What Building an 8-Figure Business Taught Me

It took me 40 years to realize what I'm about to tell you in the next 10 minutes. So I'm here driving back home here in London as we're recording this, it's sunny blue skies, which is, has been a rare occurrence for London over the last few months since I've moved back. So it's really nice to see. So I'm just gonna take you on a little drive through Kensington, Hyde Park as we go through this video. So I've talked about this in previous videos, but I developed the skill of sales working under employment in a corporation, working my way up the ladder, learning how to hire people, fire people, and manage people. But there was definitely elements of there where I wasted some years as well, you know. So I always felt when I got back into entrepreneurship at like 28, I was behind. And I was behind because there's a lot more people that were generating more money than me at a younger age. I did a lot of personal development over that time. So read a lot of books, really studied and then took the leap. But there was definitely a fear that held me back then. And I don't live with any regrets because I realize God gives you the right plan, you know, and he gives you the right doors to walk through when you choose to do it. But there was definitely times when I probably could have done things a little bit quicker and just took action faster. So that's one thing that I look back on in the time when I was in employment that I wish I just did a little bit faster was getting back on the horse, getting back into entrepreneurship. And now I've personally mentored over 1,500 business owners. Many entrepreneurs in the agency space, the number one thing I've found that really keeps a lot of them stuck is just their ability to do the things that they know they need to do, but they just don't want to do them. So this is like fundamental of having this underlying raw belief that you want to be successful and you can be successful. People get stuck, like I said before, $300K, $500K, yeah, maybe a million a year. Not many people break through this million-dollar a year barrier because it's all down to mindset, 80% mindset. All of the tactics that are out there, there is certain golden nuggets, as it were, but you just need to do the raw things right, especially in service-based industries. You just need more clients, you know. If you focus on the sales aspect and the marketing, those two key pillars are always going to be key because you can figure out the delivery next. I was watching an old video from Grant Cardone a couple of days ago, actually, and this was a video that was 6 years old, and he was giving advice to a guy called Samuel Leeds, who's like this property guy, and he was teaching him how to get to $100 million in his business. And he really drilled down into me that one, you need to just stop caring what other people think, make a lot of noise, spend more on ads. And I talk about focusing on the profit, but using that profit as ammunition and fuel to keep growing your business. And I think one thing that holds a lot of business owners back is this fear of like protecting, he talks about the bathwater, You know, like, we're using the bathwater to buff all of your kids, you know, instead of putting in fresh water. I was like, that's actually really a cool analogy when you think about it. Because I was looking back over when I've made my millions, I do protect it more, you know. And I was thinking about— I was just revisiting my investment portfolio over the last couple of days of where I wanted to distribute some of my wealth. And I realized I should be investing more heavily in my business, in ads and the marketing team, and then also investing in other companies. So actually doing angel investing more instead of just having money in my stock market in different parts of the portfolio. So it just brings me back to thinking what held all of these business owners back is this belief in themselves to take things to the next level, reinvesting back in themselves and the business. There's a fine line between having a lifestyle business that's highly profitable and you've got great leverage, which is a great business model to have, but you've, you've always got to keep growing. You know, you've got to keep adapting because the market doesn't stand still for anyone. Even in the markets I'm in with my 3 companies, There's competitors all of the time, you know. And now because AI is taking a lot of the heavy lifting away from people, like the people that are adapting with that, they're a lot smarter now, but they still haven't got— I've noticed the younger generation is more lazy. They don't want to work as hard, like, and sometimes as entrepreneurs, it's good to find the shortcut, the lazy ways we talk about, but being able to have that real grit and determination to cold call when you need to, to work those extra hours, to overtake the sales yourself. Like, all of these things that you can dive into the business, a lot of business owners don't have that fundamental, uh, drive to be able to take them to the next level. One of the other key lessons in business that I learned was like, no one is going to care about the business as much as you do. So no matter how many employees you've got, no matter how much they are loyal to you, they will not care about the business as much as you. So it is always going to be on your shoulders. Now, I've obviously got a lot of friends that have had business partners, and I've never had business partners in my companies. Something I've considered a few times and just every time my intuition tells me no, just because I've heard so many horror stories of business partners splitting up. It's been very messy, worse than a divorce, and it takes a lot of mental energy from you. Now, the benefits of having a business partner is in theory, you should go twice as fast, and that should compound over time, especially if you've got different skill sets. Like, they're not just fully crossed over on each other. So one would be good at tech, the marketing, the ads. The other is very good at sales and driving the team forward or being a brand of the business. One thing I've realized was Employees can be loyal, but they are just— they're not going to care like you do. So just don't get frustrated when things don't happen to the standard that you expect that you would do them, because at the end of the day, they're just employees that get paid and they go home. Like, they work 9 to 5. The ambition of an employee is totally different to the entrepreneur, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs really struggle to grasp the fact of the difference between the standards. Now, you need to maintain a high— I call it a high hygiene standard in your business, because the standards you expect from the team and you live by is what they're going to deliver. So making sure that you show up all of the time in the company, that you're the one always taking the risk, they need to see that, you know, because if they see you as the business owner slacking off and I know I talk about having leverage, not working in the business as such, working on the business. So what I mean by that is they still need to see that you're working on the business, you know? So every day I do a team meeting, I will tell the team what I'm working on. So because they might not know. Because they might not see me inside Slack active all day and see me on lots of different meetings, but I make sure that I'm giving them glimpses of the stuff that us as entrepreneurs are doing behind the business. Because you as a business owner, you care about the business, and sometimes your employees maybe don't see that all of the time. So it's very important to communicate with them the vision, what you're working on. You need to make sure you maintain the standards that you expect from your employees. When I started my business, I started it from necessity, not confidence. And there's definitely this belief where you need to feel comfortable first or confident you've got all of your ducks in a row before you get started. Most entrepreneurs that have found that have been really successful, they started it initially from necessity, which meant they had to make it a success. There's a book that talks about burn all of the ships, like, you know, you burn the ship, you stay on the island until you win the battle. And that's very, very true in entrepreneurship that I've seen for most successful founders is they had to make it work. When you're comfortable, and this is the same with kids that are raised in money, there's two different kinds. Most of them that are built with daddy's money, they don't really care. They don't value money. They can't work hard. And they are very rarely successful. It's very few and far between. I've got a good friend who comes from that and is actually very successful because his parents raised him correctly. He still has to work in the business for the money. And he's very, very smart and very disciplined. But that's the same. So when you're an entrepreneur, founder, most successful ones are doing it from necessity. So that meant that they will do the work that they need to do. They won't just stagnate. And also, when I look back, I see that the reason why I like the nice things, you know, nice cars, nice watches, nice properties, nice places to travel, luxury, was because that doesn't define me. Yeah, because like my bigger mission now is with Jesus, but it still drove me to be successful, to want more, because otherwise If you're just doing it for a monetary number on a spreadsheet, you won't have an actual physical feeling or experience with that. That's also another reason why people are comfortable at a certain level. And I would say that sweet spot's normally $20K to $40K a month. Nice business model to have, but most people struggle to break through that because they are comfortable, you know. Some of the people I mentor one-on-one, they come to me because they're like, James, I need to unlock the next level. I've been generating $30K to $50K a month quite consistently. They want to get to $100K a month. They want to make 2, 3, 4 million a year. And that's why I help them unpack and unlock. Normally it's a mindset shift, higher hygiene standard, and also to change their environments and the way they look at business. Otherwise they're going to be comfortable. You don't want to stay stuck. It's sort of like the next mountain you need to get over as a founder entrepreneur is actually like building what I would call a real business, is for sure scaling past like 7 figures. Because once you've scaled past 7 figures and you do that multiple times, then you are a real seasoned entrepreneur. You've developed all of the skills in business that if you lost it all tomorrow, you can make it back so fast. You probably see this with other business gurus online or whatever. Like, if they lost all of that money tomorrow, they would get rich again really fast. Talked about Grant Cardone earlier. He would be a prime example. You know, he's just got that skill to do that. So I definitely feel like with business founders, you've got to keep going to the next level, but also you just do it with a balance. Like, it's not all about the money for sure, but without money, you don't get far, you know. So like, how I got wealthy, I check my bank accounts every single day, you know, and, um, yeah, it makes you feel good. It doesn't mean that, uh, you need to feel complete within and you work on your inner self as well, but also like the money gives you options in life, gives you options. Like for me, I live in a nice place in London. I've got a nice place in Marbella. I travel the world. I'm going to be going to Bali for a few weeks as well. Get a nice villa there and have nice experiences, but then also being able to look after my future kids and wife. With good schooling, secure. All of these things take money at the end of the day. And that's why it's so important as entrepreneurs that we've got to keep growing and we've got to keep evolving. Different seasons in life as well, for sure. I've been through them all and I do them all with as much simplicity as possible, as much profit as possible, and as much enjoyment. Everyone's different. So I've got very good friends that are doing maybe $4 or $5 million a year and their calendar is 60 hours a week. One of my very good friends, I've just got off the phone to him, but he loves that, you know, like he gets excited every day to gear up his team and have a full, full calendar. For me, it's different. I don't want that anymore. But I also still, I don't want an empty calendar where you're working aimlessly. You've got to still have a purpose. You've still got to be very dialed in when you are working and working on the things that are still going to move the needle forwards. So in my business now, we're hiring again aggressively on the sales side. So again, we went in a season where we had a really lean sales team. Because I went from having a big sales team to being very complex and dealing with humans is difficult sometimes. I don't think for me, I didn't want to have like lots of different managers. So I was like sort of taking hold of that. And then now again, I want to build out bigger and better sales team again. So I want to go bigger in the US because a lot of our clients are in the US. So again, you go through seasons with that. There's also been times as a founder, I've had sleepless nights, you know, I've had times when I've had employees that I needed to fire that I just kept justifying, no, no, I'll give them another month, I'll give them another 3 months, not wanting to get in the office to fire them. There's times when you worry about making payroll, you know, for cash flow. And they were normally early on in my journey as an entrepreneur, was like when you're hiring people, it's easy to hire, but it's hard to fire at the start. So you hear the term all of the time initially. So I was hiring fast and firing slow, but you need to hire slow and fire fast. And always the times when you should be firing should be the first time you get it in your gut that this person's not right. That's when you just really need to make the cut with that. And yeah, that causes a lot of sleepless nights for founders, and that creates a lot of tension. So then what I tend to find is the people that really held back from being multimillionaires was they just weren't comfortable with the hiring aspect to do that again because they got burned. But you can't look at business like that. It's a lesson. And in order to grow, you need a team. And that's one of the things like why I went more remote with the team as well, and especially offshore in South Africa, like it's been a massive success is because the actual cost trade-off, if it doesn't work out, doesn't cost you as much. If you onboard them correctly, you train them correctly and get them into a good culture. As an entrepreneur and founder, like the actual cost is a third of the cost in the US and UK, for example, which I've talked about, and it's just a lot less stressful. Now, yes, in your business, you're going to need A-players as well, and Yeah, I'll be honest, like you're not going to always find A players as such in different remote countries. Like there will be times you need to hire in the US and the UK, like I have as well. But having that mix has really helped. But having those sleepless nights, because I would be reading about it in different books and autobiographies. One of my favorite books is Felix Dennis, How to Get Rich. I've read that many, many times. So definitely check it out if you haven't, but this guy was worth just under a billion. In the UK, self-made, did publishing magazines and these things. And he used to always drill into me, overheads walk on two legs, which means the biggest cost is human capital and wasted human capital. And one thing I learned from Felix Dennis was he talks around when you're hiring someone, let's say they're between, I don't know, 24 to 30, that's when they're up and coming, they're progressing all of the time. So you give them wage increases with loyalty and performance. But then what happens is most employees will reach a peak and a pinnacle where you are paying them what what they're worth. And then afterwards they will fall off, which means they will get wise. They're not learning anymore, but you're paying them off past experience that they've done in the past to get to where they've got to, but they're not really performing at that level anymore. So one thing you need to realize is that's when you need to cut that hire, is they'll reach a point in your company where they've took it to the level that they can, and then you're just paying them for stuff they've done in the past, not actually the stuff they're doing right now. So that's learning when to cut. And you just need to be comfortable being able to fire people. You need to be very good at hiring people, which is inspiring them, giving them energy, giving them the vision. That's why you need to be good at sales. But then also you need to be ruthless enough as a boss to be able to fire when needed or to give them a big warning. That's one thing that I learned having sleepless nights was I never have sleepless nights anymore. I haven't had, I mean, touch wood and praise the Lord, I don't have these sleepless nights where I worry in business. Because once you've built up the muscle of all of the skill set and the 10,000-hour rule of hiring and firing, then you know what to look for and you know the lessons that you've learned. And then you know what to spot if someone's not performing. And you just don't take that. You don't take that bullshit anymore. Okay, so that is the 40 years in 10 minutes or so. And I would love to hear your feedback on what lessons you've had in your entrepreneurial journey so far. So comment in the box below. I try and answer all of the comments because this YouTube channel is really to try and give entrepreneurs as much value as possible. I read all of the comments. So let me know what you want to hear from next, what your challenges are. I'll always try and comment or maybe do a video on it. And I'll catch you on the next one.