How to Build a Business That Supports Your Life Goals

0:00When you're a solopreneur, you need it more than anybody. You need it the most, you know, because what scales a business is when you start doing partnerships. Yes. So you might want to have PR for partnerships to find that. Like people go out, they're a solopreneur and they go networking to look for a customer. You should never network to look for a customer. Or not never, but your goal of networking is to find partners, to find people who will endorse you to a million others or a hundred others type thing. I think every small business should be doing PR or considering PR at some level. If you don't have someone in your life whose goal is to make you successful other than yourself, then you're going to struggle.

0:44You want as many people in your life wanting you to be successful as possible. Today the tables are turned. Now it's me in the hot seat, Sabrina Starker. She's a superstar tennis player turned entrepreneur. her. She's built 2Compr to be a global phenomenon. Now we're going to do it. Sabrina Stalker. I would definitely, if I was a young person now, learn how to buy a business and learn how you can actually go and buy it for no money down. When people say, oh, you can't be rich and happy. What a lot. That's the dumbest thing ever. Brad, welcome to the show. Thank you. So I've been really fascinated by your journey because I used to not really believe in coaches.

1:26Because I didn't really understand why I needed a coach. And I've gotten to the age where now I feel like I do need a coach and a mentor. Where do I start to look? Well, okay. So let's first of all understand why coaching is important, and especially as you're younger. I mean, the first job you get really should be about what can you learn more than what can you earn. Yes. Like if you have your first two or three jobs learning from great mentors, and if you don't have a great mentor, move on from that job. Like if you're not learning anything in your job and you're just making money, then move on.

2:05You're not setting yourself up for a career or your own business at some point. so having having someone that's been there before save you from making the mistakes is is first thing like you know hey yeah yeah i see what you yeah yeah but let's just go back over here sort of because the mistakes i've had great mentors when i've like i learned the company i learned what they did i then went to go do myself in a different way but how do i find now mentors that have like been there, done it in my kind of industry? Well, to get a mentor is different to a coach. Like a mentor is someone who is, you know, an experienced, they've done it and it's sort of an informal relationship, if that makes sense.

2:50And often people will ask me to mentor them and I'll say no until, you know, I've only done it. Are you in a good mood today? Brad, will you mentor me, please? No. The reality of my world is that coaching is what I do. Yes. And coaching is a more formalized way of mentoring. It's an agreement where someone says, will you help me be successful? And if you don't have someone in your life whose goal is to make you successful other than yourself, then you're going to struggle. You know, you want as many people in your life wanting you to be successful as possible. and if one of them is someone that you're paying to do that, why do I pay a guy to come to my house and make me work out?

3:36Well, because I know if I didn't pay him, I still would work out, but not as hard, not as much. There's no accountability to it sort of thing. I think that accountability to your goals is a real reason for coaching. And what I mean by that is, firstly, you need accountability to set goals. Like most people might set a few goals, but if you've got a good coach, you've got health goals, you've got relationship goals, you've got travel goals, you've got wealth goals, you've got income goals. Do you know what I mean? Like a good coach will get you to look at the whole picture and set goals in different areas.

4:18Now, why do you want goals? So you know what to learn. I think most people's biggest challenge is they set goals and they then think, well, how do I do that? So one really interesting part of that is being a woman. I don't have much experience with that. I do have four daughters. You have four daughters and you have a beautiful wife. And being a woman trying to run a business, I've definitely had ups and downs. So when I was younger, it was kind of, you know, I was an entrepreneur before. It was cool to be an entrepreneur. And I got told a lot of the time, you're very young to start a business.

4:50Now you've got 16-year-old TikToker starting businesses, which is great. But now I'm getting to the other stage where I'm ready to have kids. I'm excited to have kids. And having to sort my business out in the sense that when I do, then I'm not going to be, you know, it's not going to completely shut down or I'm not going to feel that motivation. You can build it to be what you want it to be. Yes. It doesn't have to be. I'm very conflicted. Some days I'm like ready to, you know, scale to a unicorn. Other days I'm like, no, this is great where I am. When you look at what is it that you want, that's the challenge.

5:26and you haven't yet decided what it is that you want for this phase of life. You know, when one of my daughters came to me and she said, at school they're asking them, you know, what do you want to be? And I had to reframe it for her and say, it's not about what do you want to be or what do you want to do for your life. It's about what are some things you want to try. What most people don't understand is you're going to have somewhere at least six careers in your lifetime. right so you can have six different things that you do during your life and so one career will lead to the next and will lead to the next sort of thing so but what happens in three years time when i'm on a farm i've got you know a couple of kids five that's what's more and then in the next room i'm like building my own little great they have the farmhouse has a company on right dinner in two years time you know but but this is this is the challenge of doing what you want versus what other people or what you think other people or changing the persona from yeah i i'm just very enthusiastic about different areas correct and you can be enthusiastic and you can do multiple things no one can tell you you can't be a mom and a successful businesswoman and and and i think we get too much of the awe in our life of you got to do this or this.

6:49No. When people say, oh, you can't be rich and happy. What a lot. That's the dumbest thing ever. You. Well, this I'd agree with. Yeah. You can be this and this and this and this. Now, there's sacrifices by doing all of those things, too. You know, by me still being so passionate about helping business people that I fly around the world and do events like this one, I get to miss a few things with my kids. And some days it's good that my kids miss me for some period of time. You know, the old absence makes the heart grow fonder is still real when I come home. The hugs I get when I come home are bigger than the hugs I would get if they were just came home from school every day and saw me there at the house.

7:37So there's a trade-off, but that doesn't mean you can't do those multiple things. interesting from a pr perspective because most people when they're first hearing about something they'll maybe know like two or three things so for example oh she was a tennis player and she runs a pr company and she's only apprentice that's like three different things but when you continually add different facets and say she shared this company this company and she does this and this and this how do you share that in terms of your personal brand i i have a couple of theories but so it doesn't overwhelm someone but actually you are able to share different things you're interested in?

8:12Well, I mean, you know, straight blunt for you, you don't build a personal brand right now. You don't post anywhere near enough to build a personal brand. You don't. I'll have to listen to Gary Vee. I'm going to have to change that. So if you wanted to build your personal brand, then you would have a community around you. And that's the thing, your community, your followers, the people that like and share your thing, What you're building on social media is a community and you determine what type of community you want to build. Do you want to build a community that like, let's say for five years on TikTok, someone was doing their recipes and then they decided, you know what, I'm going to start sharing with everyone my passion for drumming.

8:57Well, that community has no interest in that. You're probably going to need to build a different community to support you. Now, if you want to just dump the cooking community, okay, well, dump the cooking community and go and build a different one. But your personal brand is kind of different to that. It's how people get to know you. So the fact that you have multiple companies that you've invested in, multiple things that you do, highlights more of the entrepreneurial nature of who you are. but if you're not sharing that and building a community that supports you in that i think the other thing that a lot of people make the mistake of is their social media is just way too douchey and braggy it's like look at me on a boat or look at me doing it like okay the the look at me shit has got to stop at some point you know you've you've got to add value to the world with what you're doing in social media.

10:02So if you are the PR person and that's what you want to be known for, then okay, start helping everyone do better PR. Start being the voice of how you do PR. Like most companies have no idea how to do PR and how to get themselves mentioned or do that sort of thing. They don't even know how to fill in a website to do a press release sort of thing, what should be written in it. So there's a lot of that where you can say, this is what I want to be. But social media is entertain, educate, or emotion, right? So you've got to bring one of those three things or preferably bring all three things to your post so that it is there.

10:46It's adding value. It's entertaining. And it's bringing up some emotion in people. Now, a bit of a taboo subject. I'm writing a book at the moment around how women can work according to their hormones have you ever thought about that as a concept? No I've never thought about how women can work according to their hormones I'm sure that like you know when you look at how people do things learning about yourself is one of the most important things you can do So if you create that book, fantastic, but also then create a survey or a profiling tool where someone can learn about themselves. You know, I think that if you help people learn about themselves, they love your stuff even more.

11:39If they're learning about something, it's one thing, but learning about yourself is more important. And so great idea for a book if people can use it to learn about them and about how they can be better at what they do and have a achieve more of their dreams and goals because of that sort of thing. You know, every time you write a book, it's got to solve a problem. What is the problem that that book is solving? And so a lot of people write books to teach things, but not to solve a problem. and so whenever I write, the goal is to solve a problem. I'm currently putting a book, it's called The Exponential CEO and the problem is that businesses stop growing and they can't scale and so if I can solve the problem of educating people how to exponentially grow a business, then I help sort of thing.

12:35There's a problem with people that become the CEO of their own business or someone else's business and don't know what they're doing. And so if I help solve the problem of becoming a great CEO, then I solve the problem. So what is the problem the book's going to solve? And I think you'll win from there. Amazing. Now, one other thing that's really... By the way, why is it a taboo subject? Well, I think at the moment, I think more... No such thing as a taboo subject anymore. Have you met the British culture? Have you met TikTok? Have you met Instagram? Have you met YouTube? There's no such thing as a taboo subject.

13:11I just thought I'd like, you know, heads up before I started. I was the old one here. So another really interesting conversation right now is friendship groups. And I have so many of, I've been away from the UK for a long time. I've just come back and I've been, I have so many friends, but leaving the UK. Now for different reasons, a lot to do with tax, a lot to do with sunshine. Lack of sunshine. Lack of sunshine. the politics, the economy, crime, et cetera, there's two thoughts of mine. One is actually, no, I'm really inspired and I love talking to amazing people. Go there and go be in that network.

13:49The other side of me is actually if everyone's leaving, that's leaving a huge opportunity here to be that person to create a purpose. What's your thoughts? Well, first of all, let's start with friendship. okay friendship my definition of it is a friend is someone who uh you chose to be in your life okay you chose that what a friend does is they reach out and they show up two things i've told all my kids that if if you want to be a great friend you reach out and you show up they're the two things you do um and that just picking up a phone all the time is really important zooming even to the point where I literally have my phone remind me to do this because otherwise yeah you'll forget if there's a friend you haven't spoken to in a month and it becomes three months and then it becomes four it's like yeah just who are the ones you want to speak to every month set a reminder who are the people you got to speak to every week set a reminder and it's it's important to do that friendships take work they really do and and I someone recently said something like I'm not going to reach out to anyone who doesn't reach out to me.

14:56Well, you're going to get freaking lonely freaking fast. You know, I pride, my wife and I pride ourselves on being connectors. So I've seen some friends that they're like, can you believe they went out together without me? What do you mean? Well, I introduced them and they went out together without me. Shut up. You're an idiot. If you're not happy that two of your friends are happy because they met each other and they're doing a thing, you should be excited that you made that relationship happen and you should be happy about that. Because guaranteed when they're together, they're talking about you, saying good things about you because you introduced them sort of thing.

15:34So friendship groups, though, take work. And someone has to be the organizer. Now, I will admit the women are far better at that than men. Far better at that than men. We're very good. They have some amazing girl groups that have been cultivated. And there is a lunch organizer or two in every one of those groups. And they are the glue that holds that group together. And I think that if more people decided in life to become the glue that holds people together, then you would have a better life. I'll tell you about an interesting study they did in high schools. They went through the high school looking for the most popular person.

16:17And the way they studied it is they said, here's a list of everyone here. Who do you like? And so everyone had to go through and tick the people they like. The most popular person in the school every time was the one who actually ticked that they liked the most people. So if I like more people, I'm more popular. That's really interesting. I never chick flicks say otherwise. Yeah. Oh, the chick flicks are like. Chick flicks. They're designed to make you feel bad about yourself. Let's be blunt about that. Feel bad about yourself so you have to buy this new hair product. Feel bad about yourself so you have to buy this new push-up.

16:54I think the hair product looks great on you, Brad. Fantastic. Yeah, I'm really great with it. My hair product is called a hat. But when you think about friendship groups and holding them together, now we have the challenge of holding them together on an international scale. And that is a big part of the thing. So now it's not just organizing lunches. It's like organizing trips. It's organizing get-togethers and having important moments. But it's also understanding that other people have lives. It's easy when you're in your teens and early 20s and you don't have that responsibility factor. And, you know, I love it when my friends who have one kid tell me they're busy.

17:38It's like, really? You're busy with one? Okay, fantastic. Here's five over here. No, but when you get to five, they start looking after each other. To a degree, yeah. To a degree. My theory. This is my hope. I'll let you know in 10 years' time. Oh, look, I've got advice when I was young, and I've taken it as, you know, have as many kids as you can afford. Your life will be far grander, and their life is better having more people around them sort of thing. But that being said, five is enough. Thank you very much. I'm done. Good. happy for you but when you talk about so then that goes to your second question the level of opportunity in the uk right now based on people leaving you got two main opportunities happening in the uk right now number one baby boomers who own the businesses are retiring so retiring means those businesses will either be up for sale or be shut down and therefore there's customers that need to find somewhere else to buy i would definitely if i was a young person now learn how to buy a business and learn how you can actually go and buy it for no money down.

18:47Is there anyone in particular, so for example, Cody Sanchez, that you would say it's worth studying for? There's a bunch, but I've taught it for many years. You can read it in my book, Billionaire in Training. But I think that there's so much free right now out there that you can spend, all you got to do is spend 10 minutes and ask chat gpt who's the best person to stay a few good yeah who the top five that i could start with well just start with me okay and if you do enough searches on me other stuff will start showing up if you watch enough of my youtube you know it starts suggesting others that's a member i will have studied thoroughly your book then exit so that opportunity is a massive one right now the second is is that is that also because is there not also So the opportunity of taking baby boom businesses, which have got a successful customer base, which then, I guess, buying into that business, rejuvenating that business with AI, keeping customer relationships and then sending it on.

19:47But rejuvenating it with more than just AI, rejuvenating it with more socials, rejuvenating it with all of the young ideas. And this is why I employ a lot of young people because you have crazy, stupid ideas. What specific businesses would you say are the opportunities in the UK right now? um my favorite types of businesses are three types number one must do type businesses so you've got to get pest spray done you've got to get your business your office cleaned you know the things that have to be done um and they're usually just a you know they're a thing that people have a budget for already and know they have to buy all you have to do is convince them to buy from you instead of someone else.

20:36For example, a pool cleaning company. Got to get your pool cleaned or you got to do it yourself type thing. So there's the must-do type factors that are a big part of it. Rather than the nice-to-haves because then they're already incorporated into the budget so therefore there's an already allocated budget. You don't have to convince them. See, if it's a nice-to-have, you've got to convince them to buy it and convince them to buy it from you. It's easier to just convince people to buy it from you then have to convince them to buy it. The second type of business I'd look for is a done-for-you business.

21:10We've seen laziness get higher and higher and busyness get higher and higher. So anything where it can be done for you. So, for example, your existing business, PR, people don't want to learn PR. They just want to go, oh, you know what you're doing? Great. Can you do that for me? You know, housekeeping, lawn mowing, people just don't do those things anymore cooking anything where you do it for someone and this is where like even software businesses i see people go out and they want to do a software and i say whoa let's not ever sell the software let's use the software and do the service for people rather than just selling the software you know for example one of my marketing agencies we developed an AI platform that creates people's social media from one 20 minute video.

22:04We create all of their social media for the entire week, plus their email, plus their blog post. It's all created, right? We could just sell subscriptions to the service and people could buy it and do it themselves. And then they've got to post it. Instead, we build a whole team of VAs. We do it in the background. We do it for you. Now, instead of charging$30 ,000 or$70 ,000 or whatever for a monthly subscription, we're charging$1 ,500 to$5 ,000 for a service doing all of these things for you with a lot more margin than that. The third is anything that is subscription or retainer-based. So if I was going into the cheese business, I wouldn't just try to open a cheese store.

22:53I'd open a cheese of the month club. I would join a cheese of the month club with a combination of wine. A lot of people would join a cheese of the month club. But you understand that it doesn't matter what business it is. Like you mentioned, you know, the pool cleaning business. You don't sell pool cleaning one at a time. You sell it on a retainer. I come every month and I'd bill you every single month. Businesses that have an every month and every week and every whatever, they are great businesses. So moving on to that, most companies, smaller companies, don't always need PR because they need PR when they're launching something.

23:32I disagree. Everyone needs PR all the time. How are you getting your web traffic up if you're not – PR is a massively important part of just your web traffic and your searchability. The algorithms, if the algorithms see the backlinks from all of those PR campaigns, like one post on any, and I'm not going to name any platforms because I don't want to endorse any of them, but you might name a platform that you love. But one post on that platform that might have me listed on 200 media sites with links back to my website, that all of a sudden has just given Google enough reason to believe in me sort of thing and gives them so I'm getting much more Google ranking because of PR.

24:18I don't agree that people don't need PR. Small, small, small companies. When you're solopreneurs. When you're a solopreneur, you need it more than anybody. You need it the most, you know, because what scales a business is when you start doing partnerships. So you might want to have PR for partnerships to find that. Like people go out, they're a solopreneur and they go networking to look for a customer. You should never network to look for a customer. Not never, but your goal of networking is to find partners, to find people who will endorse you to a million others or a hundred others type thing.

24:56I think every small business should be doing PR or considering PR at some level even if it is just a subscription to give me an app that you say is good or a site that you say is good Harrow, Help a Reporter Out Help a Reporter Out, well that's a free one even They've rebranded, there's all the sort of things going on Now they're going to charge me money to do it They do charge any of those PR sites where it will release my press to, you know, and have me listed on a hundred or a thousand. I think it's better. Databases. Yeah. What's really interesting is now that we're able to create the PR so that it starts actually ranking in TouchyBT.

25:38So for example, if we syndicate to Bing, because that's where TouchyBT is based out, we're actually getting clients show up as that person. and it's been incredible for whoever's showing up and it's absolutely dismayed to the competition. Well, I don't think people understand who owns ChatGPT. I don't think anyone does, but we do know that Bing helps. Well, we know there's this little company called Microsoft, right? And we know that they have an investor level. So would they want Bing to grow? Yes, they want Bing to grow. So now you have to use Bing the same as you have to use Google. Yes. So that you get found.

26:16But also, if you think about the searches people are doing that they would do in Google that they've moved to ChatGPT, they're using ChatGPT for more brainstorming stuff rather than just, hey, what is this? That's a Google question. ChatGPT is, you know, as you just said, you know, who are the best people to – because if you go to Google and I type in who are the best people for this, I'm going to find someone's article on it. Correct. Right. Now, Google's gradually changing to do more of an AI up front. But if I do it in chat GPT, it goes to the whole Internet, reads a thousand articles and then gives me its its list sort of thing.

26:57But, yes, the need for Bing today is massive. People are not using Bing. They need to be using Bing so that GPT gets some more traffic, more backlinks. Well, hey there. Thanks for listening. I've noticed that 78 % of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet. By subscribing, you help us bring on even better guests, better quality content, and serve you better with even more podcasts. So please hit that subscribe button. It only takes a second. It makes a huge difference. If you support us, we're going to support your success and help you achieve big success together.

27:39So one idea I have is I own the domain prlaunch.ai. and the idea is to help companies be able to launch whatever they're doing using PR with the acceleration of AI. Reduces costs. We have thousands of case studies that we can plug in. This is something we're building out. How can I launch? First, build a community. So go out and tell the world that I'm considering launching this thing. If it's of interest to you, let me know and do a thing. And the easiest way to have them let you know is create not a survey but just a page where they can go and put their interest in and you might ask them 10 questions about it you know what would you pay for this how would you use it what would you use it for and so your goal over a period of a month or so or two months is just to get a hundred or a thousand people to say hey that sounds like something that's interesting when you launch it let me know right so you're you're pre-launching the thing to these people you haven't even written it yet, right?

28:43You haven't written, done the software, you haven't done anything. Then what you do is you go back to that group and you just say, hey, by the way, we're looking to put out an angel investor. And actually, you might even put it on the survey. If we do angel investors for this, would you be interested? And so maybe out of your thousand people, a hundred tick the box that say, yes, I'd be interested in an angel investor. So then you run an angel investor meeting and you get the hundred people along. You might have to do two or three meetings to get them all there. You put your pitch deck out there and you bring on enough angels to fund the operation.

29:19Okay. So you're crowdfunding by doing it. You could go to the crowdfunding sites, but they're going to take a percentage. So it's easier to just go to your network and release that. This is something you're thinking of, build the database of potentials. Then you bring your crowdfunding group in. Then you have them send it out to their network saying, hey, we're looking to invest. in this would you be interested in a product like this so you go from a thousand potential interested to five ten thousand potential interested customers you've got the money so go write the code and then you launch you've got five ten thousand initial customers to go to but you launch to only you say we're only allowing a hundred customers in the beginning or a thousand customers in the beginning on our beta launch.

30:08If you want to be on the beta, sign up here. And we're going to launch beta on this date and the first hundred in are the ones that get it. That's how you start a business. Great. Now, for that, how would I get the first initial kind of community of PR? Through your friends and your current network. Okay. Just go through your current network. Talk to people about it. You've got a couple of months. I sent out my mailing list. So you've got a couple of months to do it, right? Or a month. Give yourself the time to get to the number that you want. Set a goal, you know, a 500 or a 1 ,000 or 100 potential investors and just go for it.