A Millionaires Masterclass In Business, Side-Hustles and Passive Income - Mark Tilbury
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

What's the worst that can happen when you're 20? You lose what you have. You're 20. You've got all your life ahead of you to restart something else. I mean, how exciting is that? Hey friends, and welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where every week it's my immense privilege to sit down with academics and authors and creators and entrepreneurs and other inspiring people. And we find out how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools we can learn from them to help us build a life that we love.

What you're about to hear is an interview between me and Mark Tilbury. Mark has an incredibly inspiring story. He left school at the age of 16 with no qualifications and no money. He then had a winding career trajectory and he took a couple of risks and ended up starting his first business. And now, 30 years later, he's a multimillion dollar CEO. I always knew at 16 when I left school, I wanted to be self-employed. I've done loads of different side hustles. I've always liked finding ways of making money.

School teaches you to go out and find a job to earn money, but it doesn't teach you what to do with that once you've got it. In this conversation, we talk a lot about business, how to build a physical business, how to build an online business, what it really means to think like an entrepreneur and the skills needed to survive in the world of business, and how to make this thing that we call passive income. Everyone who's young has got time to make money. I don't think people are aware of how much time they have. I'm probably going to shock you here with something.

Now, before we get into this episode, I've got a very quick announcement, which is that I'm launching a Telegram community for the podcast. Now, I'm going to be honest. Initially, the reason for starting this podcast was quite a selfish one in that I wanted to learn from cool and interesting people and apply their insights to my own life. And it's just generally easier to hang out with people if you invite them onto your podcast, rather than if you just want to have a chat with

them. But over the last 18 months of running this podcast, it's grown ridiculously fast. And actually, we've had so many messages and YouTube comments and emails and Instagram DMs and stuff from people talking about how much value that you guys have gotten from the episodes as well. And so we're planning to change direction a little bit in that instead of me just treating these conversations as a personal therapy session with the guests, which we might still do a little bit of, I actually want to learn more about you guys who are listening to the podcast or watching the podcast and understand what are the things that you would like to see from the podcast.

And I really want to better understand what challenges you're going through, what struggles you're going through, so that we can then kind of tailor the guests and tailor the questions to that. So that's why we're starting up this completely free Telegram community. If you hit the link in the show notes or in the video description, wherever you're watching or listening to this, you'll be able to sign up completely for free. It's always going to be free. You will never have to pay.

pay a penny. The group is called the Deep Divers, which I think is kind of funny. And it's basically a group where I'll be posting some of the behind the scenes stuff from the podcast. But also as we get new guests coming on, I'll be asking in that group if you guys have any specific questions for the guest so that can help inform the direction of the interview. I'm also going to be posting a few polls and questionnaires and surveys in that group. So if you're interested in kind of sharing more about you and about your life,

then you can do it through that group. And then again, that'll just help us figure out how do we best make this podcast as value add for you guys as possible. And we're also gonna be using the Telegram group to give away some freebies. Like for example, often authors on the podcast will come and they'll gift us like 50 of their books, for example. I don't need 50 copies of an author's book, but it's the sort of thing that we can absolutely send to people around the world completely for free. Anyway, if that sounds good and you'd like to join the community, then do hit the link in the podcast show notes or in the video description, wherever you're seeing this or listening to this. And now let's get on with the episode.

Mark, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You're more than welcome. It's going to be super fun. I've been looking forward to this for a long, long time. Yeah, same. And yeah, I'm going on yours as well. So we'll do the link swap and all that jazz. Your story is super interesting. And I'd love it if you can just kind of take us through it. And then we'll dive in at different points. And I'd love to ask more questions about it.

it. It's quite a long story. It depends where you want me to start from, really. But obviously, I come from a different era to what is around now. And I really wanted to leave school. School wasn't great for me. I wouldn't say I hated it, but I didn't enjoy it. Is that fair enough? I tolerated going. I had lessons I enjoyed, like woodwork, technical drawing, sports, all that sort of thing. But everything else seemed to be a waste of my time. I always thought there was always more out there in the world for me to do.

So I thought 16, I can leave. So I will leave. And I was told by my mentor at the time, although I didn't know he was my mentor then, that getting a trade will be your best bet to, you

you know, whatever you want to do after that, get a trade behind you because you can't go wrong. So I became a carpenter joiner and did that apprenticeship for three and a half years. A carpenter joiner? Yeah. What is that? Well, like a cabinet maker you might call nowadays. So I used to make, well, some nice furniture I used to make, but I

Eventually I got wound up with the job because they got a really big contract for making these wooden trash bins for Walmart or Asda as it is in the UK. And I was constantly making these and that's why I actually bought that job to an end because I thought, you know, I can't continue to do this. There's more to me than that. And it actually pushed me out of that job, which was quite good really in hindsight, but disappointing at the time.

Do you think that's still good advice for people today in 2023, the trade thing? I actually think, personally, and I think we'll clash on this, I actually think too many people go to university. I think it's about 25% at the moment. Is it something like that? Yeah, it's quite high, yeah. And when I was at school, maybe 10% went.

So the best of the best went to university to do the jobs like becoming a doctor or medical professional like yourself, which you've got to do. I understand that, fully understand that, and that is correct. But what I think is a lost part of our generation now is the people that go that could have become plumbers, electricians, carpenters, which then go on to having their own businesses within those fields and growing those out. And of course, because of that, we've now got a shortage of those.

And when you get a plumber in or someone to do any work for you, it costs you a fortune because there's such a big skill shortage. So I do think too many go. So, yes, I do like the trade route and you've always got something to fall back on. And while you're learning a trade, you're also learning about life as well because you're meeting so many different people and seeing how the world ticks. And I think that's great for setting you up if you want to go into business. How would you define trade?

- Trades, well, realistically, the plumbers, the electricians, anyone that does anything that takes time to learn for a proper apprenticeship.

I'd say that's really a household trade. So anyone that you actually phone in, for example, a tree surgeon, they cost you a fortune. Tree surgeon? Yeah. What does a tree surgeon do? Like pruning the trees and all that. There's quite a lot of work there. When you've got as many trees as I have. Yeah, I mean, I don't have a house. Yeah, you're talking three or four grand for a visit. Oh, wow. Okay. So skills like that I think are worth investing in.

And I think a lot of people that do go to university, and please bear in mind, I'm not knocking university because it has its place and 100% agree with that. But too many go that could make a really good career elsewhere, like earn a lot more, not start off with the debt that they incur by going to university. And...

I do understand there's a social element to university as well, but it's a very expensive party for three, four, five years. Yeah. Or six years, I think. Six years in the medical case, yeah. So what's something like,

you know, learning to code and becoming a software developer through like without going to university, would you put that in the same category of like learning a trade? Like you've got the skill that's taken you a while to learn. You don't necessarily need to go to university for it. Yeah, I'd certainly say so because as an employer, I always employ on experience as opposed to, you know, getting marks from university or whatever happens to be all exam results because I think experience for me always counts for a lot, lot more than exam results. Yeah. Always thought that way.

Yeah. No, absolutely. It's the same for us. Like, you're like, I think a couple of our team members didn't go to university. And I didn't even realize until like ages after we'd hired them. I was like, oh shit. Oh yeah, that's, yeah, fair enough. Yeah.

It just seems a bit of a push way, doesn't it? I don't know what your parents were like, but I'm assuming... Oh, very much academics all the way forward. It's just almost a given that you're going to go to university. So I think, is there three rules in your household? Doctor, lawyer or failure? That's the one, yeah. Sometimes people put engineer in there instead of failure, but like doctor, lawyer, engineer or McDonald's, those tend to be the options that you have. And we're not knocking McDonald's, are we? Because a lot of people started there and done well as well. Yeah. How...

So let's say someone is 16, 17, 18 listening to this and they're thinking, I don't really know what I want to do. The default seems to be, well, for a lot of people, I'll just go to uni because it's useful to have a degree. How would you approach kind of if you were advising someone and if they were like, hey, Mark, I don't really know what to do. I'm 17. Well, what are the factors? Personally, I would say, and this didn't exist when I was younger, is that

Not necessarily a year out, but spend some time doing a lot of different jobs. Because doing a lot of different jobs, you do find out what you don't like. So we mentioned McDonald's there. So you could flip burgers for two weeks if you wanted to, learn the ropes of the McDonald's trade, then quit. Then go on to your next job, learn that job. See what you didn't like from it. Take the things you did and then put them together in the third job you go to. So I think...

Taking a year away to find out what you don't like is a great way to do things. And then if the choice is to go to university because you want to be X, Y, Z that needs that, then of course you go. But the problem with going when you don't know what you want to do is that's a lot of debt. That's a hell of a lot of debt. And that debt at some point has got to be paid off. And you may never go into that job or use that degree ever again in your life. So it's...

It is a bit of a waste, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah. Even in the UK where some people would say it's not really debt, it's more like a graduate tax. Oh, it's only 9% and you only have to pay it off once you're earning more than 25K or whatever the number is. Do you think the debt thing is still a factor that people should...

seriously consider? I think so, because I think it also limits their job options as well, because most people that come out of university feel they're of a certain level, that you don't want to earn below a certain level, and you are going to be paying it back nine times out of ten. But you also job trap yourself to a certain degree as well. What do you mean? Well, most people that I know that have been to university that haven't got jobs are like, well, you know, I can't find a job for my qualifications. And you think, well...

that's because you've studied something you didn't want to study in the first place and there wasn't any job opportunities for that. And whoever promised you that university course was going to give you a good living at the end of it, essentially lied to you because it's not there. But it is a business university, isn't it, at the end of the day? There's a lot of people making a lot of money, pushing a lot of people through, whether it's through the university itself or whether it's through the accommodation or whether it's through student unions or whatever it is, there's a lot of money being earned.

So I can understand why people push youngsters that way, because in a way it's an easy option, isn't it? If you don't know what to do, you've got three stroke four years of, well, I'm going to university. I'm working hard. Everyone thinks I am. But then the reality will hit after that. So again, not against university before anyone feels that way. But I think a lot that go probably shouldn't. Yeah, I think I would broadly agree with that.

I think, yeah, in some schools and in some backgrounds, it's just, you know, in my school, like 100% of people went to university and it was like really weird if you didn't.

The same at my son's school as well. I mean, my son, every single person in his school, even in his year, went to university. He deliberately did not go to the open days of the university because he knew he didn't want to go. And if he went to the open days, then they would probably coerce him into wanting to go. You know, like, you can join this team, you can be on that team, you can do this, the nightlife's great. And he felt that it would hold him back.

And I think that's the bravest decision he's ever made, because if everyone around you is going, you say, no, I'm not. You're actually the strong one in that situation. And he's now built obviously a business with my son. I built a business before we work together, but now we work together on YouTube and everything else that we do and on the podcast, Strike It Big. And it's it's a fantastic relationship because of that.

Nice. So you were a carpenter joiner, you said, for three and a half years? Yeah. So what happened next in the career?

At this point, you'd been like 19-ish? Yeah, 19, 20. But I always knew at 16 when I left school, I wanted to be self-employed. I'd done loads of different side hustles, although they weren't called that before. What kind of side hustles? I used to go fishing, used to catch fish at Dover, catch a train first thing in the morning for free, come back and pretend I lost my ticket. So very cost effective. Used to catch lots of mackerel. We used to take them around the house in the States selling them, which worked very, very well as a youngster.

I used to buy and sell cars as well so I was flipping cars that's while I was a carpenter and joiner so I used to do a car a week I'd always buy a car that I liked so if I couldn't sell it it didn't matter that would be my car but they were always Escort Mark 2s that's the car of choice and they always sold.

And I was buying them for about £300, selling them between £500 and £600. So you double your money for a little bit of valet in. And that's all it took during the week. And then someone would come along. We'd park it on a nice estate as well when they came to visit it so they'd give it a little bit of kudos. And always did very well.

So always done lots of side hustles. In fact, I got to a stage where I actually ended up selling all of my time, which I don't think a lot of people understand. But when you're being paid an hourly rate at work and you're working every hour of the day, Saturdays I'd work part-time in a model shop. Sunday I'd be teaching people to fly model helicopters. I'd actually got to a point where I sold every bit of time I had. And we went to fit a staircase on a customer's house.

And I always remember it was a really, really rich guy. And I spoke to him and I said, how can you have such a great lifestyle? Because this is what I want. I don't know if he laughed or not, but he said, you know, you've got to get your money to work for you.

And I went, well, how's that work? So he explained, you know, about investing and having a little bit of money starting to grow in the background. He says, if you think long term, you'll do well. If you think short term, you'll lose your investments. He said, so that was quite important at the time to me. And at the point where you've sold all your time, you've got no other way of earning money.

You know, you're done, aren't you? You're maxed out. So that was quite a good turning point. Okay, two questions on that. So one is...

Were you not concerned about things like work-life balance and all that stuff that is fashionable to talk about these days and very unfashionable to talk about kind of hustling and grinding and stuff? If you're selling all of your time, how were you approaching that? Well, to be honest, I was never really too bothered about finding the girls. I'm not the best looking chap in the world, I understand that, but I was quite a cheeky chappy, normally had a girlfriend and

I didn't work hard at it. I had a girlfriend, finished with a girlfriend, had another girlfriend, and so on. So that's just how it went. And I think a lot of people do spend a lot of time on trying to find the one, but I always believe the one will arrive if given enough time. So that was fine. I mean, I had a good social life. I enjoyed what I was doing. And when you're, for example, because I love radio control model flying, and that's what my main businesses are,

Being that age and being able to fly other people's models and teach them to fly on their models without having to buy them, that was great fun anyway. So I was having fun, although my time was being sold. So that's sort of how it worked. But when I did meet the one, which obviously everyone hopefully eventually does, I did say to her, look, you need to understand I'm very selfish with my time.

And she said, well, what does that mean? I said, well, when I have enough time to spend with you, it'll be 100%. You know, 100% if we're coming up to London or we're going out on a date.

We didn't have mobile phones there, so it was less interruptive. And if you had a date for an evening, it would be 100% of my commitment time and everything. But in between that, you might not hear from me or you might not see me and all the rest of it. And she understood that and what the long-term vision was. And I think if you're honest and upfront right from the start, then that's good. Fantastic. It strikes me that the phrase selling your time is,

isn't it isn't it is an interesting phrase like is that how you were thinking of it at the time or is that uh sort of afterwards as you learned more about finance you realized you were selling your time i think it was afterwards um i i realized that i couldn't earn any more than i was um because again there's no more time in the day to physically do it and i think lots of people get trapped by earning a daily amount of money and they think that's what i am worth that's the value i'm giving so that's what i get um

You can only increase that by giving more value, but eventually your time is limited. And again, we'll go back to the doctor analogy because this is what you are. Even as a doctor, you can hire and can't you? Very, very good earnings. But that still caps at some point. So let's say as a doctor, you do a bit of private and all the rest of it. I know a quarter of a million a year, something like that.

You're still capped at that. That's it. There's no more unless you make your money work for you. Now, obviously, I wasn't at that amount of money. I was probably back in the day, I don't know, 15,000, 20,000, something like that, which was double what I was earning in my job. Way over double, actually. So what can I do? You are trapped. And I realized it, but it was explained later that you'd sold all your time. Yeah.

Like that that that phrasing selling your time. I think it's you know, there's that thing of there's nothing that ruins more dreams than the security of a Monthly salary or a daily wage What's the comfort isn't it? Yeah, and I think lots of people will moan about that. You don't get paid enough But they don't want to do anything about that and that's the crucial point. It's that comfort stage and when you're comfortable and

Why do you need to do anything about it? I'm comfortable. I can moan about it, bitch about it, whine about it. But actually, I am comfortable. And that is a dangerous position if you want to be rich. You had this conversation with a super rich guy that you were installing the stairs for. How did that change things for you? It made me look at investing.

What I would have liked is someone like myself or someone like you available to be able to look up and study because I think YouTube has opened up

what the schools haven't been able to provide. And if we'd have had financial lessons at school, I'd have been hands up to go to it because I've always liked earning money. I've always liked, you know, finding ways of making it. But school teaches you to go out and find a job to earn money, but it doesn't teach you what to do with that once you've got it. And I think that's where YouTube has certainly jumped in. And the whole reason we started the YouTube was because we,

We were on a skiing trip and we noticed the ski in France up on the wall there. And we were in a chalet. And I have told the story a few times, but we were around a table. There was four youngsters. I say youngsters, 18, 19 year olds, maybe a little bit older than that. And for two hours after dinner, all they talked about or asked questions about was business and finance.

And I didn't know where the time had gone. I spoke to my son afterwards. He said, look, that was two hours. They were interested in what you had to say. I said, well, aren't they teaching this? And they went, no.

So, you know, I think you get to a certain stage in business where you think this is all common sense, common knowledge. Everyone knows this, but actually it's the opposite. They don't. And, you know, they're eager to listen and to learn and to move forward. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you have this conversation as you're installing the staircase. What happens next in your life? Well, I left work, started a business, and

And we're starting a business as well. Again, a lot of people turn off on YouTube when you start talking business because they think it's all complicated and difficult and hard, whereas actual fact is the complete opposite. Most people I find when I talk to them think they have to know everything about business. They've got to go to business school or do business studies or go to university to study it, and they're the people that go into business. Whereas the reality is...

We're all winging it. I mean, to a certain degree, I would say you've probably done the same with this business. Every single day is just trying to make shit up as we go along. And you learn the lessons as you go on. And those lessons sometimes are hard learned. They cost you some money, but sometimes they make you a lot of money. But whatever way it is, it's a lesson and you don't forget it because you've learned it yourself. It's not someone else telling you that lesson. You've learned it and you move on from that.

And it's a great way to be. I think the advantage youngsters have now, which they don't really see, is everything's a possibility now.

When I was at school, it was, what are you going to be? Well, I wanted to be a pilot, first of all. I wanted to join the RAF and be a fighter pilot and drive those fast blowtorches around the sky. But I got the bins, and obviously from there on, that wasn't going to be a possibility. So the only other thing I was good at was carpentry and joinery, so I stuck onto that. But also, I'd have liked to have been a racing car driver, or I'd like to have been...

Yeah, any multitude of different things. But that was for someone else. That wasn't for me. You know, that wasn't possible. You know, that was a barrier. No, you've got to decide what you want to be and you've got to decide that now. And you can't have anything too advanced because you're never going to get there. And that was quite a hard knock all the time. Hmm.

Very, very hard not. But that was common. That was very common back then. Whereas today, there's more kind of possibility in people's minds. I think so, yeah. I mean, again, you went to university to study medicine, and now you're into YouTube and social media and all this sort of thing. A bit random. And, yeah, you don't know where you're going to go. But the possibilities are there, aren't they? You know, if you had...

If you were at school now and you liked motorsport, for example, and you thought, well, I could do that, and you've been to the car circuit, and you go, I'm actually not too bad at this. You know that that is actually a career path. Whether you can follow it or not, that's down to you as an individual. But it's a career path. I thought it was just something racing drivers did. I didn't know where they came from. It's just a racing driver's job. Yeah, I guess partly it's sort of like two things. I think for me I was very lucky in the sense of

you know, being born in the right place, right set of parents, privilege and all that kind of stuff. But I think also there's an informational advantage that people have today that they didn't back in the day. It's like today, if you think you want to be a whatever, you can just Google it and someone will have made a day in the life of a whatever video. Yeah. And you can literally see the YouTube channels of F1 drivers and see what they're up to day to day. And you think, huh, that's interesting. Or you can listen to them on a three hour long podcast where they literally break down their entire journey. Yeah. So I think that's like, yeah, one of the really cool things.

And in a way, like I've spoken to a lot of people recently who feel that, again, to your point, the university industrial complex takes in all of these like varied and interesting individuals and spits them out to become an identical automaton going to consulting or whatever other, you know, accounting or whatever, you know.

obviously consultants and accountants all good just using that as an example I mean for you to switch from being in medical in medicine to what you're doing now I mean that that must have been a very brave move I think once the business started to do well it felt less like bravery and more like common sense and the tide was already slowly starting to turn and maybe in my year 5% of people were like I don't really want to do medicine these days I speak to medical students and they're like

30% of my year group, they realize they don't want to do medicine. So it seems like, again, I think with the availability of information and like social media, the internet, et cetera, people are realizing that the path that they are set on at the age of 16, at least in the UK where you start choosing your air levels and stuff,

is not necessarily the path you have to continue following for the rest of your life. But 10 years ago, if you'd become a doctor, you'd have done that till the day you retired. Yeah, probably. And there were very few examples of people starting inventing a surgical equipment or something. That's what I imagined I would do. I was like, I'm going to be a doctor forever. And on the side, I'm going to try and invent some kind of tech thing. But even then, that was because when I was 13, I started making websites for money. And so I already had that business thing going on the side. Whereas most people weren't thinking in those ways.

And we're just focused on getting through there. But that's the entrepreneurial spirit, isn't it? And I think that's in from a very early age, regardless of who you are. I don't think you can be taught that. You can be taught business without a doubt, and you can learn business, and you can have a go, and you can learn investing, and you can have a go. But entrepreneurial spirit, you can't just say, I'm going to become an entrepreneur. It's what you are.

So do you think that's something someone can develop? I think 90% of people can be pretty good at whatever they decide they want to be if they're dedicated enough to it.

But to be 100% good at it, that's the hard bit. And that's the difference, isn't it, really? Yeah. Between most people. Because I think in a way you've got to enjoy it as well. Yeah. Like I was interviewing a chap called Marcus yesterday who's an Olympic medalist in tennis. And I asked him kind of if you want to become a professional tennis player, what's the balance between like discipline and just sort of pushing through it?

And he was like, it's just impossible. Like, unless you genuinely enjoy it, it's impossible to just get punched in the face repeatedly, which is what happens when you're trying to play professional tennis. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I mean, I chose radio control models as my main business, but that's because I was so into it. Yeah. And I was passionate.

pretty good at it as well. You know, I traveled the world representing the UK team and we did quite well as a team as well. We got bronze medals at European championships and world championships. So that that's pretty good. And that helps build that business as well. So if you've got a passion for the thing you enjoy and you can see a way to make money from it, it's great, but it's no good at just being a passion because

so many passion businesses just go down the pan because they don't look at the business side of it first and i was always very much this is my hobby side of what i do for my business this is my business you know and they're two completely different things you know when you're doing it as a hobby you can be friends with everyone when you're doing it as a business you can't you know it's as simple as that yeah it's the same analogy that i so um in my course we teach people how to be youtubers um and

one of the things I always ask people is, are you treating YouTube as a hobby or are you treating YouTube as a business? And you can't say 50-50 on both because you've got to pick a side because that radically changes the way you approach it. If you're treating YouTube as a hobby, great. Make videos about whatever you feel like. Follow your passion, all that kind of stuff. If you're treating it like a business, then let's analyze the market. Let's figure out how you're going to stand out. Let's treat it like an actual business person would treat a business rather than hoping that, hey, if I just do my hobby thing, it'll just magically make me money.

So how did you decide that you wanted to

So what was the business that you initially started and how did you decide to go down that route? The initial business, again, was radar control models. I bought a shop because the only way you could start a real business like that was having a shop. I mean, I'd done the side hustle part of it, which was repairing people's models on the side and teaching people to fly them. But the next logical step was to get a shop. So that's what I did. And from day one, it was very good. How did you get a shop? What

well yeah well basically i just went i did a business plan i spent weeks and weeks and weeks drawing up this business plan i tried to cover everything i could i worked part-time for someone so that i knew what i needed to do um he actually stole my plans which was a pain to be honest but i wasn't quite ready to go he actually opened a shop exactly where i was going to open it with the same name as well he stole everything um

Completely another story. But I did a business plan when I was ready, which was six months following this. And on this business plan, it laid out what we could make, what my expertise was, where we were going to do it, rents, everything. Took it to the bank manager and he turned me down flat. He didn't even give me really the time of day. It was literally, well, you've made an appointment, I've got to see you, but no. No.

You know, if I could sum it up any better than that, but that was what it felt like to me. And I came out of the bank and I went, well, this is either dead in the water, never going to happen, or I've got to go forward with it and try and do something. And when you've been slapped pretty hard like that, it is actually quite hard to see a positive.

So I could have turned right, I could have turned left. So I decided to turn right. The bank next door, but one was Barclays. I went in there. I said, I've got an appointment with the manager. They went, oh, you're not down. I went, oh, no, definitely. It's 11 o'clock. Yeah, I'm a bit early. Maybe that's it. No, no. We'll let you see him anyway. So I went in and saw him, gave him the business plan, spoke about it. He went, yeah, I want to back you. He said, I'll be your first customer. Oh, wow. Just like that.

Pretty good, isn't it? That's pretty good. Yeah. I think he had a certain amount of money that they had to potentially lend out to startup businesses. And obviously we had to cover it with, you know, the property I had and various other things. But it was a yes. It was a definite yes. And that was a big thing.

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on a piece of paper and ask them for money is that how it works i'm not sure you get it now but back then certainly it was a business plan and i think when you had managers back then the managers of a branch would have you know the final say over quite a lot of things nowadays it would probably go through all sorts of committee and different things but yeah it's literally a business loan it was a startup loan it wasn't for the amount i needed even with what i had it wasn't enough but

If the business was successful enough for the first two months, it would be enough. And that's the way I worked it. And the first day when we opened up, I was so skint. I had nothing. I didn't even have enough fuel to get home. I took a sleeping bag and put it in the back of the van I had because if I didn't take any money, I wasn't able to get home that night. Wow. But that's full commitment, isn't it? Yeah. And if you're going to do anything, commit. Yeah. Yeah.

Because then there's no option. It works or it doesn't, but you're going to do as much as you can to make that work. Well, you're not worried that you're going to lose the house and all of the fears that would, yeah. Actually, I was 20. What's the worst that can happen when you're 20? This is the thing I can't seem to get through to a lot of people. What's the worst thing? You lose what you have. You're 20. You've got all your life ahead of you to restart something else. I mean, how exciting is that? It's brilliant.

Yeah, everything's on the line. Did you have that perspective when you were 20? Yeah. When I was 20, I was like, oh, shit, if I lose everything, if I get kicked out of med school, suddenly my life is over. Yeah, but I couldn't see it going wrong. Okay. But it was exciting. Yeah. So it's that excitement is what you want, and that drives you on. And we had a cracking day. Yeah. You know? I say that now. It's just over 100 pounds we took, just over. And to this day...

And this is another thing in retail that amazes me. We've never, ever had a day where we've taken less than £100 on a day we've opened, ever, even in the early days. And what amazes me is people have to decide to come to your shop, particularly back then. No internet, no eBay, all that sort of thing. So they've got to come to your shop, make that active decision to come in and buy something. And I always thought you've got to have a day when no one decides to come to your shop, haven't you? But we never have, which is quite amazing, isn't it?

That's amazing. Okay. I've got a friend who's super into burgers. He just loves making burgers, makes burgers for his friends. And he says, one day I really want to open like a burger shop or like a burger van or something like that. If that person was on your ski trip being like, hey Mark, how do I turn this into a business? What would be the steps that you would follow?

today assuming you can't just walk into barclays and be like hey can i have a loan well the problem with food is 80 of food ventures fail okay so it's a pretty bad statistic in particularly restaurants um so the best plan of attack is to be the 20 not the 80 straight away so there you go that's the best advice you can have because that's the that's the one that's going to win

You've got to have something a bit different as well. And again, with burgers, it's very difficult, isn't it? Because you would think, or I would, I'm not into burgers, but you would think everything's been done.

And then you look at one burger outlet that we went in the States, In-N-Out Burgers. The simplest menu you ever did see. Okay, so there's three different options. They're just the same burger made in three different ways. And they were absolutely flat out. My son, who's sitting over there, absolutely loved it. Kept taking me back to this place. I was like, God, if only they did a chicken burger as well, it'd be great. But because they specialize and their menu is so small,

You know, people know what they're going there for and they do a very, very good job of it. So I would probably say to anyone that's going to start and do a burger van or something like that, make it simple and make it so you can repeat what you do. And when someone comes back the next week because they enjoyed your burger, make sure it's just as good. It's exactly the same as it was the last time they had it. Because the worst thing you can do is make this wonderful burger and then the next week go, I'm going to cut down on the cheese. I'm going to cut that a

a little bit thinner. I'm going to just, you know, I'm going to now start portioning the sauce a little bit less because these are key savings to make my business work better and put more profit on my own margin. But as soon as you start destroying that product or bringing it down from what people like, it just,

Gets worse and worse and worse. And you might get a third visit, but you won't get a fourth. You know, the second visit's because they enjoyed the first one. The third visit was because they thought the second one, well, maybe you made a bit of a mistake, but I'm still after that ultimate burger I had the first time I came. I think I'm in a fourth time for something that wasn't as good as the first time.

So for a business like that, that requires some level of startup capital, how would you approach finding the money, assuming you don't have rich parents to give it to you? The three Fs, friends, families, and fools. Ha ha ha.

Okay. Because they're out there, aren't they? Why borrow it from somewhere where you've got to pay that interest back? So those are your three places to start with. If you get enough from that, then you can go to the banks. The banks will give you some money without a doubt. So then you can go that way. I've never gone to a venture capitalist ever. I've never done fundraising, never gone down that route. Obviously, some businesses need it because they have to go through this process

and I hate this word, burn stage. Burn stage? Well, then burning the money, trying to build that brand. If you've got a good brand, it should pretty much start organically growing. So I hate a burn stage. And people that tend to raise money in that way do tend to think, oh, I've got plenty of money. We can do that. We can do that. Before you know it, it's gone.

So a lack of money or certainly a small amount of money at the start is actually a bit of a superpower because it makes you make the most of all your free advertising, everything that's available to you to make, you know, the best decisions from. So it depends what it needs. I mean, if it's a startup burger van, how much can that really cost? I mean, you need a van, you need to adapt it, do it yourself if you can. You've got your recipe, you've got your menu, you've

10 15 000 find a pitch nowadays you're more likely to have to pay for a decent pitch but back in my day you'd have just wheeled up wherever you wanted to and put your sign out yeah but just keep turning up keep doing it yeah you know it's uh it's all doable but uh you know a lot of people will put excuses all along the way of course yeah yeah i think especially for like this is partly why i really like you know when when when people ask me oh you know i want to get rich what do i do

often I'm like, okay, well, there's a lot of books you can read and stuff. But if you learn how to code, that is a very good way to get into the business thing. Because almost every software business that you start does not need startup capital. You can get your $10,000 of Amazon Web Services credit for free. You don't need to spend 15K on a van. And you can almost be profitable from day one. You're not in that burn stage where

crap, I've just spent 15 grand and now I need to recoup that over the next five years and then I'll become profitable. And the other beauty of a digital product is you can obviously be anywhere in the world producing that digital product. So your overheads can be cut to an absolute minuscule amount if you want to. And you can be in a beautiful part of the world for very little money producing your product. So yeah, digital products are fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Similarly, I get emails from people being like, hey, can you do a video about passive income ideas from Pakistan? And I'm like, well, no.

no, because I'm not in Pakistan right now, but also like...

Passive income ideas from Pakistan is the same as passive income ideas on the internet anywhere else because the internet is not localized. So I think there's definitely something to be said for using the power of the internet, which wouldn't have been a thing back in your day to start businesses that can benefit from that location independence and also the scale. And the trouble, you mentioned passive income. Most people's definition of that is it's a business that's going to give me money. I haven't got to do anything. But the real definition of a passive business is it's going to cost you either $2,000

time or money or a combination of the two. So whatever way you look at it, you know, it's not really passive. You know, it's got to have that initial investment of time or money or both. Let's go back to this guy that you were installing stairs for. So it strikes me that there are two directions you could have gone from there. The guy's saying, telling you, you know, make your money work for you.

And I'm going to use the terminology from MJ DeMarco, who you might be familiar with, where it's like, you can go down the slow lane approach or the fast lane approach. And the slow lane would be, OK, I'm making, I don't know, $2K a month. My costs are $1.8K. I can save 10% of my paycheck every month, and I can put it into the S&P 500. And I watched a video on YouTube from Ali Abdaal telling me that Warren Buffett says you should invest in the S&P 500. Great. That money is growing by 7% a year. By the time I'm 55, it should be worth $1 million.

versus I'm going to take that spare 200 quid and I'm going to use it to start my own business. What do you think about those two different routes? Well, I use the combination of the two. I've always put away approximately 10% of what I earn into an index fund. Nice. Always, from about 18. Nice. So I'm sorted, aren't I? Because that was always going to become a big amount. I can draw down on it now if I want, but of course...

Why would I? I've got 10 years of hopefully amazing growth. But I've also gone, hopefully, partway down the fast lane. And that is obviously opening a business, investing in myself, investing in the business, and pushing that forward. There's lots of hurdles along the way, though. Shops were a great thing to have when I started the model shops. And we built those shops up to various, several different shops.

But then, of course, the internet hits and then having brick stores isn't the way to be. So you've got to adapt that business. So now we're talking 35 years on from when I started and we're still in business doing a similar thing, but we're doing it in a completely different way. So I think an entrepreneur sees answers as opposed to hurdles or they might see a hurdle, they get over it and move on. You know, don't get stuck by it.

And that's what we try and do. So 35 years ago when you started the business, were you thinking, you know, 35 years later, I'm still going to be doing this or were you more like short term in Europe? I would say it was a lifetime sort of business at the time. Definitely. Because I think most passion businesses are. I think the ones that aren't, the ones with the exit strategies are more tech type businesses. Yeah.

And if I was advising your friend with the burger van, I would probably say that the main thing to focus on is your exit, to be perfectly honest. Where's it going? Where's your finish stage? Because if you don't have an exit strategy, you haven't got anything that's sellable. So a few years back, probably 10 years back, I decided that wasn't something I had, an exit strategy at all to the business I was in.

and so I've made it or adapted it so at any point should I now want to sell it I have a role in exit strategy.

So year on year on year. And it's now a turnkey business as opposed to being fully dependent on myself, which it was. Obviously, we had staff, but you take me out of it 10 years ago, it wouldn't have operated. But now it will operate very well with the staff that we had. Again, I refer to yourself, similar to yourself, you have a very good team behind you. And once you have a very good team, then the business can roll on a daily basis.

Yeah, I think the thing for me is, you know, I was in Miami earlier this week. Everyone's there was like multi-million slash 10 million agencies and talking about selling to private equity for 20x profit. And I was just like, yeah, I don't think I have an exit strategy. But for me and this business, I don't really think of as a business, but I feel like I don't really want an exit strategy. For me, making YouTube videos, interviewing people, writing books and stuff,

that's more like a lifestyle choice rather than a quick business or similar to my lifestyle because the enjoyment was there so you know it rolled and rolled and the enjoyment came yep every day yeah that's a great thing with enjoying what you do isn't it yeah it's a fun time yeah you are going to work and yes you do work hard but the work you do you enjoy so you're rewarded every day yeah absolutely and i guess further down the line if i did decide okay

This is no longer that fun. Let's now, let's maybe figure out an exit strategy, license the IP. There's, you know, there's then things that you can do to build a cell as it were. Just to take things back to complete basics. What is a business? If someone's listening to this and they're like, I feel like the word business is, is

We're talking about exit strategies, I just threw out 20x profit. For someone who doesn't understand what's going on, it's like the word business can feel very daunting. So how would you break that down most simply? Well, if you want to boil it down to really the brass tacks, it's buying something and selling it for a profit. That's the brass tacks of business, isn't it, really? Or

producing something and adding value to it and selling it for a profit so it can be as simple as a side hustle and the reason side hustle is so popular i think on youtube is because people don't think it's a business where of course it is a business it's only when you go into scale that the problems obviously come but a side hustle essentially is a business and

And no one's scared or very few people are scared of a little side hustle. Yeah. But they're scared of doing a business. Yeah, that's true. But really they're the same thing, just slightly bigger. A lot of people think business is when you start employing people. Of course it's not. It's way before that. But the employment thing is a big trigger or a hard point to get over when you get to that stage. So when you're selling, when you're repairing model airplanes on the side, is that a business? Yeah.

I would say it is because you become known for it. If you're known for something and that's what you do, I would say, well, it is a business because it was the start of a business as well. Without that, the business wouldn't have started. It wouldn't have had the capital to be able to start. You know, what I was earning from that, you know, made me more money. So if you take the repairing people's models scenario, I was working part time in a model shop. So I had quite a lot of customer base from that.

I wouldn't go out and teach them to fly. They'd crash their model. It would need repairing. Or if they didn't crash it, I would be able to suggest how we could make that model fly better. And my speciality was radio control helicopters. So there was always upgrades, always. So what you need on that, you need the new metal head or the titanium tail boom or whatever happened to

be that would improve it for you and it'd be like well i don't know how to do that well leave it with me when we come back for a lesson next week i'll have it all done for you so you've got the spare parts i was buying with a trade discount because i'm working in a store so that's great you sell at full price you've got the repair costs and labor maybe an hour always charged to the hour that's always a good tip you know if it takes you half an hour your minimum's an hour

and you had, you know, supplied it back. They were going to be there the following weekend because they wanted to pick up their pride and joy. So they're not going to not turn up for their lesson. So it's actually, that is a business, you know, and it's only then scale in it that people have the issue with. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I like that definition of business. It makes it feel a lot less daunting because I think even like before, I think, yeah, for me, when I was doing my web design type stuff,

I was really thinking of myself as a business or even trying to act as if I was a bigger agency than I actually was. Just one man job hoping people would give me work. But yeah, the word business does seem very daunting to people. And thinking of it as you're taking a thing

You're buying a thing, you're adding value to it, and you're selling it for profit. It's strange, isn't it, really? Also, the other hard thing when you're doing it as a side hustle is understanding what you're worth as well. Because your value you're adding quite often is a lot more than you're charging for as well. So if you're charging an hourly rate of £30, £40, £50, £100, and you are booked out, I mean, it's obvious to look at that now and go…

well, I was worth more than that. I should have charged more. But at the time you think you're charging about the right amount and that's why you're busy. But, you know, you could, let's say you doubled the amount you charged and you lost a quarter of the people, you're earning more money and you're working less time. And that's quite a hard lesson to learn when you're starting out in business. Why do you think people have such an aversion to price and money? Um...

This will get political, haven't we? I think before...

I'll say it before Margaret Thatcher came into power. Cause I always blame her a little bit for everyone trying to get the best price on everything before that. I think it, I always felt it was what something costs was what something costs you went and you bought it. And I think she brought a lot of Americanisms in where you, you know, you question the price and you ask for a discount and all that sort of thing. So I would say that's where that stemmed from. And of course now it's a worldwide market with the web and the web is

in certain aspects is a race to the bottom on price, particularly with the likes of Amazon and all the rest of them with their bulk buying power and not having to declare profits and all the rest of it. So people are always after a bargain now. And I think that I would say that's where it started, in my opinion. Before then, it was you paid the price.

And like, I think there's also an interesting phenomenon on the other side. So my singing teacher, Josh, is charging like... I'm glad you're having lessons, by the way. No, thank you. Yeah, I need it. My singing teacher, Josh, was charging like, I think, like 30 quid an hour initially. And...

is ridiculously qualified. It literally has performed in Broadway musicals and has done TV work and is amazing. And I was like, why are you charging 30 quid an hour? And he was like, oh, I don't feel right. I don't feel right charging 35 or 40. Even though his business is not particularly profitable because we were talking about it. I was like, dude,

Surely just like double the prices because that thing of maybe you lose 25% of your customer. Who cares? You double your prices. And if you do, you can always come back for the price you were charging. And he said he felt bad increasing the prices because he felt like it wasn't worth it even though people were willing to pay. Do you see that kind of thing at all amongst people that you talk to?

I think a lot of people under charge. I mean, I used to race cars, full size cars. It was a great hobby, by the way, if you ever get into it, it's fantastic. I don't now, I sponsor someone in the British touring cars, but I used to race cars and I used to have a guy used to do a lot of the mechanic inform me on that car.

And I'll deliver it to him. He'll tell me what he's done. And he'll say, that's 75 quid. Sorry about that. And I'll think, God, I was expecting 200 pound on that bill. And I'll go, yeah, I have 125. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have it. He went out of business. He was in business as a mechanic for about four or five years. Went out of business. And I know why he went out of business. I told him why he was going to go out of business. And he wasn't charging enough.

But he was so afraid. And I don't know why people don't try because trying to charge a little more is an experiment in business, isn't it? And you push it to as far as you can because you can only make that profit once from that customer. You don't want to rip anyone off. I would never say go and rip people off. But you're providing value and it's what you put as that value. And that's an important amount of money.

If your customers think what you're doing is worth more than you're giving them, I mean, why does anyone listen? Yeah, why do you think people have that fear, that fear of charging more? I think they think they'll lose everyone or feel they're ripping someone off. They don't value their skill enough, which is a shame.

Because skills take a long time to establish. So again, if you want to boil it down to learning to fly a model helicopter, that to the stage from getting an RC helicopter all those years ago, and they were hard to fly. I mean, they didn't really fly. They beat the air into submission, basically. But to learn to fly a model helicopter took me the best part of a year to get to the stage where I could teach. Now, some people, it took a lot, lot longer than that. But for me, it took a year. That is a lot of flying time, time,

spare parts when you break the model, that's a lot of investment, isn't it? And you've got to get that back. So it's got to be worth something. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think when I first started charging for our course about two and a bit years ago, I was so scared. I was like, oh, people are going to think I'm a sellout, like,

I've built an audience off of free content and now I'm going to charge for something. Oh my God. And then like, it's kind of expensive. So like the people in my audience who can't afford it are going to think I'm a terrible person. And there were all these fears I had around money. And I think what was underlying that was the idea that money is evil and making money is bad and making money by charging people for things.

And it just had, there was a lot of untangling I had to do. Was that something that you've come across? I've never struggled with it really. With, I mean, you get people knocking drop shipping, don't you? Oh, you've bought that from Alibaba for $10 and you're selling it to me for $30. That's a rip off. Well, what do Walmart do?

What do Sainsbury's do? What do all these companies do? They buy for a low price. They sell for a high price. And the value they put in between is why they can get that profit. Why would you say that's a ripoff? It's not a ripoff. That's what I want to sell that product for. So why should you struggle with that? If no one wants to buy it, then I've got a problem because I can't earn the margin I need to survive in business. So either I've got to change my business model or

Or I've got to look at my margins and see if I can rely on less. But there is always a figure that you can't do less than. It's just not worth your while. And if you're not earning money, what is the point? And the thing with courses, I mean, I only provide free content, as you're aware. And I don't have a problem with courses. I think courses such as your own and others are very good and provide excellent value.

of course there is the other side of it and you know the people that produce bad courses and they are a rip off without a doubt you know so it's very hard to justify the cost of yours but you know the effort that's gone into what you're producing and

Again, that's the value you're adding. And if that's good value, then you should never be ashamed to charge for it ever. The fact that you can now sell millions of a digital product, that's immaterial. You've still put that value in.

Yeah. Yeah. I think another thing that I have appreciated over time is sort of, I think cost-based versus value-based pricing, where I think people are in, are often thinking, oh, this only took me half an hour. Therefore I'll charge based on that versus that half an hour has added 500 grand in sales to this, this company that you've just tweaked the headline for. So let's charge based on the value we've provided rather than the cost it costs us.

to just do the thing yeah it goes to like a story of the guy that fixes the computer i mean the guy goes to this massive computer place let's call it ibm and they don't know what's wrong with their big blue computer or whatever it was called at the time and he turns up he looks around and he takes out a component puts a new component bam it goes into life and he says there's my invoice 20 000 pounds

And they said, £20,000, you're only here five minutes. Yeah, but it took me years to know what component to take out to make that work. That's my value. Do you want me to take it back out? Yeah. No. Right. Okay. £20,000. Fair play. And also if that computer is printing them like £100,000 a minute, it's like, you know. Exactly. To them, those five minutes are worth 500k. Yeah. But, you know, knowing that component might have taken him. Yeah.

50,000 hours of gaining knowledge to know that's the component that you need to change So they're actually paying a proportion of that 50,000 hours of learning. Yeah, true. I'm paying for it back So what is what is your model business do these days? What does it look like? What does it look like? At the moment we have a couple of shops that sell direct to public they also sell on eBay and also via the website and

there's still a very big enjoyment for me. And if I get time, I'm behind the counter from time to time, not as much as I'd like to be, but I still get a kick out of selling a product, particularly if someone comes in and they don't know what they're buying. And I can explain, ask them who they're buying it for, what they want it to do and all the rest of it. And I can explain the best package and they go, yeah, I'll have that.

that's quite a kick. You know, it's really nice and you know they're going to love the product and that's brilliant. So that's the shop side of the business. Then we also have a design, import, manufacturing and distribution business as well. And we manufacture in China and also in Vietnam. And they're my own designs that we manufacture. And the best selling one of those designs is a model called the Riot, which is a model aeroplane.

And I designed that when I was 14 in a geography lesson at school. No way. Wow. Yeah. It took me years to make it. And the reason it took so long is because there used to be a product leader in the market. And I had to deal with him because I knew he was getting quite old, that when he retired, he would pass those design rights to me and I'd continue that brand and he'd have a royalty.

but like in business, there's always a bit of backstabbing somewhere down the line. And he passed it to someone else. And I said, well, yeah, listen, Arnie. He said, well, I promised that to him before. I said, well, you could have let me know. But I had all these models that I designed as a kid. And I went, right, here we go. Let's get them manufactured. And now we are more prolific than the models we would have taken on.

Because they're better, of course. And I designed those because I couldn't afford the kits when I was a youngster.

You know, so I'd use the woodwork lessons. Well, after school, they had a woodwork lesson. I'd cut out the sides of the models and use the technical drawing tables as well to do the final designs. You know, use what you've got available for free. A bit like where you start a business. Use your advertising tools that are free. Use everything you can. Don't just go, how much does this cost to advertise and give them all your money? You know, it's about using what you've got.

This episode is very kindly brought to you by WeWork. Now, this is particularly exciting for me because I have been a full-paying customer of WeWork for the last two years now. I discovered it during, you know, when the pandemic was on the verge of being lifted and I'd spent like the whole year just sort of sitting in my room making YouTube videos. But then I discovered WeWork and I

I was a member, me and Angus, my team members, we were members of the WeWork in Cambridge and they have like hundreds of other locations worldwide as well. And it was incredible because we had this fantastic, beautifully designed office space to go to, to work. And we found ourselves like every day, just at nine o'clock in the morning, just going to WeWork because it was a way nicer experience working from the coworking space than it was just sitting at home working. These days, what me and everyone on my team has is the all access pass, which means you're not tied to a specific WeWork location, but it means you can use any of their several hundred coworking spaces around London, around the UK, and also around the world.

And one of the things I really love about the coworking setup is that it's fantastic as a bit of a change of scenery. So these days I work from home, I've got the studio at home, but if I need to get some focused writing work done and I'm feeling a bit drained just sitting at my desk all day, I'll just pop over to the local WeWork, which is about a 10 minute walk from where I am. I'll take my laptop with me, I'll get some free coffee from there, I'll get a few snacks. And it's just such a great vibe and you get to meet cool people. I made a few friends through meeting them at WeWork and it's just really nice being in an environment almost like a library, but kind of nicer because there's like

a little bit of soft music in the background and there's other kind of startup bros and creators and stuff in there as well. And it's just my absolute favorite coworking space of all time. It's super easy to book a desk or book a conference room using the app. And it's a great place to meet up with team members if you're gonna collaborate and you'll live in different places. They've got unlimited tea and coffee and herbal teas and drinks on tap. And they've also got various kind of after work events that happen like happy hours and yoga and a few other exercise type things. And you can also take in guests. So often when guests will come over to visit,

I'll say, hey, let's pop into WeWork and we'll just work from there for the whole day and then we'll go out for dinner sometime in the evening. Anyway, if you're looking for a coworking space for you or your team, then I'd 100% recommend WeWork. Like I said, I've been a paying customer for theirs for the last two years, which is why it's particularly exciting that they're now sponsoring this episode. And if you wanna get 50% off your first booking, then do head over to we.co forward slash Ali and you can use the coupon code Ali at checkout ALI to get 50% off your first booking. So thank you so much WeWork for sponsoring this episode. It's so cool hearing about physical businesses. I guess, you know, these days,

Really, the only businesses you hear about, often the ones interviewed on podcasts, are like online and internet businesses like a marketing agency or PR or digital media or content or courses or any of this kind of software. Yeah.

But like physically designing a product, getting it manufactured and selling it to a physical customer, that's got to feel pretty good because you do the online stuff as well. Is there a different kind of enjoyment in the two? From online sales, there's very little enjoyment, unfortunately. I don't really like online sales, although they're a big part of our business. There's no emotional attachment.

Attachment to an online sale apart from seeing the figures at the end of the day which oh, that's great That makes me feel good That's it. Yeah but what is nice is when you sell all this stuff and you don't see these customers and I go and visit different flying clubs or whatever happens to be or I'm Racing model airplanes, which I'm doing this weekend as well And you go to this club and half the models at this club are the models you designed and you go Wow, look at that. Yeah

Yeah, that came from my pen and it must have come through me at some stage. And that's pretty powerful stuff, really. Nice. I've just got a few specific questions about the shop stuff because it's weird for me. Do you have to buy stock in bulk in advance and then stick it in a warehouse and then you're hoping to sell it over time? Is that how it works? It can be. It depends how you do it. I mean, we ship from China 40-foot containers. And if you...

look at model airplanes again going back to the one we just spoke about you can get uh 550 of those in one 40 foot container so obviously you're you're having to get containers on a let's say a monthly basis um so on that side of the business yes you've got to buy in bulk because we're supplying not only end users we're supplying other model shops as well around the country we also license the product to um

well, used to to a guy in Germany who isn't there any longer, but also to a guy in America. So they actually have the manufacturer that's sourced under our license and they go out. So, yeah, you do have to buy in bulk on that side of the business. On the other side of the business, the shop business,

Really, yes, you used to have to buy in more bulk, but because now it's a more competitive market, you probably don't have to do that now. And also your website can show warehouse stock potentially that you don't have. We try not to do that route. We try to have everything we show on our websites in stock, at least a single item.

Because, you know, you get an order for it, you want to fulfill it straight away. So the only company we deal with where we have to buy well in advance and to the maximum we think we're going to sell is actually Hornby Hobbies. Okay. Because they're very, very, I'll put this on record, very backwards in the way they do business. You know, they want to know exactly what they're going to sell for the year. They want those orders in advance so they can manufacture it, which I think is the wrong way to go about things. Yeah.

When we first moved to the UK, I was eight years old and we were living in Wiltshire,

a little town called Devizes. And there was a toy shop there. And I used to go there and buy these like mini airplane things. And like, you know, they would have the whole thingy of like the Revell paints and the glues and stuff. I would get like a £7.99 one for my birthday. And then I'd spend ages like painting the bits. And then I realized you could paint them before you put the thing on and it makes it way easier. And that was like my hobby when I was a kid. And my brother and I went back a couple of years ago and the same shop was there, the same kind of stuff.

we bought ourselves some Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards just for old time's sake. But yeah, there was... Did you get Charizard in it? No, I wish. If only. If only. Yeah, there's just something so nice about just...

the the tactile nature of like a physical hobby which i feel like i don't i don't really do anymore but also the visit to the shop yeah it's lovely isn't that yeah you can talk to them and be like hey how much enjoyment you get from i'll have one of those i'll have zero

Less than zero. So that's the same for me selling you that product. Yeah. You come into my shop, as I explained before, and you ask about something and I can give you years, years of advice, years of help. You know, that will be perfect for you. And you've had that experience of coming in and buying. Why have we decided that the internet's better? What a shame. I think it's the same kind of thing. Yeah.

You know, if I make a video teaching someone the step-by-step methods to starting a YouTube channel, that's very different to sitting down in front of someone and saying the same stuff, but seeing the like, oh, shit, in there. You can see the light bulb come on, can't you? Yeah, and you can see kind of the ideas worrying and stuff, which you just don't get over the internet. But yeah, internet, zero cost, big scale. Exactly. There's lots of, you know, pros and cons.

So you've got this model business right now. What other businesses do you have? What are the streams of revenue in your life? Well, there's all sorts of streams of revenue. Obviously, investing is a stream of revenue, but everything I invest in gets reinvested anyway. YouTube, obviously, is a revenue stream as well, which is shared 50-50 with my son.

And obviously there's a lot of cost to YouTube that people don't realize. I mean, all this equipment, it all costs money, doesn't it? And to do a professional setup, we reinvest a lot of money. I don't know what the percentages are, but it's a lot of money.

And that's a good revenue stream for me now. But it was never started for that reason. You know, it was started purely to pass on these years of knowledge. And I say to a lot of people to give 35 years worth of life experience, you've got to look about 55. And that's just the way it is. So it wasn't done initially to be a revenue stream. But, of course, it certainly is now. Nice.

So kind of model business with the manufacturing arm and also the commerce arm.

And then the YouTube thing, sort of your main, I guess, active income. Yeah. And then investing and stuff on the passive side. I'm a very keen reinvestor. So I don't really take much out from investing. The only time I really have is when I bought one of my warehouses because it was during the dot-com bubble. And I took it out and bam, it went down. And I did it a week really before the bubble burst. It was fantastic. Nice.

You've got to have a little bit of luck along the way, haven't you? Changing gears a bit, what is your take on buying versus renting a house? I like to buy. I not only like to buy, I like to buy and pay off.

Oh, interesting. Yes, I know. Well, I'm very borrowing avert. Although we spoke about borrowing earlier, borrowing for a means, I understand. The loan that started my business was paid back within two and a half, three years, and it was a 20-year loan. So a 20-year, 15-year loan. I like to pay back loans. I like to know what I've got. I like to know what's mine. Now,

If I did it all again, I would be less avert to borrowing money and using money to make more money.

So my advice on that or my tips would be don't be a loaner vet because money can make money. If you've got access to it, you can make money from it. But I would say on buying property, for me, your key property you live in, buy it, own it, get it paid for. It can't be taken away from you. You've got such security for you, your family, and your wife for the rest of your life. That's my take. Yeah.

You know, on a residential property I buy to rent out or commercial property I buy to rent out, obviously I'll borrow and I'll let that run the term. Although most of my commercial property is paid off now. Oh, nice.

but you get to a certain stage in life i mean again we mentioned 55 which is what they have yeah then you want to be secure yep you know all these things as you gradually secure things off you feel safer with the future and how things are going to go so although i'm not avert to borrowing some money for a good project i would always endeavor to try and get that paid off for me as quickly as i can my son is the opposite but then

But then he's 24 and has a lot of time to go over those stages of paying down. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So you guys have a ridiculously enormous following across all of the social medias, which is fantastic. You've done a fantastic job over the last two years. Big shout out to my team as well. Last two and a bit years of doing the YouTube stuff. What are the main questions that you get from your audience around finance?

Probably what should I invest in to make me rich tomorrow? Almost, you know. Okay. And it doesn't matter how much we preach or put over long-term investing is long-term wealth. It's very hard to get that message over. And I think with the instant access of everything to youngsters nowadays, it probably is hard to understand that, you know, you've got these small amounts to gain a big amount in the future. So,

I always bang on about index funds. We've already mentioned it before. If you've not got an index fund running in an ISA, why haven't you? It's one of the simplest things that you can do as an individual, the most tax-efficient thing you can do as an individual. You are going to be a millionaire if you put an amount of a decent coffee away every day into your index fund, sorted. And that's your safety net.

Now again, a lot of people say you shouldn't have a safety net, you should be 100% in on what you're doing. But that's always been my safety net. I always thought from the day I started putting into an index fund, I would never ever touch that money. Now, I'm at a stage where I could touch it if I wanted to, I can touch my pensions if I wanted to. I don't need to. I have other revenue streams bringing the money in. It is just there just in case. It's almost a reminder that you made that money, you can make it again.

You don't need to touch it. Why do I need to touch it? Yeah. Yeah. I've been preaching the ISA index fund strategy to my friends and years. It's so obvious. If it wasn't so good, it wouldn't be limited to 20 grand a year, would it? It'd be a open pot to put as much as you wanted in. So it's just obvious.

You know, you've just got to get on board and take the small losses when they come. Keep putting in. Don't worry about it. Forget about it. It's working in the distance. I mean, you don't come out of your house, if you own a house, you don't come out of your house every day and go, oh, it's gone down 5% today. Yeah. Of course you don't, because it's still there, isn't it? You're not selling it. You're living in it. You don't worry about that sort of thing, as you shouldn't worry about your index funds. Just keep putting in. Historically, they've raised money.

eight percent a year yeah you can't go wrong with that yeah and if anyone needs a primer on index funds we'll put some of my videos and your videos in the video description and show notes so you can you can get a get a primer on them um any advice for people who are who don't have large amounts of disposable income who think i'd love to start investing but i'll do it i don't have enough money right now make more money

You can only save so much money. I was expecting you to talk about tips for budgeting and stuff, but this is interesting. Like what do you mean? Make more money. You can save so much. So you get paid a thousand pound a month for argument's sake. Okay. If you saved every penny of that, that's a thousand pounds. Wow. That's all you can do. There's no limit to how much you can make. So make more money. You know, you've got to budget. Of course you've got to budget. If you don't budget, you don't know where it's gone. So a hundred percent budget, but make more money.

How do you do that? Like someone might be listening to this thing. Well, okay. People like going to a bar. Yeah. They like going to a pub. Well, go to the pub, but be the other side of the bar. Get yourself a part-time job. You've got all the social side of going to the bar and being in a pub and you're getting paid for it. Yeah. You know, that's just one example. There's hundreds of examples. You know, it's just make more money. It sounds so simple.

It is, isn't it, though, if you think about it? I mean, if someone said to you, right, you need to invest £5 a day into an index fund, and you turn around and go, I don't have £5 left. In the whole of your day, taking out your day of work, you couldn't earn £5 somewhere doing something. Of course you could. It could be washing dishes in a restaurant. It could be anything, couldn't it? But you could earn an extra £5. Don't spend it. Put it in an index fund.

I can imagine someone listening to this. I mean, for the record, I agree with your advice. I can imagine someone listening to this being like, fuck you guys. You guys are privileged and rich and like you don't realize that I've got a family to feed and like I'm already working two jobs just to pay my rent because rent's gone up because inflation and stuff. How can you possibly tell me that I just need to earn more money? Because they're working so hard, so hard because they're servicing the debt that they're under, generally speaking.

So, again, if we're into that scenario, start earning more. Start paying those debts down, particularly the high debts. I mean, they're crippling, aren't they? Again, if you're earning that £1,000 a month, for argument's sake, it's an easy figure to use, and £200 of that is going on interest and payments and you're not getting anywhere, well, you're actually living on £800. So get it paid down. I know it's harsh. It is harsh, but it's also quite simple as well, isn't it?

So let's say, okay, so let's say someone listening to this are like, cool, I'm earning a thousand pounds a month right now. What would you recommend as like,

your approach, like if you were in that position, how would you go about earning an extra, let's say a hundred quid a month or an extra 500 quid a month? Well, it's probably a bit different for me and it's different for everyone, isn't it? But I would use that scenario. I just said, if you'd like going to the pub, work in the pub. If you like, whatever you like to do, find some, some requirement from it. Like I was flying model airplanes or flying model helicopters. There was an element of, of desire that I could pass on that skill. So that skills were of something.

You know, go online. You know, there's lots of things you can do online, like copywriting, for example, or whatever it happens to be. In fact, you don't even have to do it. Just ask AI to do it for you and send it on. You know, there are so many things that you can just earn that small amount extra. And as long as you don't go and spend it or waste it,

Your quid's in. Nice. Okay, so one big question that you get is, how do I start investing to make money to get rich tomorrow? What other kind of questions do you guys get that you find yourself answering quite often? That's quite a hard one. I'm looking at Curtis there for a thing. I mean, most of the things we get are quite positive, and I think you're in a similar situation. It's more of a, I didn't realize that, I'll have a go at that. I think the thing that we get that we can't really –

get over is the time. Everyone who's young has got time to make money. I don't think people are aware of how much time they have, but they've got to start. You can't keep asking for advice and not taking action. Because where's it going to get you? You can read 100 books, but if you don't take action, what's the point in reading all those books? No point. So you

Action is the thing, isn't it? The answer to most people's questions is take action. Do something. Have a go. Nice. What's your take on the whole –

stop buying lattes from Starbucks so that you can put your £3.50 in an index fund debate. Well, it's not really that, is it? That's not really the thing. You know, the smashed avocado on toast. It's not really the thing. It's where you're going to find that money from. And obviously by saying don't buy the coffee, don't buy the avocado, that's all on the saver mentality, isn't it? It's like to save some of the money you earn. Well, yeah.

all those things bring enjoyment don't they i mean going out for a nice coffee taking the wife out or the girlfriend or whatever yeah they're all nice things so i'll go back to i said before put some money on top of what you're earning and use that that's money you didn't have any money you earn on top of what you earn is free it's not free money but you can think of it as free money use that to invest

rather than say I've got to physically give up my coffee. But having said that, do you need a Starbucks coffee on your way to work? Probably not. You make an instant coffee, pop it in a cup, stick it in the car. You'll enjoy it probably just as much.

You know, I buy a particular instant coffee I quite like, and everyone goes, instant? But I quite like that. So I'll make a coffee. When I go to work at the shop, I'll make a coffee. I'll take it with me. I could stop. I've got to cost a drive-through on the way to work. Well, you know, it might sound tight coming from me, but that's four quid. I don't need to spend that. The chances are, if you stop for that, you can have a pastry as well, and you've seen what they charge for those. So, you know...

You don't have to do these things. And actually, what are you giving up? You've still got your hot drink you enjoy. Have you come across a book called Die With Zero? No, but I'm guessing what it's about. Yeah. It's an interesting book by Bill Perkins, basically about how people who are kind of aimed at, I guess, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.

people who invest a lot into their careers, where the mindset of make more money, save more money continues way beyond it's actually useful. And actually his whole premise in the book is that

provided you've given what you want to your kids and given what you want to charities, you should aim to die with $0 in the bank account. And a lot of people, when they hit retirement age, they find that A, their health is already declined. And so they should have spent more money when they were younger to do interesting things. And B, that the mindset of scrounging and saving pennies

No longer like that, that then holds them back and they end up dying with loads of money left in the bank account, which is time, which is money that they could have not worked for and therefore saved time, assuming they didn't enjoy their jobs, or it was a backpacking trip they could have taken in their 20s or 30s or whatever that thing might have been.

How do you how do you think about that balance? Well, it's multifaceted that isn't it really because first of all, you've got to say Do you enjoy what you do now? I enjoy what I do for a living the YouTube side of things and social media with my son. I absolutely love So first of all, why would I stop doing that if that's something I really enjoy? so far this year we've been to Las Vegas and

We've come and met you today. I'm doing a bungee jump shortly because one of our guests gave us a bungee jump experience. I'm going to Dubai next month. I'm doing a parachute jump over the Palm Island, or that's the plan. We're skiing. I don't know if I just mentioned that. I love doing lots of experiences. I would say if you're an entrepreneur or a businessman,

The model I've always tried to do is to spend a little bit more each year, try and improve your life and your experiences every year. And what I believe is when you pass away, the experiences and the fun you had are the things that you're left with. So I've always done experiences, always wanted to race cars. I've done that. The boxes tick, you know, all these different things are great experiences and you should experience them without doubt. But,

Dying with zero, I don't like the idea of that. I like the idea of generational wealth, and I like the idea that

my granddad said to my dad you're going to do better than me you know carry the family name forward and all the rest of it he said the same to me i've said the same to my son as well you know i think that generational thing is great and particularly when you come from humble beginnings if you can build your family wealth up that's got to be a good thing you know nice how do you think about like charity and like donating and that kind of i like to think that

I give for the right reasons, but I think we all give for the reasons that we can say we gave. Yeah. Um,

I think Ricky Gervais did a really good sketch on it in, what was it, Extras, where he went past and went, oh, I've only got a tenner. I don't really want to give a tenner, but oh, there's a tenner. You can't have the tenner, you know, and it was all for show, wasn't it? And I think there's a lot of that goes on. I give where I want to give, and I'm happy to give where I give. I don't probably give...

give enough at the moment but probably will more so in the future okay if i see it being used well as well you know that's quite important to me i mean our charity as a business is kent air ambulance so we'll give to that because i think that's a very good cause and maybe there's a bit of me that thinks i might need that one day so a bit of payback i don't know yeah there's obviously all these things in there why do people give to cancer organizations

might need what they develop you know it's it's a funny thing isn't it yeah yeah um a lot of entrepreneurs they sort of when you ask them especially i think above the age of like 30 they kind of wish they'd spent more time either on their health and or their relationships as they were as they were making it big as it were

Do you have any of those regrets? The only regret I have is I wish I could have spent more time with my son. He's giving me the eye now because he knows where I'm going with that. And that's probably why now is such a good time. You know, he's 24. He's a man, you know, and we get on well and we work hard to achieve the goals we want to achieve.

But it is a very hard balance, very hard balance. I mean, the thing he if you asked him, the thing that I didn't spend enough time on was he was very good swimmer and I wouldn't have gone to enough swimming events to watch him. My flip side of that was always that they wouldn't give you the time that his race was on.

And I wasn't interested in watching anyone else swim or getting hot in the environment of a swimming pool. It's not just hot, it's humid, it's horrible. And it's so loud with everyone screaming, their kids coming on and all the rest of it. So if they could have given me a time, I could have gone, right, I'll lock that in. I'll be there. I'll be watching that, cheering on, saying well done at the end and all the rest of it. So that's a slight regret, slight regret. But realistically, yeah,

If you work hard, you can gain the benefits along the way. And if your life gets a bit better every year, then I think everyone enjoys that. Nice. Do you think that, again, so when I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, and you haven't alluded to this yet, which is interesting, but when I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, they talk about the importance of work-life balance. But they only talk about that once they're already millionaires. To what extent, like we talked about when you were younger and, you know, in your teens, right?

But to what extent do you think for, let's say, entrepreneurs like your son, for example, or someone like me, I'm 28, or people in their 30s, how important is this idea of work-life balance, do you reckon?

I think the honesty is, as we alluded to earlier, is the important part of that. So as long as your partner, and I know you have a fairly new girlfriend, I think the honesty behind how much work you need to do and how much time that takes up, that's important.

Because at the end of the day, yes, it's a relationship, but it's also a bit of a contract as well, isn't it? If she's expecting more from you than you're able to provide and vice versa, then that's a problem. That's where the problem is going to create. So I think open and honest is very important. We used to operate the shops initially seven days a week. You know, that's a lot of time when you're on very low staff and you're having to be there. So I...

I think work-life balance is very important. But if you start off honestly and then every year it gets better, then I don't think that's necessarily a problem. I'm probably going to shock you here with something as well. Oh, hello.

when my wife went into labor to have my son, um, I was out teaching someone to fly a model helicopter at a time. I said, Oh yeah, I'll be, I'll be there. I'll be about 20 minutes, half an hour. So that was bad really, because I should have been straight there. Um,

Two days after he was born, I was in America competing in a radar-controlled model helicopter competition, which, again, would sound bad to the average person. But that's the commitment I had to the hobby and to the industry that I was in, that I had to do that. So it doesn't sound right, but that is how it is. Yeah. And your wife was okay with this? Well, to be fair, she was probably happy I wasn't around for those two weeks anyway. Nice.

What's it like running a business with your son? It can be quite argumentative, but ultimately fulfilling. Our podcast now is called Strike It Big. It used to be called Like Father, Like Son. The reason we named it Like Father, Like Son was because we thought the arguments that we had and the disagreements we had and the differences between the old and the new, that would make great viewing.

We ended up finding that the arguments we had weren't really the ones that we'd want to air anyway because they were probably irrelevant or when you look back on them a day later, it's sort of like, well, it didn't really matter whether that was orange or red. It didn't matter, but we had an argument about it. But ultimately, working with your son is very rewarding and that would never have happened

within the industry that I'm in because he has no interest in radio control models. So it was a case of we would never work together, but now we do, and that's good. Nice. Because a lot of people would say, oh, you know, whatever you do, don't go into business with any family members. Yeah. I guess you don't agree with that advice. Not really, no. You've got to be quite strong.

I think because it could have fallen apart. Yeah, but it didn't fall apart and it's like a relationship with a girlfriend stroke wife You know, it's never happy. So it's never like that. Great. Great. Great. Great. Yeah, great It's a roller coaster. Yeah, and there are ups and downs and issue as long as you know ultimately the we're we're both working for the business for the betterment of the business and when I suggest something as a

outright ludicrous or call your thinking from the stone age dad you know it's it's meant with the right passion you know to get the business forward and you know a couple of days later you might come back say yeah there is something in that and there's an app that does that now in a better way and we can work with this and oh yeah that works and then that's great another time maybe that was absolute

Awful suggestion. But I'm okay with it as long as it's taken on board and it's like, yeah, we'll give it some thought. Nice. And then that's good. Fantastic. But it is a roller coaster. Yeah. What do you see as the end game for you with the, I guess, the content side of the business? That's hard to say really. I mean...

The thing I get from it equally as I do from working with my son is the good comments back. When you get comments back that you've changed people's lives, that's great. When people walk up to you, and I'm sure you've had this, it's like, I saw that video with you and talking about this fund or talking about this idea or this side hustle, and I've done it and I'm doing really well. That's brilliant. I don't really want that to stop. I'd like that to continue forever.

Forever. Yeah, because that's fantastic, isn't it? If you can bring everyone up rather than push everyone down, you're going to feel better as a person, aren't you? And that's why I like, you know, you know, 99.9% of our comments are positive of people that have done better for what they've done, haven't realized what they could do or what they were capable of. I mean, how many people don't realize what they're capable of? Most. Yeah.

You know, it's amazing. Nice. So internet fame has broadly been a positive thing for you guys? I think so. Yeah, we were in a tube station last night and that was quite funny. Oh yeah, what happened? I'll just recognise, you know, people chat. Sometimes they don't want to come up to you, do they? You can hear what they're saying. Oh yeah, that's the guy I learnt such and such off of. And you can hear them discussing it. And you can think,

That's fantastic. Not only has he learned it, he's telling them that that's the guy and now they're learning it. And that's superb. Yeah. It's a really nice feeling to be able to pass on knowledge and experience. My mentor, Dave, this isn't the guy we spoke about earlier. This is another guy. He died about 20 years ago now. He passed on his knowledge for free.

Absolutely for free. Didn't even know he was passing on the knowledge. Didn't know. Maybe he had an inkling I was absorbing it. I don't know. But that was for free. That's why we do all our content for free. One thing I'm curious about. So I'm going to phrase this in a weird way. But from what you've experienced and what you've seen, what are the different levels of wealth? By which I mean...

You know, there's clearly a big difference between like 10K a month and like 50K a month in terms of what it affords your lifestyle. But like 50 to 100, 100 to 250, 250, what are the levels with which you see or in your friends like step changes and this thing actually improves your life? Well, I think it's widely accepted about 80K buys you just about anything.

Most things you want and you can go wherever you want. You can do pretty much whatever you want Over a certain amount of time you can do all those things So if you want to go to Cuba, for example You can fly economy to Cuba have a week in an okay hotel and all the rest of it So I think the first key for most people is to get to that sort of level of wealth beyond that

It does several things. It enables you to go in first class if you want to, or premium even. You know, there's a plus to that, isn't there? You know, it's diminishing returns, but the comfort is so much better. Like for myself, when I first traveled to China and I was doing my business there, I was traveling economy. Now I would never go less than premium because I,

I know that if I go a better service, I can work that next day that I arrive. Well, when I was traveling in economy, I couldn't do that. You know, I'm all like this and being a larger sort of chap, it's very difficult. So as you become better off, it affords you just those better ways of doing things, the better hotel, the better travel, the, you know, some might say the better experiences.

you know, really, because, you know, rather than sitting on the beach, watching that guy paraglide along behind the boat, that's you paragliding behind the boat. Obviously it is a diminishing return, but you can also buy back a bit of your time as well. And I think as you become wealthier,

that that's the thing that you're buying back you know because you get other people to do other jobs for you other things that you'd be tied up doing anything that takes your time away if you can buy that time back then yeah that's a great thing isn't it and we're all on a limited time scale here all of us and it's too short you know we all think we're going to live to 100 but the facts are we're not i don't know what the facts are it's probably 80 something yeah something like that

it's not a lot of life is it really and you've got a lot of things to fit in you know i had an accident not so long ago you may have seen the video um and that that's it wasn't a life threatening well it could have been life threatening it was a punctured lung and a

ribs gone on the back and all the rest of it it was pretty shocking um but as i laid there and i looked at my wife and my son i thought you know hopefully it's not the last time i see them but if it is they won't be able to write on there i wish you'd done more because he's had a pretty fulfilled life up to this stage

And I think that's quite a nice way to be. I mean, I also believe, you know, I don't like live every day like it's the last because otherwise you'd end up with no money doing all sorts of things you shouldn't be doing. But I think you should live this life like it's your last life.

because it is you know so enjoy everything as you go we have one guy who works for me he said you should spend more money you should do more things you should do this you should do that and i said but i'm having a great time i'm 55 years old i can't remember a year i didn't enjoy so there's nothing wrong with that is there yeah i take enjoyment from all sorts of things yeah it seems like it yeah um

So there's a bit of a debate. Well, it's not much of a debate. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these two scenarios. Number one, I don't like doing the laundry. I don't like doing the cleaning of my house. Therefore, I'm going to outsource it because my time is worth it.

50 quid an hour, I can outsource it for 20 quid an hour. 100% agree with that. Versus it builds character and it's good for you to clean your own dishes and wash your own clothes, stop being a twat, like do it yourself. When you couldn't afford it, you did it yourself. You understood what you needed to do. And when that person phones you and says they can't come in, you know how to do it. It's all about understanding those jobs. Once you can afford to buy your time back, 100%, that's what you should be doing. I think that.

you know wholeheartedly but doing the jobs I think is quite important as well if you have the money as a birthright and it's gifted to you and you never ever do any of those jobs and I think you've lost something there without a doubt and within my business or businesses there's not one job I haven't done

and also use my carpentry skills in there as well you know so everything yeah everything i can do i've done and then when i ask someone to do a job i'm not asking them to do a job of from a position of i don't want to do that i hate that job you can do it i'm doing it saying well i have done it you know i've done my time it's now your time to go through that and that's how it is nice

And also you're making employment as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for someone who does your laundry or does your ironing, that's another little side hustle, isn't it? You know, it's something rather than sat there watching Emmerdale Farm or Coronation Street, which if they enjoy it and they get enjoyment from, nothing wrong with that, but they could be stood in front of an ironing board doing your ironing and earning 20, 30, 40 quid an hour. And they can watch Coronation Street while doing that. Exactly. Yeah.

Perfect, perfect scenario. And then they can invest it in an index fund. That's the one. We'll put links to Vanguard and stuff down below. What are some things where you found that...

spending more money has actually led to more fulfillment a lot of people say like business class is way better than economy so if you can afford it it's totally worth it are there any other things where well first class i wouldn't say it's necessarily better than um than premium to be perfectly honest so we flew uh first class back from the states because virgin offered a

that we couldn't say no to. You probably had similar deals. So we said, yeah, okay, we'll do it. But the life-lapse beds for me being six foot four and a half, six foot five, it was no benefit because I was still cramped up. But in a premium seat, I can sleep no problem at all. So I wonder where we're going there. So buying. Oh, what are some areas in which you found that spending more money has actually led to a better experience or more happiness? Yeah.

I think being able to... Going back to the airline thing, it is being able to up. But you don't have to go the full hog. I spoke with Graham Steffan recently, who most of your viewers will recognise that name. And he...

He is more frugal than I am. He's ridiculously frugal, yeah. I'm always surprised whenever I see him. Yeah, he said, because we said about traveling first class and premium and this and the other, and he said, I always travel economy. I said, really? You know, you're worth $20 million. Why would you travel that way? He said, well, the only time I've traveled...

um upper class is when it costs me less than 30 an hour to track more to travel first class he said that's what i i value that first class at so that's the way he looks at things i think that's too far i think you know you can't get there is a diminishing return obviously we know that but if you arrive in comfort that's got to be worthwhile and also

I'm sure you've been in the Virgin lounge at Heathrow. That brings back the jet set way of traveling. You go into that lounge, you're fully relaxed. You feel like you want to get on the flight. You stay in the normal area. You're fighting to get something to eat. Your drink's being knocked over by someone. Everyone's screaming, all the noise going.

So it does afford you certain benefits, that's for sure. So spending a bit of money is a good thing. And rewarding yourself as well. At the end of the day, having a reward keeps you positive and focused on what you're doing. So again, talking of rewards, my son bought a Rolex because we got a million subscribers. That was the target. If we ever got to that, he would buy that. He did, and he rewarded himself. And I think...

If you're building rewards to your business, then that's a good thing. Cool. Final question. What was it like interviewing and meeting Andrew Tate? Amazing. Yeah? Yeah. Some people will find this hard to believe, but he was a perfect gentleman. He arrived early. He gave willingly of his time.

as much time as we wanted. We thought we were overrunning and we stopped because we'd filled a card up on the camera and we said, oh, we feel like he's going to want to go. And he said, oh, that's fine. Yeah, time to get another coffee. And if you want any more, oh yeah. So we went for another hour on top of what we thought he would allow us. Some of his thoughts and ideas, of course, are not

you know, great with everyone. I understand that some of them aren't great with me. We did a reaction video to it and I would say 80% roughly is what we'd agree with. 20% isn't, um, talking of hate comments, cause this brings some up that of course we had some from that. Um,

And people, the biggest comment we had is, why are you talking to this guy? And we get that quite often when we interview people, you know, from time to time. You know, this is not what we expect from you. And the reply is always that we interview interesting people because they're interesting, not because we agree with them 100%. And if we only interview people we agree with 100%, guess what? We'd have no guests. Mm-hmm.

You know, you take what you can from an interview as a viewer. Learn what you can. Discard what you don't want. You know, throw it in the trash. It doesn't matter. But take what you can, learn what you can, and that's how you move on. You can't be black or white, totally polarized. I hate that guy, so nothing he says is going to be of benefit to me. Or the opposite, everything he says is gospel. It's what I believe, 100%, whatever he says. You can't be like that.

And I think it's a shame when people are because then they don't have their own opinions. Yeah Yeah, I'm yeah, I'm with you on this one. I think I mean it's the people that you meet the form your opinion surely Yeah, you know, that's that's what it's all about. They're the only ones that can change the way you think the things you understand

Yeah, we had a bit of a debate amongst our team about this sort of stuff. Like, what sort of guests do we want to give a platform to? And there was a lot of back and forth. And I really appreciate everyone who kind of shared their opinion on this. But my view was that if I could get an interview with Vladimir Putin, I would be like, hell yes. I wouldn't be like, oh, this is the sort of person who's so evil that they cannot be spoken to. Yeah.

And if you would interview someone extreme like that, then basically reason to have a conversation with basically anyone and figure out what you can learn from them. Because everyone, regardless of how we think of them, has an interesting perspective to share. I think so. You know, if J.Q. Rowling wanted to be on the podcast, of course, we'd talk about her writing. Probably wouldn't talk about her trans views, but we'd talk about the writing. It's like you can learn something from everyone, regardless of what you think about the totality of their opinions. Yeah.

But then some people would say that, like, well, you're giving a platform to someone that is spreading their messages of hate even more. How do you feel about the whole platforming thing? Or what being de-platformed or giving them a platform? As in giving, like, freedom of speech does not necessarily mean the right to a platform. So by having a big platform and bringing on someone like an Andrew Tate or whoever evil person is currently evil and, you know, in the...

in the media, then you're allowing their message to spread more than it would otherwise. Well, what's your opinion on Andrew Tate as this is what this actually is referring to? My opinion is broadly similar to yours. I think 80% very reasonable, 20% I disagree with significantly. I think the way in which he phrases a lot of things robs a lot of people up the wrong way and he knows it does and that's kind of the whole model.

My first question to him was, do you believe 100% in what you say and do, or are you just poking the bear? His answer was, well, I'm poking the bear. I'm getting a reaction. So,

So that was the first question we posed, and he answered that honestly. Obviously, he believes in some of the women stuff he believes in, and that's what we kicked back on. We pushed back on it on the actual interview, and we pushed back on it even more on the follow-up video we did. So you're going to learn something from everyone. I think it's wrong necessarily to deplatform someone, right?

And I don't, are we giving him a platform? I think we're giving people a chance to listen to a good debate and a good conversation. Yeah. Yeah. And we're in control of the edit. Yeah, exactly. You know, so although I'll be absolutely honest with you, 10 minutes edited out of that one. Yeah. About 10 minutes for flow. So that was a pretty good,

everything video. Nice. In fact, it's the least edited podcast I think we've probably ever done. So that shows it was very genuine, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, he will. He's on Rumble, isn't he? All his fans will find him no problem at all. So, um, I think it showed, um,

Think he showed Pretty much the true side of him which I'm quite proud of to be honest and it was the last interview with Andrew Tate before he was Arrested. Yeah, and the charges keep changing don't they so you do wonder if he's being pinned with something He hasn't done who knows I mean anyone who's had the background he's had probably has a skeleton in their closet and

Probably. So it's very difficult, isn't it? Yeah. Very difficult. Yeah, I think I'm with you on this one. I think I can see why people would say don't give someone a platform. But I think the net value to the world of...

exposing people to opinions that they don't like with appropriate degrees of preparation yeah and ultimately freedom in the final cut i think is always a reason to have the conversation i mean we obviously did clash on the the woman's side of things because i personally believe finding the right partner be it male female whoever you are that is one of the most important things in your life that will make you a stronger person

Not having multiple women. All that does is spread your time out, waste your time, find the right person, have a full loving relationship. And that's what I've had. And,

That's what I'll continue to have. Fantastic. Mark, I think that's a good place to end this. Thank you so much for taking the time. Where can people learn more about you and the work that you do? They can come and see us on YouTube. Just type in Mark Tilbury. I'll come up. Or watch the Strike It Big podcast where I think you'll be appearing very soon. Exactly. We're going to do that for you now. Thank you so much. Have a great day. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Pleased to meet you. Likewise.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode.

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