Interview With the Millonaire Clown - James Sinclair (10 Minute Highlight)

Podcast. We are in season seven, episode 14 and today we're going to be doing something a little bit different. I've invited onto the show James Sinclair, who is one of Britain's best entrepreneurs. He started at the age of 15 out of his nan spare room and now he has built an empire which is huge. If you want to go find out more, Google James Sinclair, go to james sinclair.net. what he really wants you to do about is go to his YouTube channel. He is on a mission in 2020 to grow that YouTube channel. I think if I could compare him to anybody, he's the Britain's version of Gary Vaynerchuk. If you don't know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, then just go check him out. But he gives so much value, content and advice away for free on that YouTube channel and he's really trying to grow it from the 3,000 where he is now to, you know, 10,000 plus. So please go over to YouTube and subscribe to his channel. Today we're going to dig into a whole host of issues and topics, including why business owners should be taking note of politicians, which is an interesting one, seeing that it's the general election coming up very soon in the uk at the time of recording. We also delve into why you should sack yourself from your business. He goes over why he wrote about certain topics in his books as well as many other things. This is one that you should not miss. And although it is not hospitality related, I think any business owner can get on this and they can learn something. Before you do leave, go rate, review and subscribe to the boosted podcast. I appreciate every single one of you for tuning in, but without further ado, let's jump in and have a chat with James Sam Sinclair, the millionaire clown. By the time that this goes live, your new book will be available. Is that right? Which one is the new book? Getting Customers. Tell me about Getting Customers. Tell me about Getting Customers. Break that down.

Well, the full title is called Getting Customers Easier, Faster and for less money than you ever thought possible. Because in The World of LinkedIn, Twitbook, YouTube, Tickety Top, Instagram and all of this, I think most business owners that don't understand the fundamentals of marketing become very lazy. I. E. They put something on Instagram, they post something on any social media platform and the results they're getting are not the results that they would dream of getting. So I wanted to write this book to give business owners the fundamental basis of marketing. So if you understand the policies in here, you'll be able to get a far better response from your posting on the media. So it teaches about the method of marketing that I believe too, which is market message media. And I believe people have forgot about their market. They forgot about their message. Because media is so freely accessible. They're just posting stuff without any real understanding of marketing. We talk about copywriting, how to write the best copy to get people to take action. Actually, what is call to action. And some of my best call to action stuff that we put in basic business. There's a whole chapter on basic business understanding. Average customer value, lifetime value, transactional value, why you must market, why customer service is king, and why product first and marketing second is the way to go. Because you have these two extremes. So you've got people that just market really well, or these guys that have a great product that don't market. So you've got great marketing, terrible products or great product, terrible marketing.

All right, I love that. And a nice little pitch for the book. You can go get it from any good bookstore. And the bad ones as well. But what I want for you to do, take us back now to when you were 15. How old are you right now, James?

34.

34. So just over 15 years ago, you were 15 in your nan spare room. That's when you came up with your first business idea. What was it and what was the biggest lesson that you learned in those first few years of having a business at just 15?

The smart thing that I think I did, and early enough this was, you know, it got into my head that you can build a business that has instant cash flow now, might not be profitable, but it's got to from day one have some form of cash flow. And I think all startup entrepreneurs need to understand that the first business that you do might not be the one that you really want to do, but the first thing that you do has got to give you some basis of understanding that you've got to bring cash in, pay some bills, and keep them back to invest into the things that you really want to do. I always wanted to own visitor attractions, Mark. It was something I was passionate about doing. But I realized at 15, I couldn't go and open a theme park. I didn't have the capital to go and do it. So I thought, well, look, you know, I know where my end in mind is. I want to own visitor attractions. Let's start now by doing magic shows and doing kids parties and going to visitor attractions and being the entertainer at visitor attraction to build up my knowledge base of that industry and Learn how to get cash in, get company. And I think that's what I was pretty good at, you know, being unusual in a very usual world at 15 and you know, I was the youngest kids entertainer on the block. I didn't wear a bow tie and a bloody waistcoat. And I do do that now, but it's a bit fun. And I chose a business that had margin in it, I. E. You know, if I build 200 pounds, I could keep most of that 200 pounds. Whereas you know, most businesses, you build 200 pounds and you're, you know, the profit that most businesses make, it sub 10%.

One thing that I've always wanted to know is that you've got the first venue and you've grown it to the point where you, you want to get a second, you want, you want to get that second venue. What is the, what is the. I want to just go back to that sort of mindset, to that point. And what is the one bit of advice that you wish that you had received at that point before going from venue one to venue two? And obviously you've learned loads because now you've got loads and loads of new venues. But what is that one bit of advice that you wish that you had received? Going from property number one to property number two?

I think people need to understand how much money they actually want to make to go into their personal bank account and not keep growing a business just for ego's purpose. So if you, you know, think, right, I need to just, you know, I want to make 50 or 100 or 20,000 pounds to live the life that I want to meet, that I really want to have. Do you need to go and open that second business? Could you just get another 50,000 of revenue out of the existing business? Make that money that you want to make. Most people think that opening a second venue, a second restaurant is just going to double your profits. In reality, it can be the other way around because you're splitting yourself across two. I don't think having two is a great place to be. I think you either have one great restaurant or 20 great restaurants. I think three or four is just, you know, history tells us that those people usually reverse and go back to having one again because they can't afford the middle management to go and run it and stuff like that now. I thought it would be easy and it wasn't. The only reason I got through was I didn't have a family, I didn't have a relationship, I didn't take any money out of the business. I carried on doing gigs at weekend to live off of that. The business could breathe and we nearly lost it two or three times. And if you're not properly funded, it's near on impossible to get through that growth curve of becoming a multi chain operator of anything, whether it's a dentist, doctor, shop, restaurant, hotel, you know, it's very difficult. And that's actually why I wrote this book, the Experience Business. And this book is all about what you've just asked me, how you build a business with margin. Because if you haven't got margin then you cannot reinvest back in the cut back in the business. Give your, what I call customer cuddles. There's a whole chapter in there called that customer cuddle where you give, you know, like Apple gives you customer cuddles. When you go into one of the shops there's always loads of staff around so you don't ever have to wait to see someone that's a customer cuddle. But you know this thing, this Apple iPhone, you know it cost them 100 quid to make, they sell it for 1200 quid. There's 1100 pounds worth of margin in there, there. So that you do always have the best shopping experience. If there is a problem, you can go and speak Apple on the phone. A fantastic. You get a genius bar appointment, they sort it out. One of my earpods wasn't working, they just gave me a new one, you know, and I thought this is fantastic, you know, but you know, you pay 250 quid, whatever it is for one of these earpod things and you know that it's probably cost them 15 quid to make that. So you know, I just think they're fantastic for giving me back. But when you've got a low margin business you're very profit and loss protected so you don't go and really look after your customers because you know that if you give them back something you've lost your money for. Disney are the same.

Now, without going on for too long on this one topic, can you just delve into me, the sheep, the ox and the eagle and talk about why it is important for business owners to listen to this.

Another difference between the sheep, oxes and the eagles. And the, the eagles are people that know what they want the business to look like when it's finished, have incredible vision, think with the end in mind. Great. At joint ventures, they're not control freaks. They think how can I employ as many people as possible to do everything for me? The oxes are control freaks. They, they're always scared of delegating because they're control freaks. They're superheroes of their business.