Why you should sack yourself from your business - with James Sinclair S7E14

Foreign.

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 a at the age of 15 out of his nan's 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 one 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 Boostly 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 Sinclair, the millionaire clown. 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.

The full title is called Getting Customers Easy, Easier, Faster and for less money than you ever thought possible. Because in the world of LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and all of this, I think most business owners that don't understand 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 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 product or great product, terrible marketing. And it's all about what should the business owner be doing in their business. And you know, from my point of view, the business owner should be the marketeer of the business rather than the operator of the business. And if you can get that fundamental shift when you look at someone like Walt Disney, Richard Manson, Elon Musk, Stelios, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, they spend a big chunk of their time on the marketing of their businesses, hence the super success that they have around them. Jeff Bezos also, there's a reason we know those people's names. They're great marketeers rather than operators of their business. And this book really gets you to understand that stuff, you know, and you know, how personal brand is very different to a business brand and why you can build a personal brand now within three years with some effort, you know, and not a huge capital cost investment. I think after three years of consistently putting effort into building personal brands that can turbo charge your marketing in terms of return and investment to get your customers. And it talks about also like some of the great things, especially what's going on right now. We're heading next Friday at the time of here. We'll know who our new prime minister is going to be when this video comes out. But who knows? Right now we're looking through the looking glass and we haven't got a clue. The polls are up and down, but there's some great things that business owners can learn from the marketing that politicians do to get votes. Whether you're left wing, right wing, centrist politician stuff that they do, like knocking on doors, leaflets through the post, getting on the radio, getting PR opportunities, writing articles, but all of that stuff they do to get votes. Actually, if business owners focus their mindset about, look, you know, I'm running to be MP of my local town, all of those things that they do there are very similar to the things that business owners should be doing to get customers for their business. It's all in getting customers with examples of everything that I've done. It's all based on experience. There's no theory. It's 160ish pages. There's some great things about most customers, ideal customers, and it's really good if you've got teams around you. It's not going to teach you how to do Facebook ads, it's not going to teach you about the latest phase of organic reach on LinkedIn or anything about TikTok. It's all about before you get to any media, whether it's radio, tv, film, video posting on social media, it's all about the basics. Good, good stuff of 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?

Number four. 34.

Day four. 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?

Well, it's funny, I had a couple of mums that just remortgaged their house come in to see me yesterday and they're building an app. You know, the new sexy thing that startup businesses want to do is build a tech software company and compete with people that have got billions of pounds and think that it's just easy to build a website and make loads of money. The smart thing that I think I did, and early enough this was, you know, it got into my head that you go out and 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 some 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 customers. 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 now they do that now, but it's a bit funky.

I was gonna say, it's funny how you've come full circle and now you've got the waistcoat. So go on.

And yeah, so I went out and done all those things and I focused on getting customers and getting some sales in and then the excess that I kept from those sales after running the business, I just invested into bigger stuff, you know. Yes, I think I was lucky enough to do that 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, you. The profit that most businesses make is sub 10% and you need huge turnover to make money. And I didn't have to do huge turnover to make money.

So obviously you've gone from 15 being, you know, children's entertainer and then you've gone through the years and like I say, you've done this for a long, long time now. But I just want to just flash forward just a little bit to when you've got your first venue. You've got your first venue, it's going well. And Obviously now in 2019, 2020, you've got many venues. But 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 want to get a second. You want to get that second venue. 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.

Yeah, I mean, 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 purposes. So if you, you know, you 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 to 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, you know, 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 that 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 because usually hospitality works because it's over managed. And you know, even chain restaurants are really struggling now. You know, there's loads and loads of stories, you know, lots of people watching this will know about that. You know where chain restaurants are really struggling. The great restaurants that we all know love that are around us is usually an owner manager, that passionate about the menu, passionate about customer service, puts in seven days a week. They work so hard, they created their new days of the week. You know, they created time to do stuff that most people just won't do. 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 sustainably reinvest back in the cup, back in the business give your, what I call customer cuddles. There's a whole chapter in there called Back customer Cuddles where you give, you know, like Apple give 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. Nothing comes from a cuddle. But you know, this thing, this Apple iPhone, it, you know, it cost them 100 quid to make, they sell it for 1200 quid. There's 1100 pounds worth of margin in 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 offensive. 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 protective, so you don't go and really look after your customers because you, you know that if you give them back something, you've lost your money. So Disney are the same.

All right, let's, let's try and reel this back into what the topic is all about, which we're sort of talking about sacking yourself from the business. You said it yourself as people out there that try and do seven days, trying to do eight days worth of work all by them themselves. And what I love about you, what.

I just said there is crucial to the art, to the question that I'm about to give you. If you don't have margin in your business, you are never going to afford to employ other people because you'll be scared. You go, right, all my profit's gone margin. So important.

Yeah, let's go on to this. Then. I saw a talk of yours because now you've obviously grown your businesses, growing your businesses and now obviously you're getting your personal brand up and running by doing talks and writing books and all these things. One of the talks that really stood out to me was a recent one where you explain about the sheep, the ox and the eagle. 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.

Yeah, I mean, Mark, when I was younger and I started out in business, I always thought, why doesn't everyone just do what I do? And as a few lines have come along my forehead and under my eyes, I've come to understand people a little bit more. And now I can't understand why anyone would want to live my life. It, you know, I have nicer things than most people. I, I get that I drive a nice car, I have nicer holidays, I live in a nice house, I get all those things. But the reality of it is I live to work. And I don't know if that is the right way to live your life. I can't help the way I am. I regularly work till one o' clock in the morning. I regularly work seven days a week because it's like an illness, it's like a disease. It is who I am. So when I wrote this book, I feel like I'm constantly plugging, but I'm not.

The hat trick of plugs.

But all I'm doing is making Jeff Bezos some more money. Because every time someone buys one of these books, Jeff gets more than me. And I wrote about this in the book the Sheep, Oxes and Eagles, which is what I refer to as the entrepreneur's pyramid, which you just mentioned. I quickly realized that there's three types of people and three types of business owners. There's the sheep that do the same day in, day out, they wait for it to happen. There's the oxes and these guys work incredibly hard. By the time they've got 65, they paid their mortgage up, they have a nice holiday every year, they work 70, 80 hour weeks, they're control freaks of their business. But to all intents and purposes they are quite successful. They are business owners and to describe them really they are managing directors of their businesses. Then there's the top five, the eagles that would say their chairmans or shareholders of their businesses. And really you would class them as investors even if they own their business 100%. They're an investor in business and they're the three main key differences. There's the supervisor type business owner, which is the sheep. So it'd be a plumber, electrician, get up through the same day in, day out. Then there's the oxes, they will become managing directors of a plumber or electrical business. And then there are the eagles that would say they're an owner of an electrical business and they've employed a managing director to run it. The two types of businesses are experienced Businesses or scale businesses, they're the two that make money. The scale business needs, you know, has low margin but has huge turnover, therefore can implement all the policies that I teach. So this would be a Tesco, a Lidl, that sort of business making 2% of billions of pounds worth of turnover. It all works. Or there's the experience business that makes 40% of half a million turnover and they can still employ great people and actually have a life. And then the difference between the sheep, oxes and the eagles. And 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're always scared of delegating because they're control freaks. They're superheroes of their business. They're the only I can solve the problem type people. They say things like, if you want a job, run well, do it yourself. They're sitting in that category with so many people, you know. Whereas the eagles would say, if you want a job done well, let's create a system or how can we employ the best possible people to create the system? And the sheep are the 80% of people that, you know, turn up doing the same day in, day out. That's what makes the world go round, that is.

Thank you for that. So yeah, we've got all those free books and don't worry, I will in the show notes for this give links to where you can go get all of them. So let's move on now, sue, you obviously give a load of advice. You do the YouTube channel, you do the Instagram, you've got blogs, you're literally everywhere at the present moment in time.

You obviously speak to a TikTok now as well.

TikTok as well, which is obviously the new thing, the new kid on the block. But you speak to a lot of business owners on a day to day, probably from all the different types of industries. But what would you say time and time again is the biggest mistake that you see that these business owners, these small business owners are making right now?

They have battle plans, but not a war plan. Very simple. Most business owners do what I call World War I style of business when they need to do World War II style of business. What does that mean? I shall explain World War I, no one knows really what that war was about. You know, they were fighting for a mile of land and lost A mile of land, fighting for a mile of land, lost a mile of land. World War II, you know, everyone could turn around and say, look, the vision is we get rid of this nasty bloke in Germany, we liberate Germany and we get rid of the fascists. And then you have the battles to do that. But everyone knew why they were doing it. Whereas World War I, you know, you know, it was just like, everyone's just fighting these battles with no real end in mind, no purpose, you know, it's like these two mums I had that I'd done some. A video with yesterday, you know, I said, what do you want your business to look like when it's finished? We want it to be a brand. What do you want it? You know, what profit do you want it to make? What revenue? They couldn't tell me what profit they wanted to make. They could only they said, we want a million pound turnover, which is everyone's go to thing. You know what they say if they're on when they put on the spot, like a million pounds, wherever. I said, why? Because that'd be a nice achievement. That's not good enough, is it? That's just not good enough, you know, because you can turn a million pounds and lose half a million pounds. Would you feel that's a great achievement? No. So, you know, the greatest entrepreneurs always know what they want it to look like when it's finished. And that's people as well. You know, I always say, there's people that go for university, the kid or the guy that says, or the girl that says, I want to be a doctor. Like, they're going to go for education far more successfully than the person that goes to university. Yeah, I don't really know what I want to do, so I've just done a photography degree, you know, like, come on, you know, like what a waste of your life that is, you know, where if you actually thought about what the end in mind is, but, you know, not everyone can do that. But that's what successful people do. They can tell you what it looks like when it's finished. And I believe if you can succinctly say, this is the finished date of the business, this is the profit, revenue. What do my team look like when it's finished? What's the culture look like when it's finished? What do you do for that business? What have you got to become? What are you going to do to have everything that I've just listed above? Then you'll be far more successful than most people.

I Think if anybody wants to get a real insight of somebody who's done just that and had that end goal, go and check out Mike Winix podcast, Mike Winnick's YouTube channel. I know you were on his, on his podcast recently. He's a guy who has done exactly that and has got the end goal. I know now he's fighting off entrepreneurs and doing all the other things, but go and have a look at his YouTube channel. He told you exactly. But when he started his business, he had the full end goal in mind. He knew who he wanted to sell it to, he knew what he wanted to achieve in his business. So that'd be a real good example to go and have a look at.

Right.

We're coming to the end because I know you're a busy guy and you've got to get off to a very important meeting. So I'm going to finish with some quick fire questions. So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions and just give me the first thing that comes back. Everything that you talk about in here, don't worry, it'll be up in the show notes if you miss it. So number one favorite business book that you have read?

Oh, Losing My Virginity. Richard Branson.

Nice. What is your favorite podcast or YouTube channel? I'll let you have a YouTube channel.

I've got to say, I've got to say that I need to say how to get Rich Felix Dennis, because those two books are both equally as favorable and I just need to get that one in. It's a fantastic book. And you can also get it on audio. It's great to listen to on a long journey as well. Both of them you can get on audio.

So are you, are you a podcast person, would you say, or would you more listen to the audible do podcasts.

But if I was going to listen, I would be audible rather than listen to podcasts.

All right, So I think that would.

Change in the future.

Okay, interesting. All right then. So here's a good one. Favorite purchase under a hundred pound in the past year.

Oh, this. See this on the back of my iPhone is the extra battery. It's 100 pounds. I think it's 99 pounds, 95 pounds, I think it is. And the Apple Shop, but the Apple one, not some knockoff thing. My phone never runs out of charge. Now literally my stress levels have gone right down.

So there we go. Because you are obviously that we have realized on this podcast you like to talk about. So if you've got extra battery. Good. All right, then what is Your biggest pain point in the business right now, or businesses. What's the thing that is keeping you up at night?

Why put so much effort into my YouTube channel and I've only got 3,700 subscribers. It's constantly on me, but I think I'm gonna smash it on Boxing Day. With our brand new would have come out by then. We're doing. We're buying a million pounds worth of property or attempting to, with hardly any money. And we put teaser out on that last night. We got 500 views. That's the quickest we've ever got any views in. I mean, a YouTube view is real. Facebook, Instagram, all them views.

I was one of those views. Whenever anybody puts anything along the lines of no money down, I think around a YouTube video, you're gonna do all right. I know the fellow that you're doing it with, he has the thumbnails and stuff. Stuff doing really well on the YouTube, so. But yeah, we will, we will link to that, don't worry. And by the time this comes out.

That video, we don't know, I mean, everyone will know the results of it. I mean, right now, I mean, I can talk about it because it's not coming. I mean, right now we've secured one property, so we're, you know, we're pretty much £900,000 away and we've only got eight more days filming.

Good. I am looking forward to it. I'm not into the. Into the property, but I am actually looking forward to it. So I'm definitely sure you're live.

At the end of that documentary. Whatever money we need to put into it, I'm going to put the money in. But then within three months, four months, six months, whatever it is, we're then going to go and make that money and that will be challenged too. And we'll be using business tactics to do that from scratch. That we'll build a business that makes, say, £70,000 worth of profit in three months.

When we do this again in December 2020, I guarantee those YouTube numbers will have gone up by then. Do not worry about that. All right, then, final one then.

You don't have to be mystic to work that one out. What, another year? I should hope it grows a little bit.

Yeah, just a tiny bit. Just a tiny bit. We'll definitely get one more subscriber from this, so. Okay, so last one then. How much sleep do you get at night?

Oh, I think sleep is, you know, everything else is here and sleep is here. I think you've made it in Life if you can wake up naturally every day. I do not and I absolutely want to get this over. I do not subscribe to anyone getting up before the birds to be successful. I genuinely believe an extra 90 minutes in bed, if you can do that, will make you a better person and a healthier person and live a longer life.

I like that. But how much sleep do you get?

As much as I can between six, eight, nine hours every day.

Nice. Good man. Well, unfortunately I've got a one year old and I don't have that luxury. That is my alarm clock.

Yeah, I got three year old. But I know your pain is horrible.

When that, when they are that long. Yeah, yeah, well, we'll get that. I think my tip, if anybody wants a little tip, Those afternoon naps, 15, 20 minutes max, grab them when you can because those are the lifesavers. When you're tired, just have a little 15, 20 minutes, curl up into a little ball. I can sleep anywhere, anytime, as long as you don't go over 20 minutes, because after 20 minutes your body fucks you up. But as long as it's under about 20 minutes, then you're all right, you're doing good.

So, yeah, I don't know if you go over 20 minutes.

So I am no scientist, I am just a lad from Scarborough, but I know people who are quite good on this sort of body hacks and whatnot things. But after 20 minutes you go into a deep sleep or a trance. So as long as you go under 20 minutes, that is like the optimal level of the cutoff point. So I am quite good at having those little siestas. Living in Spain, siesta is, is allowed. So yeah, just go jump in, just wherever it is in the car, in your bed is lovely on a sofa, on a park bench. Just go on about little 15, 20 minutes and you'll be good for the rest of the day. Perfect, James. All right, where can people go and find out more about you? But more importantly, if anybody wants to come to one of your events that are happening in 2020, we know there's one coming up on the 6th of February. February. So by the time this comes out live, it's going to be a bit last minute. Where can people go to find out more about coming and why should somebody come before I let you go?

So on the 6th of February, I run my business growth seminar. I run a few of them a year. It's a couple hundred quid to come to one of those. It's an afternoon, including lunch and I share loads of ways of how you can grow your business. Marketing, raising money, buying businesses, getting the best team members, retaining team members, retaining customers understanding the three types of entrepreneurs the business life journey. Preparing for that. It's packed out with stuff and it's a great day. We'd love to have you there. If you're serious about growing your business and it's all experience based, nothing theory based, you can book onto that@james sinclair.net and you can get my book on james sinclair.net, getting Customers. The new one is only available on Amazon right now, but really everything that you really want is your own. To YouTube type in James Sinclair, subscribe to that YouTube channel and feast your ears and eyes on 400 videos on business for free.

Amazing. Thank you so much for that. And everybody, I just want to say thank you for tuning in to the net this episode of the Boost Hospitality podcast. We are now in season seven if you believe it or not. Episode 14. If this is the first time that you have tuned in, please go back on the full back catalog. We've got people from all of the hospitality industry giving helps and advice on how you can increase your direct bookings. This was a very special episode with James Sinclair and I thank you so much for tuning in. Before you leave, rate, review, subscribe and also as well, a little cheeky plug for the Boostly YouTube channel. Go and find it. There's loads of advice on how you can boost your direct bookings, but for now thank you very much and I will see you for the next episode very soon.