- I mean, I get so cross if I'm doing repeatable tasks.
I'm like, literally, so cross with myself.
So that I can justify that this is not a one off task
I need to make sure that it's recorded
so that he can take some snippets out of this
and turn it in to content
that will continue to work for me forever.
So that 10 minutes that I just spoke to you,
will carry on working for me.
And this is one of my most favorite of favorite phrases,
again Bill Gates' phrase,
"Most people overestimate what can be done in a year,
"but underestimate what can be done in 10 years."
And that's what sets that man apart.
And people tell you you haven't got time to think,
"I haven't got time to do that",
I just think "shut up"
(laughing)
Shut up.
(mellow music)
So you wanna pull opportunities to you
rather than push for opportunities.
You need to build yourself a personal brand
by putting stuff out, primarily I would focus on LinkedIn,
giving good quality advice, never selling.
Over a period of 12 months
that will pull opportunities towards you,
if you do it consistently and it's good enough to watch.
What most people do is they make 10 videos and go
"this isn't working" you know,
you need to think of yourself like Disney,
it's got a back catalog of 100 years of stuff.
Now I'm not saying you have wait 100 years,
but you know, it takes time for this stuff to kick in.
That will really work.
In terms of what your role is in the business,
the person that you use, you've got as your part time
marketing apprentice should be doing admin, office work,
you need to be a full time marketeer.
So, you need to get in to the mindset when people say
"what do you do?"
You say you've got a recruitment business,
you need to be saying "I market a recruitment business."
So, you are the marketeer of your business,
rather than the operator of your business.
Most business owners,
and I'm gonna ask you now to give me a percentage scale,
what percentage of your time would you say you're
operating the business, and what percentage of time
are you getting customers and marketing it?
And what I tell you, if you focus 100% on getting customers
and growing the business, rather than running the business,
you will see the shoots of success within months.
And what will happen is, that's harder,
it is harder to be a full-time marketeer,
getting customers person.
Most people don't do that, they are running their business,
not growing their business.
Tiniest thing that I picked up,
what's your team?
When you're speaking about your team the first person
you spoke about was your marketing apprentice, your boy,
and I always tell business owners the first person
you should employ is a PA, and they're like
"whoa, ha! I've just started out in business,
"you wanna make me look like some macho VIP,
"lording it up with my PA!"
And I'm like "no", because, here's the thing right?
You want the best marketeer on the planet,
they're gonna wanna work for Apple, Google,
Facebook, or work in Mercedes or BMW,
where they'll get paid 150 grand to warm up people
that are already warmed to brand, and it's easy.
But when you're a business owner and entrepreneur,
you've got to become more of what we call
a direct marketeer, which is something very, very different.
You're a guerrilla marketeer looking for
warm leads that don't necessarily know they need you
and it's completely different to brand marketing,
making people aware of you,
you've got to find ready made leads really to grow
your business in the quickest and cheapest way possible.
I love telling this little story, one of my clients,
Dad works there, family business,
and the son is actually very good at business development
and his Dad is quite good at business development as well,
comes in from a long journey, they've got a warehouse,
and the son says to Dad "what you been up to today, Dad?
"Have you had a good time?
"What have you got done today?"
He said "I been on the forklift,
"I've sorted out the warehouse,
"look how tidy and clean it is."
And he said, "Dad, you know, James won't be very pleased
"about this, you're doing a £12 an hour task,
"when you could have gone and got us more customers
"for the whole day."
But Dad was literally over the moon that he'd sorted
the warehouse out, and made it look like a new pin.
It's very similar to clearing the garage at home,
you never do it but at the end it's like
"yeah look at my garage, it's completely tidy,
now this is fantastic."
Where really you'd be thinking how can I buy a bigger house
with more garages and employ someone to look after them.
And that's a completely different mindset
but it's the right mindset for a business owner.
The problem with those project things is
it's unleveraged work, and I will not do unleveraged work.
So what does unleveraged, leveraged work mean?
So, you've done it, you get paid, you gotta start again.
So I will never get involved with anything like that.
For me, leveraged work is buying a day nursery,
buying the freehold of that nursery,
doing all the work, but then it works forever.
So, writing a book, but you've got to find another
project, find another project, and it's very hard to
systemize 'cause every property's different.
Now you might say "yeah I always have that carpet,
"that same wall" so there's elements that you can leverage,
but you've always got to go and find the next deal,
so my advice to you, if it was me, I would be thinking
I'm gonna put my money in to something that's not
leveraged in terms of leveraging equity on properties
like leveraging your time.
Say you've got half a million quid, or 200 grand,
whatever it is, you put in something that you do the
work and it's something that I call "fit and forget"
that's why I love writing books, or making a new video.
I literally put the video together, I put it on YouTube,
and it will be there in 10 years working it's little
way for me, getting a few more views,
getting more people round my table like this.
I make a podcast, I do the work,
and it continues to work forever,
and that's why people always say to me,
"oh, why don't you do some commercial conversions?"
I say "'cause I leverage work, end of story, next!"
So, if you can make some decent money from it,
and if you're worried that your energy is going to wean off
over the next 20 years,
I always say when people get to 70,
you don't want a lump of capital,
you want continuous income, don't you?
I'm always thinking about leverage in terms of
can I leverage my team?
Can I leverage the work that I'm putting in to this?
I mean, I get so cross if I'm doing repeatable tasks.
I'm like literally so cross with myself,
why am I doing this?
Now I don't want to do the same thing more than once, ever.
So like this here, so that I can justify that this is not
a one off task I need to make sure that it is recorded
so that he can take some snippets out of this
and turn it in to content
that will continue to work for me forever,
so that 10 minutes that I've just spoken to you,
will carry on working for me.
I'm obsessed with it, to the point
- [Woman] I'll send you an invoice
(laughing)
- Literally.
You paid to be here. (laughing)
- [Woman] True.
Literally, literally to the point I will get the hump,
like properly get the hump if I feel like I've wasted time
and it can't continue to work for me.
Basically great businesses,
and I'm not gonna teach this toady,
have four transactions in quick succession.
That's what a great business is.
So a day nursery, you come in on the Monday,
you're there on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Private school, you pay on the Monday,
you use it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and continuously.
So, you have this what we call the rule of four.
So when a customer interacts with you quickly,
within four times, or whenever us as a human being,
we go on four quick dates with someone,
then they're usually husband and wife material,
it's like right if it's one date, well, you know,
I don't know if I'm gonna give 'em a chance
for the second date.
Now, actually they could be really good but unless you get
to date three or four you don't know whether you
like that other person.
So, I always look for business where you can,
so with here most of our customers only come once a year,
so Gerrard, you came over the summer holidays.
When did you last come here if you don't mind me asking?
- [Gerrard] This is the only time,
this is the first time we've been.
- Yeah, well we haven't got you back four times,
so we've got him, he's a customer of ours,
but he hasn't transacted with us four times.
So what we try and do is get them to become members,
so membership's only £5 per month here,
but it's £15 to come in on the door.
But, then we get them and they come and they pay us
each month and then they're loyal to us.
So a customer's only worth, to Marsh Farm, £30 a year,
if they become a member they're worth £100 a year.
And then we try and get them in to our day nursery
and on to our Father Christmas experience.
So that's why your HMO business is so good,
because they come in on the Monday and by Thursday
they've transacted with that room four times,
by sleeping in it, and it starts feeling like it's theirs.
So they don't just drop in and out,
you know, private school, day nursery,
unless you really muck up with the day nursery,
people are there until they go to school.
Basically a great business is where the customer loves it,
wants it, needs it.
The most exciting businesses are when, for an entrepreneur,
is when they love and want it, and they forget the need bit.
So when you think about this thing,
Apple iPhone.
I want an iPhone.
I need an iPhone.
But I also love my iPhone.
If this thing breaks today, I will go out of my way,
change my diary, to fix it.
If something bad happens in my day
I will forget my day out.
I won't go out for dinner,
am I making sense there?
When it comes to child care, private schools,
people need education for their children,
they want education for their children,
and if you speak to people,
where their children go to school or private school,
usually they love the school that their child goes to
and they pay handsomely for it.
And they love that.
And that is why.
It's like the dentist, like, if you've got pain,
you're really gonna love him if he sorts that pain out
and makes it goes away.
And you want and need it.
So therefore, it's not considered.
You know, who changes their dentist at a whim?
My dentist's been my dentist since I can remember.
'Cause I've transacted with him more than four times
therefore I've become really loyal.
Bank accounts, you know, you don't just sign up with a bank,
and then just go, do you know what,
I'll bank with Natwest on a Monday,
and d'you know I might move to Barclay's tomorrow.
They've got this way of getting you to transact
four times in quick succession.
Business is very tax efficient,
property is not as tax efficient as business.
You can sell a business, for example,
get entrepreneur's relief,
and chuck all the money in to property.
That is not the same way round.
So you can build up a profitable,
and maybe you're doing that for 36 months
to really fund as many deposits as possible.
'Cause what I always tell people when it comes to it,
if you really want a successful property business
you've got to find a way of getting deposits,
you know, and money will run out.
And you can only leverage them enough times.
So you need to have a cash in plan to get your cash out.
And I always tell people a business is the fastest way
to grow property.
If you put your nuts and bolts in to a business
for three years and just say, look, this business,
it's sole aim is to buy two properties a year.
(man drowned out by speaker)
Chance has seen me speak about this all the time,
and I always say to people when they're in that situation
you need to get out of environment.
Been saying it, it's one of my go to things.
You're trying to think about what your future looks like
in these spare moments that you have in our busy lives.
I tell people you need to get out of environment
and put some decent quality time.
Now, over the weekend, I watched a Netflix documentary
called "Inside Bill's Mind" which is a three part
documentary on Netflix about Bill Gates.
Every year, I just love this cause it proves my point,
every year,
Bill Gates get taken on a sea plane
and he lands in this river and he goes in to this
little log cabin,
no computer, and he just takes a bag of books,
and he has been doing think week
ever since he's been running Microsoft.
So he goes on his own and he just thinks
about what the business looks like in the future,
and I always say you need to think about what the
business looks like when it's finished,
and I've been doing a bit of that today.
How many people would you say actually afford
themselves that time?
So, this is not going on holiday,
he calls it think week.
That's what he calls it.
It's in his diary.
I'm on think week, I just go with books,
he like literally takes a little like,
you know like a bag for life,
and I'm just watching this, has anyone seen it?
- [Man] I saw it before.
- He literally has got his little bag for life
that he carries everywhere with him,
and his PA re-tops it up with books,
and everyone's like "you have no understanding
how much this man reads, and how much he thinks."
And so he's scheduled in his diary,
the sea plane drops him off on his own,
and it's got a fridge full of food.
And that's it, he's on his own,
this man is the richest man in the world,
gave half of his money away,
then dropped down to the seventh,
then he became the richest man in the world again,
after giving half of his money away,
he's not the richest man in the world but he would still be,
by a country mile, richer than Jess Besos,
and all of that, if he hadn't given so much away.
But he has given so much away.
And he affords himself good quality thinking time.
And most people just don't do that.
(man mumbling)
It's no excuse is it,
he's still chairman of Microsoft.
You know, he's eradicating polio,
he's doing nuclear energy physics to try an cure the
world's energy problems,
and people tell you you haven't got time to think.
"I haven't got time to do that"
I just think "shut up, shut up"
(laughing)
but what most people do, they know what the end of the
year looks like.
I'm trying to tell people
what does it look like in 30 years times?
And this I one of my most favorite of favorite phrases,
again Bill Gates' phrase,
"most people overestimate what can be done in a year,
but underestimate what can be done in 10 years."
And that's what sets that man apart.
Because no one thinks like that.
Other than the uber successful.
I'm just saying it to you one more time
so you never forget it.
"most people overestimate what can be done in a year,
but underestimate what can be done in 10 years."
And if you can afford yourself time to think in 10 year,
10 years is really not a lot anymore.
- [Man] It is when you get to my age.
- It just seems to go so quick you know,
I can't believe it's 2020 next year.
People keep saying, we're having meetings,
"ah, we're doing that in 2020" and thinking ah,
that's like seven years away,
(laughing)
and they're like "no, it's next year Jim"
I'm like but I can remember the millennium dome
being built, I can remember that,
(group chatting in agreement)
it was only, that was last year, wasn't it?
And you're thinking like about the 2012 Olympics,
that seems like last week, you know?
Just unbelievable.