S1 Ep7: How to Start Your Business with No Money, Find Your First Customer & Sell Like a Pro – Simon Squibb

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SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. What are the biggest misconceptions people have about entrepreneurship?

People think building a business is hard. No, working for someone else is hard. Do not say 90% of businesses fail in the first year. It's not true, it's a lie, and you're peddling that myth which will hurt innovation.

350 million views in a month?

Yep.

I mean, that's bigger than television.

We get more views than the BBC.

Do you mind if I ask you about your childhood?

Found myself dipping in and out of like sleeping on the streets and sleeping on friends' couches, and I've I remember begging and someone spat me in the face and called me a drug addict. And through sheer desperation, I walked up the driveway of this house. I knocked on the door and I said, my name's Simon Squibb. I've got a gardening company and I'd like to take care of your garden. He went, oh. And for the first time in my life, the entrepreneur muscle in my brain, this muscle I want everyone to wake up so they've got choices, it woke up.

So anyone that's joined us today, obviously this is my friend Simon, who we're going to talk for as long as I've got Simon. I'm going to keep him here talking. But before we begin, we just spoke about this off camera. For a lot of people in my community, we talk about a WhatsApp group that I was once part of that kicked off my content journey. And I think I just told you that it was the thing that kicked off my content journey. And so Simon was one of the people in a WhatsApp group with me alongside Daniel Priestley, Tim Armoo, Dan Murray Serta, and Eric Partaker. Is that everyone?

Yep, I think so.

Um, and I got put into this WhatsApp group with you guys, and I remember thinking, Daniel Priestley's one of my favorite authors ever. I was like, I'd literally just started looking at you and being like, who is this guy? Like, louder than life man out there. No idea who you were. Uh, and then that was the beginning of our journey. And all of us, 2 years ago since then, have all built huge public, um, channels and audiences and so forth, but have all achieved an enormous amount of stuff. And so I put a lot of the thanks and credit and support down to— we all supported each other every single day.

Yeah.

At the beginning of that journey.

Yeah. I think it's important, less people listening, you can't do it on your own. No. I, I'm a successful entrepreneur. You're a successful entrepreneur. I don't think we'd be successful with our content if there wasn't some sense of community around what we're doing. And, and actually you are competing against people with who are in teams. Yeah. So if you want to win, you need a team. And I think school teaches you the opposite. Now sit down and recite the answers to this exam all on your own. Don't cheat, don't ask anybody else, and, and don't get any help. You have to do it on your own. And I think the real world is completely the opposite. You need to have an army of people supporting you. Fighting with you. Um, and, and I think that group was probably symbolism of it. We were all trying to get knowledge out into the world to help people have a better life. I think we had a common purpose in that group. And so when you posted something, you know, I wasn't— I wanted to like it, I wanted to read it, I wanted to comment on it, I wanted to share it with my community. Yeah. And, um, I remember when you kicked off TikTok, I was, I was proud to— I had 3 million followers at the time. I was like, Chris knows what he's doing and my community are going to benefit from it.

Yeah. So I had zero followers at the time, and I was like, Simon, do you think I should do TikTok? And he was like, yes, 100% do TikTok and all the rest of it. And then the next afternoon, or like 2 days later, I had a few thousand followers and you were like, come on my live. And we did a live together and I got my first couple thousand followers.

Yeah, because again, my audience will resonate with your knowledge and, and my kind of view on the world is like, it's not me versus you, it's me and you versus what's missing in the education system. So like, I, people are like, well, Do you really want him on your channel? 'Cause then he is gonna take away your audience. I'm like, no, he's not taking away my audience. He's, he's, he's bringing value to the community. Yeah. I'm trying to bring value to, and you've got a different perspective. Yeah. You've got different views. You may, uh, disagree with some other things I say and give people a fresh perspective. I think that's awesome. Yeah. You know, I think a world where we all have the same views is a very boring world. And, and I know, 'cause I checked you out, that your knowledge is real. You've actually done it. I mean, I, what I would never do is promote someone that's doing fake success and pretending that they're making all this money from dropshipping only to be, you know, really making their money from selling people a course on dropshipping, you know? So, so I think it's important of course to align yourself with the right people. But as soon as I understood what you were doing and in a heartbeat, you know, without hesitation, I, I will promote you to everybody I know in the hope that that person in my community gets the knowledge. Mm.

I read your book last night.

Wow. You managed to read the whole book in one sitting?

Yeah.

That's pretty impressive.

Like, I feel like if I'm gonna read a book, it either happens in almost 1 or 2 sittings or it doesn't happen.

Right.

And I think that's the nature of a good book is that if you can read the whole book, then you are gonna, you're gonna do that. If you can't, then you put it down, you never pick it up again.

Mm-hmm.

And I feel like if you're gonna sell a good book, it has to be a book that's handed on.

Mm-hmm.

And so a lot of people do talk about presales of a book, but actually the reason that things like, um, Atomic Habits does so well is that everyone keeps going, hey, Hey, this book.

Yep.

And my favourite book, 4-Hour Workweek, and I've bought it for about 1,000 people. So it's the nature of books.

Can I make my book your new favourite and you give it to 1,000 people?

Yeah, everyone who comes in.

I saw it when I came in. Yeah, thanks, man.

But you talk a lot about risk, so I'd like to know what's the boldest risk that you've taken in your life so far?

Asking my wife to marry me. I think that's everyone's probably, if anyone's been married, will know that's quite scary, you know, committing to one person for the rest of your life. Uh, best decision I ever made though. Well, I would argue that she made the decision to say yes, but I, I think that's, that's always a scary thing. Commitment is always a scary thing in general, especially if you think ahead. I've been with my wife 23 years now. Oh wow. So I'm, and I, I actually consider it one of my life achievements to still be in a happy marriage. I've got 3 brothers that all got divorced, had, you know, horrible horrific situations happen to them in their, their love lives. I, I'm happily married and I, and I'm really quite proud of it. Yeah. I guess business-wise, I, I, I've different stages of my life, different elements of risk. You know, I started a business at 15 years old. You know, my mum kicked me out of home and I was stubborn enough to not go back. And that's a bit of a risk. Could have ended very badly for me, right? Being homeless. And that could have been a very different life for me. But I took a risk. I didn't succumb to being bullied and I started a business to survive. And so I think that was a risk. And, and then it was more a risk I had no choice to take though, I guess, when I was younger. Risks that I've had choices to make. Um, I, I started a comic book business. I put a million US dollars into it.

Oh wow.

And the whole thing collapsed and it didn't make money. And I, and I, um, you know, it was a very big failure. Yeah. So I took a risk at the time and, but I, I always think failure is such a brilliant lesson. The businesses I've been really successful in, like Fluid, which I built up from nothing and sold for a lot of money to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Yeah, there's lots of lessons from building that in fairness, cuz it was 15 years. But I, I feel like the failures really taught me important, like fundamental lessons I'll never forget, much more than the successes I've had have. So, um, I lost a million dollars, but I also learned so much and I, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't have changed it. I wouldn't change it now.

And what's the hardest thing that you've ever faced in business? The hardest decision you've ever had to make?

I hate letting people go.

Yeah.

I think that's still the hardest thing. I hate firing people and I hate having to have those conversations because I always want to, I'm always rooting for people and I always want people to push through. I talk a lot about this in the book actually. You do. As I think that when you see someone, you know, like I was, there's this thing called 7 and 8s. I don't know if you remember it in the book, but like where a lot of people, you've got a 10, they're brilliant, everyone knows they're brilliant. You don't wanna lose them. I give equity to people that attend. I want them to stay. They make a difference in the business. Without them, businesses don't succeed. And then you've got what we call the 1s and 2s within the, you know, business profile. They're not happy, they don't enjoy it. They know they don't like it. You know they're not enjoying it. They want to go and you know they should go. That's all pretty easy.

Mm-hmm.

But the struggle becomes people that are on the grading of like 7 and 8. Yeah. And, and I, and I, you know, I, I've had a lot of people in my businesses over the, over my lifetime. That are, you know, in the category of 7 and 8. And often it's the employer's fault. They didn't do due diligence on that person when they hired them. They, they didn't check that this person's really going to enjoy the work. It's a lot of the time the, the recruitment process that's the reason that they're not performing. Because you put them in a different role, in a different company, different management, they're probably a 9 and 10.

Yeah.

Um, but I find dealing with 7 and 8 really hard because you just think a little bit more training, a little bit more love, A little bit, you know, motivation. Just get them on a good week and they'll be a 10.

And they can be sometimes.

Yeah, they can. And that's also the danger. Yeah. But the problem is if you, if you don't deal with 7 and 8s, um, they remain unhappy, you get unhappy, you end up talking about them once a week using up energy, and your 9s and 10s leave.

Yeah, that's true. The thing I've actually found is that some of the 7 and 8s who've left my business have started their own really successful businesses.

Of course, 7 and 8s in your company doesn't mean they're 7 and 8s in life. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think, I think it can be your management style. It can be your mission doesn't align with theirs. There's lots of reasons for it, but, but you know, 7 and 8s tend to also sometimes not quit cuz they also think the same thing. Maybe one day the boss will get better. Maybe one day the company culture will get better. Maybe one day the mission will mean something to me and, and they stick around and you do the same. And then both parties end up being slightly miserable.

A lot of young entrepreneurs fear failure more than anything. And I, and I think growing up I certainly was terrified of publicly failing.

Mm-hmm.

You've been an entrepreneur for a long time. Mm-hmm. And so across so many different businesses, I heard you on interview earlier, you've invested in 70, 80 businesses.

79 companies so far. Yeah.

Along that journey, you must have had so many different failures. Mm-hmm. Is there one or two that stick out to you and say like, that was a real learning experience for me?

Yeah. I've had so many failures. I, I think the, um, I, I see them like, you know, I left school at 15.

Yeah.

So how was I gonna learn? The only way to learn is put money into something and learn the hard way. And so, you know, people go and do MBAs, I guess, and that's how they learn. They put some money into their education that way. I think that's a waste of money. I think if you've got, you know, £100,000, don't do an MBA, put it into a business and see what happens. And give yourself a year or two of building a company and you'll really learn what it's like. And at the very least, you'll have a story to tell. I think all my failures, what I love is I've had a story. So for example, Starbucks, I was, I've actually used to really love Starbucks. Mm-hmm. I was a bit obsessed. I read a book called Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schwartz, who's the founder of Starbucks. And he was the first person to really implement part-time workers would get full medical coverage. Mm-hmm. And it wasn't a government mandate to do it. It was him as an organization of a company. He wanted his employees to be looked after. First time I'd ever heard of a company doing the right thing without being mandated to do it.

Yeah.

And what that meant was that McDonald's and all these other organizations had to do it to compete for those, you know, part-time people. And so I've always been like a little bit obsessed with like business in general. And I think that I, I decided I wanted to open up a coffee shop. And so just at that time, smoking got banned in pubs. It's starting to show my age a bit.

No, no, I remember going to a nightclub the night it was banned.

Right, okay. Wow.

I was young.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, I saw, I saw a gap. I'm like, okay, You know Starbucks where they sell alcohol, right? So you can have a cocktail.

Yeah.

You can have a coffee. I don't drink alcohol. I've never done my whole life. Wow. So I wanted to go and have a coffee with a friend of mine who likes to have a glass of wine. So I opened up this coffee shop called Grey's and it was all done on impulse. Yeah. Actually, originally the whole idea was a gift to my wife as a wedding gift because she also talked about wanting to design a coffee shop. She's a designer. So She wanted to do a logo for a coffee shop and design a coffee shop. So we're like, let's do it. And we had 3 other businesses running at the same time at that time when we decided to do it. And again, I think half a million pounds went into this coffee shop. Yeah. It was the most beautiful thing. Yeah. We, we absolutely loved it. And people used to, our friends used to come there in the evenings and we used to hang out. Our staff and all the other companies used to eat there. But I, I didn't know what I was doing and I brought someone else in to run it. I wasn't running it as you'd expect. And I think the first month we lost £6,000. Okay. And I was like, how have we lost £6,000? We're serving coffee. And it turns out that if it's raining, no one will come to your coffee shop. If it's, you know, they have to go out in the rain. So all your sandwiches, all the food wastage. Yeah. You know, we're throwing away £200, £300 worth of food every day cuz people aren't turning up to eat the food. Mm-hmm. And so I, I learned a hard lesson, but we kept it open for 5 years.

Oh wow.

So I, it would do well now. Well, I mean, I think I made a lot of mistakes during that process as well. I guess, you know, just sharing a story of failure. But even now I still have like conversations with my wife and our friends about the wonderful evenings we had there and the game nights we had and the, the businesses we launched in that coffee shop. And in fact, I'm so like still in love with the idea of it that I'm going to open up a coffee shop in London.

Love it.

To kind of relive probably the same horror. Hopefully I won't lose the same amount of money, but, but I, I kind of think that the only way you really, um, can justify failure is by going again and trying to learn from the mistakes you made when you first failed.

I asked Simon to come to the studio because I want people to read his book, and that's quite literally what I want to do here. I want people to read the book. I feel like Simon was a huge, huge inspiration to me at the beginning of my journey. So do you mind if I ask you about your childhood?

Of course not.

Because I think that, you know, you hear about the story a little bit when you, you know, listen to, um, some of your videos. But I think, you know, if you take us back to being 15. I found becoming an entrepreneur at sort of 16, 17, 18, not homeless, not having those challenges, incredibly hard. So what was it like at 15? What is your story at the beginning?

I was 15 years old. I mean, I remember literally 6 months earlier someone asked me, what am I gonna do when I grow up? Sort of thing. And I'm like, I'll be a lawyer, is what I said. I don't know why, 'cause I'm dyslexic. I, I literally find it impossible to read, but being a lawyer seemed cool. And I can talk. So somehow maybe watching too many TV lawyers made me think that I could do it. And my parents actually wanted me to do it. I realize now it was some subconscious that, that, that's what they wanted me to say so they'd be proud of me. Right. Entrepreneurship was not part of my, uh, thinking. I mean, entrepreneurship as a word, I actually think it's, it's losing its, its, its value. Mm-hmm. You know, to me, um, it, it, it back then it was just small business owner was more what people used to describe people that started a business. Right? So, um, entrepreneurship now is the word and it sounds cool, but I wasn't thinking about starting a business. I was thinking about how the hell as a dyslexic person am I gonna become a lawyer? Mm-hmm. And then suddenly my father died. He was 54 years old. He actually died in front of me of a heart attack, right in front of me. I actually thought he was joking.

What?

Are you okay? What's happening? Is this a joke? You know? No. 8 minutes later he was dead. And I remember it like it was yesterday because the ambulance came. Ambulance was pretty quick, in fairness to the NHS. And literally, I remember the ambulance driver saying, I'm sorry, he's gone. And then, you know, emotion. I'm 15 years old, you know, my mum's just lost her husband. I've got 3 brothers, everyone's crying. It's just pure misery. And the next 2 weeks, 3 weeks, just the saddest environment you could possibly imagine. And as a 15-year-old, I just wanted to be out. I went, I had a girlfriend, I just wanted to go out with my friends, I just wanted to escape all that pain. And, you know, I come back quite late and my mum would be like, what are you doing? You know, stay at home. And I just— my mum and I clashed, and we're very different people. And she said, it's my way or the highway. 'And I took her word and I left, and I never went back.' And initially, I, you know, I first few days I slept outside, and then I plucked up the courage to ask some friends if I could stay with them. And so I stayed in people's houses, but I didn't— I couldn't stay long. I stayed at my girlfriend's house for a little bit, but I was a bit awkward with her dad there in particular, like, what the hell's going on? You know, my 15-year-old daughter with a 15-year-old boy. What the hell's happening? And I didn't wanna tell them what had happened. So I, I just found myself dipping in and out of like sleeping on the streets and sleeping on friends' couches and trying to figure it all out. I went to social services and they kind of laughed at me. They're like, 15, rubbish, let's go home. I was like, I can't go home. And they're like, well, we can't do anything to help you. So I tried to get a job and I, I went into lots of different places. Of course, bars, restaurants, they can't take me 'cause I'm not 18. And then, um, the odd shop. I went to WH Smith and shops like this, tried to apply for a job. You need a National Insurance number in England, right, to get a job when you're filling out the form. And I didn't have one 'cause I was 15. And then I was starting to look like shit, so no surprise no one would employ me. I tried to beg, um, probably one of the worst ever moments of my life. I remember begging again outside of WH Smith and someone spat me in the face and called me a drug addict. Get a job is what they said. And I wasn't a drug addict. I just found myself in this really difficult situation. So I, something changed, something kind of clicked in my brain. And I, I was desperate. Partly that's it. I walked past a big house and for the first time in my life, the entrepreneur muscle in my brain, this muscle I want everyone to wake up so they've got choices, it woke up. School never taught me to use it. Everyone's got it. And it said to me, that big house has, whoever owns it has money and their garden is really messy. They'll probably pay you to clean the garden up. And through sheer desperation, I walked up the driveway of this house. I knocked on the door. This guy answered the door and I said, my name's Simon Squibb. I've got a gardening company and I'd like to take care of your garden. Um, the guy went, oh, he knew I didn't have a gardening company. He looked me up and down. I, I, I, I tried to hold eye contact.

Yeah.

And he said, um, Sure. I haven't got any time to tidy up. I'll give it a go. He's like, how much are you gonna charge? And I just picked out of the air £200 a month. By the way, I'm glad I said per month. Yeah. Because there was, it's just some lucky instinct. And he said, sure, I'll give it a go. And then in that moment, I kind of like, I think I was like, wow. Yes. He's like, sure. I'm like, I don't have any equipment. Can I use your equipment? And he went, Sure, mate. No problem. Taking pity on me, I think. And then I walked away and I thought, £200 is so much money. That's accommodation for a week. Again, maybe showing my age, but like that, that, that changes things. And I, I kind of never done a garden in my life, never sold anything in my life. I suddenly realised that I could take an idea in my head and make it real. So I then knocked on 100+ doors that day. And managed to convince 11 people to let me take care of their gardens. The following week, by the way, I had to start doing the gardens and that's a whole different story. But that— I am not a gardener, it turns out. But that also turned out to be a good thing. I had to hire people, some of the homeless people that I'd become friends with. I hired some people to come and help me do the gardens. And it all kind of took off. It was like mind-blowing to like suddenly I was making money. I got myself into a HMO. I managed to actually, you know, have a little business. And then it all came crashing down. It completely collapsed because I didn't realize this. England has a winter. I've been alive 15 years. Winter hadn't registered in my head.

Yeah.

Winter came and every single person canceled the order. They said, we don't need it for the winter. The rain was pouring down.

Come back and sell.

Yeah. They'll basically come back in spring. Yeah.

Yeah.

But of course that left me like, I guess, you know, People think 90% of businesses fail in the first year, which is not true. That's a complete lie. People are listening to this and think that's true. They've been brainwashed. That is not true. The, the absolute facts are 23% of businesses fail in the first year, 64% of businesses fail in the first 3 years. So if you think 90% of them failed, you're part of the brainwashed system that's told you that's true. But even if it is true, 23% of businesses do fail in the first year. My gardening company failed in the first year. But here's the thing, you can't take away all that learning I just had. Now I knew how to sell, and everybody can sell. I didn't realize this. Introverts, extroverts, everyone can sell. I'd learned to sell. I was free. Now I just needed a new idea. So, uh, I actually went and got a job. At this point, I was 16. I did have a National Insurance card. I cleaned myself up. I actually had accommodation.

Yeah.

I went and got a job in a hotel. And, um, I actually got another job just before that, but you know, I don't normally talk about it. I worked at a radio communications company, but I eventually got this job at this hotel and cutting a long story short, this entrepreneur muscle had woken up in my brain. Yeah. And anyone that's new entrepreneur or, or an entrepreneur in general, if you haven't controlled the muscle, will have like an idea every 10 seconds. Yeah. So literally everywhere I went I saw litter on the floor, like, oh, it should be a litter collection machine. Or everywhere I went there was an idea. My, that muscle just went mental. And, but I had to focus it and control it. And I had this idea called Accommodation Express. I was in the hotel and the receptionist in the hotel were picking up the phone and very pleased saying, we're full, sorry, put the phone down.

Yeah.

And I said, well, that's a shame. We've spent a lot of money marketing the hotel and you're just happily putting the phone down on them because you know, like it's good news. That customer's a bit disappointed now. Give me the phone and I'll find them an alternative hotel nearby. And that's how it started. And then I realized you can get 15% commission if you place a booking in another hotel. Mm-hmm. So I initially split it with the hotel I worked at, and then slowly this turned into a whole new business called Accommodation Express. But once I'd woken up that entrepreneur muscle, I could not stop. And for the rest of my life, I've pretty much been building businesses.

It's interesting cuz that idea that you had as a youngster for the hotels, that's like a classic middleman business. And now, of course, in every service that we have in the world, I've built a few of those businesses myself. You can build incredible middleman businesses.

Of course you can.

That will deliver the customer exactly what they want, which is choice and quality, and deliver the supply, as in the hotel, or in my case, care homes, the right person. Yeah. Or the right bed or, or room.

Yeah. I think people don't realise actually that, that, that arbitrage business is, is, is, there's still so many opportunities, especially big companies.

Yeah.

That, that leave so much on the table. Like I, I even think Amazon's very ripe for disruption. You know, I, I do like eco-friendly delivery boxes and, and nice packaging. You know, the, the awful delivery that you get from Amazon. I think that people don't realize in, in the detail of these big companies, you can pick them off and then you can win. But people, people are too lazy or, or haven't had that entrepreneurial muscle working up on them, which is why I, I wrote this book. I wanna wake up that entrepreneurial muscle in people. I wanna help them totally train it and leverage it.

So let's talk about that. What are the biggest misconceptions people have about entrepreneurship?

There's so many. I do think that 90% of businesses fail in the first year is a big one.

Yeah.

And you know, I interviewed James Watt from BrewDog. He even said it. I had to pull him up on it. I'm like, don't say that anymore. Do not say 90% of businesses fail in the first year. It's not true. It's a lie. And you're peddling that myth, which will hurt innovation and will stop people living a free life. So even very successful people who I respect, like James, you, you, you've got to be careful.

Yeah, and I do think people get a bit of, um, almost like survivor bias. Like, once you make it, you think it's so hard.

Totally. And I'm sick of entrepreneurs telling me how hard it is to be an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

And every time someone says that to me, I'm like, great, give all your equity to employees then. There you go, no more stress for you. None of them fucking do it. None of them. Not a single one. I've never met a single entrepreneur that's willing to do that. So I always tell entrepreneurs— and this is another reason I get a little bit of hate, by the way— not everyone could be an entrepreneur. I'm like, sure, but think about the people that actually could be entrepreneurs, what they're hearing. Their boss is telling them how fucking hard it is, which is just bullshit. 'Cause if it was so hard, give it up. They're not giving it up, are they? Second is employees themselves and they don't know. Oh, I wouldn't want to be a boss. That sounds hard. How do you know? You've never been one. Mm-hmm. Like I would never work for someone else. There were very few exceptions. I'm, if I owned equity in something that I believed in, then I would potentially work with someone else. Mm-hmm. But I, I just think that that is the ultimate freedom that everyone deserves to have the option to do. That's why I push entrepreneurship so much. I want people to have informed consent. Yeah. Right now they don't have informed consent. People get put on a conveyor belt, they go to school, the school teaches them to go to university, university teaches them to get a job.

Mm-hmm.

And literally you're suddenly in your forties, you are an accountant or a lawyer, whatever. You're selling time. No one's taught you to buy time. That's how you really scale. And they're stuck. They've got a mortgage, they've got a car on finance, they've got maybe kids in private school, or, you know, just in general life costs, responsibilities. That's it. No one educated them. Now they're stuck. And I think that's unfair, and I refuse to let that be the norm. That is the norm right now. Yeah.

It's so funny when you, when you're lucky enough, because I think I started a business early because my dad, right? And so if I'm honest, I think that most people don't have that moment of being like, I could be Yes. And so like we knew as kids that we could be because our dad was.

Yeah.

And so it, it's strange that people make it seem so hard because if you fail once, you will learn from the failure. And the second time you do it, you might fail again, but you will pick up bits and pieces. And I think my whole beginning of my entrepreneurial career was just continuous failures. I just did it kind of under the same name.

Right. And again, like those are stories, you know, like they make you interesting. I mean, I, I, I did actually have dinner by accident with a lawyer the other day and I honestly was like, I just wanted to go. They just, they went to university and then they became a lawyer and they can't even talk about the cases that they're doing.

Yeah.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, your life is so boring. And I think life is so exciting. I don't, look, I don't want everyone to necessarily have to become an entrepreneur, but I want people to have the choice.

Totally. I don't think most people will become an entrepreneur and I don't think it's the life that everyone wants.

But I think it's different types of entrepreneurship, right? For sure. Your life, you know, what is success? Like, yeah, I literally just helped someone who wants to be a fashion blogger. She's gonna enjoy that. You know, that's an entrepreneur, but it won't be a job to her. But it won't be a job to her. And I think that's the key. Mm-hmm. Like, I don't think what I'm doing is a job. Yeah. I've just, you know, launched a book and launched a digital platform and I'm just having fun.

Mm-hmm.

And I, I think that's the thing. I won't work. People, people have seen work as a negative thing. To almost like they have to do it to get the things that make them happy. Yeah. And I think it's the reverse. I think you should enjoy what you do and you don't need those things to make you happy.

I think, yeah, especially for most people when they think about running a company, they think it's the hardest thing possible. And I think that the early stages of businesses is very hard, but that's often the businesses that are well known as in those are quite big businesses.

Yeah. I think being Elon Musk is pretty hard. So he described, you know, entrepreneurship as eating, eating glass while staring into the abyss.

Yeah.

But that's his type of entrepreneurship. I, I wouldn't want his type of entrepreneurship. You know, I, I, I, I think that that's the thing. You've gotta define what success is for you. But for me, entrepreneurship is just understanding how to control your destiny and you deciding what you do with your time. The most valuable thing you could ever own is your time.

And so you talk about it in the book, but how does someone practically start a business with no money?

Well, I think it depends on the business. Mm-hmm. But I mean, generally, if you understand, for example, cash flow, most businesses can start quite quickly. So for example, I built a massive, very profitable business called Coaster Ads. Mm-hmm. And the simple idea was, you know, you got Heineken and Carlsberg coasters in bars and restaurants. I stripped them all outta the bars and restaurants and I put advertising coasters in there instead.

Mm-hmm.

And how I launched that business, I, I, in the end, I think we printed 35 million coasters. Wow. So, you know, a lot of money went into the business. Yeah. I think in the first year I made £2 million profit from this business.

Wow.

And I started it with no money. So how did I do it? I was 24 years old and I met a very talented graphic designer and we were brainstorming ideas. And while we were brainstorming what we could do, we were both putting our drinks down on these coasters and we said, that's a waste of advertising. I've been putting this drink down on this coaster for the last 40 minutes. Looking at that Carlsberg ad.

Yeah.

I don't drink alcohol. It's making me want a Carlsberg.

Yeah.

Right. So I think we said, okay, well, what, what, what, what, we, we could do something. We could put ads on there. And Helen went, sure. And then we teamed up together. Helen designed a little deck, so she, she put her time in. And then I started researching who might advertise on them. And I went to 20 brands and I pitched, we're gonna take over all the bars and restaurants and we can put your brand in these bars and restaurants. Would you like to do it? And they said, sure. One big company called United Airlines said yes. And I gave them a 6-month exclusive contract to do it, but they had to pay me 50% in advance. And with that 50% in advance payment, that was all my costs. I priced it so the 50% was all my cost to make the coasters, distribute the cost, pay the restaurants and bars, pay staff to distribute everything. They paid me the deposit for the idea and then I delivered on it and then they paid me the other 50%. A month later, once I'd done everything, that was my pure profit. Mm-hmm. So I think once people understand like cash flow, yeah. Again, when I launched Fluid, I won a client, they paid a 50% deposit, and I used that 50% deposit to pay everyone to do the work. So again, I started with no money. And that, that simple, again, I talk about a lot of these principles in the book, but like that simple principle of understanding how you can manage cash flow will probably get 92% of businesses off the ground.

Takes, again, takes the fear and the unknown out. If you can win a client that will pay 50% upfront, right? You're off. That's exactly how I started my first business.

That's what I mean. But this isn't taught in school. And this is, this is a combination of financial literacy and, and business basic 101. Again, why I've written this book is to try and highlight that these things, once they're taught to you, anything is possible. Now, of course, I've launched a digital platform, right? Help Bank is a competitor to LinkedIn long term. That's my ambition for it. That has meant large chunks of money going in at the beginning. Mm-hmm. Right. But that, but that, that, that isn't where I started. I started as a gardener. So, you know, yes, someone argue it's taken me rather a long time to save up the money to start a digital platform.

Yeah.

And there are ways to do it today that don't require you to work for 3 years. Oh my God. Of course. You can go get an investor.

Also, you could, you could set up that business with third-party tech.

Totally.

For low cost.

By the way, I did.

Yeah.

So before I built the tech, I started a Discord channel.

Yeah, there you go.

And so it, it was all free pretty much. So, you know, I actually paid a moderator to help me set it up at like 100 quid, but like the original Help Bank was a Discord channel.

Yeah.

And so that cost me nothing to just to determine whether or not people would help each other for free as they do now on Help Bank. Right. So I didn't throw a million pounds at it at the beginning. I did an MVP, which happened to be someone else's technology.

And what is an MVP?

Minimum viable product. So a basic proof of concept, as cheap as you can do it. And every successful business has done this, by the way. Mm-hmm. You know, Airbnb, literally they rang up someone who was advertising a room for rent on one platform, and then they saw someone was looking for a room on another platform and they rang the two up and said, I put you together. I just want 20 quid if I do.

Yeah.

It was done manually.

It's incredible, isn't it? I mean, I, I think nowadays, and I don't know if it's like the glorification of Silicon Valley businesses, but you can build a business with very little money.

Yeah. I would say you should.

Don't just getting a couple customers going.

Totally. I actually think the Silicon Valley model of like someone raised 100 million is a bit toxic.

Yeah.

Because, and I, I actually have the same feeling about Dragon's Den. I think Dragon's Den has trained Britain in the wrong way. I'm a fan of Dragon's Den.

Mm-hmm.

But 20 years of thinking the way to make your business work is beg some rich guy for money or girl is a mistake.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I, I built my businesses not, not with anybody else's money. And, and actually if you can build a cash flow positive business, the thing is as soon as you take someone's money, you kind of have a new boss. Mm-hmm. So it's like a, it's a slight weakness. You think, oh, please give me money. But now you have someone to report to that isn't your customer.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that Dragon's Den's taught people that, like, oh, you know, and the other thing I think, you know, if I was starting to now go off on one on Dragon's Den, it's like, I think a lot of the time, you know, if I, I refuse to go on Dragon's Den. If you come to me and you say, I have a food business and I need help getting into Tesco's. And I say to you, I'll give you 50 grand, but I want 35% of your business and then I'll introduce you to Tesco's.

Yeah.

Fuck that.

Yeah.

I'm a multimillionaire. I'll introduce you to Tesco's. If I got the contact of Tesco's, it's gonna help your business. I'm doing it. Mm-hmm. That's it. Like if I'm worth 400 million, do I really need to charge you equity in your business? Now Dragons know how valuable equity is, right? So it's a little bit unfair on the entrepreneur. Just help them. Now I know that doesn't make good TV, but I think it's, I think it's bad. That's the only education programme on British TV. Mm-hmm. So people think that's the only way to start a business and it's a mistake 'cause it's not.

And so to the person out there who's thinking maybe they have an idea, maybe they don't have any money, but how do they get their first customer? 'Cause like we just said, I, I'm now thinking back to my original marketing agency, and whenever we started a new service, we would go and get a client to do the service, and we would start the service with the client.

Perfect.

And often the client wouldn't 100% know, and you would work out as you're going along, and after a few months you'd have it locked down and you would be cash flowing the service.

Totally.

And that's fundamentally how I think businesses traditionally were, but now everyone wants funding. So if you're in their position, how do you find your first customer?

I think it really again depends on the business.

Mm-hmm.

So today, uh, someone pitched to me an AI mentor business and they want a million pounds to go away and build an AI mentor business. I'm like, get one person who wants a mentor and match them with a mentor and make content around that. Yeah. Like I actually don't believe in the mentor model.

Yeah.

I think it's, it's, it's, it's actually become part of people's subconscious. Again, I need a mentor. I need a mentor. No, you don't. You need to know the questions you need to ask of the person that has the answer. Mm-hmm. Right. If you ask me to be a mentor, I'm sure you get it all the time as well. I don't know what that means. What, a day of my, a week of my life, and then I'm responsible for the rest of my life for you. And no, uh, don't ask me to be your mentor. Yeah. But if you go on Help Bank and ask me a question, I'd probably be able to answer it if you ask about marketing and I'll be happy to do it. So I think people need to redefine what they actually need. But anyway, what I said to this person was start off by finding one person that needs a mentor. So do a post on Instagram Stories with, do you want a mentor? With a form in it and then find out what they need. And then if they say they want to meet MrBeast and they wanna be mentored on how to make content for MrBeast, then make your video about how you got MrBeast as their mentor.

Mm-hmm.

Or try just to see how hard it is to get that mentor. Now that might not sound like an AI mentor business, but you are actually doing market research on what people actually need before you go spend a million pounds building technology.

Yeah.

And, you know, Airbnb did this brilliantly. Airbnb did a whole thing where they did Obama reels. They sold cereal boxes to people at conventions.

McCain.

Yeah, exactly. McCain. McCain.

I can't remember.

Not as cool. Yeah, but the point is they sold thousands of thousands of thousands and they made money and they made money from selling something that doesn't sound really related to Airbnb. But what it did was it allowed them to understand their first big market was people who were going to conventions. If a convention happens, there's not enough hotel rooms. So they knew that was gonna be a market for Airbnb at the beginning. So by, by selling these boxes to people, almost like a gimmick and bit of fun, they also asking them questions. Where did you stay? How much did you pay? How did you feel about the room that you stayed in? Have you got a room locally available that people could have rented? You know, like by selling and making money from something that doesn't look related to the business, they actually built money pot up to build the tech and then understood all their customers. Yeah. So again, with the AI, mentor concept, that person can find out what people really need when it comes to mentorship, figure out who out there could be a mentor to model their AI mentor on.

I'd also say to people that, uh, I know that it might be scary to reach out to people, but you might as well reach out to people. You'll get 100 nos. Yeah, like, but occasionally it must be the case for you. I'll get reached out to a huge amount on the channels, and very rarely I will write very detailed responses to it because it's I don't know, I'm in the right moment, in the right moment I get the message and it sort of strikes and I'll write the personal message. And I think back to myself at 20, 21, 22, I was doing that all the time.

Yeah.

I was nonstop trying to connect with people.

I, first of all, I agree that people should reach out and try their luck.

Mm-hmm.

No doubt about it. But I think one important detail people need to understand, if you reach out to me in DMs, I will not reply to you. But if you go on Help Bank where I do reply, now this is why I built Help Bank as well, because I want people to know that if they want to get hold of Elon Musk, the best chance they've got is on X, right? Make a tweet, understand what he's replied to in the past. So for example, say you're gonna run for Prime Minister.

Yeah.

There's a chance he'll reply to you right now.

Yeah.

Right. Understand how people are interacting and people don't do their research. So I say every day, it's almost become like a hobby of mine now. I'm not replying to DMs on Instagram. I'm not doing it, but I am on Help Bank and I also do reply to all the comments on my posts 1 hour after they've all been posted. The videos have gone out. People aren't listening. They're still sending me DMs. All right. So that's, do your research about how people respond and where you have got that person's attention. Don't waste your time. It's like, sell me this pen and selling someone who doesn't need a pen a pen.

Yeah.

They're not, people don't understand. Selling is also going where that person responds.

Yeah. And I suppose you said this earlier, but selling I think is one of the most defining traits that entrepreneurs have. Where would you tell someone to learn about selling if they're sitting there thinking, I'm not a salesperson? People have quite a poor perception of sales. Where would someone learn?

Yeah, first of all, shake that perception of sales as being bad. Just get rid of it. Again, I think it's taught to you at school, like somehow it's car salesperson, it's bad. Sales is freedom. If you, you are actually selling if you like it or not. If you are going to a job interview, you are selling, right? If, if you are trying to impress your colleagues in your business now, you are selling.

Mm-hmm.

So why not learn the skill of it? First of all, I have actually spent a lot of time with a YouTube video that I made. It's one of my most popular YouTube videos.

I see.

Teaching people everything I know about sales for free. So, you know, and there's plenty of great resources out there for free. On the other side of it, it's like, if you are scared of selling, you know what, go knock on someone's door and try and sell them fish from the fish market. Just try it.

Yeah.

You know, like push yourself outta your comfort zone. Now if you are an introvert, then learn to sell using things like sales funnels and email marketing. I did a brilliant podcast with Russell Brunson. He talks about everything. He charges £80,000 for his course. Normally he talks about everything for free on my YouTube video. Mm-hmm. Like we've never lived in a better time than right now for getting knowledge to do what you love. You have to apply yourself though, and you have to remove these limiting belief systems. Like I've said in my book, like If you think you can't sell, then you'll make it true. I think it's Henry Ford said, if you think you can or you think you can't, you'll be right.

Yeah.

So, so sales, if you're an introvert, it's just a different method. It's the same basic process, but it's just a different method, right? So you might use LinkedIn if you are an introvert, you, you might use DMs.

Mm-hmm.

You might use email, right? So, so all of those tools are the tools that an introvert might use. But if you are an extrovert, like just pick up a microphone, go into the street.

Yeah.

And, and I think sales and marketing, I think marketing is just these days is just so much opportunity in marketing, which does the sales for you.

I would say like you're, you're completely right. Although people would never identify it now, growing up I was so introverted with new people, not necessarily with people I knew, but with new people. And so I just became so good at digital marketing.

Right.

And so I was quite good at one-on-ones, but never good in groups. So I couldn't do networking. And so became very, very good at making people come to me through social.

Yeah.

Which broadly speaking, you are one of the best at. So you've built this audience of 11 million people. Yeah.

Am I right? Yep. Stove up. Um, who's counting?

Yeah. Yeah. When I met you, I think it was 2 or 3 million followers.

Yeah. And so it's, it's 2x in the last 12 months. Yeah. Wow.

And that, that, and that is obviously an example of just compound growth. Consistency and so forth. But to those out there that are beginning their journey, I think most of the time in my life I've always told myself I'm too late, and then I've worked out that never— I'm so early at all the things. So if you're starting on social media now and you want to build up a profile, what do you say to that person?

I think people need to know their own personalities. I'm a big fan of Human Design, and so you can Google it, you know. I, I'm a generating— manifesting generator. Which means I'm quite good at coming up with ideas. I'm not the best at coming up with ideas. I'm quite good. I'm really good at execution. And I think execution's so undervalued, but I, I work really well with people that have really good ideas and I can make the idea happen. And I'm really good working with people that are, uh, deep execution. So I'm light execution. So generating manifesto. I think when people understand their human design a little bit, so what are you? You probably know, you don't need to go do this human design thing, but you probably know like, who you are and what you like doing. So if you like writing, mm-hmm, then you want to figure out what platforms really play best for writing. Of course, LinkedIn is a good example. Even now, they've, although they've recently introduced video, writing still is the most popular part of LinkedIn.

Sure. Yeah.

So I think people need to like be honest with themselves. If you are going to do the social media, what are you going to be naturally good at? Because again, school teaches you the opposite. If you are bad at something, they make you double down on it. Yeah. Whereas in real world, the best thing you can ever do is something you, you like doubling down on it.

Mm-hmm.

Like whatever it is you like to do. So if you like talking to camera, fucking talk to camera every day. I remember the first time I ever went live and live is so powerful, by the way. I don't think people understand the power of live. I, I go live every day for the last 5 years. Every day I've gone live. Yeah. And when I first went live, there was zero people on the live and then It went 1 and then it went 0 again. And I was talking to no one, literally there was no one on the live. And I was talking to the camera in my head. I was like, I think I've gone slightly mad. Why am I doing this? But I kept going. And then that one person came back in the room and then they didn't leave. And then there was 2. Yeah. And then there was 3 and then it was back down to 1. I'm like, what did I say wrong? You know? And that's how you learn that. And I actually miss those days. I kind of miss it now. I'm sure I could, again, I don't wanna be the entrepreneur that wishes it, you know, complains about how hard it is. I think, I think, you know, if I wanted to, I could stop, but I kind of miss that early learning. And I think what people don't understand about building a business, people think building a business is hard. No, working for someone else is hard. Mm-hmm. Okay. And at the beginning of working for someone else, it's easy, but gets harder over time as you have to do what they say and new boss comes in and wants you to prove yourself again. I think working for someone else is hard over time. And easy at the beginning. Working for yourself is really hard at the beginning, but does get easier over time. And it's only hard at the beginning because you have to learn shit. Mm-hmm. It's actually that going out and hunting thing. If I told everybody listening to go out and hunt today, well, that, that was fucking hard. But you'll soon realize that you can hunt and you'll get better at hunting, and then you'll have a laugh with your mates in the rain up a tree. You know, like it's fucking cool.

Mm-hmm.

And it's meant to be hard. Life is meant to be an experience. You know, so you want to do the hard things, especially when you don't have kids and you don't, you know, do it when you can. 'Cause you know, the more time you can spend learning the craft, the better.

I think the takeaway there as well is there will be so many people who will say they want to build a profile online. There'll be so many people who say they want to build a business. You've gone live every day.

Every day. For how long? 5 years, just over.

I mean, that is mind-blowing. I didn't even know there was live 5 years ago.

Mm-hmm. I, I, Clubhouse was kind of also like part of that live experience, you know, like you just go into the world and, and communicate with people and you, and then you get good at it.

By the way, going live for 5 years, that, I mean, if that's not the biggest lesson of consistency for everyone, I don't know what is.

Also, um, you know, I, I posted twice a day for the last 5 years as well. Yeah. And, and I, and I put up stuff that now I'm embarrassed of and I've taken some of it down, but like, I think, I think that also is a discipline of like, okay, it's not perfect. I'm putting it out there. It got 50 views, I think, you know? Mm-hmm. And the very first few TikToks, and I'm not taking them down, the very first few TikToks I did was me with my son at London Zoo.

Right.

And he's dancing, which, the reason I did it is I wanted to understand, you know, putting music track on it, doing a filter.

Yeah.

Editing the video in the app. You know, I was just, I just found the technology interesting. Mm-hmm. And so the first videos weren't me giving business knowledge, they were me with my son at London Zoo. And I deliberately haven't taken them down 'cause I want people to understand that sometimes you just have to follow your passions. I love marketing. Mm-hmm. And everyone was starting to talk about TikTok in, in the marketing world, and I, I just had to master it. And so it wasn't, I didn't go on it thinking I have to become big on TikTok. I went on it thinking, I don't wanna be irrelevant. I wanna know how this works and I'm gonna play around with it. And so literally like the first few TikToks were my son playing at the London Zoo.

That's also such a good lesson about life and business in that your direction will just reveal your path. So like, if I'm pursuing something and I'm finding it interesting, if I pursue that thing, even if I don't know my purpose, the purpose will often reveal itself as time goes on. I'm so sure that's, that's probably the case with you as well, is that this refined thing that we see in front of us, which is now 11 million followers, hundreds of millions of views, this incredible book that everyone obviously should buy on the last—

um, link down below.

Yeah, there probably will be a link somewhere. Um, this thing that we see these days is so polished, it's such a machine, but I want people to go back and look at your early stuff.

Yeah, no, it's true. I think in the early days there was a combination of me wanting to learn and, and for me to be useful and to be seen. And so I think even now I try to describe what I'm doing today to people as it's, it's not It has a philanthropic element to it, but I'm actually doing it for selfish reasons. I sleep better when I've helped someone in a day. Like I genuinely feel happier. And I think actually this is human nature. We don't realize it. We've been taught this system of like give and take. Mm-hmm. I'll help you only if you help me. That's actually not natural for us, right? Because we used to live in tribes of 5,000 people. And what, what used to happen is you are in my tribe and you have a problem and I'm the person that can help you with that problem. I help you because if I do, my tribe is happier. Then you're not even the person to help me with my problem anyway. Mm-hmm. But it's only when the taxman got involved about 100 years ago and they said, well, we need to track this. We need to know if you help them and there was a, was there any money involved? We, if we need to track it, because it's natural for us to just help someone without any expectation of anything in return. And then my tribe is happier and my life is better. Mm-hmm. And so actually I've discovered this by accident, by not having to charge people for help. That I have never been happier because I can help someone and I don't have any expectation of anything in return. Most people listening will probably be able to source a lot of their pain in life to something they did for someone and they didn't give them what they wanted in back. So you've lent someone money and they didn't pay you back, for example. Or I saw yesterday someone opened the door for someone and they didn't say thank you. That person was so pissed off. They're like, well, don't say thank you then. You know, they caused themselves pain.

Yeah.

Because they did something that that person didn't ask them to do. They opened the door for them and then they caused themselves some sort of aggro because that person didn't react in the way that that person expect. I'm like, what's the point? Mm-hmm. Just open the door for someone. Don't have any expectations. Just do the right thing.

One of the best bit of advice I got when I was younger was my, so my first mentor was this guy I paid and he actually was a great mentor and he said, um, meet 20 new people a month. And I ended up meeting 50 new people a month for my first year in business, which was an unbelievable thing. So it's sort of pre-social media. And so I was one-on-one coffee and lunch with 50 people a month. And the other bit of advice was try and do a favour a day. And so I did a favour a day and 50 people a month for years. Mm-hmm. And the compound effect of that on my life was that it's not like I was asking for people to do me favours back, but even if you are just thinking about it a little bit more cynically than you are, strategically helping people.

Well, it's kind of karma as well, you know, like you reached out to me and said, Simon, I want to help with your book. Yeah. You didn't ask for anything from me in return. You know, it's like, let's just do this, Simon. I just want to help you. Yeah. And I, and I think friendship and, and all these things come from that sort of gesture. And I think people need to live a bit more like this. People always tell me reasons they can't do it, you know, um, they haven't got time. It's a common one. I'm like, You've got 4 fucking minutes today, right? Mm-hmm. You've got 4 minutes to help someone. Go retweet someone's post. Go like someone's small business. Go comment on, go give someone a book review. Go, it's not gonna cost you anything. You've got 4 minutes. Go do something nice for someone. And here's the thing, people don't realize that they do, um, you know, you get dopamine from social media, you get oxytocin from doing this. Like you, you literally feel happier. Like if anyone's given a Christmas present to someone, they'll know, like, you know, you, you find the present, you wrap it, and then you give it to someone, that's actually a happier feeling than when you receive a gift.

Totally.

And, and I think people remember this, they'll realise that helping someone else is actually helping you. Yeah. Like, and people need to do it more. And that, that's a big part of what I'm trying to get across in my book. Like, you want to be happy, help someone else be happy. You want to be rich, help someone else get rich.

I'm writing a book at the moment and one of the things that I'm trying to articulate is all the lies that I think have been baked into society. And it's a huge part of this book. And if we think about what are the things holding youngsters back right now, what do you think are the most pervasive lies in our society right now?

There's a lot. I think, again, I repeat, I repeat some of them, but like you, you're told to sit down and shut up. Don't do that. Don't sit down and shut up. You're told to all wear the same uniform. Nope. Be yourself. Stand out. Be unique. That'll help you in the future. You're told to not work with someone else. Don't copy. Fucking copy. What are you talking about? We only have fire today cuz someone did fire and we went, that's a good idea. I think I'll do that. You know, like copy the fuck out of everything. Like I'm doing Help Bank. If you think you can do better, copy it. You know, if you see me doing Vox Popping in the street, I'm getting hundreds of millions of views every month. Copy it if you want. You know, there's no original idea. There's only original execution. But in school we're told copying is bad. I mean, I spent most of my life being told how bad China was because they're copying. And now who's copying who? Elon Musk is copying China's apps, right? That literally is the opposite. TikTok's being copied by Meta, right? Meta, Facebook was a copy of MySpace. MySpace was a copy of Friendster. TikTok is a copy of Vine. Like everything good is a copy of something else just done better. So I think people need to realize that copying isn't bad. Now, there is a nuance to this. Like Mark Zuckerberg pretended to work for someone else on their idea and for a month worked on it himself. That is scummy copying, right? That is literally stealing someone's idea and then launching it behind their back. I might get sued for this now, but it's a fact and there's a movie made about it. I'm sure he's suing the movie before he'll sue me. Point is, that is what he did. He stole the idea of Facebook from the Winklevoss twins. Now that is a disastrous way to build a business. However, if he heard about MySpace and came up with Facebook like the Winklevoss twins did, that is perfectly fine. Mm-hmm. They had a better idea than MySpace, right? I think, you know, following through, I think to prove I'm right, Mark Zuckerberg has not invented anything since. He bought Instagram.

Instagram. Yeah.

He bought all the products since, all of it bought, right? So he hasn't actually ever invented anything. And actually that's part of his problem because he can't innovate on Facebook, so he has to buy from outside. So, so I think, you know, in the end that, that will come back to bite him. Um, I'm not sure anyone listening would, would you, would you wanna be Mark Zuckerberg? I wouldn't wanna be. I don't, I don't, I don't think. But anyway, I think the point I'm getting to is that You know, in school we're taught not to copy, and that's a mistake. I think you can innovate. Don't do wrong, don't steal, but innovate for sure. Copy.

One of the things I will say till I'm blue in the face to anyone wanting to learn about business or about building a profile is that my first business was the least unique thing in the world. It was a marketing agency. There were 10,000 marketing agencies.

Same as me, by the way. Same.

And all we did was we executed it for the luxury industry.

Yeah.

And managed to bootstrap a business in 10 years.

Perfect.

And then Lottie to the great, you know, is a big company now doing incredibly well. But that model of connecting people is one of the oldest things in the world.

Totally. When I, when I opened up my agency in Hong Kong, I counted how many companies were doing something similar in Asia. 7,600.

Mm-hmm.

Doing exactly what I was about to offer. And I think the thing is, the reason we won and I, it became a massive company and I sold it to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The reason it did, well was I enjoyed it. A lot of the other people that were doing it weren't enjoying it and they weren't, uh, growing and learning. I, I embraced digital very early. A lot of my competitors like Ogilvy, they were actually using me to do their digital because to them digital was a sideline thing that they didn't really understand. That's for the young people, you know, like back then I was young. So it was like, I, I just, I just think there's so much opportunity in, in, in that kind of idea that something isn't an innovation in people's minds and you can jump in and do it.

One of the things I've seen you talk about a lot is that property has been branded a certain way, and in many ways it's actually limiting people with that belief.

Yeah.

In that owning a house is the ultimate goal. And so my understanding of what you're saying is that owning a house isn't a bad thing, but the money that you make could be put towards much, much better.

I think owning a property to live in, I don't think young people should do it. No. A lot of people don't agree with me of this, but I believe that when you are young, you should see the world. Mm-hmm. You should go where the opportunity is. So someone said to me the other day, they wanna be an actress. I'm like, best place for that, go to LA. And then someone else said to me, they wanna launch an AI tech business. I'm, best place for that, San Francisco. I think that when you buy a house, in a way you kind of get trapped in the system. Now people always talk about this and they'll say, well, you know, I can rent it out. And yep, maybe most of the time with mortgage though, you are legally not allowed. Mm-hmm. Depends on your terms. But most of the time, once people have bought themselves a house, they get stuck where that house is. Mm-hmm. And I think when you're young, you should be mobile and you should go and see the world. You should understand how things work, you know, You don't have high expectations or submersion yet. You don't have like, when I go to Bali, I wanna stay in a villa now with a pool, but when I was 18, I'd be happy to sleep on a friend's couch. Mm-hmm. And you know, I think when you're young, you should just go and see everything you can see and experience everything you can possibly experience. And buying a house where you grew up and living in it, I don't mind people doing it if they understand. Again, this is informed consent. As long as people understand it's not an asset, it's a liability. Mm-hmm. And technically you don't own that house, the bank does. And you'll be paying a lot more for that house by the time you paid off all the interest. Because let's face it, banks aren't there to help you actually. Banks are there to make money out of you. They want you to work for them, but you know you don't want to. So they give you a mortgage so that you are actually working for the bank without even realising it. You're selling hours for money that you give to the bank. So just keep in mind when you're young, you trap yourself in that. You take all your savings and you put it into a thing that isn't going to generate you income. And then you work hours, which is a limited amount of time you have in life, to then pay that mortgage for something that maybe, assuming you don't sell or have lifestyle inflation and want a bigger house and, or don't miss a payment at some point, you may own it by the time you retire at 60.

Yeah.

Right. And here's the irony. If you own a house and you're 60 years old and you paid it off— first of all, that doesn't happen for everyone, but let's say you've managed to, like, push through and do it, and you've got 2 kids. In England, when you die, 45% of that house value, it goes out in inheritance tax, so you lose 45%. Then the 2 kids that now own that house have been given 25% each. And guess what? That's not enough to buy the same house you just left them. So now they have to get a mortgage for 25 years and then spend the next 25, 30, 40 years of their life paying off the same fucking house you just left them. So the whole thing is just like Monopoly. Mm-hmm. And I, I love the history of Monopoly. Do you know the history of Monopoly?

No.

So it was invented by a very clever woman, and originally she wanted to highlight, she made two Monopoly boards, one where the land was owned by the people. Like imagine like tribal land where you've all got tents on that land and you, you know, your tent falls over, they build you a new tent. No one's homeless. Mm-hmm. You've got land that's owned by the community and then you all live together in that community. No one's, you know, there's 320,000 homeless people in this country. When I was homeless, there was 21,000. In 35 years, this home ownership thing, this experiment of home ownership has gone horribly wrong.

Mm-hmm.

And no one's being honest about it. Okay. Now home ownership isn't even my biggest problem. I, I, I think home ownership, the problem is people have been trained to think it's mortgage versus rent, but it's not. You've been tricked. It's mortgage versus freedom, especially when you're young. You've got no kids. I'm to— I have a different point of view as you get older and you have kids, but if you're below 40 and you, you want to make it, take all the money you've got and put it into something that generates your income. Right? So home ownership is, you live in that house, it's a liability. No one understands how money works because no one teaches you this at school. You live in that house and no one understands it's not an asset, it's a liability. It costs you money every month. Now, people that are a bit slow around this or have an agenda to sell you property courses will tell you it's rent versus mortgage, cuz that's how they want you to think. But it's not. I travelled all around the world. I saw things, I learnt things, I took my money and I put it into learning. I didn't put it into a house that traps me in a location and then get a job that I have to have a monthly income to pay the monthly mortgage. Right. As soon as you have a fixed cost, like a mortgage, like rent is different. You can quit rent and move out. You can just give up that property and not take all your savings and, and have it tied up in that house. Right. I see people buy a house, they put all their money into maintaining that house, and then they're fucked because they've got no money to spend building a business that makes them free. Right. Buy to rent and all that side of it, I think is semi-evil. Mm-hmm. Okay. 'Cause I know nurses that can't afford to buy and can't afford to rent. And yet the government, you know, till recently there was no money tree, so they can't pay them more. And they're charging nurses for the car park in the hospital they're working in where they're underpaid. That person will probably save you and me and our life tonight, and they can't afford rent. They can't afford to fucking own a house.

Mm-hmm.

We're charging them for the car park in the hospital they're in, and we can't give them a pay rise. What the fuck's going on? And I, I think that the property business has a role to play in that nightmare. And I'm sure a big wealthy property owner today might go into the emergency ward and meet a nurse. 1 in 3 nurses in the UK are on food stamps. I'm sure they're getting their 8% yield outta their property, but society's starting to suffer. And things like accommodation, electricity, and food are a basic human need. Mm-hmm. This should never have been made into a business. And monopoly was invented to highlight this. If you have a monopoly board where the land is owned by the community, then people go around the board and live harmoniously. If you have it where the property can be bought and people pay mortgage and rent and all that stuff, eventually there's only one winner. And you know who it's gonna be? BlackRock. Mm-hmm. It won't even be the people that own property now because inflation is a problem basically around property ownership. Your property value's gone up, but if you wanna sell that house and rent somewhere, well, you are gonna fucking eat up your capital quick. Plus the cost of food has gone up to match the value of houses. It's a fake reality that you've got value there 'cause you have to live somewhere.

Do you think, just hearing that now, I wasn't planning on asking you this, but do you think that you would ever have gone into politics?

I looked at going into politics. It's a cesspool of liars.

Yeah.

And so I, you know, I, I actually hired a consultant. It does keep away good people. I hired a consultant 5 years ago. That's my original plan. My original plan was maybe I can become, I was very naive, maybe I can become education minister and fix the education system by being education minister. Mm-hmm. I hired a consultant to help me understand how to get into politics. And this is what they told me, no word of a lie. And this person, by the way, got a prime minister elected. Okay. They said, Simon, you're going to have to lie. You're gonna have to pretend you think Brexit is a good idea. I'm like, I can't do it. You'll never get elected, Simon, unless you say Brexit's a good idea. I'm like, it's economic stupidity. You know, my favourite line still, when Nigel Farage took a phone call from someone and said, look, I didn't believe in Brexit. I really didn't believe in it, but now I do. And Nigel Farage went, why? Yesterday I got kicked in the face by a horse. I think it's just, you know, like And, and I won't be popular even saying it now. Like I think, you know, people like move on, move on. No, if you made a bad business decision, why would you move on? I will never get elected because of that sort of thing. So I gave up on the political approach and I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna save the problem. I'm gonna fix the problem from the private sector. And in fairness, Elon Musk is doing this pretty effectively, right? He's, he's probably gonna put humans on another planet before meteor comes and blows us all up. He's doing it from the private sector. I think for-profit businesses that do good is the thing now I've dug my heels in on. Right? We will make businesses that are profitable, not charity, cuz I think that's also flawed. Those models have a problem. Profitable businesses that make a difference in the world. And I don't need all that political shit to make it happen. I don't need people to vote for me. Mm-hmm. I don't even need people to like me. I'm gonna make a difference by making profitable businesses that do good with that profit. And I think it'll be more effective. I would argue that Elon Musk has been more effective in fixing potential problems in the world than any politician ever in history. So why would I want to dumb down my IQ and become a politician?

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people might hate Elon Musk for the person that he is often in the public and so forth, but what he's created will be, you know, and it's not over yet.

Yeah, let's see what happens. But I think, again, I can't speak for Elon Musk, I can only speak for myself. I personally believe that for-profit businesses that do good with the profit is the future. And I think politicians, No, every other industry's been disrupted. I actually think politicians and government needs to be disrupted. We, we give all this power to this middleman, this person who promises to do good, and then they get into power and they just want their picture up on Number 10 and they wanna get elected again. Right now, Labour is just thinking about how to make Labour more electable next time. Mm-hmm. They're not thinking about how to make this country better. I mean, Winston Churchill didn't get elected again because he was just thinking about how to win the war, right? And sometimes you need to run a country for the long term. You can't run it so that 2 years from now people say they will elect you. You've got to build a country based on what the country actually needs, not what's most popular on the ballot.

And so over the last 5 years, you've now grown this platform to 11 million people, and we will all know elements of your content. You know, like most people, I will just binge your content cuz I love the stories, right? I love seeing, I love the part 2s as well. Mm-hmm. Do you need a better name for the part 2s?

Yeah, we do.

But I do love the part 2s. But what's the most memorable story? Like, what's the biggest impact? And also, I suppose, the story that sticks with you the most out of everyone you've helped so far?

It's like asking me to pick one of my children. Um, I really enjoy stories where people have been vulnerable and shared their pain, because I think paying doesn't mean you pay attention. Pain means you said. So when people share their pain and then they apply it to something positive, I think that's really inspiring. So, um, instantly who springs to mind, like Kelly Canines. Kelly, uh, on camera with my, with, with her permission, she shared an awful story. Her dad died when she was young, and then her mum remarried, and then, um, sadly she had a very difficult relationship with her stepdad. And in the end, uh, child services got involved and, um, crazy, her mum left Kelly, uh, with the new husband and left Kelly homeless. And it's a crazy story, but Kelly tells the story in a, like, um, almost a positive way that through that pain, through that awful experience, she, uh, found comfort in looking after animals.

Mm-hmm.

It was therapy for her. And then she realised that animals don't have a voice. So when they're in pain or they have a problem, some people don't even know, even owners don't know that their pet isn't, isn't, isn't in a good way. So she started a pet grooming business called Kelly Canines. And I just, I just find it inspiring that someone can take something so awful that's happened to them and turn it into something beautiful and positive in their lives. And I, and I, and I, I think stories like that really resonate with me, not because she's now a millionaire with a big, you know, pet grooming business, but because she's doing something she loves. Mm-hmm. And she's, by the way, she's like magic with the animals. You, it's like watching Dr. Doolittle or something, you know, she's just so special watching her do her, her work. But I just love it when people share that painful story and then they do something positive with their lives with it. So people like Kelly really stick out to me when you ask.

And a lot of people probably have this question, but you give people money, you give people advice. Often you give them a variety of different types of money. I think sometimes you are someone's first customer, which I think is like very powerful for someone to realise they can make money from their passion or hobby. But sometimes you give people a lot of money as well. And so a lot of people are wondering, where is the money coming from? How does, how does it work?

So at the beginning I used my own money. So I put half a million pounds of my own money into the initial stages of this. Um, and then the videos started to make money.

Yeah.

So I make money on TikTok, I make money on YouTube, and then that gives us more money to give away. So it's a kind of a mini MrBeast for business model.

Mm-hmm.

Where we make content and that content makes money.

What is the ripple effect that you are trying to have? Like, how are you gonna measure the impact that you've had on the world? Because I feel like now the impact, 350 million views in a month.

Yep.

Is that right?

Yep.

I mean, that's bigger than television.

Well, I just did a post about that. We, we get more views than the BBC. Yeah, I think, um, I think the views are one thing, but I mean, if you have a dream today, where can you go to get help? We're living in 2025. Name me the places you can go. And I think that's the thing. I think there's a gap. When I was younger, there was like youth centers and Libraries were quite nice, you know. I think all of these things have been neglected. And I, I mean, maybe you can get on Dragon's Den if you've got a product and you're doing all right, it's good on TV, can wait 9 months and then 6 months before it's broadcast. But, you know, I think that we, we need a place where people can go. I've actually been pitching to the government to turn job centers into dream centers. You know, we, we need, we need a place where people can have their dream heard, and we need a place where people can get help to make that dream. So I think the ripple effect for me is like, I'll just take it each day at a time. If I can promote one dream a day, which is what I try to do, then that's, that's a pretty good life achievement. I think if the people watching the content then also go for their dream, maybe one of those people will, you know, cure cancer. Maybe one of those people who invent something that saves the human race from AI. You know, I think it's about waking people up, ironically. And I think it's about giving people the chance to live a better life. And I have a 7-year-old son. I want him to grow up in a world where people are nice to each other. You know, that this give without take thing is really important to me. I've discovered it selfishly, how much it makes me happy, and I want other people to feel it because it's our natural state. And I want people just to help each other. I think it's how we're gonna solve a lot of the world's problems. Stop expecting something from someone. I think a lot of wars are caused by like give and take. We'll give you, you know, this if you give us that. Mm-hmm. And I think if we just started helping each other, we'd have less wars and more people, you know, would have a better life. Um, and I, I want everyone to be rich and a lot of people don't agree that this is possible, but I, I spent a lot of time in Asia and I watched 400 million people in China go from poor to middle class. From 2000 to 2020, I watched 400 million people going to middle class. I would argue that today we don't have a war because of it, because people in China don't want a war. There, there's lots of middle class happy people. Mm. So I think the whole world needs to get rich and people are like, well, if everyone gets rich, who's gonna pick up our rubbish? Robots. Right? Because, cuz the truth is the reason robots are not picking up our rubbish right now is it's cheaper to get humans to do it. The reason robots aren't filling up our shelves in supermarkets is because it's cheaper to get human slaves to do it. And I think that we need to realize that humans are amazing, absolutely incredible things. And, you know, we shouldn't be doing these pointless laborious tasks that we've been dumbed down in school to do. Mm-hmm. So I, I mean, maybe it won't happen in my lifetime, but I'd like to help everybody wake up and give everyone the knowledge to do the thing they love and help them find the thing they love so that work isn't a negative thing. 'Cause you've, you've got 70, 80 years on this planet, you should enjoy it.

I think one of the, um, pieces of recognition that you had recently was obviously winning a million dollars at the—

That's crazy.

The Billion Summit, which is crazy.

Yeah. I cried my eyes out. Weirdest thing ever.

But I mean, of course, because I think that obviously the amount of money is one thing, it's nice, it's recognition, but it's how, how many people entered.

There was what, 16,000 people were put forward for the, for the, for the, the award and the money.

And how many people voted for you?

3.8 million people voted for what I'm doing. Yeah. Which is, it is mind-blowing. And at the event itself, you know, uh, Maye Musk was there. Elon Musk's mum was in, was in the room. Wow. It's a thousand like movers and shakers.

Mm-hmm.

I just felt overwhelming energy as well. Like people, cuz I think over the last 5 years I have had a lot of hate, a lot of people not believing what I'm doing. So there was something in that moment that where everyone's like, hey, you've been doing good, man. And you know, you're not a con artist, it's not a scam, you know, and you've been transparent about the money you've made and what you've been giving away. And I made YouTube videos about the money I've made and what I've been giving away. And like, I don't know, it was just something in that moment where all that negative I've had over the years where people are judging me or people are not believing it, you know, in what I'm doing or, or not being supporting. I just, overwhelming support of love. The money was a small factor in it. Don't get me wrong. I'll be honest.

It's recognition though, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

And, and frankly, someone giving a prince, you know, I think her— I have to get the terminology right— Her Majesty. Yeah, Her Majesty. I think that's the right terminology. Her Majesty, we are in Dubai, giving me a million US dollars and having no catch, just like, keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, there you go. And everyone in this room like, yeah, Simon, well done, you know, like, you and your team, you're amazing. Yeah, I don't know, I— it, um, it was a moment. I mean, this week's been a pretty crazy week, you know, with a million dollars on Monday Richard Branson teaming up with us to help people with their dreams.

And he's your hero, isn't he?

He is my hero.

Yeah.

And I know a lot of people don't like him. I don't, I just, he, he is for me like the only person that stopped me getting teased when I was younger. I, at 15 years old, when I'm on, when I am an entrepreneur, I'm, people think there's something wrong with me because I can't get a job. Everybody at that age in my generation, they were getting jobs, you know, JP Morgan and showing off their fancy, you know, business cards. And I was doing a gardening company, you know, like, and I think that the only person I could ever explain what I'm like to was Richard Branson. I'm like, you know, that guy that's doing an airline and that guy that's hot air balloon and having fun. And that's the only person I could anchor to.

He was a poster in our dyslexic class.

Right.

So we had a specific class for the people who were super dyslexic.

Right.

And they had a poster of him on the wall.

Yeah.

And it was legendary.

Right. That's what I mean. So You know, again, I recently interviewed Richard Branson. I felt like a kid. I'm 50, you know, I'm not a kid. I felt like a kid sitting with him. I was just like in awe of him. Yeah. But in the comments, a lot of people are very miserable, miserable about him and I think have their opinion. But I, he's a hero for me and helped me tremendously through. He doesn't even know he's helped me. And I'm really, really proud to be working with him. So, you know, a million dollars on Monday, recognition from 1,000 like top business people support. Wednesday, Richard Branson teams up with us to help people with their dreams. And on Friday, my book gets launched. And then today, just before I came here, I was just told by my publisher, my book is number 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Like, and I, I'm just ahead of the Pope. We just launched a book, the first sitting Pope to ever write a book.

Yeah.

And, and so they're quite good at writing books. Yeah. Their last book did well.

Yeah, it did.

So, so I think, you know, I'm just, I'm just, oh, I'm, I'm very grateful. Um, I feel I've got an amazing team. People don't realize I've got 26 people that help me with this, by the way. People still think it's me with my phone. You know, I have 26 people that help me with this platform to help people with their dreams. Yeah. I'm, I'm so lucky. It's such a great team and, and the community that, that support me, um, is just mind-blowing.

And so for anyone thinking about whether to buy the book or not, what is the, the core promise of the book for you?

I think the book is there to help you maybe recognise your limiting beliefs and hopefully eradicate them. It is there to help you believe in yourself. But I really wanted to give a sense that the book theme will give you everything you need. Mm-hmm. But to really make the world a better place, you need to help other people.

So you do talk about helping others and building something meaningful. So how does the book practically help someone build something meaningful? Because I even remember when we first met, I was talking about my company and what I was thinking about doing in the future. And you were like, can you do something to help people? It was the first thing you said to me because you were like, you're an experienced entrepreneur, you've done it now, can you do something to help people? And I remember thinking like, this guy is a bit crazy. And I think, you know, that was 2 years ago, I just met you. And I think a lot of people might be like, wow, I mean, like, he is a character for sure. But the more you get to know you, it is your complete mission to not only allow people to sort of wake up from not knowing that they can be entrepreneurs, but also practically how they can go on and do it. And so I made some notes last night, but, um, what is like how to find your purpose, like how to actually identify your purpose, I thought was a fascinating part because people are so confused over purpose and passion.

Yeah.

So how can people go about identifying like a passion and a purpose?

Yeah. Well, if we give away too much, no one's gonna buy the book.

No, they'll buy the book.

But I think one of the things, buy the book guys. One of the things that's quite important is to understand like the difference between like a dream and a purpose. So I think that people get a bit confused about these, and I think the word purpose has come across as so fluffy to people. So, you know, actually my, my dream, just to illustrate this kind of point, my dream is that we live in a world where it's give without take, that we open the door for someone without any sort of expectation of anything in return. If we can help someone today, we should. Give, give about take. I want people to move away from give and take to give about take. That's probably my ultimate dream. I think my purpose along towards that dream is to fix the education system, to help people learn what they're, what they're capable of. And I think one of the things to kind of focus in on is like, make a list of all the things you enjoy doing, you know, be incredibly selfish. Mm-hmm. And then you said this earlier, I think the, Once you know what you love doing, just start something. Mm-hmm. You know, like, thank God I started a gardening company. It's not glamorous. No one thought it was cool. It was dirty work. It was hard. I made lots of mistakes, but thank fuck I did it.

Yeah.

I think people just need to start, you know, like, but try to start within a category of things you like doing. So I didn't like gardening, but I did like sales. I didn't know I liked sales back then. I got a real thrill when I knocked on that door and that person said yes that first time. Thank God that first person said yes. By the way, luck plays a huge part in life. If I hadn't had that person say yes, I might have thought it was not possible, not knocked on the second door because the second door said no. Mm-hmm. So I think that, you know, I learned I like sales, which has now become marketing, much more fancy, much cooler. But I love sales, but I didn't like gardening. So I brought someone else, else in to do the gardening who did love gardening. Yeah. And so I think that's what people should do. They should make a list of things they love. To do, and you might not, you know, fully understand yourself yet, but hopefully you at least understand I'm an introvert, I'm an extrovert. I like writing, I don't like writing. I like meeting people, I don't like meeting people. I like cutting hair, I don't like cutting hair. Mm-hmm. You know, like what is it you like doing? And then try to apply a business model to that thing. I think not enough people have taken their hobbies and making it a business.

Well, in terms of time, I think that's it for us today. All right. Anyone who buys the book on this call on the next day on Amazon, I'll give £500 to, and I'll send you a signed copy of Simon's book. And Simon's been incredible to say, I'm also gonna match it.

So I'm gonna give 3 people £500 each and try to help you with your businesses. All you need to do is drop in the comments down below on this podcast what your dream is. I'll go through those comments 2 or 3 days after the podcast has gone out and I'll pick 3 people. I'll DM you, send you a book, send you £500, and try to help you with your business.

I often think that things like buying someone's book is such a small token appreciation, such a small amount of support. I often think the people who first supported me on launching on my social media, I still remember who those people are because they were total and utter legends when everyone else said it was super lame to be posting on LinkedIn, uh, you know, 3 years ago. And the amount of people who said that to me, and I was number 1 on LinkedIn the other day in the world.

Amazing.

And so that I now get people being like, oh, how do I do it? And it's like, well, there is a way, but at the beginning everyone was like, that is so lame.

And And it's those people that I remember, the people that— it's funny you say about the buying book, it's little things that people do to support you. I think you can actually tell who your friends are through it too. You know, there's a lot of people that pretend they support you and then they don't buy your book.

Yeah.

Or they ask for a discount. I'm like, Jesus Christ, you know, like, yeah, I make about a pound from every book you sell. So it's not like I'm making a fortune. I want the knowledge to get out there in the world.

Yeah.

But you're right. I mean, that early support thing really makes a difference and you never forget those people that do it genuinely. Just again, back to my point, they give without take. Mm-hmm. You'll never forget the people that did that. People that have an agenda, they do it, but oh, you have to do something for me. You also remember those people and they, they don't get as much karma points later in life. No.

Well, Simon, thank you very much for coming on. See you next time. Take it easy.

See you later. What's up baby?

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