Tom Glanfield: From Sleeping in the Office to Selling a 400-Person Business and now going again

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0:40Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Matchdays deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero Sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion. There's a real fine line between being bold and successful and being reckless and unsuccessful. Who is Tom Glanfield? Loving father foremost, loving husband, fund seeker and I'd say entrepreneur. When I exited I had right in the end 400 staff. We borrowed money from the bank and I sold it to an employee ownership trust so the employees owned the company.

1:23Tom Glanfield could just stop and go and get cocktails on the beach somewhere abroad and not doing anything else. And that brings the serial entrepreneur element in because that's not what you've done. I got approached by two friends who started a réseau business called Après Provence. I just love the name. The opportunity, I think, in that wine market with Après is so big. If you entered the World Cup football as a team and you were just handed the World Cup, it wouldn't feel that amazing. But if you had all the struggles, you've got through the playoffs, you've had the penalty shootouts, you've had the highs and lows, then it feels like a real achievement.

2:00And it's the same, I think, with a company that having to deal with intense pressure sometimes. I think if you hadn't had all that, you would not have that satisfaction at the end when you actually exited. That's the word, satisfaction.

2:22action. Sorry to interrupt. I've never asked this before, but if you can subscribe and follow, that will allow me to keep bringing extraordinary guests onto the show. Now let's get back to it.

2:36John. Looking forward to this. Yeah. Who is Tom Lanfield? And you're going to ask me this. So loving father foremost, loving husband, fun seeker, and I'd say entrepreneur. So you're going to say serial entrepreneur? Serial entrepreneur. But I don't know. I kind of hate that term a bit. I think it's too used these days. But I'd say I am. The principle is you started something from scratch. Yeah. And you've done that a few times. So tell me back to the beginning. Yeah. The first part of the journey, if you like. For some reason, I've, and I probably need to analyse my childhood somehow to see this, but I've always wanted to start my own, always wanted to start my own business and have that freedom.

3:20I always had a good rivalry with my brother who actually qualified for the Olympics. so I think it kind of like set a thing in me that I need to start a business now and I actually started a recruitment business with a graduate loan when I was like 22, 23. I had some immediate hurdles to get over. One was that I looked so young. People say I look young now. Take it. Yeah I mean 50 next year Jesus so maybe not that young now but at that time I was very young and in recruitment the level I was getting at was very senior so I didn't want to be going to meet a essential partner saying that I'm Tom Glanfield's owner of Glanfield Associates and looking about 16 and they're not taking me seriously.

4:13How old are you at that point? I was like 22, 23 so I looked like someone who would be on work experience. I recognised that was a a big hurdle so I did a few things I had a tape recording of me and some friends on surround sound in a in my girlfriend's attic uh so it sounded like a busy office I chose the name Lawrence Harvey to sound like a big established company I changed my name so sounds dodgy but wasn't uh I was Tom Glanfield always um as owner and director of the business but I traded as Tom Edwards as a consultant so my boss was Tom Glanfield I was Tom Edwards I re-registered my girlfriend's house or ex-ex-ex-ex-ex girlfriend something like that to Harvey House Rygate instead of 32 Effingham Road which was the address to Harvey House Rygate so when I turned up to meet my Accenture partner I was instead of I'm Tom Glanfield from Glanfield Associates living at 32 Efficient Road, Rygate I was I'm Tom Edwards consultant at Lawrence Harvey at Harvey Harvey House, Rygate and yeah and we're growing super fast so a real sort of boutique and my boss is Tom Granfield so I'm Tom Edwards so that was I guess but from there then I had to obviously offer which I did a genuine good service winner takes all and there's no place there's no time there's no money for second place in recruitment sounds a bit cheesy that quote I'm pretty sure it's off Top Gun but then by offering a good service I grew the business And then as I took on staff and moved into London, I told my staff to tell my clients that Tom Edwards has left the business.

6:12So they took over my clients and then I became Tom Glanfield. Introducing Meta Glasses. Hey Meta, any last minute tables for two tonight? Sure, there's a great Italian restaurant 15 minutes away. Hey Meta, where's the nearest flower shop? Five minutes away, straight down Broadway, past the bodega. Their lilies are trending on Instagram. Just saying. Hey Meta, am I forgetting anything else? How about setting a calendar reminder for next year? Meta glasses, available in more than 20 styles. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back.

6:54So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. There's a superhero kind of moment here, isn't there? There's like you put your cape on. But you're already the guy. I mean, you're the same age range as me. You probably watch Usual Suspects.

7:27I don't even remember that. Kaiser Solche, where there's that guy who talked about Kaiser Solche and he was actually him. I think it's a bit like that. Told the story. It went well. It got bigger than I ever thought. And I had a really clear goal of where I wanted to get to. I didn't take any external funding. I ended up sleeping in the office for a year to save money. Got it to a certain size where I could then sell it and exit. Can I just say, almost like that uncomfort that you had about being an entrepreneur at the beginning, that's proper entrepreneurship. That's proper graft. Yeah, I think...

8:06That's relentless. I think with entrepreneurship, there's a real fine line between being bold and successful, and being reckless and unsuccessful. You're always teaching, because you're taking the very nature of entrepreneurship, if you looked it up, would be taking risks, taking risks that most people wouldn't do or feel very uncomfortable doing. And I think it can be very easy to move from one of those states to the other one. If you, at one moment, just back down and don't rise to the challenge, you can end up in that reckless category. And I think too many people, especially in the UK, like to see people fail sometimes and succeed because I think people will get jealous if you do succeed.

9:02Yeah. That's why I think it's important you just say what you've done, right? Because you are sitting here now and from that business point of view, successfully exited. Yeah. But you put the graft in. You had the kind of the nights where you sleep in the office and there's all the stress that goes with building and scaling that business without any external funding. So I just want to say congratulations. Thank you. That is almost like the holy grail of what a lot of entrepreneurs are striving to achieve. Start a business, scale it, and exit. Yeah, well, I think the best thing for me was we actually did what most people, a lot of people wouldn't have heard of.

9:37It's called an employee ownership trust. We actually built it with the employees. So when I exited, I had, right in the end, 400 staff. and we actually did it. So we borrowed money from the bank and I sold it to an employee ownership trust so the employees own the company. Not private equity or anything like that which I think I was always worried about private equity coming in and just completely changing the business. But with the employee ownership trust the employees then effectively inherit the business and the only thing I could, I've never seen this happen yet, I haven't heard this happen to me yet but I can imagine it'd be a feeling that you'd probably get when you see your kids graduate and then maybe get a trust fund as in like the two my co-CEO now we have a co-CEO I have two guys who join me as graduates and see them go all the way through to the business that it is now and and it's so cool that I'm sort of part of it I still own sort of 10 % of the business and sit in board meetings but seeing what they're doing with the business and how far they're going it's really cool you can tell the people side of things which isn't talked about enough the importance of people in the business and then the fact that you value them and anyone watching listening now that's been part of that journey knows that that's because of the the hours spent in the ex-girlfriend's attic putting the graft in people is everything right um i think um it makes the business i now advise or look at um it's it's all about the people um because if even if the product's a bit off if you have the best people in the market they will change the product to make it work so at that point tom glamour could just stop and go and get cocktails on the beach somewhere yeah abroad and not do anything else and that brings the serial entrepreneur element in because that's not what you've done if anything in a time that i've known you like keeping up with you the pace that you move at is relentless yeah that so you've bought an incredible place in sandbanks that you're now you've got your planning permission for you're going to build the most beautiful home didn't they?

11:36Got married. Had a kid in the last year and a bit, and you got another one on the way. Already had kids. And you've started another business, which I know you started from friends coming to you with the concept, the idea. But now you've grabbed hold of that, and that's keeping you particularly busy. So tell me about that. I'd say I'm spinning a few plates. You enjoy that though, don't you? You thrive on it. Yeah, I think so. It's kind of both. I mean, it goes back into being trying to be bold and successful than reckless and unsuccessful as in I'm going all in with both of them and I don't know why I keep doing this like when I start really believing in something I will just kind of go all in and I hate to say the phrase it's all or nothing but it kind of kind of is I did have a phase after starting my business where I did relax and I did get that property and I remember sitting there on my seafront, my harbourfront, looking at Brown Sea Island and just feeling completely calm, almost stressed that I wasn't stressed.

12:43Yeah, I didn't have that same adrenaline that keeps you going all the time and just loving that feeling of just watching the world go by. And for me, that felt like success, like getting that time. I got approached by two friends who had started a wine business, a rése business called Après Provence. I just loved the name. Like I thought the name was amazing. I thought it was going to be a bit of fun. I wouldn't necessarily say it was going to be the sexiest market in terms of investment because I thought this isn't AI. Everything's about AI at the moment and tech. But I've quickly realized, being an investor now in other businesses, that out of 100 AI companies, one might explode, but the rest are probably going to go bust or it's going to be so different in a year's time.

13:30But actually, with a product business, I've gone full circle on it. And the opportunity, I think, in that wine market with Apre is so big. AI can't drink wine, which is a good strapline. Maybe I should use that. But there's just such a big market there. And as a result, I've been sucked into it and taken over the business, taken the majority share, headhunted and hired, as I do, probably one of the best guys in the market. So actually Andy Turley, who is a UK sales director for Peroni. And it seems to be flying again. It brings your previous background of recognising good people and recruiting.

14:16Yeah. So you say it seems to be flying. How far can you go with it? Because that's a competitive market, right? Well, it kind of is. And actually, I really don't think it is at the same time. Rosé is growing. The market is growing at a pace. And probably in our age demographic, you've seen friends and especially male friends drinking more and more rosé. The fastest growing sector in the whole wine market is actually men drinking rosé. If I ask anyone, tell me a name of a wine brand, give me a wine brand name, they'll probably say like Whispering Angel or Maniti or something like that. Well, actually, Rosé is normally the smallest section of the wine menu.

14:52So in Rosé, if you make it big, it seems to be big brands. But they all seem to take themselves a little bit too seriously. Yeah, it very much seems to be falling into this exclusive crowd who are drinking it. And it's very much centered around females, females drinking Rosé. So you've got Whispering Angel, you've got Lady A, you've got, I think another brand came up recently called Amy, another one came out called Queen. You've got Love. They are all centred around females drinking rosé and nothing's really going after a market of men drinking rosé. So whilst we're not exclusively going after men, we're, Apres is, I just think the name's fantastic.

15:31It's the lifestyle. It's a lifestyle I absolutely believe in and love. It's that drink with mates at the end of a day skiing. It's that state of play. It's everything I want a lifestyle to be. Fun, doesn't take itself too seriously. Work hard, play hard. I've not thought about this before. We obviously know each other person, but that is the thing. You know, when you sat and looked at the view at Sandmanx when you first bought the place and you were relaxing, enjoyed it, but you don't it. You put the graft in. You provided the finances to buy that. When you go skiing, you destroy yourself on the slopes.

16:05and then the apres part, whatever you're doing, having a glass of rosé, you've earned it. Yeah. It's such an obvious thing to say, but it sums you up because you are the epitome of work hard, play hard. Yeah, but it is just sucking me in because just like the house build, that's another thing that I've got going on at the same time, is MDTV, which is the second biggest Provence rosé producer in the world, is looking to take a 15 % stake in us, which they've never done before. So they recognize the potential. That's great validation for you, right? Yeah. And it's just suddenly gone massive. But to see it through, to make sure I'm on that bold and successful and not reckless and unsuccessful, it does require your time to really grip it up and grab it by the throat.

16:57For it to be everything I think it can be. But that goes back to being all or nothing. So you're fully focused on it now. You're looking at where everything needs to be amplified. Yeah. And I also like the fact that you've got quite a novel take on the regions from a global point of view. So expand on that. Well, again, I think this benefits them not really being from the wine market. Well, I'm not from the wine market at all. I'm recruitment. So you're looking at it very differently. And I think quite often that's a thing in business is people don't see the wood from the tree sometimes. but we've done a deal recently with SailGP which is the Grand Prix of sailing.

17:34They're an amazing brand and we're gonna be the exclusive Rose provider to their event in Portsmouth. They've got a global circuit and they said well you know if you go out there we go to New York and we can go to Sydney and we can get all these places and our non-exec who is in the wine market said it can't be done that quickly because you have to pay all these import duties, look at Chateau having to export to every country. I was like, well, we'll just have Apare California, and then we'll have Apare Wahiki from New Zealand. This is going to be an extremely busy month. I have to watch 104 soccer games, follow the pregame, the postgame, yell useless opinions at the TV.

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18:48Texas, Ohio, Alaska, we're up there too. Comfort Inn. It's calling your name Save on the stay Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim Well, I hope you like my little song Book direct at storiesvilletales.com I can't believe that's not been done before. It's innovative and it's entrepreneurial. It seems to be done in the beer market, but weirdly not in the wine market. I think the wine market takes itself very seriously. So it's in need of modernisation and I think a fresh outlook. So with MDCV, it could be probably one of the fastest globalisations of any wine brand ever. So now I just need to see it through.

19:30Yeah, totally. But at the same time, I'm also doing my house build as well. Yeah, I'm going to have a watching brief of how well you go with this. And I wish you every successful bit on that. You already are successful. A number of people that know you or would look into your world would see you as successful. How do you define success? Well, I was going to say, when people see me as being successful, what do you think they see? Oh, spinning it back to me. Successfully, Exeter's founder who's bought the opportunity that builds you the most incredible dream home and the beautiful family around you that you spend quality time with.

20:05Yeah. I'm answering this for you. And having the opportunity to go again following a passion and putting your skills into play with all the lessons that you've learned. Yeah. You don't need to say anything now. Yeah, I mean, I think if you ask anyone what success is, I mean, to me, it's quite a deep, deep question. It's just multifaceted. As in, I would say, my instinct would say success is buying yourself time and time with, for me particularly, I mean, it's different for everyone. Time with my family, so with my kids, with my amazing wife. But I think success then goes hand in hand with happiness.

20:48And then it's what do you define as happiness? And I think a key thing for me in happiness is actually number one is the relationship you're in with your partner. So my partner, Jordan, he's female, not Blake, is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. I'm fully in love there. And I think that's quite often overlooked. People always talk about their career, money, things like that. And you're probably 90 % of your time with this person. So that is so important. Secondly, I think it's just self-pride is in something you're proud of that you've achieved yourself. If you entered the World Cup football as a team and you were just handed the World Cup, it wouldn't feel that amazing.

21:36But if you've had all the struggles, you've got through the playoffs, you've had the penalty shootouts, you had the highs and lows, you've had people sent off and you still overcome that and won, then it feels like a real achievement. And it's the same, I think, with a company that if you were just given a trust fund by your parents or whatever, which I've never had, I can't imagine it'd be the same feeling as growing a company, sleeping in the office, having to deal with intense pressure sometimes, real financial stress, people issues and management and all of the things that come along with growing a company, then I think if you hadn't had all that, then you would not have that satisfaction at the end when you actually exited.

22:21That's the word, satisfaction. Yeah, so I think that gives you comfort in your own skin, you know, to be who you actually are. And I think until you've done that, until you've found something that you're really, truly good at and by that definition of success or in, that you ultimately will never be fully happy and then fully successful. Yeah, I get that. And I've known you long enough to know that you really do have a value on time. I feel like there's so much that you are trying to pack in to the time that you've got. And you'll bring your age up in conversations where you're like, oh, I've got to get this done before.

22:59I can tell that without even saying it, it's before you sort of run out of time, if you like. And then alongside having clearly scaled and continuing to be super busy from a business point of view, you'll add challenges in. At any one time I'll see you popping up on Instagram and you're up a mountain, but you're not necessarily just skiing. You're doing some charity challenge and running and all that. Do you feel that need to keep challenging yourself? I think life's short, right? And if you just coast along and you're always in your comfort zone, you start getting old and it gets a bit boring.

23:35So I think every year I try and have some kind of challenge that puts me on my back foot, be it physical, mental, whatever it is. Definitely now I'm getting sucked more into apouret and the house build. I probably take my foot off the gas a bit with triathlons and all that kind of stuff. That's where I was going with it. So you're not necessarily doing it at the same time? So that tells me that when I met you, you had your foot off the gas for the business. Because that's when you were doing these triathlons and looking for the challenge that now Aprey's filled. Yeah, it's weird. I always set myself little goals.

24:10And when I did triathlon, the goal was actually to qualify for the world champs. And this may seem nuts to you and a massive anticlimax, but I qualified for the world champs. And I didn't actually turn up for the world champs. because for me the goal was to qualify and once I've done that that was kind of done it's the same in business I had a real goal of being a certain age by the time I sold so I still had my health and my time with kids and things like that while they're still young and I had quite an amount of I was trying to achieve EBIT wise before we sold so I knew that would give me security I probably turned it out the window of it with my house build, I've gone very ambitious again.

24:57That puts the pressure on APRE now. I am fully focused now on actually hitting the build and the budget we set, but then fully focused on growing APRE to get that second sale, to then be able to pay down the mortgage, have that as stress-free, because that will become the family anchor. I think for me, I've always wanted the best. I think I've always moved around a lot in my life in London, Devon. When I was growing my business to my eight offices, I was going to LA, New York, Munich, Manchester, Bristol, all the time. So I think I've yearned for a solid family place. It's a bit like a legacy in the family.

25:45I think this is what I found in Sandbanks. It's a big, big ambitious project again. I never thought I'd be having the build cost that I'm facing. But it will be amazing. You're timing as well, the last few years of all the cost increases. So now I'm fully focused on making that work. And I think APRE has the ability to really come through as another massive sale like LHI. So I need to make that happen as well. I want to talk about the house. Yeah. We both love Sandmakes. You have the most amazing place there. You love your health and fitness. So I want to know what might not be obvious to anyone from a biohacking point of view, what you're putting in there.

26:26What kind of quirky things have you got in this case? Well, I sound like a psyche, but I'm planning to put a hyperbaric chamber in it. So like a lung ventilator thing. I've got my cold dips, my hot dips, my sauna. I think the biggest longevity drug is socialising and having a space to socialise. And yeah, I've got you and your family, your beautiful family, over a lot of times uh for drinks in the front um and for me it's having a place where i can entertain have a very social socially active life there um because it is tough and we have moved out to a much smaller rental uh we don't have a spare room we've got another another child coming so it's gonna be a tough two years but i can't wait to move back into the place once it's done puts the pressure on and you're documenting it all you've set up an insta page yeah so getting some So again, that has actually put me out of my comfort zone, even doing things like this.

27:21To be honest, I get out of my comfort zone. When I was young, I actually had a serious phobia of having my photo taken or video. My parents went through a phase of having no photos of me because I'd always be hiding whenever a camera came out or just standing there, my eyes closed. So all these photos of me, just my eyes closed over the years. But I was thinking, hey, life's short and it'd be great to document it. So we're documenting on Instagram called the Sandbanks Build. And also it's a good way to combine Apre. So you kind of bring them together. So we have an Apre bar at the end of the garden where I actually interview the builder, neighbors, things like that.

28:00They obviously had you on there, which is a really cool conversation. Really interesting, yeah. And yes, it's just bringing it all into one, basically. And even LHI, my first business, I'm keen to get the co-CEOs in there as well to talk about LHI and kind of just bring everything together. I love that. And fair play to you to put yourself out of your comfort zone. But that's where the growth is, right? You know this. It's clearly almost, I guess the term would be imposter syndrome. Yeah. The Tom Glanfield pseudonym, Tom Edwards, that you sort of hid behind. I think everyone's got to ask themselves is when I feel too comfortable, I kind of think I've stopped learning.

28:36I've stopped pushing myself. And I think it's so important to always be challenging yourself and always having that next kind of goal and challenge. so I think for everyone you should always be thinking yeah just do it you know and push yourself out of that comfort zone so the version of you sitting here now is the most accomplished the most mature got the most perspective what advice would you give to the young lad that has gone through that journey of hiding off camera closing your eyes so that effectively if you can't see me I can't see you and at any one time battles a certain amount of identity that's embraced growth and and reap the benefits yeah and that advice is so valuable to anyone watching listening that's aspirational and wants to i think it's just don't be scared what other people think be comfortable in your own skin who can like who cares like just go for it like um don't let anything stop you for going after your dreams and just just go for it like life's short yeah i think it goes so quickly and i think i sound really old when I say that but it does go quickly it feels like it was only last year I was 21 um I still act like it uh but um but I would say yeah just know what you want and go for it and don't don't ever be don't ever be scared of what other people think I think if you're confident you just own it then people people accept it and people back it um I think if you're doing anything half-heartedly, you're always going to kind of fail.

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