FOUNDER #8. The Great Influence Owner on Creating Personal Brands - Ash Jones

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1:57The first time we sat down, he said, I want my career to look like this. Steve was the same. And it's like, they know what they want. They know how to get there. They just need the right people around them to help make it possible. He got onto Dragon's Den. And it's because of that whole idea of like, show your personality. So the company is called Great Influence. I'm very insistent on this with everyone that we work with. I can't say it for you. The best people in what I do are really good at being themselves. People buy into characters. People buy into people. People love people, right? How many people have you seen on Instagram betraying something they are not?

2:32I think there's two things. One is like people have a problem with the word personal brand. Yes. And then the other thing is that people don't think about... 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.

3:06I hope you enjoy. Let's start off with, who is Ash Jones and what has been your biggest achievement in business so far? Who is Ash Jones is a very, very big question to start off with. I'll keep it simple. I'm 37 I'm from Manchester and I'm a Man City fan I love music I play the guitar I write songs and I ended up in the world of business about 13 years ago now and yeah there's a bit we'll get into it but there's a bit of a before and after of those moments um but yeah I've always been a bit of a creative guy and i like i'm a bit of a people's person uh and my biggest achievement in business is just still being here yeah like the business turns seven in the next couple of weeks and i feel like getting past the five-year mark is a bit of an achievement in itself um and we're starting to get that phase now where businesses who were like competitors of ours are disappearing now yeah so just being around is kind of still an achievement at this point it's a great achievement mate yeah seven years still in business not a lot of people can say that no yeah no it's it's not an easy thing is it you'll know firsthand how difficult it can be once you get the first few years are a bit honeymoon and chaos yeah yeah yeah all the chaos but then there's there is a moment i feel where the first couple of years you're just kind of like riding a wave and the wave goes for you at times and then i feel like once you get to year five six seven it's about are you actually good at what you do or were you just a bit right place right time for a while um so yeah i feel like getting to the seven year mark is a bit indicative of i think we might be onto something yeah and we might be good at what we do maybe well you're a very humble guy i know you're very good at what you do just uh let the listeners know that what your company's called and what it actually does so the company is called great influence great name by the way love that name i've no idea how i came up with it um which i mean i've i've come up with a few good lines or names and i always remember them apart from that one which is really annoying because i'd like to know what was going on um but yeah we're a personal branding agency and we help founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs and senior leaders to figure out the whole piece around how do they raise their profile to help grow their businesses essentially.

5:38A lot of it is I'd say like a bit of a modern thing now with like social media and content becoming such an integral part of how people grow businesses and we've kind of ridden the wave of that happening. So yeah, that's a snapshot of what we do for people. well i think when i'm looking in i think you're way ahead of your time number one you know to jump on this seven years ago because really i think when you and i first spoke was in the pandemic yeah and you were saying dodge why are you not doing a personal brand and i was like oh i felt really uncomfortable this whole personal brand thing you're like mate just do it i was really uncomfortable do it because i was always behind the business yeah and as soon as i put myself in front of the business and created a personal brand whatever you want to call it just being real the businesses have flown and it really goes to show that that model does work if you are the front man of your business and let people know your personality and your character yeah i think it depends on it depends on the person and it depends on the business um but i think now you're seeing people a lot more get on board with the idea of kind of being the face of the business i just think it's a very un-british thing yes and we've had to kind of like it's taken a little bit longer for british people to get on board with the idea of putting themselves out there um but it's definitely like now we're seven years in and something's happening now where it's like okay people i i think you're right we were maybe a bit not too early um as i don't think you can be too early it just gives you time to figure things out but it's definitely starting to ramp up in momentum now like the whole personal brand piece and yeah it came off the back of um so i think i well i wasn't early to it it was i was working with steve bartlett and i think he was super super early to the idea and it came from we were looking at like you had like gary vaynerchuk in the u.s at the time and it's he was doing a daily vlog and we were running social chain and we're thinking like how do we promote social chain and looking at what he was doing over there and being like there's no there's nothing like this over here which sounds a bit strange to say now the idea of a founder like putting their face to it on social but it just wasn't happening then in 2015-16 so i think we were just ahead of the curve of something and now it's becoming quite a like commonplace thing in business which is good for great influence so so roll back seven years before we go into you and steven were working closely together what was the point when you said right i need to leave and go off and do my own thing and create up social um create your own business the great influence um i just felt like i'd i needed something different something of your own that was never the plan okay um i never i never expected to like start a business be a founder be an entrepreneur however you want to put it um that was never the idea and actually i the one thing i remember about having the conversation i was in car once with steve and he said he was like do you think you'd ever start a business and my response was i wouldn't know how to get a pound off someone yeah so there was always a thing of like i just wouldn't know how to do that so where do you even start um and i think entrepreneurship there's in my experience there's two types of entrepreneur one is the person who kind of has it as an idea and they're like I'm gonna do something I don't know what the business is but I'm gonna go down that path and figure it out and they start a business by doing that or you get the other type where it's like they're good at something and because they're good at that thing it ends up in them starting a business and that was kind of like my path into it is I just was I wasn't good at it at the time I was interested in the idea of personal branding I'd done it for Steve for a few years and then I thought well I want to continue doing that work and the only way that I could continue doing that work was to start my own thing good for you so so so who triggered who then for this personal brand does Steve trigger you or did you trigger Steve to create a personal brand back in the 16 17 18 19 yeah so I met him in 2012 and And he just dropped out of university at the time.

10:02And I was unemployed at the time. I was on Job Seekers Allowance. And I just agreed to go to university as my mum was very, she sat me down and had a conversation with me. I was 24, 25. And she was like, please do something.

10:22So as mums did. Yeah, please do something. and I said okay I'll do something and then I saw a video on Man City's Twitter page at the time of like the social media team and I thought oh that'd be cool yeah so I signed up to do a market marketing degree and I thought that when I finished it was going to be three four years I had to do four years because I didn't have any qualifications so I had to do an extra one before going into uni and I thought I'm going to be 28 when this finishes I'm going to need something else other than just a degree um so i had an idea of trying to find something else and then i met steve uh very randomly at an event and it was just good timing like he was right at the beginning of his business journey so to speak he was 18 he just dropped out uni um a friend of ours said oh steve starting a business and you're looking to do business so kind of intro does um and then i I dropped him a message afterwards on Facebook just saying like, I've heard networking is important.

11:26So this is me networking, like hi. And yeah, he got back to me and then I went round to his. And if anyone's heard his story, he speaks about like being in Moss Side with like, his laptop was held together by sellotape and all this kind of stuff. And he showed me this idea that he had for a business, which at the time was a student notice board, taking the student notice board online. and it was called war park um and yeah he showed me that and i was like well i'm at university for the next three years so if you want someone to work with you on this stuff i'd i'd love to and um started working with him then and that startup lasted maybe like two years yeah and then at that startup the idea for the agency that came afterwards social chain kind of materialized in that moment and he met don mcgregor during that time um and yeah it was a bit of a conversation it wasn't really like one of us triggered the other so to speak um he did this speaking thing in 2013 maybe and i went and watched it and i said like you should put something like that on youtube and it was just a bit of a conversation like oh you should do a youtube channel but there was no purpose to why he would and then social chain came around and there was a purpose all of a sudden as it was like well it'll help us get business um so yeah it just became a bit of a side project where we'd wait until everyone like the working day was done and we'd go into the office uh i'd meet him in the office at like midnight and we'd film some videos until like two three in the morning and then we'd put them on facebook and we just repeated that process for a few months and then the videos started to pick up a little traction and we started to think all right okay we there might be something in this um but it was still very much like a test see what happens yeah it's a project yeah on the side of social chain um and we were just doing it late at night and then it started to get a bit of traction it was like right okay maybe this could help um social chain in terms of like marketing the agency and getting our name out there so then that became my full-time job as i was actually trying to i was marketing social chain before that yeah i was the marketing director for the agency um and then my role changed into building steve's personal brand and yeah we started everything from zero um and it was just a case of like not not not overthink it yeah yeah just try things and see what works and i think what did you notice that worked what did you notice when steve was like i see what you're doing as as director of that company i want you to come and work with me and work on the personal brand was it him saying i want you to work on the did he say the words the person i want you to work on my personal brand or i just want you to film me talking yeah there was no like personal brand name yeah it wasn't a thing yeah and what we're talking 2016 are you saying yeah yeah okay yeah 2015 2016 um and but he was doing public speaking from like again like maybe 2013 14 personal brand wasn't like a it wasn't like let's start building your personal brand um he was just good at speaking and he was doing bits of speaking offline at like events and it just made sense like right okay let's just film some of this stuff and see what happens there wasn't any thought process to it past that um it was very much just i think all the best things kind of come that way you're not overthinking the process whereas now if you tried to sit down and strategize it it probably wouldn't happen in the same way so yeah so how many years were you working on his personal brand before you went up and set up your own company doing personal brands for other people yeah from we started maybe early 2016 and then i left in may 2018 okay so it was like a three year two three years and what made you want to leave i'd i remember having a conversation with a friend and just saying I feel like I'm I'm checking I'm not I'm just like phoning this in at the minute and I know myself too well to know that if I start like getting lazy it's a dangerous place for me to be and I just knew that I wasn't I didn't really not that I didn't care I cared so much about social chain and the people within it like but I just knew that I wasn't in in it anymore and I was just turning up and clocking in and clocking out and I felt like I was going a bit stale which yeah it's a dangerous place for me to get to and I thought I need to kick out of this somehow so I decided to leave and I remember I called my mom and she was like don't don't do that she said steve's really good and i was like it'll be fine trust me yeah i'll figure it out yeah but yeah social chain was was he upset when you left um yes i didn't do it in the way that i should have done it okay um i should have had a conversation with him and i didn't i handed in my notice when he was in the u.s okay and i was in manchester okay um and it's probably the only time we've we've been um we've been best friends for 13 years now and that period from may 2018 for about two three months afterwards we just didn't speak really it's a shame isn't it that happens when business gets in the way of friendship yeah i mean it's kind of unavoidable if you're in if you're in something for so long and um yeah i think we like everyone in that social chain period we were all learning and figuring it out none of us had the answers everyone was really young it was all our first time doing something um and i think the fact that a lot of us have come to the other side of that and we're still friends and able to speak is like testament to being able to work through really difficult situations because social chain was like a rocket ship of a business like i was there for three four ish years it felt like a lifetime like you had a lifetime's worth of experience in the space of three four years um and yeah it was those three months were the only period where we didn't talk and we got over it eventually and we spoke um but yeah it wasn't the best ending what was you what was going through your mind at the time you're thinking i don't want to see him face to face and tell him for oh he's in america i better do it now and hopefully i can just slip away and um i i found having converse difficult conversations is really hard okay and i avoided difficult conversation yeah confrontational conversation yeah and it's the thing that like building my own thing you can't avoid doing whereas when i was part of somebody else's thing you can kind of get away with it like there was a process like i could just hand in my notice to somebody and that was all i needed to do so yeah it was a bit of a cop but i just really struggled with confrontational conversations um and yeah he's he said it to me before as well like he's um the type of friend who will be honest about the things that you need like what you're great at yeah which he always was nobody has believed more in me than he did yeah um when i very much didn't believe in myself he was very vocal of doing it for me and then the other end as well of like i think you need you need to work on this and think about how you can be better at this and and those difficult conversations was something that yeah he said to me before so and how did you take that um i've had to learn to i think immediately my guard goes up with things where it's i'm being challenged um even now i see it when um like i don't know with the football something stupid with like mancy lose a cup final on saturday my guard goes straight off like hey leave me alone yeah um so yeah i've had to it's a thing of maturing right it's like not not everything is an attack on you and sometimes people are just trying to you know roundabout way help you out yeah um so yeah i've had to so basically the key there is not to take it personally and take it on board as long as you respect that person who's telling you i guess yeah yeah i've never had um the friendship group that we have where it's like me steve don mcgregor and a couple of others uh olav yonchev anthony logan and michael heaven and it's a very unique friendship group that we have and it's a very it's the most supportive friendship group and the most challenging friendship group at the same time and you need those two things to be like the best version of yourself you need the people that will be like that and i'd never had people like that around me everyone was very soft around me and everyone was very nice and would never tell me if i wasn't doing something right um and that friendship group has kind of yeah helped me to soften my immediate guard when okay somebody confronts me so to speak that's nice yeah yeah so transforming from working for someone to then going solo tell me the mindset that you had to have and tell me the sort of the highs and lows and the pressures that you've gone through in the seven years when you launched the great influence to where we are today um i think a lot of the time being like if you're a first-time founder you're doing it for the first time i'm figuring everything out it can be a bit of a minefield whereas i had the fortune of being very close i wasn't a founder of social chain but steve and don were founders and they were both my best friends and i saw near enough everything yeah um and i think having that as an experience and kind of seeing some of the things that went right and things that didn't go right it gives you a bit of i guess a bit of a directional compass so to speak in starting your own thing um but i feel like starting out you don't even think about any of that stuff you're just doing you're just reacting to what is in front of you and trying to do the best that you can with it and with the business i was doing it on my own for two years so essentially just like a one-man band which is a million times easier than running a business because you it's only you yeah um and then in 2020 i decided i'd actually had a conversation with steve and dom where it was a really interesting point like in 2020 they'd left social chain i'd been doing great influence on my own for two years and we had a conversation where all three of us were kind of like searching for our next path even though i was doing great influence i was kind of like i feel like doing it on my own i'm a bit bored again like i was at social chain i could feel myself getting bored um and they said they were like just go for it just try it like build a team see what happens uh and i decided to do it after that and then hired uh claudia cardinale her name miss um i met her in september 2020 and i got very very very very very very lucky with the first hire she's fantastic by the way yeah yeah i know she's sitting next to me right now but she is she is fantastic i can see what she's doing on on linkedin and the times we've met in ibiza you can tell she's the right person yeah i feel like that the first person that you bring into it is kind of like pivotal to whether the early stages go well or not um and but again it comes down to hiring the right people you know all down to hiring you know as an entrepreneur it's not about the operations that is finding out who's the best come and make your team stronger yeah and your first hire who's been with you seven what five five years five years yeah what did you see in claudia someone like me yeah um and not in a business sense better looking version yeah yeah yeah cooler um funny yeah yeah yeah all the things that i'm not um yeah and i what i mean by that is more just as a person so nothing to do with business like i think at the time like she was she was just a freelance copywriter and she hadn't she hadn't sharpened yet yeah so that she was at an early stage of of what she was trying to do so was she was she post uni or before yeah yeah yeah okay yeah and she'd been working uh she'd done like an agency for a while she was working at another startup and i saw her posts on linkedin um and i just thought she looked like an interesting person um and yeah i think that the first couple of hires like we had the same thing as social train the team there it was very much like it was the people rather than the skill that they had and i think if you're gonna work in a small team it's more about the people than the skills that they've got um they can learn that yeah yeah yeah he's given the self-belief to go and learn it yeah yeah well i knew nothing like steve taught me about personal branding and i knew nothing about anything when i started working with him so i kind of had the experience of like right okay you don't need to know something to get started it's just working with good people who have the right attitude and yeah i can't really articulate what it was but it's just something in i sat down with cloudy and it just some people feel like home yeah so those first two years took you know this is really important for listeners out there who are setting up their own business they may be working somewhere and going i don't like my boss i feel trapped this is a nightmare i've got a great idea i want to go off by myself what were those first two years like for you were you living at home you still have to pay rent were you were you did you have offices did you try to get certain did you try to get steven on board on a on a monthly fee did you how did it work to get you off the ground um I kind of uh I just I didn't want to put it on anyone else so like with Steve for example as a friend it's like I could have lent on him in the first year for like advice and all this kind of thing and I just i don't know i've kind of always had the mentality of like don't bother people like um so yeah the first year or so it was just i just tried to figure it out and i was i didn't have any money um and i had four grand in my bank account which uh was gifted to me and by steve lovely um what as a thank you yeah i yeah just uh yeah it was uh like a bonus kind of thing um when i left and i had that was that did he did he give you that after the after the three months or in in between periods okay it was it was a bonus for like a project that we don't kind of thing yeah yeah um and it just the timing of it was when i was leaving yeah um so i had that and then yeah I thought I've got six months like four grand will last me six months um and I thought right okay I've got six months to try figure this out and I got to the end of 2018 and I remember saying to my mom I was like I don't know if this is going to work out I'll give it a few more months and I moved back home I moved back in with my parents and I was the first few years of the business I lived with my parents uh that's a good move by the way anyone listening out there if you're setting up your own business go and get free rent for as long as you possibly can yeah while you're setting up your business to take the overheads away yeah and it's not just like the financial it's like the parents support you in yeah so many different ways um and i was 30 yeah 30 from around 30 to 33 at home yeah yeah which um i think i i don't i don't really think about it was nothing to me but i think people maybe struggle with the idea of that at high 30 31 32 like going and being at home but i think yeah there's it's i couldn't have i couldn't have done it without without doing that which is it's a privileged position to be able to do um and i think if you're in that position where you've got the opportunity to you know if you're starting something out even if it's not business even just just you're starting out or something but it's how were you how were you how did you and you how did you earn your first pound note like you said earlier oh i couldn't go and sell something for a pounder that's not my style you know i'm not really a salesperson am i a marketing person to run your own business you've got to be to be successful you've got to be good at sales and marketing you've got to be good communicator you've got a good contact list all these things going on how did what was your first money that went into your bank account within that first two years of setting up this business yeah it was actually um one of the things that steve would say to me is you're great at sales he said that to you yeah so he gave you the confidence of that even though you didn't believe in yourself yeah i get what he means now yeah because i saw sales as yeah knocking on the door yeah yeah and what he actually meant was you're really good at selling without selling you're good at communicating to people and articulating in a way that will convince them to do something um and my approach to it was i never i still now it's probably to detriment i don't go out with the idea of trying to sell to somebody to try to win the business i go out first and foremost of like can i help this person with something that i know and then if that conversation leads to like i think we could potentially work with them it goes into like uh i again it comes from like a genuine place like i think that i can do something to help you rather than trying to sell to somebody that's the best way yeah yeah i've got something that you would like can we work together yeah and then deal with the business the numbers afterwards if they're on if they're on board yeah yeah it's nicer isn't it yeah but i think those those early years it was just um yeah i just got those first few clients and you or at least i did anyway it's like you try to make it as cheap as possible and you what you think is a lot of money you're asking for it's actually not to other people and you learn that over time um but yeah in those early days it was just I thought I could help people with what I knew and I was very fortunate in that even though I'd done a few years with Steve and we'd achieved a lot in that time i was still figuring out how to do it in real time yeah so those early people that i worked with kind of took a bit of a chance on me in a sense even though i'd come from somewhere that had great credibility i was still figuring it out um so yeah it was just a case of doing doing good work for people it's still the same now yeah so just bigger bigger numbers and more people around you yeah yeah more overheads yeah but that first the the earliest thing that i can remember finance wise with the business I remember going to meet an accountant and he did like a forecast for me and looked at what I'd made in the first year or something like that and he was like right okay you're gonna so you're gonna make seven thousand pounds a month for the rest and I was like oh my friend this is very you're you're assuming things there um which kind of speaks to like I must have had some kind of lack of confidence that you didn't think you get to seven a month yeah and the number wasn't even a thing it was just like the fact that this will continue like oh you're assuming that this is going to keep going um and i maybe had to like build up confidence around that but yeah um can you remember how much you turned over in your first year and your second year roughly around i want to say maybe 80k in the first year so you stayed under you stayed under the vat threshold year one i think so yeah and then around 1 21 30 in the second year okay yeah and all by yourself yeah yeah that was that was when i was on my own good for you and then the third year claudia come along yeah and then how much did you have to put claudia on when she first started started as a student or an ex-student 21k yeah yeah okay yeah and the The first people in the team was all around that, 18 to 20K.

32:45Yeah, in 2020, 2021. And what was that like, that first step to hire someone? Because lots of people, they have the fear of hiring. I think hiring is key to growth. But all of us, when you first hire that first person, in your mind you're just thinking 21 grand. Bloody, that's a lot of money. But actually, for what they can do and take stuff off your plate and to grow the business, it probably wasn't a lot knowing what the future could hold. Yeah, I think it was...

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34:50it's anxiety inducing of like you've got somebody else is it less about the money and more that somebody you're responsible for somebody else and especially if they're good people you really don't want to let them down yeah um so yeah i i don't think the the the thing is cloud was really good so like straight away clients would be like she's magic yeah and you that kind of takes the anxiety away from you being like okay i feel like she's gonna pay for herself yeah it is a good move to do this and i'd been i think one of the smart things that i did is that i was very frugal and every like i didn't spend money i a friend of mine um he like we both were doing a similar thing and he drove a range rover and i bought like a when i learned to drive i bought like a 1 000 pound mini or something like i think it was five grand for a mini and i could have got the range over uh because i was making like 10 grand a month um and i just thought no just keep head down yeah stay in your play yeah um so i managed to build up quite like a good reserve of cash in the business so that even say that like the first two years if the first year was 18 the second year was 120 yeah there was probably like 170 180 still in the business like i didn't touch it kind of thing so when it came to hiring people it felt comfortable yeah you knew you had the buffer of like even if we lose everything yeah i can pay somebody for you got a wonderful safety net there yeah yeah no one talks about this in business like saving is a superpower but people seem to just like spending and another superpower as well you know everyone's kind of everyone's sort of like scale up, scale up.

36:49There's times in business you've got to scale down as well. Yeah. But everyone always talking about scaling up. Yeah. I actually, for the first time last week, I realized the importance of being sat on like a good amount of cash in business. And I've heard stories of it really catching people out where a tax bill comes in and it almost kills them. And it happened at Social Train early on where a tax bill came in and it's like a cash flow problem especially when you're in agencies and it's like you maybe wait 90 days to get payments and things like that and i just completely forgot that we had a corporation tax bill and it's a huge corporation tax bill and you know a lot of money goes out the account in one day and you have an expensive month and that happens and it's like fortunately with i had that thing from early on of like build up cash in the business rather than take it out and sit on it and it means that when something like that happens which i think you like you're gonna have those moments in business where you something is a bit something pops up yeah something i mean corporation taxes it happens every year you should know the date yeah i just didn't think about it but then i don't it's like oh it's fine it's not a problem but i imagine for a lot of especially if you're early in business yeah it catches you out cold especially if people are going around going i'll get that rangy on tick for a grand a month and i'll get that and all of cold the key to the key to run running a business and building a business is save for a rainy day yeah like you did there you were stashing away stashing away and that gave you the confidence to then probably grow your business to year three four five six and seven who was the next hire after claudia how long was claudia on board for before you went to get someone else um a couple of months okay and then around december january started to bring in one or two other people all full-time you no no okay yeah part-time and then it went full-time very quickly um how does your business model work for the listener yeah so everything is on a retainer yeah clients will just pay us a flat monthly fee yeah and if we do a good job they return the next month and it repeats okay um so yeah it's always been like that it's not like project-based or anything and is there a have they got to give you three months notice a month notice yeah six months notice a year's notice is there um what would you like what's the ideal scenario that someone's got to give you notice that they're fully on board i don't pay attention to what's in the contract yeah if somebody rings like clients will ring me up and say like we're just struggling at the minute and we have to cut this no worries okay all good don't worry about it all good and i feel like that kind of thing it comes back around 100 where it's like goodwill yeah the amount of contractual money yeah that we've foregone is yeah it's like it's a significant amount of money yeah like easily over six figures kind of thing um but yeah i think it's more important to understand that you're dealing with people and it's like you're also we're in the business of reputation yeah and but that's all we've got all we've got is our reputation yeah that's all we've got as business owners as entrepreneurs you know if you ask a thousand people about ash jones all you've got is your reputation yeah i think i do feel like it's a bit of a double-edged thing though because i think i've learned that you can you can put yourself to one side to try to help other people out and you've got to get the balance of doing that right where it's like we now have a business that has the seven people in the business we've got our own like financial things that we've committed to and things like that and you plan for things and then if something happens and changes and i think down the years i've maybe been too like it's fine don't worry about it like tried to help other people out and been too nice when really there's a couple of situations where it's like really maybe you should have been a bit more um tougher yeah and it's not i think the thing that i struggle with is associating toughness with um not being nice yeah to people when really it's just like no we we agreed to do this and it's not my fault that it's happened and yeah i think there's one of the mistakes that i probably made early is maybe being too yeah too nice a bit of a walk over at times um and you've got to learn to it's okay when it's just you and a small team and you've got cash in the bank yeah seven's a nice number by the way yeah i've got seven one of my business i've got seven i like i like i like having small teams yeah anything over 12 because it just becomes complicated hierarchy politics it goes up to 15 16 people are sleeping with each other it's okay it was all chaos what's going on in there do you know yeah i like to keep everything under 10 but that for the hot spot for me is always seven yeah yeah yeah we had it it was at social chain the initial team was like 10 of us yeah and we were all sat around one table yeah and i just remember how much i personally got out of that where everything was around one table and any conversation was had around the table and the experience of it just really suited me and it was actually one of the early investors in spotify a guy called shack he came into social chain and did a talk and he said that every time your company changes like zero to ten yeah and ten to 25 25 to 50 50 changes massively it's an entirely different company yeah um and some people will be right for the zero to ten and they won't be for the 10 to 25 because the 10 to 25 the person going to employ the people are getting people who are actually qualified for that job or actually the naught to 10 is you're all working together as friends yeah and building yeah yeah and then well that then that causes problems he comes in and starts demanding stuff and that guy's like well i've been here for seven years who are you to tell me that and then that's when the problem arises yeah yeah and i was very much like with at social chain i was built for the zero to 10 i was not built for the 10 to 25 and it's a little bit different a great influence in that my opinion on it is that i want everyone to be really good at what they do and i've always had the idea of like small team that are really competent with a small client base like we've we've turned down working with so many people because we kind of want a small yes and it's very personal like you'll know how personal business can be and the minute that it starts getting you've got too many clients too many team members you lose the personal element to it and yeah that personal relationship especially in the line of work that we do where it's somebody's individual reputation you have to have a very personal relationship with them and the minute that the business gets too big you lose that you yeah especially the person paying you is like ash i can't get hold of you today what was it when normally i'll get hold of you that anytime i'd get send you a whatsapp or whatever yeah yeah tell me some of the clients you're working or tell me some of the clients you've worked with over the seven years um so a lot of founders of like agencies startups scale-ups uh i guess notable ones um julian herne of fuel uh we work with founder of grenade for a short while my protein um who's my protein oliver cookson okay yeah you still working with oliver No.

44:33No, okay. No. But unbelievable story. He lived around the corner from me. He's a Manchester-led. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ridiculous, 500 million or something. Is that right or is that? Yeah, yeah. 500 pound to 500 million. Yeah, and he had 100 % shares in that. Mm-hmm. My God. Yeah. And he grew - I got an email yesterday. Was that the guy who emailed through yesterday said he wants to come on? Right. Okay. Yeah. He grew up in Withenshaw, which I'm from Sailmore, which is just around the corner. Okay. So, yeah. Who else? That's some story. Just hold it. Hold the formula. It sold out for 500 million. I had 100 % shit.

45:06And this was on a protein powder brand. Yeah. When protein powder was quite new to the market, I guess. And someone just snapped him up and said, yeah, very much so. Yeah. But it was like a lot of great businesses. It came from a personal problem. Yes. And then you built a business off the back of it. Yeah. So, yeah, you should have Oliver on. Good lad. Interesting story. Yeah. He's a Man City fan as well. He's a Man City fan, is he? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I'll, I'll always, yeah. But it's Beckham. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Who else? Matthew, Matthew Syed. He's a like bestselling author, had multiple bestselling books.

45:41John Amici, we've been working with for the past four or five years now. And he's one of the most intelligent people I've, he is the most intelligent person I've ever met in my life. What, Book Clever or Street What? Street Clever or Book Clever? Yeah, Book Clever. Just his way with words is unbelievable. What does he do? um he was the he was the first british nba player okay he's from manchester as well um and first british nba player first publicly out nba player um publicly out yeah like came out as gay oh he came out as gay okay yeah uh first nba player to do so and now he's an organizational psychologist so he went from nba to psychology okay and yeah he's an incredible incredible man where's he from uh originally from stockport in manchester so he's gone from stockport to nba yeah basketball then come out as gay and then come back and he's got an organizational psychot yeah organizational psychologist they work with a lot of global companies on leadership and transformation and interesting guy very yeah and again he's got like best-selling book author uh and then but the highest profile person we work with is gary neville and been working with him for four years now really yeah even though he's a red yeah we had to iron a few things out at first no i was um when i actually met him for the first time i was like a fan of his yes in that i'd watched every interview that he'd done on YouTube and I just loved his like take on football and as a broadcaster yeah as a player, him and his team inflicted great pain on him on a lot of people, yeah What he's done off the pitch is pretty remarkable like, does the bloke sleep?

47:41Like I see him I see him on three podcasts then I see him on Sky Sports then I see him running his businesses then I'm seeing doing relentless group, then I'm seeing hotels. And I'm seeing like, I think, has he got like... Yeah. It's... He's juggling a lot. Yeah. I mean, that group of players from under Alex Ferguson, Sir Alex Ferguson, apologies. The mentality of that group of players was, I think, you know, they achieved great things for a reason. But from my knowledge, not many of those players are like maybe i guess david beckham business business minded yeah yeah and i think gary from early on was very interested in business and you can see that though yeah he sensed that he built different yeah uh i've met i've met only two people really that are like well him and steve uh the only two people that i've really met where and i've spent time with to get to know them well enough um where i'm like there's just something different about them in how they work yeah and how they want to build um so yeah they're a bit of a a rarity i think and yeah it comes from his dad if you listen to him speaking that work ethic comes from his dad so it's very much like in him well they're a family of achievers that's what they are the family is unbelievable like the two lads playing for man united and england the sister playing for the roses of netball captain yeah he's gone on to do the business it like yeah what did the old man what did dad and mom do are they representative of sport somewhere uh yeah they were both involved heavily within sport and like even now his mom jill yeah still plays basketball netball still plays netball now yeah we should get it down to the ball more sevens yeah you should come on jill well, if you're out there, let's get you down.

49:42It's actually this weekend. Yeah, so yeah, they're a relentless family, I guess. It runs in the family. But yeah, he's got so much going on. And a very, yeah, obviously I'd spent so long under Steve and I've been his friend for a long time and he teaches me a lot that I take on board. And Gary has been somebody, again, who I've had the fortune of spending a lot of time with and I've learned so much. It's like the best thing that I found about running a business is it's actually a hack for your own life. If you work with the right people in business, because of the line of work I do, I get to be involved with people who are great at achieving things.

50:28And it's kind of like a knock-on effect. You see firsthand why they're so good at achieving things. And yeah, I'm very much somebody who like takes influence from other people to help me build my own way of operating, so to speak. So yeah, Gary has been one of those people in my life where it's just. So when you first met Gary, he obviously knew what you did. How's that relationship been over the last four years? And what actually do you do for him? A lot of it is he's got a really clear idea of what he wants to do. And the first time we sat down, he said, I want my career to look like this in the future.

51:11He had a very clear idea of where he was going. And everything has been about trying to, like, what are the steps to getting there that need to happen? Whether that's within his broadcasting career or whether that's within, like, the businesses that he runs. Like, how do you get to this point? um and a lot of what i do is it's supporting i i say supporting because there's some people that we work with where we're leading them yeah but with somebody like that they are leading everyone yeah um and steve was the same and it's like a really good visionary mind they know what they want they know how to get there they just need the right people around them to help make it possible and that's very much like my role and the other people that work with Gary you see like it's a team that's coming together that has a clear idea of what it's trying to do and what it needs to do to make those things happen so yeah he's got such a huge profile now where it's like he's in the every single day he's social media following of over like 10 million followers he's on tv all the time there's so much going on in his world and it's about trying to think how does based on what he wants to achieve in his career and what he's got going on now what do you do and what do you not do like how do you position somebody and how what do you need to be like mindful of how they're coming across and being perceived and it's not in the way of like um managing perceptions to try to like make people think yeah or or try to control what somebody says or anything like that it's very much like the career steps that that person is trying to achieve and based on what those career steps are they need to do certain things and position themselves in a certain way so that people get that idea of them and it helps them open the next door and the next door and the next door um so yeah it's very much a lot of that kind of thinking when somebody's got so much going on it's like how does all that come together do you have to rein him in at all um or does he know what he wants do you have control over his any of his over his linkedin account or his instagram account or any of his accounts that you can actually write stuff on his behalf i don't ever write stuff no on everything and i'm very like insistent on this with everyone that we work with i can't say it for you yeah because if i say it for you it won't come across the right way it's it's not you um and it instead it's about like helping them to be able to get the right things out like you're drawing things out of them at times you're helping them understand what they need to talk about in this moment so it's more strategy is it yeah very much so especially when somebody is at that level of profile and the thing with um like gary's so good at being gary and the best people in what i do are really good at being themselves so you don't have to do that for them it's instead your job just to try to like shape and know when to do certain things and then not another's like so yeah it's very like strategical and tactical um but it's also like the best people are also really collaborative like it's not a hand this off to ash and great influence and off they go yeah it's very much like together what what do we think and we have an open conversation around it and somebody's idea might be better than the other and yeah how important is a personal brand today um i think it's becoming a lot more important when you think about the way that the world is going with ai and things like that which has kind of come out of nowhere um not that ai wasn't a thing before but i think the last six months have made it a bit of a pressing conversation in a way that it wasn't before and you're now in the early stages of seeing how a personal brand will be important in the future in the if i can like if i'm applying for a job i just click a button and it writes everything it does the cv for me it does the cover letter like so what's it i'm thinking as an employer when i'm looking at people's profiles as well it's like you it's so easy to apply for a job now and the job market is very crowded so say there's a thousand people applying for a job how do you stand out from a thousand people where ai can help a thousand people be the best version of themselves to try to win the job and i think that's where the idea of like personal brand comes in for me it's not just something where it's like founders and ceos and entrepreneurs there's the case for that that always has been there's always been a thing of like the spokesperson for the business it's just been accelerated because of social media it's now easier to do and you can control it which is very compelling to people in business we can control the narrative whereas usually the narrative especially if you're in large businesses the narrative can be controlled by the media which is what businesses don't want um so yeah i think in the future the idea of um a personal brand or just understanding how to stand yourself out from others and almost like curate yourself have you noticed all the clever people on on linkedin and instagram building their own personal brand yeah i mean it's very much um a modern thing i think and you like you're living proof right like how important you've been in business a long time and you've probably been doing the personal brand side of it more recently yes what's been the difference between the before and after not on you but like the impact for you and the business ventures that you run in a business sense huge huge doors opening everywhere like literally doors opening everywhere but you have to be yourself i never liked those words when we first spoke personal branding like you just have to be yourself and put yourself out there yeah and so people can see your character but you have to then intertwine stories into your character talking about business if you are on linkedin or just being real and putting some family stuff up there, but mentioning about business and people buy into characters, people buy into people.

57:50People love people, right? Um, I've seen so many opportunities since I've done the personal band. There's been so many doors opened. It's been ridiculous to be the co-host of the Harry Redknapp show. And that was like four years ago. I was only in, only in it for a, for a year doing the personal brand or six months and then doing the podcast as part of the personal brand. Yeah. That's blown up. and then you see things blowing up on on linkedin and instagram and those sort of channels as well but i can't speak highly enough of it i think there's two things one is like people have a problem with the word personal brand yes which is entirely understandable as it comes across as maybe a bit like egotistical which a lot of people doing it aren't doing it for the ego yeah they're doing it for a reason to help support things that they're trying to achieve agree which is normally business yeah yeah so the the term and immediately puts people off yes and then the other thing is that people don't think about the knock-on effect of doing it they just think about doing it so they think about like oh i've got to like create content and post online and do all these things and that's all they're thinking about they're not thinking about like oh this door will open up or they're not thinking about the knock-on effect and i've like seen it firsthand with so many people where it's like don't look at the public facing things so take somebody like steve for example don't look at what he's doing look at what the impact of what he's doing is having on him and the business ventures that he runs and the opportunity that is coming as a result of doing those things like he got onto dragon's den and if people like for him to get onto dragon's den from where he came from is an unbelievable thing and it's because of that whole idea of like put yourself out there yeah tell your story create however you want to put it show your personality yeah but what it does it open like it came back opening doors there's so many opportunities coming your way if people understood the power of this because at first i was like i'm not sure about this i'm not sure but there are there are doors opening every day people coming in on instagram people coming on linkedin people emailing through do you want to be part of this business can you open this door can you do this we'd like you on this show we'd like you to do this it's never Everending.

1:00:18Yeah. Why were you not sure? You said, I'm not sure. That's a fantastic question. Because I was always building company brands, I was always the person behind the company brand. As soon as I put myself in front of the company brand, I went, this is me, and this is who you're going to be buying off if you're going to buy festival tickets or you're going to buy, or whatever it is, or your business.

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1:02:18it just made it so much easier there we go it's as simple as that but why you you say it at first so i was a bit like hmm because i had that connotation of oh people are going to think you're just posting because you want to just put yourself out there i'm posting because doors are opening yeah opportunities are coming away you do a post an opportunity something slips in someone said i've been watching you or looking at you watching you for three four years here's an opportunity would you like to come and have a chat oh my god wow thank you mate or yeah it just or you walk down the street and someone clocks you and goes oh mate i've got this idea what your thoughts and like it's just it's never ending yeah but that thing that you say there about like i didn't want to be the face of it and people think who whom steve said the exact same thing yeah so there's a great clip of him on the podcast and he's saying like when we first started doing it i mean doing youtube and all this kind of stuff he almost didn't do it yeah because his his issue was people are going to think who who does he think he is and he said that that almost stopped him from doing it and i think i think 99.9 of people will think that if you can break that and just be you and right from the heart with a photo or a video and just be you you can't hide anything yeah you're not yeah as long as you as long as you can back stuff up that you are the real deal yeah i think this is a problem as well yeah where it's like a lot of people are trying to portray something that they're not and i've and i've seen that i've seen that a lot and we were chatting in the car on the way here how many people have you seen on instagram portraying something they are not buying all these followers from asia and then you go and look on look on we're saying how do you spot someone who's blagging it they might have 75 000 100 000 whatever and then you see their reels and the reel says 900 views yeah okay straight away that person's bought all of them from a foreign country yeah or you or you see on yeah there's lots of ways to see isn't there isn't it the issue is is that um in the world of business it it's fine to do that if you're in the world of like being an instagram influencer but in business your reputation you get found out is everything yeah and the people at the upper levels of business can spot yeah it a mile off agree and what you end up doing is you convince the people that aren't crucial yeah and they follow you but the people that are crucial see right through 100 that's a great way that's a great way of putting it you can kid the people that don't really matter but the people that really matter you can't kid you can't kid a kidder yeah yeah exactly and that's like it has to authenticity it's like a bit of a cheesy word i can't stand that word by the way yeah when i hear someone use that word i think are you real just be real yeah it's just being just be real and be you and life becomes be honest honest just be straight yeah and say how it is but i also understand people who are employed ash like if you're employed you can't go and write really how you feel if you go and work for a bank or work for jp morgan or work for someone you can't really go and on linkedin but the the owners of those businesses that are cool with their people working with them writing it their business will just blossom yeah more people know about it more people find out about the culture more people have realized that you're a good boss and you you're good with people the knock-on effects are huge and i know i know business owners who won't allow people to write their thoughts on linkedin yeah it's a it's a weird weird yeah it's it's backwards yeah it's very it's not progressive yes um and yeah we're getting to a point now where businesses need to be progressive with things and understand that now people are going to be posting online and they're going to be doing their own thing and you've got to bring them on side with it you can't create a barrier or some kind of like try to control what people are doing um and it's the thing that i've struggled with is like i'm from a culture in business i worked in a business before this one and i've started this one and the culture is very similar and the clients i work with have similar cultures in their businesses you attract what you want to attract yeah and it's just like the people aren't trying to control people there's not much politics like everyone's very nice and personable and if a difficult conversation needs to be had it's had there's respect there like that's the world that i've always been around yeah so when i see the opposite of that i can't quite wrap my head around it Same.

1:06:56Also, we were talking about podcasting, like the metrics on podcasting. Entry to podcasting is really cheap, but it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of research. It takes a lot of your time of being a podcaster. But there's also this sort of front that no one knows how well that podcast is doing or not. Yeah. How would you tell if a podcast is doing well or not? Have you heard of it? Like, has somebody mentioned it to you? And the problem is online now you can fake so much. But I can spot a fake in my life. Yeah, yeah. It's what I mean. We're in it, the game. You can spot a fake who's bullshitting and who's not, who's pretending to be someone they're not.

1:07:46Yeah, and I think, again, it's like within business, you need to remember that this is within business and your reputation is everything. and over decades you can't hide the truth you can hide the truth for five six seven eight years maybe but eventually it comes out yeah and i think too many people aren't thinking the longest term with their personal reputation and the reputation of the things that they build and their reputation with the people around them yeah um and i think that a lot of it is naturally people will do things in business to try to get ahead or give themselves a competitive edge and i think that's a very understandable and reasonable thing to do but i think the line is being heavily blurred now especially with social media where you can game so much that doesn't really exist you said like five years i think people can get found out in six months now i think people are getting really wise to this i reckon three years ago four years ago people weren't as wise but i think people are getting really wise to see who's the real deal who's not and when you see a real deal person And doesn't it make you go, that's nice.

1:08:55Yeah. Yeah. Fair play to them. Certain people will stand the test of time and others won't. And I think I always think of it like I have confidence that I'll still be here in a decade helping people. And I think in that decade, I'm not going to be perfect, but I think people will go, he's a good guy. Yeah. And I think if you can do that, that's like the trick to it. That's the key, isn't it? It's not trying like the short term ism. It's just not worth it in business. And again, it goes back to that point of like, maybe I've been too nice at times and having to learn the balance between the two.

1:09:30But it always comes from a point of view of like reputation is everything. And in 10, 20, 30 years, I want to be able to lean on people and people be able to lean on me. And yeah, it's been a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around in business. is like there's just some people that aren't good yeah it's just the way that is and some people are in it but do you think that's do you think that's why there is such a high percentage a high rate of people failing as entrepreneurs um there's a lot of good people too and things just don't work out but yeah i think there's it's it's not good like people in it for themselves or in it for the wrong reasons or that um yes it is i've i've had to struggle with wrapping my head around it at times um and none of us are perfect we all make mistakes we all get things wrong we all could have treated people better in certain situations and had conversations at certain times that we maybe didn't um but yeah i've encountered some people along the line it's just like how do you operate for so long when you've been blagging out yeah essentially but I think long term you know it's interesting business as well breaking the back of a business I always talk about the thousand day rule if you can break the back of a business a thousand day that is phenomenal but you're looking at five years seven years sometimes five years to break the back and break even do you know what I mean I go into business now just long term like the festivals now I've bought my sevens going 18 years you know I've got a built a moat around my business you know you've got to do anything you can to protect that and what happens is the competition comes in they punch you they kick you they try to do whatever you do you are there protecting your business like it's your baby which it is like a diamond yeah you know it's um business isn't easy though if you're not used to business and you have worked for someone and you go and sit up by yourself you're in for a shock yeah it's it's the single greatest life i've not had a child um but for me like my life is insanely different from how it was before change as a person kind of thing and i think that you don't you have no idea how it's going to change you and it comes with an undercurrent of anxiety and some kind of like low level stress at all times and you have to learn to like build the right characteristics to be able to operate like that where every day is kind of like an unknown yeah and the things that you deal with and the uncertainty and the anxiety that comes with it especially if you're an anxious person like i'm an anxious person okay so and business is like pouring gasoline on that yeah um see some people are very like cool calm collective never really been anxious people and just you know it's it's easier for them but if you're of an anxious disposition business is yeah it's like gasoline on the fire kind of thing and it's 24 7 and you're waking up thinking about it and you're going to bed thinking about it and you're thinking about paying all your staff and you're thinking about is the income coming in and you're thinking about the taxes going up and you think about the entrepreneur's tax going up the employer's tax going up you know all these things you've been thrown at constantly then you're thinking what's left at the bottom line are we working on a 10 net profit yeah you know we're working on 5 net profit you're working on 3 most businesses lose money yeah you know most businesses get themselves in serious trouble they lose money they're getting in debt but they've got they've got such pride in the way and the ego gets in the way they don't want to go well let's give it another another year another year they might end up being 100 grand in debt then 150 when's the point where you go i've got hammer notice i've got i've got to stop this business yeah i think i again like my privilege is coming from a culture where quitting at the right time was encouraged yeah and it's something like steve spoke about in his journey like when we did that that first business he was doing wall park he knew when to quit yeah and me and Dom were working on it with him at the same time.

1:13:33And it was like, okay, well, if you're stopping, we stop. And he's had a thing of like culturally knowing when the right time is. Like it's not an embarrassing thing to queer. It's a good sign of an entrepreneur when you know when you're into something, then you know when enough's enough and you can step away and go, you know, this is a good time because I could get myself in proper trouble here. If I hold on to this for another couple of years, I could lose another 100 grand or 200 grand. There's a good time to walk away. But that's a sign of a good entrepreneur. yeah well a lot of people think it's it is quitting it is failure i guess the it's the personal thing isn't it it's like to publicly fail is a very challenging thing for people to accept and yeah it i've i imagine it's not an easy thing to go through seeing people recently where it's like very publicly yeah having to shut down companies and liquidate them and things like that and i can't imagine being on the other side of that where you're the person the founder that's you know having to go through that and and we could go into the whole vc thing i've never borrowed any money in the last all my businesses for the last 27 years as a proper adult but if you're caught up in a vc thing and you're you're chained like that and the pressure's on you people think oh i see people celebrating on you know we just raised two million quid three million quid mate they are going to squeeze you for every bit of an ounce of blood to make sure this business model works you don't even know where this business model's actually working you've got in for VC money early doors.

1:14:58You're hiring like it's fun. Yeah, hire that, hire that, let's get the nice offices. When you work stuff, you bootstrap it. Like you were saying earlier and what we've done over the years is that you go, I can't afford that yet. Okay, we'll employ that one person. Let's hold back this whole time. Then we go again. Then you build that for five, six, seven years. Then if you really need backing to take it to the next level, then go and get your backing. But you've proved that that business has worked. I find it very odd to see this massive celebration of businesses that haven't been proved receiving all this money.

1:15:25and VCs who are there, never running half of them, but a high percentage of them have never run their own businesses. They're just going to number crunch in. You know, I find that whole thing, there's a whole, we could speak of a whole. There's two things that I've learned from other people in business. Yeah. And one is I've never seen anyone having a good time when they've got a big team. Yes, I agree. And then the other is I've never known anyone to speak positively of investment and having investors. Yes. it's always the opposite um and also something that they never saw coming and the smartest people that i know never saw certain situations coming that came which kind of teacher is again it's like a thing i look to and i'm like if we were to ever like i've turned down a couple of investment offers and if something serious was to ever come onto the table i'd have that in my head of being like what what what you think is going to happen the opposite the smart way smarter people than you thought this was going to be one way and it turned out to be a very different so just dangerous yeah before we finish up here that that journey to where you are today are you in the best possible position you've been in your seven years of great influence as we see it today personally or professionally personally personally um yes yeah yeah yeah i've got to a point where um i think i was maybe lacking in the confidence of what i was able to achieve or how good you were yeah yeah and over the last six months especially something is just yeah and yeah i have the confidence in myself that other people saw in me i've actually got it in myself now and i think once you've got that it can become a cultural thing yeah like if the founder doesn't have it it's very hard for the rest of the team to have it absolutely if you don't believe in yourself how are the other people you are on the journey with you going to believe in themselves or believe in you yeah and you can't fake it you can't say it yeah because people feel it so until you feel it in yourself and that's where you that's how you feel today yeah yeah i'm i'm getting to a point where i'm i like i will publicly say i think i'm good at what i do which it doesn't come from a place of arrogance it's taken me seven years of downplaying myself because i didn't believe that i was good at what i did i can tell you you are brilliant at what you do thank you yeah you are you're absolutely brilliant at what you're doing and to see that confidence in you over the last six months and when even in ibiza i could see you sort of brewing up there like when was that that was yeah it was last last summer that was last summer wasn't it yeah see saying yeah yeah how you are today is a lovely position to be in yeah are you happy

1:18:23getting there yeah getting there i think when i started the business i was happy because you're happy go lucky and then you start to i started the business when i was 30 and now i'm 37 it's like you mature in that time as well you start to become an adult for the first time um and yeah in the last year i've only had like mature situations that i've gone through for the first time where I've been like okay this is life this is how life unfolds um and I think the last three four years I had so much going on and I was developing and figuring things out that it's difficult to not that I wasn't happy but I think you're just not even thinking about yourself you're just doing everything else um so yeah I'd say like I'm starting to get there where I'm like it's less happy i'm just so grateful yeah and i've never been grateful not that i've not been grateful you know i've just not realized it yeah um and now the people that i'm around and what i get to work on and the fact that i get to get up in the morning and do something that i find interesting like yeah i have so much gratitude that i i didn't have knowingly a year ago and i think the last year has just really taught me how very very very very lucky i am and i think that's like happiness is up and down yeah some days on saturday i was sad because city lost the cup final last night i was happy because united lost so happiness and sadness is down but i think yeah like am i grateful and excited about the future of what i'm doing and what i have in store like yeah I've never I've never been in a better position in my life and it's because of everyone around me and everyone that's been around me in the past 12-13 years and it's not about me either it's about everyone else so yeah I'm ready for what's to come.

1:20:26Mate amazing mate I've really really enjoyed this Likewise. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you so much for having me on. My pleasure you're a gentleman, good man Esh cheers mate, good luck to you thank you. Cheers buddy that was really good i really enjoyed that well done really good 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 cheers guys when everything is moving all at once your workforce your tech stack your business you don't need more tools you need one solution that's why paylossity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI-driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next.

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