The 80/20 Deal Structure: Why I Never Buy Businesses Outright | Lee Smith

Buying 100% of a business is almost always the worst deal structure from my experience. It took me a long, long time to realize I wasn't actually good at running a business. Probably after 10 years of owning a company, I realized I wasn't very good at it. So when I learned mergers and acquisitions, it was absolutely amazing.

Fascinating that you can have a $50 million turnover business with only 10 employees. Certainly makes the HR stuff easier.

My God, very smart in today's world. All of the regulation, everything the government does hindering business. There's more taxes, more regulation around employees. They're making it easier for employees, rogue employees, to sue your company, to take them to tribunals. It's an absolute nightmare running a business right now. I'm seeing a lot of companies going into liquidation administration because— Hi, my name is Lee Smith. I was brought up in a council estate in South London. Never had any kind of capital behind me or a plan to wealth, but I always knew wealth was something I really wanted to achieve. I went from being a DJ to working in a jeweler's to working in law firms to starting my own web design and IT company. And then in 2014, came across mergers and acquisitions, which completely flipped the switch in my life. I've now done 30 mergers and acquisitions, building 2 separate sector groups to £10 million in profit and Absolutely loving life right now. The stars have aligned once again in my career. And yeah, and that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Very brilliant. Thank you for coming on. We're going to get into unpack all of that. But before we do, I just want to see if I can find some things where you, something that you believe that you, where you think the rest of the world would think you were crazy or stuff that you think the rest of us believe that you think is Totally bonkers. What are some of those things?

The main thing, which is the kind of main theme I come across almost every day when I speak to business owners, is I've— I'm finding the UK government to be completely anti-business right now. And I honestly believe we're in a very short window of opportunity where you are either going to be wealthy or have options or some kind of freedom, or you're gonna be led down a path of total control. And I'm having these conversations almost every other day with owners when I sit with them.

Okay.

Right.

That's one, right? What's next? I'm just so, it's so hard for me to not jump it, but let's get them on the table and then we'll jump back to them.

Buying 100% of a business is almost always the worst deal structure from my experience.

Okay. Third.

Um, by the end of this decade, the most valuable asset in Britain will be, um, an SME producing, uh, profits.

Okay. Okay. And what else?

You don't need to understand what a business does to own it successfully.

Okay.

Fab.

Where, where, um, where do you want to start? Do you want to go back to, do you want to go back to the government? No, leave the, no, we're going to leave the government. Let me go with where you are are, right? So you don't need to understand a business to own it. You don't have to know anything about it. You do have to know how to run a business. You just don't need to know how that business does its thing. Is that what you mean?

I think all of it is up for scope because it took me a long, long time to realize I wasn't actually good at running a business. Probably after 10 years of owning a company, I realized I wasn't very good at it. So when I learned mergers and acquisitions, it was absolutely amazing. I realized I could go out and buy something, team up with somebody that does know how to run a business, and leave me to go out and do all the fun stuff, drawing the diagrams and the structures of where we're all going to get to. And someone else can go in and do what they do best, which goes to the kind of EOS philosophy, the right person, the right seat.

Yeah.

I'm a dealmaker. I like strategy. So I've owned a HVAC company now for 6 years. It's a fantastic business and I still barely understand what they do, to be honest.

But you've got a managing director in there and he or she is obviously very good at running the company. So do you have a series of KPIs that you're like, okay, as long as you're delivering This, I'm happy. And what's the, what's your cadence for, I mean, how many days, how many days a year do you, are you there managing that business, not managing that business?

I was in there for probably one, one day per week, I think, in the first several years, maybe one to 2 days, because it was, I'd bought it just before COVID So I was probably in there one to 2 days per week. So the, the founder was still involved. The 2 key directors were still involved. So all I All I instilled into that business was a very, very light-touch structure using the ERS framework. So there was monthly board meetings, which sounds radical, but they weren't really doing board meetings every month. I put some KPIs in there. So very, very light-touch stuff to improve that business. And it's gone all guns blazing. But now I have found someone very experienced in that sector who grew a company from $20 to $80 million, and he's now taking it to a completely different level.

Aha.

And so, which is sort of an evolution of that, of that, like phase 1, phase 2, because you probably couldn't afford, could you? You couldn't have afforded him in 2021?

No.

No. I mean, if you could, they're hard to find. So you stumble across these people occasionally, and then if that's what you're trying to do, then the paths align. And Does that, does that, uh, I mean, it does fit with my philosophy, which is, you know, if you should be able to run the company 2 days a week, which you were absolutely doing because you weren't in the other 3, but you were doing— it's not that you're not doing— you're thinking about the business, you're the strategy. You don't need to be in there behind a desk to have to be thinking about where this business might be going. You're doing—

No.

It's almost like that's not work. Do you know what I mean?

Like, you know, if you enjoy it, it's not Yeah, everybody else would probably see it as not work, but for me it was, it's just as, you know, it's just as complex as somebody internally, but I'm trying to figure out what the best strategy and structure is for the business going forward.

Why did you buy the HVAC business?

Um, I, well, that's a good question. I was at that particular time, I would say it's lucky, but you're only lucky when you put a lot of effort in.

Yeah.

I was looking for companies of specific sizes and specific balance sheets. So in 2019, I bought 2 companies, almost identical, both doing roughly a million pound profit. Let's say both sort of 8-figure businesses. And so there wasn't— there was a plan because I was after construction specifically. But what it's turned out to now is being absolutely perfect sector because with AI robotics coming in, it's actually probably one of the best sectors to be in.

Yeah.

There's now private equity, there's overseas companies now getting involved in the UK market. So I feel quite lucky to have got into the sector, but there was a little bit of a method to the madness back then.

And you said the previous owner stayed. Which is why you could do it because you had some management who knew. And what was their motivation to sell to you and then to carry on? What were they trying to achieve?

Well, he owned multiple companies and he was running the business half the time from Spain, half the time from the UK. So he wasn't full-time either.

Right.

So I guess for him, he could see a way out because the business was doing well. He was extracting capital. Obviously I come along and say, look, you've got a great business, let me buy it off of you. And that frees him up to focus on the other activities he does, which is other businesses and living.

Oh, I see. So you took the founder out, you took the owner out, but you kept the rest of the management team.

I bought a majority stake of the business.

Okay.

So I kept him in. So he retained 20% of the business.

Right.

And then 2 of the key directors got equity as part of the transaction.

Okay. Which goes to your other point, which is the 100% ownership is typically not the best deal.

Yes.

Because I don't understand the market. Yeah. Okay. So let's dig into that. That's because you think it's, you don't understand the market. It means management are motivated, have the same incentives as you.

Yes, exactly. Because there's a massive drive at the moment. I'm seeing that there's lots of property investors that are moving into mergers and acquisitions. They want to buy a business.

Right.

So what I'm saying is you don't have to know the sector as long as you retain the people in there and use an ethical structure. I've got a specific kind of partnership ethical structure I use to keep everyone in and aligned because I'm not dictatorial. I like to build good cultures, which is what attracted me to the whole EOS system and things like that. So it's about empowering the people in the business already.

And when you buy them, is there always a, there's always a plan to sell them? You're not, this is a means to an end. It's like buy these. I know you then you buy, you're merging them as well. So did that, you've now created, you know, you're not sort of buy and hold separately. You'll buy and merge to try and get some synergy.

The original plan was a, it was a 3-year plan, but then COVID happened 3 months after I bought the business. So that plan was out the window. So it's now 6 years since I've had the business.

Right.

Um, it's going from strength to strength. It just did its best year last year. Um, and like I say, I've now taken on a new business partner and we're expecting 50% growth minimum this year in revenue and more than that bottom line because he's now bringing contacts and contracts and resources in.

Okay, very good, very good. And so before we get to the UK government one, the most valuable asset class at the end of this decade will be profitable SMEs. What's your thesis here?

I'm seeing a lot of companies going into liquidation administration because a lot of businesses, as you'll probably see, there might be an IT engineer who's gone and started a business because You know, it's something they enjoyed. And I see that you probably see that a lot as well.

Always.

Yeah.

Yeah. They're not necessarily entrepreneurial. I would say majority are not entrepreneurial.

No, there's, there's, um, they're running, they can, they run a sort of steady business, but they're, you know, often it's referral-based rather than sales and marketing, you know, that, that always not quite, you know, they're often they're sort of hand to mouth in terms of sales and marketing. They get to about a dozen people because that's sort of span of control for one person and they get stuck. The IT service business, there's loads of them. One of our— we work with a company called Spruce, which is a startup in the heat pump installation business. They've built a software platform that allows heat pump installers to do that. And they see the same thing in the heat pump installation business. It's like one guy and then 10 helpers. And so very common. And those, government comes along and everybody's got to pay more and more.

In fact, there's a couple of those types of businesses we're actually at legals at the moment. Renewable energy heat pumps.

Okay.

Yeah, there's several we're looking at acquiring at the moment because exactly that, they've reached a plateau. They don't know how to grow the business. They're struggling either on the financial side, the resources, or the marketing.

Yes. And also their success means that they're so busy, they're like here and they can't take 2 days off to go and do marketing or, you know, because they're just so busy and they can't take time off and it just gets people just burnt out. Exactly.

And they've got to do all the compliance, they've got to deal with HR issues, which gets more and more complicated now because the government's making it harder to employ people. So when we come in and say, you know, we've got dedicated HR people, we've got dedicated finance people, we can take some of that pressure off of you to carry on doing what you enjoy best and we take on the stuff you hate.

Yes. I mean, one of our longstanding clients is a Canadian PLC called Constellation who own multiple thousand software, B2B niche software businesses around the world. They don't do mergers and acquisitions, they buy them. In fact, if they buy something big, they split it up into small groups, but they do have that HR and finance layer over the top that allow the owners to, founders and owners often to carry on running those businesses With some help, which is great. Um, so let's go to the UK government's, um, anti, anti-business. The UK government is anti-business. What's the, um, what's your, how do you feel about this?

Passionately. Every day I log into LinkedIn and I see so many people Posting about the same thing. Like I said, 99% of my meetings I have with business owners, they all on the same page with this. All of the regulation, everything the government does is hindering business. There isn't anything that I can see where it's encouraging business. There's more taxes, more regulation around employees. They're making it easier for employees, rogue employees, Um, to sue your company, to take them to tribunals. It's an absolute nightmare running a business right now. It's still the, it's still the best thing to do in my, in my mind, but it's getting so much more difficult, which, which I think is probably why so many business owners are interested in what we're, um, proposing to them.

Yes.

We're giving them, we're giving them more tools to combat it.

Yes. And it's just that level of expertise and assistance.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the, how big did you, your IT services business, how big was that? And is it still in your portfolio or did you sell that? And that's how you—

It's still in my portfolio. So when I started mergers and acquisitions, it was, it was a $200K business.

I mean, I thought it was a business. You were that man and 10 helpers.

I was absolutely that person. It was $200K. I mean, in the first year we had £1 million worth of leads come in, but it was just me running every department of the business. So it was $200K. Then I learned mergers and acquisitions. We got it up to £2 million revenue, which is where it still sits today. Didn't cost us anything to get from $200K to $2 million. It was 3 mergers with smaller companies. And so now we're reviewing options because I think AI is going to disrupt that market as well.

Yeah, totally. Do you care when you do your mergers and acquisitions? Do you care about geography or do you use that as a mechanism for increasing the target market or?

Depends on the sector. So in the renewable energy and the HVAC sector, we're open to going up and down nationwide because we've got the resources. In the IT market, it's been more focused around London, Greater London, some flexibility.

Okay.

But in my early career, I was driving all around Midlands, the North, the Southwest, the Southeast doing deals. But then I realized it was taking me away from my family.

And what's the— how old are they now?

My kids?

Yeah.

I've got a 24-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old aggressive teenager.

Who you can speak ill of because he or she probably doesn't listen to dad's podcast.

No, not at all.

Well, at 14, I mean, what do you know? You know nothing. If only you were me and you knew everything like I do. Yeah. Anyway, that's fine. So, um, I'm, uh, how many, how many employees in the whole group now?

There's probably about 60, about 60-odd employees because we use a lot of subcontractors.

Okay.

Um, because it's in building services construction, so there's a lot of subbies. We've got about a base of 60 at the moment.

At the moment. Yeah, we've, one of our clients has got 10 staff and turns over £50 million because everything they do is through general contractors because they're a, they're a house builder. And so it's just so fascinating that you can have a $50 million turnover business with only 10 employees. Certainly makes the HR stuff easier.

My God, very smart in today's world.

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What's the— how small do you go? Because it seems to me that quite often people have businesses which are almost unsaleable because they're so small. And does your model allow you to take advantage of, I guess, buying power in a market where there's lots and lots of small— I mean, what do you do? Would you buy— would You said earlier the HVAC business had a great balance sheet. So what are the things from the buy side that you look for in a business?

I think the minimum size we would look at probably at the moment is probably £2 million, going up to £80 million.

Okay.

Yeah. The biggest—

In terms of revenue?

In terms of revenue, that is. Yeah. Not too fussed about the profitability because we can always fix that if it's not profitable at the moment. And in terms of what's attractive, it depends. They might have a client we're trying to get into.

Okay.

Could be a region we're trying to service. It could be a specialist skill we're looking for. So it does depend because I'm in 3 sectors at the moment, 4 sectors at the moment. So it does depend on sector-specific kind of strategies.

And so one of the things that I was saying to you earlier is that often we're working with clients who are thinking that they'll exit their current business. And they might then be interested. I'm sure they'll be interested to, you don't need to understand the business to own it. So take some capital that they've got, do something. They don't want to sit on the beach and do nothing. What you've done, how many, you did a whole load of, you've done a whole load of exits as well, haven't you already?

Yes. Yeah. A few smaller exits along the way. And in 2024, I sold 3 construction companies back to a business partner.

Okay. So what, when you're, when you're, let's dig into this a bit more. If you're looking, if you're one of our, one of the listeners and you're thinking, right, this sounds really interesting. What, what do you look for? How do you structure a deal? How do, how does one go and do this? If I want to go and buy a business tomorrow, what's your, what's your advice? What should my, what should it be on my shopping list? And how should I go and find one?

For the general person who hasn't got oversight, as in managerial experience, I'd probably look for something with second-tier management in place.

Okay.

We don't necessarily look for that, but as long as there's somebody in that business that can act as a general manager or as a light MD, and then my business partners can mentor them and oversee them and put KPIs in place.

Yeah.

Um, I would, I would say £2 million revenue as a minimum, just because it's some kind of infrastructure stability.

Stability. Yeah.

Yeah. And like I say, profitability doesn't matter, but just, just know what you're— you've got to have an idea of what you're looking for really from the outset.

So look, let's, let, um, maybe you don't want to do this for your business, but say, say it was a £2 million managed service IT, managed IT business. And it's barely, it's like not making much money. I mean, really what's happening is the owner's taking out the dividend and they're paying themselves okay, but the business is then pretty low in terms of retained profit. What do you think that business is worth?

Now there's multiple ways to work that out. You could do a recurring revenue, like 1 times recurring revenue, for example. I would typically look at a standard 3, Maybe 4 multiple on profit, adjusted profit, because most IT companies, their balance sheets are zero.

Uh-huh.

And it's usually just the recurring contracts is, is where the value sits.

Yes.

But it depends. You do have to do an exercise. Maybe you'll— you don't need their office. I'm actually going through this process myself. I've got a few buyers, um, who have approached me and I'm doing it the reverse way.

That's right.

I'm working out what And what they don't need in my existing business and normalizing the profit.

Okay. Right. Okay. So adjusted EBITDA so that you can go pay me a multiple on this adjusted EBITDA, 'cause here's all the stuff you don't need. Yeah.

Adjusted EBITDA. Yeah. We, I mean, we've got our own in-house evaluation tool that will do the exercise and do a 2 to 4 multiple based on 3-year average or current year.

Okay.

Which tends to work across most deals.

Okay. And then if that's where you are buying, what are you hoping when you put it together? What's your sort of longer-term, was 3 years, now 6-year investment thesis? You buy it 2 to 4. What do you think? What are you hoping to sell at?

So we've got a very clear idea actually. So because we've now got the renewable energy and the HVAC group, we've got the platform companies ready. We're in talks with lots of businesses right now. So we're buying at a 3 to 4 multiple and the exit is looking at a 7 to 10 Conservatively 7 once you hit those levels, but 8 to 10 is possible.

Okay. And why do you think you have this sort of divergence of this? Why do you think people should be owning profitable SMEs rather than property, say? Because you said you've seen people move from property into owning SMEs. What, what's the— what is it about owning a business that makes you optimistic for the future versus, I guess, being an employee? You know, like a business owner versus— is that, is that, you know, you can either be an employee or you can be a business owner? Is that—

Yeah. And look, I'm not knocking being an employee. My daughter is an employee. She's got— she come out of university, she's got a good a good career, but she's realized that even with her above-average salary, she needs a second income. It comes down to taxes for me is the clear answer. Owning a business allows you to optimize your tax efficiency through expenses. Obviously depends on accountants. Well, I think that's the difference. I think that is—

It does, doesn't it?

It does. That is the differentiator. You can be happy being an employee. That's great. But with the cost of living in the UK in particular and the war that the UK government is waging on individuals, it's very clear and real. Everybody knows it. Everybody feels it. The cost of energy. There's so many factors that are hurting people at the moment. And I think that's only going to get worse over the next 2 to 3 years, by 2030, I think there will be a clear choice. You either own a business and you have options and spare cash, or you are just an employee and you will be struggling even more than you are now, is in my opinion.

Okay.

Which is my ideal scenario at the moment is to buy more businesses, make all of the employees shareholders in EMI schemes. So when we do exit, they get a payday as well. That gets them onto that Onto that ladder.

Okay. And the directors, what are you doing there? If I think about a typical private equity deal, you might have 20% sweet equity, the CEO would get 10%, and another 10% would be spread across the leadership team. Do you structure it like that or somehow differently? Because you said in You've given the director shares, and then what proportion of equity then is in the EMI scheme across the employees?

Yeah, it's a good one. We were looking at at least having a 5% spread for— if you think about it, someone listening to this might say, well, 5%, that's nothing. But at the end of the day, we're giving multimillion-pound businesses, we're effectively gifting 5% to the team because we realise they're important. But I think that's the point. That's the cultural shift, is I think this is something that should be done more and more.

Yes.

And what proportion do you think you would advise people to sort of ring fence for the leadership team?

What I've seen is 5 to 10%, but it does depend.

Okay.

It depends on every scenario. It depends on how many people there are. In the HVAC deal that I did, as part of the process, Um, the, the 2 key directors got, I think, 5 to start with, then it moved up to 7.5%. Um, but I don't think of it like that. I always, I always think that everybody who's involved with me, as in key directors and shareholders, I want them at least to have a 7-figure as a, as a bare minimum exit when we, when we sell.

Because otherwise it's, it's, it's nice but not It's not impactful.

Yeah, 5% of nothing is nothing.

So yeah, you want, you want pay your house off.

Yeah, I tie it to a value.

Yeah, pay your house off, buy a car, right? And then that, that was, you know, that was a good 5 years. Good. Excellent.

Yeah, exactly. So I like to bring it back to actual figures.

And so when you're fixing, fixing up these businesses that you've acquired, what are the typical, like, you know, day one? Do you, you've, you know, you've mentioned EOS. So, you know, What are the things, what are the tools in EOS? What are the problems you solve culturally, operationally? What are the things you see all the time that people haven't taken, haven't fixed? Because you said, oh, monthly board meeting, right?

Ta-da.

But I mean, it's not like that's, you know, you've gone, oh, look at this, there's a thing you've never heard of. It's like, it's a thing you have heard of. It's a monthly board meeting with some KPIs. But lots of people don't have them.

They were doing, I mean, this was a £12 million company at the time. So they were having board meetings, but there was no rigid structure that there'd be one every month. It may be every, it might be in 2 months' time or 3 months' time, or it was very random. As soon as I got involved, I just made sure it was every month with the EORs. Meeting framework, just so it was a little bit of structure.

Level 10 framework.

Set some budgets and targets.

Yeah.

Simple, not just a verbal, um, verbal plan, written plan. And it's amazing what you can achieve when you, when you actually set targets.

Hold some people to account, have some accountable people for the, for the, yeah, for the, for the things, a few things.

Yep. And a shared Um, vision of the future.

Yes.

Okay.

Which there wasn't. It was just a really good business. Um, but there wasn't, there wasn't a sail set in a, in a clear direction. So that's something I sat down with them all and we came up with that clear, clear vision.

Yeah.

That whole, you know, it's, it's sort of, well, we'll probably do about what we did last year, next year.

Yes.

That sort of bumbling forward, which isn't bad, but it's, you know, If you want to double the business in 3 years, you've got to do 20-odd and double it in 5, I think 17 compounded. And then you're being explicit about something and then that drives the budget and then that says, well, what might we sell them? And are we growing geographically more customers or same smaller customers charging them? And it turns into a strategy before you know where you are.

Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, we decided, I mean, every 3 years they were working with tier 1 contractors, some of the big players that like to not pay. So again, another strategy was direct to end user where possible, no more tier 1s. So lo and behold, 6 years later, we've not had a really significant bad debt. Simple things.

Yes. Well, do you know what? I was looking at the finances this morning with somebody and we were doing a cash flow profitability and cash flow analysis of the last few years and they've been trading in the Middle East. And you could see that the Middle East was just sucking cash because they pay after 6 months as opposed to in advance. And, you know, that hadn't— it wasn't a— it was a deliberate strategy to go into the Middle East, but they hadn't actually calculated that that was tying up £1 million of working capital.

Significant.

You know, that they haven't factored into the price. And just so you know, they were actually doing invoice financing in the UK to balance just Things that they sort of ended up in that they hadn't done deliberately. So just fascinating. As you say, you look at those tier 1 contractors and you go, the way they treat you should mean you might say, oh, that's fantastic. Look, we've— remember looking, doing some due diligence on a German business a few years ago, and the bigger customers should have been more profitable, but there was this tier of customers, the biggest ones, and they weren't the least profitable, but they were definitely less profitable than the mid-market customers that they served because they They just beat them over the head and got a discount. And again, when we did the due diligence and shared it with management, management almost didn't— it was a surprise to them that they were like, oh no, they must be more profitable. Well, that's not what your data says. It says they're less profitable.

I think you can be too close to it, which is why I think it's better to be detached for that reason as well, because you can see it from outside with a clear clear head, you're not too tied into, it sounds glamorous, move going to the Middle East, but then if you're not actually drilling down into the profitability and the cash flow of it, you can easily miss it.

And have you got some things that are working well or not work? Hiring people, hiring great people is always a challenge and winning new customers is a challenge for some. Are there some things that you are seeing across the portfolios in terms of hiring that's working or what, even though the economy is not booming, that you're winning because of something you're doing?

Something that really helped me about probably about 3 years ago was a book called Who.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It was absolutely fascinating. And it was a book, I think it was from billionaires and their experience of hiring people and their framework. So I integrated that framework into hiring processes.

Yes, I'm just— I just turned around to see if I could— yeah, there it is.

Yes.

A man with a bookshelf. Yes. I love it. Jeff Smart and Randy Street.

Yeah, absolutely fantastic. For any business with hiring issues, that book is a must.

Fab. And so that's— you've then again, then that becomes a playbook for everyone, every business in the, in the group.

Yes.

This is how we're going to hire. We've now got a structure and a process.

Yeah, I transcribe it, put it into kind of a document, and then share that with, um, the teams to then implement that into the hiring process rather than a, a casual video call and, oh yeah, I like, really like these people. Um, much more strategic questions and trying to filter out the nutters because there's lots of them.

Yes. And what about, you know, your businesses are winning and growing. What are you doing that your competitors are not doing?

Well, I think we've kind of hacked it now by acquiring someone from one of the largest independents who's got all of the contacts. So he's now got the contacts, the clients that we would have liked to have. We've now got access to them. And we've got access to the personnel that we didn't have access to before. So I think we've just completely flipped the script and upgraded everything we were doing, which is why I'm so bullish on what's going to happen this year.

That's— I mean, we've got, uh, one of, uh, one of the clients that we work with for a few years, they've gone from 0 to 10 million ARR. And, uh, Oliver's number one go-to-market plan is hire the best rep, from each of our competitors. And it's exactly that access to market. You don't have to buy the data on who your competitors' customers are. You've just got someone who knows who they all are, how you sell against them.

Just fascinating.

So underrated to hire people who know things.

And this was through an acquisition. This was through a failed acquisition. I ended up headhunting effectively this MD who's now my full-on business partner, and we're going out and acquiring together.

Fab.

And he's improving my business. And I offered him equity, which was exactly what he was looking for. And he was being underpaid. He was on a very high salary, but he should have been a shareholder.

Yes.

And I told him that. I said, well, come and join me and I'll make you a shareholder if you deliver. And now we're going out and buying Fab.

Lee, we've mentioned Who. What other books have been useful to you on your journey that you think people should read?

I think one of the go-to classics, Think and Grow Rich.

Oh yeah.

Completely changed my world in every way. Just the whole mental thought process. Might be very woo-woo for people, but, um, yeah, I'm a passionate meditator and definitely focus on energy frequency, those kind of things. So Think and Grow Rich is a foundational book for me. Um, Die with Zero, um, was a bit of a different kind of book that I really loved. Gave me a different perspective on—

Die with Zero.

On life in general.

Who's the author?

Bill Perkins. I've got it next to me.

Okay.

I might cheat with 4.

Yeah, no, no.

What's the—

just tell me more about Die with Zero. What's that?

Well, it's the traditional model is you build up this pile of wealth that your previous generation never had, and then you leave it when you die. And it gives you this concept that your children need it most around the age of, I think it's something like 26 to 30. So it completely changes your previous programming that you just leave it to people when they don't really need it. They've been through the pain and the struggles.

Because I think the other stat is the average age of somebody who inherits in the United States is 67. I mean, it's like, it's like, and you just think, if only I'd had that money, you know, if somebody had given me that money when I was in my 20s or 30s, you could have bought a business, started a business, done something. But at 67, yeah, you know, you've probably already sorted yourself out.

Yeah. And I think it just hones you on the whole thing about live your life because it, you know, it says by the age of 65, you've pretty much You're not going to be physically able to do all the things you want to do, which is kind of the retirement age, which is nuts, which is why I'm a passionate traveler. I travel and do as much as I can. I want to see the world as much as I can before I get to that age.

Yes, indeed. And you wanted another one. What's your other one?

The Fourth Turning. That's the third book. And the reason why The Fourth Turning is because While people are freaking out now, what's happening in the world with the war in Iran, Ukraine, and wherever else is going to be next, maybe Cuba, the Fourth Turning just shows you that we are in a predictable cycle. We're in that 100-year cycle where currencies collapse, where there is more volatility. So it's all predicted throughout history that we are in this period, which is why I said to my family, we need to get out of the UK from 2026 to 2028, specific period. Where it is predicted to be the most volatile in the 100-year cycle. So I can talk to my family about that and hopefully it relieves some of their anxiety about what's going on in the world.

And where are you going?

That's another conversation. Okay.

Right. Fine.

Fine. Okay. Fab. Lee, it's been absolutely fab having you on the show today. Thanks for coming on.

It's been a pleasure to be here.

Next time.

Leadership isn't about theory. It's about making decisions without all of the perfect information. It's about leading from the front, and it's about remaining calm whenever the pressure is on. I, I quite often talk about state management, and actually our team, if we show up in the morning when we walk through that office door in a shitty emotional state, Guess what our team does? They just reflect that back at us. Whereas if we show up in an energy-rich state and actually focus on all the reasons why it can work out, then guess what? We unconsciously give our team the permission to actually be their best selves as well, and they'll generally match our energy, right?

If you start a business in Warsash, right, or I start one in Salisbury, you know, and you say to people, we're going to be the best in the world at X, people just roll their eyes, you know, you know. And, and whereas in the US they go, they go, yes, what can I do to help you?

Exactly.

I mean, it's like, I love your, I love your passion. And over here people just go, oh, dickhead.

Great leaders know when to break the rules.