A Letter to the Prime Minister with James Sinclair

Foreign.

Sinclair is back. Three appearances. It means he gets the hat trick ball. You'll find out more about what present we're going to send him in this episode. But we're talking today about boosting the hospitality industry, saving the hospitality industry with. And there's definitely some tactics and tips to do. So James is going to come on, he's going to talk about what he's been doing in the past five weeks since he was last on, on the podcast. And also as well, he's going to be explaining about what he has been doing not only for his business, but how he's going to help you. And he's got an idea and he's going to read it, he's going to tell everybody about it and then we need you to action on it. We're in season 8. This has been recorded on Thursday 30th April and we need your help to spread the word about what we're going to talk about. So please make sure that you listen but make sure that you also grab it. Take what we give you and you, you spread the word as well. Before you go, I just want to give a big shout out to our sponsors. Hostfully. Hostfully.com you can go get a free digital guidebook, but right now, by going to hostfully.com get your free digital guidebook, that means you don't even have to have that little laminate that you leave.

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Well, I had a big empire. I don't know whether I've still got a big empire. That's the, that's the question. I mean, yeah, I'm in a man that's pretty much spent his life in the hospitality and leisure sector. We own 11 family attractions, six day nurseries. We make teddy bears. We've made over a million teddy bears. And I coach entrepreneurs, I write books and, and I write a daily podcast called the Business Broadcast. I've been making YouTube videos. I like championing entrepreneurship, hospitality and leisure to government to make sure that our voices are heard and I continue to do all of that. I'm in lockdown. My missus is six weeks to go before we have baby number dos, the second baby. So we're, you know, isolating. You know, I can't wait to get out the house and, and get in and control my business. Been very, very difficult for me to accept that this is the way it's got to be and try and digitally run my business. In terms of size of our business, it's, you know, we're, we're a 12 million pound revenue business, 450 staff and so it' difficult to navigate this new way of doing stuff. I have them high days and low days like last night I just could not get to sleep till 3 o'. Clock. I was just laying in bed from midnight till 3 o' clock mainly trying to scheme my new ideas for my farm shop, which I'm sure you talk about in a minute about how we can get more customers and do all of that stuff.

Can you just sort of explain your opinions on it and why you believe this is a good sign? Specifically for people that are listening to this from the uk first of all.

The United Kingdom is obviously trusted around the globe as a great place to do business. And when you've got a country that has a majority moderate government and I would say they are a moderate centre right government or even if you had a center left or a centrist government, when you've got a majority government that is not going to worry about a general election for five years we sit comfortably in that position where we sit Ireland have got a three way situation going on there where no one's really got any power. We sit in a very comfy position that we have a majority government. We don't have to worry about that. That gives investors, I. E Outside money, pension funds, big proper money, faith to invest in the UK and it's not just that, it's private investors, angel investors, they're looking to dump cash into the U.K. you know, as a global brand, UK plc is very trusted and if I, not just because I am a Brit but if I had to place my money anywhere in the world, the UK would be in my choice of the five top 10 and I think that's Being recognized, the world. We've got a great legal system, we manufacture stuff. Well, we've got JCB, Mini Cooper, Dyson, etc.

This is a letter that you want to send to Boris. This is a letter you want to send to the Prime Minister, you want to send to the Chancellor, but not just you, you want everybody to join in, you know, everybody from the hospitality, all the businesses. So could you just explain the idea behind it? And obviously then we'll explain at the end how people can get involved as well, because this is really important.

Countries like Spain, France, Ireland have a lower rate of VAT for leisure and tourism. In the United Kingdom, we pay a higher rate. I mean, there's actually why France got Disneyland or Disney, Euro Disney over it going in Spain or going in the United Kingdom. And the United Kingdom was quite high up there in the choices to do that. But because we have a high rate of vat, that's why France got chosen. It's been proven time and time again that if you have a lower tourism vat, a lower leisure and tourism vat, it actually drives more taxes into the government's coffers. What I'm quite keen about doing is in this situation where government are actually listening and they're understanding that leisure is the one that's most hard hit, now is our time to shout the loudest and champion change. I think. I think what's going to happen in the furlough scheme, I don't know if this is accurate and completely true, but my best guess is that the leisure and tourism sector will be able to furlough their staff for much longer than other sectors. What I'm really hoping for is that the government allow us to furlough our staff, but allow them to work.

So if you could just break down the letter, the seven step plan, and then we'll explain to everybody how they can help.

As you listen to me read this, I'm happy for people just to literally swipe it and deploy it, steal and deploy, whatever you want to do, because there's some really good ideas. And what I've tried to do is I'm not trying to be stupid. I think that the government can do all of this stuff because they need to get their money paid back. Shall I read it and then we'll go through it?

Yeah, yeah, please.

I would be happy for you to use that. So here we go. Number one furlough. The taxpayer is committed to the expenditure. Let's use that money to drive the economy forward, not for people to sit at home this needs to be to go to the sectors that are most affected. Leisure, retail, specifically non food and hospitality. Let's allow those companies to have support on paying off until normality returns. If they take this, they should take up, they should top up the 20%. A restaurant and leisure business will make its profit in the last 20% of turnover. Working at anything less than 100% capacity means. Well, they won't make any money. So let's use the furlough to put us back to work, not sit at home. Of course, once it's safe to do so. Number two, business rates. This 12 months will fly by for businesses to really benefit. The 12 months needs to be from when we start trading. After all, you wouldn't pay rates if you had a flood or a fire that stops you from trading. So please give the relief from when we start trading. Number three, VAT deferment and tax time to pay. I applaud the VAT deferment plans. However, I think these should be spread over a much longer period, say 36 months on a means tested basis. For companies that have had to abide social distancing rules. When companies fire up their engines, they'll be throwing all they have at the cause to keep their engine going. Taxing and taking turnover. Turnover that comes in will ensure a weak spike. Let's go further and expand on this. Companies will need to protect cash and as most entrepreneurs will look to do the right thing, I. E. They will save jobs that's less of a drain on the state. We need to let companies pay tax over a period of time within reason and on a means tested basis. This will get funding into companies far easier than banks. You're probably going to do this anyway, but please don't let HMRC make us complete a tightrope Walk over 16 chomping crocodiles to get the help SMEs needed. Number four, VAT overhaul. And I'll just stop here a second, Mark. This is completely essential for our industry. Leisure, retail and hospitality industries like mine, leisure, retail and hospitality that can't claim much VAT back always suffer with this nasty tax on turnover. Why can't we have a higher VAT rate for products and lower for services? And whilst we're here, countries that have a lower tourism and hospitality VAT have been proven time and time again to improve the government's tax tax Take in the countries these rules operate. Ask France and Ireland. They both have lowered leisure and tourism taxes. This really is the sector. But they never this sorry, this really is the sector that May never come back if you don't do this. 5 Sibyl's loans. The Rubik's cubes of the Sibils loan. The Coronavirus business interruption loan scheme. So far at the time of writing, only 2% of businesses have been able to get that injection of cash into their business. Now I think we all know in time this will improve. But my biggest issue is short term payback. Why only five years after the initial one year holiday? This aggressive payback will cause much stress on businesses that in many cases will be forced to be like a startup again once we've been in hibernation for so long. Let us pay that back over 10 years. Far more manageable. Lower the repayments and lower the risk. Forcing people to pay it back in five years will, I believe, cause companies to go bust and that in turn hurts the taxpayer. Number six, insurance. Imagine this. Here's little old me not panicking when this all took off. Why? Well, I, like most businesses, felt comforted by the fact I pay insurance and have done for years. We'd all be tickety boo. I thought I'd receive my business interruption claim and trade through when normality comes knocking again. I was wrong. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to see that insurers are running away. I get that. It's a huge sum for insurers and they'll need help. Their industry is built on this premises, the premises built on this premise. The premiums of the many pay for the losses of the few. In the case of the Coronavirus, that model is clearly not the case. My point is this. Can we not use ipt, that's insurance premium tax, at which the Exchequer collects around 27 billion pounds a year and has done for some time to be given to insurers to redistribute to the businesses that are most hit. Please use your powers to make insurance fair. Or frankly, what's the point in paying insurance. Number seven, supermarkets don't need relief. Give that money to SMEs. I cannot believe we the taxpayer have given supermarkets that have never had it so good a big tax break in business rates. Their income in some cases has sourced 40% ahead of last year on a year for year like, for like basis. Seriously, why don't we use those billions redeposited to businesses that have had nothing and need it most? I've read that this amount amounts to £11 billion. So that's it. What do you think? Now's the time you might be thinking, who's the person behind this Letter. Hi, Boris. Hi Rishi. To the person. And to the person that's reading it on their behalf, I hope you take it up the line. I'm James Sinclair. Who? I'm a UK entrepreneur. I founded my company when I was still in short trousers. Fifteen to be exact. I've tried my hardest to climb the slippery slope of business. It's hard at the best of times for business owners, so a pandemic is just what we needed. Open brackets. I'm British. I'll be damned if COVID 19 will take my sarcasm away too. Close brackets. Our business has gone from hero to zero. We're in hibernation, but like a grizzly bear, we can't wait to wake up. So for our company, it's Party Man World. Our channel of indoor play centers, Marsh Farm, our 50 acre visitor attraction and Twizzle tops, our chain of day nurseries. We stand ready to go, ready to go like gangbusters. I'm also super passionate about two other points. Our 450 employees, their livelihoods and entrepreneurships. Entrepreneurs have always solved the world's biggest problems and I've always wanted to help those looking to start, scale or build up in business. To that end, I've penned four books on business, mentored and helped a ton of entrepreneurs with my iTunes top 10 podcast, YouTube channel and online training platform, Entrepreneurs University. Here's what I'm going to do for our companies. Just so you know, I'll personally guarantee, raise cash, put my house on the line and secure whatever I have to do to keep us going and to keep my people employed. Hoping you're helping, hoping you'll be the fuel to drive our engines. Yours entrepreneurially, James Sinclair. So there you go.

And you get the round of applause in as well. That was amazing. And I just basically want to say to everybody that is listening and has been commenting as you've been going, we need you to get involved. So what would you like people to do? I've shared the Google Doc where you've got that literally what you've just read out there. What do you want people to do.

That I'm going to. I'm just going to put one more tweak to it and then I'll just put this everywhere. You'll be able to get the final tweet from our website. Just contact us@james sinclair.net and then I want you to send it to your mps, all your local mps and then CC another letter and send it into Downing Street. You can sign it off as me and as yourself. Or just as yourself, I don't care. Or, you know, nick my words and put it, I don't care. I just, you know, I really, I just want people to get this over to the Prime Minister. Now is our chance to beat the drum of the hospitality industry in the United Kingdom. Otherwise I fear, I fear that our voices will get forgotten and we need to bang that drum.

Marsh Farm, what have you been doing with Marshfarm? Because obviously the visit attraction, people can't go in. But what was the idea that you and the team had and what did you do?

A click and collect drive through farm shop. So think about McDonald's drive through, think about a farm shop if you combine those two models together. So people, we've been doing about twelve hundred thousand pounds a day worth of sales online. People come into our car park and we put the food in their boot so there's no contact and no queuing up outside supermarkets going forward from that, we're going to open a full farm shop. Now, we started off with some, and there's some lessons here for entrepreneurs. We started off with a shoddy brand and we built a basic website really quickly and since then our in house team, we've got better imagery and we've designed a brilliant new logo that's much more, more in keeping with that type of business. Today we went to Spitalfields Market to source the best possible products that we can and we're going to set up a membership business. So it's 6.99amonth and if you live locally for that 6.99amonth, that'll include free delivery and 10% off of all of our products and services. And then we're going to do veggie boxes that we can distribute from our big barn all around the country. And we've set up a new website, masterfarmshop.co.uk and we're getting the, you know, liter stuff than a supermarket and much better prices and, you know, so we'll be distributing good quality stuff direct from market every day since being on lockdown.

Since doing your daily podcasts and things. Or is this something that you had the idea for sort of before March and you've just gone, right now's the perfect time?

No, no, no, no. We was, we had a big bomb and we was going to turn that into a restaurant. You know, obviously that's not going to happen right now. And so I made a decision to, I said to the team, like, guys, we've got to get this going and we need to make some Money because I, I've kept on my md, my FD part time and accounts, my commercial director. So if I can just bring in some cash to pay for them. I mean the margins in this is nowhere near as good as leisure and retail but the customers are much more regular and it's, it fits my business needs. It's a love, want and need business. People love good quality food produce, they want good foot quality food produce and they need good quality food produce. My, my hunch is as well that we're going to have another lockdown in September, October with the second rise of this virus, unless there's a vaccine, of course. And I want to make sure that we've got a really good retail offering for food, good quality food so that we, you know, can really compete with supermarkets for the second bite of the cherry. And then, you know, if we can, you know, when we open again, we're gonna have 200,000 people going from our farm attraction. They'll all be exiting through our farm shop.

Before we go on to the quick fire questions, because I do have some quick fire questions for you but I did tell James about, but obviously hasn't passed a message on. Before we go and see who them. I just want to go through basically the message that you have to the British public. So obviously we're speaking to hospitality owners, hospitality owners are watching this but there are a lot of people, the British public. So if you could put a message out to the British public that when the lockdowns do end, whether that's going to be coming up soon or whether this is after a vaccine. But what, what is the message to you? And obviously you've got all these hospitality businesses, you know, you've got the visit attractions and whatnot. What would be the message that you're going to pass on to the British public to say listen, we're open, hospitality businesses are here. You've been cooked up in your house for six, eight weeks. What would be that message to people and what should be the message that again a two part question. What should be the message that us as the hospitality owners should be passing.

On to the public as well for customers? I think there's some good points here that I just. So it's three points only. Number one, if you're in UK hospitality, less people are going to be going abroad. So, so that people are going to stay, Kate, because they're going to be worried this virus is going to come for a second bite. Where would they rather be ill? Would they rather be ill? You know, in an international destination or in their national country, they're going to want to be in their country. So I think there's going to be a lot more people looking to stay K and I think that's really exciting for the UK hospitality industry. Secondly, the ones that are going to survive are the ones that think like marketers of their business rather than operators of their business. So you've got to market that you're still open and ask people to come and do business with you and come and use your restaurants, use your hospitality, work out how to do text message marketing. You know how to do all of this stuff so that you can get people to trade with you.

Now let's find out more about James Jimbo Sinclair, the inside and how your mind works. So the first quick fire question, and again, it's a quarantine style quick fire questions, obviously. But if you could be on lockdown with one celebrity or famous figure, it could be alive or dead, who would that be? So for two, three, four, five weeks you'd be on lockdown with one famous figure. Could be a celebrity, could be anybody, famous figure of past or present, who would that be?

Well, right now I would want to be with Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak to get my seven points through to save our lives.

There you go. I like that one. And obviously you'll save him from all those dirty and happies that he's gonna have to be looking after.

Yeah, yeah. My Mrs. That, she said, God, that man, that poor man. He's got to keep the country together and now he's gonna have SL nights.

Yeah, he's had a busy couple of weeks. If, if there is one movie or TV series obviously without lockdown going on and you're chasing around the country and whatnot, doing all of the things, you obviously built up a bit of a to watch list on Netflix or Sky or whatever. What has been that one movie or TV series that you've, you've watched recently that you could recommend to others? Or is there something that's there but you've just been, you're really looking forward to checking out? Is there anything that you can recommend, whether it's Netflix, Sky TV movie, whatever it may be.

I've watched Unorthodox on Netflix, which was flipping fantastic. That really opened my eyes. I love Peaky Blinders and I love Game of Thrones. They're the, they're my three. But Unorthodox is the recent one I've watched. I thought it was fantastic.

Nice. And as you are listening to this where it's live or on the replay. Everybody, please get involved. Every night we're doing this and we've got some great answers coming in on the comments. What is the one thing, the one thing that you've missed being able to do since being on lockdown people and.

Getting out of my house? Yeah. I've been locked up for seven weeks now and I can't handle it.

Yeah, I mean, that's been a common. A common answer. So, Deb, there's some people and just being around people. Okay, next one. And there's only two more to go after this. What has been your favorite purchase under a hundred pound in the last. Last year? So anything in the last year. You know, it could be any of these fancy gizmos that you've got lying around in, in the office. Or is this one specific thing that, that you've purchased in the. In the past year under 100 pound? What would be that?

Well, I said last time, I said it was my phone charger. I remember saying. Do you remember me saying that?

Phone charger? Yep, that's the one.

Yes. Yeah. It can connect to my phone. So I think I have to have a different one now, though, aren't I? Because I said that last time.

Yeah. Yep.

I see. One of the things, it's about £100. It's one of these little SIM Sabine tech mics. So it means that you can have a lapel that connects to your phone for when you're making videos on YouTube. So you don't need to use a DSLR camera and you don't need to have earpods in your. In your ears.

I like.

And earpods don't actually work on video on an iPhone. I don't know if you know that.

That I did not know that. So get one of those little ones and it will.

So, so, so these work on Facebook, they work on Instagram, but if you actually record a video on your iPhone, it's. It's not. It doesn't, you know, so. But with this, you can be 15 meters away and still have like audio quality. So it's a really good. It's called a Sabine tech. It's about 100 quid. It's good little.

I like that. And final one. So what has been. What would be your guilty pleasure? So whilst on. Maybe it could be on lockdown or quarantine, do you have that one guilty pleasure? That's basically something that you do. It's the one that you like to do. And again, one that other people may not know about.

Well, the problem is for me, I love sugar, so anything like a KitKat, I'll be making fresh cakes. You know, I love all that stuff. I don't drink, so sugar's my enemy and I'm probably getting a bit too fat and I'm gonna have to start working out and getting rid of it once this all finishes. But I just love that sort of stuff.

Well, it's, it's handy that, because obviously there's going to be a chocolate orange arriving in the post for being at the hat trick. Hat trick of appearances on the Boostly podcast. Buddy, we massively appreciate it. This is where you get a 30 second chance to pitch and promote the podcast, the Entrepreneurs University. Where do you want people to go? Where do you want people to check out?

Yeah, well, so my YouTube channel, James Sinclair. There's 450 plus videos to help you grow your business. My podcast is James Sinclair's Business Broadcast. But I can. We've built this amazing online platform, this business training platform called Entrepreneurs University, which we're improving all the time. I saw the next level up of what we're doing and that's being released now. You can try it free for 14 days. We're doing zoom calls and we've got a ton of cheat sheets and blueprints that we're putting into this platform for you to help grow your business. So for free for 14 days, you can try my Entrepreneurs University. Just go to james sinclair.net, click on the homepage and there it is, big button and it will take you in and you can try it free 14 days. You get a welcome call with one of our coaches, which is well worth it. And then if we've got any members that I think that you should connect with through that welcome call, we'll connect you with those members so that we can help grow your business. And we just want to. It's a model that we're building so that it never stops growing. So one of the things that I've been speaking today about my team, we're putting in interview questions, incident sheets, our staff handbooks, my business plans, they're all going into the vault of the Entrepreneurs University. So it's just adding more and more value to help people grow their businesses.

Nice. Thank you very, very much for that, buddy. Thanks for coming on. And everybody, please do go check out the podcast, the YouTube channel and the Entrepreneurs University as well. Well, and everybody, please, please, please. We've hit that goal. We hit that target. I wanted 50 likes on this video. So it would get more people aware of it. We have done more than that. We were on 58, so thank you so much to everybody that has helped contribute to that. And before you leave, if you haven't done so already, Share this video Share this live video on your wall on a Facebook group that you may a part of that is hospitality related. Tell everybody about what we're doing and we're going to get this link, the letter that we spoke about. When James has finished it and finessed it a little bit more, we're going to get it spread out. I'm going to email it out to everybody so you can take it and send it to your local MP and try and spread the word. Let's see if we can really help the hospitality industry with this. But most importantly, make sure you focus on yourselves. We're doing everything that you can from here on in to spread the word. Email your previous guests, talk about on social media. We will get going. This country will open. Your country will open open, whether it's sooner or later, but when it does, people want to travel. So make sure that you are really active and telling everybody about it. For now, I'm going to leave you, but tomorrow we're going to be back and we're going to be giving you more little tips on what you can be doing to get more bookings. But for now, thank you so much for tuning in. Stay safe and we'll see you.