How does a Dutchman make money FLIRTing with social media from his Riad in Morocco?

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Welcome to this week's episode of the Silver Fox Entrepreneurs Podcast. This week I'm delighted that I'm interviewing an old friend called Mark Kampmann, who I met back in the mid-'90s when I was running EastWest PR in Singapore, and Mark was the director of marketing at Logica PLC in London. Mark's a Dutchman who's made the UK his home, and he has made digital his career. He's the author of a book called Flirtonomics, and we're going to chat about how he has made digital his life and his passion for sharing all about community and digital marketing, and how he's going to make that fund his future, which is in Morocco.

Mark, Mark, Jim Campman, an old friend and a Silver Fox Entrepreneur. Welcome to the Silver Fox Entrepreneurs Podcast. Tell the other foxes about yourself and what you're doing now.

So I realized recently that I've been at work for over 40 years now. And I started the 1st of April, 1981 with IBM in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam. Now, if I look at those 40 years, I can see that as 4 decades. The first 10 years of my career, I worked for large corporate organizations as a marketeer. Companies like IBM, Burroughs, Unisys, always in the technology sector. The second 10 years of my career was where I started working international. I moved to the UK, worked for the European headquarters, and then moved to California where I worked in Silicon Valley for a few years. And we're talking about the early '90s now. And this is where I got involved, heavily involved in the internet, and I later realized I was one of the first to demo the internet in Silicon Valley. The third 10 years were the years that I sort of got into the startup business and where I got into social media, which was obviously completely different than the decennia before that. And I built up lots of experience of marketing for small companies, startups, companies, small-medium enterprises. And then the fourth 10 years, which is the latest sort of 10 years, is the period that I ran my— that I'm running my own business. And that's where we will go into more detail throughout this conversation, Jim.

So, Mark, you've really been riding the tech sort of wave from the innovation through to the implementation and now to social media. As a man, I think generously in your 50s now, why do you think being over 50 is an ideal time to start in business? Because you've obviously been in big companies and then smaller companies, but now you've got your own business. Tell us what are you doing now and why you think doing it later in life is great?

Yeah. So let me give you my ideas here. So in the end of the 2010s, yeah, so 2009, 2010, I'd been in marketing, working for large corporate organizations, working for startups, and I had the feeling of, I've been there, I've done that. Yes, so I am repeating myself. I sort of felt I've achieved my ceiling. I don't want to run an organization with hundreds of people. I am a marketing expert and a social media expert, and that's what I want to develop. The company that I then worked for didn't give me that space. So we're talking 2010 now. And then I hit that magic moment that most people in business will get in their 50s.

Yep.

They will get that moment. What am I doing? Where am I going? Am I going to go— am I going to be on autopilot for another 10, 15 years until I retire? Am I going to continue commuting to London for 2 hours a day? until I retire. Right at that moment, I saw a video on YouTube from Steve Jobs. It was the video, and I recommend everybody— you may want to add it to the show notes.

Yeah.

It was the video where Steve Jobs actually announces that he had cancer. It was his inaugural speech at Stanford University. In that video, he makes the famous statement, live every day like it's the last day of your life. And I looked and I said, am I living every day like it's the last day of my life? And I said, definitely not. I didn't like my job. I was commuting 2, 3 hours a day. I said, this is not what I want. Now, I also had a bit more financial freedom, so I had the opportunity and I had the freedom to decide and to look deep inside my heart and said, if I can follow my passion, what would I want to do? And what I wanted to do after some deep soul searching, I said, for me, now it's the time to start sharing my experience. Because I've got tons of experience. I've got global experience. I've worked in every continent of the world. I've worked in every culture in the world. I knew technology inside out. I knew social media inside out, digital marketing inside out. Yep. And that is what I want to share. So I started my little training company, markkampman.com, on the 1st of August 2010 in Reading in Berkshire in the UK. And my office was my living room. Yep. And I started to connect. At first, I started to put together a 2-hour social media training. Yeah, how to use social media for business. And then I started to connect with local businesses. Yeah, I went to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, I went to networking events, and there's quite a few of those in the UK. And that's where I sort of started handing out a flyer, a 2-hour social media training in my living room, £25, come and join.

Right.

And I still have the TV that I ran those training up in my living room. And people came, 4 or 5 people. But soon people said, Mark, what you're doing in your living room, why don't you do it in our boardroom? Yes, so then that took me from the living room to the boardroom. So where all of a sudden I was training individuals, yeah, there were Actually, I was training management teams.

Yep.

So that's how it sort of started. I started to get traction.

Yeah. Yep.

And then, so that was a really good platform to start. And then I got into a kind of a training academy where I had the opportunity to deliver 8 weeks of a sort of an 8-week training program to people on social media.

So was this the SimplyLearn project that we— No, no, no, no, no. BK did already.

No, Simply Learn BK got much later. This was just a local sort of school, yeah, and that was offering education to adults and to businesses. So, but the essence here was over those 8 weeks of training, I developed 8 steps, yeah, and 8 steps to set your business up for social media. And each step was one of the training sessions. Now, why is this so important? And that is a takeaway. I want to give people. When I started to present those 8 steps, people in the class at the end said, Mark, fantastic, those 8 steps, but I don't have the time to implement them. Can you do that for me? Yeah, so what started as a training sort of business for myself soon now turned into a consultancy business.

Yep.

So, and that is a great way to move and to start your own business in a way you want to share your experience, start with training, but that then moves into a consultancy Yeah, if you start developing an approach.

And would you say, would you, would you have said that the secret sauce there was to create an identifiable stage? Because that seems to be these days kind of the currency online is, here's your problem, here are 3 steps, 5 steps, a quantifiable number and a defined output. So do you think for people that are consultants with a specific knowledge, It's this codification that's key.

Yep. And that is because, you know, this is a— it is kind of an umbrella for everything that you do when you give people a very tangible sort of concept on how to implement the recommendations that you're making to them. Now, there is another step into this. Yeah. But before I go into this next step, which is an important part, I just want to share one more thing. Very important. In the development of my business was obviously to develop myself as an expert in my field. And being a social media expert, I found out that I obviously started using social media to develop my online reputation. So I started having a website, I started to blog, I started podcasting, I had videos, I was very active on LinkedIn. And people say, yeah, LinkedIn and social media, it doesn't work, it doesn't generate leads for you, but it does. Yeah, after, I think in 2012, I had a lady connecting with me on LinkedIn. She said, Mark, I don't know you, but I see you're a social media trainer. I'm based in Dubai. Do you want to run social media training for us?

Wow.

Yeah, and I, and that was just a lead that came in through LinkedIn. So I connected with her and said, of course I'm interested. So I, and I struck a deal with them. Yep, and that was in 2012. I've been in in Dubai 7, 8 times since. Yeah, I'm now considered a social media expert for the Middle East. We had somebody from the Chamber of Commerce of Cairo attending the course. She said, Mark, you know, you gotta come to Cairo. Yeah, so because you need to train our customers.

And Mark, if I just cut you off, just so, can you just give us some idea of the sort of numbers? What do you think are fees that can be charged? Because this course is also about, these podcasts are about The numbers. You were talking earlier on about £25 in your living room. If you're going to Dubai, what sort of fees do you think can be charged by consultants, trainers per day or per course?

Yeah, good question. Depends on the market that you're in. Dubai, they have— there's plenty of money there. So I'm certainly in the £1,500 to £2,000 a day bracket. Yeah. And they are also prepared to pay for your travel time. So that was very profitable for us. UK is different. Yeah, so UK is very competitive, and it could be anywhere between £800 to £1,500 a day for UK. When you go into online training, it becomes more competitive. So, but yeah, you shouldn't be afraid in asking Good prices. Yeah, good.

And I think that's, that's a key, a key learning as well, is that the, the knowledge that you've accumulated and the experience, plus your ability to communicate that, has a, has a value of absolutely £1,000 to £1,500 per day to an organization.

Yeah.

And have you found, have you found that it's more profitable to sell to companies than to individuals? Because obviously that's a change as well. You've wanted to work with individuals, but you've gravitated back to companies. Is that because it's more profitable or you enjoy it more?

Yeah, and I think businesses is obviously more profitable. They've got more money than— but it's all a matter about volume as well. Yeah, and that's where you start need to build your reputation. So the more reputation you get, the more companies will come to you and say, hey, I've seen you here, or I've heard you there. So it's important that you're getting on the speaker platform. And another very important thing that I did, and I can recommend it highly to people who want to start their own business in the consultancy area, is start to document your knowledge. And basically, in publishing your own book. Yep, so I took my 8 steps and I've summarized them in— I sort of condensed it into 5 steps, and I developed a 3-day course for those 5 steps of how to set your business up on social media. I recorded the course. I then gave the entire video to a transcriber, and that person transcribed the entire course for me.

Okay.

I locked myself in a room for 3 weeks and I edited the transcribed text and that was my book. Yes. Great.

And from a practical point of view again, Mark, so how did you find the transcription service and what did that cost you?

Well, if I'd known then what I know now, it wouldn't have cost me anything because what you can do is when you upload a video on YouTube, Google will automatically transcribe it for Oh, will it really?

Wow, because otherwise you can use like Rev.com.

There's lots of— yeah, I think I paid something like 200 quid at the time. Yeah, £200. But now I would upload it on YouTube. In the transcription, YouTube would transcribe it. You can sort of download the transcription and then you can edit it.

That's useful. I didn't know that because I'm— yeah, that's very useful.

Okay.

So the book that I published 2 years ago is called Flirtonomics: How to Attract Date and Love Your Customers on Social Media.

Nice.

And FLIRT—

Does your wife mind that title?

She loves it.

Okay.

And FLIRT is the 5-step approach. Yeah, so the 5-step approach, FLIRT is an acronym: Focus, Listen, Integrate, Reach Out, and Track. Yeah, the book is on Amazon, so if you search on Amazon, you will search for Mark Kempmann or Flirtonomics, you will, you can find the book. And it's that to me has been one of the most valuable assets in further developing my business because all of a sudden you're— when you're speaking at a conference, for instance, you're no longer Mark Kampmann, social media expert, but you're Mark Kampmann, author of. Yeah, and that makes a big difference.

Okay.

Yep, so that is the Sort of the third 10 years. Yeah, that brings me to today. Yeah.

And tell us about today then. So what are you doing now? Because what I'd like to do in this sort of 5 minutes we've got left is to talk about maybe the 3 behaviors that you found that make a difference to you.

Well, it's interesting to see what— if you look at my career over the 40 years.

Yeah.

So I'm now about to start my 40th year. So First ten years was large corporate. Second ten years was international marketing. Yeah, third ten years was my own my own business. Yeah, so I'm now in the next stage of my career is how do I want to what do I want to do now? Yeah, where do I want to go? And I think that is another important stage that because you know. It is also, we're not getting younger. Yeah. And I know—

Thank you for the reminder. Yeah, my knees remind me. I thought my knees were reminding me of it, but now you're reminding me of that too, right? Okay.

But you know, it's, if I look at it, I'm doing more of my work online. Yeah. So, and do more online training. And that's, for instance, what I do with SimplyLearn, where you and I sort of reconnected as well. Yeah. But I'm now at this stage, you know, am I going to do this for another 10 years? Because I love what I do, and I don't want— I'm not seeing myself retiring until I'm 70. So, I see these last 4— last 10 years, another big change.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I'm doing now is I've got a house in Marrakesh, in a riad, and I am developing that as a hotel, as a bed and breakfast. And that is a completely different direction. But obviously, that is a very rewarding direction. And I can actually— everything that I do, that I've done all on digital marketing and social media, I can actually now implement it for myself as well in my, in my Riyadh.

Yes, that's a great— and I think that's a great point, isn't it? That now you can start to build a lifestyle around where you want to live, and the skill sets you've got enable To generate recurring income.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So through, through that asset that you bought, in fact, we've got another, another Silver Fox in, in Indonesia, building out houses and then using what he's learned from his career to sustain himself later on. Now, Mark, it sounds like you've got everything organized. But what about mistakes? Because I know you to be perfect, but maybe you'd share with the What would you say have been some one or two things that you've done that you would say you ideally didn't do? Somewhere you spent time or money that didn't add value to you?

Yeah, you know, when you drive your business with passion, the process sometimes sort of is a bit sort of on the back burner. And particularly the process of developing a new business, because that is probably if you start your own business is what everybody will experience. Yeah, and that's also the topic for your next your next session on the mastermind is how can you guarantee that you have this cash flow that you don't have to worry about next month paying next month's bills. Yep, and if you are busy and enjoying what you do and you have lots. of clients, yeah, then there's no need to focus on business development and getting new clients. And yeah, and that's where you need to get a process in place because there will be a state, there will be situations that you have fewer clients than you would like to have, yeah, and then you need to start going into business development mode again. So, would you say that's been a mistake that you yourself—

what would you say would be a mistake That you've made?

I think that would be that—

too much passion and not enough process?

Yeah, too much passion, not enough process. And also maybe too much individual. Yeah, so because I've had various opportunities to start an own— to sort of grow into a business with more people. Yeah, and That could well have turned out to be very successful, but I wasn't that keen on doing that. So I may have missed some opportunities there.

Right. So you stayed a bit of a loner. Can you just share with us about your relationships? This is always one of the parts of this conversation that we try and just talk about how you've retained, because business is one, Could you just tell us just briefly, we've got about a minute and a half left, in terms of the relationships and how you keep that side of your life together?

Yeah, so throughout my international work, I started to build a family and the whole family followed me to the US, back to the Netherlands, back to England. We had 4 sons in the process of doing so, but one thing that it did go at a cost, the career, because at the end of sort of the third decade of my running my career, I split up with my partner. And that was also the period that I started to reinvent myself. And we're talking about the late 2010s, early 2000s, sort of in 2011, 2012. And that coincided with starting up my own business. And I now remarried with a lovely Malaysian woman and with a completely different perspective on relationships and having a lot more time to invest in the relationships as well with my wife, with my children. And let's be honest, when you are running an international career, you don't have— you're more focused on your career than on your relationships. And that, yeah, I paid the price for that, but I reinvented myself. I'm in a much better space now than I was then when it comes to my personal relationships.

Great. Now, Mark, thank you for that. And can you then share with us, with your experience, what would be one practical takeaway of running a business? Not a social media takeaway, but a Mark Kampmann Enterprises, how you run your life and your own business. What would be the one thing you've learned or the one thing that you think is giving you the most success. The—

well, there's one other video that has been a sort of a thread throughout my running my own business, and that is a video from Simon Sinek, and it is called Start With Why. Yeah, and I think we should put it in the show notes as well. Instead of most people and most businesses, they start with what what they do, and then they may come to why they do it, but they're not talking about the why are they doing this.

Yep.

So, and his proposition is you have to start with why are you doing what you do. If you can find that why, then that will give so much more satisfaction in the work you do. My personal why is I want to inspire people to learn continuously. If I see people learn, and if I can get into the process of getting those people to learn continuously, that gives me the biggest satisfaction. That gives me a bigger satisfaction than getting a massive order. Yeah, I want to inspire people to learn. And that is— that would be my main takeaway. Yeah, start with the why you do what you do.

Mark, that's great. And I think your passion has come across there on the why. And you've always been someone who's had a lot of inspiring thoughts. So in terms of where people want to find out about you, you mentioned markkampmann.com.

Yep, there it is.

And also they can find you on LinkedIn, I think, as Mark Kampmann.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's correct. So markkampmann.com gives you everything I do. On LinkedIn as well, under Mark Kampmann. There is the— I'm on Instagram as well. And there's the Riyadh, riadforrussia.com. So lots of places where you can, can find me.

Great, Mark. Thank you so much. Been a pleasure to chat with you today. Thanks for sharing.

Okay, it's been a pleasure. Take care.

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