The Million-Dollar Mindset: Key Lessons from Daniel Priestley

0:00The ability to scale into markets has never been easy. There's never been more money in the world. You can hire people all over the world. You can put together teams, problems. There's a huge amount of problems that need solving in the world, entrepreneurial problems.

0:12Alex Chisnall:So it's the greatest time ever to be an entrepreneur. Daniel Priestley, the best-selling author and founder of Dent. He shares why every entrepreneur needs to build influence, IP and income if they want to scale without burning out. Can anyone be a founder who starts from scratch? Harder for some and easier for others based on just the basic nature of what it's like to be a founder. The longer time you've spent in education and in corporate institutions, it tends to be harder to be a founder. I've hired people who've come from phenomenal big businesses, done great roles. They really struggle with the idea of starting with a blank piece of paper.

0:48Alex Chisnall:Welcome to this special bite-sized episode of Screw It, Just Do It from our back catalogue of over 550 past episodes. If you like what you hear, don't forget to follow the show and grab your free two-day pass to the Festival of Entrepreneurs this October. Just head to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to claim yours and don't forget to dive into the back catalogue. Want to surround yourself with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs if you've already decided to screw it and just do it? The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th at the NEC Birmingham, and I'm giving away free two-day pass to my listeners.

1:21Alex Chisnall:200 plus speakers, 90 plus sessions, billion pound entrepreneurs sharing their real stories, not theory, but the actual strategies they use to scale. Head to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk right now and claim your free pass, because the best networking happens when you're in the room with people who've already decided to screw it and just did it. So I'm interested in exploring how you went from dropping out of uni to go to work for somebody else, to going from that to being an award-winning entrepreneur who's built and sold multiple seven, eight-figure businesses and written five books on starting and scaling businesses.

1:59Alex Chisnall:Lots to cover. There's a lot to cover. Yeah. Just that quick little anecdote. Yeah. There's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. Agree or disagree? Yeah, totally. Totally. What an amazing time to be an entrepreneur. We've got, you know, think about it like this. We've got global marketplaces that we can access easily, cheaply, freely. Think about how much went into scaling Coca-Cola into multiple countries. And now any business, I know businesses where there's 10 people who work out of spare rooms and they have like 50 to 100 million views on YouTube and they make millions of dollars and they like have people in all over, you know, all over the world.

2:35So the ability to scale into markets has never been easier. There's never been more money in the world. So the governments during COVID pumped money in. That's actually why we have inflation. The definition of inflation is too much money looking for too few products and services. So you could not ask for a better – like if they put that on a billboard, currently there is too much money chasing too few products and services. You'd go, okay, good time to be an entrepreneur, coming up with stuff, right? So that's there. Global talent pool, right? You can hire people all over the world. You can put together teams.

3:12Problems, there's a huge amount of problems that need solving in the world, entrepreneurial problems. So it's the greatest time ever to be an entrepreneur. If we look at My Business Score app, we've got a team of 20 people with no office. Everyone works remotely. Fun, freedom, flexibility is the culture. We've got clients in 155 countries.

3:32Alex Chisnall:Wow. Nearly every country in the world. Yeah. I'm learning geography as a result of seeing our clients coming in from different places. So, you know, clients in 150 countries, you know, 20 plus employees with no offices. You know, it's totally scalable. We grow by 5 % to 7 % every single month at the moment. We want scale up of the year, right? And it's all just easy. We didn't even raise very much money. Did you not? No, we raised just under a million, a million US dollars. But we haven't, we've spent half of it, not even half. So we still, you know, we still haven't even deployed it. And this is three or four years later.

4:08We're cashflow positive. We're profitable. You know, rock and roll.

4:11Alex Chisnall:It's a great time. Another question for you. Do you think anyone could be an entrepreneur? I think anyone can be part of an entrepreneurial team. Can anyone be a founder who starts from scratch? Tends to be harder for some and easier for others based on just the basic nature of what it's like to be a founder. the longer time you've spent in education and in corporate institutions it tends to be harder to be a founder i've hired people who've come from phenomenal big businesses and you know they've done great roles they really struggle with the idea of starting with a blank piece of paper right but once they're entrepreneurial okay they're entrepreneurial they're part of an entrepreneurial team when you look back on that time now when you um you're interested in the concept of entrepreneurship itself and you came out with that book key person of influence um and you see people launching businesses based on personal branding and the industries that come out of the back of them what do you think about now how do you reflect back on that period and when you wrote that book well you know the funny thing is i feel i feel like i didn't do enough with it to be honest um you know i was the first one to write a book yeah i read it and yet the strange thing is I didn't really like get super consistent with YouTube until recently.

5:32And I didn't, I didn't go all in on like all the stuff I did pretty well. I, you know, I built, built pretty great business and global business, but I look at what others did with that opportunity, like Gary Vaynerchuk and more recently Alex Homozy and all that. And I sit there and slap myself and go, I could have easily been the Alex Homozy of the day.

5:53Alex Chisnall:Probably wasn't lifting enough weights but um yeah wearing enough tight yeah i needed a nose band or something like that but but um you know so there's a bit of disappointment that i didn't do more with that but also there's a lot of pride in the fact that we you know we we worked with five we have worked with five and a half thousand companies so far yeah that's phenomenal and like our clients have done really really well off this we steered them in the right direction through the pandemic and through the you know through through ups and downs so in many cases like we regularly get people say i have my business because I went through the accelerator.

6:26You know, I have, you know, this lifestyle, I got this exit because of what we got from you. So we get that all the time.

6:33Alex Chisnall:If you're enjoying this conversation and thinking, I need to be around more people like this, then I've got the perfect solution for you. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is where five to 10 ,000 ambitious entrepreneurs come together to learn from the people who've actually done it. It's on October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes real entrepreneurs real stories real strategies exactly like what you're hearing right now but live and in person go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and get your free two-day pass before they're gone what would you um it's a random question what would you do differently then if you were publishing that book next week, what would you have set up to maximize the impact of that this time around, Daniel?

7:22Probably like some of the big breakthrough moments recently, getting onto a big podcast like Diary of a CEO, you know, millions of people see that. And then, you know, really getting in there and being consistent on places like YouTube and LinkedIn. And, you know, just probably, here's the thing I would have done. I probably would have hired three or four more extra people on the team whose only job was just ramping up personal brand. I know that sounds kind of ridiculous for anyone who's not done that, but when you start to see what personal brand really can do for you, the opportunities that it opens, the speed that you can launch things, the speed that you can hire, having three or four people whose job is just ramp up the personal brand of the founder, not a stupid idea.

8:07Alex Chisnall:Yeah, and the obvious examples being a Stephen Bartlett whose podcast you've just been on and having that team in the background. He's got like 35 people. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? Just with his team at the podcast show, I was interviewing them live at the podcast show and it was like, you know, them saying, we'll literally get a phone call going, can you jump on the next flight to New York? We're doing four interviews tomorrow. And can you just sit in and take notes? And I was just like, really? It's like, yeah. And then you just go away and clip it all up. Of course. Yeah, of course. Rock and roll.

8:36Alex Chisnall:Yeah. Okay. So let's talk starting a business from scratch, 2024, 2025. How do we know if a business is a good idea? So we need to do fast and cheap experiments in the marketplace. So there's two sides to a good business idea. There's what happens behind the curtain and there's what happens in the market. So behind the curtain, you need to do a bit of soul searching. You need to but essentially say, am I really going to stick with this? If this is going to be a really bumpy road, if this is going to take me to my edges, do I really care that much? Is it worth doing? Am I trying to just chase the money here or do I want to do something beyond just making money?

9:18So you need to do that kind of internal bit of soul searching. I'm a big believer that you should always have five to ten ideas that you explore and then pick the best one. Not just get hung up on an idea, but actually, you know, do a bit of exploring. You might also really want to go and talk to some mentors and say, which one do you think is the best idea and why? Not necessarily that you'll take the advice, but it's just the questions that they will ask you. It kind of points you in that direction. Once you've narrowed it down to what you want to do and what you think is a good idea, now we need to see if the market agrees with you.

9:52The best experiment I've ever come across is called a waiting list. So a waiting list is just you launch a landing page and you say, we are launching a new approach to blank. So we're launching a new approach to getting fit. We're launching a new approach to healthy eating. We're launching a new approach to scaling a business. We're launching a new approach to protecting your business from cybersecurity threats, right? Whatever it is. So we're launching a new approach to X, Y, and Z. It's for this type of person. Join the waiting list to find out more information as soon as it's available. So click a button, join the waiting list, and you might also say these are some of the features or these are some of the things that we want to do.

10:33This is the team behind it is also a good thing. So all of that's on a landing page. And then click the waiting, join the waiting list. Now when they click join the waiting list, they do name, email, location, but then you ask three or four questions and you want to ask a couple of questions about what problem are you trying to solve? What desired outcome are you excited to achieve? What have been the biggest obstacles that have stopped you from getting that outcome before? What have you tried that hasn't worked? And how much are you willing to pay? What's a decent price? So those kind of questions, you want to ask those and collect that data so that you can fine-tune the idea.

11:13Now, if I pump that out, let's say I send 150 direct messages, if I can get 3 % to 7 % of people onto a list,

11:25Alex Chisnall:I'm going to say, okay, that's got legs. Okay, 3 % to 7%. Yeah, because it's only early days. Yeah. Now, mind you, if it's a really warm list, if I've got 150 people and they all know me, like me, trust me, maybe it's going to be 15 to 20 people on the list that makes me feel like that's good. But if I'm just reaching out pretty cold, when I launch an idea, by the way, so many people are such lightweights when it comes to launching an idea. I'm just going to park this and go off on a rant. But people say, oh, I tried to launch a business and it didn't work. And I go, how many people did you message?

11:57Oh, I messaged 30 people and only two responded. I'm like, they're great numbers. Keep going. But I've run out of people. No, you haven't. The whole internet is codified. When I'm launching an idea, I'm messaging 3 ,000 people to see what happens from 3 ,000. I typically do 20 batches of 150. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say, okay, I'm going to send this to butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, see whether butchers, bakers or candlestick makers are more responsive. Yeah. You know, I'm going to send this to people in London, New York, Singapore, see if I can get, you know, a geographic.

12:34Alex Chisnall:Keep it simple, the same message to. Same message or I might test some different, slightly different messages. Yeah. So essentially the variables I can work with is, you know, who is the ideal customer persona? Where are they? So who are they? Where are they? and what message resonates the best with them. So I'm going to do different batches of messaging different types of people, messaging different locations of people and messaging people with a different message. And I'm just going to send thousands of those. People go, where did you get the list from? Literally I message people based on groups that they're in in LinkedIn, hashtags that they might follow, people they might follow on Twitter or Instagram, I'm just going to reach out cold.

13:21Simple message might be this. Hi, Alex. I noticed that you follow, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk and I do too. I really love his content. Over the last five years, we've been running a marketing campaign that worked really well, generated 90 ,000 leads and$20 million in sales. The way we did that was through a scorecard. if you would like me to if you'd like to know more about that particular campaign I'm doing a breakdown of that campaign step by step on a zoom call it's completely free I just want to share this information see how people react I love it that's brilliant

13:59Alex Chisnall:that conversation just proves something you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with so here's my challenge upgrade your network the festival of entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th And I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes to get in the room with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs who are actually building something. This is where the risk takers, the game changers, and the people who've decided to screw it and just do it come for inspiration, education, and connection. Don't just listen to their success stories. Go meet the people living them. Grab your free pass now because the biggest risk isn't taking a chance.

14:35Alex Chisnall:It's missing the opportunity entirely. So I hope you enjoyed that bite-sized episode with Daniel Priestley. Three things I want to mention here. System over stress. So Daniel's advice about building systems early doors is absolute gold. It's what separates the chaos from the scale. The key person of influence model still holds up today, especially for service businesses and especially for personal brands. Earn while you sleep. So his points on recurring income and productizing your knowledge really landed with me. they're smart, they're simple, and ultimately, they're scalable.