My Teacher Said I’d Never Become Anything

0:00Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnall and this is Screw It Just Do It, the podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. I just wanted to prove to myself that I am better than this d*** that was sort of hanging around the back of the class trying to dodge any questions. I knew I could do stuff and I lived in a pub and there was loads of business people knocking about. and I was listening to their stories and I was thinking well I could do that I just started doing anything I could to raise some money I had a teacher Mrs Smith hit me with a ruler across my fingernail she shouted at the top of boys you will never become anything and I use those things as bounces to prove people wrong when I got to about 19 I had four men working for me full-time by the time I was 20 I had over 25 people working for me we have a culture of failure you're quite accepted to have a few failures.

0:57Absolutely. Please don't fail on the same thing twice. Best thing you can probably do is start working on yourself first, business after.

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1:43Alex Chisnall:James, you left school at 14, couldn't read or write, but went on to build a 30 million plus business portfolio um at what point did you realize that you're not going to follow a normal path in life that you're going to pretty much create your own i think you know i did leave i left school slash kicked out of school they'd had enough of me being the sort of disruptor because i was so frustrated um i was like a class clown you know it's a common story alex you've interviewed plenty of people there's an itch there that either gets embedded of grit and determination but I just knew that I knew I could do stuff and I lived in a pub and there was loads of business people knocking about and I was listening to their stories and I was thinking well I could do that but I couldn't do it in the conventional way so I just started creating this sort of mini environment around me I had a girlfriend that used to read all the sort of addresses for me to sort of go and do work I was cutting grass I was washing cars I was kind of doing anything I could to make a buck um I had one job only ever uh working for Colton Tyres in a little tyre shop and um my dad got me that job from this bloke in the pub and uh I just did some maths Alex and worked out that you know if I have this much money per week times 52 it wasn't going to cut it for the things that I wanted to do in my world um so that was it I just started doing anything I could to raise some money and grass cutting finished in the autumn so then I started doing tree cutting um and i thought god i need to be sort of i thought i needed to be a qualified person before i could do my little yellow pages ad that said you know tree surgeon on it um so i went to a college to learn that um and the dyslexia really floored me i you know i couldn't read i turned the reading and writing button off it held me back in in in in sort of progress of time it was sludgy you know and I didn't want that effort I wanted to get on so I got done because I nicked the vans at the weekend from the college to go and do work and then I was using the upper students to do the work for me and I did recruit some really good tree surgeons from that sorry Meriswood College that's what happened but it was such a long bloody time ago I'm sure they can't there they won't care now um but that was it really and i i knew from there i i could do stuff and i wanted alex you've heard this before and i've i've interviewed people on my pod i i just wanted to prove to myself that i am better than this dickhead that was sort of hanging around the back of the class trying to dodge any questions they'd asked me to stand up and read and i you know that would floor me and it was you know it was you know i skip around it and i've done some podcasts with dyslexic universities and colleges that are trying to work and help people in early stages with dyslexia we're hark on it for a little bit but you know it is it's embarrassing you know it's embarrassing it's sort of it makes you feel incomplete in the in the in in your status of your community you know and I wanted to prove to my community be it that my family friends or local where I lived that I could do stuff you know and was there like a specific moment that you can recall where you you know a screw it just do it moment as we call on the show where you decided to like back yourself and basically go all in on being an entrepreneur and a business owner yeah I set a company up a limited company and my sister said to me what you doing you can't just set company up it's willy-nilly you can't even read you know and yeah you'll have to watch me on that one you know it's just those little triggers those little memories you know i had a teacher mrs smith hit me with a ruler across my fingernails my fingers you know the steel bloody ruler across my fingers and she shouted at the top of us you will never become anything and I and I use those things as bounces you know to to prove people wrong and once I realized my social skills Alex were there and I could talk to people I was likable you know and I was friendly and I was uh you know I was moral about doing the job right and stuff like that and I suddenly realized that there's I've got something here that I could make a very good living from and that's back then you know my teens that was what it was about making a living you mentioned your sister but what about the rest of your family friends people around you when you when you kind of started going down this path what was what was their reaction as well my my my dad blessed me he left when i was sort of 16 so i was sort of on the way and then he left and my mum and dad split up my mum carried on with the pub and my brother sort of took on the dad role of sort of chucking people out the pub and keeping everything in you you know in order Alex they thought it was a bit of a pain in the arse a bit of a dream as we got my sister did and my brother did and and I you know and I love them to death and you know but back then I was a bit painful I was so inquisitive and and enthusiastic it was like oh do you have a day off you know and if you hadn't had taken you know that decision have you ever thought you know what would life look like today well yeah I think that I would be running a pub because my dad had left and if I could read and write and do the books and do all the numbers and stuff like that my mum would have just probably handed me the pub and I'd be this dead alcoholic that had died about five years ago do you know what I mean I mean that's what probably could have happened you know it's a career path isn't it yeah yeah yeah um but you started you mentioned with a lawn mowing round what what did that teach you about business early on that you can kind of reflect back on that i think it really taught me that you've got to um you've got to find a customer that is needy and i literally used to walk around the streets with a mower until i found a lawn that possibly wouldn't be able to be cut with a normal normal lawnmower because they'd let it get a bit too long so it was either a bit of a strimmer job or the mower i had had a really big engine on it i was quite mechanical i knew i knew how to do that i'd swapped this sort of three horse engine out for a big five horse briggs and stratton engine so it would do the job quickly and and and efficiently and you know we need a hungry audience and i learned that very early you know people don't want to get covered in green slime and sweaty grass and dog shit and all the rest of it that goes with it and i was okay with that you know and if you want to pay me money I'll do that for you and we did it very successfully and I started you know when I got to about 19 I had four men working for me full-time by the time I was 20 I had over 25 people working for me and we had a very successful business domestically it was mainly domestically then at 20 and then we started picking up local authorities and municipalities and government backed buildings and highways we did you know Ruskins built to quite a scale and back in the day but yeah and what point then in that early journey for you like when you were a teenager there James did you go from like in your mind I'm making some money now to right this is a real this is a real proper business like how many people maybe had you employed when you actually thought this is a proper business now or did you realize that before then I think I realized that you know a sort of like employee number seven that um right i can't be in this truck um doing work and i took on the role of going to jobs and setting teams of men up and then i i actually needed to do more back office stuff to make sure that quotes were going out and we were starting to do some commercial work and i had to go meet these tree officers and these um you know people that were giving out the work, these clerks of work, on the gas board, did a ton of work for the church.

10:04All their vicarages, we did them everywhere. It was huge work. And I realised quite early on that I can't work in the business. I need to work on it. And I kind of got that. And this is no books yet. There's no CDs. There's no audio books for me to hook into. all my learning had to be by you know listening to people and and trying to drag and understand how it all works and get the proprietary language of what we were in you know we were arboriculture i didn't even know that word when i was coming out of the lawnmower world you know this is we're in the arboricultural business um i went to a conference alex and i paid 350 quid to go to liverpool never been to liverpool and um it was the arboricultural conference for contractors and local authorities and i just went there and i i went in every every talk seminar there was going i put myself in for it and in the bar i was speaking to these people we tried to get on the local authority list and one question and it floored us because it said what other local authorities or government um government uh departments he working for we weren't working for any and there was a lovely guy there mike wortley and mike wortley i explained this to him i could see his badge and it had all the three little daggers on it from from essex county council and he was their main tree officer and i said how do you do it it's like chickens and eggs and he said well no phone me and um see what i can do and he gave me a few footpaths to do that was donkey work really and then after about three years we were their main contractor and when we had them big storms you know we did over i don't know four million pounds with them and other authorities you know it just it just you know it's just that getting into those communities of people and into that sector but we were very good alex at delivering we're on the time we're all clean and tidy the guys were very good we executed the work well we weren't cheap you know we were

12:10Alex Chisnall:good and who i mean did you like you say that there were no um you know youtube channels to learn from or um you know books we were talking about earlier etc so how did you learn to build a business oh that's it you'd frozen then i didn't hear what you said say it again say it again alex okay yeah don't worry it'll it'll figure it out in the back end afterwards but yeah so um you know to build a business like that and and talking about you know your back backstory with like reading and writing etc and and not being able to access you know different learning materials that we have now like you know youtube and webinars and such like but who was helping you do that was there anyone helping you do that or were you literally just on the fly yourself yeah i didn't really have a mentor then you know i'd listen to a few old boys in the corner of the pub and i didn't really want to be like them but i could swipe and deploy some of their tricks and flicks but um if you look in my my the back of my body it is riddled with scars like real deep ones like real bad ones and we made so many mistakes and um you know they stand me well now today that those scars and i and i you know i didn't care when you're dyslexic you're a failure from the minute you get up in the morning for the reading side of things so failure i didn't have a problem with failure i'd fail and just go oh yeah it doesn't matter well i don't care what they think next item please and off we go to the next thing didn't pay the vat sold a business didn't pay the tax uh bought a porsche wrapped it around a tree didn't insure it you know i had done everything that you can think of i'd done it wrong you know and that gradually honed you in to this person that needs to be attentive you know fit for finance pay the tax you know but be be uh eligible to be able to get loans and to be able to get um you know finance on trucks and stuff like that and i gradually sort of chiseled myself into this person that could perform in a commercial world and i liked it i it was exciting you know i wasn't very good with girlfriends i had one then lost one because i wasn't ever there i was always at work and you know it just went on you know i love the attitude to failure there as well i think there's a there's a lot of people can learn for that because people are scared to take that leap to, you know, ultimately screw it, just do it and start whatever they want to start, whether it's a business, a relationship, a new job, but people are scared of failure.

14:46Alex Chisnall:And I guess that's reinforced even more these days with, you know, being online permanently, social media, et cetera. People are afraid to kind of put themselves out there and afraid of what people think of themselves but ultimately everyone's too busy in their own little world to to give a crap aren't they i mean we we do we do a um a mastermind course at baddow park house baddow park mastermind annex most of my work they're two million pound turnover companies plus and we're trying to get them up to the next level of you know look four five six million and most of the problems is they're in their own way and it's because of how are they going to be perceived what will the what will the industry think of me by having the audacity to do that do i want to go on on youtube you know do i want to be in social media give yourself a day off you know get if you want it do it you know and the attitude has stayed with me um and even now i've a big team here that run a big luxury wedding venue that we have here on the estate here um we have a culture of failure you know you're quite accepted to have a few failures in there absolutely please don't fail on the same thing twice but you you know no one's going in there with a big stick banging anybody around the head because of a bit of failure try ideas otherwise the ideas will run out and no one will get creative and start doing new in innovative things for the business you know i want disruptors i want people to take risk i want to come back and ask you like with with webinars and and in person stuff you know how how different um that is like connecting people together that you can you can speak to in a room rather than doing so online but obviously you want every as many people as possible to access that kind of stuff but before i do tell me you touched on it earlier but you built a business you you sold a business and i believe you bought it back and rebuilt it that's not something many people do right so can you tell us what happened there yeah no we we had a buyer asplunder came in to buy um uh and we were quite a healthy arboricultural national company.

16:55And what I understood about tree surgery and tree services, from soil testing to planting, we had departments for stump grinding, for all sorts of big tree nursery we owned. We had a big tree transplanting company, these great big trees that got moved around. I soon learned to take this cottage industry or this cottage sort of localised sort of business and turn it into an industry and we turned it into a nationwide company we worked in Ireland you know right up into Darlington we worked all over the place but really through how we knew all these tree officers from these arboricultural conferences that that happened very quickly Asplunder wanted to get into the Chelsea flower show and we had a stand there you couldn't get a stand there it was hard to get in there and they they came their american company they bought us out um very quickly uh people thought my wife at the time thought i was having a divorce she didn't know what was going on because i wasn't there i was trying to sit in and do all these figures to scrunch it all together for them um and they took the business and sort of just gently crashed it into the floor over 18 months and i could hear this on the grapevine and i knew what was going on they're losing customers left right and centre I was very good at massaging customers checking in and doing all that and they were trying to run it like it was McDonald's you know and they were just just automated systems it wasn't working and the receiver brought that to me and said look you know this is all going horribly wrong I've got to wind it up he phoned me up he was in Romford I said where are you so I'm in Romford and my office is in Romford I said it's just down the road I said let's go and have a coffee and i sat down with i just said right what have you got to what have you got to do with this he said well i've got to pay the tax and pay the vat and um i said no but how much have you got to have and he said i need 38 grand i said right okay i said well i'll give you 50 grand and you make some of those other bills go away and he made some of it go away some of it we had to be as we picked up some debt but he made a lot of stuff go away because i motivated him to and manipulate it in my fucking life.

19:03But, you know, I was a smarter cookie then. I'd sort of been through that. We took it back and we built it up, Alex, and then we did a management buyout with that. And that was a good, it were good times, you know. I enjoyed it. It was good.

19:17Alex Chisnall:Yeah, very good story. And what did that tell you about that relationships, for example, you know, with people? And that's clearly like, you know, one of your skills. Tell me a little bit about what's taught you. I think the superpower for a dyslexic is that they've got to be, and this isn't a dyslexic podcast, this is about business, but you get so many dyslexics within the business entrepreneur world, it means that you're a good communicator because you have to because you want to try and drag information out of people and you can't swat up about it, but you can with YouTube, so whatever. But I learned that people have needs.

19:57um you know when i go to an agent to buy a property now my first question is hello jack how can we get your commission today is the day that we need to we need to organize your commission how can we do that and and they laugh and i go right come on why are they selling it who's died who's getting divorced where's the subsidence you know and we're trying to hit it from a more a more a more earthy conversation but than being this sort of stiff upper lip businessman and you know you you you worked around richard branson and i i did back in the day years ago i worked for richard looking after derry and tom's building um up in london in his houseboat and all sorts of things for him then um you know and he was a it was good to watch how he how he worked and i sort of i think he was one of the first early books that i read um and then i read hundreds and thousands after that, but it's as they got onto platforms that did audible listening.

20:55But it was about what is there to lose? Look at the title of your podcast. What is there to lose? And if you're worried about how you're going to be perceived, then my favourite expression for the podcast today is have a day off. Give yourself a break. It's not worth it.

21:13Alex Chisnall:I like it, yeah. Have a day off. It's a good one. um and you're obviously very open talking about dyslexia we know richard's um dyslexic but you know instead of trying to fix it you've built systems around it and i think it's important to talk about it because exactly the reason you said so many of the people that i've interviewed over the years on this show um have been dyslexic um how has that shaped the way that you you've built your businesses and maybe you can talk about the the current businesses that you're that you're building as well. I think that it's made me be very hungry to find neurodiverse people to work within my business.

21:51I think they bring similar qualities because they do stuff differently. You know, when you show me an idea, it goes in all of the receptives and I'm working out to futurise it, moralisticise it. Is it going to be something that people will still want? uh it does it have legs and i'm going around in circles in my head but i come up with a very quick clear vision of what it's going to be you know i've got a couple of people that are quite autistic on the spectrum that work for us here they're very thorough they get shit done and if you tell them to do it like that they do it like that so there's there's very good thinking and brain power that comes from from that neurodiverse community and i hunt that down i want them to be and my business they're very good face fronting um people as well if they're if they're dyslexic because that's their that's their their bit that they're really good at because they've had to be um the businesses that we run now we have a big portfolio of commercial property um and we have a team that run that and we collect money so we're we collect money every month and we do that with very strict rules and we do it very thoroughly we don't let people get behind on that because they can never get back from it and i've learned that very quickly um we run we run the the baddow park um house that is a big luxury wedding venue and i learned very quickly from that alex to stay in my lane it's all about weddings it's not about bar mitzvahs or or 50th birthday parties we stay in that lane and the team that run that for me are very specialized in doing that.

23:28So we're upper end in that. And they're a great team. And then I have the team that are running James Martin Entrepreneur. There's about six people behind this for me. Some of them are subcontractors, some of them are in-house. But they are from all different creative walks of life. And they bring so much to the table. Alex, do you know what I really like about it doing all this is i am constantly learning you know yeah and that that's what i really like that's what i like doing my podcast and my podcast is james martin entrepreneur conversations coming on to yours i'm learning stuff from you that's the bit that really keeps me young and in tune with what's going on um otherwise what we're going to do sell it all up and buy a boat i don't know that doesn't interest me in the slightest you know so i wanted to let you know

24:23Alex Chisnall:about something that I see trip founders up all the time. If you're running a business with international payments, one of the biggest hidden costs is often foreign exchange. World First is built specifically for businesses operating across borders, helping you manage payments, hold multiple currencies, and reduce unnecessary FX costs. They're not a high street bank trying to do everything. They focus purely on international business payments and currency exchange. That's their thing. Switching providers is a commitment, which is why they're giving our listeners 50 fee free business transactions to properly test their service.

24:58Alex Chisnall:Plus, signing up for an account is completely free, and there are no ongoing monthly fees. You've got 60 days from sign up to use them. Head to worldfirst.com forward slash screw it and get your 50 fee free business transactions. Now back to the podcast. Love that. And no, it's what I always love about doing my podcast is that every single conversation you have, you can take something away and implement it, can't you? It's something that people might not have heard of. But again, hiring a PA at 18, I think you did, is not a normal move for most people to think like that. What made you think that way so early?

25:37Alex Chisnall:Or was it just natural, I guess, maybe you didn't think about it? I know why that happened is because on a dark Saturday morning, I sent a team out to number 25 Second Avenue in Ilford to cut a tree down. Sorry, Dagnam to cut a tree down. And I stayed there. I was trying to ledger the VAT on my own. I mean, that's how crap it was back in the day, in a porter cabin in a rented yard. and I saw the crew come back at about lunchtime with a great big load of wood on their truck and they all waved goodbye job and knock so they just do one job on a Saturday and go and put a thumbs up to them outside the porter cabin and they left and about 10 minutes after that a guy phoned up from 25 Second Avenue Dagnum and said listen if you're not bloody coming at least ring me and then I know what's going on but I feel it's a bit rude and I went right okay yeah i'm sorry about that it's probably been a bit of confusion we'll do it next weekend he said yeah okay fine i put the phone down and i just thought what's going on they've obviously cut somebody's tree down and that the wagons had our name written all over them so i realized the job sheet that i had written out for them said 52 ah i sold backwards so off i go up there it was now dark in the afternoon on this winter's day on a Saturday went up there I just had to knock on the bloke's door I could see there was sawdust on his driveway and he came to the door and I'm trying to explain myself and he said well you better come in and then he went in and I looked down the garden it was black and it was this sort of big open plan with patio doors looking out to this garden and he turned this bloody great with floodlight on and there was just no nothing there there was no tree and i saw his shoulders just drop you know his head to one side i went oh my god what's he gonna do but his granddad was buried under the tree or something like that and he just he just alex he just turned around after a big pause it felt like an age and just said well i hope you're not bloody charging me for it mate like no no no no no no he said right okay all right yeah i've wanted to get rid of that for ages so uh your loss that was that was that was it and from that moment i knew i need someone to write these job sheets out i found a lovely lady and she came in uh two days a week and um she started she worked for a big big company up in london she was very professional and she she honed me into paragraph writing and how to formulate proper receipts and invoices and And she took over all the ledger for me writing stuff up before we had sort of digital packages to do to do work and stuff.

28:30And the rest is history. She she became a very good managing director of my business because that's what she ended up being, you know, my world, you know. And I have I have I have staff behind me in this office. I have I have Linda that looks after everything into accounts. And then I have Christina that's been with me about 14 years that is a PA, but she's now become an EA. And now we have another PA for her. And she's also looked after me as a communications director. But, you know, it's you need good people to run these businesses and to be able to operate and to be able to operate at speed and use your qualities where they're meant to be using.

29:13you know i can i put my nose to it do them numbers and check them again i said do i want to not really no no i want to be with customers i want to be finding staff to work for me i want to be finding new ideas and innovation on technology to shove into my businesses to make them fit for purpose

29:31Alex Chisnall:you know that's my job you know what do you spend most of your time on day to day other than creating content today obviously but what do you kind of spend your time on working on the businesses rather than in the businesses? Yeah, I think currently I live overseas, I live down in France, I spend sort of a good amount of time down there, so I'm not around as much, but when I'm here, I will spend at least two, two and a half days on content and doing keynote speeches or doing lectures at universities or whatever. I have Oliver that's with me today that trawls around with me on that um on the businesses i will have um board meetings with the different companies that i own um i do some non-exec stuff as well so i i get on zooms for those i'm i'm on zoom and stuff and and doing doing that quite a bit um and i'm spending quite a lot of time doing mentoring and doing a mastermind at baddow park house so that kind of eats up quite a lot of time if I'm out to dinner when I'm here because the family aren't here so if I'm out to dinner I'm usually with other entrepreneurs or business owners shooting the shit and finding out what's new what's going on should I do this shouldn't I do that the community is it's lonely Alex isn't it being a being an yeah absolutely you need to check and balance yourself my older years tell me that check it ask someone that will tell you the bloody truth you know I want them to say I think you're barking up the wrong tree here mate no one's going to buy that and then check it again you know yeah and do you do you um do you host any of the masterminds yourself or you have like a team who overseeing that i host the mastermind so the mastermind will work out here uh two days and they stay here with us once a quarter um they do two days here and then i have mark creaser and mark is very well known in sort of copywriting and strategy and all things sort of technical to do with building brands and advertising.

31:39And he hosts that with me. We have Davina James. She also comes with us with that. And she sort of onboards people and helps us with that. So we have quite a team. And if you come in for that, it's not a big sales pitch. We are passionate about growing your business. We will work very hard to empty our brain and our black books to help you get to the next level and and i think people stall at a couple of million quid i think yeah yeah in the free chat they get in their own way of that and they they find it hard to to stretch themselves and see themselves either prepare preparing their business for sale or preparing their business for growth and acquisitions or whatever they might be wanting to do but um And that takes up quite a bit of time.

32:25I was doing a lot, Alex, a lot of one-to-ones, and that was taking up too much time. And people were paying quite a lot of money for that. And in the end, I was too committed to that. So the mastermind, there's only about 12 or 14 people in the masterminds. That's a number that we can work with. And we got on a big joint Zoom calls with that, and they've got access to us to, you know, there's like a hotline. You've got a problem. God, I don't understand this lease, or I don't understand these technical dialogue coming from a solicitor, we'll jump on it. But it's about being able to spread good contractors for them, good ways of raising finance with a good broker.

33:02We know some really good guys for that. Or find a really bloody good bank that will back that type of business, because it's the sort of slightly specialist side of lending and how to prep themselves, how to get fit for finance. I think we should do a video for that, Oliver, off screen here. How to get into the finance. That would be a very good YouTube video. I like that.

33:24Alex Chisnall:It's a great phrase, isn't it? It's a great title for a YouTube video. Absolutely. And clearly you've gone all in on it, but how important do you see the value in creating content and building a personal brand as well, you know, in this day and age where everything's moving towards AI, obviously? Yeah. I think it's not necessary in every business that you're in. That isn't necessary to be this face out there in the media. But I think for 96 % of them, if you're not building a personal brand, you're slightly behind. You are advanced of all of us. We've been doing the donkey's years. But if you're not, you are slightly behind.

34:09and you've got to play catch up because your space might have two very dominant personal brands in it or you've just missed the boat uh you need to get in early with whatever your specialist subject is or whatever your niche is but you know i know people that are running sort of um sewing circles and they make millions of pounds globally because they're the face of sewing and that's a huge following but they're the face of sewing and they do products they do courses they do classes whatever it is so you know riches in niches but people want to try before they can buy alex don't you think i think that's what they want to do they want to see who is this bloke who is absolutely saying all this check her out and even when i go to a bank that don't know me i just say look look me up on youtube i do stuff then you can see what i'm about you can see i'm real and you know you've got to have a wholesome attitude and be honorable and all the rest of the things if you're going to do it.

35:06If you're a scallywag, stay being a scallywag and keep off a camera, you know, whatever you want to run your world, however you want to run it, you know.

35:14Alex Chisnall:Yeah. Look, James, you've built businesses across multiple industries, right? Property, events, hospitality, etc. How do you spot a real opportunity versus a distraction? Because you must have a lot that comes across your desk, right? I think I use my scar tissue as a friend to help me make that decision. because I'm older than most still doing it. So I'm 63 and I don't see myself ever retiring. So I pull on that. I will look at stuff that has innovation value. Where can I bring value? Or where can I cross-pollinate what I've already owned that I can add more customers to it or use their customer base to resell things that I already sell outside?

36:03so we would look at buying a catering company if we're a wedding venue because it has synergy with what we're already doing you know if you're a window cleaner you need to go and buy a chewing gum cleaning company so you can marriage off the same customers because you know a university of windows will have a university of chewing gum that they need cleaning so you need to have synergy on those type of things i used to buy a lot of land and get get planning permission for housing i I don't do that so much because it's very boring and it takes so long. And I had a partner in that. I don't do it very much, but it gave me quite a few big liquidity days of wealth that allowed me to buy a lot more commercial property.

36:43I love commercial property with a passion. I want to buy a real. If anybody wants to sell me some really horrible commercial property cheap, please send it to me. The worse, the better. You can't build new commercial property and make money out of it in the short term. It has to be junky stuff that you can do up and tidy up. I've had lots of opportunity to build new stuff, but it's a 10-year model. The rules and the regulations on building costs and the code that you have to build to now just takes the profit out of it. So it's a 10-year model. We're doing stuff up and we're sort of 18-month to three-year model, quite successful.

37:24Alex Chisnall:and and how much do you think is is instinct versus how much is your experience do you think yeah instinct you know don't don't knock it that great book by Malcolm Gladwell um uh Blink is a fantastic book um get that if you want to learn about instinct I don't know if you've read that Alex have you read that no I know the author obviously but and I've read some of his books but I haven't read that one no okay learn from me never ignore ignore your water your water in your groin you know if it feels weird it is weird it probably was going to be weird if it's too good to be true it's too good to be true um but yeah instinct people someone who's selling let's let's go and understand them i like to understand who the seller is if we're buying a business who's going to be running it because it won't be me so i need to understand what the management look like um so i don't want to spend time with them and understand the opportunity who's leaving who's not who loves it who hates it um and i think be curious yeah it's not all about maths you can do the numbers but they're only on the back of a fag packet anyway at that stage and you need you need to be you know you need to run the model whatever you're buying or or sinking your time into have you got the time to do it and spend the energy to do it have others that you can motivate do it and you know is it something that you want to do i think that you know that i don't you know if you're i'm passionate about cooking i'll open a restaurant i'm not saying that but you have to have some level of passion to want to do it i'm very lucky alex i have teams of people in different businesses where we have a construction team a civil engineering team so i'm always thinking of what next project I could buy for them to do.

39:15So I know I can just tap into them and all my lovely subcontractors that I've used for donkey's years will just, I go, oh, they'll know how to do that, like standing on one leg. So I know that it would be very simple for me to push the responsibility for the effort to others that I'm very versed in already.

39:33Alex Chisnall:And what do you think, last couple of questions for you, James, what do you think separates people who actually build something meaningful like yourself compared to those who never quite get there i mean there's a big question but i mean you know i think they it's a marathon it's not this this sprinty thing where's the where's show me the money where's the money you know you need to it's a long game you know it's a long you were telling me how long you've been doing the pod for now this is you're staying in this is a long long game now you've got to be your sort of time frame i'm not saying you have to be nine ten years whatever to get a sponsor we're way off from a sponsor we would love a sponsor of quality i think that's probably three years away before we get our numbers up but guess what we're motivated to go and get it so we see it um i think the difference is this whole tiktok world of get quick you know it's it's about staying sometimes with something i always talk alex about tweaking the model you might be in something that's just about earning wages well then let's tweak the model to make it you've got too many products you haven't got enough products you've got one service let's get four services you need to tweak the model and make it businesses need to make profit so you need to reinvest into yourself and into your business and the best thing you can probably do is start working on yourself first yeah great business after yeah yeah yeah great answer um before we dive into a quick quick fire round um for somebody listening who maybe didn't follow a traditional path maybe struggled at school and there'll be loads of those listening and feels like they're there may be a little bit behind the curve as we've talked about uh what advice would you give them if you've been there i think i think if you're if you're your heart and your tummy tells you that you you see yourself like that then go in your mind and see yourself as a success literally go and see yourself five years forward who you're with what you're wearing what you're driving what you're doing and take some pictures while you're in that that that that watermitty world out there that that world of fantasy and then come back and then organize your path to go there and go and ask for help you know alex go and ask for help find someone who's already ahead of you and say excuse me i'm thinking of doing this is there any chance you could help me because i've had people come to me and say that and guess what i kind of drop everything and say come on right don't do that never do this make sure you do that and if you need me there's my number phone me not too often because I'm busy but tell me on you know I've had it happen to me a few few occasions in my career as I've gone along and I've used you know different different people in different industries when we took on the wedding venue Alex I didn't really know anything about hospitality so I went to a good mate mine he owns two massive hotels big corp they are and um he just gave me a load of time he gave me rooms to go and stay at hotel for rooms for about three nights in each hotel got his team all around me and he just gave me the grand tour and all of the secret easter eggs of what to do and what not to do and that all happened in sort of like four or five days it was like a university course on running hospitality in five days unbelievable um and i think anybody thinking that that's what they want to do this entrepreneurship course you know uh alert it's not for everybody it is a bit crazy and a bit weird and a bit painful but if you're prepared to stick with it find a community of like-minded people as well that you can lean on you know great advice and it's really visual like the picture that you just um painted there as well which i love and you know so many people um seem afraid of asking for help right but it's it's a superpower to actually ask for help because it's all been done before right it's just reframed absolutely yep yep um okay just quick fire round to finish up um for you what is an entrepreneur what would be your definition of an entrepreneur james an entrepreneur is a seeker of opportunity yes if you look it up that's what it says um an entrepreneur is an idiot um they're they're someone that's in a bloody hurry they walk quick um they're quite rude sometimes to their staff because they think that everything can happen on a wednesday just well why isn't i done yet so um that describes me but i pre-empt that most most most sort of um christmas parties by apologizing on a microphone to all my staff and telling them you have to go on i pre-apologize in advance of the year coming of what an awful bit I am.

44:28But they know me very well. Some of my people, I've got people who've been with me over 36 years working with them. What is an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur is somebody that wants to carve their own way and they want to have their own ecosystem around them so they have a sense of community around what they do. And I think that's very important. it's it's banded around a bit alex as this sort of like oh don't you know i'm an entrepreneur yeah you know i see a lot of that plastic entrepreneurs but you know i meet some really super super people with with with my life at the moment with doing teaching and and helping people and it is it it buoys me up to work next to them and with them and it keeps me inquisitive and young because they're all young people and I love it and they clip me they go you can't say that anymore Mr Martin I go right I think that's the best definition we've had on

45:30Alex Chisnall:here to be honest I love it um yeah no I love it um what about a scale-up business because you've done a lot of that what defines a scale-up business for you what do you mean by scale-up business explain what you mean yeah so the difference between a startup and a business that's scaling up what would you say the difference is it is is you getting out to the business and stop working in it i think that that's the big definer for me is that you've got to start you know getting that your your day is about um working on the business and not in it and that's tough and that that jump is tough um we've just made a youtube video about it how to get from out of the van into an aston martin how about that for a youtube video we would be making that's tremendous And it's tough, but there are five ways to do that.

46:19And we explain that in the video. But I mean, it's, you know, it is about you wanting to have something for sale ultimately. So you're scaling up to craft that business into something that you can have a big liquidity day down the road. And if you can't sell that business because you're so far in it with what you've chosen to do, either change what you do or take some of those fast pounds out and buy something that's going to work for you while you're asleep at night and that could be commercial property it could be stocks and shares it could be investing in another business that others run for you but you need to have something going on in your world so when you're asleep it is bringing money to your door yeah no again fantastic um what about an entrepreneur that inspires you either you

47:10Alex Chisnall:know in the last 30 odd years or somebody who's come on your radar um that people might not have heard of uh more recently i've just done a little bit of work and befriended um jacob lockwood and he makes a wax coat clothing all made here in the uk um and you look him up jacob lockwood Lockwood clothing it's all made in Great Britain he is the the he is the sort of quintessential entrepreneur he's burning bridges behind him he just sold his house so he's got more money for stock he's writing letters to the king can you check out one of my garments and give me a review on it he's on on video every single day he is relentless he is full of energy and and you know I'm so glad you asked the question so I can promote him.

48:02Yeah, I love it. He's it. We can say Elon Musk is an innovator or whatever it is, but he's so far removed from reality. Richard, back in the day, was someone to follow. He was inspiring because it was all fun. It was great fun. He wanted to do it his way. I'm sure he burnt loads of money having fun, but it looked like entrepreneurship could be fun. And I think you've got to do it with that mindset, that you're going there to have fun. As much as the scars hurt and the trip-ups can floor you and you question yourself and, you know, you have these days where, you know, are you kidding yourself? All that goes on.

48:42But, you know, things can happen. You've got to stay in for the ride sometimes, you know. I went off piece to do this.

48:51Alex Chisnall:Yeah, no, it's good. I was just writing the name down. Did you say Jacob Lockwood? Jacob Lockwood, yeah. Got it. I'm going to check him out. Fantastic. and yeah lastly just anything else you wanted to add people want to work with you find out more about who you are and what you do where's the easiest and best places to um to get in touch it's very easy to find me james martin i'm not a chef so he comes up first so you do james martin entrepreneur then i come up right james martin uh entrepreneur conversations is our podcast and we do one of those every week that drops on a Wednesday. And then I've also got my newsletter, Alex, that I do weekly as well.