The Social Media Lessons Every Founder Needs with Chris James | Backed by Funding Circle

0:03Chris James:This episode is brought to you by Funding Circle, business finance that backs you. Chris, welcome to the podcast. What up? Thanks for having me. No worries. We like to kick off the same way every time. Who are you and what problem do you solve? My name is Chris James. I help people who doubt themselves, who are actually experts, make money from it and not doubt themselves. All right. We've got a lot of big money business questions for you. Let's go. So I'll hit you with the first one. What do business owners need to understand about cash flow? About cash flow? Yeah. I think the main thing that you need to understand is the levers that unlock it first and foremost, because there are leading and lagging indicators, obviously, of your financial situation, cash flow being one of them.

0:52so all the way from visibility through to lead gen through to a number of offers and calls that you make all these little like open micro conversions are going to increase that cash flow i am not a cash flow expert there is one just off camera but my my whole my whole thesis on it has always been collect as much as you can up front

1:14Chris James:i like it what what uh what advice would you give to someone before they're about to borrow money Before they're about to borrow me. Yeah, so if it's like I'm going through the funding journey, I'm thinking about kind of getting investment or like taking it to the next level. Is there any advice you'd give to anyone in that game? I have no idea what I would say to that. I've not been in that situation. I literally don't even have a fucking credit card. The only money I owe is on the mortgage and I want to pay that off in the next three years. Have you always been like that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, scared.

1:44Wow. Be scared. Risk averse. No, you know, common sense would apply If we're not looking for a business answer, it's just like, you know, how much are you going to have to pay back? How soon? And is it achievable given the trajectory that you're currently on? Nice. Okay. And then you probably speak to a lot of people who are maybe starting the first business or at least starting to take the side hustle seriously or something like that. Let's say someone's listening who's got the business idea and tomorrow's day one. What's the first thing they should do? Try to speak to as many warm people as possible.

2:19don't i i think you should build businesses backwards right go on so you start in my opinion you start working out what's the like basically how you want to spend your week first and foremost like obviously it's going to have to be a little bit more aggressive at the start of building a business right um but after that how much money do you want to make so you're really center of the dartboard what do i want and how do i want to live um and then you can start thinking about the business and you design some form of offer that is actually capable of you getting there without overworking, because I think that's massive and you don't really think about it.

2:49After that, how do you make that sound compelling? How do you go and get feedback, social proof, introductions and cash? And I think that comes from your existing network first. If I don't know you and I say, hey, do you want to buy this thing? I've just put it together. You're going to be like, who the hell are you? So I think a lot of business advice is, oh, go mass market, go and speak to as many people as you can. But actually, just go to those closest to home. So I'm with my friend Zoe here and someone asked me this question before. I was like, well, I would just ring someone like Zoe who I'm quite close with, who I know has a load of people who can either get me the introductions I need or can say, that's shit.

3:25Don't sell it. Change this bit. Or you should charge more or whatever. And that first, I reckon like 30 days of you going hell for leather, you boys know how many calls you can make in a day if you need to. I used to work in cold calling environment, 220 calls every single day. You can do volume in six, seven, eight hours if you need to. but most people are trying to get all the other bits right like the content and the profile and the branding and the fucking tea cozies and all the stuff that like the stationery and all that first no just that's like the iceberg the tip of the iceberg you need all the stuff underneath it so i think engineering from the thing you want to sell getting feedback then how you're going to convert people then how you're going to get people into that conversion mechanism then worry a little bit more about your top of funnel marketing and going viral and shit nice there's there's so many

4:12Chris James:people in the field today if we gave you access to all of their ears well what's the one piece of business advice you'd want to pass on just one just one um can i borrow the strap line that you put at the end of everything you can borrow it yeah but along those lines right like i'll do another version of that strap line because it helps me out a lot of the time um no one gives a shit so just go and do exactly what you would want to do and plan to do and hope to do um i had a good frame that was given to me by a business mentor a while ago he's like right before offers me and i want you to write down how you want your life to look when you were like 70 80 and you're retired so obviously i did all the classic i want a nice car i want swimming pool or be able to enjoy time with my kids and i met up with him and i gave it to him and he's like nice nice he's like let's just start doing that now.

5:07Or let's do that next year. Oh yeah.

5:11Chris James:Why have I not thought of that? Don't put it on hold. Just condense the time. Just do it now. I will be confident. We'll just be confident now or whatever. Yeah. What advice then do you think people should ignore? A lot of it, man. The worst advice. Oh God, I really don't have a quick answer for this. I've had some seriously bad advice in my time I think it kind of going with what I've just said, you know, it's like getting all your ducks in a row and thinking that there is only one route to market or to success and following, and I've done it myself, guilt, very guilty of it, like copying other people's stuff because you see them having success, but actually you end up with a carbon copy of their business that you end up fucking hating or their life or their calendar or whatever it is.

5:57And I've done it so many times, whether that's with big brands or big personal brands that I admire or smaller brands as well. so finding out your own way and just having a little bit of trust in the process rather than expecting results now because you like hopped on a trend or copied someone nice with with all the

6:14Chris James:successful people you've met what what do you think is the most underrated skill in business time management the ability to block out shit that is irrelevant to the next or the big goal so i think if you if you can manage your time to the point where you're like there are you know the uh the quadrant out of the what's the eisenhower matrix out of the seven habits of highly effective people um a lot of people being completely reactive to stuff that actually if you just press pause on it for like fucking a day it'll just evaporate but they're just rushing to answer the emails or get to the slack notifications or whatever it is when actually if you just stay focused on what's probably a little bit more boring and a bit more monotonous and doing the thing that you know needs to be done deep down i think that's the superpower and it comes down to i think managing your calendar effectively knowing that the right priorities are in there reactive time i had a friend that like she used to schedule worry time which I think is brilliant.

7:24Wow. So something will come up and it'll be like oh fuck that ain't very good and she will go well worry time is on Tuesdays at four so I'll just put it in the worry box for then and it worked for her. Yeah it's just like a little like a mental model to like not have to worry about stuff now like I'll give this the time and attention it needs but just not now it's not a bigger focus or a better focus or something more important. That's a great show. In short focus. I'm going to nick that Tuesdays at 4 only though Tuesdays at 4 see you next Tuesday the people that work with you what do you think is the difference between the ones who get what they set out and get what they want out of it and maybe the people who missed the mark

8:09lower expectations and higher standards so that's again something I tell myself quite a bit we all expect a lot of ourselves because all we're comparing ourselves to as people who are fucking so successful on LinkedIn or whatever. And if we can just learn to, one, I think like kind of ignore a lot of what other people say, because like everyone says, it's a highlight reel. But if you can lower the expectations of yourself and just go, you know what? This might take a year, not a month. Then you're probably more likely to succeed. But at the same time, if you up your standards, now you guys were talking about running on the on the previous podcast i pinged my car for a while ago and it really pissed me off because running's really therapeutic for me you know when you do it you know how good it is for the clarity and the endorphins afterwards and i wanted to get back to just running 8ks but i just had to start at like doing two and i was like oh i'll just increase the standard to two and then actually i want to run eight normally so i just worked my way up i I was like, I will do a load of 10s because then the eight is easy.

9:15And I think increasing your standards will increase the likelihood of success.

9:21Chris James:Nice. And then final question, what advice would you give to someone that's trying to win their first customer? First customer? Oh, God. One, it will come. Like, it will happen and it'll probably happen faster than you thought. But, well, I'll take that off. Someone might have told you that it'll happen very easily. What would I tell someone who's going to win their first, trying to win their first ever client? I think it would be going back to what we said earlier, right? Just go and speak to people and try and get as many introductions into that golden circle of your target market as possible.

10:05um it's all most people think they can get clients just through content i think and they get really disgruntled when the content doesn't attract any any inquiries i think you're much more likely to get there especially at the start through conversations one-on-one conversations rather than one-to-many like broadcasting through content so literally i would treat if i had to do it i would treat like backs against the wall i would treat every day like that call center and I would be making 100, 200 phone calls. And I wouldn't, you know, you guys probably know this, booking meetings. If your car broke down, you're not going to fucking DM the AA, are you?

10:48They're not going to, they're going to take a while to get back. What are you going to do? You're going to ring them because that's a two-way conversation. It's open communication. So just go to the fastest, most responsive channel you possibly can reach that people that like target market on and just ask them i'll be very direct about jack i need a favor i need a little bit of feedback on this thing also i need you to like intro me to a couple of people on whatsapp while we're on this call now is that cool wow i just like obviously assuming that i knew you a little bit yeah yeah right now okay we're in the podcast but yeah just like you have to be a bit aggressive at the start and you're gonna get knocked back be ready for rejection like it it fucking hurts but no one ever did anything good by hearing the word yes a hundred times they heard like 60 no's another way i've heard it framed before which i think is great is go and collect a hundred no's just go and get a hundred people to say no to you because you'll get a yes before you get to 100 of course you will amazing well chris thank you so so much for joining us welcome that was quick fire that was quick fire thank you for having me Thanks, mate.

11:54Chris James:This episode is brought to you by Funding Circle. To find out how you can get fast, fair and hassle-free finance for your business, visit FundingCircle.com.