Unleashing Success with Consistency & Persistence W/ Josh Bardsley

0:00Welcome to the Big Success Podcast. Cutting-edge conversations on business and personal success, as well as how to level up. Here's your host, number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. This week for the Big Success Podcast, we have Josh Bardsley. Avalanche is his company. He does amazing things, creating marketing results for definitely the professional services, accountants, attorneys. Now, young man who's already built and sold seven companies, all right? Now, that serial entrepreneurialism doesn't really happen often. Now, I was lucky enough I met Josh when he was 17 or he met me when he was 17.

0:39Either way, he's an amazing learner, but he's done it. It's not those people that learn it and just think about it. He gets in there and does it. So his views on success are going to amaze you. The book he's just written on Raise Your Hand Marketing, phenomenal stuff. How he manages and recruits and retains a young audience, millennials, Gen Z, phenomenal stuff. So he's scaling an amazing business around the world from London. Let's go. Let's learn from Josh. So Josh, first question. It's always simple, but it's not that simple. What is success to you? How do you define success? Pretty clearly, actually.

1:15I'd say that success for me is going to sleep excited to wake up the next day. All right. Tell me more about that. How did you arrive at that? What gave you that thinking is your definition? because i realized that when i first started in business i was chasing money i was chasing material items i was chasing everything and whilst those things are great when you get them you soon realize that that wasn't kind of your main driver and for me just enjoying everything and you know going to bed at the end of the day with just a feeling of like i can't wait to get up again and do this again yeah yeah so let's go backwards then a little way how did you or when did you choose success?

1:57Like when was it something where you said, you know, I'm going to be successful in life? I was a kid and I always knew I wanted to do something big. I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. How did you decide to be a lawyer? I thought I wanted to be a lawyer too. And that was from watching LA Law. I watched Corbin Bernson. I watched Suits and I wanted to be Harvey Specter. um but you know i started studying private equity law at college and i was like actually shit i don't i want to be on the other side of the table um this sounds fun and i said okay how do i how do i do that and i need to go learn and so i stuck myself in more books than is is kind of comprehensible and um just success grew on me i think i didn't i didn't start out with something in mind i just wanted to i just wanted to do something big yeah and was there a time when you decided that was there something that happened which made you decide it or was it a lesson from family or what what was it because often there's a spark in people it says and and obviously people listening to this podcast or watching this podcast they've already had that spark at some level yeah it was very clear actually i remember it specifically it was uh reading a book that called the billionaire training and i was like oh wow you can actually make money uh and you can do different things right yeah you can do the things and my dad brought me a signed copy back from the very first event he went to with you back in like 2012 yeah and it still says on it brad shaker's 2012 or whatever it was and um i think your comment was my next billionaire in training or something and uh i was like damn this sounds fun and it doesn't sound that complicated It just seems like you've got to do the work.

3:45And that is really a very big thing. You know, it is the work. So in your mind then, you know, you've built seven companies, done all that stuff as a young man. How does success happen? What's your formula or what's your methodology to make success a reality? I've always just – the way that I'd say it is when I went out into the world, I realized that a lot of people were selling pints and delivering half pints and I said a great business you could build a great business just by selling pints and delivering your heart you're delivering a full pint and I was like this is interesting because I just look at any company I think you're just not you're not you're not delivering to the level that you could be and I said well I can do this and and success will be just been the fact I'm just delivering what I sell and that that happened very quickly every business we went into i just said okay how do we just deliver for one and deliver consistently whether it's in property or in kitchens or whatever and it just seemed to work like that was the model and it grew from there seems ultimately too simple but it's definitely i've never tried to complicate success so let's flip it over then how does failure teach success?

5:06I had a tricky relationship with failure. Um, I think a lot of kind of type a personalities have a tricky relationship with failure. And I used to beat myself up a lot. Um, it was only from the learnings that I realized that failure was something that everyone always says to me, Oh, great. Josh is getting anxious and he's going through a crisis situation because we're going to come out of it with something sick. Um, so So I've taught myself to kind of use the two or three days situation of woe is me to the problem to create epic. I'd say every single amazing thing I've done has always come out of some terrible situation.

5:46I think just enjoying that process. I still hate it, but trying to enjoy that process. So what's your mindset then? How do you approach it? If something does go wrong or something looks like it's gone wrong, how do you approach that to turn it into a success? What do you do in your brain to get that to happen? so my business partner abby lets me have 10 minutes of hissy uh emotion and it's like okay time's up and then it's like okay let's have a look at the solution and and have a problem and actually we kind of go seek them now my team the team here at avalanche that we i teach them go break shit go break stuff and and fix it and and just break it on purpose and i think that that mantra of success is if you you'll be very successful if you can just learn to break things that seemingly work and make them better and enjoy that process so let's go back then to the success factors and that sort of thing when you look at success what do you see as the factors of people who succeed versus those who don't consistency i think that success is like i spent a long time with uh satire matthews when i was a kid about 19 um and the first thing he said to me was you got to be the most persistent person in the world um and just not ever stop um and you know look at me i'm 75 years old and i'm still not stopped and he's like the success is not success looks like it's just been just come out of thin air but there's a lot of backstory behind it and i'm sure you know you have experience as well like it one set one step forward each day compounding that and then i think buffett talks about it he's like you know we just looked up from our desk 50 years later and we had a 600 billion dollar company it was just we just kept moving forward every single day and i think it's just that ability to do that just every day just get up move forward so flip that over what is it that uh for the other side because like when you worked with uh like bill ackman learning from bill and Marshall Goldsmith.

7:47Obviously, the flip side of that is there too. Young, and let's define our advice here just for a second. The millennial generation, Gen Z, how can someone at that level say, okay, let me take the lessons of a 75-year-old and apply them today to success? Longer, chill out. Explain that for me. Explain chill out. Well, when I was younger, I don't like to look backwards, but I probably could be far, far further along in my career if I just chilled out. when I was like five, if the first five years of my career, I was so gung ho on getting successful, making millions of dollars, running around, doing everything that I thought I needed to do that in reality, I could have just, I've made a lot of steps forward, but lost that back in that time.

8:36And if I just kind of, you know, kept moving forward, chugging slowly, focusing on the principles of consistency, delivering great quality services and products, whatever I would be, you know, the compound effect would have taken his thing. And Bill, when I worked with Bill, Bill's theory on that was exactly the same. Like, this is all about the compound effect, but I'm going to put 100X multiplying on it. He's like, I'm not interested. It's got to be big or none. And so there's lots of different lessons from lots of different people. But it always comes back down to be persistent. Whatever you decide to do, don't do it for six months and quit.

9:14Find something you want to do for a long time. I like it. I like it a lot. You're on the Big Success Podcast. We are here with the Josh Bardsley and we're going to be coming back and taking a look at marketing. We're going to be taking a look at recruiting. We're going to take a look at managing young people and how to succeed at all of those things. With over 200 strategies for maximizing cash flow, Brad Sugars' book, The Apprentice Billionaire's Guide to Cash Flow, is the one tool you're going to need in order to maximize your company's profits throughout the course of its growth cycle. And you're back, Josh Bodgley, Avalanche, amazing company, doing great things for accountants, attorneys, and business coaches around the world, generating leads.

9:52I want to look, though, at something that you've become amazing at, and that is how do you recruit millennials and Gen Z? I guess you've got to add Gen Z into the equation these days. Yeah, there's so many Gens now.

10:09We've only really hired that age group. They've always kind of hovered around those age groups, so 18 to 30. one of the biggest things for me is like it's only a short small amount of them really care about money it's more about like what you can offer them in terms of flexibility that age group is they want to know like okay can I work from home they want to know like what benefits they get they want the community aspect of business they want the socials and I think the biggest thing is if you just run a company where everyone is there and just doing it and going home you know you're going to lose people they want to feel like they're in a friendship circle tell me more about that the community and the social aspect how do you succeed at that without going overboard i guess yeah this is a hard thing because we've got to the point now where we're quite big in terms of so not not a huge team but like 20 20 25 people it's it's harder to go to the pub with 25 people than it is to go to the pub with five people and so we're having to get a little bit more corporate with the structure but i think just having a consistent it being consistent is is the key thing and you know celebrating wins like we always do like a you know win of the weeks and and bringing people in we make sure that they're kind of you're pushing out their comfort zones the thing with gen z is that they hate going out of comfort zone um they want to but they hate doing it and if you manage them in the way that is like old school management which is like you know can you do this can you do this and i need to stand by xyz time they do not respond well to that whatsoever it's more like hey what do you think about this get their opinion get them to buy into the solution as their solution as well and then it gets done it's like that it's their project yeah and they'd like to feel they got ownership of stuff so okay you're teaching a guy like me uh 51 years old gen x uh how do i adjust to recruit these young people then what have i got to do that's different to what i would have done before i think that actually the the word needs to come down to recruit or retain um it's it's relatively easy i still think to recruit these people i think that having an image of your your company as a you know it has technology it's fun it's it's it's it's got big plans they all want to know about that they want to know about your big plans for the future they want to feel safe standard stuff getting them through the doors pretty straightforward how you retain them is probably the harder point because as you know like this age group the the average is probably only about eight months or something in terms of data so it's it's retaining them is where you need to help them buy into the relationship you buy into the projects you give them ownership of things and that that for us is we've not had anyone leave like from their own accord yet and in the last few years in terms of this model so done a pretty good job of making sure that they feel like they own their process now it's funny that you say you know as you know no no i'm 51 i don't know this stuff making it social making it fun all that stuff is totally different.

13:17So what else have we got to do to manage and lead the millennials and the Gen Z? The best thing that we do, the best thing I've done with this whole, you know, keeping them, maintaining them, making them happy is in team meetings, everyone pitches it and it's everyone's ideas value, no matter what level they're in in the company. And there's votes. If you have a project on, you know, let's change this process or let's have this new strategy, everyone in that team will make a decision as a team and they vote in and it's that kind of buy-in and that could be anything that could be you know what color are we going to make this week's ad or like if something simple it could be anything just helping them buy in and making them feel like they're making an impact is really key to them yeah um and if you do that they they don't just stay they get the work done yeah yeah yeah it's so much more energy and effort into that than historically has ever been done.

14:12Let's flip the conversation a little bit. You wrote the book on marketing, okay, about raising your hand. How do we succeed at marketing overall? Then we'll get into some specifics. Marketing overall is a good question. I think it could be a very long question, but I'll keep it short. Marketing is nowadays, you're buying a lifetime relationship. um and that's that's the switch it's no longer i'm buying a transaction i'm buying an initial transaction you have to buy a relationship because most brands nowadays even if it's b2b or b2c the level of opportunity for loyalty with customers has never been higher people have major major loyalty to brands even you know small things um and marketing is very simple if you just you know instead of going out and selling and saying hey you know do you want to buy my stuff you say let's have a conversation you make an offer that you know is really something that they need right now um you get to have a lot of conversations and you get to build a lot relationships so it's it's kind of like a switch and you know what is marketing success is basically you're no longer a hunter you're a relationship manager you're a farmer um and if you can do that make that switch, you'll be successful in any business.

15:35So let's talk about that in a little bit more detail. You mentioned the word conversations, and I think that's become a big thing. You're a big believer in getting conversations that lead to conversions. How do you generate or how do you succeed at generating a lot more conversations? Yeah. So most businesses, when they do their initial target market, when they buy their company or start it, they'll say, okay, I have 10 ,000 people that fit this demographic in London, right and then all of their marketing is focused on people that want to buy right now and in most industries the people that are literally walking around thinking about your product or service right now is very small maybe four or five percent and so you put all your effort into that four or five percent so you know if your market is 10 000 actually your marketing is only really dealing with four or five hundred and it's really hard to spot them so the the raise your hand marketing idea is So, okay, let's make that switch and let's look at the whole 10 ,000.

16:30And instead of talking about us, let's say, okay, what can we offer that we know everyone in that 10 ,000 will have and building something that will give them what they need. And in return, they will engage with us either digitally or physically. And that is the simplest thing in the world to do and very easy. to implement for any company it's funny some people listening going it's not that simple josh obviously it is simple to you so what triggers someone to raise their hand as you call it so the raise your hand is just as simply you've offered something that they want so the way that we talk about this in the book and in in general marketing perspectives is what figure first figure out what kind of needs they have so if we look at b2c typically there's two two things that everyone will walk around having it's emotion and aspirational you know me everyone is emotional and everyone's aspirational in b2b everyone's got ego and everyone wants exposure so those are the two things emotion aspiration ego and emotion that we we want to create our offer on and that could be something that we wrote in the book about um about this uh las vegas gardens corporation as a dummy company and it's like okay how do they do this so they use ego and exposure they create some sort of offer that you know will invite people to grab a free you know goodie bags or free talk to talk to talk to them about their garden interview to be interviewed about their garden you're leaning on these exposures and leaning on these emotions and leaning on these different aspirational pieces to generate um conversations so in reality it's just making sure that you give someone what they need um and if you can give someone what they need they raise the hand it's that straightforward so once you get them to raise the hand what's you mentioned the word farming before tell me more about that yeah so farming is in a context of this perspective like you know 10 000 years ago hunter would be the hero and he would go out and he would you know get the prey and it might be another year before he gets another one but he's still the hero and the farmer's the boring one who doesn't doesn't you know is uncool um the farmer has to sow his seeds and wait six months for his his his success but when that success comes it's very consistent and so most hunt marketing is hunting you're going out there and you're hoping you're working on hope to generate business and whilst it might work every now and again it's not predictable um and farming allows you to bring predictability it's a bit boring to start with because you have to do some work and you have to have a lot of conversations and you have to nurture people.

19:22And you do that by just simply looking at what they need and having conversations and continually offering them what they need. And then when they do think about you, which will be some point down the line, you're the first person that pops into their head. It's that kind of thing. And when we look, let's look at hair salon business, right? So hair salon would put an ad out saying, you know, come and have your hair colored with us. Okay. That's a hunting technique. You're kind of hoping that someone is going to be come across your ad who wants their hair coloring. Great. If instead you put an ad out and you think, okay, what does every woman want in this town?

20:00They all want their hair to look beautiful. Okay. We're going to run an ad that says, come and have a free blow dry with X hair salon. It's completely free 30 minutes. We just want to meet you and because it solves that problem of the thing that they need the the amount of hands being raised about 10 times what the ad is and the fun thing is that when that person actually sits down in that chair and has a conversation with the stylist we found about 70 percent of them would rebook so what we're doing is we're buying initial interaction and we do that by giving stuff away and that's that's funny so let's flip topics just for a second young entrepreneurs right a lot of them don't have the confidence to kick start off to actually dive in to actually open the business what is it that that you think is different what was different for you or how do those who dive in actually do it versus those who sit back and wait

20:59i've never been a sit back and wait kind of guys so it's it's difficult for me to understand that kind of mindset but a business is is reality as soon as you sell something and there was initial transaction you have a business and and if you think about it when I was starting out my dad was my first client um and then I had another one and then I had another one and it all kind of grew from there and if anyone wants to start business it's just like okay I would say make sure your first sale is something that you can bring from your network of people that you know, your experience in the past. And once you've got that first sale, you can prove your concept.

21:39It's pretty straightforward to create stuff. You're on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. We'll be back in just a moment and we're going to look at scaling up. Josh Bardsley is the founder and CEO of his own company, which specializes in helping businesses create a winning culture, develop effective marketing strategies, and increase revenue. He's also a highly sought after keynote speaker, author, and podcast host. Now, with his insights and expertise being featured in numerous media outlets, we can dive into Josh's journey, his strategies, and insights on how to achieve big success in business and in life.

22:13All right, Josh, let's talk about scaling up. Some of your early businesses you built, just normal-sized businesses, now you're into the scale thing. What changed in your thinking?

22:27Fine. um i nothing changed i think i always wanted to be big right but i've got this thing of paying my dues like i think i should pay my dues and i should learn how to build x business before i um you know try and grab somebody to come help me do it and i think i may have got bogged down in the learning a little bit too long um i think that it could have grown faster quicker but and that's something that i'm learning now is that actually like the blitz scaling idea you know it doesn't need to be perfect.

23:00And now my mindset is, okay, we grow as big as we can, as fast as we can. And if things break along the way, that's fine. As long as we keep the quality high and keep our customers happy. Like that's the key thing. Let's focus in on that. If things break, it's going to be fine type thing. I think a lot of people get panicked about that. Did you have to shift your mindset? What happened to make that your reality? I had to break a lot of stuff. And what? And realize you didn't die from it? What's the theory? Yeah, it comes back down to the crisis thing. You know, like, you know, I think just over years of being punished over and over again, you kind of learn that actually all my good stuff comes out of failure and crisis and things breaking.

23:43So I'm not afraid of it. I don't like it. I'm not afraid of it. And I know that actually in order to scale, I need to break things. So I need to break my capital raise. I need to break my marketing. I need to break these things constantly and I need to screw up. And if I do that nine times out of 10, I'm going to come out with my pod with a great idea to fix it. And honestly, when I talk to anyone about scale, like yourself and Terry and everyone, it's, if you just settle, if you settle for a million bucks, then you'll be at 700 for a long time. You want to build a million dollar company. You're stuck at seven,$800 ,000.

24:22dollars if you if you set your intentions and you set your focus actually do you know what i'm gonna build a hundred million dollar company and in the case of our conversation a year ago was five million does what you do a billion let's work on a billion dollars and if we hit 600 million damn so it's just a mindset shift yeah so when you talk to people because when you when you have conversations and you show people a billion dollar business plan does it scare them excite them what what's your reality around showing that and sharing that with people i've uh been burnt a lot with this um and i think that's one of the key learnings for me in the last few years is pick the people that you share your vision with correctly um and because some i used to share everything with everyone um in the company especially and in businesses and people some people just wouldn't get it and it wouldn't it would do more harm than good um and i would always you know people i have my team now like josh different different group different group so it's like uh i think you know if you need to have people around you that are going to love the idea of a billion dollar company um and if you've not got that around you need to find it because if you don't, you ain't going to get there.

25:42You need someone that's going to help support you. So if I was to say Josh's top two or three lessons around dreaming big, what are the top two or three things that you say to make me dream big, this is what happened or this is what I had to learn? Experience it. Explain that one more. I think that going and putting myself in an environment where I was around the people that had these amazing stories and amazing experience and you know going to places like different events or um you know things that I wanted to get into like Formula One and and different sports and different things that I just dream about and going on the boat stuff getting there and talking to people they're actually real nice most of the time um and successful people want to share why they're successful and i got into a lot of extremely insane situations just by asking um and i've traveled the world i've done amazing things i've talked to billionaires i've lived in a house with one i've done all the things and that just came from me being like you've done this can i learn from you um and they always say yes every time all right let's go into the lightning round uh josh your opinions fast short sharp answers how do you succeed at goal setting

27:13i have a funny relationship with goals but i would say that my goals goal setting needs to be done in a way where it can be tracked back to the activities you do today so as long as you can start with the end in mind you can track it back to right this moment and it's got daily management tools to get you there, fine. If you're not, I wouldn't bother. How about self-development? How do you succeed in self-development? Do as much of it as possible. I think when your energy is high in business at the start, that's like your absolute critical moment because it will diminish. Your love of books and education, it will diminish.

27:52My appetite for learning now is not the same as it was five years ago. I read 15 of your books in about three weeks in college because I had nothing else to do and I loved it and you know it's so when you've got that critical moment get in just take everything in as possible and then the the key thing with maintaining um self-improvement is discipline I treat myself discipline as like I'm training for an Ironman so it's in my calendar it has to be done it's like I'm trained I'm going to the gym yeah and I've got to the point now my education has changed so I consume an awful lot with video and audio and so i try to do more things i try to do more at the same time how do you succeed at uh having fun like enjoying it in the journey not just uh doing the work some of my team would say i'm not quite there yet um using i use but come back to my marketing theory yeah it's aspiration like i like to do aspirational things and take myself out of environments and go to things.

28:54And, you know, I always had a dream of going to the F1. I go to the F1 and instead of going to normal F1, I'll go and sit in the paddock club and just experience these amazing things. And it just recenters me. I'm not one for being extravagant too often, but like you need to kind of recenter your why and like why I'm doing this is very important. How do you succeed at wealth? that is something i love so discipline spend far less than you earn and be diligent with your budgeting like i am earning my way right now i i spend very i spend as little money as possible i'm doing that through discipline i could spend a lot more money than i'm spending right now but i've had the same budget i had three years ago and i'm definitely a lot more wealthy now than i was three years ago.

29:45And I thought to myself, I will continue to do that until the next 10 years. And I think discipline with wealth, you'll agree with me there. I think you said to me, Josh, don't worry about it right now. Just make it for your 40s. Yeah. Mark Cuban's idea of live like a student for the rest of your life. Very important. How do you succeed at health? but see being an entrepreneur is you tend to lean on convenience and in a city convenience doesn't always mean healthy and I learned that the hard way and you know have a few issues with health in the past and it mostly comes down to what you consume and you know I tend not to drink caffeine anymore and things like that and I always have a race or something that I'm doing.

30:37So I'm doing an Ironman in June. I know that's kind of crazy, but it keeps me actually working out because I'm, as you said, a goal-hungry person. If I don't have something that I'm working towards, I won't do it. So have goals with your health and work towards them. Brilliant. Josh, final question. What's the best advice or the best quote you ever read on the subject of success?

31:03the best the best advice um i've ever heard and and continue to come back to is is two two things one is just focus every day on putting one step forward um don't worry about everything that's going on around you and then and that was that was from the main man warren buffett and the other one was spend far less than you earn. Simple stuff. I love it. This is the Big Success Podcast. You've been listening this week. We'll be back next week with another amazing guest. Click on all the links, connect with Josh, learn his marketing stuff, be good, keep learning, and we'll be back and you'll get more success next week.

31:44And that's the Big Success Podcast for today. Hopefully you took a lot of notes. Hopefully you learned a bunch and hopefully you're going to take action on it. BS, Brad Sugars, Big Success, take action. Check all the show notes for all of the links. So I make sure that you have links to every single thing that every speaker has in our show notes. Check them now, click the links, take advantage of it, and I'll speak to you again next time on the Big Success Podcast. You've been listening to the Big Success Podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit www.bradsugars.com.