- Corporate business growth center, alright guys.
(thumping)
Stop operating, start growing.
Now, we can't get the right fucking owner
to put the right systems and processes in place
to make the business better.
Sir Winston Churchill,
we're going to get (thumping)
rid of Adolf Hitler! (thumping)
You say I'm a florist, no,
you're a marketeer of your florist business.
You've got to focus on getting customers.
I go around and see loads of day-gnashers
What's the problem with the day-gnashering.
Oh, we can't get the stuff!
Can't get the stuff!
No, you can't get the right fucking owner
to put the right systems and processes
in place to make the business better.
Who remembers this at school,
this will tell you why management
really does well.
You remember at school, right,
you'd go, you was in, you know,
you had 6 lessons throughout the day.
Same set of 30 kids go to different ones,
so you do English, you did math, you do science.
Same set of 30 kids going around
the school throughout the day.
And behaved differently, compared to what
teacher was teaching them.
Just put your hands up if you recognize
what I'm saying here.
I need to understand that.
The same set of kids behaved differently
with a different set of teachers.
That there gang, because hopefully,
you can paint that picture in your head,
is describing management.
That teacher can get different results
on the same day with the same set of people.
On the quality of management alone.
It's not the kids, is it?
Oh, the kids are a nightmare.
It's the quality of the leadership and management.
And you're not born with this stuff,
you have to practice it.
You have to read the books.
You have to invest in yourself.
Okay, vision, end in mind.
This is, this is how do we get great.
So this is the leadership part of a business.
How do we attract the best management
to come work for us?
Because there are group managers,
great people, who have a choice to go to places.
How do I say this?
Average people end up working for average people.
Good people work for good people.
Excellent people work for excellent people.
So you guys have got to move yourself up.
So you magnetize, you know,
the best people to come work for you.
This is the stage one of making great stuff happen.
You've got to have a compelling vision
with an end in mind.
Why do I write books that are like vision statements?
You know I give staff members.
Yesterday I was picking my little boy up
from the nursery here.
Carrie, who's one of the room leaders there,
just a fantastic member of staff,
and she said, "James, I've read your first book."
And I was like, you know, I had a good
20 minute chat with her,
and because there was a big traffic jam,
so I was having a chat with her.
In my car I had another two copies of this book,
The Experience Business, and Getting Customers.
I gave her them.
So she said, "I can't believe it,
I'm going to go read."
That builds culture and understanding,
a vision end in mind.
I don't write these books to get 50p a sale from Amazon.
I write them because they're vision end in mind statements.
You know getting customers
is a set of systems and processes
in the marketing that I believe
that we should be doing as a cost benefit.
So when we employ someone in marketing,
look, that is the system and processes
that we believe, committed to paper.
So you've got to have this vision end in mind.
You know, so I want to build
national profitable brands that families love.
You know, we want to be the best.
We want our team to be happy and hardworking.
This is what our business looks like
when it's finished.
Who can actually with clarity say,
what their business looks like when it's finished.
You guys, by the end of the day,
because I'm going to make you do it.
That's who.
Very few.
I'll tell you who the best people at this VC is.
Does anyone know what VC is,
does anyone know what it stands for?
Vulture capitalists.
That's right, vulture capitalists.
Some people call them venture capitalists,
I like to call them vulture capitalists.
There's one of the things we can learn from them,
before they invest any money in an organization,
before they write that check,
they know when they're going to get out
and what that business is going to look like.
And they're working towards that aim.
They will say, we're going to invest X,
but in 5 years time the business will look like Y.
That's what we're going to build towards.
And most people don't know that.
They don't have a war plan.
They have battle plans.
Good battle plans usually, but not a war plan.
World War I and World War II,
two very different things.
World War I, to this day, no one can really explain
what the reason was for it.
Taking a bit of land, and then
we're taking a bit of land.
And fighting too and from,
no one really knows what's going on.
World War II, we've got a reason.
We've go a vision.
We've got this bloke with a funny mustache,
taking over the place.
And our vision, our end in mind, our war plan,
is to get rid of that bloke.
So everyone can get behind the culture better.
Because there's a reason.
So if you want great people
they need to know why they're doing it.
They need to know the end in mind.
The same with education.
Most people going to university,
why are they going there?
Ah, kill a bit of time until I work out what I want to do.
No.
Then the other successful people,
they get through, they go,
I want to be a vet,
I want to be a barrister,
I want to be a lawyer.
When they can say what their end in mind is
they can whiz through education much better.
This is why I'm stressing myself out
on this courseware because I know that's my journey.
That's my journey, that's my destination.
Businesses need that.
That's how you magnetize the best people
to come and help you.
Now the best people might be a bank manager
that believes in your vision,
that might get you that first loan.
Or an investor that believes in your vision
to invest in your business.
Or the landlord to give you the property
to grow your business.
Human beings are looking for that vision
with an end in mind.
That's what they're looking for, gang.
And most people don't have it committed to paper.
It's gotta be committed to paper.
You've gotta make a contract with yourself to say,
well it's gonna, ah,
I'll give you some tips and tools
on how we can do that later.
The entrepreneur's coming up with the war plan,
the management's coming up with the battle plan.
Sir Winston Churchill,
We're going to get (thumping)
rid of Adolf Hitler! (thumping)
Generals and sergeants, right,
c'mon let's come up with a battle plan
on how we can do this, okay?
Let's send in the Navy.
Blow me, that hasn't worked.
Okay guys, what we gonna do now?
Okay, let's send in the troops.
Oh no, this isn't working, we need Intelligence.
Let's get some spies to crack the code.
Benedict Cumberbatch, he's gonna crack the code
and he's gonna give us the right intelligence.
If you've watched that film, sorry,
I'm just going off a bit there.
If you've watched that film,
the spies gave the intelligence,
the knowledge, the power
to get the thing over the line,
so I'm going to send in
the right deployment of troops.
So what I like to call this here is OST.
This is how we manage businesses, gang.
OST.
Objective strategies and tactics.
So the objective is coming up by the entrepreneur.
They're coming up with a war plan.
The battle plans are the strategies and tactics.
The situation is most people are coming up
with different strategies and tactics
without an objective.
That's the NHS I've just described there
to you guys.
Strategies and tactics changing all the time
with no clear objectives.
The objective stays on point,
but the strategies and tactics can change
as long as they're there to meet the objectives.
So World War II, the strategies and tactics
were changing but they still had a consistent objective.
World War I, no objective,
just a change in strategies and tactics,
and a complete and utter bloodbath.
Are you a person that's always changing
your strategies and tactics without a clear objective?
Are you a battle planner with no real war plan?
What's the war you want to win,
then you make much better battle decisions.
One day, in yourself, you know, take a drive
up to Norfolk or something.
In a good environment,
book yourself into a hotel,
with a pen and paper,
and write down what the future
of your life looks like.
Where do you want to take yourself?
Give yourself that time to really think.
You know, Bill Gates, has Think Week.
The bloke is one of the richest but he,
he would be the richest man in the world
if he didn't give most of it away
and he's still up there.
Even after giving literally half of it away.
Every year he goes on Think Week
and he goes to this little shack.
I mean, the bloke,
you realize how rich the man is, yeah?
No technology and he takes what looks like
a Sainsbury's Bag for Life,
full of books and a notepad.
And he just thinks.
I do that stuff.
I go and properly think.
And most people don't properly think.
You know they think that's something,
oh, I'm just going away for a week of thinking.
What, this bloke's finally lost the plot?
But I'm telling you, like,
if you afford yourself that,
you can make great stuff happen.
You've found your passions
but your hobby is music, is it?
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
- Yeah, your hobby is music so build a business
that allows you to just do music all the time.
Maybe you're going to sell bongos online, on Amazon.
Sell bongos, get them made
in the Far East for bongo beginners.
Percussion instruments, get them made in the Far East.
Then make a YouTube channel about your bongos.
You know, so buy these on Amazon, here's the link.
You know most of the people that buy my books
and come to my courses,
like this guy's flown over from Ireland
because he's seen my YouTube videos.
Successful people buy-in time to allow them
to go and do better stuff.
And they buy-in their weaknesses.
I'll tell you some of my weaknesses.
I'm terribly unorganized.
I'm so unorganized, you wouldn't believe it.
So I just buy-in a PA.
She's really organized.
I don't like doing bookkeeping or administration.
So I build an accountancy team.
I don't like managing people,
so I bring in an MD.
I cannot wait to employ a solicitor to full-time.
I'm trying to work out, when can I afford
to employ a solicitor full-time?
I employ a full-time, fully qualified accountant
that just works for me.
You wouldn't believe how much more time
that's given me back to make me more profitable.
Now on my 10 year thing, it's like,
I'm having a solicitor.
Isn't it great your life will be
when you've got your own solicitor on tap.
So rather than me paying 3 grands worth of fees
for some stupid letter or little case,
I can really get the best advice
and then get an external solicitor
to make sure we're doing the right stuff.
So I'm thinking about this stuff in the future,
what does my team look like?
What's my weaknesses?
I'm not a legal person.
I know just enough to smell the bullshit
but I'm not a solicitor.
All I do, if you watch me,
I buy-in time and weaknesses.
I'm playing this fantasy football game constantly.
What team do I need around me
to explode the business.
Because even if you can't afford it right now,
when you start playing the game
of what you need around you, in your head,
you will start working out ways
of how you can make the impossible, possible.
It might seem impossible right now
but you play this game,
it starts becoming possible.
You're growing the business,
not operating the business.
Remember this, there is your,
this is how you grow,
it's called the business growth seminar, guys.
(thumping)
Stop operating, start growing.
Big things will start happening.
You are a getting customers superstar.
This is what you are.
People to say to you, what do you do?
If you say, I'm a florist.
No! You're a marketeer of your florist business.
If people say to you, ah, what do you do?
Ah, I've got me own football coaching business.
Stop saying that, say,
I market for a football coaching business.
Even though you own it.
I was working on, has anyone heard
of Jimmy Nicholas, this guy has just exploded.
He has, over 8 years,
built a 300 million dollar company.
From scratch.
He's on YouTube.
He's changed his role,
from Chief Exec. in that company,
to Chief Marketing Officer.
And he still owns it.
Because he knows that getting customers
grows the business.
He knows that operating it,
getting someone in to operate the business,
is much easier, getting a manager is much easier,
than someone that can make 10 million pounds
worth of sales happen from scratch.
Got to focus on getting customers.
Felix Dennis, I often reference him,
one of my favorite business books, How To Get Rich.
Has anyone read How To Get Rich?
He died, he was worth half a billion quid,
seriously wealthy guy.
He's wrote a shorter version called
88 The Narrow Road,
and I think rule 84 is employ an accountant
before you can afford them.
In-house.
And you go online, and it's like get a part-time FD.
But as soon as you get these outsourced people
it's just giving you comfort, isn't it?
If you can't afford it, you can just cut it off.
But if you're serious and want
to get a boutique business,
or sorry, a scale business, you know,
get in what I call a superstar bean counter.
Not just a bean counter, like, a superstar one.
I think I could've achieved a lot more
if I'd have done that move when I was 25.
I wouldn't, or, I just said, right,
I'm not not going to pay myself for 6 months.
Live so frugally to pay for the accountant
to work for me full-time.
And I'm talking about someone
on 70, 100 grand a year,
and that, like a power accountant.
My accountant, RFD, he's just managed to get us
a quarter of a million pounds back on R&D.
We messed around with it for 3 years.
We just couldn't get it overlined, too complicated.
They're free.
We overpaid some VAT thing, we got 27 grand back.
Deals are all legal.
It's just the spreadsheets, the numbers.
Understanding Spend Per Head, tax efficiency,
tax planning.
You know, I'm investing in people.
And people have a real problem with that.
But all successful people do it.
You've got to employ people.
I just can't begin to understand
how much that makes a difference.