$100M Exit at 37: What They Don't Tell You About Selling Your Business

When you've run something yourself for 9 years, you need to go and hire a CEO that not only is going to be good enough to take the business on, but also get them through the next exit, which is a really important part of investment as well. I just couldn't deal with this idea that my competitors were out there getting more opportunities than I was. So for me, it was about being everywhere and creating this brand that Andrew was almost like 10 people at the same time.

You are often the risky candidate, you know, like You know, you're batting against much bigger companies. And so the person on the other side's got to take a risk. And they're not going to take a risk if you send in the junior salesperson. They're going to take a risk if you turn up. And, and you, because they're looking at you going, if I pick you, my job's on the line.

But if you want to really accelerate growth and you want to take every opportunity that's available within the sector you're in, for me, you just have to. Hi, I am Andrew Holbert. And my story is I'm council estate background. I am working class. I am all about starting from the bottom with nothing. I have been on this crazy journey for the last 10 years or so where I went through university, which I got into by the skin of my teeth. I went and did a graduate scheme in the property services sector. We got bought out by a big business, which I hated. I was so good at working for a small business, could not work for a big one. Still not been able to work that out today. Look, when I was 27, I left that business and I started Pareto, my business, from my bedroom. And when I say I had nothing, I mean, literally, it was just me and a laptop and me in my pants trying to work out what the bloody hell I was going to do. for the next 10 years. No funding, no backers, no friends, no nothing. Just the whole idea about creating this great business. Over 10 years, we took Pareto to a £50 million turnover organization, 500 staff. We sold services to the biggest tech businesses in the world, and I was lucky enough to orchestrate a $100 million exit across that time as well. I finished up working a couple of years ago when I was 37, and the last 2 years have really just been about decompression, trying to look back and go, what on earth just happened in that last 10 years? Because there are big chunks of it that I cannot remember. And also just reconnect with my wife and my kids and my family and my friends and really just decompress and just go, wow, that was an incredible journey. We managed to set a goal and actually achieve it, which not many people get to do. And yeah, now I live on a nice farm over in Oxfordshire, generally driving a quad round, picking fruit and cooking jam and all that sort of stuff and eating sourdough. So yes, in 90 seconds, that is my story. Thank you very much for listening. That's brilliant.

As you said, ex-council house, I'm thinking about your LinkedIn profile. You know where people put ex-Amazon and all that other shite, ex-whatever? You should put ex-council house in your LinkedIn profile.

Well, look, my family, so my nan and grandpa, they moved onto that council estate in the early '50s in a caravan. They didn't even have a house to begin with. And they had 3 kids and a couple of foster kids in a caravan in the early '50s as they were moving onto the estate. So, it was a really early thing. And eventually, like we said, As I say, we managed to drag everybody off the estate and out from there. But yeah, that's the real genuine humble beginnings from that perspective.

And whereabouts was the estate?

Well, it's in Oxford, which people would think, well, Oxford's very posh. It doesn't have council estates in Oxford. But yeah, we got about 3 or 4.

So before Margaret Thatcher sold them all off, everywhere in the country had social housing.

Oh, I know. I know.

And what a great way, honestly, what a great way to build community as well. I honestly believe a core part of my entrepreneurial beliefs and my business beliefs came from that community background. So like when I was a kid, every Sunday my entire family would get together in a tiny living room somewhere and we'd all eat together. There would be like 25 of us in like a 4-seater bedroom, 4-seater living room. We'd all be eating hot dogs and like my grandpa would get us all like a bag of sweets each and stuff. But community's so important and I am so grateful for my background. It made me a hard worker and it made me want to do more for sure.

So look, before we dive into some of that and unpick some of that story, What are some things that you think are true that the rest of the world thinks is bonkers, or the other way around, you think stuff that other people think is just ludicrous?

I mean, if you've got all day, I could probably give you a list of 100 things, but let's go with 5. So I think let's go with social media wankers, number one, and everything that they're doing wrong. Balance is bollocks. And I really, that is one that I'm really fired up about. So I look forward to talking about that. Don't leave retirement until you're too old. Do it early. And I'm living that now and just like, it is an amazing place to be. Money does not buy you happiness, and even bright yellow McLarens definitely don't buy you happiness either. And I think number 5, which worked really well for us, you don't need a big marketing budget to make a splash and to create a name for yourself. There are many techniques you can use without loads of money. So yeah, they're the 5 things that I'm interested in today.

Fab. Look, I'm going to start with the McLaren then. So why does owning McLaren not make you happy?

Or money more generally?

I mean, the data says you get to about $70,000 of income because it's US data, and then it's pretty flat from then on.

But well, I mean, in the UK, you start earning like £123K, you go into that very special tax bracket where you'll be paying 60% tax because they start—

Fleeced. It's called the fleeced tax bracket.

The fleeced category.

Is that what it is? Yes. Look, I was very fortunate. I had 2 private equity exits in my time. The first one made me a millionaire and made me be able to buy my mum and dad their house, buy my sisters their house, buy my own house. I gave my dad quarter of a million pounds to retire. Famously, I went to Barclays on a quad bike and took quarter of a million out in cash and then drove it to him and dumped it on the floor in a Sainsbury's bag. So I did all the nice things I wanted to do the first time I got my money. But the second time I was very lucky. We had a second bite of the cherry. We made a significant exit at that stage, and that meant I could go and do something a bit more frivolous. So I actually went up to Nottingham to buy a burnt orange Aston Martin DB12, I think it was. And as I walked into the showroom, on my left was this bright yellow McLaren just winking at me as I went in, a 570S. And you know what? I walked in, I'm not even going to test drive it. I'll just buy it. It was like 100 grand.

100 grand.

Here's my debit card. I'll just buy it now. It's fine. And I didn't, literally didn't even test drive it. They turned it on in the showroom and I was like, sold. It's fine. I'll take it. So they delivered it to my house and I drove it around. Now look, I'm a big guy. I'm 6'3 and 18 stone. If anyone's driven a McLaren, you have like bucket seats. You need the ass of like a supermodel to be able to sit within these things. I don't have an ass like that. I have an ass like a rugby player. So I couldn't drive it for that long because it gave me dead legs, which was dangerous. Um, so yeah, look, I drove the McLaren round for a while and I just felt like a total fraud. Honestly, I just felt awful. Everyone was like waving and like doing the thumbs up as you go past. And I say it just reminded me of like The Inbetweeners, like bus wanker. Every time I was going past, it just really sort of set me off. And then, uh, when you drove into London, people would step out in the street and take photos of you and all that sort of stuff. Now, whilst it's fine to feel like a celebrity for 30 seconds, actually I wasn't about wearing my wealth on my sleeve. I'm still not now. I don't buy expensive clothes or all that sort of stuff. I just try and sort of do me and try and stay out of the limelight, which obviously having a bright yellow car didn't help. So yes, I sold it after about 6 months, lost 10 grand, the worst investment deal I've made since crypto in 2021. And yeah, I just don't think the key to happiness is not money and material things. For me, it's time. Money allows you to have time back and having worked 100 hours a week for 10 years, as an entrepreneur, being able to go back and just not have an alarm clock and have my daughter come in at 7 in the morning, who's 6 years old, and cuddle me until we wake up and get ready for school, or like going for coffee with my wife after you've dropped the kids off. Those things for me are way more valuable than some wanker car. And yeah, that's really where I'm at at the moment in my psyche.

And before we go on to retirement, which might be the next one, but Why did you feel like a fraud or, um, what, what was that?

It's a good question.

Because is that, is that because you don't feel, is it, is it your, is it your background? So like you don't feel like a rich person. So being a rich person or looking like a rich person is just, yeah.

I think it's probably a mindset thing. You know, when, when I was a kid, we had to earn everything. You know, we, we lived in a house and we, we had a roof over our head. I had amazing parents, but we had to earn everything. So if we wanted to buy some toys, we'd have to go to a boot sale and sell some of our toys. is to raise money to buy more. And that's true. That's the sort of thing that we used to do. So all of a sudden driving around looking like potentially people thinking that you were someone special, that was quite difficult to come to terms with. I much prefer random shit cars. So I have a 1959 Series 2 Land Rover that has been completely refurbished with no roof and it's bright purple and it's got big old wheels on it. I'd much prefer to drive around my farm in something like that than try and take the McLaren around. Yeah, I think because I didn't come from money and money has never been important to my family at all, I was almost a bit embarrassed with that wealth that was there and showing it overtly. So that just didn't work for me. Not to say I may go and buy an Aston Martin eventually, but not at the moment. I'm not in that space.

And so let's segue into the retired at 37 buyback time. Will you get itchy feet, do you reckon? Tell, or tell me more about the buying back time thing.

I think for me, like, and I mean it, I, and anyone that knows me, I was genuinely on all the time. And in property services, which is what we delivered, buildings don't turn off at 5 o'clock and everything's great, right? You go throughout the night every single day of the year. And a big client for us was London and Whipsnade Zoo, and we've had that contract for 10 years or so. So look, animals, they don't care what time it is. If they're going to cause trouble, they're going to do it. And famously on Christmas Day, the reindeer escaped. No, on Christmas Day, Santa let them out and they were running about, which is a true story. I got a call on Christmas Day saying the reindeer are out. I'm like, it's fine. The elves will put them back. It's all going to be fine. So for me, being on all the time, I could deal with it. And I am amazing at handling pressure. I may have not been a nice person, but the pressure was never going to break me. But I was able to handle it. So I've just found this incredible joy in being able to be present in the moment. And that's probably what I mean about retirement here. So when my daughter was about 18 months old, I remember I was at home with her and I was very rarely there then because I was always out and about. And she went and she— my phone wasn't in my hand and she went and picked up my phone and put it back in my hand. She couldn't even speak. And that's because she was so used to me just being on the phone all the time. And it was a real moment for me when I've just thought, I've got this wrong. This isn't what my life is about. And it was one of the spurs to actually try and get the business sold and take a step back. And also, itchy feet. One thing I did, which is great advice for anybody who's selling a business, I worked with a business psychologist for the last 8 weeks leading up to the sale, a guy called Stuart Duff at Pearn Candola. And he just prepared me for what it was going to be like. And he likened it to winning a gold medal. So he was like, a lot of gold medalist athletes, they train and train and train and train. And then they get their reward and then they get depression afterwards. And he said, it's about swimming towards an island and eventually you're going to get to that island. But when you get there, you better work out what happiness is about for you. Otherwise, you're just going to be hit with depression. And so we worked on that for 8 weeks and it was incredibly powerful for me to think about it that way. And yeah, no, I've been really good for the last couple of years. I'm loving life and definitely not interested in starting another business at this stage.

Very good. Well, um, so thinking about your always on then, I guess that's the balance is bollocks. So, um, 100-hour weeks. If you hadn't worked quite so hard, you might not have got quite the thing, but you reckon you're either all in and you're winning or you're just sort of bumbling along.

Yeah. And I actually don't say this to be offensive to many people, but I just think that if you are running a business that's doing a million quid and you've started and you're getting to a million quid, but you're really struggling to go from like a million to 10 million, which many people do struggle with that growth piece.

Yeah.

I just couldn't deal with this idea that my competitors were out there getting more opportunities than I was. So for me, it was about being everywhere and creating this brand that Andrew was almost like 10 people at the same time. And I also talk about myself in the sales process as like an external person, because when I was in sales mode, I was a character and I was delivering as that character, as Andrew. It was a bit of a defense mechanism for me. So what I had to do was people used to say to me, oh, you're so lucky being an entrepreneur. You can have a lay-in on a Tuesday. I was like, well, you can have a lay-in on a Tuesday, but then you're not out meeting people, networking, writing sales proposals, trying to find new marketing ideas and things. So for me, I just couldn't let it go. And actually, when I told my wife I was going to leave the business and start Pareto, she wasn't that keen on the idea because, not because she didn't want me to do it, because she knew that I would go all in. And we've been together nearly 10 years at that stage.

Yeah.

So I think like I have those tendencies to just do it and like balance for me just isn't an option. Now, of course, there are people who have wonderful lifestyle businesses and some people can make that work. But if you want to really accelerate growth and you want to take every opportunity that's available within the sector you're in, for me, you just have to absolutely fucking grind. And I mean like every time consistently outperforming everybody else. And that's what worked for me. And I put a lot of effort into that.

Uh-huh. And, um, okay. The marketing piece, which you've mentioned there, um, what you said, oh, you don't have to have big money to make a big impact. So what were some of the things that you Yeah. Did that you—

Again, look, this is real practical advice that people can use. So for me, we didn't have a marketing budget until we're about 8 years old, you know, probably like $25 million, $30 million turnover at that stage. What we were doing was we were creating stories for us to be able to tell. So the way we did that was various things, but one of them was social value initiatives. So we do loads of social great things for people so that we could have stories that we could tell on our social media. So for example, there was this under-11s football team, a girls' team in Abingdon. They didn't have their own football kit. They had to use the boys' kit unwashed so they could play their games. And I thought, nobody wants to wear an 11-year-old boy's stinky kit, let alone another girl. So we said, how much is a kit? They're like, 300 quid. We're like, crikey, buy 2, buy a training kit, whatever. Like, just actually do these things that's gonna make it great for women in sport. So, um, so it's stories like that. And then, hey, you go and tell that story to everybody that you could possibly tell that story to. And the other thing that really worked was article writing. So in the property services sector, there are like 5 main magazines in what we do. It's quite a big sector. So I just canvassed all of the editors. I always made sure I knew who they were. I would write articles. This was before AI. I mean, this is a lot easier now. I'd write articles and send them to them and say, hey, if you've got any upcoming space for this sort of topic, here's a story that we've told. And we had over 150 articles published in the property press in the end. So every time someone was opening a magazine, it wasn't a full-page ad. Advert on Pareto, it was a story that Pareto had written, and it just continues to tell those things. The other one, and finally, but really importantly, was awards. People are really nervous about applying for awards. We won over 50 in our time, and we still win them today for various different things. Could be entrepreneurship, could be ESG initiatives. It could just be the general business situation that we've been in. But for me, like, external awards are a great way of validating your business and giving yourself credibility within the sector that you're in. And if you have a great brand that people want to get behind within the sector, generally they're pretty excited that you've won an award outside because you're promoting the sector that you're in as well. So for us, that worked really well. So doing social things so you can tell the story on social media, doing articles that are very easy to write now with good ChatGPT use, and don't be lazy with ChatGPT, you know, you need to use it correctly. And then, yeah, the final one is just awards and getting all those stories out there. And that is free, most of that that I've just said. And you can go out and create that.

I think we had a, we followed a similar strategy at other businesses I've scaled. And one of the other things which you don't mention is that your competitors fucking hate you because they see you everywhere. They see you everywhere. And so they, you know, the employees, everybody just hates you and your firm because it's like, why is our marketing so shit? They're everywhere. And it's like a 6-pointer in a relegation game. It's just brilliant. Outthought, outmaneuvered, outworked.

It's like you were in, uh, it's like you were in the room. I'll give you, I'll give you a real example. This is a true story. So I was, uh, I was a big donut guy, right? I love donuts. It's partly why I got 24 stone at one point. So I was eating donuts. In 2019, we spent 25 grand on donuts, which may have not been the right thing to do as a business, but that was our strategy. But every single time, and I mean every single time, if I was going to a client pitch or a client walk around, so in our world, we had to walk around buildings so we could price them up, and we'd all walk around together with the competitors. Every single time, turn up with a box of donuts with their logo on. And here's the extra little hack. You always get a vegan and a gluten-free option as well. So you can imagine I'm walking into a room of like, say, 20 blokes that are all like in their hard hats and high-vis and their big boots and everything. And I'm like, hi guys, you want to have a donut? I've got the client's logo on these donuts.

You want to do it?

And you just create this noise in a positive way. People fucking hated it, Dominic. They hated it exactly like you just said. And Andrew, as the character, I was always so nice to everybody. I didn't have any enemies. You couldn't say anything bad about me because I was just sort of doing all these nice things. But all these little subtle hints on all these positivity things and being seen for being different. And I still haven't met someone who says, oh, do you know what? I don't really like donuts. Generally, people like donuts, especially if they're one of those different ways.

The, um, you said, I, I'm putting on, it's a persona that Andrew the sales guy's a persona. I think it's a defense mechanism. Is that, is that against a hatred of sales or?

Oh, well, yeah.

Or do you, are you, are you, do you appear to be an extrovert, but you really are an introvert? What's the—

Yeah. I, I, I tell you what, the business psychologist couldn't work that one out. I think I need a lot more therapy. No, look, the reality for me, it actually was a defense mechanism against criticism. So let's say I was to go into a pitch and it just fell flat and they didn't like it and they didn't like me and they didn't like that. It was very easy for me to go, well, do you know what, Andrew? That's not you. When you get back in the car and you go home, you're a different person than you were in that room. And look, business is a lot about negativity. It's about constantly just taking negative shit happening all the time. And I think that was a real way for me to just go, yeah, that's Andrew over there. If you don't like Andrew, that's cool. That's not me personally. And there was one occasion, I can't use the brand because it's such a high-profile one, but I did a pitch and they absolutely hated it, right? They hated me and they wrote a letter on very formal headed paper and they said I was skittish. They said I was unprepared and they basically said I was terrible. Now, look, I've sold £250 million of services to big tech businesses, right? Very rarely did I get this feedback that I was a total disaster. And because it's on such formal paper, I actually have got it in my office in a frame because it's like, and I've highlighted where the negative feedback was. Now, that opportunity actually came back round again because the provider they put in didn't do a very good job and we got another bite of the cherry. Now, I didn't put myself in the pitch that second time because why would I? They didn't like what I said. So I took an air traffic controller with 30 years in the RAF experience who always wore a suit and tie, and I put him in that pitch and we won. And we won that contract even after we had the negative thing. And it remains a fantastic contract for Pareto. And it's absolutely true that actually you just need to understand in sales who's on the other side of the table and what story are you telling. And the great ability of sales is to change your story almost eyeball to eyeball, conversation to conversation, and quickly work out on the other side, what are they interested in and what are they not interested in? And most of the time we got that right.

Let me interrupt the conversation just for a minute because I don't want you to miss this. My new book, Mind Your Fucking Business, is out on Amazon. If you're thinking yet another business book, I think you're wrong. This is actually a blueprint to cutting through the noise and achieving unparalleled success for you. It's based on 10 years of business coaching, spotting similar problems that people have had, and coming up with real-world solutions. If it's supercharging sales, if it's mastering talent acquisition, building a powerhouse brand, cultivating a company culture that breeds success, then this book is a ticket to your transformative journey. It's filled with practical tools and frameworks that I use every single day with my clients as part of their coaching program. If you want to take your business from good to great, look, you can go to Amazon and you can buy it, or you can click the link in the show notes and head over to monkhouseandcompany.com and I'll give you a copy. I'll send it to you today. I'll send you a copy for free. I want to help you build a fantastic business. Now back to the conversation.

Um, I've, I've got, we, I know we've got one we haven't spoken about, uh, social media wankers, but, um, but before we do, I've just, that all the way through, all the way to exit, you were still selling.

Yes.

Because I just wrote a blog post this week, which is so often I meet founders who go, oh, I need to hire some salespeople so I don't have to do selling. And that eyeball-to-eyeball thing is, you know, you are often the risky candidate, you know, like, you know, you're batting against much bigger companies. And so the person on the other side's got to take a risk and they're not going to take a risk if you send in the junior salesperson, they're going to take a risk if you turn up. And because they're looking at you going, if I pick you, my job's on the line, right? You know, yeah, we get some building shit done, but You know, that's like less, that's not important to me really.

You are so bang on. I 100% verbatim agree with what you've just said in our sector. So look, I was competing against businesses 300 times our size, right? Billions of billions of turnover. So then Andrew turns up with his donuts and his rainbow laces and says, hey guys, do you want to listen to me for 5 minutes? Um, but actually, so what that meant for us was that we were very, very different. And you are 100% right. No one loses their job for putting one of the big boys into that job because in property services, because it's statutory compliance, you have to choose somebody to do it. You can't not do it. So they always had to make a choice, and that was a good thing. And what we tried to do was make sure that we were obviously going to be the choice. That was always how we were trying to make it happen. But we would do things like, you have to use your skills and the benefits of your business, you have to use against the big companies. So for example, our carbon footprint was 169 tons per year, right? The big boys, their carbon footprint was over a million tons per year. So when we were going in and talking about sustainability, we were saying, if you truly care about sustainability, do you want to support a million tons a year or 169 tons? And by the way, here's a jar of 5,000 jelly beans. And this is their representation, and ours is one-third of a jelly bean, just to make sure you understand how different we are between those two things. You see, food played a big factor in my sales process. And, um, so like for me, it was about like the David and Goliath thing. It was about saying they're too big, they've lost touch, they're not gonna deliver a great service to you. They don't care about you as a customer. Look at this amazing journey we are going on. We do care about you. Let us grow with you. And when you're in big tech businesses, and, and I mean like most apps on your phone we were delivering to, it was that sort of level of customer base. They care about that stuff. They love giving the little guy a chance because they believe anybody can change a light bulb. It was all of those amazing other things of the social value that we did and the journey we were going on and the tech we were using. They wanted to be part of that and support us. And look, we grew contracts from like $100,000 a year to $5 million a year. That's absolutely true. By going on these amazing journeys, we went into 7 countries in Europe, found myself in bloody Romania and Bulgaria more times than I would like to say. Yeah. Um, you, you just need to find great businesses that want to take you on a journey and that can be very, very powerful. And the big companies and the competitors, they can't get anywhere near that because they can't deliver that.

Yeah. And then this, so this last one that you think is this, um, people on social media telling you what you should be doing. What, what is it about them that drives you nuts?

I just want people to understand that just because you have a great big social media following and it looks like you're really successful, you're not right there. And people who are starting out and My TikTok account has 280 followers today. I'm really getting out there in terms of growing the social media base. But it's very easy to look at people on social media and go, wow, isn't their life amazing? But it is this whole generation of we only tell the positive stories on social media about what's going on. We don't tell everything that's happening behind the scenes. And I think my advice to anybody, especially younger people that are looking up, It's hard work and graft. That's what you need to actually go out there and do. And a lot of these people that say they're making $100 grand a month in this, that, and the other, they're not. It's a total lie. Unless maybe OnlyFans and that, but that's a whole different thing. But yeah, like, and actually, as someone who's sat here and sold businesses for $100 million, literally, I can tell you, like, it's not quite as glamorous as they make out within there. So I just think on social media, try and find people that feel a bit more real and authentic who will tell you about the negative stuff that's going on as well. My story's amazing and the 10-year journey is amazing, but do you not think I felt bad when I didn't go to my kids' nativity play or I didn't go to parents' evening or I missed things when I should have been there and I wasn't? Those things still play on me now, even as a more mature person.

Right.

So actually, that's why I'm so driven to try and fucking enjoy everything as much as I can in this short period of time. And if anybody knows Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I really feel like I'm in this level of self-actualization at the moment in terms of I'm so grateful for those really small things. Just going back to that money doesn't buy you happiness point, going to my mum's and having a cup of tea and having a chat is one of the best parts about my week. And that may sound really boring, but I love it. And being with my kids and doing their homework with them or taking them swimming. That's power. That's wealth for me. Like, that's where I want to be. And all the social media wankers, they're great, but you can have it back. It's not what I'm interested in. And actually, I love my family more than I love them. And I think I just, a word of caution that don't believe everything you see on the internet because it's not true.

I think it was easier to be an entrepreneur in my father's generation because basically they just had kids. My dad watched me play rugby for the first time in my 40s. Right. He had never seen me watch. And my mother said to me when we came back, she said, did you play rugby? It's like, like twice a week, every week. Like you must've washed my kit and bought my boots. But, you know, just no interest at all. It's totally, totally different.

My, I even go back to my own dad. So like my dad was a factory worker for 46 years. So he started at the age of 15 and until I gave him the money to retire at 62, he was in the same factory every single day, which is almost almost incomprehensible for some people to think about doing that as their career these days.

Yeah.

But he was out the house at 7 and he was back home at 7 o'clock at night. He was a 12-hour-a-day guy, 5 days a week. But on the weekend, he was an entrepreneur because he was— my dad's incredibly great with his hands and making things and installing things. And so he used to install alarms on the weekends on people's houses. And early doors, he used to cut out wooden dinosaurs and then he'd go to boot sales and sell them and put the little stickers on them with the name. So early customization stuff in the '90s before any of the AI stuff you have today. So actually, although I don't consider anyone in my family as being an entrepreneur, there's been hugely entrepreneurial traits within the family.

Yeah.

And predominantly because they didn't make enough money from the 2 low-paid jobs that they had, my mum and dad, to sustain 3 children and a house. They had to then do additional things to try and top that up to make sure that it was possible to keep going. So there were points where my mum had 3 jobs and my dad had his day job and 2 side hustles at the same time. And that is entrepreneurship. Ultimately, you do what's needed to make it work for your family. And yeah, I'm incredibly grateful for that, even more so now in the situation we're in.

One of the things that I ask guests about is there's 3 bits to this. One is, you know, there's some stuff that we've talked about that, you know, only you can do as a founder, like leading the sales, you know, Finding equity partners, raising capital, building a vision and selling it. There's a whole load of stuff that only you can do. Often people get stuck and their business plateaus because they're too in the weeds. So I want to ask you how you managed to buy back time. Then leadership team, other than you, did anyone on the leadership team do the whole journey with you? And maybe you've got some comments on that. And then Systemization, which we may or may not get to depending on time. But I think the leadership and U3 and up are intrinsically linked.

So yeah, they're probably the same point in there. So look, one of the things I'm very, very proud of is in our time, we hired 15 senior leaders into the business and we did not lose a single senior leader in the 10 years that I was CEO of the organization. Everybody, I personally hired them. I personally interviewed them. I wasn't a CV guy, as you can imagine. I was like, forget the CV. Let's go and have a burger. Back to food. Let's go and have a coffee and actually just tell me about you. And I always used to turn it around. I was like, why do you want to come and work here? I know you can do the job, but why does my job work for you rather than why are you going to work for me? I was thinking about it the other way. That was very powerful. And look, so everyone came on the journey. Everybody. And they joined at various points. So no one was there from the very, very beginning because I was there on my own. Um, but yeah, maybe Bill had joined maybe 18 months in, something like that. So he was there for like 7 and a half years of the journey. And then we just had various people join throughout that time.

So was your exec team 15 people at the end or was it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So at the end of when I exited, it's bigger now. Um, but by exec team, I had, uh, we had a sweet equity pot. So basically, Just in terms of how you bought back time from starting off until we got to about $20 million, we did not buy back time. I did absolutely everything.

That's about 200 people.

Uh, yeah. So yeah, probably 100 and 150 odd people, 200 people, that sort of level. So until then it was me. I did 7 jobs, like easily, easily. And I had a great guy, Bill, who was my finance director, my IT director, my compliance guy. He did absolutely everything else. After we sold to our first private equity, which was NVM, we made about £20 million out of that deal. Um, we then raised a sweet equity pot of 20%, and that 20% sweet equity pot went to those 15 individuals that I just mentioned.

Gotcha.

Now, some of them were already on the journey. Some of them joined shortly after, uh, that journey had occurred. So we were able to incentivize that senior team to be part of what we were doing into the future, and that's partly why we were able to retain. But we've been running the business for 6 or 7 years before we created the sweet equity pot. And, uh, that sweet equity pot at the exit went on to be worth a significant amount of money that was split between them. And they were able to do things like buy their houses and get their dream cars and all the stuff that people who are just on normal salaries in normal jobs are able to go and do, which was an amazing thing. But I think for me, without that, it would've been harder to attract some of that talent to the organization at that stage. So, Every role I was trying to do. So like one was marketing, one was like project management, one was in the commercial side. We started to hire great people in so that they could take those duties off me.

Mm-hmm.

The other important thing was after we did the first deal, I effectively led a management buyout to run the second deal again. So I was the main shareholder again, and I ran the second deal. But I knew at that second exit, I wasn't looking to be here after that exit because I'd done my time and I'd worked very hard for it. So the hardest role was finding a CEO.

Yeah.

So you can imagine when you've run something yourself for 9 years, you need to go and hire a CEO that not only is going to be good enough to take the business on, but also get them through the next exit, which is a really important part of investment as well. So we scaled high and low for that person and we found someone and we managed to do it. And they were with the business for a year or so before we exited and it was really successful. But look, that was a hard time for me because everything I'd built then I was taking a step back from. They weren't doing things the way that I would've wanted to have done it. But Andrew, you made your choice. You don't get to make those decisions any longer unless you want to come in and run it. And I was not a CEO that wanted to exit and then come back in again, as many CEOs do, especially founder CEOs, because they don't like how the business is being run. That wasn't for me. And so, yeah, it was all about hiring great people and making sure that I understood the reason of why it was going to work with us. And the sweet equity was just a positive kicker. Uh, in addition to that as well.

And what, what was some of the, in sort of thinking about Bain and, uh, you know, their work, you know, looking at sort of founder mode, what sales is one of the things. What are some of the things that even at the end or towards the end before you hired the CEO that you were still, this is worth my time. This is a, this is leverage for us.

Um, I'll go back to that marketing piece. Um, I had created a brand for myself within the sector. So I, um, I also volunteered for the Institute of Workplace alongside what I was doing. And I ran a charity called Tomorrow Meets today as well. So I was doing quite a lot all at the same time. And, uh, but what that meant was I had real authority within the workspace sector. So my brand was very valuable for continuing to raise brand awareness. And in a stat we have in 2022, there was an external survey done on the sector around the top 10 brands within the sector, and Pareto was number 6. So we had businesses 300 times our size, which is true, and we were the 6th most recognizable brand within the sector. with no marketing budget and no scale to us whatsoever. We're only like 40-odd million at that stage. So I think, um, for me it was just about telling the stories and being out there and doing the networking and writing the articles and the consistency. And the consistency never goes away. And the awards and stuff, it was all about being everywhere. Just like, just a point on networking, which I think is a really valid point. People think networking is running into a big room going, oh, here's my card, here's my card, here's my LinkedIn, here's my It's not what networking is. You need to go and network with people and chat to them and make a connection with them and not try and sell anything to them so that when they maybe need your product or service, then they contact you and go, ah, remember we had that chat over that glass of red? And the most powerful networking time is after the event when people are walking back to get on the tube or get on the bus or whatever they're gonna do. Those 30 seconds of interaction when you are walking to the tube station or the train station or to the taxi or whatever, That is the valuable time because everyone's dropped their guard. They're not in a formal situation any longer, and you can just talk about your kids or family or whatever it is that people are now going back to, which they sacrificed because they weren't there. That's a really powerful time to be around. So make sure you hang around for that bit if you're networking.

Fab. And what books should people read?

Well, I'm not really a reader. There's a couple of reasons. My attention span is zero. That's the first one. But also secondly, I really struggle to stay interested when I'm reading. But I will give you 3. I have 3 ideas of books that people can read.

Yeah.

Number one is The 4-Hour Workweek. And what I love about that book is he never works 4 hours in the book, which is quite wonderful really. I mean, the whole thing is a lie from the very beginning. But what he does teach us is that you are a very expensive resource, so you should be hiring other people to do things for you rather than doing everything yourself. And I think that is good entrepreneurial advice as you're growing.

So let me, I've got, let me, I just want to chip in because there's, I've got a thing that drives me demented, which is so many times, did you have an EA?

I did not have an EA. No.

Ah, you see, I, do you know what? I was Because I thought you might not, right? Because there's something about, uh, I think it's part of this mindset with money thing or, or where you come from, but there are lots of people who don't have an EA and then they're doing $30 tasks or £20 an hour tasks. And it's like, why did you not have an EA?

Yeah, I was too much of a control freak. I'm an upstart. No one tells me what to do. I, I wasn't, I look, this is my own hangups. I couldn't trust anybody to do it to the level that I was going to do it myself. It's an insecurity thing, a part of the psychology stuff that I did with Stuart as well. But also, I just think I'm the fucking best at everything, and I genuinely believe I am. And yes, that's an ego point to that. But also, I didn't want anyone to let me down. I didn't want to blame anybody else for something not happening. And let's just say we had this amazing sales opportunity and they asked for a meeting. For whatever reason, the EA messed up the meeting and I went at the wrong time, or I didn't get on the call and we missed the opportunity, that would eat me alive that we missed that opportunity. I would not be able to forget that for a long time. And even though it would be my fault. So I was obsessed, Dominic. No one could do it better than I could. So that's partly why I was running. And you're absolutely right. I was doing $10 tasks at times, but that was also how I was effective because I was really fucking good at it.

Next book. Sorry.

The next book is called The Escape Manifesto. I actually read this on my honeymoon. And look, the crux of the book is if you want to take a step out and start your own business, create a little fund for yourself on the side. So stop buying all the coffee, stop going to football, stop pissing money away on a Friday night. Create a little pot on the side of money, maybe about 6 months' worth, if you can do that over a period of time, and just give yourself a safety net. So that if you want to step out at one point, then that is your safety net for 6 months to have a go at running a business. That's the crux of that book. It's not a very long book. It's not a particularly good book. But actually, I found it a very accessible read when I was on the beach in Tanzania or whatever I was, especially as I don't like reading.

Well, I picked up a book years ago in a petrol station called The Little Book of Calm, and it had a thing in saying, have a fuck them fund. Have 3 months cash because if you don't spend money, you can have 6 months. And that just meant I went back to work the next week as a volunteer and just was fucking awful in every meeting I was in because at that point I didn't care if I got fired. So I just started speaking my mind. I was insufferable.

I love that, the fuck them fund. It's so true because look, I was talking to a friend of mine only today. He's 40 years old, 2 kids. He is grinding his ass off in corporate Yeah, he is working every hour that there is. He's working late in the office in London. He's coming back, putting his kids to sleep. He's then working after that, and then he's doing stuff on the weekend so he's ready for the week ahead. He's in a normal salaried London-based corporate job. I'm like, mate, what are you doing? You can do this for yourself and make a whole lot more money. And he's sacrificing time with his kids now because he's not able to give it towards them, and that's really getting him down. And I'm like, mate, Like, you are living like most males in their 40s. You're living the challenges that they all have, that actually there isn't enough time and you have to make sacrifices. But my whole point is, if you're going to make fucking sacrifices, make it for yourself, not for someone else, because actually that's the opportunity of entrepreneurship.

And so many people are in that position. And that's where, you know, in the UK, certainly it's not like 21-year-old kids who've come out of Cambridge, You know, it is people in their 40s who go, I've done this forever. I could do this for myself. Totally.

Yeah. And actually, I think, um, once the kids get a bit older and you sort of, you know, they start thinking for themselves a bit more and you're not needed as much in terms of that day-to-day interaction, that's a powerful time. Do you know what I, what I've come to realize when I'm say 55 years old and the kids have flown the nest and they've gone, I would be an amazing entrepreneur again at that stage because you have all the knowledge. you've chilled the fuck out for 5 minutes in terms of calming down. Your kids have gone off the nest, so you've actually got a little bit more time properly within your day and you're a bit calmer. Pareto, people always thought we're a very young business because we're very sort of vibrant in our approach and in our marketing. Actually, half the people we were hiring were over 50 because I really like people at that age because they were experienced, they were calm, they'd been through it all again. They weren't necessarily trying to change the world, And they'd made all the mistakes in their 20s and 30s and started to mature in their 40s. It's a really powerful group of people to hire. And yeah, it just worked particularly well for us. And I really enjoyed those older members of our team and they made, they were an important part of it for us. It was really, really powerful.

What's the other book?

The final one is The Beer-Mat Entrepreneur, which is about the Cobra Beer founder. And I just like it because it's about food and drink, which has been a core theme of what we talked about today. But it's just this whole concept of starting the business on the back of a beer mat in a pub and just making it happen. And I think that's incredibly powerful. And for me, just make it happen. Just start. Just go out there and do it. There's nothing that's stopping you. And if all these great businesses can go out there and make it happen, you can. No one's special in any of this. Just fucking give it a go. I just think everybody needs to try if they can.

I've got one question to finish with, which is, you know, if you think back to the school that you were at in Oxford, that council estate, how many of them escaped? Just you? And so then the question is, was it the mindset instilled by your father or did you get lucky somehow?

Yes.

That's a deep question. Look, when— before I was the age of 16, I hung around with the wrong crowd, if you like, you know. So I, I was in all sorts of trouble, uh, by the age of 16, including knife crime and theft and, and bad stuff, you know. I— the change, the moment for me that maybe was lucky, I just had, um, I was able to get decent grades in my GCSEs without trying very hard, and I got into sixth form. And almost exclusively, all my mates that I was from that life from, they did a They didn't go. And then I got into sixth form and then— You changed your friendship group.

Yeah.

My friendship group was a load of middle-class white guys who were all going to go to university and they had aspirations and they had 2 parents and they'd never been in trouble with the police and the bikes they rode weren't stolen bikes and all that sort of stuff. These were, and actually that became my friendship group. And because I've always been incredibly organized and very gregarious and outgoing, then for 2 years in sixth form, all I did was organize parties at private school girls' houses on Friday nights. And this was before WhatsApp. WhatsApp and before the internet and everything. So we just had an amazing time. But that was the change for me. When I left those people behind, when I went to sixth form and they didn't, my life sort of changed at that moment and my aspirations changed as well. So I don't know where they all went and we don't have the joy of knowing all of our friends as we get older. But I feel like I was one of the lucky ones. If I hadn't have got into sixth form, there is no way I would've gone on this journey. I'd have been having a baby at the age of 16, 17. That's what would've happened to me.

Me working in the factory with your dad.

Absolutely right.

Yeah. Andrew, it's been fab talking to you. I've, uh, I haven't, uh, laughed this much in a long time. I've got a sore jaw. It's been brilliant. Thank you for coming on.

Uh, thank you so much for having me. I, I feel I've sworn an awful lot in that video, so maybe put a swearing, a swearing blooper at the start. But no, uh, really appreciate the opportunity, and you're a fantastic host. Thank you, Dominic.

Appreciate Next time.

The world is changing. Uh, there's, I call it a cataclysmic change. Every single thing that we feel, touch, see is going to change and is changing. We've got to empower entrepreneurs. We've got to empower governments. And we've just got to cut some of the shit out so that other people don't have access to it. Be very aware that you're going to lose people and you're going to lose good people on the journey. If you're totally passionate and you are trying to do something that nobody's ever done before, it's difficult for people to come with you on that journey because they just don't— they can't push as hard as you want to push. The average person on the street cannot comprehend a total lifestyle change or a total system change. It's too hard. It's too big. It's not for them. It's for us.

What have you got on the horizon that you think will impact growth? I think if you.