S1 Ep6: The World's Best CEO Coach On What It Takes To Win and Becoming Anti-Fragile - Eric Partaker

Whether it's slots or live dealers, SpinQuest.com has the fun and action you're looking for with SpinQuest exclusives, blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and even live dice with craps and bubble craps. The games never stop so you don't have to. And right now, new users get $30 coin packs for just $10. Play now at SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit SpinQuest.com for more details.

Catch the NBA Playoffs on Sling TV, the most flexible live TV streaming service, putting consumers in control to watch games their way with flexible subscriptions. Wanna catch one game or a full series on ESPN? Grab a 1, 3, or 7-day pass. If you wanna catch as many games as possible, get a monthly subscription with our ABC, NBC, and ESPN combo package. Either way, Sling lets you watch the playoffs your way with no long-term contracts. Learn more at sling.com.

It's threshold for pain, you know, like, can you step into discomfort and enjoy things that are difficult or hard for, like, most other people?

I feel like a lot of 9-to-5s feel quite risky.

I'm not there in thinking that the 9-to-5 is too risky. I think pretty much you can do absolutely anything that you want in life, like, if you focus on the right things. I think the majority of people focus on the wrong things. Here's a simple way to look at it. You have ordinary and then extraordinary, right? I've always said to myself, You may be smarter than me, but there's no way in hell you'll outwork me.

You told me when we first met about your near-death experience.

Mm. Feels like somebody's like sitting on my chest. Start getting nauseous. And he's like, we need to land the plane immediately, he's having a heart attack. Wow. Just remember looking up at the paramedic looking down at me and I just said, please don't let me die. I have a 5-year-old son.

Do you think that founders and entrepreneurs can actually have a work-life balance?

No.

Uh, for the audience who don't know you, you know, you're broadly known as the CEO coach. You know, you've been Ali Abdaal's CEO coach for a long time now. You've coached some incredible people, massive entrepreneurs, very successful founders. But for the audience that don't know you, do you want to tell us a little bit about your story?

Yeah, so I always started out with, um, the quote from John Lennon: life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. Just because Um, none of this was planned. Um, I'm just kind of like, I smell opportunity and go with the flow. So I, I was literally at this, I was at a management and organizational behavior class at my university and it was a visiting professor from Stanford. And I only took this class cuz I was like, wow, Stanford, I'm gonna learn something from somebody who's way more intelligent than me. Um, and, um, and I remember in the class he said, if anybody is gonna get a job at the company that I'm gonna profile next, I'll fall outta my chair. And then that made me pop up. I wasn't really like paying that much attention. And, um, and then he profiles this company, McKinsey and Company. I was like, how's McKinsey? I have no idea. Uh, and then I find out gold standard management consulting. I'm like, what is management consulting anyways? But you know, like the 800-pound gorilla in that, that sector. And, um, and so I just went up to him after the class and I was like, look, I'm gonna get a job there. And he's like, well, I will fall out of my chair then. Um, and I ended up, did, you know, I, I did get a job at McKinsey. Incredible. Start for my career. It gave me a really good business foundation. It was a bit of an equalizer in terms of a pedigree thing for me. So I was in the Chicago office for a while, then in the Oslo office. And I'm half American, half Norwegian. Then I was using Skype, given its Scandinavian roots, a little bit earlier than most people. And I looked at that and I thought, wow, this is going to be big. And so I knocked on their door, you know, figuratively speaking, and, you know, said, hey, can I join the team? And they said no. And I was like, ah, I don't like that answer. And so 3 months later, I said, can I join the team? Like, you just applied. I'm like, yeah, but I think you're not thinking about things correctly. I think you do need somebody with like a business background. Here's why.

Yeah.

And I got my foot in the door, um, and then, um, um, spoke with them and ended up, you know, becoming a member of the early team at Skype and, um, helped with the blitzscaling of that. And then, um, you know, we had this big exit to eBay for a few billion dollars. Um, literally, so after that, I'm literally sat on my, I'm living in London now at the time, I'm sat on my sofa. And I'm just hungry. And I'm like, man, I miss burritos. And so then I go online and I'm like, are there any burritos in London? And there's like none. And I'm like, hmm. Ah, maybe that's my next thing. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to build a burrito and taco restaurant and build that. And that becomes like Zagat number one, you know, rated, you know, becomes like the public, you know, favorite or whatever in terms of, you know, the brand and the food.

And it was incredible because obviously I'm from, I'm from London. And so like we just used to eat at your restaurants all the time.

Yeah.

And I suppose what is the comparable in America? What's the— is it Chipotle?

Yeah.

So that was the model.

That was the business model. I was like, okay, that model works as like as a delivery mechanism or whatever. And then we just, I was very, at the time, I was very inspired by, still am, but everything that Richard Branson had done. And I was like, okay, so he takes, what does he do? Like, often he goes into already well-established industries where, you know, he's the underdog and he wins through brand, you know, culture, a proposition that just like resonates more with like, say, the people or whatever. I was like, okay, we're just going to do that same, that same thing. And, um, um, so built that, um, that actually did not end well. So, you know, I went from experiencing kind of unicorn success with Skype, um, and this goes back to like threshold for pain. So, uh, that was like a 13-year journey. And, um, in our 12th year, um, there was massive restructuring going on in the restaurant industry. Um, you remember like when all the delivery platforms came in and so the whole economics of the industry changed and we had like several leases that we were trying to get out of as a, that we hadn't yet built, that we were trying to get out of as a result of like football patterns changing and everything basically deemed that they wouldn't be profitable anymore to open. And then of course we couldn't offload them because nobody else wanted them because they were seeing the same patterns. And then we had, we had too much debt in the business and, and then, you know, boom, boom, boom, a series of things align. And so we go through a restructure. Come out of the restructure, we were able to shed some of those leases and we're like, phew, okay. So we come out of the restructure, I think we were close to, like in dollars, but, you know, restructured into a company that had about like a million a year in EBITDA. So, you know, fairly safe place. And then COVID comes 3 months later. And in the clause of the CBILS loan, right, the main—

The government loans.

Government loan in the UK. It said if your company's been through a restructuring the 12 months prior, you're automatically disqualified from the loans.

Wow.

And if you're in the hospitality industry or the travel industry during COVID with zero government support, like Boom. That's like the death sentence.

So you couldn't even do things like furlough?

No, we could do that, but we, we couldn't qualify for like the massive, you know, we had no working capital support or, you know, any of that. So the whole thing went up in smoke and I had migrated already to like a board position at that point. But it was still like painful, right, to see something that you had built over a decade. Yeah. And it's just like, poof. Gone. And then, but then I saw, okay, well, you know, what do I want to do next? And I, various like CEOs and founders had been coming to me over the years asking for advice, either because of like the McKinsey time or the Skype time or, you know, the Chilango time. And so I thought, well, I need something to do next, you know, stay busy. And I thought, okay, 2 days a week, I'll coach and mentor CEOs and founders. And so I started to do that on like Mondays and Tuesdays. I moved to Portugal from London. Um, and, um, and then started to invest in some of their, their companies as well. And then all of a sudden, like, just kind of rebuilt, um, from a wealth point of view, like, to a point that was higher than actually we were ever before.

That's wild.

And we had some good outcomes from, especially with Skype, for example. So it just, it kind of, like I said, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. It just kind of like proves to me that I think pretty much you can do absolutely anything that you want in life if you focus on the right things. And that's like the key point because I think the majority of people focus on the wrong things.

And you told me when we first met about your near-death experience, which seemed to be like a real wake-up call in your life. Is that—

Yeah.

Before Chilango?

That was during.

During Chilango.

Yeah. This is like 2010. And I board a— so I'm returning. So had a business trip in Spain, was returning to London. And like shortly after the, you know, the plane reaches cruising altitude, I had not been feeling well though. Like, you know, honestly, like for the whole 6 months prior to that, I've been noticing like pains, like, you know, my jaw and my chest. And I just kept like, you know, putting it off to like stress or whatever, which definitely was like one of the components. And yeah, so we reached cruising altitude and and I just start to sweat. It feels like somebody's sitting on my chest. Start getting nauseous. My friend and colleague, Louis, is sat next to me, and I'm like, "Dude, feel my arm." And he feels my arm, and the look on his face was just like— and Louis says, "It feels like your arm's been hanging in a meat locker." Was it freezing? Like ice cold. Wow. And I thought it was just me, like, think, you know, in my own head. But, you know, it wasn't the case. And then he jumps over, runs to a flight attendant, flight attendant asks if there's a doctor on board, doctor rushes over.

As in a passenger?

Yeah. And then luckily for me, there was a doctor on board.

Oh my God.

Doctor rushes over, like, takes my vital signs and he's like, we need to land the plane immediately. He's having a heart attack. And And I thought, like, when you think it's like game over like that, lights out, it's like, and then if you're 35,000 feet in the air, you're like so far away from any help that you, you know.

Yeah. So you're thinking in that moment, done, right?

And I don't care how strong you are, like how strong, because I consider myself a pretty, you know, tough person in terms of especially in terms of like, you know, mind, man, you become nothing in a moment like that. Like, and I thought, I thought I was, because my heart was beating. So it felt like I could feel how faint it was. It was just like, boom.

Oh, Christ.

Boom.

On a plane as well.

And I was like, man, that feels like a flickering light that's about to go out. And I just remembered, I kept thinking, please, like, just fly faster. Like, the descent felt like an eternity. And so they emergency land. And there's like an ambulance on the airport runway. I like Googled after, how much does it cost the airline for an emergency landing? And it was something like 150,000 or something. And I was like, I only paid 1,500 for my ticket. So I thought like, that's not a good deal for them. Although they probably have insurance, right? So, yeah, so they take, they take me off on a stretcher into the ambulance. They administer nitrates right there on the runway to open up the blood flow. And yeah, I just remember looking up at the paramedic looking down at me, and I just said, please don't let me die. I have a 5-year-old son. And those were like the first words out of my mouth. And he said, just sit tight. I think we got to you just in time. And the next morning I woke up in the hospital and I just remembered feeling incredibly— it's a weird feeling to wake up and be— because we take it for granted every day we wake up, right? And, um, but when you wake up and you're like genuinely grateful, like, oh shit, I'm still alive. Um, and, um, yeah, and that started— like, change didn't happen right away, but, you know, it was like a process. And, and I realized that—

as in changing your perspective?

Well, change in that— because remember we were talking about like work-life balance, work-life satisfaction, and that you have to recognize that there's an imbalance. And, um, but you still have to show up at your best on the health front, on the home front. And I wasn't doing that. And so I decided I had to look after my health more. I had to look after home more.

One of the first things that I ever saw of yours was your book. And this is before we knew each other. And I saw the title of the book and then I saw I mean, it was early on, but I saw Sahil Bloom post about the book and about how, you know, he was using it to be his best self in all of his key moments in his life.

Yeah.

And so the book was The Three Alarms.

Yeah.

Yeah. And what was the concept behind that? Did that come after the wake-up call?

No, that was basically the summation of everything that I put together in my head following, you know, that wake-up call. The concept is really simple. So everything, as you know, like everything for me is like 80/20. You have to find the leverage. And there's a lot of different stuff you could focus on to improve your life. You know, like Stephen Covey has like roles and responsibilities. You can think of nearly endless roles and responsibilities. I think Tony Robbins has like categories of improvement, but I can think of nearly endless categories of improvement. And when I really think about it, what's the most important stuff? It's your health, because without your health, you're nothing. I experienced that firsthand. Your wealth, both in terms of how you make the money and what you do with it. And then your relationships. Because when I was about, you know, when I thought it was lights out for me, it wasn't, please don't let me die, I have to clear out my inbox. It was like, please don't let me die, I have a 5-year-old son. So it's like your relationships. Are what matter. If you're given, if anybody on the planet's given 5 more minutes in their deathbed, what are they going to use it for? They're going to use it to hug someone longer, talk to someone longer that matters, right? That's the only thing you're going to use it for. Um, and I think that would be universal. Um, so health, wealth, and relationships, it's like the 20% of things you could focus on for 80% of the improvement that you seek in life. So narrowing focus in everything that you do, you know, earlier I was saying, you know, you can do just about anything that you want in life if you focus on the right things, but people focus on way too many many things. So it starts with narrowing your focus to health, wealth, and relationships. And then it's about being a little bit more intentional, you know, rather than reactive, in terms of what does best look like for you in each of those areas. And then, and then just assigning some kind of identity to that. Like, like, what would you call the superhero version of you in each of those areas? Um, And then, and then just simply setting an alarm on your phone to kind of like remind you of that identity at the time of day that would most benefit from that reminder. So for example, at 6:30 AM, you know, I have an alarm that goes off that says World Fitness Champion because that's the version of me that goes to the gym in the morning, especially when I don't feel like doing it. Um, and then 9:00 AM, World's best CEO. Because, well, if I was that, how decisive, inspiring, reliable will I show up today in my various meetings or whatever? And then at 6:30 PM, the most powerful one for me is, it says world's best husband and father, just to prompt the question, how would the world's best husband and father walk through that door right now? So it's like just having that intentionality. right? Um, so that you're not drifting.

And so if you were talking to someone who's struggling with the different aspects of their life right now, whether it's like work or family, the advice would be to try and model the best version themselves in each of those.

Yeah, think of what the best version of you looks like. Give that a name, um, like what's the superhero identity of you. Think about a time of day that would best benefit from being reminded of that identity. And then on a daily basis, just try to do one thing. So 3 things total in each of those areas, one in each, which if done would evidence that you were you at your best, right? So as an example, world fitness champion, you know, so earlier in the week it was like, I'm gonna try to burn, you know, 600 calories on the stationary bike, you know, and then, World's best CEO, it was— I was going to— I made it a point that I was going to get a proposal out, you know, that day that I had been sitting on. And then world's best husband and father, you know, so a recent one was, you know, I just said to myself, I'm going to do a ping pong tournament with my 11-year-old, you know, in the evening. And it's just like having these, like, simple little goals in each of those areas. That's all it is.

So what's the biggest challenge for people who are trying to improve their wealth and health and relationships? Like, what's the thing that stops us all?

Well, because they don't think about it. They just don't, you know, they— so especially if you're really, really career-focused, you get so consumed with the professional side of things that all the other areas of your life gets, you know, that's like the leftovers. Um, and if you just were intentional once again about what best looks like and just pick one thing that you could do.

Mm-hmm.

Well, at least you're doing, you know, one thing, right? That's evidencing that. So, yeah, I just think that the biggest thing that gets in the way for most people, especially when they think about being more satisfied with work and life, is that they're not intentional about what good looks like and what they can do on a daily basis to evidence it.

I think one of the things that's quite fascinating about you is you obviously built a great brand with Chilango. And like I say, like, I, you know, I live in London, and so for me it was just like part of the high street growing up. And obviously that company became a brilliant business that people loved and adored, and then because of big macro problems kind of just disappeared. And so that rock bottom is something that a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs will experience with their companies going under or failing or whatever, like from that moment, how did you say, I'm going to pick myself up? Like what's the plan you went through? Because presumably you were in your own rock bottom at that point. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing is, you know, when something doesn't go to plan, the first thing you need to do is look into the mirror. And so, yeah, it's, yeah, there were big macro things going on. Right? But, but you still need to look into the mirror and take responsibility, right? And, you know, and that's key to recover from a bottom because otherwise you're going to stay on the bottom or just repeat it. And so, you know, one of the, you know, the first things was, okay, well, what could I have done better? And, you know, you got to be really careful with how much debt you put into a business. And, um, because when the times are flying and everything's great, mm-hmm, it looks great, right? Then all of a sudden, you know, the, the industry changes, you know, like I said, footfall patterns change and you got like throw in a pandemic and, you know, a heavy, heavy debt business is gonna, you know, go out very, very quickly. Right. Um, you gotta be super, super con— you know, most entrepreneurs, I think founders need to be more conscious about. Just expenditure in general. You know, like how, especially at HQ level, right? Again, because when things are going super well, yeah, you know, yeah, you're not really, you know, worried too much about it, but things don't always go well. So, you know, I think we could have run like a leaner cost structure as well. And then when you expand, right, you have to be careful no matter what business that you're expanding. It's easy to, and we talked about this with our creator businesses now, right? It's like, it's easy to want to do like a bunch of things at once. But we know now from experience, no, no, no, hang on. Focus on, you know, where's the 80/20, optimize the hell out of that, then move to the next bet, right? And So yeah, that's the first thing is like when you hit bottom, make sure you're not just pointing outwards and also like point inwards and ask yourself what can you be doing better and differently? And, and yeah, it was powerful in that sense because it helped me create— it helped me realize, you know, for my next business, my next venture, I want to go with a model that inherently can operate from a leaner structure, right? And that can make money with much less, like, investment.

Yeah. And much—

and virtually zero upfront risk.

I think that is a bit of advice that new entrepreneurs never take on. So For example, nowadays, if I ever think about starting a business or if I ever invest in a business, I always ask myself the question, at the scaled version of this, when this thing becomes what we all hope it will be, yeah, what profit does it create then? Yeah, like, what's the throughput then? And then one step further than that, nowadays I always think, what is the industry likelihood profit? And then what is the likely multiplier? And then the likelihood of sale. And if those, those things don't stack up in a really positive way, I think to myself, well, this thing that I'm interested in is probably just an interest. It's not a business I should pursue.

Yeah.

And so I also think that like one of my first businesses I ever did was such a failure dramatically that—

and what were the reasons?

I mean, a lot of what you just said, like we, you know, we raised money for a tech platform when we were like 18, 19, having no idea how businesses ran and spent an absolute fortune on the belief that we could raise more money.

Yeah.

And then before long we realised that we just weren't monetising. All of the plans we had for monetisation didn't work and suddenly the cost structure was just growing and growing. And suddenly I was like, well, even if this business makes it, it's going to be a pretty awful business.

Yeah.

And I think that was a useful experience early on. And now I think, you know, for example, we've launched businesses in the last year. Before we did that, we thought long and hard about the business in 10 years' time.

Yeah, totally.

How much money will it make? Will it be free cash flow? Is it sellable? Is it going to have—

and we're still thinking about all these things, right?

Like proportionately raising costs is not something I'm interested at all. Like I want a global scale business with high margin.

And I think this is where like most Founders, um, less so like CEOs once you make that transition, which is worth talking about too. But, um, most founders, they, um, I mean, look, the number of cases where you have an incredible exit from a business that basically wasn't profitable, that's like fantasy land.

Yeah.

Uber recently became— that's just total fantasyland. That is not what you should be building and optimizing for. And I think a lot of people, I hear so many times, because I said this once at one point myself, I'll hear so many founders say, so I'll say, how's the business going? Really good. Yeah. Okay. What's revenue? Revenue is X. Profitable? Next year's our year.

Yeah. Yeah. It's always next year.

Next year we become profitable next year. Yeah. And so first of all, the language is already, it's like, it's already set up for disaster because they literally say next year, next year's floating. Like you just said, it's always next year. So it's not like, oh, we become profitable on, you know, December 31st. 2025. Like, they never speak that way. It's always next year. So they literally are kicking the can down the road.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of the business go under because they just keep kicking the can down. And at some point, it's just not going to work, right? It's just going to fall over.

Do you think that founders and entrepreneurs can actually have a work-life balance?

No. Uh, I think it's a myth, but it depends once again on who you're talking to. So like, I think for the person, I don't know what the numbers are, but let's say for example that entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, let's just assume they're like, say, 1% of the world and that 99% are not that. And thank God, or else like probably nothing would get done, right? So I think the person who, wants, you know, the career, really enjoys the 9 to 5 routine and wants like that security or whatever, like then work-life balance I think applies. But I think for like founder, entrepreneur, CEO, I think it's more like work-life satisfaction. Not that, you know, the other group doesn't want satisfaction too, but it's just that It's just so hard to balance things. I mean, you know, as a founder entrepreneur, it's like your standard is like a 10-hour day. Like, that's like standard when things are going okay. Yeah. And then that can easily become 12, 14. Yeah. But satisfaction is that even though, you know, things are imbalanced in terms of most of your time is going towards work, you still feel satisfied, like on the health front, you still feel satisfied on the home front in terms of you're making the most of the time that you do have, you know, you're doing your best on those fronts, even though things are imbalanced.

You obviously advise and have advised hundreds of professional CEOs, and obviously in there will be dozens of founders. Is there any controversial advice that you would give to them that on the outside sounds you know, incredibly controversial. For example, I think that mainstream now is like work-life balance, etc., etc., whereas we've discussed so many times that to build anything of like note or real worth, yeah, I mean, you've got to commit to a certain level of pain for a certain level of period.

Yeah, I mean, consistency is this massive buzzword, and we've talked about this before. Um, if you're going to achieve anything great, you know, you have to be consistent. And really what I think it's more about is like, no, no, no, you just need to almost, you need to like, like pain. You need to have like a high tolerance for it, a high threshold for it. Because if you think about like to be consistent, you don't need to be consistent at something that you enjoy doing, right? That doesn't, you just do it. You don't think of the word consistency. And then when you think about like the word discipline, what does that mean? Well, discipline just means the capacity to do things you don't like doing. So all of that though, what does that mean even one level further down? And it's threshold for pain. Can you step into discomfort and enjoy things that are difficult or hard for most other people? And I think your capacity to do that for a long period of time, that's what translates to success. There's this— have you heard of this thing, Life is 50/50?

No.

So it's like life, you know, 50% of the time it's good, 50% of the time it sucks. I think I just take like a more just like realist view on, and I know you do too, like on, like things aren't like nice all the time.

Yeah.

Every day I have to still to this day, even though, you know, I've achieved a ton of success every single day, there'll be something that I have to do. And I'm like, this sucks.

Yeah.

I don't enjoy doing this. Yeah. But you just do it anyways because you know that— Is there an Olympic athlete, for example, who's won a gold medal? And so did all those days on the, you know, the years of training leading up to this, did they feel like wonderful? They're going to slap you in the face. They're like, what are you talking about?

As if they love training every day.

Yeah, they're like, I just do it because I know I have to. And I don't need to feel like doing things. You know, I take action whether I feel like it or not, right?

So I think that mindset shift is interesting. I feel like we nowadays, certainly from conversations we've had about building companies, are very clear about the expectation that the company will put on us.

Yeah.

You know, we've both built companies before, have had exits, etc. And so now doing it again, I never fool myself.

Yeah, I know it's going to be brutal. I know it's going to be hard. Yeah. Like at the end of this summer, I had, you know, we had a 2-week, 2 or 3-week vacation. And as I was coming out of it, I was like, it's just going to be brutal now between now and Christmas.

Yeah, exactly.

But I was like, yeah, but that's just how it's going to be.

Yeah, I get that question a lot when I do talks and stuff. It was like younger entrepreneurs be like, you know, I want to have a work-life balance. And I think that it's very important to be like, if you build a small business which is totally geared around work-life balance and flexibility and freedom, you probably can do it.

Oh yeah, but that comes down to like, but what is it that you want to build?

Yeah.

And, and what I don't believe is, um, like I said, there's nothing wrong And, you know, like if my kids didn't want to become entrepreneurs, I'm going to celebrate them, love them, support them. Like, that doesn't matter.

Probably be happier than you. Like, we've had that chat about, you know, our wives, you know, like who's the happier of the two.

And like, oh, my wife is definitely— she's like the happiest person on the planet because she doesn't Yeah. Doesn't need that much. She sees kind of like, you know, whatever. She'll see me stressed out and she'll be like, you know, everything's okay, right? Yeah.

It's like that tick is not going. Like, you know.

Yeah. Here's a simple way to look at it. You have ordinary and then extraordinary, right? Extraordinary, right? So if you want ordinary, do ordinary things. If you want extraordinary, do extraordinary things. And I don't think there's like a, you know, a possible route to do extraordinary things that doesn't lead to some form of imbalance for at least a period of time.

Yeah.

Or just like, you know, relentless pain and discomfort. I just don't think you can achieve anything. You can't have outsized returns and outcomes unless you're willing to put in outsized You know, like effort.

I actually completely agree. And I think if you want extraordinary, you can't settle for doing same thing that everyone else is doing. It's often about finding smarter ways to push through boundaries and to maximize your outputs. That's why I've been using Perplexity, and honestly, it's changed the way that I work. Think of it as your personal assistant that's available 24/7. For me, it's taken a lot of the grunt work out of my day and it's freed up time to focus on things that actually move the needle. Here's an example. The other day I was reworking my content strategy and I needed to map out ideas for the next quarter. I asked Perplexity, build me a plan to manage my content calendar, and within seconds it gave me a step-by-step breakdown. No fluff, no wasted time. I even said, build me a step-by-step guide to manage my calendar based on the 4-Hour Workweek philosophy, and it's unreal. Using Parkinson's Law and the 80/20 principle to organize my work. But it's not just about work. It's helped me plan my personal life too. I was looking up the best restaurants to get a roast with my friends and which had the best atmosphere. and instead of opening 10 tabs, I just asked Perplexity and it came back with the top spots full of reviews and details. And so now I know what I'll be eating and where. And here's my favorite part. If you've worked with me, you'll know that I love a quick voice note. That's where Perplexity's voice-to-text feature comes in. I just speak my questions now. How do I streamline my team's workflows? Or even what is the best way to fix my morning routine? And Perplexity gives me all the answers that I need. And if you're a Virgin Media O2 customer, You're in luck. You get 1 year of Perplexity Pro completely free. That means advanced features like file uploads or deep dive research and more is free for you. It's such an easy win if you're serious about being more efficient and more productive. Whether you're using the desktop version or the app, Perplexity is a tool you need to try. Start using it to make your life easier and work smarter. Hit the link in my bio or description to get started today, and don't forget to tag perplexity.ai. I would love to see what you're creating. It's interesting as well. Like, I feel like, I don't know if it's cultural. I don't know if it's like a hangover of Silicon Valley, but 7 out the last 10 years I ran a small but profitable business. And whereas all of my entrepreneur friends were running much bigger, like, bets, much bigger businesses that, yeah, if they made it would be huge, but none of them made any profit. And yet they were the ones who got, like, all the press, all the attention, all the interest. And I was running my, like, small marketing business that consistently made 25% profit.

With the opportunities that people have now, with online, creating your own distribution, you have founders who will graft it out for like 10 years with the hope that after all the dilution and everything, that maybe, maybe they'll get an exit of $5 million, $6, $7, maybe $10 if they're lucky. But you can actually build a business where you get that in cash every single year.

Yeah.

And you have an exit every year.

Yeah.

So there's multiple ways to play the game. And I think, I think a lot of people still play it in this old school kind of like raise money from VCs, you know, hope to become profitable, work towards it. It never happens. Or there's— I can't remember the story. There's a story that's going around or it's been resurfaced lately about a couple of founders that sold their company for $450 million and made zero from it.

Yeah, I read that recently. But that's not, that's not an isolated case.

Like zero, like literally nothing because of all the pref shares and, you know, dilution and then pref shares.

Yeah, you get screwed.

Yeah.

And it is so interesting because I've done both. I've built a profitable company bootstrapped over 10 years, and I've built a VC-backed tech business over 5 years, and both were pretty wild experiences. But the, in the VC experience, you as the founder, unless you're super careful, you will end up taking so much money from VCs who are not making a bet on you personally as a person. They're making a bet that your company might become worth a billion and therefore return the fund. And so they don't care about you in the same way that you care about yourself and the team. And so before you know it, you know, you're talking about funding rounds of tens of millions, 20s of millions, and, and then you get on that hamster wheel and you can't get off. Exactly, because your cost structure rises, so you have to keep raising, and you leave yourself in a very vulnerable position. Whereas I remember I met you like January 2023, I think. Yep. And we were talking about business in general. We were talking about business models a lot, and you were telling me about what you were doing. You'd built this incredible coaching practice that was predominantly remote. You were working from Portugal, um, and I was working 80-hour weeks in a startup, being like, being slammed every week, like board meetings, being just beaten up. And you were there like, yeah, like, I work hard, but you know, I make 2 million quid a year. Yeah, or something. Yeah, I know. I remember being like, I'm looking at my salary being like, my salary versus the hours, this is, this is tough. Yeah. And I remember that being like a very early wake-up call for me about like prioritization, about margin, all these things. Because if you want to build a VC business, you've got to love the mission a hell of a lot because you're going to do it for a long time.

Totally. Yeah. And it's, it's hard, you know, it's hard to, to break free from it, right? It's like, it's hard to get out of the the cycle. But yeah, I mean, the best, the best thing that happened to me was seeing like the unicorn success and being part of that with Skype, seeing things go up in smoke, working with tons of other CEOs, right? And founders to like really understand all the various business models out there. To be able to arrive at, ah, okay, here's like a really, really good model for me that fits, you know, with my background expertise, you know, what I want from a lifestyle point of view and from an income point of view. And then, and then that's blossomed. You know, you talked about like the CEO coaching and mentoring, but, you know, then investment opportunities come along. You know, we've started to, you know, co-invest in things. And that's also a direct result of, I mean, we haven't even talked about this yet, but you mentioned January 2023, right? And that was prompted, I remember I reached out to you because I was thinking, there's something with this LinkedIn thing. And then I noticed you were posting and I was like, okay, this guy's also like seasoned entrepreneur. He's clearly trying to figure this out. So am I. Or I mean, I had said at that time I would like to try to figure it out.

Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't know what I was doing.

Those early days.

Yeah. And then boom, you know, we both like pretty much in lockstep build, you know, what will soon be, you know, 1 million followers each, right? in like 2 years.

Yeah.

And then that audience, you know, is leading to so many different like business opportunities for us, right?

I think that's, I mean, obviously we've kind of been studying and working on this idea for a long time, which is if you control your own distribution and you have a following of incredible people who are super valuable. And I think our audiences are, you know, you can look at them, but it's like super senior. It's like CEOs, founders, senior people in companies. It's never like junior people, all from like the UK, the US, like Australia, all the right demographics. You think to yourself, right, well, if you control your own distribution and you build high-scale products of high value to people versus any business we've been involved in before, you can make phenomenal—

I can't even compare. Yeah, like it's just, it's, it, it's just, it's crazy. It's like the margins, the growth potential, but also too, it's the, you know, the value that you provide to the people is so like self-evident as well. It's like there's like an energy to it, you know, with like what you're doing with the creator thing and, you know, the CEO accelerator that I'm doing at the moment. Like there's like a huge energy to it. Like people feel it, they experience the results, and that feedback loop just— it's so motivating, right? It's like you do a talk online, you could feel the energy.

Yeah.

You know, and it's motivating and it feeds right back into it. And this is definitely where I'm at now as an entrepreneur. I never thought I would get to this point. You know, again, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. Never could have anticipated it. And it is hands down the best, like, entrepreneurial situation and leverage experience I've had in my life to date.

Yeah. I mean, it is a wild position to find yourself in that getting to CEOs is like well known to be one of the most challenging things. Like, if your target demographic is CEOs, Yeah, like, my God, is it going to be hard to— yeah, attract those people. Because especially young people don't really understand that once you get to a certain level in business, whether you're a founder or CEO of a certain level of company, your day is predetermined before you begin the day by the minute. Oh yeah, you know, everything is planned. Like, you're traveling non-stop, you are on calls non-stop, you work 60 to 80-hour weeks default.

Yeah, the train leaves every— the platform every morning, whether you're you know, you gotta either try to drive it or hang on to the back end of it, but it's gone.

Yeah, exactly. And most successful CEOs are machines.

Yeah.

And I think that a lot of people think that CEOs are just chilling. Actually, the reality is that normally founders and CEOs are working brutal hours. And yet you find yourself in a position where world over you are training hundreds of the world's most successful CEOs in this online format, which is the most impressive thing in the world. Yeah.

And it's, you know, we've both been founders and CEOs, you know, most of our careers. So we know the game, like you just said. You're so time-pressed. And, you know, the online format, it's actually perfect for them because they don't have time to go, you know, meet, you know, a group somewhere. but they do have time to go onto Zoom, right? And, and learn something quickly, get their questions, you know, uh, answered. Um, and it's, um, you know, and there's a, there, there are a lot more, say, founders out there than there are CEO. And we actually have both groups in the CEO Accelerator, you know, founders and CEOs. Um, and they are different, but, um, but it is, I think it's worth the differences required between a founder and CEO. I think it's really, really important for founders to know what those differences are.

Mm-hmm.

So for example, even if you don't want to sell your business, there's huge value, right, in designing your business so that it can be sold. Mm-hmm. Because it just leads to better decisions, better ways of structuring it. Um, and for a founder to recognize what it takes to actually cross that chasm from founder to CEO, which is, you know, what I had to do in my own journey. Um, it's just, you know, useful knowing, you know, for example, like as a founder, Well, we were talking about like sports earlier, so that's like a, you know, a good like analogy or metaphor or whatever. So, you know, when you're a founder and if it's a football game, you have to go out onto the pitch and like you're playing striker, you're playing goal or whatever, right? You can't do that as a CEO. You can't, you know, like when's the last time you watched like a Premier League game and you see the coach run out into the pitch and play a position? Like that doesn't happen. And that's really, really hard to be able to step back and like become the coach of your team and, and like really become more like the conductor in the orchestra where, you know, you're connecting the dots and making sure that people work well together rather than actually doing the stuff yourself. That's a hard transition for a lot of founders to make. But if you can do that, though, you're going to end up building, you know, a more resilient, better business as a result.

So one of the things that you and I are doing nowadays is trying to actually group together incredible entrepreneurs and founders who are doing the same thing.

Yeah.

And I feel, you know, I said this to you at the beginning of this sort of journey that the challenge I've always had is I'm so time poor, you know, and I don't want to spend forever traveling to things. I don't want to spend forever, you know, trying to network. Whereas what we're now helping people do is we're sort of grouping incredible CEOs, incredible founders together. Psychographically. So you know they're going to, you know, work well and gel and have the same ambitions. And it comes from that thing that we've always said, which is us working together on the shared goal of like building Profile and building these companies has been the biggest example of 1 1 3 ever. Oh yeah. You know, like us walking in step is like, I will help you with anything you're doing. Not when we weren't even building together at the time. That was just like as friends and peers.

Yeah. And so, and you need that.

My God, you need that. You know, like I push you, you push me. And so now helping these groups, CEOs and founders find that in their lives has been so powerful because it's so, because it's so lonely in that role. Totally.

You know, it's like the Jim Rohn quote, you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Yeah.

And, and that only needs to be one person. You know, like for example, like what we're doing, but unless you have somebody who's going to push you to be better, who's going to, the moment you kind of reach a summit, you know, on a mountain and you do like one of those, you need the person who you look over the horizon and then you're like, oh fuck, they've reached the top of that mountain and it's even higher than the one I'm on.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you just, you need that. Right. I mean, that's like, That's, you know, competition. Like, what was it in Formula 1 with, um, uh, uh, Senna and Prost? You know, they were like constantly, you know, at each other, and that competitive tension was like super important for both of them.

Yeah, right.

You need that. And, and I think you're right. I think like a lot of fun— well, this is one of the things that's, um, really, um, so with the CEO Accelerator, when I launched it, I thought, look, okay, this is just going to productize the one-to-one coaching and mentoring that I was doing, which is like totally not scalable, and open it up in a curriculum format, right? Because it's like 12-week program, as you know, that people go through. And, and with the cohort that's in there right now, they're like, look, the masterclasses, the curriculum, like that's like 10 out of 10, like truly world-class. Awesome. But the community and the chance to talk to each other and the support you get from it, that's like 11 out of 10.

Yeah.

You know, it's like this like extra benefit that I hadn't even like properly, you know, assessed or appreciated. Um, yeah. So I think, um, you know, and it's like just a complete side note too, but it's like, it kind of makes sense as well when you think about, I think this is particularly important as more and more as the world becomes more and more remote. You know, like remember, we have to remember, you know, what does it mean to be human? And like even going back, like how is it, for example, that, you know, we're not the strongest, you know, like animal on the planet, but yet we're the most dominant. Um, and one of the key factors is because we're social, right? We're social beings. We work together. We perform better. You know, the sum is always, you know, bigger than, um, you know, the, the, then the part sort of thing. And so again, if you are a founder or a CEO or just even a solopreneur, and if you're doing it alone, I mean, it's lonely by default. And if you're doing it alone, your chances for success are going to be significantly less.

I've even experienced it in my life. And I think people sometimes get the, you're the sum of the 5 parts a little bit wrong. Like the way I run my life is I have my incredible friends outside of work, and we don't talk about work. We just have fun. Like, it's just great friends that I have so much fun with, and I always try and see and keep up with and so forth. But then nowadays I do have like a tight-knit circle around me at work of people who are like me, who like going into like a full-on beast mode for like 6 months of their life and having a transformation. Yeah. And working crazy hours and obsessing over like things and tech and outcomes and I didn't have that in my 20s. And that company that I built and sold, great company, 8-figure exit, can't deny it. However, I always think to myself, had we been mates when I was running that company, or had I been mates with you and a few of the other people now that I work with and collaborate with, and I would say are like part of my 5 work friends, I'm like, how much faster, bigger, stronger, better, more profitable—

totally—

would that company have been?

Totally.

And it's because I was alone. Yeah, I was the only founder I knew. I didn't know any other founders. I was never lucky enough to be invited to founder networks or whatever. Somehow just missed having founder mates. Yeah.

And it's, you know, of course you have like your partner or your spouse or whatever, but like that, that's, that'll be like a massive relationship drain if you're constantly, you know, like talking about stuff and bringing it home. And then of course, like their capacity for helping you you know, will be different from that of like another, you know, founder. Um, but there's another interesting thing too that you just said. Um, you know, having a team, you know, that is willing to kind of like go into beast mode or, you know, do whatever it takes. I personally think that that is like the number one, I mean, that, that's like the number one thing that I look for in another person is, you know, if it's required, and you can't require this all the time for yourself and for others.

Yeah.

'Cause it just won't last. You'll nearly die from a heart attack, right? But you need people who are, can dig deep for periods of time. I tell my, so I have two boys, 19-year-old and 11-year-old. And the 19-year-old, this is like years ago, but there was this one point where he said to me, he was like down about something. I was like, well, what's going on? He's like, well, the other kids in the class are smarter than me. He had recently started a new school where they're getting things more, you know, faster than him. And I was like, Alex, I'm like, that doesn't matter. I'm like, you know what I've said my whole life? I mean, like, I've constantly worked. With people way smarter than me. At McKinsey, way smarter than me. At Skype, I was working, I was like, some of these people are like geniuses, way smarter than me. Um, but I've always said to myself, you may be smarter than me, but there's no way in hell you'll outwork me. And I think like that and being able to find that in others and having like a team of people like that. Who can dig deep when it's necessary, like, that's like such a huge, huge component for success. And if like, if you're a founder or CEO and if you're like questioning, you know, the ability of your team when it's necessary to dig deep, and of course again, they can't always do that. Well, you know, I don't know then.

So how does a founder actually put together a robust business plan? Because as we know, you're not going to spend forever writing a business plan and that if the company is successful, or at least even if the company exists for a year, fundamentally it will change and pivot and transition. And so what would you say to the founder putting together their first plan?

So I'll tell you what I don't think you should do. I don't think you should like spend a ton of time hacking away at the keyboard writing a 30-page business plan. So I think you need to have like a notional— I think the business plan is more about, um, thinking through key components of the business plan, right? But not like the written plan that are going to equate to, or like increase the probability of success. And I guess like one of the first things, you know, to think about is, um, like what's the, like what's the vision, you know, for the business. And if you can extend that past it's way more inspiring, empowering, motivating. It becomes like currency to— 'cause as a founder, you need to sell. You need to sell people to join your business. If you're gonna be raising money, you need to sell that. You need to kind of sell people along the journey so that they don't quit 'cause it's tough. And you need something that goes beyond like fattening your own pockets, obviously. You know, it has to be like something deep. So I'll give you an example. So when we were building Skype, our 7 words were the whole world can talk for free. And, you know, it wasn't create the number one, you know, voiceover, you know, internet, you know, software, right? I mean, because who's that exciting for? And I think that was really, really important because every founder in the early days, you're always— it's ubiquitous. You're in a David versus Goliath situation. And so you need something that, you know, it's like your rallying cry that like feels like, okay, you're making an impact. Um, when we were building Chilango, um, you know, we weren't making burritos and tacos. Our 7 words were make the world a more, you know, we, you know, make the world a more vibrant place, sort of.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, um, so really think through like as a brand, um, or as a company, you know, what's the impact that you're having in the world? Like, how is that gonna make things better. Um, and if you can then distill that into a single word, um, you know, which is something that we need to be thinking about as well, but if you could distill that into a single word, you know, so like Nike's about like competition, Disney's about happiness, going back to Chilango, the one word distillation was vibrancy. Okay, so that's, that's like starting point, I think. Next, if you can then map that to your brand and culture. The brand for me is like, uh, external. The two sides of the same coin, right? So brand external, culture internal. And so let's take, you know, vibrancy, for example, that one-word distillation. Um, so that should map back to all your key touchpoints. So for example, with Chilango, we did, you know, our food was vibrantly flavored, the restaurant interiors were vibrantly colored. and we added an audition element to our interview process to uncover like the 1 in 10 people we found to have like a naturally vibrant personality. And so it like, it, you know, things became very, very sticky around that word. Um, and then you have your strategy, which is a key part of the business plan. And, um, one of the, uh, guest speakers in our, and you know, the CEO accelerator is Alex Smith. And, um, and I just love anything that simplifies the complex. And he simplified strategy as simple as simply as, um, your strategy should be to do whatever's required to increase demand and decrease supply. So increase demand is how do I, you know, basically create massive distribution for whatever it is I'm selling? Um, and you do that by being crystal clear about what's the value that you provide. Right, to someone else. And so with CEO Accelerator, it's, um, you know, we're going to help you, you know, scale your, your, you know, your, your company, basically, like your leadership yourself. And then how do you decrease supply? Well, you do that by making sure that you can clearly express your differences such that you're truly unique and that you're the only game in town. Um, and so that unique value, right, unique, decreased supply, value, you know, um, increased demand becomes your strategy. So again, with CEO Accelerator, it's, um, you know, I always say, for example, for example, when I'm coaching a new CEO or founder, I'm like, look, I know you want to scale the business, but that's the hardware. And if the hardware is to operate correctly, you gotta code the software correctly. And the software are two other pillars that you need to scale in parallel to the business. And that's your leadership. Are you leading as well as you could? Are you crossing the chasm from founder to CEO? And then are you operating to your full potential? So uniqueness, again, just using it as an example with the CEO Accelerator, is that it's this intersection of company building, leadership development, and peak performance, right? So it's unique in that way. So you have your, what's the difference you're making in the world? Why does that matter beyond the P&L? Can you distill that to one word? Can you reflect that externally through the brand, internally through the culture? Can you come up with a strategy which is going to increase demand, decrease supply? And now we get to execution. And to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, there's really only two things that help scale something from an execution point of view, and it's people and systems. And so with people, where most founders and where most CEOs go wrong is that they get overwhelmed when they think through how to do things. And it's like, again, that's not your job. You don't have to do everything, but you need to be the head coach and figure out who are the star players. And so if you, um, uh, Dan Sullivan has, uh, and Ben Hardy, they came out with, um, I mean, this is just how I've been hiring, you know, all along, but it's, it's nice when somebody kind of coins it in a phrase. Um, and they, you know, they're, the title of their book is Who Not How. So instead of when, you know, when you want, so the first thing, you know, when you want to build something new, do something new is think, well, who do I have to hire?

Yeah.

You know, who, who, because if you think about the whos that come packaged with the hows, then they'll do those things for you. So taking that who, not how approach to figure out how to execute these strategy with the right people in the right place is super critical. And then systems, you have to constantly look for ways in which you can like automate things, consolidate things, you know, do like the boring stuff, you know, to keep things going. So for example, one, like, core system that every company needs is you just need, like, a quarterly, like, offsite routine, you know, where it's like leadership decides goals, you co-create them, the teams figure out, okay, how, what they're going to do in support of those goals, fed back up to leadership, signed off, agreed. All, like, the end cap for that is a town hall where it's communicated to the whole organization. But those basic things often aren't in place. So yeah, that's how I think about like, you know, the basic components of like a, you know, business plan, I guess.

The business plan I put together a year ago, I tried something that I've never done before. I don't even know where I saw it or read it, but I said to myself, I think founders give themselves the benefit of the doubt. A lot of the time, and they give themselves like a very positive slant on whatever they're creating. And I thought to myself, if I make a business plan where I actively say, you know, I don't believe in this thing and I don't like this thing and I'm not going to give it the benefit of the doubt, like, will it still hold up to being a good business in the long term? And so I remember like writing on a piece of paper, is it naturally scalable? Like, would someone recommend it? Like, once someone's done it, would they speak positively about it?

Yeah.

When it's scaled, will it achieve a margin? Like, when it's scaled, will the cost scale with it? I put down all these things on a piece of paper because I remember being like, after 16 years of building companies, I want to build a company that's easier to build. And I don't think companies are easy to build, but I feel like you can stack it in your favor a little bit. And so I made all these assumptions on a piece of paper. I was like, if we build this product and someone does this product and it has a positive impact, will they tell two people? And I remember like thinking about the business differently for the first time ever. And then I did the thing that I think founders need to do as part of a business plan, which is I then one-on-one sold my product to hundreds of founders and CEOs on the idea of like building Profile. And I had hundreds of these conversations, as you would have done through CEO coaching. And all the while effectively running through the future curriculum and thinking for what I was doing. And just through the process of elimination, got to the core of what people wanted. Yeah. And then I did have this one-pager and I'm not a big one, like you say, for 30-page documents and proposals and financial plans, all the rest of it. But I do think testing some of the assumptions with a, almost like a, can I negatively think about this business? Because most people love their business.

Yeah.

Whereas if at the beginning you can say like, I'm just not going to believe some of these assumptions, I'm going to really test them, I think you end up with a much better thesis.

Yeah. And you have to go through that, like you're saying, that like almost that beta period where you're just gathering information too, right? Having lots of conversations to see what people value, what they want. Um, you know, the the framework for the CEO Accelerator, the scaling your company, leadership, and self, that only emerged because of, geez, I don't know, probably in the thousands of conversations that I had with founders and CEOs to uncover what is it that they actually want to scale, what's important to them. Um, so yeah, you have to, um, you know, there's that whole thing of you have to be willing to do what's unscalable first to figure out what's scalable.

Yeah.

And, um, and that's to like the, you know, when people say, um, you know, like there's this movement, like the anti-hustle move. I don't, I don't know who, where these things start, but like, or how they start. And people parrot this crap. And it's, again, it goes back to, like, of course you have to hustle.

Yeah, yeah.

Of course you have to be willing to build something out of nothing, to work hard and to put in the grind and to figure it out and to go through those days where you're like, 'Woe is me. All is lost. I hate my life.' Like, you have to be willing to go through that, especially during that period of time where you're doing the things that are not scalable to figure out what the hell is the product-market fit? What is it that people want? How can I deliver that in a way that will be scalable? But that only comes from hustling, from having the conversations. And from doing countless hours of things that you'd rather not do.

Totally. Like, I would say to founders, at the beginning of your journey, do not outsource sales to anyone else. You should do it.

100%.

No, because you're, you're not selling.

You're actually designing the product, the future of the product, the iterations, the changes, the conversations.

I, yeah, I did the first 100 sales of every product I think I've ever launched. Yeah. And, and I would say that it meant that by the time I'd done 100, I knew exactly what the customer wanted.

Yeah.

And I agree with you, I feel like things get parroted so much, and I think social media is part of the problem. But this anti-hustle thing, I think it's nuanced because I would say if you come and work for me, I set the standard that we're going to work really, really hard up front. And I say that up front. I never really say like, in this company we're going to have like a wild work-life balance and like whatever, like I want people to work hard here. We're going to do exceptional things and you're going to have an exceptional outcome because of it. Yeah, but I also think it's fine. Like, if you don't want that, don't work for startups. If you don't want that, like, don't work for like high intensity, high pressure places and then say, oh, I want a work-life balance. Like, I think that you as the individual own your own destiny.

Totally. And there's nothing wrong with—

exactly.

Like, you can choose, you know, and the litmus test for that is you know, if you have kids, if your kid wasn't an entrepreneur and into like hustling, you know, to do whatever it takes, like, would you disown them? You know, and of course you wouldn't. And so like, we have to, you know, there's, there's multiple ways, you know, to be successful.

You talked about the chasm between founder and CEO.

Yeah.

Like, I think for a lot of founders, they call themselves CEOs. But what's the big difference in your mind there?

So it's really the scale thing. So when you're in the founder mode, you're doing exactly what we were just saying. You're at the tip of the spear when it comes to selling absolutely anything. You're out on the front line. But that's not going to scale long-term. You need to be able to step back. And the key thing is Like, well, I'll tell you 7 words that are like a massive inhibitor for this, for scale. Um, and we've all said them, which is, you know, it'll be faster to do it myself. Um, and it's like, it's always faster to do it yourself in the short term, always. But you know that phrase, you have to go slow to go fast. And unless you're willing to do the 2 steps down. In the short term. Ah, I'm going to have to take some time to clarify what it is that I want, what the expectations are, the standards, maybe come up and think through with the person a better protocol for how they can kind of get to the level that we need. Like all that requires extra effort. Like that maybe requires 4 hours of time versus you just getting in the trenches and doing it for an hour yourself. Um, but unless you do that, like you just never get out of the trenches. Ever, you know, and then at some point your head is sitting there above the trenches and sniper picks it off.

Yeah, I think the biggest mistake, like, from a phrase point of view, I see a lot of small business owners say, so they're sort of founder CEO types, is like, I wish the team was as good as me, or I wish the team worked as hard as me. And I think that—

but that's on you then.

Yeah, it's like, I also think it's like you're strategically thinking about the business wrong if that's what you're coming out with.

Yeah.

Because you should be saying to yourself, I know that the team will only work this much because they don't own the business.

Yeah, exactly. They're not going to be at the same.

Why would they?

If you're at 100, you know, just relatively speaking, like best in class will be 80 or something.

Exactly.

And yeah, I mean, so, so one is the basically learning how to and getting comfortable with delegating. But to delegate, you need right people and systems, right, to enable that. Also to changing the way you delegate. So like kind of amateur delegation is like delegating a task. You know, pro delegation is like delegating the outcome that you want so that it forces, it prompts autonomy in the individual to think through what are all the substeps necessary to deliver that outcome. So for example, we're talking about like LinkedIn, you know, it's like, you know, come up with a post schedule for the week. You know, that's delegating a task, right? Come up with a monthly campaign for LinkedIn that will lead to you know, a total of 2,000 webinar registrants, you know, across these 4 dates, you know, leading to an outcome of like, you know, 100 sales or something, right? You know, that's okay. I got to think through everything right now, you know, to get—

and I know what success looks like.

And you know what success looks like, right? So that's a key thing. The who, not how approach, right? Who are the people that I need on the team? Um, but also too, just like confronting your own deficiencies. Um, when I was a founder, I knew I wasn't a CEO. Um, and, you know, I've always been a big believer in like setting like big ridiculous goals. And, um, my coach at the time said, oh, there's a CEO of the Year award. You should go for this. And I thought, Me, CEO of the year, like, that's not going to happen. But the seed had been planted.

Right.

And then I was sitting there thinking, you know, going back to the earlier when I was talking about when I heard about McKinsey, right, at that lecture in university, I was like, I need to get the job there now.

You got CEO of the year, didn't you?

Well, and so I was like, oh, damn it. Now I got to win that. And that was, you need to have like, you know, we talked about business plan earlier.

Yeah.

One of the most powerful things you can do with a business plan is just have like, what is that massive goal that you're going for? And the goal needs to be, because you can have goals that like feel like you're being pushed into action. But if the goal is truly magnetic and it like excites you, it's more, it's like it pulls you into action. And so with that as my goal, I was like, I'm going to win CEO of the Year. I got a year to do it. And so what I did was I just, I cut out the first hour of the day and I was like, that's my CEO of the Year hour. Like that is like where I'm going to be leveling up from a skill development point of view, thinking. And I went out, I literally went around, I interviewed other top performing CEOs to try to like decode their success. You know, what do you think drove your success? Created my own development plan, confronted my deficiencies. So my deficiencies at the time were I wasn't very reliable, like not like relentlessly reliable. Like I would get stuff done, but I might be like late on delivering it, show up late, like all these like examples of like not being fully reliable. I wasn't as decisive as I could be. I would like analysis paralysis, overthink things, you know. Didn't prioritize, like, say, speed over precision and decision-making. You know, a few other things as well. And so I basically created this plan to work on these skills. And lo and behold, you know, I remember sitting at the awards dinner and then they're like, yeah, and CEO of the Year, you know, at the UK Business Excellence Forum. And it was like Eric Partaker. And I was like, Huh, look at that. That actually happened.

Look at me.

I was, yeah, I was not expecting it, right? I mean, secretly was, right? Because that's like, why did you go for the goal otherwise?

It's a good lesson though. Like, having big goals is very important. And I think a lot of the pushback you get on that from a company perspective is like, I'll always say to— I'm doing less and less of it now, but whenever I was advising founders, I would say, you should get your company to the point where it's incredibly clear that you could sell it for a target amount.

Mm-hmm.

Not that you have to sell it, but that you have to get it to that point because it gives you optionality and it also gives you like a brutal focus. Because if you don't care about the amount of profit you make in a year, the company can drift.

Mm-hmm.

You can drift. And so if you keep yourself focused, you give yourself the option where you could sell, you could hire a senior team, you could step back to the board, or you yourself could try and transition to be part-time and just pay a dividend. Like, good big goals give you optionality more than anything.

Yeah. And we, you know, you and I have like crazy goals, massive goal for next year, right? Um, and I think because we have that goal and because we have that shared mentality of what are you going to do? I don't know, but I'll do whatever it takes. Um, like, we'll get there.

Yeah.

Right. Um, and if, again, you know, going back to that earlier point about teams, like, that's the most important thing I think you have to find in a team member. I think it transcends, like, you know, just about everything else. It's like, do they have the ability to just figure, you know, stuff out and do whatever it takes? To, you know, cross the chasm from A to B.

So you've worked with some of the world's best leaders now in your time as CEO coach. What are the qualities that make a truly great leader?

A lot of the things that we've been talking about, right? Do they have, you know, the vision for what success looks like? Do they have big tangible goals that relate to that vision? Can they communicate those goals in a way that inspires action, right? That rallies everyone to that better future, right? That you're trying to create. Um, can they structure and organize things in a way that, you know, the goal achievement is going to be profitable, right? Because it's so easy to build an unprofitable business. Yeah. Doesn't require much effort at all. Um, And then, you know, can they dig deep? Do they have a high threshold for pain? You know, there's this concept of, Nassim Taleb wrote this book, Antifragile. And it basically, you know, talks about how there's actually some things, you know, in the world, in the universe that actually benefit from stress, chaos, disorder. And, An example would be, so we have this that goes on in our bodies physically, right? So it's like, how do you build an immune system? You expose it to germs and bacteria. How do you strengthen a muscle? You stress it. Nobody goes to a gym and says, I'd like to get into the best shape of my life. Can you please point me in the direction of the most comfortable weights? Like this doesn't happen, right? So we get, right? And this is such an important leadership characteristic or quality, we get that in our bodies, right? That you have to, you know, do like these uncomfortable things. So it's like if you can get that upstairs mentally, and so the concept of antifragility is simply that, um, so again, our bodies are, are antifragile, you know, whereby, you know, the more hits you take, you know, obviously to a degree, the stronger you become. Um, and you have to ask yourself, well, who are you? Like if you're, if you're a shipping crate, what's the label on the side of the crate? You know, does it say fragile whereby you take a few hits, you break? Maybe you say something like, no, no, no, I'm robust. Okay, by definition, you're strong. At some point, you're still going to break. And then you go, no, no, no, I'm resilient. Well, by definition, it just means you absorb shock, you return to the same. The true opposite of fragile is antifragile, once again, whereby the more hits you take, the stronger you become. And again, our bodies do this. That's what strengthens the immune system. And so I think that's like one of the most important traits to develop. Um, and we, you know, we talk about this in the CEO Accelerator. We actually teach people how to become antifragile, you know, from a mindset point of view. Because it's all trainable. All this stuff is, that's the other interesting thing. It's all trainable. Like anybody who says, oh, you're born this way. Like that is, we're all born with a clean slate. Yeah, we might have predispositions genetically. Um, but you can learn anything.

Yeah, and I think like a lot of the advice nowadays, I think, is quite counter to that. But if someone was to say to me, how do I pursue entrepreneurship or become a founder, or, you know, build resilience, I would say like take action on something and pursue something. Because the longer you pursue something and the longer you keep trying on something, you will reveal things. And it's probably like, people say to me like, I don't have a passion, I can't start a business. And I would say like, look at something you like and just start that thing and just try that thing.

The passion will come from the result of just taking action. It's like the difference between, so Steven Pressfield, amazing author, he wrote a book called Turning Pro, which is like, had a huge impact on me. And I just kind of sum it up in the difference between a professional and an amateur. And he didn't write this exactly, but it's just like my, because I always try to like simplify things even further. And it was, um, I think it's, uh, the difference between a professional and an amateur in work and life is your relationship between feeling and action. So an amateur believes that feelings generate action. I.e., I need to feel like doing something in order to act on it. Whereas a professional knows that action generates feeling. And so they just flip the script. And the, to your point about passion, so if you need to have passion, that's amateur thinking because that's feeling generates action. If you can just take action whether you feel like it or not, as the results come in, And as you start to see the success, you will become passionate about the success that you're creating.

Even in the most micro example, I actually experienced this with exercise a lot. I would say that I am not naturally that into going to the gym. Yeah, it just doesn't ring true with me. I love sport, but I always almost half trick myself into the gym. Yeah, I'll be like, I'm just gonna get into my gym clothes, I'll leave them out the night before, I'll get into them, I'll go to the gym, and maybe I'll just watch Netflix on the bike. And then I will watch Netflix on the bike for like 5 minutes, and then I'll be like, you know, a bit more warmed up.

But what happens, like, once you start taking action? Yeah. Then, and, and have you ever once, ever once finished a workout and got to the end of it and been like, fuck, what the hell did I do that for?

Yeah, said no one ever. Yeah, because you're— the emotions after you do an exercise are always like, I'm gonna do more of this. And so if you can be reliable to yourself and like you say, like lead with action, you have such a better chance at achievement.

Actually, whenever I'm in a complete side note, but super relevant, especially given how hard the entrepreneur journey is, when I'm like in a bad mental state, like, oh, you know, like just, yeah, just not feeling it. I just know that it's only two things that I need. It's like either just a good night's sleep, you know, it's like the bridge between hope and despair, right? Or I just need to go work out.

Yeah.

And then, you know, I get to the end of the workout, I'm like, oh, being— it's been so silly.

Yeah, yeah, it's all got a bit much for me at the moment.

Yeah.

So you always say it's better to build a team than a family in a company.

Yeah.

What is it that drives that as a statement now?

Yeah, so I think, I think it was Patty McCord from Netflix, their chief talent officer or chief people officer. She said something along the lines of, and it deeply resonated with me, great teams are optimized to win at all times, whereas families strive to stick together no matter what. And I think that's so true. It's like, you know, again, going back to the sports analogy. Imagine you're the head coach of a team and you're sitting there at the media conference after the game and you've lost. And you say, "Yeah, but we have next game." And you keep losing. And then somewhere through the season, you start to say to the media and to the reporters, "I know the comments that you're making about some of the team members, but I really care about these guys." And You know, we've been through a lot together. And, um, and, and that's your answer every single time. And you, you bottom of the league, next bottom of the league, but you know, season after season and you keep using it. Yeah, but we're a family. What's going to happen to that head coach? Like you're going to be out of a job fast. Right.

And the team will no longer exist.

Yeah, exactly. So we have to, um, yeah, we just have to recognize that, um, we're not, we're not running families. You know, it's like, when's the last time you sat at dinner and, you know, fired a family member? You know, um, it doesn't happen.

It's, it's funny because on the other side of the coin, I do actually think that companies that cultivate that family relationship— I'm not meaning all, you know, I don't mean all— but I think most that cultivate that family relationship often end up then using it to guilt people into working harder. Whereas I find like if you want to build a great company, just be overtly obvious on day one that you expect absolute animals to come work for you. Yeah, because like then at least you're like, okay, I want to build this crazy thing. I'm going to need kind of crazy people to do it. You know, do you fit that description?

Yeah. And it depends on the team that you want to build, right? So it's like if, you know, again, going back to sports, if, if the goal is to win a championship, do you— are you— do you want players in the team who don't want to win a championship? And then if the goal is to win a championship, well, what's required from those players? Of course they're going to have to be willing to overdeliver, you know, operate at an incredibly high standard for sustained periods of time, right?

So what are the key questions that you ask a founder or a CEO who comes to be coached by you? What are the things that you try and identify early on with them?

The gaps. So I take that three-pillared approach because every founder or CEO wants to scale the company, but they also have to scale as leaders and they also have to be operating. At their full potential. And so I'll ask them, let's do a 1 to 10 self-rating in each of those pillars. So start with the company. So a 10 is everything in the company is— it's all, it's all in place. We don't need to really make much changes to it. We just need the passage of time. Now that's a 10. It's like totally scalable. Where do you rate it today? And usually they'll say something like, I don't know, 5 or 6. I'm like, okay, leadership. Okay, a 10 is you've transitioned from founder to CEO. You're the coach. You're not running onto the pitch anymore. You're not in reactive mode, constantly firefighting. You're way more proactive. Of course, you still do need to react to things. A 1 is you're still in founder territory. Where do you rate yourself? And usually they'll say I don't know, 5 or 6, you know, uh, and then the self pillar. So one is, you know, your current self. Two is the best version of you. You know, you're as productive as you would like to be, great at managing your time, and you do this all without like sacrificing your soul on the health and the home front. Um, you know, so that you have that work-life satisfaction at least. "Where would you rate today?" And then often they'll be like, "Oh gosh, like 3 or 4." And so let's say we had 2 6s and a 4, right? And we add those together, right? So 16, right? And I'll say, "So the 16 out of 30 current version of affairs, what's the probability of that state of affairs, like achieving the vision that you mentioned earlier to me?" And do you think we might increase the probability of you achieving whatever that vision was that they stated if we could get those pillars up to say 8 out of 10? So we're like 24 out of 30. And they kind of unanimously agree that, yep, sounds like there's some work that needs to be done.

One of the things that I think that you've helped me with enormously over the last couple of years is truly identifying how 80/20 works. Yeah. I feel like I am instinctively an 80/20 thinker. But since I have, I suppose, practiced it, I now think about it before I do the task.

Yeah. And I think that's the 80/20.

Exactly. Where's the, where's the thing I can push, which is probably technically going to take not that much time for the biggest outcome?

Yeah.

And so I presume that that's the ultimate skill. Yeah.

That's the ultimate skill in everything.

And how do you practice that?

Okay, so Chilango. I had come out of a tech business. I mean, I'm not Mexican. Um, and I don't know how to cook. Right. Um, I remember doing this cooking spot, by the way, uh, on national television with Tana Ramsay shortly after the first restaurant. I had no idea what I was doing.

On TV?

Yeah, on TV. Yeah. I was just, yeah, just, I, I literally, there was this moment. Where, where, uh, we're putting stuff, putting stuff. I sound like a chef. We're putting stuff in the pot and, um, like spice, you know, we're cooking what's going to be like this sauce for these, uh, these beans and the, like the, the pot is on the stove and it's like super hot. And I put the spices in first, not the water. And so they stick to the bottom of the pan instantly. And they start to burn and Tana's there like this, trying to save it, fix it. And, um, anyway, yeah, I had no idea what I was doing. Um, but the thing is that you don't need to, um, you know, but you, you need to be, you know, with like, like a D take a DJ, for example, they don't know how to play all the underlying instruments, but they know what sounds good together. And so I, I, I was more of like a food DJ approach, but back to 80/20. I had no idea. Most people think of 80/20 to narrow, um, like breadth of focus, but you can also use it for depth of focus. Um, and, um, so just, yeah, uh, bear with me here. This is, this is actually, I didn't think we were gonna talk about this. This is a super powerful concept that you can use on any business and it's all, uh, helps you think more critically about the business. So I knew nothing about food. Wanted to create a quick-service Mexican restaurant concept because I liked burritos. Um, and I thought, okay, well, what are all the var— what are the various factors that would attract people to come to a restaurant? And I'm like, okay, there's food, there's, uh, the environment of the restaurant. Um, right. There's the people. I was like, yeah, but what's the 80/20? Like, I gotta be dead honest here. What's the 20% of those factors that are going to create 80% of like the customer attraction? I'm like, it's food. Um, and super important to narrow focus, right? Um, because when we opened up the first restaurant, it looked like a shithole, but, you know, other people would have not done that. But we focus on 80/20 the food. But you have to go deeper now. So within food, you have, you know, flavor, texture, aroma, appearance. What's the 80/20? What's the 20% of the factors for 80%? Well, it's flavor. But within flavor then, Again, I didn't know about food, but I can taste what good tastes like. So we had 17 different meal components. Okay, well, where's the 80/20 here? What are the 20% of these meal components that will account for 80% of the flavor? I was like, okay, it's not everything here. It's the salsas, it's the meat marinades, and it's like the beans and the sauce that they're in. And then we looked at those recipes. Okay. I remember talking to the chefs. I'm like, let's look at these recipes. What are the 20% of like the cooking processes and ingredients in these recipes that will account for 80% of the flavor? And like, long story short, one of the things that ended up resulting from this like 80/20 continual drill-downs is that we ended up in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico hosting a press conference with the local farming community because we identified certain chilies that we couldn't get at the quality and the price that we needed in the UK that were absolutely critical to create the flavor that we needed. And it's like one of the— and then, you know, then the cooking thing with Tana Ramsay, which was like, nobody knew that it was a disaster, but mentally it was a disaster for me. Um, you know, result, you know, result, we became number one most, you know, favorite, you know, Mexican restaurant from Zagat and then a few other, you know, Time Out and a bunch of others. But all of that resulted from using 80/20 to identify what was most critical and continue drilling down to like the most, you know, it's like you're funneling down further and further and further. So that's like using it to get like depth of focus, much almost like a marketing funnel.

Yeah. I suppose that the thing I think in most businesses they struggle with is demand generation, leads, and new clients. Yeah. And I think that in the most simplistic form, you can apply 80/20 to lead generation. Totally. Because presumably companies do dozens of different marketing activities.

Yeah.

But if you think to yourself, what are the ones that fundamentally result in lead generation? Can I go deeper on those?

Well, so take what you and I have done, right? We've 80/20'd social media. But what does everyone else do when they go onto social media? They play the 100 out of 100 game. I need to be everywhere all the time. Omnipresence. That's crap. That's not what you should do. Yes, maybe you can eventually get to that point, but instead, what did we do? We said, where you have multiple social media channels that you can be on, So they start with demand generation starts with what is your ICP, right? What's your ideal customer profile? Second question, if you're thinking through the lens of social media, is which of the platforms do I find that ICP in the highest concentration? Mm-hmm. Um, LinkedIn. Okay. Then you go on to LinkedIn and you ask yourself, okay, what's the 80/20 here? What are the 20% of posts that lead to 80% of the engagement within that ICP? And that changes, as we both know, with the algorithm. But, you know, at one point it was like carousels, another time it was like infographics. And then within, you have different viral components within a post. You have the hooks, you have the captions, you have the multimedia image. What are the 20% of those that are accounting for 80% of the engagement? And that's how—

Yeah.

We both have like nearly a million following each in less than 2 years.

And it's funny because I think that so many traditional business people would and have said to us before, you know, this, this strategy like won't work, or like your audience is like too broad, or what have you. But nowadays we find ourselves in a position that in 2 years we've both built big audiences, but specifically on LinkedIn, a million people each who are the most difficult-to-reach ICP in the world— founders and CEOs.

Totally.

And that's why now, without any marketing spend, we can both promote our products, sell out our products.

Yep.

And do it just through organic content. And so my advice to most entrepreneurs is if you can go deep on something like LinkedIn— and maybe it's different for different ICPs— but if you can do that, have sole focus on one platform like we did, like master it and then move to something else. Yeah, because if you're going to try and do everything at the same time, the platforms are annoyingly so nuanced that like LinkedIn, in the time that we grew, that amount changed so many times.

Yeah, totally. And you have to just adjust, adjust the 80/20 lens. But, but it goes back to the very start of the conversation. You can achieve just about anything that you want provided you focus on the right things. And most founders and CEOs focus on the wrong things. And 80/20 is a simple way to like find the leverage in whatever you're doing and, and double down. Like everyone is ultimately selling a product or a service. Well, what are the 20% of those product/service attributes that account for 80% of your customer satisfaction? And are you developing those components to a world-class level, because you can be like crappy in the other stuff as long as like the 80/20 stuff is world-class.

The other thing that you helped me with a lot was understanding where my time was going, and then I suppose using 80/20 to, to work it out. So I find like when I speak to entrepreneurs and founders, they are doing so many things, yeah, that they find it's better or cheaper or quicker if I do it myself. Yeah, by the very definition, if you're filling up your week with all this kind of rubbish or admin or whatever, then you have no time for the high leverage stuff. No time for high leverage stuff. So you can't think properly, you can't go deep on lead generation. And actually, if you were to hire someone, you know, who, who costs a certain amount to do all of those administrative tasks, you buy yourself back thinking time.

Yeah. And any founder or CEO out there should ask themselves, on a quarterly basis, one question every single quarter, which is, if every area of the business were to maintain its current level of performance, where is the one area where change would have the greatest impact? And the output of that question then should then go to your calendar. And if you look at your calendar and said, to what degree am I scheduling time on that thing? And what you'll typically find is that you're spending no time on whatever that thing is. And if all you did was protect your mornings and you were like creative before reactive, or just for the first hour of every day and just worked on that number one top goal, like transformative results. It's like productivity is not getting things done quickly, right? Because you can like race up a ladder and realize it was leaning against the wrong wall. It's like, are you working on the right things.

I do that now, I think, as a result of working with you. And I now do— I now wake up and I do the most challenging, most creative, most thought-requiring thing of the day. Yeah. So it might be like creation, or it might be some marketing, like whatever's most cognitively demanding.

Exactly. Do it first.

And then once that part of the day is done, I will then probably have lunch and exercise, and then I will do the block of what I would call more like administrative and operational type work, which is more dull. It is more like getting through a list. But if I do that in the morning, my creativity just feels zeroed.

Yeah, you know, you have like one easy way to think about your day is that you can divide it into deep work, teamwork, and monkey work. And, um, and like the deep work is like, you know, the stuff that you're talking about, the teamwork, working with others. And it's like, you know, the monkey work is just like, yeah, we just have to do it, right? It's like the little admin-y things that you still have to do at some point or following up on a few emails here and there and just trying to batch it together is a good way to do it.

So how would you actually summarize yourself in one sentence?

I'm the home of the second chance. I know that, you know, it might sound a bit like, um, I quite like it, fluffy or whatever. But, um, I think we all, I think everyone wants a second chance. Everyone wants a second chance in life. They want a second chance in business. Um, I think it's universal. And, um, and it's like, and it's a nice mission, you know, to help people like step into that. And the reason I think we all want it is because nobody gets it right at the first chance. Nobody. We all screw up. We all have failures. We all think like the world's going to come apart. We all think that I'm not going to recover from this. We all think, damn, how did I screw this up so badly? And we all want that second chance. And and that's what I try to do, like, in basically everything that I do, because I needed second chances, you know, I've screwed up things massively, but, you know, you, you need to become the phoenix that like rises out of the ashes, you know, and, and, and is, is reborn. And, um, and I think, um, um, you know, I had to do that, um, when Chilango literally went up in smoke. Um, and, um, and if you just learn to embrace failure and learn to look into the mirror and ask yourself, yeah, but what did I do wrong? What could I do better? Um, you will create those second chances for yourself, and, and third and fourth and fifth and sixth, and, you know, so on.

I was talking to a group of founders the other day, and I don't know how I ended up in the group, but it was like everyone was a recently failed founder.

Yeah.

And I don't know how I met— I must have like gone into the wrong room or something, because obviously like I have failed many times before, but it's been a while since I've had a big failure. and I found myself in this room and they were like, what do we do next? Like, jump— like, about, about to jump right back in. And one of the things I'd actually say is when you have a failure, I would almost try and go into a period of your life where you just tread water for a bit.

Yeah, exactly.

Just think, exactly, like, what am I aiming at? Because if I had— like, in COVID, I lost, basically lost my business, Verb, and like 2 years later I managed to pull it back out.

Yeah.

And go again and be successful. But had I lost it in COVID, had it gone under, had I not got government support, um, and it, you know, come back, I would have started another agency again.

Yeah.

And that would have been such the wrong decision for me. Whereas I went away and I had a really big think, and my brother and I strategically talked about what we wanted to do in the future and came up with Lottie that became, you know, a 9-figure company in 2 years.

There you go.

But it was like, it was the treading water thinking a bit. And so I said to these founders, I was like, it wouldn't hurt you all to go and get a normal 'Go get a job, make some decent money for a year and just think.' Just let it simmer a bit. Yeah. Like get a one-pager out and start planning. And so that sort of brings me on to, if you are helping entrepreneurs with goal setting, like do you have any frameworks of reference for people setting goals that make them more likely to happen? Yeah.

So the goal needs to be magnetic, right? So for example, when I wanted to cross that chasm from founder to CEO, I was like, okay, I'm gonna become CEO of the year. You know, like win that award. Um, uh, yeah, see, it starts with having something that's gonna really inspire action. Um, but then you need to rub that up against reality. And one of the most powerful things you can do is just like a pre-mortem where you like die before you die, where you basically, and you can do this with a team as well, where you just say, you know, for example, you say to the team, okay, we have this lofty goal, this thing that we're going for. Let's fast forward, 6 months have passed. We actually haven't hit the goal. We've failed. What are all the reasons that would have driven the failure? Because I always believe that, like, whenever you don't hit a goal, if you would have asked that question at the start of the journey, you could have come up with, with 80, 90, maybe even more percentage accuracy, all the reasons why you won't hit it.

Right.

And then if you understand what those are up front, and then you mitigate the risk of those things happening by just working it into like the goal planning. Yeah, you just, you de-risk whatever the goal is.

And so as someone who's been through like incredible highs, yeah, like some pretty deep lows as well, how is your own definition of your success now evolved? Like what part of success makes you feel fulfilled?

Creating, building things that are hard to create. And built. Like, that is, you know, like the Olympic athlete who wins a gold medal and then he or she wants to win another. Nobody ever says like, what's your obsession with gold?

Yeah. Yeah. So true.

People misconstrue like the, the entrepreneur that wants to get to $100 million in sales or a bit, you know, are they money obsessed? I think they're missing the point. No, that's the equivalent of Olympic gold. Why do they want to do that? For the money? No. Because for the goal? No. Because it's hard to do.

Yeah.

And it feels good doing hard things. Like the person who climbs a mountain, you know, if the mountain was a little hill, they wouldn't be interested in climbing it. You know, they only climb the mountain because it's hard to climb.

Yeah.

So that's like the thing for me, like what we're doing right now, you know.

It's a big hill.

We're like, like you know, top 5, you know, globally out of a billion accounts, you know, on LinkedIn, right? That's hard to do. Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's also what makes it exciting.

I always find it so strange when, uh, for like at a dinner party, if I was to tell someone that I sold and exited a few companies, they'd be like, oh sure, you're just chilling. Why would you work again?

Yeah.

And it's like, I think beyond a certain point of money, I love the challenge. I love the complexity. I love the build. I love the early stage and the buzz of it all coming together. Yeah, yeah.

Like seeing the different things firing off.

It's like, I'm hesitant to describe entrepreneurs as athletes, but there is an unbelievable parallel between like the pursuit of something quite exceptional, uh, and huge parallel. Your point about like antifragile, I think, is very true. Like, if after selling Verb I had enough money to stop working after selling Verb, I was just like, okay, I'm done now. I'm 31 years old. I'm going to go sit on a beach. Can you imagine how fragile I would have become?

Fragile, and eventually you would have gone into depression for sure. We need human beings. We're goal-oriented beings. We're social. We need to do things together in teams, in the company of others. We need, and we need people challenging us, and we need to be working towards challenging things. Um, and that is like the path to closing the gap between, you know, who you are today and who you have the, you know, the potential of becoming.

I think one of the things that you taught me through like osmosis, rather than necessarily telling me to do this, but I remember early on being like, how does the How does your coaching, remote coaching business work? And you were like, well, we work for this period of time and then we have these like big holidays 4 times a year. And I was like, what's scheduled? And you were like, yeah, yeah, all the clients know, everyone knows, it's diaried, it's planned in advance. And so like neither of us sat here saying work all the time and kill yourself all the time.

No, like seasons and like once a quarter, 2-week holiday. You know, that's like 8 weeks in a year. Most people do 2 weeks for the whole year.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I think that lesson from you was great because I was like, I am going to work hard because I love working hard.

Yeah.

You know, and I'm fine with that. But I also am going to have holidays where I'm totally offline. And if I can do both those things, I will teach myself to be better when I'm at work and better when I'm actually relaxing.

Yeah, exactly.

So if you could choose one thing that listeners could take away from this conversation and apply it to their lives tomorrow. What would it be?

Just go back to the start of the conversation. So, um, you can achieve just about anything that you want, anything, provided you focus on the right things. Most people focus on the wrong things. The key is to narrow your focus, but you don't want to narrow again on the wrong stuff. You know, use the 80/20 rule constantly. You know, who are the 20% of your team members that can deliver 80% of the results? What's 20% of the proposition that most deeply resonates with 80% of the market? What are the 20% of the platforms that you'll find your ideal customer profile in the highest concentration? Narrow your focus and then just schedule that time in your calendar to work relentlessly on that stuff with a high threshold for pain. That was a lot more than one thing, but—

There you go.

But yeah, that's it.

So where can people keep up to date with you and what's next for you?

So LinkedIn, obviously, um, uh, you can check out, you know, Eric Partaker on LinkedIn, um, website. Um, the, the main thing that I'm focused on right now, um, is the CEO Accelerator. So that's helping founders and CEOs or people with CEO-like responsibilities. You run a division in your company, a whole P&L, whatever. or you're part of the C-suite, to close the gap between where they are and where they would like to be on those three pillars. So scaling, you know, the company, their leadership, and themselves, you know, that intersection of company building, leadership development, peak performance. Um, that is, um, that's the focus right now. And, um, yeah, come and hang out.

Yeah. Thanks for coming on.

Awesome. Thanks, man. Whether it's slots or live dealers, spinquest.com has the fun and action you're looking for with Spin Quest exclusives, blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and even live dice with craps and bubble craps. The games never stop so you don't have to. And right now, new users get $30 coin packs for just $10. Play now at spinquest.com. Spin Quest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.