A UK architect designed watches, found Chinese manufacturers, and raised over £500,000 through two Kickstarter campaigns in 2024. The brand hit €1M in turnover within two years. The video breaks down mental blocks that stop people from starting independent projects and shares brainstorming tactics to get past them.
Questions this video answers
Kickstarter
United Kingdom
Over £500,000 across the two highlighted campaigns in 2024
About £300,000 (speaker: '300 and something')
About £200,000 (speaker: '£200,000 — ~€230,000–€240,000')
Hello, friends. Today we're going to talk about career change. But before we get into the heart of the matter, if you're looking for a career change after watching this video, of course, go check out our partner, who is the Rolls Royce of career change support, professional coaching. What's more, it's so solid and serious that under certain conditions, it's covered by Franz Travail. So I'll give you the link in the description of the video and say that you're coming from me because they read my books, they watch my videos, and so people who come from me are generally treated very, very well. So one of the problems with being an employee is that sometimes when you're in it, you want to do something else. You want to move on to maybe selling your own art, selling your own services or your own products, right? And become independent from being an employee. The problem is that we're often restricted. When I do consulting sessions, what I notice is that very often people are mentally restricted. This means they have blockages, limiting beliefs and obstacles that are not real, that correspond to nothing in reality, but they are just placed in their mind mentally. And these are really mental barriers that are often the most solid barriers that we encounter in life, the most solid and sometimes hardest barriers to overcome without those that we have integrated inside, sometimes without even realizing it. So I'm going to tell you the story of a friend who made a happy career change. And you'll see that sometimes when we think outside the box, as they say, or outside the box, we can find very interesting things. Let me tell you his example. He's someone who lives in the United Kingdom. He is an architect by trade. That means he works in an architectural firm and spends 100 years making plans, plans for houses, apartments, things like that. At one point, he gets fed up with the system. I can't tell you why. It's the classics. Everyone, everyone who works for a salary has been through it. So there's nothing special about the story so far. But what he wants is to take control of his life and control it, which is what he wants to do. Here's his idea. Since he's always been passionate about watches, he decides to start a watch company. Since he can design houses, rooms, garages, parking lots, he can absolutely design watches. And so what he's going to do is design watches, travel the world, to try to find partners who can make the different pieces for him. There's the vision, but then there's the execution. So he's going to find partners. He's been to China among other places. And you have to know that the Chinese are always ready to talk their business areas, people who are very welcoming, basically, they're very business oriented. As they say, if someone talks to them about creating something or other, they're not going to say yes. How much money do you have to talk? I know companies in Europe and they tell you before they even send someone to you or talk to you, they want to know your financial health, they want to know your budget, and if you don't have it, they won't talk to you. He was hands down. And they welcomed him. They welcomed him as a friend. They invited him to eat, they talked to him, they looked at his plans. They said, yes, we can. Now, how do we finance a project like this? That's all well and good, but how do we finance it? And there, too, he thought, outside the box. There's a website called Kickstarter. Kickstarter is what we call crowdfunding. It means it's a site that allows projects to get started. There's not just Kickstarter, there are others, but he used this one. So he created a model of his watch. He described it, and he submitted it to the public, saying, here's my watch. If you support me, if you're my first customers, you'll get it at a reduced price. So he sold some. He sold it very quickly. I'm going to show you some numbers because, you know, a lot of people talk to you about doing things, doing business, doing business and so on, but they never give you verifiable numbers. Today, I'm going to give you some numbers that you can check when you look at it. And I'm giving you the links to Kickstarter. So the pages are still there. And you can't change it. He can't change this number. This figure is public and managed by Kickstarter. Well, just the two ads that I'm going to show you, they raised over half a million pounds. That's 20, 24. Last year, two ads, half a million pounds, and then a third and a fourth. I don't have them right here, but I'll show you the ones that were the most successful. There's one that raised £200,000. We're talking about €230,000 to €240,000 here. The other one raised 300 and something. So here we're close to €400,000 in two ads. Okay? This allowed him to launch his site, this allowed him to launch his brand and to go see his partners in China and say, okay, I Have the clients, I have the money. We can start working. And the Chinese, who bet on him, who bet on his success, who bet on his vision, well, suddenly they get a call telling them, okay, now I have money in the account. I have a nice sum, six figures. And. And we're going to work together. That's the idea. His company made a turnover in its first year. Literally, its first two years, it was well over a million. Okay, that's just an example. But this example is to show you that you should always keep an open mind. It's with an open mind that we move forward. You shouldn't let yourself be intimidated by the system. And the problem is, when you're an employee, when you're in a toxic employment situation, when you're around people, colleagues, managers who put you down, you feel like you're worth absolutely nothing. We have the impression that if they don't give us the money to pay for our daily bread, we're dead. This impression that is ingrained in many people's heads is false. I'll show you one of these watches. It's there. It's absolutely magnificent. So this is one of the watches that you see on kck, on Kickstarter. I don't know if you can visualize it. Well, it's a watch full of what we call complications. In watchmaking, that means complications. Mechanical systems, complex mechanical features that you don't find in your average watch, and that's what makes it valuable. So this isn't just advertising, you know? I'm not advertising. Because, quite simply, for you to advertise, this watch has to be on sale. It's not for sale. And it has Arabic numerals. It's a limited edition. There aren't any more. It's been sold out for a long time. So I'm just showing it to you to tell you that, honestly, someone has retrained, okay? He retrained in watches. And today, well, he's had success in a very short time because he believed in his vision, he believed in his art, and he went for it. He talked to people. He traveled the world. He met people. He told them, look, I don't have any money, but I have a vision. Can you talk to me? Do you want to talk to me? And most people will listen to you. So there you have it. My. My friends, that was just a story about Radcliffe watch and a way of telling you that you really have to open your mind when you're brainstorming. I'll just give you a brainstorming technique. Perhaps I Often see people doing brainstorming. For example, the other day I was talking to someone he wanted to retrain. I said something like, why don't you take a bottle of wine, fill it with food and sell it? You'll sell the food in the neighborhoods. Okay. I sometimes say things like that. The goal isn't to analyze this particular point. The goal is to see if the person is open to it. Yes, because when I say that, the person might think about it and say, yeah, but I could. But there's this problem. This problem, this problem. Here we are in an analytical approach, but with people who say this is ridiculous. If people think and say this is ridiculous, these are mental blocks. We have to get rid of them. Because very often good ideas that people may have are destroyed before we even consider them. When we brainstorm, we put forward ideas without any limits, no matter how absurd they may be, and then we eliminate them. We keep them after reflection, after an analysis on their merits. But if we brainstorm with preconceptions, well, we get nowhere. Okay. That's why it's very important to keep an open mind. By the way, there was a guy who went around neighborhoods, villages and all that. He sold food from vans. Well, he's the guy who started what we call Migro in Switzerland today, One of the largest Swiss supermarket chains. Migro started out as. That's it. Okay. So it's not really a completely absurd idea. Even if it's an idea that does work in the long term, it's probably limited today. And it's not because something worked a long time ago that it will work today. But in a brainstorming session, we don't throw anything away without thinking deeply about it. There you have it, my friends. Thank you for listening to this video so far. Don't forget our partner who can really support you. All the people who have gone through them have come back to me and told me extraordinary things, and it has allowed them to turn their lives around. Thank you for listening to this video so far, and I'll see you in the next one. Thank you.
