Van Man To Multi Millionaire - How To Scale Your Business To 7 Figures

16:19Jack Frimston:So when you think about social skills, you've actually given away a few of your trade secrets, but when you think about things that have really served you, whether it's touch we were talking about before or other things, what are the things that you think, if I was to write a book right now on social skills, these are definitely going in?

16:34James Martin:If it was about social skills, I think that be yourself and don't be a cartoon character of what you think you should projecting. You know, if you've got a northern accent, use your northern accent. If you've got a nervous disposition, bring it forward in the conversation. Sorry, I'm a bit shy, but I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Be you. Be you. And that will always serve you because I think people are very smart at seeing when they're being bullshitted or they're being hoodwinked to something. Someone will come with their telephone voice. Oh, hello there. Nice to meet you. I love your big posh house.

17:14James Martin:Well, I would go to a big posh house and I would go, hi there, blimey, I love your house. God, I'd love a house like this. Now, how are we going to do this work? Because it's a lot of work and it looks like it's going to cost a lot of money. But I know you won't want to pay a lot of money. But when you talk about a fence around your house, it's a massive fence. So there's going to be quite a bit of money involved. How much fence do you want? And try and get with the person, with their problem that they've got to do. with social skills. I've talked about this thing about touching from the top of the shoulder to the wrist.

17:48James Martin:Make sure you do interact with people. Grab their arm. Be sincere. Be honest with people. You know, I'd love to do the work. We're only a little company at the moment. I don't think we can actually afford to do all that at the minute. Well, yeah, but I really like you, so why don't you just come in and start doing a bit and we'll grow with you. You know, I think that truthfulness, what we were talking about AI off air, and I was saying to you both that I think that as soon as we see that it's AI manipulated, we're off, we scroll away from it. But when we're seeing real authentic content or an authentic person, we'll want to support them and go with them because we want them to be, we want them actually to be successful and we would prefer to support them than something that's being manipulated.

18:36James Martin:We don't want to be manipulated.

18:38Zac Thompson:Entrepreneurs are typically only as good as the people that are surrounding them. What have you learned about finding great talent?

18:47James Martin:What have I learned about finding great talent? It doesn't live where you think it lives. It doesn't live in... Is this for employees?

18:59Zac Thompson:Yeah, employees, part of your team.

19:01James Martin:It doesn't live in college degrees and degrees. That's where it doesn't live. I want people to come that are hard-working, happy people with an experience that they can share with us and that they've got a knowledge of working with others, being responsible for the work they've got to do. And, I mean, if I meet somebody and I think they're really good, I might even offer them a job if I haven't got a job for them because I'll find something for them because I think they're that good. So I've done that in the past. Even Ollie here working with us now, Ollie used to work for us as a subcontractor, and now he works full-time with us, and he's a great asset to the business because he's very good at what he does.

19:48James Martin:He works well with the rest of the team. Sometimes you can have a superstar, and you think, will they ever work with the rest of the people in this particular business? Not really, and you might have to let them go because you can't see that they would fit in because they're quite opinionated. They're very good at what they do, but that wouldn't work with the rest of the team.

20:06Zac Thompson:And then what have you learned about culture and building that throughout the years?

20:11James Martin:I think it's crucial. If you don't want to be in the business every day, you have to create a microclimate of culture that works when you're not there. We're not standing behind people with a stick saying, do it this way, do it this way. I want people to do it their way with stewardship from me and a narrative on storytelling of what we're trying to do for the customer, be it a service, a product, a venue, whatever we're doing. And I will do my Tuesday meetings with all the managing directors of all the companies that I own come together. So in the group, everybody can relate to other people. There's people running warehousing rentals for us.

20:52James Martin:There's people doing weddings. There's people doing outside works for us. They all come into that room. And I might do a little bit of, you know, mentoreting where I say, look guys we've got to get better at smiley faces you know even when you're on the mower i don't care that you're trying to you know get your head down and get stripes on the lawn if a guest comes stop the mower get off and say hello smiley face you know we're here to invite people

21:17Jack Frimston:onto the estate can i ask uh you've got a controversial opinion on firing are you

21:24James Martin:comfortable sharing i've done it on other pods and talks and stuff like that i have zero tolerance for when you've got someone that is causing disruptive or being, you know, an atmosphere vampire and the rest of the team are being hampered by it, then you don't work for me anymore. And when it's brought to my attention that there's been sort of two or three incidences that are not working and, you know, should we start notifying them down and giving them warning letters? Absolutely not. When the decision is made, and I've spoke to the managing line managers or directors of that company come to me and they kind of know now, I will sit down with them and let them sack themselves in front of me by saying, you know, this is not working.

22:08James Martin:I know you feel it's not working because you're feeling the need to have to say the things that you're saying to the other staff. So let's grab all your bits and pieces and part company. And I've commonly done it where I've just doubled their severance pay. And you can either sue me or not, but today's your last day. Thank you very much. And if you need a reference, I'll give you a reference. That's it. And then they can go away and make their decision on what they want to do. But that's the end of their time working for us. And you'll see the energy in the team and everything that comes out after that particular person has left all comes up, everything starts working again.

22:45James Martin:I have respect from the team because I address the situation fast. Can I just say, I'm not sacking people week on week.

22:53Jack Frimston:These are very rare occasions

22:55James Martin:because I'm trying to get it right with hiring slow. We were talking off air about the process of doing interviews and how that works.

23:08James Martin:Kylie, who you met here earlier, there was a job as a new wedding coordinator and it's a very good job. And we had about 130 requests for the job, then shuffled down to 30, then that shuffled down to five. I've not been involved in any of this and I only met the last three of that and I literally sat in the corner and listened to the interviews and that was great and then right at the end I might have come forward and said that my famous question is it's very nice for you to present because we get them to present to us what they're going to be able to achieve for us and I said what do you see yourself where do you see yourself in the next five years time What do you see as her?

23:55James Martin:And she said the right answer. I see myself here with a more responsible role, working hard to make weddings happen smoothly. That's the right answer. You've got the job, baby. That was it. And she's a very, very good lady, very experienced, worked for a big wedding venue before, and just a great asset to the team. You know, great.

24:16Jack Frimston:We've got to spend a bit of time with you today, and I've also listened to a few podcasts that you've guested on and the ones that you've hosted yourself, and I've spotted a theme with the way that you talk about businesses you've worked in, the way you talk about Baddow Park, the way you talk about businesses you're involved in, you always say it's probably a bit more money than the other people in the space or it's probably a bit more expensive or we're not the cheapest in the space. What's the reason for putting that foot forward?

24:40James Martin:Because I think you can sell any service and product if you can actually demonstrate the value. So on price point, so many companies come to me and they haven't got the price point right. They're too scared to put the price up. But if you can show there is true value in you being the more expensive wedding venue for a minute, but if you're the most expensive wedding venue, why? So we went on a campaign to show the people that are going to run your day for you at Baddow Park, the people behind the curtain, from the chefs to the gardeners, estate managers, to workers, meet and greeters. We got them on video, out on social media.

25:19James Martin:so when they went to price this pile of bricks wedding for this pile of bricks wedding you went you can't do on price point because you do not get the team and the team are highly trained professional outfit with lots of experience to give you a seamless day that is managed to an inch of its life to make sure everything goes well and they can deal with crises they can deal with you know a number of things that they had the experience to do it and that's the difference If you're doing, when we were in the tree surgery world, and when we were, we're still in it. We still have men going out daily doing tree surgery.

25:54James Martin:There's a huge team out today. The clearing up at the end of the day is immaculate. Not a job in progress. We clear up like we were going to leave. We're back there tomorrow, but it will be immaculate. And the reason for that is the customer does not necessarily know how technically you take a tree down or you prune a tree. but they know if they've got sawdust all over their car or they know if they've got sawdust all over the lawn or if the gate's been left open, whatever. So part of our training of those teams that work, you know, for us in that business is they know how to leave that space.

26:28And that's fine.

26:30James Martin:We just work on that we're not the cheapest but we turn up on time. We get back to you on email. Our communication skills are excellent. We have Lisa that is head of communications for all of the companies and she makes sure that all of those things... And this is a luxury when you've got a bigger outfit going, that you can put someone that's head of communications. A very, very intelligent, experienced person used to work for BT. Guess what? She now works for us. But she's been trained for 10 ,000 hours with BT on new projects in the country. She's just the best. She makes sure everybody knows where everything is and what they've got to do, from worksheets to products to whatever we're doing.

27:10Zac Thompson:A lot of entrepreneurs are like blue sky thinkers, which you are as well. But I think they're always thinking about the next thing. Why do you think, if you think about like where you grew up, why do you think you sweat the small stuff so much?

27:26James Martin:I think the famous saying is the devil is in the detail. I don't think you've got any choice to do that if you want to be a success. I think it is the small stuff that matters. Carrying on with the theme of this business, because it's easy to use the analogy of it, if you come to a wedding on the Saturday and then on the Tuesday when you meet somebody at work, they go, oh, how was the wedding? I know you went to that wedding, how was it? The correct answer if you went to a Baddow Park wedding is this. Oh, my God, it was unreal. It was just fantastic. So what was it like? It was just great. But this could be from another wedding venue.

28:02James Martin:How was the wedding? Oh, it was great, but the staff were miserable. oh it was fantastic but the food was cold oh no it was great but we didn't know where to park the car oh no it was really good but it's really noisy you couldn't hear yourself think oh it was great but the toilets were horrible by 10 o 'clock they were just wrecked well we know that and we pay attention to that so i think you don't have any choice but to but to absolutely sweat the small stuff because i think the small stuff gives you clarity to the repeat or to the to the message going out by others being turned into superstar um i call them mavens for your business you know i was asking you guys where do you get your customers from and you were saying that it's a lot of it is from referral because they're raving fans of what you've done for them and they want to show off to their friends to say no no no i've got just the guys for you to get leads done

28:56Zac Thompson:these guys know how to nail it and off you go um i want to get some brutally honest advice james so like please be brutal please don't hold back me and zach have been running the business together for five years now and obviously we've been best friends for 15 years i've seen a lot of stuff online of your viewpoint of like working with friends and having the right things in place to protect you later on down the line luckily i know he doesn't seem like a trustworthy guy but i do trust him um for us in this position splitting the business what what advice would you give us

29:33James Martin:I mean, it's scary because you don't even mention he who should not be seen. You just talk about you two. And we've not even mentioned him, have we? He's not come up. Oh, of course, no.

29:43Jack Frimston:We won't wave to him either.

29:43Zac Thompson:Let's pretend for this podcast he doesn't exist. How can you do that?

29:49Jack Frimston:We won't be saying it. Shot. That's your thumbnail.

29:54James Martin:No. That's unbelievable. I think... I'm out of here.

30:03James Martin:not for me thank you no friends no family i need to run the ship i i i in my i'm 63 so i've got an older approach to it in my opinion guys there has to be a dictator to run the company at a velocity and i think there's loads of people and it doesn't make it wrong well i think we'll just huddle along and make a few decisions and have a debate and do that. I am a true-blooded entrepreneur at speed. You meet entrepreneurs, they walk quicker than other people. They want stuff done unreasonably fast. You know, I get berated by my staff. Well, you know, we've only got two hands. We can't do it. You know, we've got a broom stuck up our arse.

30:46James Martin:We're sweeping and moving. You know, I am unreasonable with what my approach is. And I don't see that slowing down. I never want to retire. I want to die buying a commercial property in my 90s. Yes, please. That's what I'd love to do. Inheritance. Should we do that quickly? Inheritance. Yeah. Well, we need to make it very, you know, so it's all organised for the children. Well, I don't care. I'm dead. They'll be getting quite a lot of stuff anyway. We'll make it sort of, OK, but if they're paying 42 % on it, well, oh, well. It's still a ton of money, but if I'm going to manipulate my whole world to make sure the inheritance is right, not necessarily.

31:29James Martin:You know, guys, you're getting to the who is James Martin. I'm a very accomplished business owner but it wasn't from being kissing babies and puppies, you know. You work for me, you work for me. Ollie is an employee with us in here today, our video career and producer. he works really hard. I will phone him at 11 o 'clock at night with an idea or ping him stuff across there. I am very demanding. But if you want to come along for that ride of excellence and progression, then I'm your man.

32:05Jack Frimston:The other thing that would be interesting to hear your opinion on is people are being sold. The UK is not a good place to be an entrepreneur and get yourself out to Dubai. What's your thoughts on that?

32:16James Martin:I don't hold with it. I'm a royalist. I like the royal family. I think they're a big ambassador for this company. You know, let's not go down the government route. Rachel Fees and Toy Boy Silly, you know, it's just, yeah, give us a break. You know, the whole taxation thing on entrepreneurs and business owners is just absolutely ridiculous. But this is United Kingdom. Do you know what I mean? This is Britain, you know, and this is where I'm born and this is where my companies are. And this is what I want to absolutely make an economy come back. And why I do my Instagram posts every day and I do the podcast and the rest of it is to try and make the journey for wannabe business people and entrepreneurs faster into the economy without the real brutal scars that I've gone through.

33:08James Martin:And it's only because of them scars that I can actually have an authoritative opinion of how to do it because I've been there and cocked up many, many times. But in my senior years, I'm kind of getting it down now and I can sniff something that doesn't work very quickly.

33:25Jack Frimston:So the goals that you were talking about, big money that's flown around, there's things that you're still doing, I know people can't see, but we're at Battle Park, a wedding venue that you own, it's amazing. You've probably achieved so much more than you thought maybe you would if I was talking to you at 18. No, I'm absolutely pissed off.

33:41James Martin:I don't feel like a success whatsoever. Absolutely don't. I mean, with my hand on my heart, I'm pissed off that I didn't find audio books and buddying up a knowledge and community of entrepreneurs in my 30s. I only found it in my late 40s because I think I could be doing a lot bigger and better things from that bounce platform earlier. but I'm trying to make up for it now and we're buying more companies, we're buying more real estate and I will build towards doing that. I said to you off air, what is the point? When is enough enough? When do you feel like you're a success? My successes are now watching other people grow and become great at what they do and very successful.

34:27James Martin:That is where I do feel successful and I can add spades of value but I really, I really, really and pissed that I haven't been able to achieve more with what was dealt with me. I'm annoyed at myself that I didn't work harder in my youth to get things right. I worked too hard. That's what I'm trying to get. Let's get that again. I didn't work smart early enough. I worked hard. And I thought if I worked hard, had three holidays, drove a Range Rover, I was a success. How wrong was I? It was about being smart, building a team, being creative, making that you had more people around you supporting you so you could move quicker.

35:14Jack Frimston:What would be different though? What do you mean? Compared to where you are now. So we're coming here today to see you. What would we notice that would be different?

35:22James Martin:Well, there'd be 10 of these in a chain. We'd have like 20 times the commercial real estate and I would have got on that a lot earlier. um i wouldn't i definitely wouldn't be in the planning permission game it's too long-winded and and and it is just it's not very fun either it's not it's not creative you just put a planning application and you might get it you might not you know and you got buy land that's perspective and stuff um great wins but the taxation on the wins was you sell something for say 12 million quid and in the next 18 months you have to pay if you if you're geared in this way say 48 percent of that in tax where I'd much prefer to have real estate that is on a rental commercial basis where I have to pay tax on the profits but I can roll the profits into building bigger and better real estate or polishing the real estate there to get better yield out of it and I'm in more control of when the tax is paid and how I do it and I can also have a lifestyle out of having that real estate especially with the wedding venue you know if I want a birthday party I'll have it in my own venue and it will be it will be it will be catered for at cost we've we've spoke with a lot of

36:34Zac Thompson:wealthy people wealthy entrepreneurs and from from the conversations i've had with you so far it doesn't there's no like level of flashness so how how much do you feel that money motivation

36:46James Martin:is dragging you towards where you want to go the money metrics of what you buy and what it yields is very pacific and i and i want to you know i want to make sure that i score that right but when you're in my situation you know I don't spend a lot of money a year you know if I'm spending you know I don't know 150 200 grand that's all I spend on a few holidays flights and stuff that I do most of my dinners are paid for by by the company because I'm usually at dinner with other entrepreneurs having conversations you know it I have been there with a stable of posh cars and all the rest of it you know it's not about that it's about being creative with teams of people having a career for me I really get off on that I want to see people grow I want them to be a success and not to have a job with me I want them to have a lifetime career that used to be an old-fashioned thing now people having 10-15 jobs well I disagree with that I want people to stay in for the long ride but they can only do that with someone that's empathetic to their work ethic for me because I'm not here.

37:57James Martin:I do not run these businesses. I said to you earlier in this off air, I have no keys. I struggle to get in gates because I don't know the codes. And that's how I like it because they're responsible for running the businesses for me.

38:11Zac Thompson:So it feels like all of your boxes and your basic needs are ticked.

38:15James Martin:Yeah.

38:15Zac Thompson:But actually the only reason that you keep going is purely for opportunities.

38:20James Martin:I definitely don't keep going because I need to go. I do it because I love and enjoy it and I passionately keep young from it. The stat is in your 60s from this death-defying word of retirement to playing golf to not having to do things in your head, the death is five years average. It was a Guardian thing done about four or five years ago. So that ticks on my mind. My health is my other big priority at the moment. You know, I make sure I am fit and I do routines every single morning from swimming to Tai Chi to whatever I'm going to do to keep myself fit. I think we had a conversation earlier about how entrepreneurs abuse themselves and let themselves go because they're under so much pressure, man.

39:13James Martin:I don't know what I'm going to do. You know, get out your own way. Get off the sob story. Be fit. So you are ready to bring my saying, my language that I use is you bring the weather to your company with enthusiasm and fitness that others emulate around you. You know, they do. People do become clones of you when you're around them. You know, you become clones of others around you. You know, get in a better room with better people.

39:43Jack Frimston:You said something interesting before as well. You said, looking back, you wish you'd got into commercial property earlier. Earlier, yeah. What do you think people get wrong and what did you get wrong about commercial property?

39:54James Martin:I started buying houses and I bought a great portfolio of houses with a partner and that was the big mistake. lots of lag lots of of of uh taxation changed on that portfolio uh a lot of it was very fiddly and clunky you know we were at the need of that person living in that house all the time then she's having a baby then she's not paying rent and now we've got eight months lag and we've got to be in a horrible gear and kick her out and she's got a baby now what do we do where do you take that decision so to get away from that was was the best thing we sold that portfolio that was gone So now commercial property, they're responsible for it.

40:35James Martin:They have a full repairing lease. If the roof leaks, they repair it. It is a lot smarter model. And you can't build commercial property now and get a profit out of it for the first 10 years. The building costs are too expensive with land costs here in the southeast. And if you go to the northwest or you go further afield, the land costs are lower but the building costs are still the same so you the model gets runs longer so you now need to find uh poorly managed and and maintained commercial property and then polish it up and turn it into a a business a business estate into a business park with mixed use of office and container storage to factories whatever it might be that you've got an ecosystem system happening on your site.

41:27James Martin:And I'm very passionate about that. And I do it because I have a team that have been around me for many, many years that are very good at doing that. Some of that's in-house and some of that's on subcontractors.

41:37Jack Frimston:What's the truth about this no money down concept where you can buy stuff and not have any money to your name?

41:43James Martin:I think you can buy commercial property no money down if you're buying businesses where the commercial property lives within it. But you can't just buy a commercial property with no money down. Well, you'll be very lucky because they'll want to realise something very early. And if you're in the South East, the commercial property was rare as hen's teeth. With the economy of the way it is now, there is more commercial property around. But if you can buy a company that owns commercial property or operates from commercial property, then you can do a deal with a vendor. Companies are a lot more difficult to sell than a freehold business with a tenant.

42:18James Martin:They're clunky companies. They might have skeletons in there. You might do a deal where you come in with warranties of what you're going to do with that, and the banks won't lend 100 % to a company situation. But they could take the real estate as collateral, and then you pay the rest over three years.

42:34Zac Thompson:James, I've absolutely loved this conversation, so thank you so much. It's been great to spend some time with you today. We always ask the guests, if someone's listened to the whole episode all the way through, what's one question that they should ask themselves?

42:46James Martin:Are you prepared to go on the prickly journey of being responsible for yourself and everybody else. Because when you start employing people and the cock-ups and trip-ups happen, it's all down to you. Do you want to do that madness, weirdo journey? And if you're not really prepared to put that much work in, then go and get a job. Because your life would be a lot easier.

43:12James Martin:I absolutely think we are nuts when you look at what money we take out and how smart we are. All of us, the three of us around this table, could go and get a hundred grand job tomorrow. And we probably, I mean, I'm taking that and a little bit more, but we're probably only just about taking it out for ourselves. And we don't sleep at night sometimes because that's what happens, you know. But you are in control of your own destiny. Now, if that's a big part of your world and what you want, then do it. But do it with stewardship. Find people that have been there before and buddy up with them to make it an easier, smoother journey.

43:47James Martin:you need scars absolutely but you sometimes don't need some as broad and deep that i've i carry and i'd like to get rid of them by sharing them and helping people get on nice and if people want to

43:59Zac Thompson:work with you they want to check you out how can they go about that um you find all platforms

44:04James Martin:linked into everything at james martin entrepreneur the podcast is james martin entrepreneur conversations um mastermind we do a mastermind thing go in instagram there are buttons to press there you and get my letter. My musings of the week. What does my brain look like on the inside? Every week delivered to your email address, free of charge. So that's the pitch. But I've also really enjoyed your company today. And we're going out to dinner tonight, so it's going to be great. It's not really that type of party. Come on, mate. Oh, God. Have you invited us? It's not a DJ. There's not karaoke. I thought you were the DJ.

44:41James Martin:Thank you so much, James. Thanks, James. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

44:49Thank you.