From Council Estate To Selling A Global Business For Millions At 27 - Timothy Armoo Founder of Fanbytes
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I felt invincible, but I also felt like I discovered a cheat sheet. This was no funding, nothing at all. I used my skills and my brain to figure out how things work. What you're about to hear is an interview between me and Timothy Armu, who goes by Timo. Timo started his first company at the age of 14. He sold his second company at the age of 17. And he started a company called Fanbytes, which recently sold for somewhere between $1,000

20 and 50 million pounds. - I want it to be a game where like I could be number one and that game to me was business. - In this conversation, we talk a lot about the journey of entrepreneurship and we use Timo's background in starting these businesses from when he was like 14 to starting Fanbytes at the age of 21 and how they ultimately sold for loads and loads and loads of money. - A lot of people kind of underestimate the power of both naivety and youth. And I think for a lot of young people, they almost do not realize

how many superpowers they have. And we kind of use that journey to tease out lessons in entrepreneurship, lessons in kind of hustling a little bit to get what you want through the third door. We talk about his journey of kind of meeting people like Richard Branson at the age of 17, despite not having any credentials to his name. And I think it's incredibly inspiring hearing how Timo had this drive for entrepreneurship, this drive to start his own business and how he just executed on it at a ridiculously young age. And then I think probably at 21,

My dad passed away. Where I grew up, if you were coming home after 7 p.m., you shouldn't do that. I would try and make friends with the gangsters because I knew that at the very least, if they saw me in the evening, they would be like, oh, that's cool. You know, he's part of us.

And hopefully you'll find in the conversation some really practical, actionable advice if you're interested in entrepreneurship. But also hopefully you'll appreciate how humble and down to earth Timo is in his advice. I found it super, super inspiring and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Thank you so much for coming on. This is going to be interesting. It's going to be fun. You are sort of by any definition of the word, phenomenally successful at a very, very, very young age. But what I found interesting is that I guess I saw a few parallels between you and me in that we both started to build businesses when we were around like 13, 14 years old. We're also both into close-up magic. Apparently, I read on the internet. What was your interest in magic? And then we can talk about the business stuff.

My interest in magic. That's interesting. Cause I've actually spoken about that like twice. So you did some good research. Um, I think it was, so I think there were two things. First of all, I really craved being the center of attention. I think that came with being an only child. Um,

So the idea that, you know, I'd have people, even if it's like whatever, five people, they'd come and they'd like see me do this trick and it's like, oh my God. Right. That for me was quite an important thing. So, yeah.

that's one. And I think the second one was also like figuring out like the hacks behind things. I've always been very interested in figuring out how things work and how, right. So you see the output here, but what were the different inputs that went in? And, you know, my, my, um, my career as a magician was not particularly long. Uh,

uh, uh, it was basically for a few shows and by shows, I mean, a few shows to friends and family, max 15, 30 people. But I think that I really love just that feeling. And I think to some degree, I kind of peddled that, I guess, into like at school being good at public speaking. It was, I think it came back to this idea of like wanting attention. Um, um,

And yeah, that's it. How old were you when you were doing the shows? My first ever one in that short-lived career. This was in Ghana. So this was when I was like nine. Yeah, this was in Ghana because I remember my grandma in the front row

in the front row in her garden. So yeah, this is in Ghana. What sort of tricks were you doing? How did you put a show together? Oh, just like dumb things like, here's a glass. Oh, there's no... It was just like really, really trivial things. But it was all that I wanted people to go, oh, wow, that's really cool. And I'm pretty sure they all saw this was not magic.

But like to them, or at least to me, them going, wow, was kind of quite significant. I mean, so I got into magic around age 17. So I was sort of peak attention seeker back then. How do I be cool at school? I'm not in any of the sports teams. Getting good grades is not cool. So let me try to do this close up magic. Yeah. A little bit more attention seeking that way. I mean, like if you really think about it, like most of the things we do,

Whether it's business, whether it's public speaking, whether it's sports, whether it's even like being good at academia, like fundamentally it comes down to like, we want to feel important. Right. And so magic in some way made us feel important business in some way, everything. Right. When did you move to the UK?

when I was 10. So I came here in year six. Fun story about that. So I was born here. I was born in Hackney, but then I went to live in Ghana for 10 years. And when I came back here, I'm in year six. So one of the really interesting things is like in Ghana, when you ask a question in school, you have to like,

Raise your hand and stand up. Right. And like in, in here, you don't have to do that. So my first, I think like my first week in school, they asked a question about like ratios and probabilities. And I knew the answer they asked me. And I like raised my hand. I stood up. Oh,

And everyone was just like this flipping nerd. Right. So I had to spend about six weeks kind of just doing that. And then I remember the day that he asked a question and I didn't stand up and everyone was like, oh my God, this guy's a gangster now. Uh, uh, yeah, that was one of my kind of, uh, yeah. Weird memories.

So I moved here in year four and I was in Lesotho for six years. And so I had this distinct memory. It was bizarre. Like walking to primary school on the first day, we were the only like brown people in the school. It was like full of white people. And I remember thinking just like, whoa, these people are all like my skin color.

Because in Lesotho, I was the whitest person there. And then in the UK, I didn't clock. I was just completely baffled by what was going on there. I also made a few faux pas. So I was in school in Lesotho for a few years and then in Pakistan for a year. Yeah.

And in both places, if someone was fat, you would call them fat. And it was just totally normal. Just straight. And then in my year, in year four, there was this guy and I called him fat. And the teacher called me and he was like, this is really not nice. And I felt so bad. I was just like, but it's so normal. And it was only later that I realized just how normalized some of the experiences we have in childhood are. Don't you also find it funny how, I guess, in the developing world, how being blunt and being open is just so...

respected or so it's like, well, yeah, you're fat, you're fat. Go to the gym. Don't eat that much. Done. Right. Whereas here it's like, you know, yeah, you know, maybe there's this reason it's like, all right, mate. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I had to learn a lot of the empathy, compassion type stuff. Okay. So you moved to the UK age 10, moved back to Hackney? No, I lived on the Oaken road with my dad. So I just became a South London boy.

pretty much my whole life. So where did the interest in business come from? The interest in business came from at 14 when I started my tutoring company and I actually did it not because... So I did, I mean, there's a story that I've mentioned a few times, but basically like I was walking back home with my friend, we saw this black Mercedes Benz and you know, like just this crazy Benz, right? And basically we

He asked me, how much do you think that is? And I was like, oh, I think it's, I don't know, like 500 pounds, right? Just 14, no real concept of money. And I was like, cool. And he made this bet to me. He said like, you wouldn't make 500 pounds before you turn 18. Because at that time we thought, you know, 500 pounds is like, I don't know, 5 million, right? It's like, what the heck, right? Because the context behind this is like, like,

I lived in a like fourth floor council estate on Oaken Road. It was like,

Money wasn't a thing to me. Right. I just like, oh, cool. No, maybe one day, you know, I will be able to afford X. Right. And so he made that bet with me. I then went online and I was trying to find ways to make money. And I've said it before, but like, so I'm 27 now, uh, 13 years ago, 13 years ago, if you search like how to make money online, it's just like fraudsters, right? Just like affiliate marketing, drop shipping, paid surveys,

There you go. There you go. I mean, even like even, you know, dropshipping is fine, but it's like those weird things like, you know, pay me 497 and I will teach you the secrets of wealth. And it's like, well, I don't have 497. That's why I'm coming to you. So I started, but what I did see was a, was a quote, which said like work with what you know. And basically on that day, like,

And I think if it hadn't happened on that day, I would not have started the company. Basically on that day, I had done pretty well in a math test. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like work with what you know, I'm pretty good at maths. So then what I then said was, right, I'm going to tutor people maths. Because the way that I like thought about math was,

wasn't the way we were taught. I figured out, you know, like just, just different like mental models to use. And so I started and the next day I just said, right, you know, in the last test, I scored a hundred percent in that. I'm going to show you guys how I did that. And so that was really the way that I started getting my first

taste of business. And then the crucial point, and you're probably going to notice a theme from not only this business, but Entrepreneur Express and then Fanbytes is I've

I basically like built a bunch of businesses off like connecting people. So the way that it worked was, you know, it was going well with maths and then people come to me for like physics and chemistry and all that stuff. And I'd be like, well, I don't, I'm not the best at that. So what I do is I'd go to the teachers and I'd ask them, Hey, um,

In the last exam, who did the best at that exam? Then they'll tell me. And then I would then go to that person and say, hey, do you want to make some money? Right. Because the whole model was you as a tutor. I would basically match you with someone who needed some tutoring. It would be like 15 or 18 pound an hour. I'll take five. You keep the rest. And if you're like a 14, 15, 16 year old, that's pretty good.

And so that was pretty much like my first thing. And I was like, oh, like this is a business. Like people are paying me for value. Like this is an actual thing. How did you find your first customer? Was it people in your year? Yes. When they like kind of

ripping the shit out of you for having the audacity to charge them for math tutoring. So I had, so I had basically built a brand in secondary school. It's like being the smart one. And so as a consequence of that, like, it's almost like if the smart person comes to you and tells you, like, you can be as smart as me, just pay me X, you know, it's kind of like, well, yeah, okay, cool. And so it was relatively easy to get people at that early stage because I

Like people just saw me as the smart person. Okay. And where were these kids getting money from? From parents. Oh, okay. So they would go to their parents and be like, I want to pay Tim 18 quid an hour. Yeah. All right. The key was the Asian parents. Oh, mate. They were...

Money machine. Like the Chinese kids in my school, JSA, God bless them. Yeah, I think I built my first business off the back of Asian parents. I'm telling you, they are the key. Yeah.

Okay. How did it feel coming into 18 pounds an hour when you're that age and 500 pounds feels like the amount that would get you a... So I don't think it was quite the 18 pound an hour. I think it was when I had got the other tutors in. So I grew it to like 65 tutors in like six weeks. Okay.

All from your school? Yeah. Plenty of them. Rapid. And I think it was when I started to get those like five pound commission checks whilst they kept the rest. That was when I think that my mind just went, oh, because like, you know, at 18 pound an hour, it's like, I'm helping you, you're paying me.

Even when I was getting like five pounds, it was more like, oh, like I've created something which is working and like people are paying me without me like having to do the direct effort. Right.

And that was when I think it kind of, um, tip, you know, soon enough, I realized that a Benz doesn't cost 500 an hour, uh, sorry, um, 500 pounds. Um, but I think that pivotal point of like, I created this thing, it kind of worked and now like.

stuff is happening without me getting directly involved. That was the bit where I was like, oh, this is a thing. Just a quick announcement from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode. And this episode is brought to you by Heights. Heights is a brain care smart supplement that I've been taking every morning for the last 12 months. I love it so much that I actually became friends with the founder, Dan, who we actually had on season one of the Deep Dive podcast.

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There's one powerful moment of like when you first earn money off your own back. Yeah. But then the other one is where you do something and it's just like, oh shit, I just earned money while I was sleeping. Yeah. Or something like that. I remember, so when I was younger, I used to do sort of freelance web design and that's how I would get kind of five pounds here and there. Oh my God, I'm making money off my own back.

But then when I think when I was like 15, I built this affiliate marketing thing. And one of my, one of my friends, Godwin, uh, he got his four sisters to sign up to love film, which is like old school Netflix back in the day for a credit card and cancel it. And it was 12 pound 50 each. And while I, while I was on a school trip, my mom rang me up and she was like, why do you have this check for 50 pounds? And it was one of those checks that had like, you know, like electronically printed. So like how many millions, how many hundreds of thousands, it was like

how many tens five i just made 50 quid and i just built a website and my mate signed up for these fake fake accounts so that was the moment for me that was like shit you can build something on the internet and it will pay you while you're on a school trip yeah um yeah i think that moment is just you know there's a linkedin post i made which um did well which i said um

your first hundred pound is more significant than your first million. And people are like, wait, what? And I was like, the type of person that you have to become in order to like make your first, you know, bit of cash, like through business, through blah, blah, you know,

From then on, it really is a case of like scaling and repeating and like putting systems in place. But I had a huge amount of growth from, let's say, the first, say, thousand pounds that I made to like the first million that I made. It was like...

it was like I had become the type of person who creates value and I realized how to create value. So then it was a case of me like figuring out what system am I going to use? What skill am I actually going to be able to use to like scale my value? So that's why I often say that people go, well, it's so easy for you to say, but like, it is actually a true statement. Like you have to become a different person in order to like be able to give value to the world and get paid for it, you know?

Yeah, I think it's exactly the same thing in YouTube. Like the first thousand subscribers, it like makes you a completely different person. Yeah. To go from a thousand to a million is more of the same. Yeah. Just like do more of what works. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. The other thought I had on this is there's a really good blog post I read that talks about the idea of shifting the goalposts and how some people are like, oh, you know, you shouldn't shift the goalposts. Like what...

back in the day, earning 100k a year would have been like freaking mind blowing. And then you get to that point, you're like, you know, maybe like 10 million would be kind of nice. But the point of the blog post was that this is not actually a sign of like greed and capitalism. It's just a sign that as you become the sort of person who gets closer and closer to making 100k a year, your

Your identity changes. And now you realize that, oh, I actually have the skills to be able to make 100K. Cool. Let's go for 10 million. It's just in a way more of a challenge, more fun. It's not like part of it is like, oh, yeah, you know, that thing is fancier. I'm hanging out with the sorts of people that have money. Yeah, I'm with you.

But also, yeah, fundamentally the floor for how much you can earn just completely changes. Yeah, yeah. My co-founder on his phone, he has something quite cool. And it says like, how much is enough? And the reason why he asked himself that question was because he started to almost, I think he started to forget the value of just like,

like what he's done in life. Right. And at some point it was like, okay, I'm just perpetually going on this treadmill. Um, but it was also like, uh,

self-enforced treadmill. Like no one created the treadmill. He just created it and said, well, you know, I've done this at 27, 28, cause he's 28. Well, that should therefore mean that at 35, I do blah. Right. It's like, what are you doing? Right. So he just kind of did this as a, as a, um, reminder to himself, like how much is enough.

I asked our mutual friend Dan Priestley this question two days ago. I asked Dan, how do you know? I think I phrased it like, when is enough enough? And what he said was really good. He was like, when your aim is to make money for yourself, that's when you ask that question. When your aim is to provide impact and service to the world, you don't ask that question. Yeah. I was like, shit. Very true. Yeah. Very true.

100% very true. I was going to come onto this afterwards when we talk about the exit, but how has your relationship with enough changed over time? One of the things I did when I knew the exit was going to happen was I actually asked other friends who had been through an exit and I asked them how they felt afterwards.

And it was funny. There were like two camps. One of them was like, man, this was a great stepping stone to go and do other stuff. And then some were like, I've hit my number. And there's a phrase a lot of them use was that like they've exited the matrix. And I found that such a profound phrase to just say like, right. Like they came into the game, they play the game. And now everything that they do is just like,

optional upside. And I think that's kind of the camp that I'm in. I think, you know, at 27, I've been able to, with, you know, skill, hard work, but also a ton of luck. I have been able to achieve an exit. I've been able to achieve an outcome where I was like, wow, I'm

I can now, everything I do from now is like optional upside rather than feeling like I have to do anything. Whereas beforehand, I think I always, I always operated from a position of like, I had to do this. And now I'm just like, I choose to do this now, which is very, very different. Do you think for someone, someone listening to this who hasn't had a life-changing exit, do you think you need to have that before you can shift that mindset? Or is it a thing that you could have theoretically come to

without having X, whatever that number is. So I think that you can at any point decide to do it from a position of choice and optionality. But I do think that you do need some kind of forcing function. As in, I think everyone...

comes to that point at some point in their lives. It's just that like some things that happen accelerate that, right? Like at 27, selling a company for like tens of millions. It's like, okay, I could probably have gone to that and go if I was, you know, by the time I was 50, but I've just been able to do it like way earlier, right? Yeah.

So I think people can get to that and go. It's just more a case of, like, is there a forcing function that gets you there faster?

Just a quick message from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode. And this episode is very kindly brought to you by Shortform. Shortform is the world's best service that summarizes books, but it's way more than just book summaries. They almost have a whole study guide for every book that they've got on the platform where they've got a one page summary. And then they also have chapter by chapter breakdowns. And it's not just chapter by chapter breakdowns. Also in between the chapter breakdowns, they have interactive exercises where you can engage more readily with the ideas in the book.

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that will give you a completely free five-day trial and you can try out the service to your heart's content. That link will also be in the video description and in the show notes. Thank you so much, Shortform, for sponsoring this episode. I know a few people for whom that forcing function was a major health scare or like a near-death experience where you're like, "Oh my God, I'm so grateful to be alive. Everything is optional upside down." That to me is just like, "Okay, cool." That's

That's an alternative way to get off that. I was talking to Dan Priestley about this as well. There's a book called The Second Mountain. Have you come across this? No, I haven't heard that, no. It's by this guy, David Brooks, I think, where the first mountain is that mountain of success and happiness and freedom and status and stuff. And then either you get to the top and you realize, huh, okay,

or you get knocked off the mountain by a health scare or by a near-death experience or something like that and you realize there's another mountain and that's a mountain of like joy and service and purpose and mission and devoting yourself to a cause you care about and yeah the more like i choose to do this rather than i have to do this yeah yeah here you go forcing functions forcing functions yeah um okay so what happened with alpha alpha tutoring oh uh that

that flopped. He had 65 cheaters. Yeah. The reason that it flopped is actually a lesson in disguise. So,

With tutoring, when you're effectively the matchmaker, especially in tutoring, is that like if you match a tutor to a tutee, what happens is they create a really good relationship, a really good connection, which therefore means that there's no impetus for them to come back to you. So what happened was, you know, all those commissions I was getting, they were just like dwindling. I was like, what the heck is going on? And it's fundamentally because the parents are like, well,

I like Tom. Tom's a good tutor. Therefore, I'm just going to keep Tom, right? And Tom also has no incentive to let Tim know, right? That he's, that, you know, Tim, he's a five pounds. So, so,

So that business basically kind of like didn't go anywhere, but it taught me two things. First of all, was that I could just create value. All right. I could just almost from nothing, create something and people would pay me for it. But it also taught me about wanting to like own the entire infrastructure. And like that got me into the whole, like, you know, programming stuff and everything else. And then, yeah, that was it. And I think...

The first point about like having that point of realization that you can just create value was just like, oh, and it was like, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life, basically. What happened with business number two?

Business number two was my first ever exit. It was a company called Entrepreneur Express. I was really interested in, you know, business and all that stuff. So I created a, and actually at that time, I was also the editor-in-chief of my school magazine. And so I basically started like a publication, which was all around like business, entrepreneurship, because my whole thing was,

I really enjoy business. I really enjoy reading about business, understanding it, et cetera. Maybe there's other people who care about it and I can turn into some kind of business. And so the, it was both an online and offline magazine. Um, yeah.

And the reason I wanted to be offline was because at that point, as I mentioned, I was like the editor in chief of my school magazine. So there was something cool about having like a physical print. Right. Uh, so I actually called up a bunch of like the university. So like Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, LSE, I called up there like, um, like entrepreneur societies. I was like, Hey, you know, next year, uh,

Do you want to take this publication, et cetera? They're like, yeah, because of course it was free for them. So they just do it. And then what ended up happening was probably around August. So the term started like September. Around August, I was like, oh, crap.

I need advertising. Right. Because I hadn't like thought through the economics of how I will sustain the actual business. It was just like, here's a cool magazine. We've got this interview to like great entrepreneurs. I managed to get an interview with like Richard Branson, James Kahn, Alan Sugar. Actually, here's a fun story. This is a great story, actually. I don't think I've actually mentioned this story before. Inside scoop. Yeah. So this actually...

I mentioned the story before. Anyway, so I'd done all these interviews, blah, blah, blah. And I wanted to get like a big hitter, right? And there was this event called like Business Live something. It was like Business Live something. And it was in the Excel arena. So this was about 10 years ago.

And they got James Caan, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson to come and do like keynote speaks, right? I was like, I really want to be part of it. I really want to be in like the press room and just like speak to them. Cause I know if I can have like an interview with these guys, that would just be crazy. But obviously I didn't know like how I'd get their press passes, et cetera. So what I did was I emailed the, like the owner of the event,

Vishal, great guy. And I said, "Hey, so I'm this 17 year old. I don't have the contacts. I don't have the kind of credibility to be backstage."

How about if I come the day before and I basically lay out all the chairs, I lay out all the chairs, I lay out all the tables, I lay out all that stuff. And all you do is you give me a backstage pass. That's it. Right. Cause to him is actually a perfect win. It's like, he doesn't have to pay someone else. Um, and he doesn't have to spend that much time on it. It's like, okay, this random kid is just going to do it. And

And he was like, yeah, okay, cool. So the day before the business live, I remember that I showed up like 1 p.m. or something. And I just lay out like all the checks. Just taking them, putting them, putting them. I checked them in order. Okay, they're in order. I did all of that. I did all of that. And Vishal chooses word the next day.

I found myself backstage with, um, with, uh, Branson. In fact, on the front cover of our first ever entrepreneur express thing is a picture of Branson, um, speaking. Um, so I was backstage there and then there was like a back room of the backstage. And again, Vishal was like, yeah, you can come in. So we were then able to have like 15 minutes each with, um, uh,

ranting sugar khan etc um khan was quite sure it's like five minutes but um the others so i was just like cool cool cool got that and then i turned it into an interview um

And there's something very cool. Now that I think about it, I've often thought that like, and I know that your audience has quite a lot of young people and aspiring people. I think a lot of people kind of underestimate the power of both naivety and youth, right? Like,

I don't think anyone, you know, people would have seen that. All right. He can't get a backstage pass. So just go, oh, well, I guess I can't. Right. But like my hack was I'm actually going to figure out what I can bring to the table, which is just like energy and time. And I'm just going to, you know, bring that to the table. And Vishal saw that was like, yeah, cool. And I think for a lot of young people, they almost do not realize that.

how many superpowers they have in terms of just like energy, time and naivety. And that really helped me when doing Entrepreneur Express because I just didn't know what I shouldn't do. And so therefore I just did stuff that seemed logical to me. Yeah. Nice. That's sick. There you go. That's such a great story. I can't believe it's the first time you've told that. Two thoughts on that. The first is,

As I'm sure you do, I get tons and tons of emails from generally young people asking for stuff, and 0% of them offer something in return. They never say, "What I can do for you." They're always just like, "Hey, will you give me an iPhone? Will you give it like, oh, I need an iPad for school." Would you give me an iPhone? People would just ask you for iPhones. Yeah. Apparently anyone who does tech videos on YouTube just gets inundated with emails being like, "Oh, I'm really struggling. I need an iPhone." And it's literally no one emails saying that, "Here's what I can offer you in return."

And it's almost so easy to say yes to something if there's actually, yeah, time to lay out these chairs. Of course I'm going to say yes to that. Like, why wouldn't I say? So what do you think it was about you that instead of saying, oh, I can't get a backstage pass, whatever, it's not for me. You took that extra step of being like, you know what? Why don't I just email the owner of this event and offer to fricking stack some chairs? So this is actually something I've been thinking about recently, about something that shaped my youth.

And I think it's, I always behaved like I was special. Like I always, always, always behaved like I just had something like special and different about me. And so when I saw that conference, Business Life, it was almost like there was not a conceivable world in which I was not able to interview those guys. It was like,

I could almost see myself in the room already interviewing them. So it was just a case of, I just had to make it happen. And I think if it wasn't the chairs, maybe I would have, you know, like dressed up as a security person and like got in, like I would have figured out a way in. Um, and I think I had always, I think that general mentality of like, well, it's going to happen. We just have to figure out how it happens. Um,

is one of those things that has served me quite well. But I also then started to assume that like everybody needs something, right? And so you just have to be the person to give it to them, right? If you're like, you know, Vishal and you're doing this big conference, like,

you probably don't, you know, yeah, you need money. That's why you're charging people for it. I can't give you that. But the other thing that you need is time, right? And so I can give you time and to some degree, I can save you money by just doing the chair. So one of the things that I've always kind of used, one of the frameworks that I've always just used generally is like,

how do I give this other person what they want? Right. And I need to uncover what they want. Um, because, you know, because by giving them what they want, they could also, when time comes, like they could give me what I want. And it's not in some kind of transactional way. It's more like everyone needs something. Right. Um, especially just like, oh,

Over time, you know, whether it's my investors, whether it's like people that I've worked with and all that stuff, like I've come to realize that, you know, everyone has some sort of problem that they kind of want fixed. It could be a very small one. Like one of my very close friends, he's just like uber successful, you know,

The guy who we're talking about before we started this pod, when I was talking to him, I was like, oh, my best friend's knee is hurting.

And I was like, oh, okay. I actually know a very good osteopath. So then like, I couldn't help him with more money and stuff. Like the guy's worth like 2 billion, right? He's like, well, what can I help him? But I can help him by helping his friend. And then in that way, like further down the line, if I need some help with something, he'd help me. Right. So I think those two beliefs like really helped me.

Have you come across a book called The Go-Giver? No. So there's a book I started reading yesterday. It was another podcast guest who recommended it. And actually one of our team members bought the book ages ago for me because he was like, I think this is how you do business. And it's like a little tiny, tiny little book, which is a parable about this guy who's like really struggling in business. And then he meets this mentor. Oh,

The mentor basically gives them the five laws of success. This guy described, he's a real go-getter, but then he's really struggling with his business. He needs this mentor, this old guy, and the five laws of success. And all of it is based around giving. Just giving, yeah. Just giving, yeah. And it's like the more you give, the more you can find ways to add value to others in a non-transactional way, not keeping score, the more inevitably just everything goes your way. Just like good karma and stuff, right? Yeah.

But yeah, so that's basically how I got to interview Richard Branson. I just realized that we're talking about the second company. I was like, Richard Branson, give it. All right, cool. Back to it. Yeah. Yeah. There's another, there's another thing that sparked in my mind. Have you, have you come across a book called The Third Door? No. Oh, this is a, like, it's a, this is, I think your, I'd be curious to get your take on it. It's a book by Alex Benayan. In fact, I'm going to grab it so I can read this out. This is live folks. Exactly.

The Third Door. This is sick. The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World's Most Successful People Launched Their Careers. Incredible book. Basically, this guy was like 20, 21. He was like, I don't know what to do with my life. So he made it his life's mission to interview people like Richard Branson and stuff and find out what they did at age 21 to get ahead. And here is why it's called The Third Door. Life, business, it's just like a nightclub. There are always three ways in.

There's the first door, the main entrance, where 99% of people wait in line hoping to get in. The second door is the VIP entrance, through which the billionaires and celebrities slip through. But what no one tells you is that there is always the third door. It's the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred times, crack open the window, and sneak through the kitchen. There's always a way in. Whether it's Bill Gates selling his first piece of software, or Steven Spielberg becoming the youngest studio director in Hollywood history, they all took the third door.

I like that. Yeah. I feel like there's very much vibes with your approach to, you know, the way you got into interview Richard Branson is through the third door. You weren't standing in line. You weren't in a queue waiting for his autograph. You were just like, how do I get in in a somewhat unconventional way? I like that. Okay. Well, there you go. The third door. So I took the third door. You took the third door. Okay. So you interview, so you interview Branson, Khan, Alan Sugar. Wow.

What happens next? Yeah. So did that blah, blah, blah. Anyway, uh, so the, so I got all these interviews, sorry, I got all these universities lined up to take the magazine and all that stuff. Um, and then I just realized I could not sell that much advertising because I had the money for the first publication, but for the subsequent stuff, I just knew that I would, uh, struggle to actually like turn it into a business.

So then I turned my attention to the online version and it was the online version that I just put all my time into. And, and this is why I say, you know, part of it was luck, but I think most of it was like, you know, skill was I figured out, you know, this was 10 years ago and I was, yeah.

this was like the heyday of, uh, Facebook pages and Facebook accounts and all that stuff. So I use these Facebook pages to drive traffic to the online site. And that was the way that I basically made all the money was that I'd, I'd upload like banner ads. I'd tie into all of these like programmatic ad exchanges. Um, and then I just make money from the eyeballs. Um, and

And then within 11 months, I got an email and the email was basically someone from an agency called Horizon Media, which is based in the US. And they were like, hey, we'd like to partner up with you. And, you know, again, I'm 17. Someone's like, yeah, partner up. I'm like, yeah, OK. Yeah, I see. And they said, OK.

can we do a Skype? Right. This was, this shows you, you know, 10 years ago, Skype. Uh, they were like, yeah, can we do a Skype? And then said before that, can you share some of your like stats, et cetera? Cause I thought they were more just like an agency who wanted to sell ads on my site, right? You know, standard stuff. So I sent over my stats, et cetera. And then I said, Hey, um, rather than partner up, we just like to buy you. And, um,

And I tell the story a lot. And even now I tell it, I kind of get goosebumps because I'm like, I remember that was like a Friday 2 a.m. I was wearing my United shorts and like someone had just said, right, this thing you've been working on for 11 months, we would like to buy it. And I was in school then, right? And because I went to boarding school for sixth form and I was there and it was like,

oh my god like a what does this mean when you say bye because you're american does that mean that i didn't have to go to you i was talking about that stuff um and i was like

Yeah, sure. Yeah, sounds good. And then within a week, no, within about two weeks, deal done. I had transferred the site to them, admin login, Facebook pages, all that stuff transferred to them. And like, that was the first time that I'd made like serious money. The fee was

70 grand and then over a year which ended up being like 15 months over 15 months consistent payouts over traffic so in all the total sum was like 110 grand and i was just like i've worked on this for 11 months and i'm 17 i was like how did that happen so that was the first one where i was like oh this shit is magic like this business shit is magic um yeah

So you're 17 and you just made like a hundred grand. Yeah. Crazy. By selling a website and some Facebook pages to some American company. Yeah. It's so interesting, right? Cause you know, they, they, so the whole plan with Horizon Media was to build a bunch of these like niche blogs, right? So they own blogs in food, sport, business, et cetera. Turns out that kind of flopped and now they're just like an agency. Right. But like, yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy. And I think at that point I was just like,

Again, it just reinforced this idea of just like inventing things from scratch. It's just like, wow, like this happens. And I remember going to my dad and like telling him about it. And he was like, oh, so like, that's what you've been doing online. Yeah. It's crazy. How did, how did that feel when the money hit your account? I felt invincible. I felt, but I also felt like I discovered a cheat sheet. Like,

This was no funding, nothing at all. I used my like skills and my brain to like figure out how things work. So I think I just felt like I had discovered a cheat sheet to life. And I then thought like, I'm just going to dedicate myself to figuring out this cheat sheet even more and more and more. As I mentioned, like that, that hundred K was more significant than

than the exit in like tens of millions and i tell people that and they go like what like yeah because it was like i did that you know like i did that and in such a short period of time i did that so yeah it's pretty profound how did you have time to do all this stuff while also being in school i did not really do school properly so i went to so i went to a secondary school

but then in, sorry, I went to a state secondary school, but then in sixth form, I went to a boarding school. So I went to a boarding school called Christ Hospital. Hated it, passionately hated it because boarding school is not for me.

And it's so funny. There was actually a joke in the school. I had a name called like, Tim, the rules don't apply on me because they come up with like all these kind of like rules about, you know, you have to be in bed by this time. You have to do this at this time. And I just wouldn't do it. Or I just constantly ask why, why, why? So I think mentally,

Actually, I'll tell you the big mindset shift. So do you remember earlier that I said that in school, I had basically like built a brand of being the smart one. When I went to Christ Hospital, everyone there was insanely clever. I remember there's a guy, Luke Stevens. Luke Stevens was 15 and had finished his like

like further maths and he's got like a hundred percent. Like this guy was genius level, right? And there were quite a few people like that. So I kind of realized that I couldn't win the game of intelligence at Christ Hospital. So therefore the one game that I could win was that like I was more entrepreneurial than those guys. Like I was more business savvy than those guys.

So to answer your question about like how I managed the time, it was actually like in my mind, I was then like an entrepreneur first and then a student second, because I knew I couldn't win the like student game of like, you know, like get great, you know, just good grades. They're like, yes, I got good grades. I went to Warwick. I did a computer science degree, blah, blah, blah. But like,

I didn't care about winning that game enough. I wanted to be a game where like I could be number one and that game to me was business. So that's why I then like spent all my time primarily on that. And then I kind of became a student second. Was that a conscious thing or is that like connecting the dots, looking back? Oh, 100%. I actually remember I had a notebook in Christ's hospital and I remember writing that like, okay, this guy find it again. This is not something that I've shared publicly, but it's like,

I wrote people's names down who were like academically smarter than me. And then I wrote like, where can I win? Right. And, you know, I was like, Luke, Francis, Sam Shaw, like really, really, you know, intelligent people. I was like, hmm. But,

None of them are entrepreneurial. None of them are like business savvy. None of them are like that. I want to win in a game and I want to be number one in a game. So that was a very conscious decision where I thought, yeah, like this is something that I need to win this game.

Just a quick note from one of our sponsors and we'll get right back to the episode. And this episode is very kindly brought to you by Skillshare. If you haven't heard by now, Skillshare is one of the world's leading platforms for online classes for online education. They've got thousands and thousands of classes on all sorts of topics from business, entrepreneurship, lifestyle design, cooking, interior design, loads of stuff.

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for studying for exams, but also for learning languages, for learning music theory, things like that. And loads of people have taken that class and said that that class was so good that they would have literally paid hundreds of dollars for it, but you get it completely for free on Skillshare by going to skillshare.com/deepdive. After your trial's over, you can choose to continue the subscription if you like, and you can access the thousands of classes Skillshare has from other teachers,

including people that I know, people I'm friends with, like Thomas Frank and Nathaniel Drew. But yeah, the main reason to check out Skillshare, of course, is that you want to check out my classes if you want to learn about productivity and video editing and YouTubing and even cooking. So head over to Skillshare.com forward slash deep dive. And thank you so much, Skillshare, for sponsoring this episode. What sort of setbacks did you have? Kind of, I guess, sort of through up until sort of age 17, 18 at this point, like what was going on in life? Where I grew up, as I mentioned, I grew up on like the Oaken Road.

Um, this is when in like the peak of the beef between like Oaken Road and Peckham and Brixton. So basically like if you were coming home after 7pm, you shouldn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The ends were crazy, mate. Uh,

And it was so funny. Like I would try and make friends with the gangsters because not because I wanted to become a gangster. Fuck that. Because I knew that at the very least, if they saw me in the evening, they would be like, oh, that's cool. You know, he's part of us. Right. So I think that was a major setback was like the area that I grew up in and knowing I didn't belong there. That was it. Like, you know,

Every day I'd walk down to school in these council blocks and everything else. And I'd be like, I don't belong here. I don't belong here. I don't belong here. That was definitely a big setback. Yeah. Like the general environment was a setback. Living with my dad, just us. I didn't really have like a proper kind of nuclear family. That was a setback. And then I think probably at 21, I

My dad passed away. And that was a major setback. That even drove my sense of like, I need to do something significant even more. How did your dad die? He died of a stroke. Really? Yeah. And here's the crazy thing. I found him dead. Yeah. In his room.

And the crazy thing is literally two, three weeks before that, when we were kind of starting fan bites, he was like, I don't know what you're doing, but I'm so proud of you. Well done, et cetera. And it's funny when I stood up in front of the company, you know, fan buys, we grew to like 70 people and all that stuff. When I, when I stood up in front of the company, you know, I'd kind of rehearsed the talk, et cetera.

And then at the end, I was like, and another reason why we did this was because before we started Fanbytes, before we properly started Fanbytes, my dad passed away. And when he passed away, he said he was very proud of me. And I basically told myself that there was no conceivable world in which this business was not a success. And so because of that is the reason why like this had to happen, right? This business had to have a successful outcome, right?

And I think that subtly drove me a lot. Just like it needed to be significant. It needed to not have like a, you know, like an okay exit. It needed to be like, brr, like sick exit, you know? Wow. What do you think your dad would say if he were you? Well, he still wouldn't understand why I did. Like what? You're selling ads though. He said it's like TikTok, Instagram, Instagram.

I think he would just say exactly what he said, like the two years before he passed away, which is, I don't understand, but I'm incredibly proud of you. And I think he'd also say, I knew this was going to happen. I think he would. I think he always knew something would happen. He just didn't know what. Yeah. So I think that was quite a big driver.

Yeah, it sounds like he was like really supportive while you were in this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, 100%. Which is very different to most African parents. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Most African parents are like, you know, education, et cetera, et cetera. And probably Asian parents as well, right? But I think he was like that at the beginning. And then he was just like, I just don't get this guy. But at 17, he sold a business and

And he's helping out with like stuff in the house. So continue. When you say you felt like you didn't belong when you were on the streets in the end, what do you mean by you didn't belong? I thought I was smarter than them.

And I just felt like the stuff I was interested in, they were just not interested in. I'd spent a lot of time reading this blog called retire at 21.com. Oh, okay. An incredible blog. Um,

And I'd read it and I'd just be like, man, look at all these cool people, right? At that point, Mashable was quite big. So I'd read about, you know, Pete Cashmore. I'd read about all these people. I'd go, man, this is so cool. And they were just interested in like riding out to the ends and like going to Peckham to fucking stab people. And I was just like,

I'm just not interested in that, am I? There's actually, again, a side note. There's actually a LinkedIn post I also did, which the headline was, this was the day that a gangster saved my life. And it was because I wanted to be, you know, part of the kids there, you know, part of cool kids so that I could be, you know, like safe and all that stuff.

And one of the gangsters there, guy called Mike's, he actually like took me aside and said, the same for you, bro. And I was like, well, it's like, nah, the same for you. Because I think like he even realized that my heart was not in it. I cared more about like business and intellectual stuff, um,

And I remember when he said that, I was like, mate, if the lead gangster knows that this is not for me, then it's not for me, mate. But yeah, that's what I felt, but I didn't belong. I just felt my interests were different. The pathway was different. What would you say to someone who might be listening to this and feeling like they're in that position, wherever they are, that they're in an environment where they feel like they don't belong and...

So I think the first thing I'd say is like embrace your difference. I think too many people try and like shun their difference, but like embracing your difference is probably the first thing. And then almost realize that like,

being different creates different outcomes, right? Like by definition, if you want to do like extraordinary things, you can't be ordinary, right? Because the word is literally extraordinary. So I think that'll probably be the main thing, which is like embrace your difference and also realize that like, even if you feel different,

Even if you feel different, there are other people who also feel different. So find those people who also feel different and just be like different together, right? The way I did that was when I was younger, I was part of, you know, like Reddit forums where people would just be, you know, countries of my business and marketing and internet marketing and funnels and all that stuff.

And like, that's where I just found my joy. And I was like, oh my God. Yeah. Like Russell Brunson has just dropped this thing. Oh my God. It's so sick. You know, uh, whatever. Um, who else? All those people. Right. I was like, oh my God, this is so sick. All right. If you create this funnel and then you put it in like a tripwire and then you do this, oh my God, it's amazing. Right. And then I'd go out and it's like gang music. Right. And, but I found my tribe of people who cared about being different as well.

Yeah. I remember signing up to Russell Brunson's mailing list back when I was like 14 and just sort of, I was looking through my Gmail because I just auto archived it. It's like sort of like 10, 13 years worth of emails from Russell Brunson and stuff. He was the OG though, man. He was. He was the OG. A lot of us owe a lot of our success to discovering funnels and going, wow, this whole world is just insane.

All right. So that was the Entrepreneur Express arc. The arc, yes. And then you get to university. I get to university. What happens next? I get to university in my second year. I start Fanbytes. And Fanbytes...

The whole thing is really, when I sold Entrepreneur Express, I came to realize that the thing that the buyer was buying, yeah, you know, was the blog and everything, but was also like the network of Facebook pages and all that stuff. I was like, oh, that's where the value is. So then what I decided to do was I thought, right, I'm going to build a company in this space and the whole like influencer space.

and helping brands to reach that audience. And I specifically focused there on that Gen Z audience because, well, the reason why I did was twofold. Firstly, it's an audience that I understood. And it's also an audience where I knew that we could have a competitive edge. So I remember that discussion

saying, you know, why not just be broadly influenced? I was like, trust me, by saying that we are for these people, it means that we can actually increase more the value of the thing that we are providing the service. And so that was the beginning of Fanbyte. And within, yeah, five and a half years grew from then from zero to 70 people. And then we sold it. So let's go, let's rewind the clock a bit. So

You're in your second year. Yeah. What are the dots that connect in your mind to think, let me start an influencer marketing thingy for Gen Zs in this space and call it Panvite? Well, I mean, the first one was, yeah, like having sold the previous business and seeing that the value lay in the Facebook communities and the Facebook pages, which the acquirer bought. I was like, it is all about social. Okay. The second one was,

Anytime there is a new frontier of people or like a new paradigm, like brands and companies would always want help in being able to navigate that, whether it's radio, TV, Google ads, billboards, right? Like brands would always want a way to actually tap into that.

And then the Gen Z thing was just, where is my competitive edge in doing that? And the fact that you were familiar with the Gen Z audience. There you go. This second point, the sort of recognizing the sort of B2B and appreciating that. Yeah. I think that is a leap that certainly I didn't have because I was always B2C education business, trying to get Asian parents to pay for courses and stuff.

And it was only many years later as we started the YouTube channel and started to get brand deals and stuff. Even now to this day, I still, you know, I'll, I'll, I speak to another entrepreneur friend who's like, yeah, a company like notion should be paying you a hundred K a month. And I'm just like, wait, what? And he was like, you have no idea how valuable this audience is. Like these guys have shit tons of money. Like, and I'm still in B2C mindset. How, how did you get that sort of kind of firmware update in your mind that helped you realize there are companies with large amounts of money willing to pay for this thing? Yeah.

So I think I had seen it before, right? Like I was very aware of like the agency game, you know, I was just very aware of people like WPP and Mediacom and all these big holding companies. So I was just like, well, brands are paying them to market their stuff to people. So yeah.

Why can't brands just pay us to do it to this specific set of people? And was that through being part of subreddits and the marketing world and stuff? Because, again, that was an area of the world that I'd never come across before. Now I think of it. Maybe it could be the fact that when I sold Entrepreneur Express to Horizon, I realized at that point how big Horizon was. And I was like, who the heck is paying all these guys? And then I think that was...

That got me into like, oh, okay. So like brands are paying them to do blah, blah, blah. So therefore, if I could do that for a subset of people, then you'd win. Interesting. So, you know, you've become super wealthy off the back of social media marketing agency. Stephen got super wealthy off the back of social media marketing agency. Let's say someone's listening to this. They're familiar with yours and Stephen Bartlett stories. And they're thinking, oh, social media marketing sounds good. SMA or whatever the acronym for that is.

How should, like, A, would you recommend that as a business model for someone today? And B, if so, or if not, like, how would someone get started in that area? I don't think that... So I think a big part of our success when we came to... So take a few steps back. So...

When we decided that actually fan bites needs to become part of a, you know, a big company to sell the company, we had like four different companies want to buy fan bites. Right. And so, because we had like those four different companies, you know, we were in a position of strength, et cetera, but.

One of the things that I did realize was that they were all buy-in because they wanted to integrate social media and influencers into their wider marketing pool. So it's like, okay, we can do TV, we can do billboards, we can do all that stuff. And so that was always the reason for any acquisition. So I say that as a precursor to say that I don't think it makes sense at the moment to

to start a social media agency. Um, I think that the kind of tidal wave has gone. And the reason why I say the tidal wave has gone is because like for most of us who did well, we basically kind of like rode the wave of people not understanding something and then applying tech services and all that stuff to help them understand it. Mm-hmm.

Right now, I think most people understand it. And so you have to figure out a new way which people don't like fundamentally understand if you want to be in like the services business. I get a lot of people coming to me and saying, right, you know, I want to start a social media agency. And I'm like, A, don't do that. And B, if you were to do that, what part of social media do brands don't like fully understand? Start like an influencer business now

Like you can't turn it into something significant. Like you could turn into, you know, a nice kind of like cool thing that pays you and hires a few people. But like to build a business to the level that we did to the level, you know, think about people like Ladbible, right? Ladbible were like the OGs of the space, like the dons of the space, right? And they've taken that business incredibly done very well, but they rolled the wave.

And you're not going to be able to achieve that degree of success if you start now, because most of the problems have been solved. Yeah, I think that's the thing with...

Like all of these businesses, you know, even Gymshark being OG influencer marketing sort of people back in the day where it was still a bit rogue. It was still a bit weird to do that. And so there's so much alpha, there's so much edge you have when you have an insight into the market that other people don't. And if those people have money and are old, then you can win as a young person with that level of market insight. Exactly.

But now it's like, if someone says to a brand, you should be marketing on Instagram. They'll be like, bro, we've been doing that for like 10 years now. Come on, get with the times. Sarah, Tom, Tanya, and all these people are dedicated to this, right? In-house, right? So it's like, why would we need you? Because one thing I've noticed, like generally in business is, especially in kind of like B2B kind of services, businesses is like,

People are paying you for the expertise, right? And the depth of that expertise is directly correlated to the gap and the gap between where they are and where they're trying to be. So if, for example, you come in and say like, right, I can do, I don't know, let's take the example of Instagram. It's like, well, cool.

I could pay for it, but the gap between me as a brand not being good at Instagram and then being good is quite small. If you said in 2017, like I can figure out, you know, I can help you build and own a YouTube channel. Like people don't know how to do that. Right. So they're starting from here. They want to get here. The gap is just bigger, which therefore means like you can charge generally more.

So I think it's always important if you're thinking about, you know, like business and where should I play that you want to think about like how big is that gap in the problem? Because that's the way that you're truly going to win. Do you think that that gap is still a thing on YouTube?

I think building owned and operated channels on YouTube. Yes, it is. I think marketing on there. Not really. Yeah. Like everyone does YouTube ads, but like we've had so much interest from people who are like, shit, I know I should be on YouTube. We should have a brand presence on YouTube itself, but they don't know where to start. Yeah. I think there's the opportunity for brands to do that. The big thing with YouTube though is like,

So one of the other things that I think about is like, how soon can someone get a payoff? So I'll tell you like a big inflection point with fanbites was when we really focus on like the ROI that we provide to brands. And the thing is, you know, fundamentally, if a brand is spending a hundred grand, it's not for vibes. So they spend that money to make sure that like they can earn X, Y, Z. The thing with YouTube is like,

It can take a lot of time, relatively, a lot more time to build an owned and operated audience. And so as a consequence of that, like it can also take a lot of time to see the payoff. So you almost need to like figure out a way in which like you can reduce the time to pay off, right? Because if you can't do that, then you win. If it takes long, then you just need patience from the brand side or from the creative side, which can be a hassle. Yeah.

Yeah, there's some stuff like Alex Hormozy talks about this a lot, like reducing this time to value. Ah, right. Reducing the amount of like, people will pay astronomically more for a service that is quick compared to a service that takes ages, which is why like supplements is like a hundred times bigger than fitness because fitness takes time and supplements doesn't. It's anything that promises a quick fix. And if you can actually deliver on that quick fix, you're just laughing all the way to the bank. And you're winning. Exactly. Yeah.

What did the growth in terms of, yeah, so you started in your second year. What was the growth trajectory of Fanbytes in terms of, I guess, maybe you can't share revenue, but like sort of team size and stuff? I can share the first three years of revenue because I think that's interesting. First year, 400 grand. Second year, 1 million. Third year, 1.7 million.

Okay. What were the margins on this back in the day? Like you're making 400 top line. Like how much are you, how much goes into your bank account? Oh, first year we made a loss. How? Because we were just stupid at spending money. Like as in,

The first year, all we did was we were just trying to get on as many case studies as possible. And so with brands, we like overspend. We wouldn't take any real margin on it because we knew the value of the case studies. So hang on. So a brand would pay you, let's say 50K. And would you put that into... By the way, first year, we were not charging 50K, mate. Oh, okay. Fine. A brand would pay you like 5K. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And...

What are you doing with that 5k? Are you putting into ads or hiring an influencer? Like what was your thing? So we're defining what like the influencer campaign should be. And then afterwards, yeah, we're like paying out to influencers. We're paying for ads and all that stuff. But our whole thing was like, we just wanted to get really good case studies. And also bear in mind that in our first year, we had raised a bit of money.

Okay. And we're also in university. And so we didn't need to like necessarily, you know, like make profit. Right. Yeah. Through the grant scheme business, we raised 2 million for the business. Yeah. So we'd raise a bit of money. Then we raised a bit of money in,

And second year as well, which meant that we still didn't really need to make a profit. And then third year, we made a bit of profit. So the loss that you made was basically eating into the investor money. Yeah. Because you wanted to... Was this intentional? Were you like, Brian's paying us 5K, we're going to spend 10K because we want a really good case study? Or was it just accidental? How are you like, oh shit, we paid too much.

It was intentional. Oh, okay. It was intentional. Um, because we're like, you know, we have cash, so let's just like focus on just revenue and case studies. That was it. That was very intentional as well. Like the first two years was very much like we want to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and not care about profit yet. And then, you know,

Fourth year, we cared about profit. Fifth year, we definitely cared about profit. So who was we at the time? Myself and my co-founder, Ambrose. And then we hired a CTO. And then, yeah. First year, we're like five people. Second year, probably eight. Third year, probably five.

Were you like paying your own salaries? Like how were you? Yeah. We were paying ourselves like 500 pound a month, but then paying actual people like two grand a month. Okay. Um, it's probably not fourth year that we actually like started like paying people sensible money, like 50 grand, 40 grand, 60 grand and all that stuff. Yeah. I guess like when you switch from thinking per month to per year, that's. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. So I'm like two grand a month. Oh shit. Right. And I'm like 60 grand. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

so what did the case studies look like? Like, well, what's an example of a case study from a case study? So a good case study is of like, uh, I don't know. Um,

New look, right? New look came to us to reach young people. What we did was we got like YouTube influencers to do a fashion haul and then link directly. The case study got, you know, 10,000 clicks and 5,000 purchases. Like very straightforward. Now it's got more sophisticated. At the beginning, I think we were very juvenile. You know what? At the beginning, we were driven by fear a lot. Yeah. I actually say this to Ambrose a lot, which is like,

So at the beginning, I was driven by two things. Number one was a bit of fear because I was like, and it's the fear which meant we didn't charge people a lot of money. Okay. Fear as in, oh, I'm not sure. Are we selling snake oil kind of stuff? Our first ever campaign was with Go Ape and I charged them 300 pounds and they said, yeah. And I called up Ambrose. I was like, yo, we did it. 300 pounds. And it's so crazy because like,

Four years before, I had just sold my company for way more than that. But it was a new idea, a new concept, a new service. And like someone had paid us 300 pounds. Oh my God, I can't believe this. And then, yeah, it was a bit of fear. And then probably like, you know, third year when we were more comfortable with the fact that we can actually, you know, charge higher prices. That's when we did that.

Were you worried at all about how you would actually drive results? Because the thing with marketing is that it's a bit of a rolling of the dice, right? Or am I just naive about this? I was concerned, but I think that's where Ambrose...

uh became really like really came into his own he was um he was my ceo loves a spreadsheet loves all that stuff right and so he was really you know being like right you know if we get these amount of views that should lead to this blah blah blah um so he was he was pretty good in that um

And you were confident enough that, Hey, if we hire the right influencers, we can get X amount of views. And theoretically that should lead to an X percent conversion, et cetera. Yeah. Um, I think when we started it, you know, even in our second, third year, we're just like, it's okay if this campaign flops because like there'll be another campaign, you know, I think I had a lot of belief in ourselves that would do that. And also, I think we were also optimized for speed. Like,

We had a venture capitalist come to us and say, right, why not just raise like five, six million? Let's take this, you know, how does this become like a hundred million dollar business and all that stuff? And I remember saying to him, it's just not going to be that. And he was like, wait, what? And I was like, yeah, this business is not going to be a hundred million dollar business. Like it's going to make tens of millions guaranteed. And he was like,

Okay. And then he put in money by himself, not through his fund. And when we then sold the company, I then texted him and I said, do you remember the first time that we met? You were like, how is this going to be a billion dollar outcome? And I said, it's not going to be a billion dollar outcome, but like, this is exactly how much it's going to sell for. And it was exactly that amount. How did you know? Like at that level, when we're talking tens of millions versus hundreds of millions versus billion, like-

All three sets of those numbers are equally unfathomable. So what's going through your mind to be able to actually run that calculation? So what's going through my mind is two things. The first thing is I had a very good idea of how businesses like us are valued.

through a combination of revenue and profit and growth rates and all that stuff. So even now I invest and advise in a bunch of like, you know, B2B businesses. And I'm like, if you reach this number and if you do this, you can sell for within this range. - What sort of multiples are there on these sorts of businesses?

If you have tech and revenue, generally you can look at like two to four times revenue. Typically most of the businesses though are a multiple of profits, but that's if you don't have tech and we had a good amount of tech.

Which again was intentional, right? Because we wanted to build a business that was like, that had a lot of value beyond the people. And that was very intentional. So many people, this is like a complete side note. So many people see like TechCrunch, right? They read TechCrunch and I'd ask them, oh, so where do you think their business would go? Billion dollars. It's like, based on what? It's like, well, you know, billion dollars. It's like,

Based on what? Because fundamentally, when a company buys you, they're buying you because they think that by you joining them, they can make more money, right? Because if I can buy you for five pounds and I can make 10 pounds, I'm just going to make that trade every single day, right? And so-

And so for me, I kind of understood that, right? Like some of our buyers at this level, because based on our growth rate, revenue, clients, et cetera, like they could make

X amount. So therefore just make that trade. Interesting. So in pure tech, often the multiples are sort of 10 times revenue or something absurd like that. But that's pure tech where you've got recurring revenue and they're like, all right, cool. I know that this will work for the next X number of years and run that calculation. But I guess in this context, if let's say we pluck a number out of 30,

30 million just to make the numbers and assume a three X multiple of revenue. That means for someone to buy you for 30 million, you would need to be getting 10 million top line revenue.

And in order to get that multiple of revenue, you need some kind of tech platform, which means you need a way to measure engagement or measure something or something like that. Some kind of IP that they want to buy from you. Or like repeat clients, client retention needs to be high, all that stuff there. So you need all that type of stuff. And then you're thinking, okay, is it doable to get to, let's say 10 million top line revenue? And you're thinking, well, actually, yes, because all we need is 10 campaigns of a million or 20 campaigns of half a million. Exactly.

- Exactly. And then like, these are the people that you need to have and da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah. It's quite surgical. - Yeah. - It's quite surgical, the approach. One of the questions I ask, one of the questions I get asked a lot is like, how do you feel, you know, now that you've sold your company, et cetera. And my thing is always like,

It was exactly how I designed it. It was like exactly how I designed it. Cause I was like, okay, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. And it's, and it's also very important that when people talk about acquisitions, they don't think about it as kind of like, let's say if you're like,

getting one over the company, right? Some people go like, oh, I sold my company. And it's like, well, you created something of value. You realize it could be of value to like someone else. And so therefore you then sold it and you sold something of value. It's not like you sold a dud or something like that. And

The other thing that really helps with like business valuations is if you can be seen as kind of a competitive threat to someone. Oh, what do you mean? So for example, we had four offers, right? Four people want to buy fanbites. And at least one of them, we had taken a couple of clients from them.

And so we were a competitive threat to them. Yeah. Right. It was like more worthwhile. Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. Hey, look at, you know, Figma selling to Adobe. It's a perfect example of like competitive threat. It's like they are taking our customers. If we spend 20 billion, we can make,

whatever, 60 billion by not only their customers coming into the Adobe fold, but then using our other products. Yeah. And like linking them all up. So a Photoshop design can go into Figma rather than Adobe XD, which no one uses. Exactly. And all that crap. Exactly. Competitive tension drives a lot more deals than people think it does. Huge. Is there anything like if someone's listening to this and they're like, I want to be an A player, skills you would encourage them to cultivate in order to be one of those A players?

One of the things that I really enjoyed working with, you know, high performing people is that they just generally have a bias towards action. Like,

They know that they can try several things and maybe quite a few of them would flop, but they're not concerned with that. They're just concerned with taking as many shots on goal. And I think, especially when you are young and beginning in your journey, you over glamorize strategy, right? You like over glamorize, like, you know, let's do all this stuff here. And you, yeah.

And you underestimate the value of just taking shots on goal. Because you have to take as many shots in order for like one of them to go in. So you might as well have like a bias towards action. And I find that is missing from a lot of people, especially people in their 20s, 100%. Why do you think that is?

I think it's because the things that they're comparing themselves to are like people who do the thinking. So they think, so a very good example is someone might see me and go, oh, like he's a CEO and he does thinking around the who and the people, et cetera. But at the beginning, I was building the funnels. I was building the proposals. I was just like doing, doing stuff. I was like sending in the emails. I was, I was like sending all that stuff.

And so you can't compare me to like me five, six years down the line because I've had to do all the other stuff. So you have to start from here in order to get up there. Yeah. And I think that in a way, that's one of the issues with books about business and books about success in that they tend to be high level. Yeah. They tend to be aimed at executives. Yeah. And they tend to be, oh, people are the most important thing. And like your strategy is really important because of 1% deviation. It's like,

Who cares? That's completely irrelevant for someone sitting on the ground trying to take shots and go. I've never read this book by Simon Sinek. Start with Y. I've never read it. I know everyone talks about it, but I've never read it because I think at no point in my life had I got to the point where I thought, right,

Let me think about the, like the why and the purpose of like galvanizing the team and the vision and all that stuff. I'm just like, act, just do, do, do, do, do, learn, do, learn, do. Right. Um, I may do that for the next company. Right. But like, I think that I'd always had a bias towards action and the best people have a bias towards action.

Yeah, there's a good quote from the book Attraction, which is that vision without execution is hallucination. And so it's like start of executing, make the money, and then you can worry about the vision and the strategy and the mission statement and the values and all that shit further down the line. But that's like trying to spend ages on a business card when you haven't made any money. Exactly. Don't worry about it. Exactly. How do you feel about personal brands?

How do I feel about personal brands? So I think a personal brand is a very, so in business, you want to make sure that you have as many competitive advantages as possible, right? Some of them is you raise a bunch of money that your competitors can't. Some of them is that you enter into a niche that your competitors can't, right?

One of the competitive advantages is a personal brand, right? Because fundamentally it is almost like another tool you can use to attract customers and employees that your competitors can't, right?

um you know when we began the sale of the business we appointed a m&a bank to like run the whole process and all that stuff because basically there's a whole thing which i can explain basically when you do acquisitions less than roughly 10 million people often say like you can kind of you can use like a broker or you can diy right um

Anything above 10, 15 million, you generally advise to use a bank. What does the bank do in this case? So what does an M&A bank do? So

When we thought, right, this is the right time. So we'd been approached a lot by like private equity companies. So to explain what private equity companies are, they're just people with a lot of money who want to buy your company because they think they can like sell it later on for a bigger number. So we'd been approached by PE companies, private equity. And we basically decided that, oh, okay, this is the time for a deal.

We didn't go down a private equity route. We actually thought it makes sense for us to go down the strategic route. As in a strategic acquisition from a competitor or something? Not even a competitor. Or a company that wants to absorb the influence marketing thing into their conglomerate of stuff. Exactly. Okay, fine. Exactly. We decided that rather than a private equity buyer. Yeah.

And so when we decided that, we then went to connect with an M&A bank. And what an M&A bank does is basically, they're basically like the deal maker. So their whole thing is they help companies to buy companies and also to sell companies. What they do is they'll come up with like a really kind of, they'll come up with a nice presentation for you. 10 slides, just like talking about the company.

Then they send it out to some small group of people. If they say, oh, this is interesting, I'd like to chat. Then they introduce you to them and they help you to then kind of have that intro call and everything else. Hang on. So you're saying if I build a company and I want to sell it, I can get someone else to sell it for me. I don't have to wait for emails to come in. Yeah. Shit.

For a percentage of their revenue. Okay, cool. So they make a presentation, they send it out to some people and they're like, we've got this company on sale for 15 million. So that's the thing. They don't tell the price. Ah, okay. We have this company on sale and here are their stats? Yeah. And like generally, and generally it is not discreet. It is, what's the word I'm looking for?

They don't say the name of the company. Oh, okay. They're like a company in the influencer marketing space. A company in the influencer marketing space, which does blah, blah, blah. This is cool, et cetera. Cool. Right? And then when they say, right, this is interesting, then you have some people who say, right, this is interesting. This fits inside of our thesis of, you know, the future or something like that.

And then you meet those companies and you then go on, you know, some meetings with them, a bit of a journey with them, et cetera, you know, meeting them. And not only for them to see if you're a good fit, but for you to also see if they're a good fit. Fun fact, like we actually were approached by this other company and I went into the office and the office was just so hot.

It was just like, just hot. And it was because they were using like old computers and the fans were wearing and everything. And I just left. And I remember sending a voice note to Ambrose. I was like, even if they paid a hundred million, nobody's ever going there. Right. And this is actually quite interesting because it shows the transformation from caring about like money to actually like caring about like a good significant exit.

Anyway, so these bankers, then they'll like chat with you and then you chat with the companies. And then once that's done,

A set of companies put together something called a letter of intent and LOI. And that basically says, we intend to buy you for this amount. And then what then happens is you then decide which company you want to go forward with. And that then opens roughly like 10 weeks or so in which of, of exclusivity.

So that basically means that in those 10 weeks, you're going to open up basically every part of your business, your finances, your legal, your da-da-da-da. And then at the end of that, they say, right, we are satisfied with this. Because remember, in that deal process, in that 10 weeks, they can say, actually, you said your company was doing X, but it's actually not. So either the deal's off or...

That price that we said, we're actually going to reduce it. Right. And presumably they're doing whatever they can in that 10 weeks to really reduce that number. No, no. They actually want the price to go ahead. Oh, I see. That's good buyers. That's good buyers. Right. Some bad buyers, they do this and it's called reneging. So basically they'll like renege on the deal. And basically they'll be like, oh, we said 50. Actually, you said this. And now we're doing that 40.

In our deal, it went fine. The price that they said was the price that they said done. And then at the end... Question. During those 10 weeks, what's going through your mind? How are you feeling? What's going on? So here's the interesting thing. My co-founder, Ambrose, was the one who really did a lot of the stuff there, right? Like the...

Like us and the bank basically did all the stuff around like the data room and Excel sheets, et cetera. So I didn't feel that much stress. I think I also knew that a deal would go ahead. And so like, because...

I knew and I'd like told myself, like there is no conceivable world in which a deal does not go ahead. I was just like, oh, cool. Right. And I had faith as well in the company that like they would actually do what they say. This is actually a very good. This is where an M&A bank really comes in because they are like your intermediary.

because mate you can get emotional when these deals right because like basically someone in two three four months is about to give you life-changing money at any point if they're like this doesn't work okay that's fine just take it okay just take right the

The biggest thing people do when they're trying to sell their companies, if they don't use a bank or like an intermediary, is they concede too much because they just want the deal done so like they can get the money. So an M&A bank is exceptional there to basically be like, you know, actually, no, I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the thing, right? To be almost your grown up whilst you're acting like a petulant little child, they're the people there for you.

Yeah. And so at the end of the 10 weeks, they then do a share purchase agreement and then you sign the share purchase agreement and that's it. How did you feel when you saw the numbers on the letters of intent that you got? Fine. I think it didn't feel real. The bit that felt real, there were two moments that felt real. The first moment was when we signed the share purchase agreement.

Because they tell you the letter of intent and you know the price. The share purchase agreement, I remember this. And I actually have a video of this on my phone. Everyone else is signing. We have investors signing. We have... Everyone is signing their stuff. And then the final thing is we then have to sign. So me, COO, CTO, we have to sign. So...

Mitchell signs, cool. And I'm recording all of this on Zoom, right? So, and bear in mind, it's like, again, like Friday 1am because all our lawyers and their lawyers have just been working on it, working on it, which I've often found so ridiculous in the fact that like, you have all this time to work on a deal and you still push it to the end. It's like, what's going on? Anyway, and then Ambrose signs. And I remember recording this and I say, guys, like,

You know, like six years ago we met and we said, this is going to be a thing. I know there's been a lot of challenges and everything else. I'm so proud of everything that we've ever done and I'm so happy. And then I signed. And then on Gmail, we just get this docusign thing which says like everyone has signed. And I find it crazy to think that you just get a Gmail email which symbolizes like you

a life changing thing. And you just go like, all done. It's like, and that to me was like very, I was like, wow. And the crazy thing about that is I then went to bed and the next day I just went to gym and it was just like, I've just transformed my life and everything else is normal. And then the final one, the second one was when the money actually dropped. That was, that was when I was like, wow, like we actually did this. Cause beforehand is all like,

on the screen and you're like, okay, this could happen. And you go, wow, like this actually happened. There's a crazy story about that actually. And I'll just tell you quickly was Mitch and Ambrose are on, um,

Lloyd's accounts and I was on a Santander account and our lawyers had sent over the money and they'd got theirs first. So we were like walking around saying what's going on? The money hasn't dropped. And then Ambrose is, Ambrose refreshes his screen and it's like, oh my God, oh my God. And then I refresh my screen and it's like nothing. It's like, what's going on? And I'm freaking out because I'm like, wait,

Did I give them the right sort code account? I'm thinking there's someone else here. We've got millions of accounts. What's going on? And I'm like, oh my God. And then I'm like, okay, blah, blah. And then I refresh again and it comes through. And I remember just like screaming.

'cause the office wasn't finding, I was screaming, just like screaming. I was like, "Oh my God, oh my God." And the craziest thing I did was later that day, I went to my dad's grave and I was just like,

I was just crying. I was just crying. I was crying. I was crying. And I was like, I was like, like, we fucking did it. Like we did it. Like we did it. Right. And I was just tears of like falling down my eyes. Cause I just felt like from when he said he was proud of me to now it was like, boom, you did it, man. Um, so those were the two moments where I was like, Oh, like this is real. Like this is very real. Um, but yeah, crazy. What's next?

You've reached the summit of the first mountain. How does it feel? Yeah, I think...

I think one of the things that I wish I had when I was younger was I wish there was someone like me who could share a lot of the ways and the frameworks that they used to get to where they were. I think I'm kind of thinking about how I can do that. You know, there's the other stuff there, like, you know, property and, you know, property and investing and money management and all that stuff.

But I think right now I'm just trying to focus on interesting things with interesting people. That's it, really. So you presumably have more time on your hands now that you're kind of a vagabond roaming around the streets, just chilling and going to the gym. How are you spending your time these days? Yeah, so I think, I mean...

you know, when we sold the company, a big part of it was like, we did believe that like for this influencer division or this influencer thing to grow, like Brain Labs, the company board house, where the best, you know, partner to take forward. So I'm supporting them with that, which is all around, you know, like,

just hiring great people, going global, all that stuff. I mean, fun fact, like when we sold the company, 40% of our revenue was from the U S but we didn't have a single person there, which is just like outrageous, um, you know, helping with that. Um, but now we, you know, now I have a bit more time, right. Which therefore means that I'm doing interesting things. Like, so, um,

With my experience in, you know, having like builds and scaled and sold a company, I'm doing quite a lot of stuff around investing. I'm actually doing quite a lot of like PE stuff. So actually like helping to buy companies and then kind of shaping them up to exit. So I've done that in like the e-commerce space, done that in quite a few things. Why?

Why? Are you trying to make more money or what's the, what's the, what's the aim at this point? So I think it's a fun game of like, if you think about it, right. If you look at a business and you go, I think here are five ways we can optimize you like relatively easily. Um,

And you can do that and increase the value of the business. That's a fun game. Yeah. Right. It's like buying a house and fixing it up because you like fixing things up and just flipping it. Yeah. It's just kind of fun. Yeah, exactly. Right. There's people who love that game. And for me, that's an interesting game. So like buying and selling companies, investing,

Although increasingly I'm starting to look at an investor in like just gambling. I'm just like, bro, I'm just like, cool. Here is 50K. I don't know what's going to happen, but you know, vibes. I was talking like angel investing. Yeah. But I'm trying to do, I'm trying to do less of that and more where I can influence the outcome. So like, rather than, you know, 25K checks actually be like, all right, here's a hundred grand, but I'll be like,

like on the board of the company and we will help it to steer that way rather than just like, oh, you know, here's some cash, you know? Uh, cause I still want to ensure that fan bites keeps growing to the part that is, um, yeah. So that's it. How have your attitudes towards money changed from kind of age 14 thinking a Mercedes Benz costs 500 quid and making, you know, a few quid an hour to having a life changing exit? Like what was the, that journey?

So I think at the beginning, I think this is also the case with quite a lot of people. I think at the beginning, I had quite a scarcity mindset towards money. I very much was like, oh, I've got this. I have to make sure that it doesn't go. And I think over time, because I've proved to myself that I've become the type of person who can create value and make money, I now approach it with a lot more

A lot more like, oh yeah, cool. That's fine. Okay. This happens. This happens. And I'm very aware that it's very, I guess like fortunate position to be in. But like, I think that was a big change was just going from scarcity to abundance. And yeah,

you know, every time you'd hear people say like, you know, money doesn't make you happy, et cetera. It's like, like, yes, that's true, but I'm also significantly happier. Right. Like, um, um, I'm also significantly happier than I was, uh,

like when I didn't have it. So, um, those would probably be the two main ones, but I think definitely going from scarcity to abundance. And actually think a mental trick I should have done when I was younger was I think I should have tried to like program my mind to think more in abundance rather than waiting for the money to come to then think in abundance.

that was a mistake. If I had treated money as more like, uh, Oh, you know, like, you know, it ebbs and it flows. It goes from here. It goes from here. I just need to become the type of person who can do it. Blah, blah, blah. Like I would not have held onto things for too long. And I also would not have made certain decisions, which were based out of like, I don't want to lose. Um,

rather than now I'm just like, oh, cool, whatever. So let's say someone's listening to this and they currently have a scarcity mindset towards money and they're thinking, oh, Tim, easy for you to say. I know. That was me. What would be the instructions, the code for the firmware update to get that mental model of money, the one that's more abundant rather than scarce? Assuming you don't have several zeros after your bank account balance. Yeah.

Money comes as a result of the person that you are and the person that you are is by and large the consequence of like the skills and the habits that you have. So rather than optimizing for the money like focus on like skill acquisition right. For example with me I really

In our first two years, really in our first, yeah, three, four years, all the brands that came to us were due to inbound. Like they'd come to us rather than us going directly to them. And it's because we became very good at like building marketing funnels and all that stuff that brought in brands. And I learned those funnels from like, again, Russell Brunson and all these guys. So I'd build all these funnels that will become the like foundation of the business and that will bring people in.

So I thought more about like the skills I was cultivating. And as a consequence of those skills, I was then able to create something of value. And then those things of value then made me money. So to that, you know, young person thinking that, I'd say, yes, A, I know it's incredibly challenging to think like that when you don't have money.

But it's very important to focus on like the skills and actually cultivating skills, which can then lead to money, which is things like, you know, marketing and sales and, uh, copywriting, things like that. Like you want to focus on just like being of use to the economy, because if you're of like general use in some way, people pay you for that. And like, that's the way that you create value. So,

it's almost like leveling up in a video game yeah if you want if you want to get the gear to take down that end game boss you need to level up yeah you need to do all this stuff to level up yeah train up to these different trade skills that's why i was talking about cheat codes yeah actually with the book um with the book one of the titles one of the suggested titles was basically around cheat codes it was like it was something like i forgot it was basically like

how to discover the cheat codes to winning in business and life or something. Dan actually told me not to go with that title because he said that you don't want to be linked with a word cheating. So I was like, okay, cool. But, but, but I do see it as a game of just, you know, figuring out the inputs. Okay. That worked. That didn't work. Done. Yeah. Yeah. This is something I was talking about with Alex as well in the podcast. This idea that,

I know so many people who come to me and they're like, "Hey, Ali, you know about this investing stuff. I'm currently making $50K in my job and I'm saving 10% and I want to put it in the index funds or individual stocks." And I'm like,

I mean, the right answer is index funds, but actually that's the wrong answer because what you're going to earn three, four, 6%. And when you're 55, then, then you'll be good. Like instead, if you can find a way to invest those things in your own education so that you become the sort of person who then can command a premium and can just make money as an individual, that's way more ROI positive. Yeah.

And the way Homozy describes it is that it's investing in the S&P versus the S&ME. Oh, that's good. There you go. Yeah. I mean, you know, like people talk about compounding interest, but you almost want to, you know, compound yourself. Yeah. Like that's way better. If you, if you, the returns on compounding yourself are way more than any stock, right? Yeah. Than you could ever, right?

more than any crypto. Yeah. And I guess almost there's like a tier list of this almost where it's like most like the top returns are in compounding yourself. The second top returns are in investing in your own business. Yeah. And then worst case scenario, S&P 500. Okay. Once you have literally no other options and the money's just sitting there burning a hole in your account. Okay, fine. Yeah. Let's try and go for 7% to be inflation. But like there are so many options beyond that point. But I think people default to

oh, I should invest because especially I think in traditional fields, like I know so many doctors who feel like they don't have any skills outside of medicine. Like how do you make money investing? It's just the only option. Yeah. Um, rather than I actually could start a business. I could learn how to do that. Yeah. You want to almost like see yourself. One of the things that I say to friends is that you want to see yourself as like a Sims character.

Oh, okay. Something more. That you're almost just like there and you're playing Sims and like you're the character and then it's like, okay, go left. All right, cool. It's like, go to gym. I go to the gym. I do this. All right. Do not eat now. Okay. I shall not eat now. Right? Like type on laptop. Right. Cool. So,

When you have a Sims character and you just like tell it to do stuff, it just, it just like goes and does stuff. And I've often tried to see my life as a bit of a Sims character. Like I am now in good shape and beforehand I was not in good shape. And I was like, okay, what are the two things that I need to do to be in good shape? Well, eat less, move more, done. Right. So,

I eat less. So sometimes I'll be hungry and I'm like, well, I'm not going to eat now. Okay. I don't eat. Right. Um, I'm not gonna, you know, move more gym. Cool. I now go to the gym. So I think I treat myself almost like a Sims character because I'm just like, well, if a Sims character can do it, then why can't you, you know, um, that's kind of the mentality that I have towards this life in general. Love it. Do you slash, did you ever struggle with procrastination? Oh yeah. Yeah.

But I told myself that everyone else did. So it's fine. So I basically have to like procrastinate less. So rather than trying to stop procrastinating, I just said I will procrastinate less. And that helped me. My form of procrastination, which is probably similar to you, is like, it's not that you waste time doing things.

meaningless stuff is that you waste time doing the less important thing. Right? So you're like, I know I need to do this, but I'm going to read this book instead. Right. So I just became aware of that. And I just said, like, don't fight procrastination. Just try and procrastinate less, which is very different from like, I am not going to procrastinate because I don't think anyway, in my case, I don't think it was possible for me not to procrastinate. Yeah. I think it was just procrastinating less.

Yeah. I think for me as well, it was like so many of the skills I've learned over time have been because I was procrastinating from doing something else I should have done. Like, you know, I can't be asked to do my homework right now. Let me just tinker with some like web design inspiration sites and be like, oh, hello, it's a nice gradient. It's a nice spot. And over time you just develop these skills through procrastination. The only procrastination that doesn't develop skills, I think, is when I find myself just like randomly scrolling Instagram or Twitter. I'm just like, why am I doing this? And in a way, huh.

I've just thought of this. The fact that we have a phone and our phone is our go-to device for procrastination. It's a lot harder to do

interesting things on a phone than it is on a desktop computer. Back in the day, when you and I were sitting at home on our laptops or computers or something, and you want to procrastinate, oh, let's go on a subreddit for marketing. Let's go on web design subreddit. I'm not going to go on a subreddit on my phone. I'm going to go on Twitter on my phone because it's so easy. So in a way, procrastinating on a computer is just inherently worth more overall to compounding yourself than procrastinating on a phone. A little hot take there. What do you do when you know you should do something or you have to do something and you can't be asked to do it? What's the...

Do you think I'm a Sims character? I will just do the thing? How does it work? So I think I just do the thing. Yeah.

Regardless of how you feel about it. Yeah. I don't feel like going to the gym right now. You know, last night I was like, oh, it's midnight. There's a McDonald's drive-thru there. You know what? Let's go in. I don't know. I mean, so there's a very good book I read called Be Your Future Self Now. And it's written by a guy called Ben Hardy. Oh.

Oh, I know him. He's great. And I really like it because I always ask myself, like, what would my future self do? Yeah. And so, you know, going to the gym, my house, like there's a gym box pretty close by. I also have like a gym set up at home. So I'm just like, cool. I'm just going to go to the gym. Yeah. How do you balance what would my future self do with I want to have fun in the here and now?

It depends on your definition of fun. So I'm thinking, I know my future self means I would probably not want me to eat the McDonald's meal deal at midnight, but I really want to eat the McDonald's meal deal. And I feel like there's always a tension between the thing that drives long-term results and the thing that feels good right now.

Like it feels, you know, like last night I canceled my session with my personal trainer because my girlfriend was unwell and I felt, yes, I don't have to do my personal trainer session. And it's like, it feels good to not do a thing that you know you should do because you know it's going to be painful because everything that's worth doing tends to feel a little bit just uncomfortable in the short term. I think that for me, I just changed my definition of fun. That I do find it fun to do the like,

unpleasant things. So, yeah. Nice. I think that I had to almost rewire my mind to do that. I'm trying to think because one of the questions I get asked a lot by friends is like, oh, you know, why don't you chill out and why don't you do that? And I'm like, because I'd find that boring. Yeah. So the thing that I find fun is like,

tinkering with projects and tinkering with ideas and like, you know, talking to people and them saying, you know, you've changed this, you've changed that. All right. That could work. Like that's fun to me. So I think that I just rewired my definition of fun. Yeah. It's, it's interesting you say that. So I've been reading some studies that basically talk about exactly this, um, in research for the book and stuff, um, around how you can actually train your mind to feel a dopamine hit from a

or from lifting the bench press thing that's like harder rather than the reward at the end. Because if you train yourself to feel that dopamine from the donut you have at the end or the McDonald's drive-thru like I do,

that's the sort of compounding in the wrong direction. Yeah. Whereas if you can genuinely train your brain to genuinely feel enjoyment and fun and energy from doing the thing that looks like work. Yeah. You're just like winning because it feels, it feels like play. Yeah. There's a book I'm reading actually. Let

Let me get the name. It is called Designing the Mind, the Principles of Psychitecture. Sick. I'm just buying that one. And it is one of, you know, my favorite book is a book called Psycho-Cybernetics. Oh, it's sick. I read that when I was like in year nine or something. It was fucking game-changing. Yes. Like the whole idea of like neuroplasticity and all that stuff. So, oh my God. Yeah. And this book about designing the mind, it...

It's almost the modern version of that, which is like, you can rewire your mind to assign different meanings to different things. You can literally like invent yourself. And so I think that approach is what I took to just like, so, you know, in your example, I take a lot of pleasure from like being at the gym and doing like a

PR on Benchpress because I'm like, that's just more pleasurable. Right. I take more pleasure from being like, oh, I've actually gone on like an 18 hour fast because I'm just like, yeah, that's just more pleasurable.

Yeah. That book, you know, Psycho-Psychonetics, there's another one which I just forgot. But like Psycho-Psychonetics and Design of the Mind, I just found them to be like, why is this not taught in GCSE? Like people should understand the idea of neuroplasticity and being able to change your mind and change your brain. Like people should just know this. But they don't. Have there been any other books that have had a big impact on you?

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport. That was a great one.

Um, I think all the books by Russell Brunson. I've never read any of his stuff. I think that like my, I started working with a CEO coach like three days ago. Okay. And he was telling me you need to read Russell Brunson's trilogy of books just because I know so little about marketing. And he was like, this will just level you up as a CEO. Yeah. So yeah. That. Yeah. So you should do that. I will do that. Um, so good. They can't ignore you. Psycho cybernetics. Uh,

What did you take away from So Good They Can't Ignore You? Well, just the value of skills. That was why I said earlier that like, don't focus on the money, just like focus on building rare and valuable skills. And if you do that, you will always be in demand. So like right now you could put me anywhere in the world and I'll be fine because I get sales, I get marketing, I get public speaking, I get people, I get communication done.

Let's say you were controlling a Sims character. Right now, it's late 2022. Someone, let's say they've got a normal job and they're like, I want to build a business on the side, but they don't have any skills outside of, I don't know, being a doctor or something, which is a very specific skill set, but doesn't necessarily apply to business. What would be your kind of syllabus for your little Sims character to go around to build up the business skills? So the first thing I would do is,

is I will try and focus, I will ask myself what areas can I help other people make more money? So for example, like if you really think about what Fanbytes was, it was an engine for a brand to be able to spend say 50 grand and make like 70 grand. Yeah. Right. We spend 50 grand on a campaign. It made us 70 grand in profit or whatever.

So therefore I'll just keep making that trade over and over. So, um, yeah.

What I say to that person is like, focus on a space, focus on an area, focus on an industry where you can help people make more money. And the people could be consumers, but it could also be businesses. I generally prefer businesses, right? Businesses have money. Businesses want to spend money. Consumers don't. Exactly. And there's also a clear sign of ROI. It's like, if I do this, I can help them. Because fundamentally, if you can help someone, I guess, like...

If by someone spending a pound with you, they can make three pounds and in return you say, I want a pound 50, you've built a perpetual machine, right? Because then I'm just going to keep spending, spending. So I say, firstly, is look for where you can help people make more money

relatively quickly. So by quickly, I mean just, you know, like they can spend and they can get the outcome quite quickly. I would focus on like a type of skill. So

I personally think if you were young or anything, one of the best skills you can have is copywriting. Like being able to write to persuade people. To me, it's like magic. I can just type on keys, put some words together, configure them in a certain way, and that can persuade someone to then like take out their card and pay me. Those would be the skills that I'd focus on. And then

Once you've got that understanding of, right, I've figured out the market, I figured out a model in which I can help them make more money, then really all you have to do is just like persuade people to get you to work with them. And the way they do that is that you work for free at the beginning, have two, three, four case studies, and then you just keep doing it. Yeah.

That's amazing. Yeah. Most of business I've come to realize is like relatively straightforward. It's just the mind which is like makes you think it's confusing. But like what we did at Fanbytes is not like

It's not like deep tech, right? It's not science. It's not anything that's like intellectually challenging. It's just like emotionally difficult because when we'd email brands and they wouldn't respond or we'd put a proposal together and the brand would go with a competitor or they'll do this and they'll do that. Like that's the hard bit. But the actual doing of business is like relatively straightforward. Yeah. Yeah. I find that one of the things that also holds people back is like,

Just not appreciating the meaning of money. And like in, in, in, in the sense of, you know, I got, I got an email the other day, some company offering me 20 K to give a talk for half an hour. Yeah. That's like half of a year working full time as a junior doctor. Like it's just fricking insane. Yeah.

And to this company, it's just a big pocket change. And just the fact that that massive disparity in how companies and individuals value money, just freaking game changing. And we found that, you know, there've been people who've worked for me as employees who've then gone on to do freelancy type stuff. And they're just sort of all

almost like, hey, I just doubled my price and they didn't bat an eyelid. I'm going to quadruple it next time. And you get that thing where they almost can't believe it. It feels like it's a cheat code, especially when you're selling a service to a business who wants to make money with a specific outcome. You're just like, bloody hell. I used to think making £12 an hour was good. Now I've just sent an email and I've gone from 2K a month to 5K a month. They didn't even bat an eyelid. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. It's when you move towards like, you know, pricing based of value, right? There's a very good talk. I remember reading, sort of reading, watching, and it changed my life. I think it was by Jim Rohn.

or Brian Tracy. Basically, they said, you get value for what you provide to the marketplace. And I remember that just like, like changing my whole, I was just like, oh, like, that's how people get paid for stuff, because they create something of value. And then, like people pay for that value. It's like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it sounds so simple. But actually, there's, it's such a, I think it's,

It's how basically like all of philosophy, you can condense Plato's Republic to just a single phrase of like, be nice to people or something like that. But actually there's so much experience that it gets summarized into that one idea. And the idea of provide something of value, people would pay for it. There's actually a lot of experience behind something that's tweetable like that. Exactly. And I guess the mistake that some people make is they read all that and they're like, not along. Yeah. They never create anything that's of value to the marketplace. Yeah. I think...

I think I may create a t-shirt with just this act on it. Like just do shit, right? Because you have to do something to get some outcome. If you don't do anything, they're not going to get an outcome, you know? Yeah. I think in the world of business, like this thing I've been thinking recently, like I think a lot of people conflate value, value to the marketplace with my value as an individual. Yes. Yes. Oh my God. Yes. Yes.

Yes, 100%. What do you mean? Tell me more. What did that spark for you? Like, I talk to people and they have to do a specific thing, right? It's like, all right, you have a, I don't know, a nail salon or something, right? You therefore need to learn how to advertise on Instagram because that's going to attract people to you. Oh, I don't know how to. I'm not a social media person. Fuck.

What do you think that we just get out of our mom's bellies and just know how to use TikTok? Like, come on, you know, like it's an action that you have to learn. It's an action that you have to do to provide value. And that's one thing that really gets to me, like,

I'm not this type of person. And the truth is like, you're not any type of person, right? Like who you currently are is just a bunch of like actions and beliefs that have happened in the past that make you now. So therefore you can be any type of person. And so people go around like, you know, value to the marketplace and they're like, oh, I know I should be good at sales and marketing, but the value to myself is like,

I'm not a sales and marketing person. I've never learned it. Therefore, I can't learn it. It's like, what's happening to you? Right? Like, you're not a stick man who just like stays there and just come on, you know? That really, really infuriates me when people just don't go like, come on. Like, you can be more and also you should choose to be more because you're

You're not a static thing, right? So yeah, I completely agree. And it just infuriates me so much when people just have that kind of like, well, here I am. And a phrase that massively infuriates me is, well, that's just the way I am. What?

Like the way you are is due to a bunch of past experiences you've had. So the future you, if you think about the future you being a combination of the past experiences that you have, then it's every experience that you've had from now to the future you will be the past. So you might as well do it, you know? Anyway, run over. Do you get any other questions that make your, that grind your gears?

I mean, that's the first one. I love passion. Yeah, no. And the reason why it annoys me is because I see people who are way more intelligent than me, like mess up because they are not able to confront this question of like, you can be more like,

I'm thinking about two or three people now where I'm like, you could be whatever you want to be, but you think you're just a fixed type of person. And so because of that, you're not going to be that person. And every time I see that person, a part of me just goes, man, I don't know how to get this into you, but man, you could be brilliant. That's the main question. Yeah, that's the main one.

Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. No problem. Good place to end this. Yeah, it was fun. 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 going to 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

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