FOUNDER #9. How To Make Millions by Serial Entrepreneur - Elliot Wise

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0:42For you to be naive enough to think that anything in life that is worth having is easy, is nonsensical, and you're going to lose before you even start. If you are a true entrepreneur, you have the ability to build the game you never want to stop playing. You said you've got the boomers. They're the ones we listen to. They've got the power, they've got the authority. The boomers killed it. Boomers, like a 60-year-old plus now, have got more money than anyone. Gen Zs get a lot of stick. I think they're a lost generation. And what I'm seeing is the younger generation wanting to be entrepreneurs because social media are telling them that this is cool.

1:12But it's the iceberg syndrome. You never see the work that happens below it. So everyone's trying to get to a fictitious goal where they've completed the game. The people that build their wealth through blood, sweat and tears over a prolonged period of time are the ones most likely to keep it. Build your life like the game you never want to stop playing. In infinite amounts of levels, you can progress as much as you possibly want and realize that actually the enjoyment isn't in getting the goal, it's in progressing towards a better you. One thing I've noticed with successful entrepreneurs is one massive common trait.

1:42They are very, very good with it.

1:51Hey, 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. I hope you enjoy. Elliot, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Nice little set up. It's a lovely little setup, isn't it?

2:21Yeah, it's cosy. It is cosy. Let's get the ball rolling. Who is Elliot Wise? Elevator pitch. Born entrepreneur. Started my first web design business at 13 after realising that the system wasn't for me. That progressed into e-commerce, selling products and services online, specifically lighting, at the age of 16. So I'm going to give you a real quick pitch here and then we can talk about the nuances of it going forward. that progressed very quickly into a multi-million pound business by the time i was 19 and then ended up going to china importing this is back in the days 20 odd years ago well 17 years ago before i was you know blessed with alibaba or another another another tools off to china sourcing my own products cut out the middleman in the uk it's probably one of the first to do that literally on my own in my early 20s in china built that company up bang business partner screwed me over which I take full accountability for which we can talk a little bit about moved back in with my mum left my four bedroom detached house rented out to other people sold my Bentley GT that I had at 21 and built up a marketing agency because I realized the skill set that I'd learned from e-commerce was actually sales is predominantly built up a marketing agency that then scaled we We marketed for companies like Watson Gym Equipment, beauty spas and Harrods and big names and been involved in multiple businesses.

3:52Met my beautiful wife in that period. She ended up in Stoke-on-Trent doing her medical degree, for which I moved up. Started buying buy-to-let for students while I was there while still running my marketing agency, still running e-commerce businesses, setting new ones up. We then set up an aesthetics business together once she graduated, moved back down south. Had two beautiful boys since then. Esthetic Clinic is flying. I've now got more into, trying to get more into JVs, equity buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, and while also still running all of the other businesses, and more specifically now a lot more info products and actual consultancy and marketing consultancy in and around what I've learned.

4:35So, yeah, in a very short window, we've done a lot. So the biggest thing I'm taking there is marketing. Mate, sales. Sales and marketing. If you can nail sales, anyone listening out there, if you can nail sales and you know how to promote, which is marketing in posh words, you're away. You'll always have money coming in, always. So I want to go on the marketing side of it. What sort of marketing do you actually do? So anyone listening out there, everyone who's got a business or hasn't got a business, you have to market your brand to earn money. What are you marketing? Well, let's just define terms here.

5:09Because marketing and sales are two different things. For me, marketing is awareness around what it is that you do. So that's giving someone actual visual touch points with your brand or the product or the service that you're selling. This is why we do these podcasts. This is why we put stuff out online. That is marketing. The actual taking of someone's money, and I say that quite crudely, but the acquisition of someone's money into your bank account is the sales part. So marketing and acquisition teams in my businesses are separate. And marketing for me is the bit that's fun. That's the bit where you can be a fanboy.

5:45That's the front bit. You've got the money-driven, hungry guys behind. I just hire sales guys that just love money. It's the one fulfillment part. Well, it's the one part of the businesses that I am actually happy if they're just money hungry. The rest of them actually have to care about the business and the customers and everything else. When it comes to sales, those guys have a hard job. They're cranking. So for me, back in the day, it was Google AdWords because I was one of the first into Google AdWords. That's just getting your product, your website, your business or your brand in front of somebody.

6:18So breakdowns of the listener out there, Google AdWords, is that when someone's typing in, I want to do an events festival, I want to do an events course, you're going to come top of the list? Yes. Okay. And you've got to pay to be top of that list. So you have predominantly your paid ads at the top, and then below that you have your non-knowable organic SERPs, search and related rankings, basically, which is SEO, which is not paid. So those ones you can do a lot of work on to actually get your website ranked under certain key terms. And then the others, which I much prefer, is Festival Bournemouth or festivals in Bournemouth.

6:57You can pay for that term to show your specific text and link to your website. And then since that point with e-commerce now, you can put - So just break down what e-commerce is? E-commerce is selling products online. So that's the ability to take this cup effectively, create a payment provider. Normally you have Stripe or something similar that's going to handle your payments. and then go into your bank account and you create a website, customer can come on, purchase it, you send it out, the money's in your account straight away. It's the most biblical change when it came to my life anyway. And that in itself is now amazing.

7:35In terms of marketing, you can use Google advertising, which is like you said. Now there's the addition of having the product picture, the price, and the description all in one place. We call it Google Shopping. We've got one major search engine, which makes life a lot easier as well. So that's pretty much always in Google. And that's pretty much the marketing on that side of things. So breaking down your business that you currently have today, how many full-time staff do you have? Full-time staff? Well, we have multiple businesses. How many businesses do you have today? On paper, five. And they are?

8:10We have aesthetics. Aesthetics. We have a couple of e-commerce businesses. We have a consultancy business, but I also have some abroad as well and some in the UK. We have a marketing agency, marketing slash artificial intelligence agency now, because that's a whole new kind of era that we've gone into. And then the property side of stuff. So if you put the property bits aside, which one earns you the most money? Which is the most lucrative out of those businesses? E-commerce, okay. E-commerce, yeah. Still to this day. I mean, I love, love, love e-commerce because it's so scalable. I could be here today while money is still being made.

8:44And what are you selling? What am I selling? So we have jewelry. I've got a manufacturing company where we sell switches and sockets, incidentally. And we have a skin brand, which actually that's under NDA, but that's new. And I do dropshipping as well. So those ones are stocked. So you're buying in the stock. So e-commerce can be split into two kind of categories, which is dropshipping and then stocked products. Okay. So stocked products is the stuff that you own. They come in. You send it out. Thank you very much. So you have a warehouse. Dropshipping, you don't own anything. So the stock stuff is typically you have a warehouse, whether it be yours or we call them a 3PL, which is a logistics company that does it for you.

9:26You get your products in, you put them there, and then you have your staff or the 3PL company sending them out. Like a fulfillment. Fulfillment center. But most people either do it themselves or have a 3PL. That's quite stock heavy. That's much more capital intensive. Dropshipping is the art of finding this product online. Quite often you can go to AliExpress, Alibaba, there's other sourcing companies, other places in Europe. You can find a product that you like, you can have that manipulated, maybe white label it, whatever it is that you want. You can create a Shopify store, which is the easiest way to build a website nowadays.

9:56Put the product online, run some marketing, run some Facebook or Instagram ads, and then have that store or that manufacturer in China send the product to your customer. On your behalf? On your behalf. My God. And then you can hire, this is what we do, we outsource the customer service to maybe a Filipino or even artificial intelligence that then deals all the customer inquiries so you're completely hands off. It's genius, isn't it? It's a genius business model. But it must be very hard to break through or is it harder to find the product that you want to sell? Let's go into this actually. How many businesses that are good and have longevity are easy to get into?

10:34Not a lot. Not a lot. One of the funniest things that people always say to me when it comes to anything, whether it be drop shipping, trading, setting up a business, setting up a festival company, whatever it is, setting up a podcast, oh, it must be difficult. Since when did anything worth anything in life be easy to get hold of? And even if it was, and you were one of those lucky people that managed to arbitrage a small window when it was easy, you won the lottery, within a week everyone's on the bandwagon because it's easy and then it becomes difficult. So for you to be naive enough to think that anything in life that is worth having is easy, is nonsensical, and you're going to lose before you even start.

11:16So even if you're sitting here thinking about getting into business and you're looking for the easy business, stop. Just stop. Because you're going down the wrong road. There's no easy business. And anyone who listens out there now, as an entrepreneur for all my life, there are no easy businesses. But they were easier businesses in the 90s and noughties than they are today, but it's very, very different because there was cash involved. so you got rewarded straight away of selling something and receiving something at the moment i think business and entrepreneurship the way we are at the moment in 2025 i think it's really really tough for anyone getting into this world tougher i think they're as difficult as each other but for different reasons i think what's happened is is before it was more about your network the ability to get cash to get assets to know people and if you could break that which is also very difficult because you're either born into it or you have to work your way into those circles once you have the capital you're more secure now it's much more predicated on your skill set how hard are you willing to work how good are you willing to become how many reps are you willing to put in without seeing results how many people work freaking hard and don't get any results i'm not talking to jim because if you work freaking hard and you eat well you're going to be in good nick i'm talking you can you can go and set up a business these days where 85 of businesses fail anyway people don't talk about this only five percent of businesses get past 10 years i always talk about the thousand day mark if you can get to a thousand days to break even in a business that's phenomenal a proper proper business that's phenomenal sometimes that might take five years sometimes it makes seven years but in that period there's going to be a bit that if you're not obsessed with your business you're going to come unstuck if you don't love your business and what you're doing you're going to come unstuck and you're going to be looking left and looking right and people might be laughing at you or people are saying, oh, yeah, I told you so.

13:00I told you it's going to fail. Like there's a massive misconception in there about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship is freaking hard. But since social media, there are people out there making entrepreneurship look easy. I think the issue is that everyone's looking for the easy route and like you say, people naive enough to believe the stuff they're seeing online is easy. but it's the iceberg syndrome you never see the work that happens below it someone that is a master in their craft makes something that's extremely difficult look easy yeah that is a beautiful position to be in and you take a football player who's absolutely incredible you know watch david beckham back in the day the guy could take a corner and he would make it look so easy that you go out after his game and you try and attempt the same thing and fail miserably when you see someone that has that level of skill to be able to make something extremely difficult look easy you have to realize just how much blood sweat tears turmoil reps for year after year after year without seeing the results that person did and that's inspiring yeah but it's the naivety of people dodge i think that's actually most concerning and people just need to wake up and I think it's actually an obligation for you and I to sit here and say it's not as vogue as it seems we do seem to be in an era right now where entrepreneurship seems to be glorified it's probably one of the loneliest hardest grueling places I've ever sat in in my entire life but I love that it's like no different to a high caliber athlete who will be doing things above and beyond any sense of rational.

14:43I agree. But entrepreneurship is my sport. It's my sport. You have to treat it like you are a professional athlete. End of. You've got to live and breathe this. You've got to wake up thinking about it. You've got to go to bed thinking about it. You're on holiday, you're thinking about it. It's just life. But I can't compare it to anything because I've never had a job. So I can't compare going, oh, I had a job nine to five and oh God, entrepreneurship is really tough. I don't know any different. Why didn't you have a job? Because I was always an entrepreneur from a kid. Always buying and selling, promoting, selling.

15:10Whatever it was. Whatever it was. I was earning money. And that's just the way I got brought up. You know? There was a lot of cash around in the 80s. Everyone had cash. Everyone had money. Everyone was doing deals. And that's how it was. You know? 80s, 90s, noughties now. Things have changed a lot. Like, you've got to remember, the cash has gone out of the system. And where we are at the moment, cash being taken out of the system, no one in the UK is talking about it. Because it's the unwritten rule. The unwritten rule is no one talks about cash. every developer you see used to have a load of cash every builder had a load of cash every restauranteur had a load of cash as their rainy day money every brickie every cleaner every hairdresser everyone had cash what's happened now is cash has been taken out the system and the taxes are rising it's just squeezing people even more but no one's talking about the the knock-on effect of having no cash in the system because that was people's rainy day money that was people's holiday money that was people's look after the kids money and get them some nice clothes and get them some nice bits and pieces not everyone is in a position to be in a lucky position to be where we are today as you and I sit here but the middle class what I'm finding is getting squeezed so much they're actually blended in with the lower class right now you know I've

16:27Elliot Wise: got friends on 100 110 120 grand salary it sounds good but when you break it down what you're actually taking home when you've got a couple of kids and you've got holidays to give and you've got a wife at home you've got food to put on time it breaks down to not a lot at the end of the month i think one of the biggest issues is that a lot of the guys that are in their maybe mid to late 30s up until kind of retirement age now started their journey and we all hop in a vehicle and what vehicle we jump in is typically predicated with the technologies and the advice we have around and the way the economy is set up so people went and got skill-based jobs they went and got educations that helped them in an office environment maybe finance or accounting or whatever it may be and these guys by the time they're in their mid-30s now and living this new world that we live in were still in a vehicle because they weren't able to to jump out because they had obligations they had trapped they got trapped because when you hit that kind of age yeah kids yeah you have mortgages you also don't have the time necessarily to then go and learn the new world and what's happened is while they're in that vehicle for the first time in history a new tech was coming out and new ways of doing things so much so that the vehicles that were being built for the people that were jumping in it now, or even my generation and maybe even your generation, that they started in a vehicle that's going to absolutely fire past that tech that they were in.

17:59So regardless of how hard they're working or the cash this, that, and the other, these young guys, I'm meeting YouTubers that are making a million pound a month. But that's very rare. It is. We can't be promoting that. But that's an extreme. What I'm saying is I'm taking an absolute extreme to also say that I'm now working with and helping younger guys who are in their 20s utilize new technologies, new wealth creation methods, which you have leapt into. This is why you were doing a podcast. Most people our age and above would find that alien. But we've managed to find the time to adopt it because we actually had more freedom for how we set our lives up.

18:35We weren't so inundated in the system and we had flexibility in the vehicle that we were in. Well, the flexibility is being your own boss. Yes, so you had the ability to jump out of the vehicle, whereas most people jumped headfirst, took the advice of the system. And I can't blame them either because I think a lot of people that also blame the government now came through a post-Second World War period when, if you listened to the government and you went and got a decent education, you bought a house that was cheap, it paid off. You got a decent retirement. Your house probably went up. Look at the boomers.

19:06They killed it. The boomers killed it. boomers like 60 year old plus now i've got more money than anyone as a as a group as a generation they have got they own their own homes they're sitting on a business they've got a load of money in the bank happy days but the generation coming through like like when we went i was the first one to go to university of all our family didn't even our family didn't know what university was end up going to sports university at loughborough but back then it was like the kids i was with there were like oh my mum and dad told me i've got to go to university because that gets me a job and they got a job but times have changed you know this was year 2000 they were getting jobs but those people who were super intelligent back then are stuck in a job working for jp morgan which is piss boring because my wife used to work there she used to cry in the morning going what am i doing working in this bank all these different corporates but like you said a minute ago they've got through their 20s okay they might have got paid 10 15 more than their mates got into 30s they're like that handcuffed yeah we'll dangle a bit more money for you yeah but i hate my job he has a bit more money before you know they're in the 40s going i've just lost 20 years of my life what do i do now because not a lot of people will go and employ this isn't i'm not ageist but not a lot of people will go employ a 40 50 60 year old these days compared to finding a 20 year old at the right price or 25 year old or 30 year old and it doesn't matter what anyone says that that's it this is this is a lot of people think like that because when you get to 40 you demand a lot more money are you as hungry as 20 or 30 year olds i don't know there's an argument there as well but i really like the gen z's gen z's get a lot of stick elliot i really like them they get a lot of stick for what reason they get a lot of stick for being lazy um i think they're a lost generation which i find really sad but they've also got a skill set that none of us have got and it's a beautiful skill set they understand technology they understand ai they understand design they understand social media stuff that we've had to learn since it's come about but yeah i just i find the whole thing fascinating where we sit today i have to say but this is what i think happens as you said you've got the boomers and they are now the most, well, they're the wise generation.

21:25They're the ones we listen to. They've got the power. They've got the authority. And they listen to the system and benefited from it. So they're giving misinformation now to the new generations coming through because they're saying, look, listen to this, but actually it doesn't work anymore. That's the point. It doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work anymore. The vehicle doesn't work anymore. They're telling you to jump in that one, really you should be jumping in this one. And they're filling you full of fear. Well, actually, no. they don't understand that it's shifted they don't understand this new world but do you think that new world on that point there as a dad I would not be saying to my son go to university no way there's no way but what's happened is that people have been to university maybe in their 40s now as a dad or 44 or as a mum they're going go university that's what I did that's the way forward you'll get a great job they've got to stop the narrative the parents have got to stop the narrative as do the school teachers when you finish your a-levels go to university it's the best thing for me it was the best thing for you 20 years ago when there were nightclubs when there were a community when you could go and dance where you could go and do everything you wanted to do at university you meet friends for life all of that's now been taken away from people you can't go and dance you can't go to any nightclubs it'll all close all the bars are closing down the restaurant the independent restaurants are closing down what is the point of going to university lawyers and accountants are going to be made redundant over the next five six years because of ai you only go to university really in my opinion is to look be a vet be a lawyer be a you know playboy yeah you could be a playboy whatever you wanted you know what i mean but yeah i'm just finding it really odd and as we sit here as entrepreneurs we kind of i want to put that message out there that university isn't the answer well let me ask you this yeah i actually went to university same i I went to Southampton just episode.

23:11I did economics. So I did it, and I'm not coming from a place of bashing it just because I haven't been. A lot of people talk about it. So when I've walked the walk. As a business owner, do you care if someone's been to university? I don't give two hoots. I've employed hundreds of people, and I've never read a CV. Ask any of my staff who have been with me for 10 years. Never read a CV. I don't care. How do you employ people? How I employ people is I get them on. I put a message out on Instagram. da da da da who's interested i've got a role really exciting role send me a dm i get the dm if they've written something really nice the way they've presented themselves on a dm where it's written i'm like i quite like this straight away if i like that person i do a bit of homework on them 10 minutes homework and i go there's my mobile drop me a whatsapp bam got the whatsapp then what immediately call them immediately they're like oh my god the only's calling me first of all is calling me jesus christ the only podcast fooling me like it's it's a simple way of getting breaking for all the bullshit because i feel sorry for the people who are sending their cvs out to 100 businesses and may get two replies imagine how disheartening that is for a young eight for not for the young one but 18 to 35 was 30 year olds who've lost their jobs because unemployment's going through the roof at the moment but people are sending the cvs in the hope send it out and you're just waiting there i like to do it face to face if i like that person on the phone come and meet me four o 'clock today in the office bam so how many school systems and and recruitment companies would tell their staff or their customers or their students to reach out to businesses that way?

24:46None of them. None of them. So the system, if you and I both hire that way and we're both massively successful entrepreneurs and growing, why on earth is that not being taught? Yeah, I agree. So you only have to look at, it's baffling to me. In life, all I've ever done is gone, let me reverse engineer how it works and let me figure out how to get there rather than this is the information i'm being given to how to apply it to something i'll just go and look at the thing see how it's working work your way back and work your way back so to all intents and purposes go and speak to business owners and ask them how they're currently employing anyone i speak to lots of business owners and i actually mentor lots of business owners and i would never ever tell them unless possibly it was an accountancy firm or a massively highly skilled medical doctor to go through a recruitment company for me i do the exact same thing i'll either have someone approach me and actually give me value up front or i'll put a post out for a specific job role and then i'll say right okay five of you go and try and do this yeah i'll pay you all to actually do the work and if you are the best person at that role you fit you win the best you win you win simple done yeah next linkedin instagram facebook done simple Simple.

26:01And if you, at the bottom of it, you say, if any of your friends are interested in this, please tag them in. Recruitment businesses are dying at the moment. They're dying at the moment. Like most businesses are. This isn't a dig at recruitment businesses, but unemployment rate is going like that right now. But the government aren't talking about it, and that annoys me. That really annoys me. The government aren't talking about it. And if you've been unemployed, Elliot, say that you've got the sack or you've been made redundant, you ain't going on Facebook going, I've been made redundant, people.

26:28You just go, oh, shit. I can't tell anyone. I can't tell my mum and dad. I can't tell my friends. They're saying, do you get a sack? And then they're looking for a job. They can't go and find one because people aren't employing. The reason why people aren't employing is because the national insurance has been shot right up. And the government are squeezing entrepreneurs and creators and go-getters like us. But, Dodge, I don't see it that way. I see it as recruitment is dying with the way it's being done. But then there's massive opportunities because you and I are still hiring. So why a recruitment business is not creating AI that is crawling social media platforms for guys like you and I that are putting those posts up, being the first to establish those, putting the right people in front of them, training their clients on how to approach those things, and actually saying, do you know what?

27:12Rather than having that degree, actually go and get value in this space. And like you said, they're putting national insurance up and doing these things in certain industries. The businesses in the circles I'm in right now are flying. I never wake up in the morning and hear about anyone not doing well at the moment, even though we're in pretty much a global recession. We've been in a recession for a year. It's bad out there for specific industries that are people in the wrong vehicle. And I can promise you there's more money and more wealth out there than you can possibly fathom. I think a lot of people are sitting there.

27:42I think the wealthy people are getting wealthier and the wealthy people are sitting on their money waiting for a massive crash that they can go and pounce on loads of stuff. And then what will happen? The wealthy will eat away at the middle class, their houses, da-da-da-da, and they will just become wealthier. and it's the same in the high street it's the same as the corporates in the high street your independents who've got a local cafe your auntie has a cafe in uckfield where you are she's finding it hard to earn a pound note each at the end of each week they're just going to be closed down i can't afford to pay my staff i can't afford to pay the rent i can't afford all this because the turnover's there because people aren't coming on the streets and in the high streets to spend money.

28:21And this is what's happening right now. And no one's really talking about it. And what's going to happen, I'm finding, is I don't want to go into politics, but I'm finding the government are just squeezing everyone because they don't understand the mindset of a business owner and the pressures they're under to make ends meet. I set up a clothing company recently, dropshipping. It was a female underwear company, actually. That's a touch, isn't it? I used to don them around so basically we have a team that scours the internet looks for products we think are going to do well and then we test them but we start up a store put it online this company basically was the ability to actually put someone's name or put whatever you want on the underwear all bespoke the manufacturer would make the metal name put it on send it out I scaled that up within two weeks to doing $15 ,000 to$17 ,000 a day at a 66 % profit margin.

29:22Net profit. Net profit. Net. In two weeks. Okay, on what? Shopify? Never touched the product. Shopify. Shopify. From a manufacturer in China, although this business was about three months because other people got onto the bandwagon, I made within that period mid-six figures profit in and out. Just from understanding - Mid-six figures? What are you talking? Underground? No, no. 200? 300? 500 ,000, half a bar. Half a bar. Net. Net. In a matter of months. How many months? Like I said, it was just over three months. So roughly three months, you made 500 ,000 pounds. I'll get the dashboard screenshots.

29:59No, I do believe you, but that's a unicorn. It's not a unicorn. No, but it's a unicorn quick hit. It's a quick hit. So I'm trying to illustrate the point now. People would struggle to make that in a lifetime. I agree. It's just that they're struggling to make it a lifetime because they're doing the wrong thing, and they went through the academic system and they learned a skill set which actually hasn't got any value into the workplace nowadays because you and I aren't hiring. If the business owners of today are hiring multimedia experts, videographers, podcast studios, sound experts so they can set this set up, why on earth are you still learning literacy or teaching?

30:36Because AI handles that for us. My whole team uses AI. We outsource that or use a machine for it. So just look in the marketplace as to what is demanding. It's supply and demand. Simple. Everything is broken down to supply and demand. You have supply of labor and you have demand for labor. Right now we have supply of labor from everyone that learned this archaic skill set that no one uses anymore and no one's demanding it. Therefore, price is low. But if you have a skill set, value, that the entrepreneurs of today need, and you put that in the marketplace, and everyone else is still a dinosaur, you can charge what you want.

31:16You can do well. So prime example then, what did you see? Why did you go for knickers? What did you go hunting down, apart from searching knickers all day long? You must have seen something. We have criteria. So for dropshipping, you want something that's cheap to post because it's coming from China, specifically. In this case, no refunds. because it's underwear. And you've had your name logoed on it. Exactly. It's bespoke. It's light, and it had a lot of searches. We found a couple of other stores doing it, but not doing it very well. So we saw arbitrage. Now, this goes back to the point we made earlier, though.

31:51Anytime I make money easily, I panic. Because the barrier to entry is low. And dropshipping is that exactly. So when it comes to dropshipping, I look at these are products I'm testing. if i get a home run like that great but is there any longevity in it can i then move it to a branded product to kind of spend more time marketing adding other products to the range because typically it's a one product store yeah maybe had a few variants in this case a few colors and maybe different metal colored coloration differences but can i add products to this do i want to get into that space can i sell the business off or should i aim to kind of build this out and actually start stocking did you know that you'd have a short space of time to run as much money as possible?

32:34Or were you thinking, shit, this is going for six months, seven months, eight months? Or did you go, right, I've run as much money as possible, it got to three months. Why did it stop? Why did that stop? Well, we were purely going on numbers. So when you're running MetaRads, you can look at the specific cost per acquisition or your CPMs, which is how much it's costing you for a certain amount of use. How much was it cost per acquisition for these Nickers? We were getting like two or three dollars, which is extremely cheap. So we're looking at two quid, one quid. We're talking pounds. Yeah, so a couple of quid, which is very cheap.

33:03when you're selling a 30 pound product and shipping is only five quid. So the margins were really high. But what happens, it's just the numbers game. So with this, you can keep manipulating your marketing up until a certain point and keep your CPAs down, your return on ad spend as good as possible. But at a certain point, if more people are coming into the market, there's less demand for it and you've saturated. We put so much money behind the ads because it was doing so well. You've hit the entire market and some markets you can saturate. We sent so many of these knickers out. You've done it.

33:37So unless we reinvented it or expanded it, there wasn't going to be much more in it because it's not like normal underwear where you're going to keep buying them over and over again. This was bespoke. So how many named underwears? So when you were doing your homework on that, you were doing your searches again, oh my God, there's massive searches on female underwear. Is that the bit you went, there's got to be an opportunity here? Well, we also use artificial intelligence now to see the volumes of things being bought on different stores. So we have some software we've built and there's some really good globally available ones where you can go on and be like Amazon, meta advertising, any normal website.

34:11They'll get a prediction of how much they're selling, which is normally pretty accurate. And then if you go, so you take a product, you apply these tools. You can say, well, this is the kind of volume they're selling at. You look at it and go, they're doing a pretty crap job. I can improve on that. They've found something here and no one seems to know about it. I can effectively copy it. So with business, quite often, it's not about doing something completely new. It's about not reinventing the wheel, just improving. Coffeeing and tweaking. Simple as that. That's how business is running from a million times.

34:40That is business. You see someone doing a really good podcast. You go, well, they've got a nice desk. They've got a nice sound. They present themselves really well on YouTube. Can we do that but make it better? That's business. That's life. Most times in history, the people that started the thing never made the money. Second person. Absolutely. because they see the mistakes they make, they improve on it, and then they get early enough to market, but not early enough so that they were easy to beat, and you can get in just at the right time. But sitting on your ass until everyone's doing it is a mistake, and doing it way too early or being a first mover can also be.

35:14They normally call it the second wave is where the money gets hit. There's the first, second, third, and fourth wave, but second wave is where the money comes. The third wave is where it gets saturated, and the fourth wave is where people go broke. Have you ever been in debt? Have I ever been in debt? No. Well, I lie. I've been debt in so much as cash flow debt, not wealth debt. And I had to borrow money when I lost my first e-commerce business to settle debts because… How much did you have to settle in total? It was about 250 grand. Okay. Which for what I was earning wasn't a lot. But when you have no money left, it's all the money in the world, right?

35:49Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I'll quickly summarize what happened. So my business partner and I built this e-commerce business up. it was lighting, commercial lighting, domestic lighting. We sell these panel lights, 600 by 600s. And I went out to China. We scaled this business up. I actually started getting stock in. We were still buying from some wholesalers in the UK. We had thousands of products on there. And ultimately, the business partner that I had was handling the finances, was handling the shipping and fulfillment. I was handling all the digital marketing and front end. And incidentally, what happened was...

36:22He was siphoning money away. Siphoning money away. because the beautiful thing about e-commerce is typically you get the money up front and you pay for stock later. So when we had company accounts back in the day, we'd have a local electrical wholesaler who would give us 90 days credit accounts. So basically they'll give you this mic and I don't have to pay for it for 90 days. But if I sell it to you and I make 30 % margin on it, I've got 30 % in the bank plus the money and I don't have to pay you for 90 days. I find that really odd. I find it really odd how people allow people to have 90 days credit.

36:56It's the old way of doing things. It's crazy. It's crazy. You come and clean my house or anything. You come clean the house, there's your money. I was brought up with pay everyone immediately. Whatever I've done in all my career, bam, bam, bam. Whatever I've left over, happy days. Why is the mindset of the whole business is, oh, you've got to wait 30 days, 60 days, 90 days until you get your money and you've already done the job? Where's that come from? I think it's desperation and not actually knowing their worth and having the leverage. No, but I think what you said, it's always been done like that, which always has been done like that.

37:31So people just follow and go, that's always been done like that. It's like now there's a massive talk about all the taxes and whatever. Why are we paying so much taxes everywhere, hidden taxes, turnover taxes? Because it's always been done like that. So cash flow is king. Yep. I know that if I have good cash flow, I can weather most storms. and I like getting into business with people that I can see that can handle cash flow because cash is like a drug. To get into business with someone that doesn't know how to handle cash or have the responsibility and have the sacrifice of not necessarily spending on short-term wins or for their own self-benefit is someone that I'll do business with and someone that can make cash and use it responsibly is a great partnership.

38:13So for me, I've always preferred cash flow heavy businesses because if there's any economic shocks, if there's anything that comes out that you need to pivot to, if you need to make an adjustment, there's cash in the bank. It's your rainy day money. It's your liquidity. Absolutely. And in my case, it's also opportunity money because things move so fast now, sometimes stuff comes up that you need to jump on. And if you don't have any cash in the bank or the ability to get cash, you're stumped. And some guy like me is going to come flying past you when I jump on something that you can't do. Yeah, I hear you.

38:44But cash is an interesting one. Are you talking cash, cash? No, I'm talking about... Are you talking cash in the bank that you can act quickly? I'm talking about liquid. Okay. So cash or money in the bank. Yeah, okay. I'm not talking about stuck in an asset. One thing I've noticed with business owners or successful entrepreneurs is one massive common trait. They are very, very good with money in the respect of they don't squander it. They have a huge respect for it and don't see it like a free lunch, going out and have fun. And I've also noticed as well that anyone that I've got into business with that's ahead of me has always been more interested in how I live my life and the way I've established my wealth and what I do with my money more so than my skill set and anything else because they know the biggest danger to any business is someone that can't handle their cash.

39:39and how many businesses can't handle cash someone who's done really well and goes and ends up blowing it needs the money on a rainy day boom bust there's no savings an art that no one talks about is to be able to save if you don't know how to save you're missing out on something massive here people go you've got to earn you've got to earn you don't get me wrong you've got to go and earn but there's an art in saving there's an art in being nimble there's an art in having that money like you say having been liquid to go right i can go and do that i can go and buy that i can go and I can pivot like we've done in the pandemic, pivot into a media company.

40:15And the entrepreneur mindset is that you can pivot, but you also need some money behind you. How long did it take you to actually start earning decent money? How long were you in the game for? Since a kid. Since a kid. My world has been selling tickets. I'm a festival owner. I was in the nightclub for 10 years. Everything was about packing out nightclubs and taking the door money, putting my own festival and taking the door money. and the bar money and the sponsorship money and the catering and the VIP and the VVIP and the glamping and camping. So as I've got older, the numbers have just got bigger and bigger.

40:47But it's the same business model as I was doing as a 10-year-old, selling tickets to the nightclub next door from our pub as a 10-year-old. I'm still doing it now, 30-plus years later. But the numbers have just grown bigger. So the point I want to make here is you worked fucking hard to make the money that you did. and you have sweat and blood respect for the value of a pound you have earned. I agree. So what panics me and worries me is when I see young kids that make money very quickly because that's what they all want to do, the chance of them actually keeping that money is slim to none because they haven't earned the blood respect, the sweat respect of that money.

41:25And to their mind, this shit comes easy when, trust me, it doesn't. And when you blow it and it all goes up away and you think it's going to come back easily again, it doesn't work that way a friend of mine i won't say his name he set up one of the first social media companies that was actually involved in um buying followers and likes he sold that company i think for about 15 million i think most of that was gone in a year yeah the first thing he did was his hire a 200 000 pound jet go off to las vegas with all of his mates and i think he did a good 20 of it in the first week that money didn't come back i remember sitting down with him 10 years later and having the discussion about oh wish i hadn't done that at the time i now have a very different respect for the value of money yeah and when i'm looking to get into business with someone i'm looking for someone that can do that who understands a pound note do you know i find interesting as well when you see city brokers earning big money that's relationship money that's massive money they don't realize they've earned massive money for just building relationships and making some calls and and making some calls on shares and whatever they're doing that's not that's not true true true graft and what and there's no disrespect there because they're up at six o 'clock in the morning they're having long lunches they're getting on it they're building relationships they're going around the clock and they're doing it they are you know they are on it on it on it but actually they're earning copious amounts of money for what they're doing that's the bit i'm trying to get my head around that copious like being a two million pound salary or a million pound salary with a bonus of one and a half million that's mega money for people but what i want to really encourage people to remember is the people that build their wealth through blood sweat and tears over a prolonged period of time are the ones most likely to keep it those that win the lottery and earn it quickly are the ones that lose it the fastest so you if you're on that journey right now and you're struggling you're building and it's taking time rest assured that that respect that you're building for that money the skill sets and the fortitude and the stoicism as a person to become someone that can do this for this period of time is the thing that's ultimately going to make you wealthy while the others that you see make it overnight don't and it reassures me every single day when i'm on that journey i'm on that path you're on for a good win well never stop at the winning line my mum always says to me never stop at the winning line what a what a one-liner that is because a lot of people get success and go oh i've made it happy days how many people have set up one business been successful gonna to set up the second and third and failed a really high percentage of people often than not yeah a really high percentage of people it's very it's not very it's very rare that someone smashes the first business smashes the second business smashes the third business because they've got the experience of knowing what this what's about to happen the chaos of setting up a business anyone listening out there who's running a business which a lot of people will it's the chaos of running business i love the chaos i love the case if i set up a business more i know there's going to be a two three about 900 podcasts now haven't you yeah yeah it's getting that way i was like how many podcasts has uh has dodge got i was like i just love it it's my sport elliot it's my sport i love business i love chatting to business people who get it i love helping and mentoring younger generation coming through about business i just love business because i've been there done it got the t-shirt i know how hard it is and how hard it is to create a business how hard it is to break the back of a business.

44:46I know how long it takes to break the back of a business. I know what it's like to build a brand. I know how to build a brand. Lots of stuff I'm not good at. I've built my businesses and I don't do email. People are like, how have you not done email? Well, I've built multi-million pound business. I just haven't done email. If you want me, you pick up the phone or you do it on WhatsApp. People find that weird, but that's just the way I operate. I like a phone call with someone. I like to meet them eye to eye. Where are you at? Okay, can we do a deal? I can put you in contact. And I'm very generous with my contacts as well i've got a lot a lot of contacts i've built up a lot and my whole life is on that mobile phone someone says oh do you know somebody and i said yeah yeah i'll put you two together i'll say but whatsapp group boom there you go good luck i'll take myself out i'm not like oh i can have 20 percent in that if you do a deal i've got no interest in that i'm here to help and what i'm seeing is the younger generation wanting to be entrepreneurs because social media are telling them that this is cool and it is cool it's cool as fuck being an entrepreneur but to get to call yourself a proper entrepreneur takes a thousand two thousand days to break the back of something a proper entrepreneur from what i've seen will never be the richest entrepreneur no no do you know why go on it's because we get so bloody excited by all the opportunities that come up that we can't focus on one thing and we start up another business if we'd stayed the course we would have been infinitely wealthier so i always know that a true entrepreneur will be rich but he won't be the richest because he had so many opportunities like christmas day that he couldn't say no to because he loves that more than actually the biggest growth, the efficiency or the optimal.

46:15I'm the same. Have you ever had a mini retirement? No.

46:21Elliot Wise: You've got social dialed in. Search 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.

46:57Elliot Wise: Acast.com slash advertise. guys no that's scary create the brand create the vibe the marketing the sales and then build a team around me and i gently michael jackson moonwalk a way out of the business that the business can run itself and i got the business to a point in 2016 that i took myself completely out of the business and it was my wife and my boy and we just went traveling traveling festivals enjoying here there every four six weeks on holiday and that was a four week that was a four year period until the pandemic hit and in that four year period I was like my brain's not working I need to be creating I was constantly thinking of new business but I was enjoying myself so much and then 2020 here I was like happy days this pandemic thing's coming right I'm gonna set up new business I'll set up a podcast and set up an online events course and I was away again but I've worked harder since 2020 to 2025 than I have done since launching Bournemouth Sevens Festival 18 years ago with all the pressures that go with that for the first five years of 2008 to 2012 when we put it at the back of it 2020 to 2025 has been non-stop for me non-stop three three businesses three teams one festival, one online events course, which we're breaking the back of, and this podcast, which takes up a lot of my time, which I love.

48:23You're alive. I'm alive, honestly, man. I love it. I just love entrepreneurship. I don't know anything else. I know business. I know people. I love people. I'm going to swear. Go on. Fuck retirement. There will never be retirement. Fuck retirement because if you are a true entrepreneur, you have the ability to build the game you never want to stop playing. The ideology and belief system that we should work to a point at which we stop working is the whole reason people waste their lives. When you realize that actually with the tools we have available to us today, we can build any life that we envisage for ourselves.

49:02I have fun. So for me, I decide that I want to build a podcast. You don't want to do content. So I convert one of my barns at home. I move the offices in. I've decided actually I really want to have a team around me so that I can go to the gym with them and enjoy it. So I'm going to buy an office in Tunbridge Wells near to me so we can move the acquisition team down and I can spend time with them because it's actually what I want to do. Well, you love what you do. And I love what I do. And I never want to stop playing, which is why I never had this envisage of retirement. Because when I was 13 and I looked at people going through their life, like aggressively trying to get to 65 so they could take their retirement money.

49:43and then go and do a hobby and die was petrified. I'm scared of death. So I would look at it. Yeah, I'm petrified of death. I'm petrified of death. I've never spoken about this before. We'll talk about that because I've realized that that's the biggest driver for me. So at 13, I was looking at death ahead of me. I'm literally watching myself die in real time thinking, no way am I signing up for that. I'm not doing that for anybody. There's a better way of doing this. Fuck me, thank God. The internet's come about. Social media's come about. Right, let me try and do something. Some people need websites.

50:15And that's honestly where it stemmed from. The fear of death, of living that monotonous, anxiety-fuelled Monday morning crap. Imagine. Oh, man. Imagine Sunday night knowing you've got the fear about going to work on Monday. Imagine being on Wednesday. What do they call it? Hump back Wednesday or something. The hump day. Oh, we got over the hump day. Like, fucking. Imagine. It would be awful. like if you are not in a job you enjoy get the fuck out of that job get out life we got one life we have one life we have 4 000 weekends like do you know what i mean like panic attack but i'm the same but it's true though we have one freaking life we have to make the most of it we don't know when it's gonna end whether it's 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 you don't know well hopefully not i want to push 100 you know but it pains me when i see my friends stuck but they're also stuck they're also happy to come home at five six o 'clock pissing and moaning about their job and sit there and watch netflix and eat crisps every single night and on the weekend get get boozed up on a friday and saturday and have the fear on sunday and it's just this constant circle they're doing something needs to something needs to something needs to be snapped out of it so i do sunday's my favorite day so about 6 o 'clock, 6.30 when I put the boys to bed on Sunday, I actually do work because I like to get ahead every week.

51:37I feel like everyone I'm competing against. And if I start on Sunday night, I'm rolling into Monday morning. I start every Monday morning, 7 a.m., with a huddle. I literally put this out for free. Every Monday morning for half an hour. Huddle with the family? No, no, no, no. Huddle with digital. So literally anyone can join, and for half an hour, I'll get you psyched up for the week because how you start your Monday morning will predicate how the rest of the week goes. and most people turn on the news in the morning doom and gloom doom and gloom you come to my huddle yeah there's no negativity we have positivity i'll talk to you about belief systems sometimes i give you a bit of tough love but more more than anything i do it for me because i get fucking up for a week i'm out i'm ready i'm living i wake up every day not every day am i you know the happiest but i have something to go out and achieve and i'm excited to go and improve I am making something of myself.

52:27You're making progression every day, and there's not a better feeling than progressing every day in what you do, in something you enjoy doing, and you're earning money from it. Like, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And you wake up, and you see your wife next to you. You go downstairs, you're having breakfast with your boys, in the world that you've built for them, being prideful in what you are building and who you're becoming, and something that they can look up to as a role model, there is no better feeling another thing is having slow mornings because you can you know it's really what my working day is weird like if I wake up I'm bang on it groups of whatsapps or I'm meeting people or whatever and then during the day I don't work hard and then I'm back on it again like 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 o 'clock at night and on the Saturdays and Sundays just because I love what I do.

53:24I'm in a game. I'm playing sports. This is my sport. I always say this because if you have a game, right? And let's just take this for example. You have a game and you've completed it. So everyone's trying to get to a fictitious goal where they've completed the game. What people don't realize is that the fun in a game is playing the bloody thing. So if your mates come around and you pull out FIFA and let's say for argument's sake there's levels, but the last time everyone came round you finished the game and you got nothing else to play then what it's shit yeah so build your life like the game you never want to stop playing infinite amounts of levels you can progress as much as you possibly want and realize that actually the enjoyment isn't in hitting the goal it's in progressing towards a better you yeah a better business and we as entrepreneurs and most human beings actually get fulfillment from progression from seeing growth, from doing something.

54:20And that's not just from wealth. It's who you become on the journey. Like I employ probably seven or eight, nine Gen Zs. And they're hanging around an entrepreneur who's been around the block for 30 years. They're learning all these things. And I'm giving them freedom to go and learn. Go on, make the mistakes. You've got no risk. You've got no financial risk. You're also getting paid. But they're progressing. They're learning things so quickly. So anyone out there, if you want to become an entrepreneur, Go and work for an entrepreneur for a year or two years because you'll learn more in that two years than you will do in 20 years being in some corporate job that you're thinking, oh, God, I'm tied to this.

54:57I'll make another point as well is that imagine your life is one big battle and you are leading success and you're loving every day, but you get to the end and you're in your banquet hall. You're feasting around with all of your comrades that you've managed to acquire. I love the idea of that. Everyone having a feed. But what will the conversations be at the table? You'll be reminiscing about the wars and the battles that you had because those were the good times. And the scary thing is, if you don't stop once in a while, put your head above water to see where you are, to actually be grateful for what you're doing right now, you'll get to that banquet table and realise that all the things you actually did it for and all the things you actually want to talk about when you hit that goal, you're living in right now.

55:41The best period of your life is today. It's fucking today. I agree. But you think about it. This is the youngest you'll ever be. It's the youngest you'll ever be. Yeah. And you're doing it for this. These are the stories that you're going to be talking about. You're not going to be talking about the hall that you're in. Yeah. You're going to be talking about the things you're doing now. And the trouble is you will fly past. You'll fly past your kids. You'll fly past your business. You'll fly past the stuff that you actually do it to one day never be doing it again. Like you said, it might be the last day you ever do something.

56:06It might be the last day your kid says daddy to you. It might be dad from now on. Yeah. It might be the last time you actually hug someone or see somebody. Yeah. enjoy every fucking moment yeah that's not just take your foot off the gas it's just to be grateful in the now actually you know for that one life you do get be present for it yeah the thing is a lot of people live in the fear of the future and the guilt of the past and if you if you is deep but if you're living in the guilt of the past whatever it may be whether it's a trauma whether it's a massive argument or you fell out of a family member or the fear of what's happening in the world and what's going on in the world right now with whatever's going on it actually takes you away from being present today because the most important thing is enjoying your food enjoying your missus and your kids and your friends and bringing people on a journey with you whether you're work colleagues have you ever sold a company i've ever sold a company yes it was an outsourcing company actually i can't say the name but that was the hardest company i ever grew how How long did it take you to build that company and then actually sell it?

57:1212 months. Okay. It was very quick. I know they're not normally that fast. This is all e-commerce again, is it? No, this was outsourcing. So this was crazy. You're a good middleman, aren't you? That's, I would say, the best place to be in business. I hate fulfilling. Yeah. I like marketing and middlemanning. Yeah. But I understand the money's in the middle. Yeah. What's one of the most wealthy institutions on the planet? It's the banking system. You know, the best ones as well are the payment providers. You don't realise that when you pay for something via a credit card, your Mastercard, your Visa, they take a percentage of every single pound that goes into that bank.

57:46Between you and the bank, they're creaming them. That's how Elon Musk made his money, with PayPal. He was a middleman. He used to take three-odd percent from every transaction that went through PayPal. So those businesses now, because cash is out of the system, people are tapping, and those businesses have been paying 1%. And the higher-exit could be 2.5%. like depending on what the rates are again most businesses don't make money now most businesses take cash out and the way the world is where less people are spending on the high street or doing what they're doing they're going to go bust and that's what's happening look at our high street we used to have banks everywhere we used to have restaurants everywhere we used to have nightclubs in most towns four or five in the town you'd have 10 15 20 bars in what are they doing they're all closing down like what's happening around us at the moment i like to take myself away from stuff and actually look in as if i just come down from a different planet and going wow is that what you call the uk is that what's happening is that what's happening in that country i always remember our country being super proud i'm a super proud englishman used to be super proud it was always about your granddads and the stories and i just feel like we've lost our way very very quickly you know the pandemic kicked everyone but in the pandemic 2020 to 2021 i really enjoyed because it allowed me to create allowed me to get back in right i'm going to start creating new business i get all that there was a lot of bad things happening there were people dying but everyone had a safety net there was a safety net that businesses were getting money from the government to pay for your staff they pick your staff were getting paid and everyone's drinking rose and a couple of beers in the garden and whacking the pans for the nhs and that was all wonderful do You know what I mean?

59:30That was brilliant, brilliant, brilliant times. You look at that. 2025 is very, very different. Very different. Very different to 2008 financial crisis. Very different to the pandemic. 2025 is really, really different. There's no safety net anywhere. What happens if you are made unemployed? You've got a two grand mortgage. You can't go and find another job. You borrowed money from the bank. What's the next one? You go to your credit card. You max out your credit card. Then what? I want to know then what? Because what's happening right now in 25 and 26, you're going to see a lot of people. What happens?

1:00:07If you can't pay your mortgage and you're maxed out on your credit card and your credit card's charging you a ridiculous amount and you haven't got a job, then what? What happens? The biggest source of control that we have today or the governments have today is debt. If you'll look at the American... I don't like debt. Okay, if you look at the American balance sheet, the biggest asset they have is student debt. I.e. the money they're owed back to the government, the biggest on their balance sheet is student debt. The next one? Credit card debt. From day one, you leave to go into the workplace, you are beholden to paying someone back, big brother.

1:00:47Yeah. And you talk about all these people that are going bankrupt here, that's the other. Yeah, what will happen is they'll go into private bankruptcy, and then you're beholden to the government for the rest of your life. money doesn't mean anything. It's not real. The governments don't care about money. They don't care about the fact that you can't pay. The institutions just get given money for the Bank of England anyways. It doesn't exist. But what they want is you follow. And I don't want to go down like a rabbit hole. But the more debt there is, the more control they have because you have to pay that person back.

1:01:18And then you're in their system, by the way, which is then, like you say, becoming much more dependent on cashless things. So, for example, if they decide like they do in China, you have the sim system that you haven't paid your debt you've gone into private liquidation and you're not doing what they want you to do no public transport no bank accounts no ability to actually get a retirement fund no ability to get any more capital or rent people can't even pay you because you haven't got a bank account to take it in or any form of like means of tender

1:01:48Elliot Wise: you've got social dialed in search 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.

1:02:29You literally have to be bartering for food at this point. That's the way it's going. So you say that it's a worry. They're not worried. You should be. And if you're in that position, you need to be starting looking about building value in other ways. If you're brought up, if you're brought up that debt is the way of life, I haven't been brought up with debt. My old man from early doors, can't afford it. You don't buy it. Give me your credit cards. If they come through when you're 18, you get credit. Boom, cut them up. Never use them. but it seems to me that the generations are just going well that's just the way it is we're always in debt aren't we i've got debt everywhere the only debt you should really have in my opinion is your home because most people can't afford to buy the home so i understand that debt but all the other debt i really don't understand what i find difficult is the 16 17 18 19 year olds are buying trainers on clana that they can pay over three months or six months and it's just come out Like today, you can buy fast food now and you can pay it back in three months.

1:03:30How mad is this? The kids are going to all have fast food, fast food, fast food, put it there. It gets delivered to me. Okay, it's coming out of your bank each month. There's three quid, three quid, three quid coming out. There's no one's teaching people about money. I love debt. Do you love it? I personally love debt. I understand. There's clever ways to use debt and I get that. I don't like debt. at all but there are very clever ways to do it and some wealthy people do use debt there so i think it's normally quite culturally ingrained into you so for example my wife's iranian yeah like her family they look at me and have panic attacks because like you're borrowing money or my money's cheap yeah and money is cheap if you have the ability to make more than the interest you're paying so for example i'm a good entrepreneur yeah i'm going to say that without any hesitation because I am I can take a pound from the bank and pay five percent interest on it over x amount of time but I know with that one pound I can make 30 percent yeah and if you are someone that has the ability to make more money from money that you borrow borrow as much as you possibly can if however you have no skill or ability or financial discipline then stay well away from debt don't look at debt don't get a credit card don't even tempt yourself don't be around other people that use debt stay away from it i've got a funny story a friend of mine he's totally i totally agree with you there everything you just said i'll tell you this story so a friend of mine this is the first time i've heard of this he went i'm so anti-debt i got a ccj when i was 17 i've left it in my credit file so i won't give give me debt i would suggest that everyone that shit with money go and give themselves a ccj so you physically can't go and do it it's like giving yourself a casino ban yeah stay away if you're a good entrepreneur and you have some financial literacy and you have discipline and you can use it then fine but use it with caution it's it's a leverage one way or the other you can go naught to 100 real quick or you can go to naught to minus 100 real quick if you don't know what you're doing just going back just going back about selling a company yeah please i want to talk about this more because selling companies is a is something that is amazing thing to do for anyone any entrepreneur to sell a company have you sold company yes to sell a company is a beautiful thing but there's massive misconception out there that you have to sell for 10 20 30 40 million quid you don't you can sell a company for 500 000 pounds 750 or a million quid if you earn 100 of that that's life-changing it's life-changing let's get real here because there's too much chat out there again oh my mate's always coming for 25 million that's a unicorn good luck to them but if you're a true entrepreneur and you end up selling a company and not many people do i think it's 0.1 end up selling every business owner out there goes oh my company's worth 10 mil yeah i did a million pound ebitda multiple times 10 that's 10 million quid no no it's only worth something but someone's it's only worth what someone's going to pay for it you know but actually the journey of selling a company was really exciting actually selling the company that day i was like is that it you're in the you're in the accountants you're in your lawyers you all get signed off you go right the money's in the bank like oh is that it like you go and have a bottle of champagne that night and you ever try to celebrate oh she's great and then oh right okay so the excitement of selling the company actually selling the company isn't that exciting well i always think that you know i've shifted my perception of this massively because Because I recently had a profound, what I say recently, had a profound conversation with a friend of mine, Daniel.

1:07:03And he was sold four businesses throughout his life. And he's a very good entrepreneur, granted. He's involved in SaaS businesses, software as a service. So you package up a software, you make it into a… This is a really good point. Okay. Because not a lot of people know this. Explain what SaaS is. Because everyone's seen it everywhere. S-A-A-S. Software as a service. What is that? So it is basically taking a software, a function that solves a problem. So it could be something in marketing. It could be an artificial intelligence bot. So what most people do, most businesses owners do, what I used to do is say, right, I've got this artificial intelligence bot.

1:07:41I can get you leads on your social media with it, and you pay me X amount per month. now rather than continue down that road what software as a service like crudely speaking would do is package this up into an actual business where you might have a crm a whole package it might be on an app and then effectively build this service into a software where people can log on okay and then you're charging monthly recurring with that okay right so then you get the idea of being with this let's say for example i had this artificial intelligence bot for all intents and purposes we do this yeah it goes in your account it can handle customer service can book appointments for you but i put this into wise ai yeah it's a software and then when you can download that app online or you can log on to your browser you can pay 7.99 a month or whatever it is that your subscription is i packaged that up that is now a saleable sas okay so how much So, example, say you were doing$100 ,000 a month.

1:08:40Well, I know this for a fact. Yeah. If you can get that business to around$700 ,000 to$900 ,000 profit a month. What's that in pound? No, let's talk in pounds. Let's just say, for example, it's like$650 ,000. Okay. Let's call it$500 ,000 for easy. You'd probably be looking at a low$100 million figure exit profit because you are looking at… Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You're saying half a bar net profit. Net profit, yeah. Net profit at the end of the year. If you have a specific software. That someone really, really wants. Really, really wants. You'd be looking at 12 to 15x on something like that.

1:09:15Now, that's not typical. So I know that I've got a friend that's selling a software. But if you sold it for half a bar there and you 10x'd it, that's 5 million quid. No, that's per month. Oh, you're talking per month. Okay. I'm talking about per month. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you're looking at roughly, let's call it 6 million pound. Okay. If 6 million pounds, you'd probably get high eight figures for that. And that's profound. And I know someone doing that right now with those numbers, which is what I'm talking about. Let's make it really simple. Say if you're doing 10 million pounds on a SaaS business a year, what multiple do you think you could get on that 10 million?

1:09:52For argument's sake, let's call it 7 to 8. That'd be low end for something that was good. So SaaS companies have higher multipliers because it's a monthly recurring model. Recurrent. So they're buying. So they're brilliant, right? So I'm buying your business, and you say, Elliot, I've got 10 ,000 subscribers paying X pound per month. You're guaranteeing that. And they're on contract for the next 18 months. It's like Netflix. They know that you'll sign into this contract, you're buying that in, so you've got longevity in that. You're secure. And it's cash flow every month up front for something that's infinitely scalable.

1:10:22And the great thing about software as a service is it doesn't typically cost any more other than the marketing cost to add another customer in. Okay. That's why the multipliers are so high. Because if you've got a really good scalable model and it's got big demand in the marketplace, we can put another million people in and for all intents and purposes, it doesn't actually stress or add any fixed costs to the business. Because it's just all automated. Which is why the multipliers are so big. If you own a franchise and then it required finding buildings, finding staff, there's a lot more logistics behind it.

1:10:53That's why the multipliers aren't as high. You might have more wealth in the business. It might be harder to copy, but it's also harder to scale. So software and selling digital businesses now is exactly where I'm at. And like you said, I buy businesses. I'm always looking for e-commerce businesses, digital businesses that I can buy because I know that someone else has done the SWEC, which I don't want to do for the first two years. I'll happily pay 200 grand, 50 grand, 100 grand for a business where someone's worked. Done the hard work for a thousand days. And for them, that's a great amount of money.

1:11:22For me, that's not enough for the work that I'd have to put in to build that. I'd rather pay for it. So it's a great trade. Yeah. It's a great trade. So people, and the great thing about building a business to sell is even if you don't sell it, you're building it the right way. Because there's two questions you need to answer, in my opinion, to build any good businesses. One, can my business maintain itself without me? So if I was to go away for a month, would it maintain? That's the key. The second one, which is the most important, is can my business grow without me? Could you go away for a month, come back, and you actually increase sales?

1:11:51That is when you've got a brilliant business. And if you can solve for those two things, you'd be able to sell a business. Because ultimately, that's what they're going to want when they buy it. And when you're buying a business, the key to me is the entrepreneur. Are you a good bloke? Do you get it? Do you understand it? Are you good with people? What is your business look like? And also how long I can have that person in the business? Because as an entrepreneur myself, when I sell businesses, I don't want to be in the business. I sold. There was no earn out. The deal I cut was I'm out. That was genius.

1:12:22Because imagine being locked in for two, three years. They now own you because they do own you. And whatever deal you get up front, if you get 50 % up front and 50 % in three years, forget the 50 % in three years, guarantee your money up front. And if you get something at the end of it, that's a bonus. Too many people hope that the second payment is going to come along. The chances are it won't. No, and also what a lot of venture capitalist businesses do is they dangle huge carrots in front of people. So I've actually gone through contracts. So I've got a close friend of mine who has a big clothing company.

1:12:56And he went, Elliot, I've just been offered 10 mil for my company. I went, do you mind if I read the contract and what it was about? He was getting 500k up front. The rest was being dripped out. Some was giving in future shares. I was like, this is a shit deal, mate. Absolutely no way. But they put this 10 million figure in front of you and go, oh, my God, I'm done. Ego goes massive. You're also tied into the business for the next 10 years. You've got an anti-compete clause that's in there. It's not a good deal. but what they do is they buy a lot of businesses massively undervalued by preying on them with a huge number so you have to be really careful when you're analysing the contracts and the numbers that are being thrown around if like you did it's 10 million today and you're out that's a unicorn that's hard to do it doesn't work that way, life doesn't work that way it's a negotiable deal, you need your lawyers their lawyers and you sit there having a battle and coming to an agreement on something that's going to work for both parties also when selling company ours took eight months and when I was I was new to selling I've never sold a company before sold a company in 2018 you think it's going to be done in a month you're like fucking hurry up will you hurry up it takes eight months back and forward back and forward then they tweak something they change something and they're like I remember about a month before they were like just to let you know we want to tie you in three years we're going to pay you 30 % now 70 % and I said that gold's changed I went the deal's off so you said the deal's off and you double not double bluffing but you go back and back they then come back and go I want 100 % out 100 % up front done thank you very much you know there's lots of mind games going on and lots of moving parts when selling a company because at the start when you're doing the deal with someone everyone's oh lovely glass of wine yeah meal lovely things change because what people do is get the lawyers to act on their behalf saying not happy with this clause not happy with this clause not happy with that it's a game of chess but you've got to hold your nerve Talking about businesses Yeah You said that you know buying a business is about the entrepreneur Let's talk about partnering up with someone to build a business together okay what do you look for if you've have you ever had a business partner uh i have in my young in my 20s my best okay if you were to look for a business partner now what kind of criteria would you look for i would look for criteria that's totally opposite to mine i know what i'm good at and i know what i'm rubbish at and i just hope in on what i do that but i need someone who is there who can do the detail can do the running the operations of it i'm not an operator i like to create brands i like to be creative i like to build teams i'm very good at hiring people i'm very good with people but actually the day-to-day that's not my bag of all the businesses i've built i've never been in the day-to-day so i would look at a really solid operator for me so before i even get to that point i actually look at the person themselves so it'd be very rare that i ever got into business with someone out of shape i mean before i even look at someone's skills and i've been in so many businesses and employed so many people that are fucking brilliant at what they do but three weeks in they've dropped off you can't get hold of them on the phone they're they're gone people that go to the gym have for me show me the fundamental disciplines and attributes that i would require as a prerequisite before even getting into business with you regardless of what it is that you do so if you turn up and you're batting out of shape it's going to be very very unlikely unless you're bringing something massive to the table that i'm actually going to do any business with you because you're showing me everything I need to know because the way someone looks is a reflection of their emotional self-control when no one's looking if you don't have the ability not to put something in your mouth when no one's watching what is to stop you doing that to the business to me in the future and how many uh employee issues have you had with partnerships like girlfriend boyfriend husband wife that have fallen apart internally within your company uh Uh, I've had two wonderful ladies who worked for me who were a partnership.

1:16:46Right. And they were both directors. That was amazing. Um, I've currently got now, they don't work for me anymore. They were with me for like 10 years, Steph and Sophie. They were, they were amazing, like truly amazing. They've gone on to do big things themselves, but they were with me 10, I think 10, 7 or 8, 9, 10, 11 years. Fantastic. Fantastic. I've currently got a couple who work for me now who are a couple. And I took them on because I knew I wanted one of them both to stay in Bournemouth. And one of them was going to go back. So I took them both on. They were both amazing. One of them has grown to be the top under 30 entrepreneur in the events world.

1:17:25Oh, wow. Like amazing. Like truly amazing. Yeah. And also from the dynamic of just people that aren't partnerships in your business, how have you seen for example let's say you've employed dave yeah you know hypothetically speaking and he's married how often have you found issues with dave because of the partner that he's picked a hundred percent i i and i before i employ someone i find out what their relationship is simple yeah simple i need to know what your relationship is i need to dig deeper on on not who wears the trousers but no no who wears the trousers yeah but i guess so who wears the freaking trousers like hold on a minute because don't be around the bush yeah yeah yeah we're looking at that's what i look in before i pull that trigger before signing anything i need to know that you've got a good partner someone who's supporting you and someone believes in your your your career and what you're going to do because we run business that are pretty cool right it's a festival 30 000 people in a field party and we work all year round to create this coming into year 18.

1:18:29Congrats. Thank you. It's a big moat around. Yeah. Anyone to get past 10 years. If I speak to anyone who's gone past 10 years. It's big. 18 years is big, man. What date is it? It's the last bank holiday in May. If I'm not in America, I'm coming. You're more than welcome, man. You'll love it. Sport Music Festival. But yeah, it's really important to me that the other halves totally get them and totally get the way I operate because I don't operate normally. I'll fire WhatsApp to you. I'll fire them in the morning and at night. What are your thoughts on this? And I get everyone involved. what are your thoughts on that design?

1:18:58Can you sign that design off? Should we get that artist? Should we get that DJ? Should we book there? I'm just very open and people know who work for me. That's how I operate. But I give everyone so much freedom. Don't micromanage. Don't do any of that. I'm not in the day to day. I don't come to the office. Our office has been there 15 years. I probably go there every eight weeks. I do everything off my mobile phone when I'm travelling or from my kitchen. I give trust. I give self-belief to all our staff. I believe. I give them self-belief that they are fucking brilliant at what they do and they're going to be the best in the country at what they do.

1:19:31And that breeds a great culture. And I haven't been taught that. It's just what I've done over the last, as an adult, 27 years in business as an adult. Yeah. Yeah, so for me, I won't get into business with someone, especially if they've got high impact in my business without having met their partner first. Because I need to know if I'm dealing with a decision maker. Yeah. And also how volatile their relationship is. because the one thing that will derail someone more from your business outside of the owner is their partner. How toxic are they? How supportive are they? Do they have other agendas that they're feeding into their ear?

1:20:03Because, yeah, as the boss, as someone that's running the business, it's motivating them and inspiring them, you trying to compete against that's almost going to be impossible. To go out to dinner with you and their partner, do a joint date, figure out who they are, how long have they been together, what's it like, how volatile are they at work? People don't... This is why I thought I'd mention it to you because very few entrepreneurs and businesses talk about this. No, it's good. Because this is the real stuff. Yeah. Like, as a business owner, this is the kind of stuff we look at. Here's a question to you.

1:20:28Would you employ someone who's in their 50s and 60s? Absolutely. You would? Absolutely. For your business? For my business. Well, any business. Well, no. For me, I personally wouldn't. Okay. Because my business is a young person's game. It's all social media. It's an 18 to 30 crowd at the festival. our other business is a young person's game as well but i guess for your game is if it's e-commerce or it's marketing or whatever it may be in fact it's probably different for you because you're doing that other business your wife so which is an older perspective i look at hiring people that can bring value to the business that i can't simply do myself and what i've actually found with people in the 50s and 60s they tend to have skill sets in and around that might be finance wealth management that's typically where our litigation potentially bring them in the team not so much the social media end yeah but what i've found with a 50 and 60 year old is they're the people that have gone through the 30s and 40s maybe tried that early retirement realized it wasn't for them and actually got a bit of a fire up their ass and the people that are still looking to do something at that point tend to be quite fiery quite motivated and they can bring a tremendous amount of wealth to the table plus they haven't got all the things and responsibilities of life over them anymore so they can be very focused so i wouldn't write it off via age but It really depends on the person for the job.

1:21:45I will only hire the best person for the business. If you are not bringing value to the business because we're all a family, it's not just for the money in my back pocket. If I, as the owner, bring someone into the business who is subpar at the job role that they're doing, everyone suffers because it's an ecosystem. It's my job to make sure that everyone in that position is as good as possible. I don't care about PC. I don't care about whatever we need to do outside of what the government's telling you to do. Who is best for the job role? Who is best for the customer? Who is best for the team?

1:22:13that person gets hired what's it what's it like have you how many people have you actually fired all over the years a lot have you have you okay interesting i'm pretty ruthless with it now because the first thing that i do is i will always look at me so this is why i'm comfortable firing someone i will say look have i given this person the sops the assistance and processes is to actually do their job have i given them support have i made it abundantly clear what we're doing why we're here and have I given that so typically it's you that's caused the problem from that actually being a good employee and nine times out of ten I will correct that and say okay it's on me I actually didn't lay out from seven in the morning when they start till four o 'clock in the afternoon hour by hour second by second what they should be doing that's literally what I do okay now you've got that have they got the support have they got the knowledge yes they have now have they got the motivation, am I touching base?

1:23:11Are they actually in the job roles fulfilling? Yes, they have. They're still messing up. You're fired. So give me an example of how you would fire someone. In the morning you'd go, right, I've got to go and fire. No, no, no. So normally, like I said, I would look at what I've been doing and I would give a warning. I'd say, look, I've covered this, I've done this. Have you ever fired someone without a warning? Yes. Tell me how you did it. So this was actually someone in my consultancy business. How did you do it? This was a very, very direct one. So I'll tell you why this happened so we had a client who this consultant was working with helping them build that scale their business I had a complaint from that client that the consultant that was working for me wasn't being as diligent or as communicative if they'd liked I had basically looked at all the conversations on both sides and actually I think the client was being a bit of an arse but I said look what I'll do is I'll mediate a three-way conversation if you're happy to do that we'll go through everything we'll set expectations and if you're not happy with this consultant I'll either step in or find someone else or we'll sort something out but i want to make sure that you're happy moving forward fine i spoke to the consultant i was dealing with who worked for me and said look no problem at all elliot we'll have a chat with him obviously you've seen the conversations i've seen everything they've done i think your guy was being a little bit unreasonable but still we'll deal with it so he'd booked to have a call at eight in the morning i've logged on the client's logged on he's not logged on i'm sitting there going well he's being told we're on this meeting because apparently the guy can't turn up his attendance is poor he's missed meetings i'm thinking this guy's making me look like i come yeah asshole i've sat and apologized to the guy and said look i'm not gonna i said look let's address the elephant in the room yeah clearly this is a problem i apologize let me sort this out for you while we're on the call how can i help how can i sort this problem out the guy was actually pretty nice to be fair and he didn't make me feel as bad as he could have done incidentally the guy phoned me up and said oh my daughter's been ill this that and the other so I fell asleep on the sofa didn't wake up fired you could have sent me a message that's all I needed nothing that for me is a non-negotiable same I haven't fired a lot of people do you not?

1:25:09no I think I fired maybe just three people my whole time fired fired I just gone in and go mate you're out or I've just caught you out you're out only three one one

1:25:29yeah I don't want to know that one no no I'll say it I'm just thinking about saying I've never spoken about it but probably you should say it one girl came in and just crying her eyes and said oh my mum's died I was like you're joking no no Jesus Christ take your time go I'm here for you take as much time as you want off anyway about six months later she went to the funeral texting the staff and whatsapping me I said I'm here for you if you need to speak to me on the day I'm sending positive vibes to your mums on the day of the funeral whatever she'd done the funeral three months later two of my staff were in the car with her driving to Tesco to get some lunch and she had her phone on the thing and it come up mum I was like the two girls because the two girls were crying their eyes out for her like for three months before like come you lost your mum we're here for you to so two girls in the car were like Dodger I think I'll tell you something her mum called the other day so the girls went they were really stressed they were really distressed the two girls were working for me and they were like I was like oh my god wow so they went the next day and they put it onto her they recorded it and went we feel really uncomfortable your mum called the other day didn't she she was like oh well yeah she did so is your mum not dead she was like no I was like so the girls come back to me and I had it all recorded while in the car like so I could hear all this I was like you are joking me this went on for like five months from saying that she had the funeral to actually the girls finding it out and then you've got you've got to go how mad is that what Yeah, that's my point.

1:27:23You can't write that. That's like out of a movie, isn't it? Why? Why? Why, why, why? She worked for her last year. Why? Did she ask for anything at the time? A day off? She wanted days off. She took days off. I gave her everything. I gave her everything. Take days off, take your time. You wouldn't go to that extreme to get a day off, surely. How many days she had off, but would you go to that extreme and actually saying that? Well. she now works locally around here but no one knows no one knows this story and I've never spoken about it before because I thought do I say it so I'm not but why not fuck it I'm here now I think what people need to realise is this is where it comes to being an entrepreneur the shit we have to deal with on a day to day basis is mental yeah it is mental yeah it's not normal well you're firefighting I've been firefighting that's a weird fire though yeah that's a weird one isn't it I've never heard of that before no nor have I well if there is I'm glad I put it out there in fact but if there is such a thing as a karma that's coming back yes yeah that's naughty isn't it that's like final destination kind of shit that's wild Elliot mate we could go on for hours here I really enjoyed it it's nice to have two entrepreneurs sitting down just chewing the fat and just finding out what's out there and if anyone learns anything from this I feel like we've done our bit and honestly I think that like I said if we could get a take home from this it's don't feel beholden to be part of a system that you're being told is the way to do it yeah take it from us to that we're playing the game completely differently we're the ones that are hiring people growing the businesses and the way that we're doing is how it now works today and hopefully you realize before it's too late great anyone out there at the moment thinking what should i do if you're going to go and retrain in something just go and learn ai yes i promise you just go and learn ai and be the person who knows everything about ai because you're going to be light years of everyone because people are going to be losing their jobs to ai so be that person who's controlling ai yeah absolute pleasure nice one mate i've really enjoyed that no me too wicked nice one for making the effort here's a tip for you there's a podcast out there with fans

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