10 Ways TO WIN at Business!

Alright everybody, welcome to another Blab/Hangout. Super excited to have my friend and special guest Stephen Kelly, CEO of Sage, to talk to us today about how to get your idea to make you money. It's great to have you back, Stephen. You're in your London office again?

Yeah, I'm in London today. I'm heading out to the US next week, but just here today. Really good to be here, Evan. Really looking forward to this one, the big idea. And how that kind of makes money. It's good.

I think this is the first time we've done back to back where you're actually in the same location because you're always somewhere else in the world. So you got some time to be at home.

Yeah, it's good. Well, you know, my, my job, like any entrepreneurs out there with customers, colleagues, connecting the two, and that's where magic happens. So that means I spend a lot of time out on the road.

Cool. Well, we got a ton of questions coming in, but before diving in on that, I wanted to get kind of your high-level thoughts your single biggest piece of advice for entrepreneurs who are trying to make money for their idea, what would you tell them?

Yeah, actually, ironically, it's probably counterintuitive. I'd say focus on your big idea. Think about who you serve and what difference it's making to them and how it changes lives. And money follows. I would always say never kind of pursue this holy grail of money because that's not real. Always kind of come back to what we've said before. Be passionate about a big idea, believe in yourself, really focus on the customer value, and you'll build a great business. And we'll get on to detail and some examples of that during this Blab, I'm sure. But it's really the key focus is what problem you're really trying to solve, what value you're going to create, and then scale that up, really kind of come over any bumps in the road that you have. Enormous resilience that takes, we know. And, and the great thing about the idea, the idea changes on the journey, and the more you test the idea, the better the idea becomes. So, um, and, and then you pursue it. You know, we've talked about this so many times, but it's so true, uh, you know, pursue your passion, and money is the byproduct of the fruits of your labor, and you have delighted, happy customers and a volunteer army out there.

I love it. And I love the word value because for me, you know, business about providing value. The more value you provide, the more money you're going to make. You want to make a lot of money, provide a lot of value. You want to make a lot of money quickly, provide a lot of value quickly. That's the endgame. And I think, you know, starting the business around something that you're also— is valuable for you, not just the customers, like you're scratching your own itch. Like a lot of successful businesses have been started that way. And we'll get into the details because there's tons of questions coming in. So, so let's dive in. The first one came from @palvinov. @palvinov. Sorry, I said that wrong. How do you validate the idea before spending time building it?

I think, yeah, first of all, come up with an idea and it's normally a pain point. There's a lot of examples where you in your lives will know a frustration of a consumer. You look at actually which Richard Branson, we've just announced him for Sage Summit. He's an innovator, he's a disruptor, he's probably one of the greatest world entrepreneurs, and he's tried a lot of ideas. Some have failed and he's left them behind. He's failed fast and then moved quickly. But he, he always looks at kind of where's the gap in the market, whether it's travel, whether it's music, uh, what is it that we can create with our idea that's going to change the world? And it comes back to what value we create and who we serve in What problem we solving? And I think the key thing is there's a guy as well, Richard Reed, who started a big smoothie company called Innocent. And he said, you know, all you need to do is be 70% sure of your idea and then just crack on and get your idea out there as a business because you will evolve it. And I think the worst thing you can do is sort of analysis paralysis, try and come up with the best idea in the world. And because that's not real, what you need to do is shape your idea sufficiently, go and meet friends, meet buddies, maybe angel investors. When I've angel invested in a lot of companies, people have said, look, I don't want you to invest today, but I've got an idea. I might come back to you in 6 months' time when I've got a kind of couple of trial customers and I ask you to invest. But today I just want to test drive the idea and kind of you, you kind of bat it around. You reshape it and you let me think about it and then I'll go away and build a business based on that. So I kind of think the key thing is think about those key questions, those trends, like what's the audience you're serving, what value you're providing, how are you going to make a difference, and kind of what is the thing about your idea that is going to be life-changing and provide massive value for hopefully millions of people.

I love it. It's never been easier to test drive an idea. With services like Kickstarter out there where all you need is an idea or a prototype and then make a video and tell people about it, it's never been easier to go out and get customers before actually having a launch and then going to manufacturing. I just ordered a little nano drone that fits in the palm of your hand and that uses GPS to follow you around while you're like running or skiing or whatever, and it records it and then uploads it to the cloud. And I bought that off of an Indiegogo campaign, and they raised over $3 million to create this nano drone. And they may not have known if it was a good idea or not. They may have, you know, jumped in too soon. They may have had to test and tweak along the way, but this is validation. And now they have the money they need. You know, that's, that's all marketing dollars. That's not even getting investors into their business. They're not giving up any equity, and they raised $3 million in, in money to be able to build their product. And so it's never been easier to use the technology today to test drive and see if there's an appetite for your product. And if not, then maybe you need to tweak it, because rarely is the idea that you start with where you end up. There's always tweaks and changes. And so having market feedback as soon as possible so you're not just creating the vacuum can be really helpful.

Yeah, I agree. On Kickstarter, you know what, they've raised $2 billion, $10 million backers now, 100,000 projects. And I think you're right, Evan. Not only is there's never been a better time to have an idea, there's never been a better idea to do things like crowdfunding. I think the key thing is you need to own your idea. You need to— and it comes back to Evan's tagline— believe. You never want to abdicate kind of responsibility for your idea, but don't be kind of too precious about your idea because take feedback, especially from early customers. And improve your idea all the time, improve your product, improve your service. Because as Evan said, I, again, I'm angel investor in a lot of companies. And when I've seen the first business plan, and some of these companies have grown to like valuations over $100 million, the first business plan and what they ended up with was pretty radically different. But boy, oh boy, did they test drive and find out what worked before they really scaled it up. And then they iterated it all the time. And I think the world is perfectly tuned to that. In terms of speed of execution, the speed of now.

Yeah, you know, you look at BMW, they started as an airplane manufacturing company. That's why their logo is a propeller still. Lamborghini started off in tractors and then went into cars when he bought a Ferrari, and Ferrari told him, you know, don't tell me how to make a car, you stick to making tractors. And he said, I'm going to make a better car than you, got into Lamborghinis. And so it's It's a great point, and your business will change. My business has changed. I don't know how much Sage's business has changed from the start point to where it is now. I know you just made that huge announcement and you're all in on the cloud, and, uh, you know, business will change from the original idea to, to where you end up going, what will make you successful.

Yeah, the other thing, Evan, you know, relative to Sage, Sage started in the '80s, and the problem we solved then was actually digitizing accounting records. On the first generation of PC technology, our personal computers. You know, the radical disruption in technology with 4 billion people around the world with smartphones means that all our apps are coming out now mobile first. And everything's about real-time accounting, but it's way more than that. It's about payments, it's about payroll, it's about integration and the movement of money. So entrepreneurs just don't have to worry about kind of their back office. But the next radical change we're seeing is something called the back office and the front office, where we're smashing the walls that kind of used to exist, where you had a little kind of back office accounting department and bookkeepers and accountants, and then the sales guys at the front end never talk to the guys in the back office, even in a company of 20 people. Um, and I think technology today radically changes that. So just like consumers, as entrepreneurs, we can run our businesses from the palm of our hand, from smartphones. We now all the stuff around our pipeline, all the predictive analytics about what that will drive in terms of cash flow. And you know, you can do stuff like within 3 seconds get an increase on revolving credit and all that stuff through clever technologies like predictive analytics. So again, I think there's two things. One is your big idea, and then always have your social antennae out there to the radical shifts, both in technology and users and preferences in your marketplace and the people you serve. To always innovate yourself, always kind of disrupt yourself. And the examples you quote, like BMW and these great companies around the world, really opens your eyes up to say that the start idea is never always the destination.

Rise Online was asking, and you answered a little bit, but he was asking, how has Sage improved their products over the years?

Wow. I think this is just a relentless thing. We measure something called net promoter scores of our customers, the accountants, partners. And every time, and actually me and the whole of the executive team actually measure ourselves on our Net Promoter Scores. So that drives a lot of innovation, that drives a lot of connection with our customers. And last year, I'll just give you a statistic from us. In our R&D department, we rolled out 250 significant product releases during the fiscal year, and everything kind of, you know, you'd expect to be cloud-based, Probably a third of our customers now are on the cloud and exploiting the opportunity through having their data up in the cloud. Also, mobile first is a real kind of radical shift because, again, Evan, you and I run our lives with smartphones, whether it's an iPhone, Samsung, or whatever. We expect entrepreneurs, especially the millennials, to be saying, "I just kind of want to run my business like I run my life." So there's a ton of innovation. Do we do enough? I'm always frustrated. I want to do more. I want to do so much more, but boy, oh boy, we're doing a lot. I love it.

All right, let's head to the next one from M. Abhishek Anand. I hope I pronounce that okay. Does the idea really matter or the way you market it?

Hey, that's a great question. I think the idea matters, but more importantly, it's kind of the relentless execution, starting with What is the value proposition? And then go to market with it. And again, with the digital age, you can get stuff out there in weeks that used to take years. A good example actually of the shift in terms of marketing, I do— you probably saw the film Joy, J.Lo and Joy Mangano. In terms of what happened there was what was a mop company, used their life savings. Actually, 70% of our customers use their life savings to fund their businesses. But there was a pivotal moment when it just was not moving. I don't know, it was like on QVC where we just couldn't get any sales away. And she, she was going to get dropped as a product on that channel. And she persuaded them to give her the opportunity to pitch her own product. And like within the next 20 minutes, they sold 18,000 mops. So does the product matter? The idea? It was a great idea. But the sales and marketing was awesome. And you know you can market your product better than anybody else. And the internet is a channel, and YouTube and, you know, Vines gives you a unique opportunity to market your product perfectly. So that lady, after 10 years, has sold $200 million worth of mops. And you probably wouldn't think there's a lot of innovation in the world of mops, but boy oh boy, a hat tip and a salute to Joy.

It's a lot of mops. Yeah, you know, for me, this is— it's both, right? You need the idea and you need the marketing. If you are marketing a bad idea, it's not going to take off, right? Especially in this era where word of mouth is so fast and people can talk about how bad your product is. The best marketing in the world won't save a terrible product. The idea is also important because if you have crappy marketing, then it's not going to take off either. So you need both. I think also As Stephen talked about the execution, the creation of the product, 'cause a lot of people have an idea, but they don't actually then create that product or create that service and it just sits there and they're, "Well, one day I'm gonna do this, one day I'm gonna start," and they never actually start. And so the execution of actually creating the product or creating the service and then marketing it is both, right? It's not just one or the other. You need to have both if you're gonna have success as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, interestingly, Ivan, you know, in terms of today, I don't think it's just, um, where you have the idea, but I'd say now if you've got first mover advantage, you can create a marketplace. Uh, sometimes maybe 10, 15 years ago, if you had first mover advantage, you'd find your idea was too early for the marketplace, and then one of the big guys would steal the idea and scale up, and you'd sit there thinking, I had that idea. And they built a business out of it. Today, I think through the digital age, you can get an idea to market really quickly and you can scale it up, evolve it, improve it, and build a really scalable, successful business.

Nice. Next, Jared. How can you prove your ideas have worth to— worth to even if you don't have a social following or a very small one? My ideas and solutions have a lot to offer big brands. But proving I'm of value is tough. Any suggestions?

Yeah, it sounds like the questioner is, is thinking about, um, maybe pitching the idea to a big brand to, to market it. If that's the strand, I think you've got to stand out. So, you know, if you're a drinks company and you've got a big idea, you want to go along to Coca-Cola to pitch an idea, it's probably good to start the business, get the idea, get some success and momentum. But then how do you kind of stand out from the crowd? One of the things is a different idea that jumps out to his success. But again, actually, the company I mentioned before, Innocent, they got acquired, I think, majority stake by Coca-Cola for over almost $100 million. And that was an idea around smoothies. They spent a lot of time, months and months blending different smoothies, all organic, really appealing to the health market that was evolving there about 5 years ago. But they stood out. So I think with your idea, if you're doing a pitch to some of these big companies and you want to have them market your idea or you want to sell your company to them, then you've got to stand out. But what I would argue is you're much better off putting your energy into your idea of building a business rather than worrying about selling your business. Never worry about selling your business. Run your business, grow your business, and you'll get a lot of people knocking on your door to say, I want you to be bigger, part of a bigger family.

Getting a lot of, uh, "I agree," "Yes," in the comments on that. You like it. Um, you know, for me, this comes back to our last point of the idea is not enough. I have tons of ideas for big companies, right? I could walk into McDonald's and come up with 100 ideas for them, from how they treat people to what's on their menu to the cleanliness of the place to their website. You know, the idea is good, but it's not enough. You know, is the— are you— can you provide execution to these big brands? McDonald's is likely not going to pay you for an idea or whatever big brand that you want to try to connect with. It's the idea plus the execution. If all you're giving them is the idea, then they have to execute on it. They have a list of ideas too, right? You know how you have a list of 10,000 ideas? Every big company has a list of 10,000 ideas too. Stephen already mentioned today about he wants to get more done, right? He's got a list of 10,000 ideas that he wants to move Sage in the right direction. And so the idea is not enough. The only, the only caveat in terms of, in terms of that, in my mind at least, is if you have a patent. If you can patent the idea and you can get it protected, then all you're going to go is sell the patent to the company. But then it has to be something, to Stephen's point before, really unique, really different, something that people will recognize. But otherwise, if you can't get it patented, then just selling an idea to a company is not going to be enough. You need to have the execution.

Yeah, on that as well, I think it's fair to say it's all about execution and never ever kind of just stand still. You've got to innovate all the time. And also just sometimes you get lucky, uh, or something happens in the marketplace that kind of shifts the dial and makes your idea relevant. Example, a company, great company that's a customer of ours called Glowee in France, uh, back in kind of 2013, they were watching kind of marine biology and stuff, and there's this really cool light given off by creatures undersea. It's just like a surreal idea, uh, in the era of something called bioluminescence. I can't even pronounce it, but basically it's a kind of light that's given off undersea. And then the French legislators brought in, um, some laws to stop, um, shops advertising with big neon signs and stuff like that because it was bad for light pollution. And these guys at Glowee developed this kind of marine lumino technology that's environmentally very sensitive and compliant with the law. And they built a business where they're lighting up kind of advertising for companies after dark in France. So legislation, change of regulations, and also change in terms of market requirements. Just be aware and always sensitive. So not only is the idea got to evolve, you've got to market test it. But you and I know, and this is so true now in 2016, the market is so different today than it was 5 years ago. And, you know, Evan, maybe you give us some example in terms of the gaming industry and everything. People like Oculus, you know, how did that happen? You know, virtual reality is changing so quickly that you've got to be really attuned to the opportunities.

Yeah, there's a follow-up question from Kimuño who's saying, uh, Stephen, that's really encouraging advice. I love your idea execution The idea is execution. For me, execution is my Mount Everest because I'm starting out on my own. So, you know, what advice do you have for solo entrepreneurs who are having trouble executing on their ideas because they have to do everything from CEO to janitor in their company?

Yeah, I think, you know, if you're working out of your home or whatever, you're an entrepreneur. Key thing is structure, discipline, and routine. So kind of even get out of your pajamas, get downstairs, get your breakfast, get up early, get everything there. Just almost imagine you're working in an an office, creating a business from, from the get-go. Um, so, and, and then from that, I think it's all about the bias for execution, bias for action. So come up with the idea that's good enough, test drive it with the community that you want to market and sell it to. Uh, you can do that in a number of different ways. You could kind of go down to the local coffee store, uh, if it's kind of consumer idea. You could do it with your friends. But the most important thing is get your idea in the marketplace. If it's a product or a service, start actually getting your first customer. And it's almost like, Evan, when I go back and I was in a startup in California, I was an angel investor. There's momentous times, especially if you're on your own, you need to celebrate because sometimes you can have down days. It can be depressing. So, you know, it's like the first time you get your product to market, celebrate it, you know, Open up a bottle of spring water or something like that, whatever you want to do. When you win your first customer, celebrate it, savor the moment, and remember those kind of milestones. When you get your 100th customer, when you get, you know, a customer repeat referral where they recommend you to other customers, celebrate these things because that gives you great spirit, it galvanizes your energy, and it reinforces your ideas. And then once you've got customers, I think it's all about test drive in their feedback, build feedback into your model from day one so that you're always innovating your, your products. Almost like with people, what I'd say, um, Evan, this is pretty crazy, but our people, the minimum standard has got to be better than the best of our competitors. And it's the same with products. So as soon as you see competitors trying to eat your lunch and catch up, you've got to leapfrog to the next level. And just think that will be good enough for the next 90 days, because in 90 days' time, I guarantee you need to leapfrog to the next level again. It's just a constant, relentless innovation.

I love it.

I love it.

I love the passion coming out. It's great. Thinking about, you know, being a solo entrepreneur, one thing that I would encourage you to ask yourself every day is what's the highest value that I can bring to my business and carve out time for what I call CEO time. Where you're not just putting out fires and reacting, but you're purposely planning what you want to do to grow your business. At least 90 minutes every day of CEO time on big picture stuff to help you grow. Otherwise, you're just going to stay on the treadmill. And in terms of celebrate, I love that point. I remember when I was first starting out and had, you know, eaten beans for lunch every day and making $300 a month. When we had something big happen, we would go to McDonald's and we would celebrate with French fries. not a whole meal because we didn't have the budget for it, but just French fries. And that was our tradition of going out, "Hey, we got a new sale. Let's go get some French fries." So it doesn't have to be a big expensive party celebration. You know, just taking the time out to celebrate is super valuable and important because it's hard to stay motivated sometimes as an entrepreneur. And those little things can make a big impact. I love it. All right. Well, we have— We have Julian calling in.

Oh, great. Hey, good. I love this. Hey, Evan, Julian, I love it when you guys call in. It's kind of three-way interaction. It's good fun.

Julian, tell us what you do and give us your question.

Absolutely.

So what I do is I own a dance studio, kind of like Evan. And yeah, Move Dance and Fitness.

Right.

And that's kind of a—

Yeah, I love that. That's our motto.

So accept compliments from everyone, limitations from no one. But recently what I started doing is this blog called SleepSumo.com, right? Which is pretty much just about helping entrepreneurs sleep better because I think, you know, I own a business myself, you know, and I know as entrepreneurs it's extremely hard to sometimes shut it down, right? And say like, "Hey, it's time to go to bed. We can fight tomorrow again." You know, so, so anyway, that's the blog. That's what it's about. But my question to you is, when do you know when it's time to kill a product? So now you're making money and maybe you have 2 or 3 making money. When is time to say, you know what, enough, let's just focus back on, on this versus the 2 or 3 that we have?

I think it's a great question. And I think that the reality is the best sanity check is to sit in the shoes of the customer. And go and, you know, you should have— pick up the phone, uh, social media, check in with your customers. You know, it comes back to what Evan says. What is the value that they're deriving from your product or service? How is it changing their life? How's it creating benefits? How's it saving them time? How does it make them feel better? All those sort of things. You'll know pretty quickly when you talk to your customers. Is it a product failure issue or idea failure, or is it Actually, if I tweak it a little bit, I can have the right answer. And then, you know what? The great thing is if you actually said to the customer, how about if I came back to you in 30 days' time and I tweaked it to do what you're telling me you need, would you be interested? And they're always going to say yeah. They're always going to back you because also you've got a kind of relationship with them. So I think it's a great question. What I would advocate though is you kind of— when you do— we've all failed. Let's be honest. We've all failed. The entrepreneurs I mentioned, like Richard Branson, who's coming to Sage Summit, loads of product failures, company failures. But, you know, he's awesome because he's done so many projects. What he's been really smart at— and he started initially in music, and then he's got a massive travel company, Virgin Atlantic. He's got all these other businesses, Virgin Money. What he did really well was test the market, go out there, kill the businesses that weren't going to make it and scale up the businesses that were and the products that were. And I think you've got to trust your instincts. I think there's a thing Evan Carmichael says about believe, but as entrepreneurs, some days are dark days, let's be honest, and you need to kind of give yourself a bit of spiritual uplifting. And that's when you go back and check in with your customers because, you know, when you actually talk to your customers, they're the greatest people on the planet and they want you to be successful. They're really rooting for you. So you'll find out very quickly from those customer conversations whether it's a kill or it's an enhance, innovate, and adapt.

Julian, for me, for me, it would be when you lose your passion in what you're doing. Because to Stephen's point about talking to people and getting feedback and having to twist and tweak your offering, when you lose the passion for that project, you're not going to be willing to put in the hours anymore. You're not going to be willing to modify it and change it and put in the work anymore. And so if you are though, like if you still love this thing, this is still your baby, you're still excited about it, you know, if it's a dance thing or something else you're talking about, then you'll find a way to make it work. Like with more hustle, you know, what you have may not work great yet, but with more tweaking and more hustle, you'll be able to make it work. But if you don't have the passion, you're going to quit. And so that's when you give it up. The flip side, as well, is there are entrepreneurs who are making money and lose their passion in their business and they get bored, and that's actually the time to sell your company, right? It has value. If you're not passionate about it anymore, it's just going to flatline and then start to decrease. And a lot of people think, well, that's passive income for me, so I should keep it. But really, like, that's the time— go sell it, move on to something else that you are excited about. So for me, as long as I'm excited by something, as long as I believe in it, then I'm doing it. If not, then move on to something else. And everything that you put in has been kind of sunk cost. You've grown, you've learned, you've gotten better, and now, you know, focus on the future.

Awesome. So do you, do you actually guys write down like, okay, this is some of the stuff that I've learned and I'm okay with just deciding that I'm, although I might still be making money from it, right? I feel like it's not necessarily scaling or growing, then I'm okay. I'm just gonna kind of just journal, this is what I've learned from it, and just put it on the shelf perhaps and just like move on to the next step?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things in terms of what I say, which is a bit harsh actually, but it's true. There's only two types of companies in the world, two types of businesses. There's growing successful businesses and there's dying businesses. The only exception to that is lifestyle businesses. And some folks who might be out there would just say, you know, I'm happy, I've got a great work-life balance. I run a lifestyle business. It kind of flatlines on revenues. It gives me a good lifestyle. I play golf or I dance or whatever I want to do, um, 3 days a week. And that's okay. But I think the sort of people who are the entrepreneurs, um, in the world we've come from and the people who have a big idea and want to change the world with loads of passion typically have exponentially growing businesses. Within that, I think you could look— if you're down the road of 3 or 4 years, you could say, actually, I've got a good business I'll use as a funding vehicle to actually do my big idea. One of the businesses I've invested in, a great business called CloudApps, they've reinvented themselves 3 or 4 times and they've got good customers, they've done a good job. but they plateau with one product. They use that as a cash vehicle to fund their next big idea. Uh, and they started with sustainability, then they started with really cool stuff, uh, around kind of gaming engagement. And then they started, uh, with all the stuff around— a lot of big companies use these products called customer relationship management, but it's really hard to get, um, people to use those. So they provided all these kind of incentives and gaming and, and fun things to actually really make it a lot more fun than, than being in the workplace. So just as an example, I think if you've got a great product, great customers, you know, double down and go for it. But that could also spawn the opportunity to have other ideas. You know, like Evan Carmichael said, we probably, 3 of us, could come up with 20 different ideas. So let's pick the best one, let's start that. But you want to build a company that could do 3 or 4 ideas if they're related ideas. That becomes really powerful.

In the venture capital world, we would call them gazelles. Those are the high growth, you know, lots of opportunity going fast. And then the walking wounded. And the walking wounded, you're just like hobbling along, but it never actually takes off. Right. And as long as you're focused on that walking wounded business, you can never be a gazelle. And so if you've learned what you need to learn from it, then, then shut it down or sell it or give it to somebody else and focus on the next thing that you can be a gazelle with.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

All right. Thanks for calling in, Julian.

Good luck with Mooove.

Thank you.

Love it. Hey, Evan, I love that. It's great when we get folks on. It's really good.

That was great. Yeah, not everybody set up properly, but it was good. Okay, next one is from Maria. How do you approach the company or manufacturer without them taking your idea? How do you protect yourself from this?

Yes, great question. So kind of one is if you can go to market and you can manufacture the product yourself, Uh, that would be great. If that's not possible and, and it requires a significant capital investment, then I think it's definitely worth looking at. If it is a unique idea with intellectual property, look at patenting it. You know, I think great technology companies, um, typically apply for patents. And, and then it's all about speed, because I think in reality, if I see an entrepreneur and they do a pitch to me and they've got a good idea and they've got a real focus on execution, then effectively you'll back them. And it does come a lot about the belief, the passion, and the execution. But if you've got the opportunity, obviously file a patent and make sure you kind of got a, got a safety net there, safety valve.

Yeah, I agree, patent is the way to go. I mean, patents can be expensive. You can do a provisional patent, which gives you protection for a short amount of time, and then you can decide whether you want to do the patent the full-blown patent that you have to, you know, you have to pay for a patent in every country that you want to have it protected every year on top of the legal fees to kind of get it set up. So it can be expensive, but it gives you, if you get a provisional patent, it gives you a little bit of space to play with to see if the idea can work or not. I'd also, like, you're worried about a manufacturer taking the idea. I believe in building strong relations with my suppliers. And I would, I wouldn't just give this to any guy who is the lowest cost provider to make this idea for you. I'd want to work with a company that likes what I'm doing. We get, we have similar values, wants to be part of my growth and my success. Uh, and I wouldn't worry as much about them potentially ripping off my idea. So you can have the legal protection if that happens with the patent. But I think also maybe doing a little more due diligence upfront. To find partners that you want to work with. Um, you know, Sage has their accounting network and they work with, you know, their, their customers might be small businesses, entrepreneurs who are growing their companies, but the accountants then refer a lot of the customers in and they do a ton of work. Sage does an insane amount of work trying to work with accountants and recognize them as, as key partners. And so I try to find that kind of connection too, where you feel like you're working side by side and it's not just a transactional relationship.

Yeah, actually, Evan, one other thing, we talked about this on other labs, but find companies and partners and suppliers and manufacturers who share your values. I think it's really important. And part of the values you wanna work with is integrity and trust. 'Cause I think that companies with a heart are companies you wanna work with. And that you'll be successful with. So, you know, if you know a company, a manufacturer has bad ethics, don't go there. Just don't compromise yourself. Don't— never sell your soul. So focus on the individuals with high ethics. If you're pitching, go to some of these— there's so many both web-based and real-time pitching operations. There's something tomorrow I think it's called #ReleaseIT. Where 10 companies go along and pitch their ideas. There's travel companies there who instead of say, what do you want, they say, how much money you got? And they'll come up with kind of bespoke packages, search through the web around what will fit your needs. So there's loads of ways for you to get the idea. I think again, traditionally it's very binary about kind of if you've got a big capital investment, you go to manufacturers. I think in today's world, there's much cleverer ways to actually start your business, get your idea to market, and then scale it up. But most of all, I'd always say— Evan, you know, we're the same in this, I think— always have companies you work with that share your values. Values and culture are really fundamental.

I love it. Next one coming in from Kudra. My son is very creative and intelligent. Has come up with amazing ideas that I know are not out there. How do you go about getting the money to do this? So trying to support an entrepreneurial son, what advice would you give?

I love that. I'd set him up in the garage and I'd say, let's pick your top 10 ideas. Let's get a few of your buddies in, in terms of, you know, maybe sort of simulate customer sort of focus groups. Pick one, just pick one. Don't try and spread yourself too thinly and then go to market with that idea. And then you can always scale up or come back to the second idea. I think in terms of if you need finance to start it, 70% of our customers actually use their own life savings or remortgage their homes. That is a good way, if you really have passion about your business, is to back it with some of your own kind of life savings. But also, if it's a great idea, Then there's folks around the world, people like Evan Carmichael, me, or your friendship group who are prepared to invest a little bit in the idea. And I'll give you an example. Another guy I invested in about 12 years ago called Mike. He had so much energy, so much passion. Honestly, I wasn't sure about the idea, but I backed the individual and I said, look, you're asking like for $100,000 or something like that. I said, I'll give you $25,000. If we hit these or you go away and hit these kind of milestones in the next 6 months, I'm happy to double down with you, but I'm not sure about the idea. And it's kind of when you get people like that, and that was me in that case, it keeps you honest. So it actually says that, yeah, I've got to hit these kind of goals. I've got to make these 90-day goals, 180-day goals. And if I do that and there's a number of customers, referencability of those customers, all those sort of things, then you're going to attract money. Honestly, it's like not only never worry about making money, but also never chase money to fund your business because great businesses will have a wealth of investors out there. It's just making sure you find them through the best channels and sequence the timing of when you need them. But for your son, set them up in your garage, find his best idea, get it to market quickly. Back it, scale it up, and make sure it's all focused on providing value. So, you know, I'd support him totally.

Yeah. And I would say don't let the lack of money be the restriction, because it's not. Because, uh, right now you want to invest your hustle, your energy, your, your ideas, your enthusiasm. I like, I like, I love the idea of picking one idea and setting it up in your garage or basement or treehouse or whatever and just Start and give him the motivation, encouragement that you believe in his ideas, even if, you know, he hasn't had success yet in the marketplace. My parents did that with me when I was selling baseball cards, you know, 12 years old, 13 years old, setting up shop on my driveway selling baseball cards every weekend. And that taught me a lot of the entrepreneurial hustle and skills. And maybe your son's ideas are bigger than that, and that's great, but you don't, you don't need money yet to start it. Go out and get customers. Get some feedback from the market that people like this. And if you really need it, then you can go launch a Kickstarter campaign once you've created your idea, once you have some momentum, once you know what people want. And then before you go, I hate the idea of like remortgaging your house to bet on an idea and then it doesn't work. It's just a big, maybe that's my own thing. I'm just, I'm so scared of entrepreneurs who do that. There's always a smaller way to get started. You don't need to fill your basement with 5,000 t-shirts. You can go to Teespring and do it one at a time. And yes, it's not as profitable, but you can prove that it works. Like, just prove that you can sell one thing before you go out and start spending a lot of money and investing, you know, your life savings or his life savings into it, or going on the credit card. I know that's how entrepreneurs do it, and it just scares me because I don't want you to make a financial decision that then impacts you for you know, potentially the rest of your life. So don't let money be the limiting factor. Just put your energy, your heart, your hustle into it. Go get some customers, get feedback on the idea, make a prototype, and get some orders. It may not be as fast as you wanna grow it, but there's nothing wrong with bootstrapping a business and seeing success every step along the way.

Yeah, Evan, some of the phrases I use around here is kind of, we wanna run some, you wanna run a bootstrap business. Run it on fumes. You really do, because if you throw money at businesses, you've seen it in loads of VC-backed businesses, they just waste millions and tens of hundreds of millions of dollars. If you actually run it on fumes and focus on what do we need to do to provide value for customers, and start with the first few customers. And a lot of businesses actually I've invested in, the customers have funded the businesses. Uh, and then there's a second wave where they really need to scale up And then when they do that, the other things we kind of say around here is always keep a chair in every meeting free for a customer and ask yourself. I think there's a clothing brand called Ted Baker. They said, what does Ted want? And Ted's a fictional character, but the brand is Ted Baker and he's a fictional character. But he says, what would Ted, what would the customer, how would the customer feel about, you know, that design or that lapel, you know? So you're always putting yourself in the shoes of the customer. If you do that, and you really kind of— other words, like, treat the company's money as if it's your own, because it is. And then really think, where would I invest that extra $1? And, and think $1 at a time, $10 a time, $100 a time. Because the worst thing you can do, honestly, is give your son a lot of money, because you might not see him. You might go traveling around the world for the next year. But if he wants to really grow his business, the smart thing to do is say, let's take one idea. What would it take to win the first customer? Let's go and do that. Scale it up to the next 100. Stay connected to those customers to get feedback, innovate, improve the product. And then when you're confident it's scalable, think about the next idea.

Yeah, I love it. It's a classic. Give a man a fish or teach him how to fish.

Yeah, right.

Like the best investment you can make into your son is to teach him how to fish instead of giving him the fish.

I love it.

Okay, Irene. I'm selling and recommending health, beauty, and weight management products. How do I make it make money? Because it's picking up rather slowly.

Yeah. And I guess in this world, you could argue it's a crowded market. So I think the first thing you probably— you've got to think about back to what we talked about is, you know, what's the need you're serving? Why is it different? Where's the value? And how you differentiate it from all the other noisy products out there. So, um, and then I think fundamentally it comes back to find a really strong reference group of customers, uh, that you can— and I, I guess you're selling your product through the internet, um, and how you actually, once you've established a good customer base, start expanding that customer base. So it might be things like loyalty, it might be things— I think with that sort of product as well, you probably need a broader offering in terms of health, beauty, not just the product but the whole kind of lifestyle. So you might kind of feature stuff on your website around lifestyle, health, beauty, even back to sleep and stuff like that. So you've got to provide more value than just the product to stand out. I think the key thing with all in a crowded, noisy marketplace where there's a sea of products, you've got to absolutely always think, how do I stand out? How do I differentiate? How do people come to my brand? Because it's special, unique, and it really meets their needs.

Yeah. To tag on what Stephen was saying, I would try to focus on what your story is. Why is this so interesting for you? Did this help you? Like, have you lost weight using these things? Do you feel more healthy or beautiful because of using it? I think a lot of people jump in the industry just thinking they can make a lot of money and they've never actually used the products and would never actually recommend it to their friends. That's not something like if you, if you don't believe in your product and you don't use it and have insane success with it, you can't expect to get results selling it. And so I think to Stephen's point about there's so many different products on the market, the thing that will make you stand out is your story and why you're so passionate about it. And I would use that to open up doors. And instead of trying to target one at a time, at a time, at a time, I'd be looking at who can I partner with to reach my customers. So instead of, I can find someone who has 1,000 customers that I can talk to them instead of one at a time. And then also be trying to get to the media and have stories written about me with my story. Like the media is always, they always want stories. So give them a good story. They're not gonna write about your new product that was just launched. They care about the human side of it. And so those two things I think could be really helpful if you have a really powerful story. Story to tell.

Hey Evan, you can't believe it. I was, um, when was it, 2 days ago, up a big, uh, operation we've got in Newcastle. We've got 1,800 people. We've got an entrepreneur, a lady called, um, Nikki got in, uh, and we're celebrating International Women's Day and women in technology. We're starting loads of stuff. We're doing a big thing next month for female entrepreneurs to come in and do pitches and improve their pitches and get funding and get mentoring, all those sort of things. But the reason why I'm telling you is Nikki got— she just told her story. She told us about, you know, the days when it was deeply depressing, and she's built an awesome business in event management. And she personalized it completely to her, the adversities she's faced, how she's overcome them. And, you know, it was inspirational. There was probably about 400 of our colleagues there. And for a moment, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, honestly. It was less about the product, it was more about the story, and it was about the emotional connection. And I think what you're doing for your product in this instance is changing lives. You know, if it's around weight loss, well-being, avoiding depression, all those sort of things, it's really connecting individuals with a life that they may not have even known was possible. And if you can bring them the narrative around your own story, and the beauty of that and how it impacted you and maybe friends. And if they're happy, your customers who have actually had huge success and completely reimagined themselves and rebuilt their own self-esteem, then I think that's awesome. And you could feature that on your website because I think it is a very personal story and it's very emotional.

I love it. I love it. Next question is kind of similar. The difference here is, though, He says the customers find it costly. He's in the same industry, but he's finding the biggest rejection from customers is cost. It's too costly. So how does he get past the "this is too expensive" objection in selling his idea?

Yeah, it's great. I think it comes back to what we said. What is the value? Typically, you know, if customers say it's too costly, they're probably saying there's something else. We used to call it there's a hidden objection. Rarely do customers— if you've got— we're talking about ideas, we're not just producing widgets. If you've got an idea, it's probably going to be unique. It's going to solve a real pain point for consumers or businesses, and it's going to either save them bucketloads of cash, it's going to save them a lot of time, it's going to improve their well-being. There's got to be something that just jumps out in terms of improving the whole user of your product or service. And that's, you know, I'm not going to say it's priceless, but people will drive value and cost becomes a second consideration. So if you're getting hit by costs and you have what you consider to be a unique proposition to a problem you're trying to solve for your customers, then I'd say we're probably not focusing enough on the value and really accentuating the value of what you're providing. Because if they get the value and how it makes a difference to their lives, then cost is always a secondary factor.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is people don't know why you're different. You know, price is always— it's always one of the concerns. There are very few people said, I don't care about price, right? Price is always a concern, but it's almost never the only concern because they want some kind of value in return. But if I can't tell the difference between you and somebody else, I'm going to go with the cheapest one, right? You know, I went to Tim Hortons this morning to get a coffee because I like Tim Hortons. You know, I use Sage software because I like Sage, right? And so, you know, if people cannot tell that this is your job to help me understand the difference between what you're offering and everything else there on the market, because if I can't make that connection, then I'm just going to go for the cheapest option.

Yeah. And it could be, you know, if you're trying to build a brand like Tim Hortons, a great example. I'd always go to my local coffee provider and I'd never go to Starbucks. Why? Because I like to go to the local guy who gets up every morning at 5 o'clock and builds, you know, builds their dreams and pursues their passions. So I declare, yeah, I've got a prejudice. I don't want to go to the big multinational guys. I want to get the little guys. All our suppliers for Sage, they're all the small and medium businesses. We'll actively not go to the big guys. So do we consider that we always get the lowest cost? No, but we think we get quality relationships and great products and services from companies we deal with. So I think, so it kind of comes back to Evan's point, but it might be that you're focused on the wrong community to sell into. If they don't get the value, they don't get the differentiation of what the magic you can provide, then obviously kind of pitch it differently first of all. But if they still don't get it, and it's just purely a cosplay, then they're missing the value and you probably want to move on to the next idea.

Yeah. Or the next customer, right? Like find ideal customers.

Absolutely.

You could be with customers who are just too cheap. So let's move on. There's other customers who would be willing to pay you if you're providing the value. KRC, Katie, what's the best way to monetize a website? My brother has just set up a website that provides rolling tennis coverage. He's been frustrated that the BBC Sport has very patchy tennis coverage compared to other sports. It's a knock on BBC here. That's great content. How can he turn it into a viable business? So he's trying to create this website talking about tennis, upset at the BBC. How does he make it into a business?

So I think he probably, again, it comes back to a little bit, how do we differentiate ourselves? There's a lot of content on the web. I think there's about 4 billion hits on YouTube every day. It's just Crazy. So again, why is this different? And then how do we attract the inbound? How do we actually get ourselves so when people search on tennis content, we actually pop up on the Google search and all those sort of things? So the first thing is to have brilliant content. So question, what, what, what market are we trying to serve? What's our big idea? If our big idea is to give incredible tennis content and maybe some added value around commentary, or insights, or, you know, what's the view on Sharapova at the moment, and all the kind of stuff in the news around drugs. Totally different angle, you wouldn't get that from the BBC, apart from the BBC News, but you wouldn't get it from kind of the sports commentary piece. So what is the angle, what is the difference, and then build on that, and then obviously I think through the website it's all about creating the volunteer army. Get it to go viral, get loads of fun, The other thing you could do, I think you've got to make stuff on the web pretty fun these days. So run competitions, run surveys. If you're going off to Flushing Meadows, you're going off to Wimbledon, get a big community, build a community, build that volunteer army of people who love tennis as much as you do and give them something different. Give them another angle, get them engaged through competitions, surveys, maybe get them a couple of tickets to Flushing Meadows if they do amazing stuff for you.

I like it, creativity. To add to it, I'd say in terms of website business models, one is you're going to go mass market. You want to get tons of, you know, millions of views. You're going to then sell advertising and have partnerships and sponsorships on your site because they're buying the eyeballs. The second way is that you're building an intimate community where they know you, like you, trust you, and then you're going to sell premium access to stuff, premium access to content or your ideas or your opinions or gear. Swag, whatever it is, because they are tagged to your brand. You can do both. It can be challenging. But typically, the websites that start do one first. So either I'm gonna go big market and get millions of people and sell advertising, or I'm gonna focus on a really niche play and have a really loyal community and then start selling them products. So two different kinds of models. Play around, see what's more in line with what he wants to do.

Hey, just a crazy one, Evan, and it's not related. It is related to this, but a wider point.

I like crazy.

Believe, believe, believe. I met tennis players, you know, actually Roger Federer. I met him in Dubai. The nicest person you could ever, ever meet. Now, if I was building this website around tennis content, I would never believe I could walk up to Roger Federer, pull out a microphone or an iPhone and just take a selfie or do an interview with him, or Djokovic. These guys are really nice guys, you know, Serena Williams. So maybe you do crazy stuff. Maybe you turn up at Flushing Meadows when they're doing a practice session at 7 in the morning, and maybe you say, hey Serena, can I just have 30 seconds with you? I've got to ask this real burning question. Then post it. Yeah, just be disruptive. Do different stuff. Do, do stuff that no one would ever think of. So, but my point is, believe. You will in your head, we all have it. We all have these kind of voices tell us we can't do that. We can't go and talk to these famous people. They're unapproachable. They've got 50,000 security guards. They come in bulletproof limousines and they get dropped off. No, they don't. They're just normal people. They were just like you and I. You know, they're no different just because they play tennis and they earn hundreds of millions of dollars. They're still normal people and they still love fans. They love their fans. So if you're a fan, you love them, just go up and get selfies, publish it on your website, do something different, do something again to stand out. If you can get interviews with them and then you can build up a following. You know, I kind of think around the sports areas, it's just like bloggers and vloggers. They've come from nowhere in 5 years and now they've got massive followings. That's what you need to aspire to.

When I was 12 years old, 12 and 13, the Blue Jays had won the World Series. So they were like the height of baseball stardom. And I would go to Florida where they do their spring training. That's part of why I go to Orlando every year. And I would sit in the parking lots as they showed up to spring training and talk to them and take pictures with them. We didn't have cameras, you know, cell phone cameras back then, but I would take pictures. I would get them to autograph their cards and baseballs and super approachable. If you just like Steven said, like, put in the effort, go out and try to make contact with them. It, it's a lot easier than you think, and, uh, not many people are willing to put in the effort to go and do it. Uh, Rishi, Evan and Steven, she's back, she's back with her cup. Uh, what's one of the first ideas you made money from, and what did you learn from that?

Um, first idea I made money from was actually when I when I was about 16, I had about 5 different jobs and, you know, 2 in hotels. We deliver papers. But one of the ideas I made money from was actually with a hotel. I took— so I checked this out with the owner and they said some of the stuff that they didn't actually— in terms of the food and all the goodies that they had for their customers, if they had a quiet season, they said I was okay to just take out and if I could resell them, that's fine, because otherwise they were just going to throw it away. So there's a little bit of market. It was a seaside town, so we just set ourselves up on the seafront and just sell stuff. And, you know, out of that, you create enough money to go on to the next idea. So I just think there's loads of gaps out there. There's loads of opportunities. And for me personally, at 16, that was a moment where I kind of knew it's a great way. Did I do it well? No. Was I a good salesman? No. You know, all these sort of things. But it's a great start. And from that, you know, those little acorns, great oak trees get formed. I love it.

My very first business venture was when I was 5. I convinced my 3-year-old little sister to paint pictures with me, and we went around the neighborhood and tried to sell them. And we sold one to our neighbor for $0.10. I had my first sale. And I guess I just learned that from that, you know, create something and then go out and market it. And all throughout school, I had different businesses. None of them ever did insanely well, but you're learning, you're getting the hustle skills, you're understanding the salesmanship. The baseball cards I did for a long time throughout high school and at the end of grade school. And I would make more money at a garage sale than the rest of my family combined. And when they were selling couches and whatever, I was selling my baseball cards and they could understand how a piece of paper, you know, a piece of cardboard would sell for $40 or $60 or $100 and how I was making more money than them at like 10, 12 years old doing garage sales. And so I think, I think just taking that, I think as kids we're willing to, we're, maybe willing to take more risk, willing to just try stuff. We're not as afraid of failure as when we get older. And so, yeah, I'll go knock door to door and ask somebody to try to sell my art. But imagine doing that now, people would have like a heart attack. Go door to door, sell my art. What if they reject it? What if they don't like it? Where I don't know why that kind of, that creativity and that self-confidence maybe, or I guess it's more just caring about other people's opinions where that becomes so strong that it crushes our will. And so I think as an entrepreneur, those are super important lessons for me to learn young so that it was able to help me grow to the person I am now.

Yeah. And you get, you know, Evan, we've all had it. You get knocks, you get people who say no, you get people telling you you're crazy. But that's why you have to believe in your idea. And that gives you tremendous— you know, you got to have a few knocks. You know, if you're an actor or an actor, you go off and you do 1,000 auditions, you probably get no callbacks. But that gives you tremendous emotional resilience. And as entrepreneurs, you know, it's not— life's not all sunshine. It's all about taking the knocks, taking the punches, being in the ring with Mike Tyson, getting thrown out onto the gangplanks, getting back in there, just getting out and believing in yourself, believing in your idea. And I think as kids, actually, you're right, Evan. Just, they're way more emotional resilience because they just step back and they just, just love it. And it's fun. And I think back to the business idea, it's always got to be fun. So you've got your idea, you believe in it, you're passionate about it, it's fun every day. And when the fun goes out of it, that's when you need to change what you're doing. But while you've got fun, you've got belief, you've got tremendous emotional resilience, and therefore you can absolutely be I love it.

That's the shirt of the day. This is the, the little man. So it's triumph over the little man, and that the little man is the hater, the hater who just is knocking on your business and telling you all the reasons why it's not going to work out. And Rise Online, who's on this call, designed this shirt. So I like the message of the day, triumph over the little man. It's great. Um, Steve, we're already bumping up against the clock. Uh, thank you so much for the time. Do you have a final message for the audience, uh, and maybe how they can reach you as well, or how they can learn more about Sage?

Yeah, I'm on Twitter, is handle @SKellyCEO. I kind of think, um, the, the thing we sort of always talk about is idea and money. I think the thing I'd leave you with is follow your dreams again. Come up with an idea where you're really gonna really change the lives of people, and think about how it does that for people, and focus on the value, um, and then money follows. You know, if you look at the brands, as you look at Oprah Winfrey All these great people, they all say they never ever thought about making money. They thought of the idea and they thought about how it changed the world and how it would make the world better for the community of people they serve. And then obviously money follows that. And, uh, and, and, you know, comes back to the message Evan gives us every time is believe, believe, believe, and be hugely resilient. Because with the idea, once you translate it, you get, um, a lot of momentum. You're going to have a great business and you're going to be, you're going to be absolutely celebrating your successes. I love it.

Well, Stephen, thank you so much for joining us again. Thank you all guys for watching and we will see you next month.

Great stuff, guys. Thanks very much. Thanks, Evan Carmichael.