A Business without a company? - Timothy Armoo

0:00We've talked a lot about exits on this show, and we obviously will again. It's the finish line of the entrepreneurial race. But what happens after that coveted exit? What does life look like for a founder who's achieved what so many others are striving for? Today, we're going to dive deep into that very question with Timothy Armou, a serial entrepreneur who sold his influencer marketing company Fanbytes in a multi-million pound deal at the age of 27. But this isn't a story about how to build and sell a successful startup. It's actually about what comes next. Tim's journey post-exit is an exploration of identity, purpose, and redefining success.

0:42From the initial high of the acquisition to the unexpected lows and the search for what truly brings fulfillment, Timothy's story offers a look at the emotional rollercoaster that follows a big win in the startup world. But what's truly captivating about Timothy's current chapter is his unconventional approach to business. He's not following the typical path of immediately jumping into another venture-backed startup or becoming a full-time investor. Instead, he's crafting a unique strategy that involves everything from funding lithium mines in Africa to investing in avocado imports. In this episode, we'll dive deep into Timothy's philosophy of business flipping, a strategy that focuses on quick wins and exits rather than building long-term ventures.

1:29We'll explore how he's leveraging his skills in deal-making and arbitrage to create a lifestyle that brings him joy and fulfillment. Tim's insights offer a fresh perspective on success, happiness, and the true meaning of entrepreneurship. So let's get into it. My interview with Timothy our moon let's go so we've been talking and and hanging out irl little work days and stuff and uh i think it's fair to say you're up to some relatively more interesting stuff than me right now uh maybe that's because you know when you're doing something for so long doesn't necessarily feel quite so interesting whereas you seem to be doing something new often and newness is exciting um and i loved our last conversation you telling me a little bit about the things that you are exploring post-exit of fanbites.

2:16So I asked you to come in and share that with the audience because I think it is exceptionally interesting information for people in business generally, but definitely for entrepreneurs to think about business slightly differently. And certainly slightly differently to the way that people like you and me have been conditioned to think about business anyway, which is the love of the building. So let's start post-building exit, right you went through an exit of fan bites yeah then what uh then i went on the entrepreneurial roller coaster which happens anytime you get some kind of big win you basically end up having a bit of a it's not quite imposter syndrome it's just like a bunch of different waves of incredible happiness and then incredible angst so the first wave for me after the acquisition when it came out it was public news and everything was like oh my god this is the most amazing thing ever um and then the second thing was actually my world has changed but the entire world hasn't changed um so i remember going to sainsbury's and i was like where's the applause where's the choir somebody show me you know what the answer is it was in waitrose you were in the wrong place yeah i know you got money now you don't have to shop in sainsbury's that's true that's true maybe i'll try it again um and then and then the third one is actually going well what what do i want to do with my time now and i think that for me was the hardest bit because my immediate thought was when people asked me the question what are you going to do now was that i had to go bigger right because it was like the pursuit of bigger like bigger exits bigger team and so it's also an incredibly annoying question it is right and i don't think people mean it out of malice i think it's more you know it's just a curiosity and um and that for me was where a lot of stuff seemed to come from where you know i'd say i want to build a b2b data startup like i don't care i never cared about b2b data right you told people you did yeah because why because when i thought so when i think about in the conventional tech world the ones who raised the highest valuations and everything else it was all some kind of b2b company doing something boring and so for me even though i didn't have a clear idea of what i want to do saying b2b data and like exploring that because i did actually explore that because i thought well this is how we build a hundred million dollar business right or this is how we build a billion dollar business was a proxy for me to say right we're not going bigger now right um and really that was that was me trying to play someone else's game rather than trying to play my own game interesting it's fascinating that you can go through the you know the cult of personality that entrepreneurs have and then the you know accomplishment of an exit yeah and other people press articles other people telling you you're great all the stuff that strokes one's ego that actually feels amazing yeah and builds you up a lot as well and makes you feel like they're actually you know there's a lot of truth in what they're all saying about me i am a fucking legend i am great and still when someone's like what are you doing i'm like shit now i really have to live up to that hype yeah and say something i don't even know if i want to do just so that they think i'm interesting yeah because you know for most entrepreneurs and a lot of the founders i'm sure you talk to they're almost two selves right there's like the inner self and then there's the outer self the outer self is what you want others to think about you which is this daredevil goes that gets the deal does all your things and then the inner self is the one who still has levels of angst levels of doubt and as much as you can you try and project your outer self or as much as you can you try and close the gap between your inner self and your outer self and often that never really works unless you are comfortable with the fact that your inner self is going to constantly be that anxious person right and so you know i i when we sold it was like dude like your life is kind of dope like you you grew up poor on a council estate and now you're rich at 27 like fuck you've done it right and then when people were asking me it was what do you want to do now i was like i don't really want to do anything now because like i've done it right and so i had to like invent stuff which really helped to preserve that outer self and there's a challenge i'm sure every every single founder goes through that regardless of where you are really in the journey yeah right as in there's always that sense of identity yeah i actually think that's a lot to unpick of that specific topic yeah timo from fanbites and then you're you've exited yeah and being timo from fanbites isn't even a good thing right no one really wants no one wants that identity i don't want to be dan from heights no i don't want to be dan from grab all i want to be dan yeah i don't want to be dan from something and every entrepreneur knows that that is the ultimate trap you really want to avoid that trap yeah yet you go outside that trap and now you're dan of london and it's a bit like oh oh, okay.

7:44Am I nobody? So I'll tell you what, for me, it was never actually being Tim O from Fanbyte. So one of the things I did before we sold was there was a book I read called Before the Exit. And it's like a super short book, but the guy goes through these thought experiments as to how you would feel and what you should think about before you get some kind of acquisition. One of the things he says is that you end up identifying with your old company, right so as you mentioned down from height timo from fanbite for me it was actually never um timo from fanbite because i always you know fanbite was designed to have some kind of acquisition it was actually more like timo the entrepreneur i had to at some point always be doing something because i had to live up to the idea of like timo the entrepreneur because it was what else am i going to do right and so this was why even though really what i wanted to do was just chill like my cto from fanbytes is now on his next company yeah and that company's gonna do well mitchell um search land right that's really smart brilliant business blah blah right and i talked to him and i remember the first time that i talked to him i was like yo you are built different right because i needed to chill like i needed to take a mental break but you went in yeah he left early to start something new yeah literally left to start yeah and i'm like that's cool that's impressive right but also that's your dna and i shouldn't feel necessarily bad for not having that dna and i think after the acquisition i felt a bit bad because i was like well at the current moment tim was not the entrepreneur anymore because he's not building a new company interesting but how much do you also think that part of that dynamic is you were the ceo in that company and you were rolling out into ultimately an earn out yeah inside a company which is a normal part of a journey yeah and you know mitchell cto and this stuff often happens with co-founders and stuff he wasn't the ceo so it's also more of a burning desire to be like i see that yeah that is true that is true there definitely is that as well there definitely is that as well okay so post-acquisition you're sitting around doing nothing i yeah i basically just sat around doing nothing it's so funny right because now i look back at the post acquisition period and during that moment or during those periods i convinced myself i was doing stuff right because i was not just like in my bed just lying down you know i was i was meeting friends i was talking about ideas i was like trying to start new things um or trying to do different experiments but now i look back two years on 18 months on i'm like you did absolutely nothing like nothing that you did was actually consequential and and i think that was needed so i liken this actually to i'm reading a book at the moment called the artist way you ever read that yeah yeah right so you know there's morning pages yeah so i do my morning pages every day and you know contact context for listeners on morning pages is you basically write down three pages of whatever comes into your mind to get the junk out of your head yeah so that the rest of your day there's there's good stuff yeah or better stuff you've sort of cleaned the junk sounds of actually totally analogous to what you're talking about yeah there's a couple of months of like fuck all just a bit of meandering a bit of this a bit of that yeah it clears the head out to actually start to do something good and you have to actively do it this is something which i think in hindsight i did well and i didn't realize i was doing well which was the act of actually doing nothing like you have to pursue doing nothing which actively means that when someone asks you to do something you say no and you just spend your time doing things for just doing the activity so i can't even remember the number of times i went extra in in a single week right you did seem to be extra right because i was like i enjoy this and i'm not going to do this for some external reason i'm just going to like do this to do this right or it was when I really started um going to the gym a lot was like yes there is the end goal of you look better or you get fitter but also I enjoy the process of like going to the gym doing the things at the gym I think most people like envy you know most men anyway would envy the space and time to go to the gym and get built because you you read about these stories about people doing it and you're like yeah well if i had all the fucking time all the time to go to the gym and eat that well i'd bloody do it too so actually it seems like a really good use of that like that luxury yeah yeah you weren't doing it whilst you were building because you were too busy to yeah yeah um okay how do you find like the end of that like you know how at what moment are you like all right it's kind of done now um so i think it's when i internalized the reason why i got involved in business I thought the reason I got involved in business was to make money I've come to realize that that was probably 10 % of it and actually 90 % of it was I used business as my vehicle for significance it was my way of showing myself and proving to myself that I was someone who could be somebody for example um a very famous american actually yeah this is this is a very good story um a very famous we'll be the judge of that uh a very famous american vc who invest a lot in media businesses after the acquisition messaged me on linkedin and said we don't have a presence in europe we would and we are raising specifically a fund for this uh and it's a i think it's 120 million uh fund and we'd like you to basically lead it and i was like so my first thought was that would be so sick to put on linkedin that i am now the general partner of 120 million dollar fund and that would definitely get me all the bro points right for a day for a day but also quite frankly going to events and saying i lead 120 million fund is a flex right especially being a young person especially being a young black person as well it's like oh that's a good flex and i thought about it over a weekend and i realized i just don't want to do that so definitely a lot of work yeah right and you know yeah 220 and you make your money etc but i just thought i just don't want to do that but timo 18 months prior would definitely be like yeah sign me up and the inflection point came when i realized that it wasn't about say the prestige or the money was actually like proven to myself elements of significance which is then when anytime someone asks me hey what are you doing next I say well I don't know and I'm happy not knowing or I'd or I just say I'm exploring this random e-com idea which would probably make like 10k a month but it'd be pretty good and so that inflection point came there a second inflection point actually came in 2023 when my when when my best friend passed away I was in Serengeti I'd taken myself and my ex for her birthday actually we'd gone to presumably she wasn't your ex at the time no she wasn't like a post-relationship punishment no no uh we broke up in October actually um I had taken her as a birthday gift to Serengeti was amazing and just before that I had actually been told and I went to see my friend because he had he had been suffering from migraines and i went there and a day afterwards i get a call from our other best friend because basically it was like me him richmond and our third friend lauren's we're basically like a trio um and lauren says come to the hospital richmond is in the hospital i'm like okay let's go i go the shock by the way yeah he was ill no all i knew is just like rich had migraines that was it right i go and then he says yeah so they've uh so they said is leukemia and i was like okay um let's go through this together so that was on a saturday i went to see him on a sunday i went to see him on a tuesday um and then on wednesday i flew out and then on sunday i pick up my phone so we've done this whole serengeti thing with elephants giraffes etc we're like in the middle of the serengeti and i pick up my phone and lauren sends me this text and he and he basically says hey i couldn't get through to you but it's a shame to say this through the phone and i'm really sorry to say to the phone but i rich got sent to the icu and he couldn't make it through and my mind was in such denial that i saw that and i remember this text and even now i think about it i go what was going through then i sent him this text and i said hey bro thanks for letting me know please stay strong for both of us right because in my mind i've seen it's like rich is gonna go through the icu and he'll come back out right but we're having breakfast and you know i'm thinking about rich in the icu and i'm like oh man hopefully he can pull through hopefully he can pull through and we're then in the truck it's me my girlfriend and the truck driver and we're going for I think like our fifth day of Serengeti and then it's almost as if someone opened up my brain and said no it's not what you think it was and I just went wait what and then I looked at my phone and I just started crying like just bawling out like a like a five year old just bawling out and then I also showed my girlfriend and she also knew Richmond quite well and and she also started bawling out and then the truck driver he and i had formed such a bond over the last few days he also started crying like the whole atmosphere was just and i remember because i did the tribute at his funeral and i remember that church and i remember it overflowing with people and thinking as everyone does at funerals they go man i wonder what my funeral would be like and my and my thought was i bet people would say you know tim was great tim was fun to be around and he was a very good entrepreneur or like he was a very inspiring entrepreneur and he built this and i was like that sucks that really sucks because richmond may i had pages for richmond other people had this richmond go out his way to help people and there's no way you'd even know and I was like do you know what I don't understand why I'm like trying to build this bigger thing and do this thing actually the thing that just gives me joy is just like the people that I do it with and the actual like art of the business building and then doing it with people where we build great memories and that instantly like it's like a switch the next day I emailed a bunch of people who were like talking to me about you know like like doing a startup here doing thing I was like I think I'm not gonna do this and I remembered the people who I did enjoy my time with and I was like all right let's figure out something and just that inflection point really changed the way that I thought about life business and also just how to spend your time it also made me think about this idea of in the typical tech startup world you pursue something for a very long time and then you get a big win and I was like I think there's an alternative way where you basically have like these what i'll call these uh short sprint startups so you and people that you really enjoy spending time with work on something and that thing just like starts to make money and you enjoy the art of like building the business and at some point selling the business and you just keep getting quick wins over and over and over again rather than just like waiting for some eventual crazy win there's a really lovely saying uh i don't don't remember who said it but it's not about what you do it's about who you do it with yeah and it always struck me as an amazing point because you know i've got three businesses and actually every one of my business partners is someone i they're all different but they're people i love spending time with yeah that's the one thing i've always been super lucky with like i i love spending time with those people.

20:47Yeah. And that's an awesome feeling. And I think that's, you know, it's same with employees, right? Like the people that you work with, you're going to spend a lot of time with them. And if you like spending time with them, it's awesome. Yeah, it's actually just good time spent generally. And I think that's like such an important piece of entrepreneurial advice, because a lot of people just do the thing, because it is the logical thing to do. Yeah. And that sucks the energy out of stuff after a while is very hard to sustain enthusiasm if you don't enjoy who you're spending your time with i have a friend who just sold his company um it's used by a lot of people yeah um and it just got announced for like 600 million right and i remember talking to him and just thinking he knew right like he didn't care about the space but he got into the space and it was like oh this is gonna be good for me this is gonna be But he was very self-aware in that he didn't get lost in the source.

21:46So when things went wrong, he was like, oh, okay, well, it's gone wrong now. Or when things went worse, like, yeah, that's good. That's great. And he wasn't emotionally tied to it. And I think that's a bit of unlearning that I'm trying to do as well. It's also the reason why my business strategy has changed completely. Okay. Let's talk about that. Yeah. Because I've been learning vicariously through you. Yeah. What is your business strategy? How do you have a business strategy when you don't have a business? This is what I love. Yeah. So my business. Do you officially have a business? Obviously, yes.

22:19Yeah. You have to. So what's it called? So I don't. So I guess. It's like a holding company. Yes. So I guess one. All right. How do you think about a business? All right. So I guess there are three businesses here. Right. So one is the, I guess, a personal brand as a business, right? And what is really fascinating is we've just got a pretty chunky deal with Penguin to write a book. And that's going to be quite good. But like all the personal brand stuff that we've done feeds into that, the speaking engagements, et cetera, et cetera. The second thing, which I guess is more relevant to the audience here is some kind of, I guess, M &A, private equity style business.

23:06but in very, very, very, very, very niche audiences. You know, there are a few ways you can create value. You can create value with your skill. You can create value of time or you can create value with your money, right? Which is like, I'm here to fund this thing, et cetera. Or your network. Or your network, yeah. Whatever, the buyer's ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that it took me a lot of time to understand. Actually, this is very profound. it took me a lot of time to understand that you didn't create value just through your hard work and that was a big unlock for me so for example we're currently doing a bid on the biggest numerology website in the world um what does doing a bid mean we are in the pros of buying the biggest numerology website in the world and what is numerology numerology is like a cousin to astrology right um and it's basically rather than star signs it is numbers so you could be like you know take your date of birth take your blah blah and like you are a number five and because you are number five you have this quality this quality and this quality me a five out of ten no you're a nine out of ten uh um and so but that is just an example uh when beforehand i not beforehand but as well as this we're building a big business in like some variation of like Crohn's disease and IBS where the way that we're building it is super interesting so I realized throughout the entire fanbite journey that actually the thing which I really enjoyed was the sale process like running the business was fun it was cool etc but like the deal making is where it really happens and so for me I thought how do I make anything I potentially do into the future how do i make it as exciting as the deal process so almost how do i perpetually live in the deal process right so the way to do that would then be to basically make any business that you start or run basically a very long sales process where you are going to sell it right which means that every time you're like oh we're doing this deal so i'm going to pick this example here of the health one so i spotted something and it was that companies like webmd mayo clinic which are really large healthcare companies what they are doing is they're spending a lot of money on mna mna being mergers and acquisitions buying companies and is that because they find it easier with their enormous size and processes to acquire companies and run them better than it does to start something new because their dna at this point somewhat actually the main thing is so many of these companies are just big online media brands right and so mayo clinic is like you know i have a spot on my neck what is it and then you go mayo clinic forest last neck spots right these are the causes these are the symptoms blah blah but all these businesses are basically massive massive media empires and the way that they grow is by bringing under the fold a bunch of other media brands and and then redirecting their traffic directly to them.

26:24And so in so much of the spend that they're making, it's like buying content sites, buying things that are just going to grow their traffic without them having to spend a few years having to do that. So when I see that as an opportunity, I go, okay, you're spending, you know, let's say 400 million a year on this stuff. I'm sure you can easy, you know, spend 50 or 80 on something which I know you really need to get in. So then we'd look at and we'll go, right, what niches are they not already in? Okay, this sounds good. We're now going to build a business directly in that, but we're not going to use SEO.

27:02We're going to use different social media tactics and stuff to build huge online properties. Editorial landing pages, getting really good at paid social, really good at attention hacking, stuff that you're good at that they, as incumbents, won't be as good at. exactly and then uh in a few years uh you say hello mr corp dev web md here's the thing that's making 8 10 million a year uh do you want to buy for 80 it would cost you maybe 160 to actually do it yourself with all the learnings and the insights and everything this makes sense for you okay bye so i've been doing that a lot there's a company i've just helped so i can't actually say publicly because it's going to be out soon but it it does this in the uh seafood industry and And it's doing this actually in the seafood industry.

27:47And I'm guiding the founder through M &A. And it's very interesting because it's almost just like, well, someone needs this. We're going to do this. Can you say the specific example of that, say, in the company? As in, like, what does that even mean? Doing this in the seafood industry? I get that it's a niche. It's a B2B. Probably a bigger niche than people realize. How big is seafood? Billions. Like tens of billions. Like tens of billions. Because think about it, right? when you're talking about like i guess the maritime industry which is broader you're talking about ships you're talking about like boats you're talking about food you're talking about like it's massive right um and so actually being the b2b owner in there that's pretty interesting right and there are a bunch of other people who would like to enter into that market um i just did this for a company which was well i did for a company who was in the aviation industry that was pretty interesting b2b aviation industry um if people want to get a look at what that sort of industry is there's a company called uh simply flying which basically all they do is just you know they get all the news and stuff from the b2b industry people come to them but for example for so many of these companies what you're effectively doing is you are building audiences and distribution for them right so uh to give another example um well can you give a specific example in the aviation industry yeah what's the problem and solution okay so let's look in the aviation industry there's a company called simply flying right they talk about the b2b side of flying so they talk about the new purchase orders that emirates are making the new airplane parts the new uniforms that staff are wearing the new just like stuff which if you are in that industry you would really want to know.

29:35And so then, for them, what they are is they are really an audience of hundreds of thousands of very high value people who work in the aviation industry. So then a larger company who perhaps supply Boeing with their rainbow flags or their wings might be like, hey, we spend so much on conferences, on events and all of that to try and access our customers why don't we just buy simply flying seven ten fifteen million rather than us just like paying a ton and doing it over years and not really knowing how it's going to work and that really has been the business strategy i've been doing recently which is very different to just like let's just endure something for a long time and sell it it's more like let's build profitable media groups media entities and then there will be someone who would want to buy it at some point this is the exact thing that um hubspot did when they bought the hustle right like the hustle for those who listen was like an email newsletter for tech business finance and obviously a portion of those people were very much like startup people who would buy hubspot's product hubspot go we could just do this ourselves and try and build our stuff or we could just buy distribution so that's a big thing for me i'm just like building up distribution and then i'm selling distribution whilst on the way making money from the distribution which is very different from um let's build this company here let's scale this company let's raise money let's do all those things how do you literally like the thing i'm trying to work out firstly the business plan on like the zero to one like how you how you get it yeah and the other part is more like the finding the opportunity like how do you find the opportunity because the best way would be to be really well renowned in this specific niche and way of doing things and become the magnet that other people are looking for the partner that does the thing whatever but that's not really what you're doing on social media at the moment you're not really publicizing this is what you're looking for and you're not trying to broaden your surface area opportunity via social media so instead it feels like it's more covert so then the question becomes like how do you find the right opportunities because one niche industry doesn't forget another niche industry so one one niche go to market does transfer to other go to markets uh yeah as a skill that part i get but not often in network opportunities yeah so the way you do that ah i'm letting all the secrets now but okay i'll let some of the secrets the way you do that is that Get your yellow pages.

32:20It's going to fucking divert our attention. Get your old yellow pages and start looking through them. Is that every industry or rather every niche has thought leaders. Yeah. And those thought leaders are typically people with very large audiences, typically Facebook groups. And so what you do is that you identify the people with audiences and then you use the same go to market, which is Facebook ads, tour community, emails, blah, blah, blah, blah. and then you just run that exact same play and so that's what we've done in numerology that's and now we're parlaying that audience into like uh like an actual media site but do you mean that you reach out to the people who already have the big audiences and already have their their community yeah and say we can do this proposition for you which specifically is designed to take you from this moment now to an exit yeah is the pitch basically do you want an exit if you do we kind of know the playbook of how to take where you are right now into an exit or yeah or or or can we buy you and then we'll just do the exit ourselves yeah yeah and that is the approach for the webmd play we've we've identified three big niches and that for me has been way more exciting and it and it feeds me with more pride when i wake up and i go right let's do this rather than how do we raise money for this where's this you know our series a series b not for me and more pride because you can set yourself a clear journey from the outset or from this moment and we're getting all the way through to exit here and we know that that's the journey yeah do you time frame it if you can like do you try and time box this stuff so i aim to get at least one significant liquidity um event within 18 months of doing it and that significant thing could just be pulling out a ton in dividends um so one of the things we've obviously spoken about um but we haven't said on here is i got involved in um funding commodity businesses yes probably best way to say it sure and um and they provide a lot of liquidity every six months so like every six months through dividends you mean through dividends through the sale of the um the sale of the assets so actually i'll just tell people so basically i got involved a lot in lithium mining and that and specifically funding the extraction of the lithium and um first question is the same as last question like but how does one do that so is that is that through already so as an example is that through already being successful and having a good network or could someone who is looking now like hack that network yeah so um right so the story of how i got into it this is going to sound like the story of a nigerian prince um this is going to sound like the story of a nigerian prince i got a message on instagram from a guy and the guy said from a nigerian prince and the guy basically said hey i've been loving your content blah blah blah and i was like okay thank you and he kept commenting on my stuff and he kept saying stuff like hey let's talk business the thing is i get that probably 100 like 100 times a day hey let's do business all right mate 99 of them are me that's how i know you and um and you know what like this guy kept bragging not bragging but like nagging and nagging and nagging i said okay cool i'm a i said just like tell me about yourself now it turns out that he is the son of the ex-vice president of a country in africa and so and i was like yeah okay mate and then i googled him so am i aren't we all yeah and then i googled him and i was like oh yeah he actually is um and then we and then we became friends um and then what ended up happening was he he basically was like hey we want to sell one of our lithium from us to the saudis and just to be clear lithium is like a gold rush because it's what's being used in electric car batteries correct yeah so the general playbook is the mines are found the lithium is extracted it is then refined and then it's sent to like typically well it sends to like the chinese or something like that and then they sell it on to tesla all right so basically the play is that that stage two and three which is the um extraction and the refinement uh that basically um is where i come in and i fund fund it and then it's then passed on to the next people etc so that's actually how it came to be and the first deal that I did was basically I will fund it and we already have a buyer so we already knew there was a Saudi family who were very interested in this or a Lebanon family and then we said okay cool there's a thing we're gonna sell it and make back our money well make yeah it does very well and I was like huh that's interesting we should do more of this so how like when you first let's just be really clear yeah you get a dm from someone and all these fucking comments and then you're like okay yeah google this guy all right fine yeah he's legit and stuff but you're still putting millions down for a mine yeah first time you do it you must have been shitting yourself a bit so do you know what so the first i mean yeah to be transparent so the first day i did i put in uh 2.8 and i'll tell you what dollars or pounds in pounds right um and that's to buy the whole mine or how does that work so that's to fund yeah yeah yeah like to fund all the lithium from that particular mine right to fund the extraction extraction yeah okay just to note i'm not involved in like the buying of the mines right or the operating of the mine so someone owns the mine or the land owns the mine or however it works but you get a license to extract and the cost of doing business to extract it is 2.8 million and therefore that's the cost of goods so to speak yeah the cost of it all i think was like seven point something so i put in a third of it right yeah um and was i shit to myself no the reason why is because i use the same principle as i'm doing in business which is i already knew the buyer so we had a conversation with the buyers we knew they were good for the money they have the money like they are well known in the industry as like people and all they wanted was basically like the access to i guess like to like to the lithium right and so it was just like an arbitrage play um so was i scared um so i think the first time may be a bit apprehensive but you know what i did and i actually um i actually got this from the tony robbins so tony robbins has this thing which basically says like you should act like the person that you want to be right and i thought about it i thought well in this deal there is someone in this deal who is not scared at all and i want to be that person so i basically i think even when i was doing the deal i wore something different i like i like wore a white shirt which made me feel like i was doing big deals right i was brainwashed myself to ensure i was that person which meant that when i did send the money um it just felt like yeah this is what we do but then i'm pretty sure like two days afterwards like you know maybe the saudis were fake right yeah but you know after the first one then it just keeps going yeah okay and so that playbook is like a rinse and repeat yeah yeah rinse and repeat rinse and repeat rinse and repeat and then the other thing i'm now and yeah yeah and then the only thing is maybe potentially the bias change but to be honest as with anything once you find a good customer you keep them right so likewise for them once they find us everything's about trust exactly so how does that business work as in is that a separate business on its own right yeah that is a commodity business and then the other thing i have under that is i fund the sale of avocados from kenya and tanzania to sainsbury's and waitrose here hello left field all right take me through how you get that deal where does avocados come from That is a friend of mine who I've known for about two years.

40:55He basically, again, he's just in like the arbitrage business. And so, for example, he buys avocados for a pound, sells them for a pound 40. He does that four times a year. So therefore, it just keeps compounding and compounding. And so I started that. I put in a bit of money. And what his issue is basically cash. His thing is patient capital. So basically like someone who, you know, yes we could go down the lines of um banks etc but they charge you a crazy interest rate because it's you know relatively risky like you go from kenya tanzana etc so i put in a bit and and uh that pays me every quarter uh and then i ended up i was like you know what i'm gonna come to kenya with you to see how the whole thing works and when i saw it was like wow this is incredible like this is sick like i can see the journey from we take these avocados from the ground it goes to here to get washed it gets sent to distributors here and it ends up at sainsbury's in brixton yeah wow that's insane and then your bank account that's the full journey yeah and then bank account so i did that whole thing and now basically um yeah that pays me every month that actually funds my entire life and more so the avocado specifically yeah because because like that's a regular thing um makes like 35 45 a year crazy that's so great i know it's it's it's interesting when i think about these things and i think about the like the 21 22 year old timo who thought that the life he wanted to live was the like zuckerberg life like build his tech billionaire life and then go wow he would never have thought that the thing that actually gave him genuine happiness and fulfillment was doing stuff with people that he really enjoyed um spending time with and then like almost spotting these random arbitrage opportunities and so is everything about what you want to do like next in this next era so to speak about arbitrage it's about it's about not playing someone else's game it's so you are playing someone else's game in arbitrage no because you're playing i enjoy doing that in a process right yeah but the end goal for me is like i enjoy deal making yeah like that's my thing and arbitrage is basically short-term deal making right you know buy this year first year whoa good deal right um i enjoy deal making and i think i will consistently enjoy deal making okay is this easy you make it sound easy is it low maintenance so i'll tell you the biggest stressful bit about all of this it is choosing what opportunities you pursue so it's not actually like the opportunities themselves are not particularly difficult it is choosing which one and that opportunity cost of thinking oh that could have been this that could have been that and the proxy for doing that now is who I do it with.

44:01I've come to realize that it's definitely not about the opportunity, it's about the who that I choose to do it with. That's such a good framing. Yeah. Most people come up with, you know, a system or whatever, but for happiness, that has to be the best framing out there. And one big hack I did, I think this would be very useful to your audience, would be I wrote down on a very long sheet of paper the perfect features of a potential co-founder. It went all the way from what's their experience? What books do they read? What is their morning routine? How do they talk?

44:39What's their fitness regime? I had all of these things. And it was so interesting that the more that I started to be detailed about that, every single person that I do this with, every single person, the avocado person, his background, the stuff that they're interested in, tick. and every single time I've tried something which hasn't quite worked it's actually been because I've deviated a little bit from the who so are you looking for people that work out you're looking for people who are into hypnotism I'm looking so ironically I'm looking for people who don't believe necessarily in schedules like that for example that very specific thing so i can just tell you so for business stuff one i'm looking for people who are self-organizers because i am not organized i'm actually diagnosed adhd and also bipolar go figure um um i'm looking for people who have had some degree of success in their lives already this sounds very elitist but for me i I think it's very important to work with people who maybe they were debate champions.

45:55Maybe they've sold a company. Maybe they've done something. I'm also looking for people who can have hard conversations. And how do you do that? When you work with someone, you perhaps are a bit more direct with them to see how they would actually come back with you. There was someone who I was very excited to do something with in the astrology space. but then we had like like they were meant to do something or i was meant to do something actually and i just had a very direct conversation as to why i couldn't and he just kind of just couldn't look me in the eye was all that stuff it's like you're great but you don't take the box of like can you have hard conversations because in business you have to so like there's all these different factors there's i think there's about 23 or so which is just like you know has this that is that is that um but you created a checklist for yourself yeah and you're always adding to that checklist or taking away i was taking away um one of the things which i took away uh wow okay this is gonna make me sound so just off but i was saying i wanted people who were in their 20s that's something that i took away the reason i wanted people in their 20s was just because I was fully cognizant of the fact that when you're in your 30s or 40s that you have a family like work and doing this sort of like randomness is counterproductive to you having a good family right if you're like hey babe I'm going to Tanzania now to like obviously what makes you happy are different exactly and so one of my criterias was like someone in their 20s right I got rid of that and the reason I got rid of that was because I met enough 30 year olds who actually yes they had a family but they were able to compartmentalize life and work in a way which meant it didn't actually take away from what we're doing I thought okay that doesn't make sense get rid of it so basically looking for a psychographic not a demographic exactly so the takeaway for your listeners here is that yes you can design your business but I think even more importantly you can design who you choose to do the business with and it's as easy as here is a notepad these are the criterias this is what i'm good at this what they're good at but like go as much detail the same way that you think about having a very detailed uh girlfriend or boyfriend do that same thing because it's very weird and it's a bit woo but the world would attract those sort of people to you i mean it's logical it's the same as with hiring right if you want to hire like a great marketing director you've got a pretty good idea about what you're looking for your company values their skills like the attitude ability for feedback why on earth would you do that with a business partner it's even more important 100 yeah makes a lot of sense you know this may come as a surprise to people and i'm sure so many founders are going to be able to really empathize with this but i don't think i like really enjoy the journey of fanbites and I think a lot of founders can probably empathize with not really enjoying their business because it was a means to an end or it is a means to an end and I'm now in a space that I really enjoy the actual journey like I really enjoy hopping on a zoom with like my partner and talking about all right cool so how are we going to do this thing I like I look forward to that and i'm really and i think most founders maybe this is me speaking from a position of privilege blah blah blah but like i think most founders don't realize how easy they can move from not enjoying to enjoying something if they just like step back and critically think like do i enjoy the people do i enjoy the opportunity do i need to raise that money do i need to do this thing if i don't need to then just don't do it yeah because a lot of this stuff in entrepreneurship is about survival and that's really the place where need should come in yeah yeah it's weird people leave things that they wanted to do to do things that they didn't want to do yeah i mean look a lot of founders create their own cage yeah like categorically which is a horrific feeling because you should know better and you don't yeah a lot of people know they're going to create their own cage and walk straight into it i mean how many people do vc funding exactly that way they know exactly what they're doing yeah look into it anyway and the moment it happens they're like oh no what have i done yeah okay so um it strikes me like the thing that you're actually articulating enjoying is novelty yeah and that's the thing that you don't really necessarily get in a startup game you're building long term you're building the systems like it's compounding and compounding in the same thing is as we know incredibly productive yeah profitable could be very very samey whereas actually what you're doing is bouncing around a bunch of things there's a novelty avocados this my media here of course that's fun yeah of course that's fun but is there going to be a point you think where there's just super distracting like you get how do you basically split your time properly to focus on making those actual opportunities so or is that the cheat code of basically having the money which is that like this is what i'm bringing to the table so stop fucking bothering me with anything um so

51:22so i think at some point i would decide something that i want to commit let's say the next five to seven years of my life to ironically i think that thing will come when i decide what i want to do from a family perspective um and i'm also very aware of the fact that i that i'm speaking about these things it's like a now a 29 year old single man who doesn't have many commitments i think when eventually that happens i would choose to decide to focus on something for a long period of time but with the same intention of building something designed to be sold i think that for me i i did a lot of soul searching i spoke to therapist as you know um next week i'm speaking to a hypnotist Yep.

52:20Random. But I speak into her because I want to unlock another part of my brain as well to understand, like, is this truly what I want to do? Or more importantly, is there something which actually can get me? Is there something that gets me to my end goal of just like real fulfillment, which I have not been aware of? Interesting. so I think what's good is you have the awareness that you're taking advantage of being your age your stage of life and all those things you know they the idea of starting something that has a definable end on a cycle almost right like you could buy and sell a mine and the only reason to do the next one excuse me the only reason to do the next one is because it would make more money yeah which obviously becomes exceptionally attractive and is its own trap but and your ego will tell you to do that but at the right point in your journey you could also say but i don't need to yeah and you can just stop that one which is different to being in the middle of a business journey yeah you can't just stop that i mean you can but it's hot you can but yeah but it's hard but i guess look like the thing that i want people to take away from this is not everybody now go farm avocados and mines it's actually the fact that um those are my notes gone it's actually the fact that um i think for so many of us founders we zombie our way through the journey and there's never times or there's rarely times where we critically step away and go like is this what i truly want and i was definitely on that path of right like hey let's go do 120 million dollar fund let's go do a b2b data thing let's go raise money because also as you know you know one of the almost one of the honey traps to vcs is a previously successful founder right it's like oh my god let's just you know and i have that as well right and i had all this stuff where i could have said yes yes yes yes yes but critically understanding what gives me joy and i'm not saying again i fully understand that you know founders are in different things but look at your current business maybe there's a way you like mold your business so you do the things that actually also provide you joy rather than feeling it as just going through this thing that you don't have any choice over because you chose to start the business so by definition you should be able to choose how to run the business you know yeah so i'm gonna take that lesson and read my fucking dms i don't know who's in there but you know i offered some crazy shit Yeah.

55:02Okay, dude, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming back. All good. Sweet. Nice. Thanks for listening. If this conversation with Timothy Armou has sparked your interest in exploring unconventional business strategies, or it's just inspired you to rethink your approach to entrepreneurship in general, share this episode with your friends and fellow entrepreneurs, and maybe even share it on social and tag me and Tim. If you're looking to support the work we do here, the best way is to leave us a review and subscribe to us on YouTube. Alright, I'll see you next time.