I've started seven businesses that have gone  0 to a million in their first 12 months three  

businesses that went north of 10 million but  here's a crazy thing anyone can do this and  

I'm going to take you step by step through the  best ways to start making that life-changing  

amount of money Daniel pry money and business  Expert that's helped thousands of people start  

scale and grow their own multi-million pounds  businesses from scratch these are the best ways  

to start a business we start with an idea but  we need to sharpen our ideas in the market not  

in our minds I see so many people that raise money  book an office buy computers but after all of that  

no one's interested in their idea so we have to  conduct tests where we fail fast and fail cheap  

for example waiting lists is one of the fastest  ways to test an idea and this is what really  

smart entrepreneurs do like Elon Musk launched a  waiting list for the model 3 he launched a waiting  

list for the Cyber truck validating the idea in  fact Rolex had a massive breakthrough when they  

stopped selling Rolexes and they started selling  the waiting list but if it's crickets okay fair  

enough let's have another idea but what if someone  steals my idea ideas aren't worth anything the  

value is for the person who does it what are the  fundamentals of being an exceptional salesperson  

pitcher first you will have to you said business  is a team sport is there anything you found that  

is consistent across all of the best people you've  partnered with so here's what I'm looking for and  

there's a lot more to go through but one of  the other strategies for building a business  

is and that should get you into the six figures of  Revenue just by doing that it's shocking because  

it's so simple let's talk about money let's talk  about if someone's out there and they've got £100  

or £1,000 worth of disposable income what should  I be about to making myself financially free the  

truth is that there's incredible wealth to be  created one of the biggest opportunities in  

the world at the moment is it's absolutely crazy  to me that so many of you have decided to watch  

our show um and so many of you have decided to  subscribe to our show we now have five million  

subscribers on YouTube which is a number that  I just can't comprehend and it's a dream that  

I absolutely never could have had we started the  dire of a CEO just over 3 years ago now and in  

my wildest expectations we might have had 100,000  subscribers by now so you can imagine how shocked  

I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into  these conversations every week um and spend some  

time with us so thank you and I made a deal with  you I made a deal that if you subscribe to this  

show that we would continue to raise the bar and  in 2024 we're going to raise the bar like never  

before I've been working for the last nine months  on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed  

to the show and I'm very excited to deliver  that for you the Productions going to change  

we're going to go even further with our guests and  we're going to tell even more Global stories so  

as always if you appreciate what we're doing here  the simple free favor I'll ask from you is to hit  

the Subscribe button let's get on with the [Music]  episode Daniel if someone has just clicked on this  

podcast can you tell me the reason why they should  stay around and listen and what you think they're  

going to get from this conversation I think we're  living through the most incredible time in history  

never before have people had the opportunity to  build something that is a global business full of  

fun freedom and flexibility full of passion and  purpose and today that is accessible to almost  

anyone who'd be listening to this podcast the Baby  Boomers they got access to affordable housing we  

get access to Affordable Global small businesses  now the entrepreneurial journey is scary to a lot  

of people but if you conduct the right experiments  have the right mindset follow the right process  

it's really predictable and safe for people to  get involved in entrepreneurship and I think  

anyone who's listening to this is going to see  that it's a lot more process driven then I think  

that we can go step by step to build a business  that you absolutely love on the other end of  

this conversation in an hour's time or two hours  time or you know whenever this podcast finishes  

what are they going to have that they didn't  have before this conversation we're going to  

talk about the entrepreneurial Journey as a set  of steps predictable steps and they're going to  

be able to have a map of how do you move through  that entrepreneurial Journey like what do you do  

first what do you do next how do you go to the  next level and scale up and who do you contact  

uh and it's based upon literally coming across  thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs at each  

stage of the journey so ideally what I want people  to walk away with is just that Clarity around how  

this entrepreneur thing works and who are you  what's your experience so my backgr is over 20  

years of Entrepreneurship I started my first  company when I was 21 years old I did 2 years  

working for a mentor from 19 to 21 uh we built  a business from scratch to millions of Revenue  

I then left that Mentor I went out on my own  started my own first small business uh it grew  

very rapidly we went from Z to a million in the  first year and then 10 million in year three I've  

started uh seven businesses since that have gone  Z to a million in their first 12 months I've done  

three businesses that went north of 10 million  and what about this accelerator I I read that  

you have an accelerator where you have thousands  and thousands of entrepreneurs who come to your  

accelerator for business advice coaching from  getting from zero to you know up on that um up  

to their trajectory yeah so 12 years ago I noticed  this trend um around this idea of global small  

businesses and I basically saw that technology  was making it possible for anyone to do the things  

that multinational corporations were doing and I  started an entrepreneur accelerator designed for  

people to positions as a key person of influence  to build their personal brand to build a core  

team of people around them to digitize the value  that they offer um and to take the most or make  

the most of the times that we're living in and  since then about 4 and a half thousand companies  

have gone through this whole process um we've seen  people go from zero to multi- multi-million pound  

exits we've seen people build the business of  their dreams where they get to live and work from  

anywhere and you know we've also seen what people  struggle with and what they've found difficult  

we've gone through pandemics and Global Financial  crisises and all of this sort of stuff with our  

clients it's dancing classes for entrepreneurs  it's it's a high performance environment where  

you get to be around people who want the same  sort of things that you want uh you get to have  

some accountability some best practices uh you  get a community or a network around you uh and  

you go through that entrepreneurial Journey with  other people who who are going through it as well  

do you think anyone can be an entrepreneur I think  entrepreneurial spirit is something that we're all  

born with um entrepreneurship is this idea that  we want to create value for others that we want to  

take a little bit of a creative risk that we want  to do something that represents self-expression  

there are different stages to the entrepreneurial  journey and everyone can go through those stages  

um there's also not one type of entrepreneur  there are people who are very good at Finance  

there are people who are good at operations there  are people who are Visionaries there are people  

who are doers and get the stuff done and there are  businesses that suit those types of people so it's  

about finding out who you are finding out what  kind of business would actually be well suited  

to that person and then making sure that you're  doing the thing that you're you're well suited  

to how does one know that a business would be  suited to them CU if you you know gauged on  

the the people that come up to me in the street  or the taxi drivers I speak to or my friends or  

the DMS that I get everyone's got an idea nobody  seems to be short of ideas but so many people seem  

to be stuck at that moment of making a decision  to pursue a particular idea that they almost get  

like paralysis like sofar preneurs you know all  of their ideas stay on the sofa that they were um  

conceived on but they never seem to get out of the  sofa because of like that paralysis I don't know  

if this is the one I get that the time is this the  idea the the thing is we need to sharpen our ideas  

in the market not in our minds so what we have to  do is go make contact with other people and see  

what they say and see what they think so we have  to conduct uh tests where we fail fast and fail  

cheap if we fail at all so here's an example of  what I like to do when someone has an idea I say  

set up a very simple waiting list landing page  and essentially let people know I'm thinking of  

starting something in this particular space or  we're launching something in this space later  

in the year if you're interested join the waiting  list now that waiting list concept essentially if  

people will join the waiting list and if you get  hundreds of people joining a waiting list it's a  

pretty good indication that it is a good good idea  uh if you launch a waiting list and you message  

3,000 people and say I'm launching I'm launching  this thing do you want to join the waiting list  

and no one joins then it's a good indication  that's not the idea right cuz we have to have  

a good marriage between what we're passionate  about what we want to do and what the market  

wants um there's 6 million businesses in the UK  30 businesses in the USA and that basically means  

there's a lot of businesses doing a lot of things  that already exist so the market might not have an  

unmet need the market might say hey I already have  a great cupcake Supply there's already someone who  

makes great coffee in my neighborhood we don't  need another one okay fair enough let's have  

another idea right you can always have plenty  more ideas so you got a test the faster you  

can get on with conducting a fast and cheap test  the better you're going to you know go with your  

entrepreneurial idea because that's one of the big  sort of mental barriers that people have is they  

see that committing to any of these ideas is going  to cost them three years their reputation and  

potentially hundreds of thousands of their money  or or an Investor's money so that again creates  

paralysis because the discomfort associated with  being wrong when you think there's so much on the  

line will hold you in place but your idea there  of just throwing up a landing page immediately  

kills the Paris and also just a landing page of a  waiting list so you're not even saying that this  

thing's are dead certain you're just saying we're  going to be launching something if we get enough  

interest um and here's the waiting list and by  the way this is what really smart entrepreneurs  

do like Elon Musk launched a waiting list for  the model 3 he launched a waiting list for the  

Cyber truck I think he launched a waiting list  for a flamethrower I joined all waiting lists  

yeah and he he's you know he's essentially what  he's doing is a very smart process of validating  

the idea one of the best mindsets that we have as  an early stage entrepreneur is the mindset of a  

scientist conducting a little experiment and what  we're trying to do is not be emotionally attached  

to what happens one way or another what we what  we want to do is we want to say you know what if  

people don't like this okay I'll have another idea  if people do like this I'll go to the next step um  

so a scientist is just kind of like conducting an  experiment and the best experiments are cheap and  

fast a waiting list is probably the most powerful  early stage experiment you could um you could go  

with Elon Musk when he launched the waiting list  for cybertruck I don't think there would have been  

an investment Bank on the planet that would have  backed a factory for something that looked like  

cybertruck but when he walked in and said I've got  a million people who have put down a $100 deposit  

if only 5% of them go ahead they can crunch the  numbers on that and say yeah okay we'll fund  

that fair enough let's build it um so it's very  powerful I did this recently I I had my team come  

up to me and say hey we could do a startup around  um an AI that helps people write a book and um I  

said well I'm not sure if anyone would like that  but let's launch a waiting list so I launched a  

waiting list put one post on LinkedIn 750 people  joined the waiting list list I was expecting 150  

uh and in the waiting list we actually asked  questions like how much would you pay for it  

per month and how many months do you think it  would take you and what would success look like  

and what would failure look like and what else  would you try instead of this if this didn't  

exist what would you use so we asked all these  questions we collected a ton of data uh and then  

off the back of that we speced out the product I  also went to Angel Investors and said do you guys  

want to co-invest in this one we raised £300,000  on the seis um scheme uh at A3 million valuation  

for an idea no lines of code nothing built nothing  designed uh and essentially we got ourselves ready  

to to launch in a couple of months just simply  off the back of that waiting list and all the data  

that we uh that we collected so interesting the  the other point you said within there was about  

you said there's kind of two things what you're  passionate about and what the market wants now  

on the point of passion it's so cliche people say  follow your passions do things you're passionate  

about Etc how role how important do you think the  role of passion is in actually succeeding at any  

of these ideas so if I've got four ideas cupcake  business floristry business soccer business and  

I don't know AI business what role does my own  intrinsic passion of any of these areas matter  

in the chances of success passion matters a lot  because business is hard and you have to stick  

with it through the Downs so the reason passion  is valuable is because you are going to go through  

valleys um and they're going to be painful and  they're going to be the the gratification is going  

to be very much delayed uh in any business Journey  so passion is the thing that gets you through it's  

not the thing that you ride high on it's the thing  that you get through the hard times with um I have  

a very weird definition of passion I kind of like  tried to strip it back to its bones and I look for  

an alignment between origin mission and vision so  I essentially say what is your origin story what's  

your background I want to see that you're doing  something that aligns to what you've always been  

doing I want to see that this goes back to age 10  um for me when I ask people about why you're doing  

this thing I want them to start the story a long  time ago and I want them to tell me about little  

wins that they've had along the way that have led  to this moment which is why they're starting this  

business to me that's great because anything that  we keep coming back to as a recurring theme is  

what we're meant to be doing so for me I've going  right back to age 10 I have experiences throughout  

um my teenage years and going back to age 10 that  were about business as a Force for good um and it  

goes right back to a garage sale that I did when  I was 10 years old we had a house fire it was a  

horrible experience but it turned into a positive  experience because I set up this garage sale and  

made some money and something bad happened and I  turned it into something good through business and  

for me there's this recurring theme that all of  my little winds line up to these these themes so  

the origin story is really powerful the vision for  the future is what do I want to see happen in the  

future if all of this goes well and other people  are doing it too what would this look like in the  

future what would 10 years from now 20 years from  now be if we were celebrating what would we love  

to be celebrating and then the mission is what is  the most high value thing that I could possibly  

do that's in alignment with that Vision so  essentially if there is a strong alignment between  

origin mission and vision something happens where  you you carry yourself in a different way you you  

you sit differently you speak differently you're  you're in this alignment other people pick up on  

it they want to quit their job and come and work  on your team um they hear about the vision they  

hear about your origin story they hear about the  mission and they go oh I'm going to leave what I'm  

doing and come and join that and that's the magic  of Entrepreneurship so for me that's passion it's  

not about like superficially I like snowboarding  or um oh I've always enjoyed baking a cake it's  

the uh alignment of origin mission and vision  interestingly there um I was trying to think  

about what the opposite of everything you've said  just looks like what's the opposite of passion  

in your definition what's the misalignment look  like so can you give me a an an example of what  

the opposite of that definition looks like the  opposite is I heard about some guy who pumped a  

cryptocoin and made millions of dollars so I want  to go and find out how to pump crypto coins or uh  

I heard someone who made money flipping property  so I need to flip property and I'm going to do a a  

course on Flipping property I've got no interest  in property uh I've never been interested in  

property I've never shown any interest in in any  of these things I just want to make money and it's  

got nothing to do with my background I've got no  little wins in this I I have no real vision for  

the future other than being rich um so essentially  this is of no value to anyone listening no one  

cares in fact when people hear that they're  repulsed by it in most cases just hearing someone  

talk about that makes you feel I definitely don't  want to see you for the next two years why are  

they destined to fail because they can't attract a  team team uh essentially all of business and life  

is a team sport and it's your ability to attract  great talented people around you who want to work  

with you that is ultimately the reason we succeed  and it's ultimately the reason we feel good so if  

you're saying things that repulse people then  talented people leave and talented people don't  

want to be involved if you're saying something  that feels resonant that it feels aligned and it  

feels like um something's happening it feels  like this guy's up to something or this you  

know this woman is up to something she's in  rolling people in this Vision that she's got  

and people love her story it's destined to succeed  because good people are getting involved and more  

and more good people are getting involved do you  knowing what's a good opportunity and what's not  

a good opportunity do you think that when you're  younger you should be saying yes to more stuff  

cuz like in the position you're in now you're  bombarded with opportunity so you have to use a  

kind of a different mental framework yeah do you  think when people are younger they should have a  

different bias towards accepting opportunities or  [ __ ] around and finding out yeah definitely we  

we should definitely go through that phase um and  also be willing to say oh that wasn't it I'm going  

to stop and go try something else so you dropped  out of University I dropped out of University I  

was so excited to go to university and then as  soon as I realized it's this is not going where  

I want to go I had to make the decision to leave  all my friends um and walk away from University  

that that sort of dark Valley you have to walk  through of uncertainty when you make the decision  

to leave the um well worn track of University  or corporate job or the 9 to5 that how how does  

one prepare mentally like what's the mindset of  someone that goes you know what I'm going to go  

through the stinging nettles through the bushes  and be lost and find my own way I always enjoyed  

all of this by the way so the my mindset was  that I was always quite excited that um being  

lost I felt was probably going to be part of the  process I have a simple view around mindset which  

is you're either being a reptile an autopilot or a  Visionary what's that reptile thing you mentioned  

what's the definition of that oh well reptile mode  is fight flight freeze freak out um throw Tantrums  

uh be angry at the people you should not be angry  at um feels unfair that the world's against you um  

all of that and the Visionary what the definition  of that so the Visionary I don't know if you've  

had these moments where you feel anything is  possible um and you feel very expansive um you  

think in long time frames so you think in maybe 10  20 years out you also might see the World As One  

Small Place so you might uh mentally your mental  model might be that the world is just one little  

ball that flies around the Sun and there's markets  everywhere and that there are opportunities  

everywhere and that there are people trying  to get stuff done and I could have a business  

that's anywhere and you feel a sense of love and  compassion and optimism uh and you typically uh  

become more influential in your circles the other  strange thing about the Visionary mindset is that  

um they did some research with Indian farmers and  they found that uh these particular people they  

got paid their yearly salary in one lump sum and  then they had to make that last for the whole year  

and as they were getting close to the end of that  cycle they had uh an IQ test which showed that  

they were 15 points of IQ lower than when they  had just been paid the lump sum so the lump sum  

allowed them to think long term it allowed them to  feel affluent and abundant and their IQ the scores  

on the IQ test went up um as a result of feeling  good and feeling amazing and feeling affluent and  

then by the time the money had run out and  they you know not sure whether they're even  

going to make it to the next one their emotional  intelligence their actual IQ intelligence had  

dropped significantly so one of the things that  is a real challenge if you're doing it tough is  

that you're essentially regularly putting yourself  into these uh situations where your IQ is right  

down um your your emotional intelligence and your  IQ suffers as a result of being in reptile mode I  

remember a time where I got a parking ticket for  $40 and I I freaked out like I flipped out I had a  

massive fight with my friend and um you know like  I was in a place where $40 was was seriously an  

issue um and I remember thinking I'm just going  to eat cereal for for weeks um to try and get  

through this um and so full reptile meltdown mode  what would the uh Visionary have responded to the  

parking ticket well the Visionary has a different  view of life and the the first thing is that if  

a resource exists on the planet anywhere that  resource is really just a couple of conversations  

away so essentially a Visionary would say well  someone's got $40 I just have a talk with them  

and and see what they need and I'll help them  with whatever they need they can help me with  

the $40 that I need um maybe I need to wash their  car maybe I need to you know help them with their  

video editing or something so the Visionary is  all about the idea that there's really not a  

lot of boundaries between the resources on the  planet that it's just a gray Zone around who  

owns what and Who's got what and we can just have  conversations about that so Visionaries can easily  

raise money and raise funds because they just  think well someone's got the money and they want  

to put it to use so I'll just give them a plan  as to how we're going to put it to use there's  

a great story that I love which is I think it  was the producers of Top Gun were creating these  

little models of airplanes and boats and they're  trying to figure out how they would do like a Star  

Wars style Top Gun movie and someone said have  we actually called the and us whether we can use  

their planes and their boats and everyone's like  no it's like well they've got planes and boats  

let's see if they want to do it so they ring up  the Navy as you do and they speak to the general  

and the general says oh yeah we want to enroll  more people in the Navy so we would love for you  

to make a Hollywood Blockbuster film what do you  need and they basically say well here have the  

Jets have the boats have the aircraft carriers  what whatever you want to do so it's kind of  

weird to think that someone woke up this morning  with the resource that you want and if you have a  

conversation about how that resource gets used  right essentially you are now as it's as good  

as you having the resource someone woke up with an  aircraft carrier if you've got a good use for that  

aircraft carrier why not have a conversation about  how that aircraft carrier gets used today it's  

shocking because it's so simple and and but it's  so resonant with me there's two examples I'll give  

the first I've talked about many times was when I  was 16 17 in six form saw Carly Stoke sat in front  

of me who was a girl in my school I think she was  head girl but she was picking the vending machines  

we were going to get in the school and in my brain  I thought um we have 2,000 paying customers here  

surely there's a vending machine company that  would love to put these machines for free and  

give us a cut went to the computer room sent five  emails based on Google search rankings by the same  

day and Mr sprinkle who was our head of keystage  5 has confirmed this on live TV someone showed up  

with a tape measure to fit the machines because  one of my emails had gone to a former student who  

was now the CEO of a vending machine company and  he had been looking to give back to the school  

example uh B comes in that one yeah did you feel  what it felt like to be a Visionary where it's  

like anything is possible like why are we not  just of course we've got 2,000 CL like like  

did you feel cuz you must have felt reptile versus  Visionary in your life you've had reptile moments  

where you're like 100% I hate everyone I want to  kill everyone you know and then you've had moments  

where it's like oh you know we can bend the  world yeah we we can bend reality exactly we have  

conversation about how reality works and we'll  just you know bend it yeah and so my question has  

always been like where does that come from because  is I view our beliefs all of our beliefs as a  

stack of evidence we either have or don't really  have and for me the youngest of four siblings I  

had so much space compared to my siblings when  I was young that I got to like we said earlier  

like [ __ ] around and find out I got to conduct  experiments and that led me to believe that the  

world is bendable I used to say when I was 14  that if someone said to me that we need to go  

to the Moon next week I believe there's a way cuz  I think there's probably a rock rocket going and  

all I need to do is contact the person and make a  compelling pitch that's how I get to the the moon  

next week you thought that at 14 yes I used to say  this all the time like my my difference between  

myself and my peers they were academically better  but in my head there was the only thing that stood  

in the way of where I am now and where I want to  be is a bunch of people bunch of conversations  

yeah pitching essentially pitching is in Rolling  people into new ideas so what entrepreneurs do  

to advance their ideas is we pitch them into  existence we start with an idea and we pitch  

it and we pitch it and we pitch it we sharpen our  pitch by talking to people but what we're doing  

that's different is we're not just explaining  the idea to people we're trying to enroll them  

into that Vision we're enrolling people into this  Vision that we've got for the business and that  

um process of getting people to do something that  they didn't wake up thinking they would do that  

day is pitching right that's and that's one of  the first tools that you learn as an entrepreneur  

and actually on Dragon's Den that is the main  tool that people are given in order to enroll  

the dragons into investing or getting involved or  not so um where does it come from I think was your  

question uh I believe it's built into every single  individual that it's an evolutionary function that  

essentially at the very base of our brain is this  reptile mode which is fight flight freeze which  

is rarely appropriate but in a survival situation  probably is appropriate and then there's autopilot  

mode which is essentially just do what you've  always done repeat the past you know just get into  

a loop uh if it worked last week and and I didn't  die last week well then I might as well do the  

same week again um and then there's Visionary mode  which is what could I do different ly what you  

know what might what would be a creative way to  solve this problem so I feel that a lot of people  

think they're missing something and actually it's  all built in and if you can get yourself into that  

Visionary mode often it's the people you hang out  with um it's the books that you read the podcasts  

that you listen to if you can get into that mode  then a lot more becomes possible you get more IQ  

points you get more EQ points um and you see  the world in a in a very different way the key  

question there is like how do you get into that  mode I have a very one-dimensional biased um  

Journey so I'm not sure if my journey is the the  best one to take um notes from but from what I've  

seen personally people are either in some kind  of upward spiral towards being more Visionary  

because it's compounding in their favor they're  sending the email and then it's working which  

means they have the evidence to send more they're  more likely to send emails with more conviction  

and more frequency because it worked last time  and then more work they get more responses so  

they send more emails it's this upward wonderful  reinforcing spiral upwards and they become more  

and more Visionary like Elon Musk is at the very  top now he's like space ships to Mars yeah he's  

like chips in your brain that monkeys can control  computers with that's someone at the very top of  

that Visionary cycle and at the the bottom of the  reptile cycle is someone who you know at work the  

CEO says does anyone want to stand up and share  their ideas and they just slouch back in the chair  

because they've had their confidence um negatively  reinforced maybe last time they tried it didn't  

go bad maybe their father or their mother gave  them bad feedback one day and they're in this  

downward spiral where when they do show up they  show up with low confidence they put in a bad  

performance it goes bad less likely show I would  actually call that autop pilot mode which is I've  

never done this before so I won't do it next time  um reptile mode is is very destructive you're act  

you're actively breaking your world so it's it's  where you do the worst possible thing okay um so  

you are throwing tantrums and you're lashing  out against the people who you should you're  

actually lashing out against the people who are  trying to help you probably um so that's that's  

where you're really at the bottom of reptile mode  very destructive autopilot in your situation where  

you said about the person who you know is given an  opportunity to speak and they say oh well you know  

it's not what I do is the autopilot response  the Visionary is like oh this is a chance to  

mobilize resources um I've got an opportunity here  to expand my sphere of influence and become a key  

person of influence in this room you know so the  Visionary is like oh great this is this is a good  

opportunity I can do more with this if the pitch  is the keys to everything you want to be because  

if we were saying that it's really conversations  that stand in the way of where you want to go  

and it's the pitch that is essentially the key to  wherever you want to go what are the attributes of  

a perfect pitch what are the fundamentals of being  an exceptional salesperson pitcher well you've  

seen some great pictures on the den um lot of bad  ones too yeah so here's what I look for clarity  

is the base level you just don't want to confuse  people um Authority is the ability to communicate  

that you are worth listening to that there's  something about your background or what you've  

done or the data that you're possessing or the  mentor that you've got that gives you some sort  

of authority to be talking about this so Clarity  and Authority uh defining some sort of a problem  

that the customer has or some some sort of problem  that exists in the world that needs solving and  

that you've identified an Insight or a solution  for that problem then the why which I would say  

is about communicating why you care enough about  this that people would buy into you as the person  

to drive this forward you then want to define  the opportunity what is the bigger opportunity  

for anyone who gets involved the next steps what  should someone do next and then the emotion or  

the essence that you want to leave people with  so that they remember remember you based on that  

essence or that emotion that you made them feel  so that's the great Arc of a of a of an inspiring  

pitch what was the last one there was that the  emotion so Clarity Authority problem solution  

the why opportunity next steps and the essence and  it spells out Capstone so that's how I remember  

a great pitch I've I had to come up with a way of  remembering this because I was pitching so often I  

had to be able to come back to okay how do I pitch  this so the essence that's the one I I wanted some  

more definition people remember you based on how  you made them feel so you want to think how do I  

want to leave people feeling what's the emotion  that I want people to remember when I'm pitching  

yeah so you want to finish the pitch on an emotion  you want to finish the pitch by expressing um what  

it is that you uh essentially what is the emotion  or the feeling that you want um you want this  

business to be about and what's the opposite of  that then the emotional piece so what's a pitch  

that is lacking uh well a lot of pitches finish  on next steps and it's very logistical um so I've  

seen lot of pictures that are going great and then  they go and then here's what we need to do next  

blah blah blah and then it becomes a little to-do  list and everyone goes oh that kind of landed flat  

and if you finish on the essence then you actually  just bring people back to this is what it's really  

about so that we even though we've talked about  opportunities and next steps and the finances and  

all that sort of stuff you want to finish on this  is what we're really about this is what we're up  

to in the world I've been thinking a lot about  you know some adjacent subjects to what we're  

talking about here but this idea that if you just  asked five times more than you're currently ask  

asking your life would change um the secondary  example I was going to give after my coffee um  

machine example from when I was 16 was when I was  18 and I was completely broken that's when I was  

shoplifting those Chicago Town pizzas to feed  myself and I need I start I was starting this  

business called wallpark and I needed camera  equipment I sent 20 emails to camera company  

saying hey I've got um this website I'm going to  launch we're going to record videos on campus I  

need some cameras if you lend us the cameras we'll  put your logo on all the videos we make on campus  

within 7 hours Samsung had sent £10,000 worth of  camera equipment to my front door in my side I got  

an email the day after the cameras arrived and it  said these are um returns send them back when you  

don't need them anymore and I'd solved someone's  problem for him because he had returned cameras  

in a warehouse that he didn't know what to do with  he sent me £10,000 worth of camera equipment for  

free within 72 hours you just asked and I go oh  my God like when you're at the bottom and you  

have nothing to lose and you have an internet  connection and a Gmail account why aren't you  

sending out 20 30 50 emails a day yeah asking you  think in emails I think in calls um cuz when I  

was 18 you pick up the phone and make a call um I  always had this rule called make three calls and  

I remember a nightclub party that I I saw these  15-year-olds um sitting in the street I just  

turned 18 and I was um loving going to nightclubs  and I saw these 15y olds and they're skateboarding  

and they're hanging out in this little area  and um they were asking me what it's like to  

go to a nightclub and I said oh some should put  on an under 18's nightclub party so that you can  

experience it and see what it's like they're like  oh that would be amazing and and I thought oh I'm  

going to do it so I called the nightclub I'd been  going to and said oh I have a promotions company  

and we run nightclub parties for under 18s during  the school holidays we've selected your Venue to  

be one of our venues um for the next holidays  would you be interested in discussing that he  

said like yeah send through a proposal and then  I'm like oh okay yeah we'll send it we'll send  

through a proposal and anyway we ran we ran a  series of nightclub at that thing and we it was  

the first time I'd ever made 10 grand in a night  because we had a th people pay 10 bucks ahead and  

that was a lot of money and it was all cash and  uh it was it was wild and it was just literally  

just asking I have to say a lot of people send  me messages I get um many thousands of messages  

a week across my inboxes LinkedIn Instagram the  podcast Etc and because I'm exposed to so many  

thousands of messages as I'm sure you are you get  to see the variance in a good ask versus a bad ask  

yeah now I want to drill down on that what are  the core components of a great ask the best ask  

has With or Without You energy With or Without You  energy is the energy that you have when this is  

going to happen with or without you so essentially  when you say we're going to be doing this filming  

and do you want to send some cameras and we'll  put your logo at the bottom it's happening with  

or without you you can be the company that gets  the logo or not um but it is happening with or  

without you um the worst asks are I desperately  need this to happen and if you don't say yes yes  

no one will ever say yes and and therefore I'll  give up so if I think about the best asks that  

come through something is going to happen and it's  going to happen whether I'm involved or not and  

I get to choose whether I want to jump onto that  or not um and those are the most compelling most  

exciting uh opportunities that that get pitched  so I'll give you I'll give you an example when  

I first arrived in the UK I had a suitcase and a  credit card and I'd never been above the equator  

I arrive in London and I'm going to launch a  business in London and within the first two weeks  

I message all the people who are influential in in  my industry and I basically say I'm I'm hosting a  

dinner party there's going to be about 30 amazing  people there who are The Who's Who of the industry  

um I've just arrived from Australia if you'd like  to come along to the dinner party let me know  

and I'll um allocate a spot to you and within two  weeks I'd filled 30 spots at my at my dinner party  

and they were all people who had massive databases  the biggest database was like 600,000 people so  

so I've got this dinner party and I stand up and  I say I'm Daniel Priestley and I've just arrived  

from Australia and I'm going to be launching  a business here I thought I'd put together a  

dinner party just to kind of get to know everyone  I've got my diary with me I'd love to make a time  

uh in the next couple of weeks to sit down  and have a chat with you about how we could  

do a commercial partnership or a joint venture  um as part of our launch I'll just come around  

and I'll make a time and um and and and then other  than that enjoy the evening so I walk around and  

I book 28 one:1 me meetings for the following 2  weeks and everyone who I had a one toone meeting  

with knew that I had 28 other one to one meetings  and they could see that I'd hosted this party mind  

you the party this dinner party cost like 1,500  quid it wasn't it wasn't nothing but it wasn't a  

lot so I then end up having these uh meetings and  everyone starts agreeing to support my launch so  

I'm pitching into existence that we're launching  this thing uh and then the biggest database with  

600,000 people they say yeah we'll support your  launch so when we did the launch email campaign  

cign to everyone's database we booked hundreds  and hundreds and hundreds of people we did two  

nights in Manchester two nights in um Birmingham  Milton keing and then we did like three or four  

events in a row in London we did4 million pound  worth of sales off the back of it in the first few  

months it was interesting that whole experience of  just putting together a dinner party and getting  

everyone involved but it had with or without  you energy what what's the sort of psychology  

underpinning that is it like scarcity what is it  that's causing with or Without You energy to make  

people choose to buy from you or go with you I  think people like to get involved in something  

that they feel is happening um and it also  demonstrates that you're a key person of influence  

that you're actually an influential person in your  industry that you have the confidence to say I'm  

I'm putting this on and it's going to happen we're  going to make the movie we're going to launch the  

business we're going to do the thing we're going  to raise the fund you you're free to join or not  

uh totally fine uh it's there's no neediness and  humans respond to the idea that they don't want  

to miss out on something that's going to happen um  very rarely exciting things happen right most of  

the time for most people everything's humdrum and  then occasionally something exciting is happening  

and you don't want to miss out on something  that's happening so you know I don't like no  

one likes neediness people like things that  are happening and people like to flock around  

key people of influence so by demonstrating that  you're a key person of influence who's putting  

something together people just naturally gravitate  around that it's interesting it reminded me of an  

example from a company that uh I invested in  five or six years ago and in one of my first  

meetings with them I looked at their website and  they had this button on there that said um become  

a member now and I said we should try changing  that to join the waiting list and when I had  

my first board meeting with this company they  said Stephen of all the things you've done for  

us the most valuable thing you did was getting  us to change that button from become member now  

to join the waiting list and I said why they  said two two things happened the first is the  

amount of inquiries we got the amount of people  clicking that number Rose by 500% the second  

thing is conversion went up by about 300% because  previously just by changing a couple of words on  

that um button people would click the button they  would then get scheduled an appointment to have  

a tour of this um facility they would then not  even show up for their tour they would because  

they didn't value it the minute we changed it  to join the waiting list and then they got an  

email saying hey you've been selected for Q jump  or whatever they would never ever miss the tour  

and if they were late for the their scheduled Tour  by 1 hour they would profusely text and apologize  

and try and reschedule tiny shift tiny shift in  just a couple of words not a tiny shift because  

if you look at how human psychology works in order  for someone to want to buy something they have to  

be about 100% certain in order to join a waiting  list you only have to be 5 10% certain that you  

want to do something and people like to warm  up to things a little bit slowly so join the  

waiting list means that hey you only have to be  slightly sure that you want to do this then the  

uncertainty of do I get through or not I've joined  the waiting list I've made a micro commitment now  

it's there's a an uncertainty Gap and it's like  oh I need the certainty I need to know whether  

I'm off the waiting list or I'm through to the  next phase so now we enter a different like oh  

will I will I or won't I get through but it also  gives the business a great opportunity to warm  

people up so you talked about doing a tour of  the club let me give you some other examples um  

glastenbury music festival they tell people that  they can't book a ticket they can only register  

for a ticket um that they're interested in a  ticket so a registration of interest but not  

a ticket sale so what they do is they get 700,000  people to register interest and then they tell you  

slowly who are some of the bands and they warm  you up to will you get it or not and they tell  

you 500,000 people are now registered 600,000  are registered 700,000 are registered and they  

said but there's only 4,000 tickets so then they  say we're going to make the tickets available at  

500 a.m. so only the True Believers are going to  be there only the true music fans who are willing  

to get up early and then there's this whole  like suspense and excitement of like will I  

get a ticket or not people set their alarm  in the morning they know that 700,000 have  

registered 140,000 will get through so they just  fight for those tickets Rolex had a massive uh  

breakthrough in the way that they uh in becoming  a Big Brand when they stopped selling Rolexes and  

they started selling the waiting list so you can't  buy a Rolex the way it works with a Rolex is you  

go into a Rolex retail store and the only thing  they will sell you is getting onto the waiting  

list so they won't actually sell you a watch  so first you will have to get on the waiting  

list and register and then about 6 months later  they'll say good news uh we have the watch that  

you want available but it's only available for 3  Days right other than that we can hold it for you  

for 3 days but after that that we'll have to sell  it to somebody else and essentially everyone goes  

rushes down and gets the Rolex so that cycle of  join the waiting list and then make the sale is  

brilliant and this translates perfectly for people  at the early stage of the entrepreneurial Journey  

because it doesn't matter whether you want to do  a rocket to Mars or whether you want to launch a  

cupcake business or you want to do a fashion brand  or you want to do uh a service of bookkeeping and  

accounting all of those you can launch a waiting  list with minimal cost um set it up very simply  

and basically um you use a template boom you  you've got a waiting list and you can also collect  

the data so you can't just join the waiting list  name email answer five questions to get on the  

waiting list how much are you willing to pay what  are you trying to achieve what's your biggest fear  

of that could go wrong what would you try if this  didn't exist so you ask a few of these questions  

and then people get on the waiting list you've  got all that data when people hear that they'll  

think that putting someone through a set of sort  of rigorous questions to give them access to the  

product on the other side would would deter most  people but it reminds me of a psychology study  

that I read about then wrote about in my last book  where they got two groups of people um and it they  

had a boring Community Forum online as the sort of  the product they let one group of people straight  

into the boring Community forum and then they  asked them how much they appreciated and found  

value in the boring Community Forum that group  of people said it was boring right then they had  

this other group of people in this study and they  didn't let them into the boring Community Forum  

they made them go through a rigorous selection  process and the people that got into the boring  

the same boring Community Forum when asked in  surveys after how much do you value the boring  

Community Forum they said it's great yeah and it's  the psychological bias because you've had to fight  

for something what you what you're describing is  Harvard yeah it's Harvard University it's exactly  

that it's the same University subjects that  everyone teaches but it's hard to get in yeah  

um I use one of the other strategies for building  a business is waiting list but also discussion  

groups so one of the things we do when we launch a  business is we don't launch the product or service  

we launch the discussion group so the first thing  is um let's say let's say I was going to launch  

a gym in wesworth I might say we're going to  do weight loss wesworth an online discussion  

group on WhatsApp and we' just promote the hell  out of that group and if we had 4,000 people in  

that group we could then launch a gym pretty  easily off the back of the discussion group so  

I'm a big believer like in weight list discussion  groups anything like that that is super fast low  

risk low cost these are the best ways to start  businesses that that you you you know and you're  

collecting data you're getting people to answer  questions to get in and you're learning about  

what the product Market fit probably is going  to be the right product for those people in ones  

worth exactly and sometimes you get very surprised  you you find out that Oh I thought that this was  

going to be for men who want to build big muscles  but it's actually for women who are excited about  

CrossFit it's like oh okay didn't didn't know that  like now I've asked the questions I'm finding out  

that it's slightly different to what I thought  I thought everyone would love red but everyone  

loves blue uh okay we we can we can do that so  in those early stages of of business you want to  

when I said uh before about conducting fast cheap  experiments waiting lists discussion groups online  

assessments are amazing so an online scorecard or  an online assessment great way to think of them is  

a Readiness assessment so Readiness assessment  like are you ready to launch a podcast answer  

10 questions to find out are you ready to build  your brand answer 10 questions to find out are you  

ready to be an investor in this type of investment  answer 10 questions to find out so it's an online  

assessment where you answer a series of questions  to get a Readiness score and then based on the  

Readiness score uh you people will then find  out if they're 30% ready 40% ready and people  

love these Readiness scores this is one of the  fastest ways to test an idea and getting signals  

of Interest everything is Downstream from lead  generation in business so you essentially have  

to uh you have to generate leads and then you  figure out if you've got a business or not so  

the fastest you can get into the lead generation  the better one of the worst things that people  

do when they're starting a business is that they  think that having a business is about the supply  

side of what they're doing supply side means  your ability to look after a customer and keep  

a customer happy but actually a business has to  start with the demand side it's you've got to test  

the demand side before you test the supply side  if you can't manufacture demand there's no point  

manufacturing Supply it doesn't matter you know if  you say oh I you I've come up with this chili and  

basil flavored ice cream great you can make that  but does anyone want that right you got to check  

out whether you have the ability to to get that um  product into a market so what I see so many people  

they take qualifications they get certifications  they might raise money they might set up a venue  

they might book an office they might buy laptop  computers all of this stuff and they might spend  

SP 3 to 6 months doing that and then finally  after all of that they then experience oh no  

one's interested in this now what do I do with  all that stuff so in the Chilean ice cream example  

what should they have done join the waiting list  we're launching Chile and bzel ice cream if you'd  

like to try it and taste it join the waiting list  people don't know what they want though because in  

the ice cream example it's a taste thing right so  it sounds good but in reality it could be re like  

so I mean this is a crazy idea it's a terrible  idea that we're but but anyway let's let's go  

with it um so you you create a waiting list where  we're doing really wild flavored ice creams and  

it's crazy flavors like chili and Basel ice cream  and salt and pepper ice cream and blah blah blah  

if you're interested in really different exciting  new flavors of ice cream join the waiting list and  

we will invite you to a taste tester um when  it's ready you'll get to come to an exclusive  

event where you get to try and test our latest  recipes in in central London so now you promote  

the waiting list and you see can I get lots of  people and some of the questions might be which  

flavor are you most looking forward to are you  looking forward to octop octopus ice cream are  

you looking forward to you know which one right  so you go through and you they answer all the  

questions and then they join the waiting list then  you say join the ice cream Discovery discussion  

group right so now they're in there talking about  their favorite ice creams and what crazy flavors  

they like and you can actually have a daily poll  and you're doing that all in WhatsApp and then you  

say now come to the the event that we've got the  taste testing event you could launch the ice cream  

assess all right what kind of what which type are  you are you the Savory ice cream person or the  

sweet ice cream are you the you know so you could  have four ice cream personalities and they take  

the test and find out which ice cream personality  they have so you can do all of this stuff for free  

or almost for free without making a scoop of ice  cream right none of this stuff involves actually  

any commercial kitchens none of it involves  packaging or branding or any of the expensive  

stuff you're just doing the things that's testing  whether people are actually interested in this and  

if it's crickets if you put a lot of effort into  trying to get people interested in this and you've  

got 12 people in your little group and they're all  you know sadly looking at each other going where's  

the basil ice cream you know this is never going  to fly if it you know I was thinking there some  

people might come to the discussion group you know  your friends whatever your mom comes down she goes  

yeah your ice cream's great Daniel well you want  to do cold Outreach cold Outreach I don't know  

how long we're going to talk about ice creams  but cold Outreach is is where you essentially  

make um a list of all the communities and groups  that exist online all the all the accounts that  

already have followers and you just cold Outreach  a thousand people and and get them involved but  

Daniel what if someone steals my idea well my my  experience tells me until you've got a Ferrari no  

one steals your idea yeah people steal ideas from  people who have Ferraris right so it's that bias  

towards if you've been successful in the past then  your ideas are worth stealing the beauty of having  

nothing is no one's going to steal your ideas ever  they're going to look at your account on Instagram  

and go oh you got no followers and you know you  haven't got a Ferrari so I'm not going to steal  

your idea so you've got this great Advantage when  you're starting from zero that no one no one will  

steal the idea and here's the other thing ideas  aren't worth anything uh here's a great idea  

let's rip down all the old buildings in London  and build brand new buildings what's that idea  

worth trillions well it would be worth trillions  if we did that well actually no the value is for  

the person who does it so if someone else steals  your idea does it they deserve the money right  

let them have it they're better at executing get  on with the next idea and be better at executing  

next time so if someone's able to execute better  and faster than you they deserve that money that's  

fine let them have it get on to the next idea  thinking about it like this podcast there's lots  

of there's like three million podcasts a lot of  podcast the idea itself to start a podcast isn't  

where the value is derived from no so much of it  is pitching and um and also the commercials behind  

the scenes you know creating the right offers  making sales so this is the other other thing  

that early stage businesses need to do you got to  stop calling yourself an entrepreneur and start  

calling yourself a sales person you're going  to get out there and make sales in the early  

days so a lot of people are really uncomfortable  with the idea of making sales but that's what an  

entrepreneur does an entrepreneur is a salesperson  especially in those first couple of years you you  

are the chief salesperson if you can't sell it  nobody's going to sell it I've the heard of a lot  

of these topics is this idea of failure because  you're talking about experimentation we're talking  

about ask with all these things and people's  relationship with failure seems to correlate to  

their eventual success over the last couple of  years in particular especially from doing this  

podcast and a lot of other more recent businesses  that I run I've realized that that experimental  

mindset the type of person that quickly runs the  test versus sits and procrastinates for years  

is really the winner in most Pursuits and then I  studied Amazon and Jeff bezos's shareholder letter  

says this has to be the best place in the world  to fail I looked at booking.com and they have that  

moment where they launched their experimentation  platform because they were sick of arguing about  

what the best feature was in the boardroom  I look at Thomas Watson back in I think 1950  

or 60 where he says um one of his employees had  just made a huge mistake which cost the company  

$600,000 and he's asked in an interview are you  going to fire them and he goes fire them I just  

spent $600,000 training them these people  seem to have a different attitude towards  

the value of failure yeah this goes back to the  school system the school system is designed for  

component labor and you don't want components to  fail um what we're doing now is different so we're  

especially now we're entering entering the age  of AI so in in a post AI world most of the things  

that we think of as valuable that the school  system could possibly teach us are not going  

to be very valuable very long so functionality  versus Vitality when something is functional it  

performs a task reliably when something is vital  it's Irreplaceable life force energy so what we  

have to do is recognize that the value has swung  from something that is reliably able to perform a  

task to something that breathes life force energy  into into a project so I know this is kind of  

woooo but essentially this is the difference  when you are breathing life force energy into  

something you're okay with failure we're we're  just conducting experiments we're finding the way  

that works and we just found 900 ways that don't  work and now we're going to find the next one and  

you you're bringing something into existence it's  just like being a parent you know when when you  

see the child P down you you get the child back  up and you get them on to the next thing and when  

we learn riding a bike we have to go through  falling off the bike so there's all of these  

experiences that you know what it's like to bring  life force energy to something and that involves  

a process of failure um and then functionality  if we're really um putting our value around the  

idea that something has to be functional or that  I have to be functional that my value is in my  

functionality then failure is such a bad thing so  this is a big difference in how the pendulum is  

now swinging we have to remove the idea that you  are valuable because you're reliably functional we  

have to swing it back to this idea that you're  valuable because you breathe life force energy  

into something for someone that doesn't know  the definition of Life Force energy how would  

you define that so this word Vitality has two  definitions Irreplaceable and life force so  

if something is vital it's Irreplaceable and it's  life force so you need to find something that you  

are the Irreplaceable life force you pitch it into  existence you create it you innovate it um you  

take ownership of it you enroll others into it um  that's the alignment kind of thing you're talking  

about you're aligned to that thing yeah you fully  expressed your life you're enjo you're enjoying  

this because it's your life Journey um and uh  you know we're so tuned out from from the idea of  

this that that essentially we have to relearn what  the hell does this even mean this definition life  

force energy is what kids do right think about you  know everyone's talking and everyone's serious and  

then a 5-year-old bounces into the room look what  I found right and it's like look there's mud and  

there's this and there you know it's like whoa  and suddenly everyone's disrupted and they bring  

energy into the house they bring energy into a  room so they just know what it's like to fully  

Express themselves and breathe life force energy  into something let me give you another example  

they're magicians and they have these like fake  thumbs and these things those fake thumbs are  

functional things right there's a functional  thing called a fake thumb and that's how you do  

the magic trick but it doesn't mean that everyone  who has that fake thumb can do the magic trick in  

fact some people do the magic trick and people go  you're just wearing a fake thumb right then there  

are magicians who completely make you believe in  the magic and they're using just the fake thumb  

as well they're just doing the same functional  thing as the other magician but they're so good  

at doing it they're so good at enrolling you in it  they're so good at getting you your attention and  

your engagement and your beliefs align to what  they want you to believe that suddenly bringing  

that magic trick to life is what the magician  is doing when you study magicians you realize  

that it's not about the gadgets it's not about the  functionality it's about the way they do the trick  

it's the way they breathe the life force into the  trick so the the life force is the magic it's the  

way you it's the way you bring it to life so the  idea that I noticed years ago when I wrote the  

book key person of influence was that there are  these people who make stuff happen around them  

um and the these people they build reputation  their names come up in conversation they have  

more fun they build reputation all that sort stuff  happens and when they're involved in something it  

all comes to life and when they're not involved in  it it almost dissipates it get something magically  

doesn't happen um your involvement in 40 different  country uh companies people would ask the question  

but how are you involved in 40 different companies  and the thing is that you're not functionally  

involved in 40 different companies but you're  breathing a life force energy into 40 different  

companies there's something that your your energy  brings that stuff happens with you involved that  

wouldn't happen if you weren't involved you're  the IRL life force and if that Irreplaceable life  

force comes gets gets removed the result won't  be the same if you're involved the result will  

be different and that's what people want from  you and it's not functionality no one's saying  

can you come and work in the office it's very  very interesting very very true and I the two  

sub questions that spiraled off that were how  does one know and does one need to know what  

their Vitality their life force energy is do we  need to know and is there a way for us to find  

out what it is we need to get into environments  where it becomes normal to explore this stuff and  

we need to be around people who are full of life  so when you are around vital people you discover  

things about your own Vitality you've had this  experience of launching a podcast that gives  

you access to the world's most interesting people  and me um and you've got this uh I bet from every  

single person you've raised your energy you've  raised Your vitality something inside you was  

awoken in each and every interaction that lifted  your vibration up when you're in a low vibration  

environment where everyone's functional everyone  is suppressing their life force in order to be  

functional you essentially just resonate with that  and you suppress your life force in order to be  

functional so we need to get into environments  where Vitality is the norm uh where we raise  

our energy where we feel good about thinking  about vision mission and values and we feel  

good about exploring origin and what what value  that might add to the world um it feels normal  

to be conducting experiment it feels normal to  be making sales um it feels normal to want to  

be a key person of influence in your industry um  it feels normal to have a conversation about what  

resources already exist on the planet and how they  could be used differently so all of those things  

happen inside the right environment so I have  a saying that environment dictates performance  

I went into a number of Prisons with a charity  called key for life and what we discovered is that  

a lot of these young men are entrepreneurs but in  their environment the product that you would sell  

is an illegal product but they in that environment  the only successful entrepreneurs they come across  

and the only successful entrepreneurs they meet  are selling drugs so they go oh that is my pathway  

that's what I do that's my mentoring that's  the environment if you were to take these same  

entrepreneurial spirit that these young men have  and showed them oh here's an IT services company  

they'd go start an IT services company or here's a  book publishing business oh okay now I'm going to  

be a book publisher so these their entrepreneurial  Spirit the only place they saw in the environment  

of someone who's on the rise was this drug dealer  friend so they got involved in it so environment  

dictates performance what we need to do is we need  to find environments that lift us up what if we're  

not in an environment that lifts us up because  there's going to be a couple of million people  

right now that are that when you've described the  definition of Life Force energy and you've also  

used the word stagnation as almost the antithesis  of that they're thinking oh my God I would love  

some life force energy I'm in a corporate job  in the city I've been doing it for 10 years I'm  

I'm institutionalized in this place because I've  been here so long that I don't even know what the  

outside world would look like and I've got these  ideas but I've been they can feel their soul has  

been drained to some degree got a mortgage change  well change environments for at least an hour or  

two a week and what I mean by that is I'll give  you an example when I was 21 I was going out to  

pubs drinking with friends all the time we're  getting drunk and that was the normal night and  

there was this one night where these people turned  up who did laop uh Latin Jive dancing and I looked  

across the room and I saw them Jive dancing and I  went oh that's incredible and I get talking to the  

the guy and I say how did you how do you do this  and there's like six beautiful girls and this one  

or two guys who they're all waiting for a spin  and I'm like how do how are you doing this he  

goes come to dance classes so I'm like go to dance  classes that's I would never go to dance classes I  

rock up at dance class and then when I was there  I was in this environment where it was completely  

normal to dance that was just the normal thing in  that environment you grab a partner and you the  

music comes on and they show you the moves and  you do the moves when they demoed the moves and  

I can vividly remember this from 20 years ago  when they demoed the moves I thought to myself  

there is no way I'll learn that in 3 months and  then by the end of that first 2hour session I'm  

doing the whole routine and I'm comfortable with  it I'm like wow I can do this so being in the you  

can't do it outside of the environment you can  only do it in the environment so entrepreneurship  

is an environment thing you you do it inside an  environment and you it's very hard to do that  

outside of the environment so you basically have  to find entrepreneur meetups entrepreneur groups  

um you you find a mentor uh you you know in  every city around the world right now there  

are entrepreneur meetups every night of the week  uh online there are entrepreneurial events every  

day of the week so you just get in you just get in  the environment there's this thing called social  

shedding which I've never actually shared with  anybody before but it's this idea that when you  

take that first step into dance class and you  get to see behind the curtain of another world  

you slowly no longer resonate with your other  friendship group and what and there's often a  

friction there where they say oh Dan you Dan's D  they start cracking the jokes oh Dan's a ballet  

dance and now Lads and what they're doing there  is it's somewhat linked to this phrase misery  

loves company they don't want you to leave no  one wants you to change you're Dan Priestly we  

know you as this do not change your identity if  you try to change your identity we will mock you  

we will disguised as a roast and we will try  and hold you back because if you change what  

does that say about us what that's that's holding  a mirror up to me it means that I'm less than you  

in some way and I hear this from entrepreneurs  or startup entrepreneurs that when they that  

decision to start building a personal brand or  starting that cupcake business typically causes  

resistance from their existing Social Circle and  then this decision whether they want to socially  

shed which means letting some of those people  go if we were born at any other time in history  

you would grow up in a town get a job in that  local Town go to school in that local Town um  

and everything would revolve around just the  local issues of of that particular place you  

probably would know a thousand people for your  entire lifetime and you'd have this very tight  

Circle there's something in our Evolution about  being part of these little local communities and  

for the first time in history you can choose to be  tapped into a global Community anyone in the world  

who who shares values or you want to share their  values it's now freely available to to us there's  

something that feels very foreign about that  because it's never happened for the last 5,000  

years and then there's something very exciting  about this where you go actually I'm living in  

a different time now this is an incredible moment  I think that what's happening is that we're going  

through an Empire shift and the current Empire  shift is this Empire shift away from geography  

to digital which means that we connect on values  and we connect on purpose and we connect on Origin  

Mission Vision and those sorts of things so what  the larger shift that that's actually happening is  

this shift of do I want to play by the old rules  of the geographical based system or do I want to  

play by the new rules of being in the cloud and  in the cloud anything is possible because I can  

go anywhere I can do anything I can access any  information I can connect with any person on the  

planet and as soon as you make this shift into  the new Empire that's where everything starts  

to shift and now you so we all have to make that  shift so the big shift is not even just changing  

your friendship group it's the courage to Empire  it's the courage to say actually you know what  

the world is a very different place than what I  was born into it's now going through a big change  

the faster I can actually get into this wave and  surf this wave the better that's so interesting  

and one of those shifts from the old Empire to  the new Empire is seen in building a personal  

brand because the old Gatekeepers of media and  reputation were just newspapers and the radio  

and there was like you know 10 of those so you  got to be lucky to get on one of those now in  

the new Empire in the clouds you can build your  own Media company around you per Mission free you  

can digitize your value um you can connect with  anyone in the world who resonates with what it  

is that you do so when we launched the most recent  business um score app we launched it in London but  

because it was the pandemic um we ended up with  employees all over the world and we've never had  

an office and we still don't have an office  and it's this incredible business and what's  

happening is that we now have clients signing up  every single day over 100 people sign up and we  

have clients in 152 countries I checked yesterday  and they resonate with a message and there's no  

the business doesn't exist anywhere there's no  actual place that you can go to visit score app  

it's just a digital business the employees are  everywhere the customers are everywhere but what  

holds it together are these intangible things such  as values and vision and the value that we offer  

and the ideas and the you know all the stories  and all of that intangible stuff now exists in  

the cloud and the whole business exists in the  cloud so it is an incredible time time personal  

brand is one of these incredible things where you  don't need permission you can just go straight  

to the market you've done that um and anyone who  resonates with your story your ideas you know your  

the things that you want to get done in the world  they can just follow along um I I hate the idea of  

personal brand being like showing up and doing  dances it's actually it's about sending out a  

signal of this is what I'm up to in the world and  do you want to come along for the ride do you want  

to be part of that like are you up for this game  that I'm playing do you want to do you want to  

take part in what I'm interested in so it's it's a  connection it's it's not an image it's not like a  

voice or a a message that gets repeated over and  over it's I'm up to something in the world and I  

would love more people to be part of that come  with me I think him I heard Adam Grant speak in  

one of his books about the big misconception  with personal branding is it that it's this  

kind of pursuit for fame whereas great personal  branding isn't self-promotion it's idea promotion  

it's this is what I believe this is my perspective  gather around if you think the same self-promotion  

sounds like we just won an award last night at  the marketing Awards and you're all on the table  

taking the selfie we are amazing that doesn't  cultivate a personal brand personal brand is this  

is my perspective on the world um if you've got  the same perspective which we call idea promotion  

come join me it's not look at me it's look at this  yes it's not chasing the spotlight it's becoming a  

spotlight and spotlighting the thing that matters  most and it's it's shining the light on something  

else especially on an idea so we see people online  who are Shameless self-promoters I went to the gym  

today look at my avocado on toast with chili  flakes and they're saying look at me look at  

me look at me and the people that we most want  to follow are the ones who say don't look at me  

look at this this is what's going on in the world  and this is what you should you should be excited  

about this um and and that's the difference  because on the surface we might see you and say  

oh you know Steven's all about like look at Steven  it's like no no no you're missing the point if if  

you think it's about that you've missed the point  he's shining a light on something that's going on  

in the world and he's bringing stuff into the  spotlight he's not trying to say check me out  

he's saying check this out it's interesting that  the podcast was the most accelerating thing for  

my personal brand and it's really bringing people  here and then do my very best to listen as much  

as I can which is interesting right because  we've kind of cultivated it's almost like the  

campfire we've cultivated more people sat around  the campfire listening to conversations like this  

it is incredible that these times that we're in  these are the conversations that would have been  

behind closed doors 20 years ago and you would  have been incredibly privileged to be able to sit  

and listen in on those chats and now they've been  democratized these type of high level conversation  

the types of conversations you have that you  share with the world uh you've democratized  

something that was once a very elite activity and  you've made it freely available people I've I've  

come to learn especially over the last couple of  years about the importance of people you talked  

about people at the very beginning of this  conversation hiring people finding the right  

people to join you in your mission how Central  to being successful in both business but just  

more broadly in life is assembling the right group  of people so business is a team sport there's no  

there's no getting around it I don't believe in  solopreneurship I don't believe that you can be  

a oneperson entrepreneur I think entrepreneurs are  team players and that they assemble teams um they  

put together teams of amazing people sometimes  they put together teams of ordinary people at  

the beginning and then they become amazing people  so I'm a believer that two person co-founders or  

a Founder plus an assistant is a great place to  start four person campaign teams eight person  

core teams 30 person performance teams so I love  the British military's approach to team building  

uh so in the British military they have two person  scout team four person fire Team 8 person section  

30 person platoon so they go 2 4 830 and um I I've  used that myself in my own scaleup approach where  

if if there's a new idea we put two people on it  once it's proven four people are on it once it's  

up and running eight people are on it once it  becomes a business that has its own Standalone  

value 30 people are on it so it's 24830 um and  that's been um that's been a British military  

learning uh that that I that I kind of went well  if they've done 400 years of HR experiments why  

wouldn't I just learn from how they organize  their teams is there anything you've found  

that is consistent across all of the best people  you've hired worked with co-founded a company with  

partnered with is there any consistent thing I'm  I'm always looking for complimentary energies so  

here's what I'm looking for uh in the deck of  cards there's four suits so you got clouds so  

head in the clouds Spades doing the work Hearts  connecting with people diamonds money Finance  

data so I always look for a balanced team of  someone who's Visionary with someone who's a  

Spades person doing the work Implement someone  who's heart connector with someone who money  

or or data so I'm looking to try and perfectly  balance my team with the four suits and I've seen  

Visionary people who get nothing done because they  don't have an implementor around I've seen amazing  

connectors who don't have anyone balancing them  out so they never retain any of the money that's  

flowing around them because they're an amazing  networker people are doing deals around them  

but they're not involved in any of it so for me  it's the it's the connection between those four  

energies and when you get all four en firing um  and in one team then you get the value creation  

and retention let's talk about money let's talk  about it we're in a cost of living crisis in the  

UK and many countries around the world are either  in or on the brink of recession so one of the most  

popular questions we've had at the dire of a  CEO in the last 3 to six months is about money  

people's concern about their own money spending  finance and saving if I'm someone out there now  

that has I don't know $100 or1 worth of disposable  income every month or if I have a, or 0,000 what  

should I be thinking about as it relates to  creating more money and making myself financially  

free the first thing is you just want to earn more  um people massively settle for how much they could  

earn um so the first place to I think to invest  is in yourself but here's the first principle  

the first principle is uh income follows assets  income follows assets means that the more assets  

you have the more income you'll earn if I own if I  want rental income first I need a house if I want  

dividend income I need shares um if I want to be  paid as a brand ambassador first I need a brand  

so essentially the more we can accumulate assets  the more easy and effortless the money flows so um  

we have to figure out well what assets could you  accumulate and what assets could you formalize and  

own I wrote a book called 24 assets and I listed  out all the different digital assets that are  

new economy assets that people could have things  like brand and positioning things like databases  

things like company culture is an asset now so I  talk about how do you formalize those things if  

someone's just starting out and they've got 100  a month to be to be perfectly honest trying to  

invest 100 a month or any of that it's not going  to do anything it's not going to change your  

life but if you put that into your own skills and  your own development um let's say you don't have  

negotiation skills well there are courses that you  can take for $100 that give you negotiation skills  

let's say you don't know how to close sales you  can take a a course on how to make sales let's say  

you don't feel confident public speaking you could  do a public speaking course um so there are things  

that allow you to gain your skills the other  thing too is money is relationships so if you  

don't have a lot of money you typically don't have  a lot of relationships um you might have a limited  

number of relationships or a limited number of  relationships with people who have a flow of  

money when you have a high degree of relationships  with people who've got money flowing it's very  

effortless for that to flow to and from you as  well so you might have to invest in relationships  

um when I arrived in the UK I knew that uh one of  the places that I would meet interesting people  

would be private Banks so I didn't qualify for  private bank but I went into a private bank and  

I said I'm going to be launching a business and  of course it's going to be great and successful  

I want to bank with a private bank um can I do you  have an entrepreneurs program oh yeah we did and  

they start selling me joining the entrepreneurs  program now it cost me £600 to open an account  

with that private bank but they immediately  invited me to dinners and they invited me to

networkingsocial

people for a dinner party uh we're going to have  had burgers on the boat and he and he said oh  

great can I come and I said of course you can  come it's your boat right and so he said great  

that'll be exciting so he basically said you can  you can host this party on on my 100 foot boat so  

I reached out to all the people who I didn't know  and I said hey we're putting together burgers on  

the boat would you like to come along and have  some burgers with interesting people and then  

they came along and I made the investment into  relationship um now the funny thing is a lot  

of people will say oh but you know someone with  100 foot yacht funny thing is I I think plenty  

of people who have a boat especially in Dubai  it sits empty most of the time you could reach  

out to 30 people and say we're going to do it on  someone's boat would you like it to be your boat  

with or without your energy so making investments  into relationships is a really powerful thing for  

$100 a month personally what would I do with  $100 a month take people out to dinner that  

would be my number one investment i' I'd probably  be taking people out to dinner why the investment  

into the relationship so I would be inviting the  most interesting people I could possibly invite  

uh if I had the ability for $100 a month I guess  that's one dinner so I would reach out to someone  

interesting and say I've seen your story I've  seen what you're interested can I take you out  

for lunch can I take you out for dinner it's my  shout I'd love to get to know you a little bit  

better obviously don't do that with someone who's  famous you get a hundred of those a day I get  

plenty of those a day reach out to someone who's  not famous but who's accomplished who's successful  

who's who's a mentores type person not necessarily  a superstar but someone who's a few ahead take  

those people out to lunch take them out to dinner  would you say in that message that you know you  

talk about calls I talk about emails what what  would someone have to say to you considering where  

you are in your life now with all the inquiries  you get for you to actually go for a coffee with  

them um so bear in mind everyone's going to  email you and say this yeah well it happened  

today actually someone said um Daniel I noticed in  the background of one of your photos that you have  

an amazing Fender Strater I teach people how to  play guitar um I would love the opportunity to do  

a guitar lesson with you and help you to shred on  that guitar and it was really nice he had watched  

my podcasts in the past he had noticed the guitar  he reached out with something that was valuable  

for me and he said I'd love to have a chat with  you and teach you how to play some guitar and I  

obviously I'll have a chat with him while we  do that but that was a really it was it was a  

very sense uh it was very it felt like a a good  connection I also had a look at his um profile  

and he looked like a really lovely person you know  who's who's getting on with doing stuff there's a  

bit of With Or Without You energy as well in terms  of you know I can see this person's up to stuff so  

I look at that and I go he did some research on  you mhm he offered you value in an area where you  

were potentially seeking or looking for the value  yep oh that's definitely true if you've seen me  

play guitar but that's that's like the corol  component and I I feel the same way that I I I  

try and figure out why sometimes I reply to these  cold Outreach messages but 99.9% of the time I  

don't and it tends to be the case that the person  will say they'll show that they've done some kind  

of research on me which is good for your ego like  everyone has an ego you want to feel like someone  

actually cares and then they'll offer me something  in return for by way do you know I did this to you  

I don't know even know if you remember you and  I were both speakers at a conference right and  

we were in the elevator and i' prepared for you a  really nice leather um briefcase and it had your  

I created the happy sexy millionaire thing and we  we gave all the speakers one of those you weren't  

that special we had we had something for all the  but anyway it was interesting cuz I actually have  

done that with you and we never ended up following  up with you and you never followed up with us but  

here's here's the thing I want to share that  no I want to share that because sometimes it  

doesn't work right sometimes you have to send  out like when I sent out 3,000 cold DMS to LA  

launch a business I didn't expect 3,000 people to  respond I expected 30 or 40 people to come back to  

me when I gave gave that to you do you remember it  I remember getting a briefcase and I'm trying to I  

do I do quite a lot of public speaking these days  so um we only had like a five like a two-minute  

interaction and I said hey this is a little gift  for you inside we've created something for you  

have a look um was it something I had to scan  was there something scannable in there yeah we'  

we'd built you a little landing page campaign yes  I remember yeah I remember getting in the car and  

saying to my team oh this is cool yeah and then  of course it gets past of the team and they're  

like yeah yeah fair enough put that on the pile  of cool things um so the point is is I'm saying  

that to say these things you don't want to get  hung up on the idea that one person's like in  

that same event we gave that same thing to another  really well-known person they've gone with it and  

they're like um you know millions of followers and  they're one of our clients now so we have wither  

without you energy which is when when my team do  this we pick 30 or 40 people who'd make a amazing  

connections and contacts in our VIP Outreach team  and then we reach out to them and we expect maybe  

two or three of them to get back to us so it's  that idea of you know don't like if someone  

messages you and you don't message back it's not  the end of the world there are other people you  

can message and there's a and look what happens  there you go it comes around again it always  

comes around again if it's if it's meant to happen  it'll happen so what about people you know so many  

members of my team speak to me and ask me about  investing they have tens of thousands to invest  

or whatever but I'm curious about your personal  investment thesis with a with a capital that you  

have spare what do you do with it to create more  money so what does your portfolio look like it's  

extremely boring I stick any available Capital  into S&P 500 what's the S&P 500 for anyone that  

doesn't yeah the top 500 stocks in the US so  essentially any government that inflates its  

currency anywhere in the world that money will  hit the economy and it will eventually make its  

way back to the top 500 companies in the US  through spending or that Capital will end up  

being put into the S&P 500 which inflates so  one way or another it's going back to the top  

500 companies in the US so it's almost impossible  to beat the S&P 500 I hate investing it's not my  

thing I like expansive business creation I'm an  optimist uh great investors are often pessimist  

they're very good at thinking what could go wrong  and they analyzing risk I hate that [ __ ] so  

for me personally I want to as much as possible  expand the portfolio of businesses that I think  

should exist in the world and I've always made  my money by just saying I romantically like the  

idea of this business existing and I'm going to  pour my energy into it and it's going to become  

worth millions rather than think about where I  want to invest money I want to create something  

that's investable for other people to put money  into because that's how you really make money so  

the exciting thing is not placing my own chips the  exciting thing is creating something where others  

want to place chips in into that so let's talk  about that Journey then yep that Journey from got  

an idea want to start that ice cream business that  Chilean basil ice cream business whatever except  

for tens of millions except for tens of millions  it I I get off the ground people love my chile and  

basil ice cream what what is the journey that  anrea goes on from zero up until they exit so  

there's there's a key stages the first four stages  where everyone gets caught is called chaos concept  

audience offer sales so you have to develop your  concept so it's a good concept youel Val ated it  

you've conducted some experiments you're aligned  to it other people are excited about it audience  

is that you engage an audience waiting lists  dinner parties uh scorecards quizzes discussion  

groups all of those are great audience Builders  y um offer is that you construct a packaged up  

offering so that people can buy something and that  they that audience can now act on something and  

buy and then sales which is the ability to talk  and discuss with your interested parties to Clos  

deals to actually get sales across the line and  to do that predictably and reliably so for sales  

we established something called a rhythm of laps  leads appointments presentations and sales and we  

measure our pipeline every week how many leads  how many appointments how many presentations  

how many sales so those are the first four things  concept audience offer sales and that should get  

you into the six figures of Revenue just by doing  that the next thing is about team building you've  

got to establish a key person of influence who's  got a personal brand Who's lead the leader of the  

company who's going to embody the brand and you  got to build a team of eight people around them  

um a general manager Marketing in sales Finance  admin um uh it media and operations those kind  

of roles and essentially you now build this core  team of eight and um the key person of influence  

job is to engage bigger and bigger audiences and  so they get out there and tell the story of the  

business they get on stages they pitch um they  publish content they raise their profile they do  

joint ventures and Partnerships so they're leading  from the front while the general manager or Ops  

director is making sure things don't fall apart  behind once you hit about eight people you now  

have to digitize absolutely everything of value  in that business so now you go through the whole  

process of digitization of the value so you're  getting ready to scale which means for example  

moving physical relationships to a CRM some kind  of data database or building a CRM uh formalizing  

your intellectual property um building a brand a  company brand um formalizing your organizational  

culture uh getting into um really good investor  relationship and and documentation governance  

so all of these are developing systems developing  assets of the business um having online marketing  

and sales systems having an online way of  generating a lot of leads reliably having  

an online way of making customers mostly happy  most of the time so you're basically trying to  

build as many assets as possible what you're  trying to do at about 8 to 10 people is raise  

revenue per person so let's say you got 10 people  with 100,000 per person so you got a million of  

Revenue 10 people times 100,000 million of Revenue  if you can add assets and get it to go to 1.1 1.2  

1.3 million now you've got 130,000 per person so  what you're trying to do is add as many digital  

assets as possible to get the revenue per employee  or the revenue per person up once you see that the  

revenue per person is going up now you can add  people because the more digital assets there are  

times by the number of people now you're going to  be successful now the really hard jump is from 12  

to 30 from 12 people to 30 you're too big to  be small too small to be big very difficult  

time in any business's life um and what you have  to do is go through a transformation of a small  

team of rebels and misfits to a professional  team that's that's manufacturing value a lot  

of people have to go unfortunately some of the  earlier people who were there because they could  

breathe and had a pulse and all of that sort of  stuff they uh unfortunately have to go find a  

new startup and you now have to go and bring on  team members who come through recruiters with a  

proper process and who they go through an an an  entire process of how they join the team they're  

on boarded correctly and now you transform into a  more valuable Professional Organization once you  

hit 30 you've got a five person executive team  plus a non-executive director and an advisor and  

then you've got some teams of teams and now  you're doing 10 million of Revenue 3 million  

of profit and now you're exible have you got  to make a decision earli that was a mouthful  

it's so true it's so it's so funny did you agree  with that all of it I agreed with all of it the  

interesting thing as well is the part you said  about of the first 10 people you hire very few  

of them are equipped or ready or able to adjust  to the environment you have at 30 40 50 60 100t  

and it's and part of the re what I've noticed is  that when there's 10 people you're requiring a  

different set of skills and you're you're thinking  more about multi multidisiplinary individuals that  

can kind of wear a few hats but not do anything  exceptionally well Swiss Army knives they can do  

25 things badly yeah exactly and then when you get  to like 50 60 70 people it's really Specialists  

Specialists bread knife bread knife Cuts bread  really well just that so on this then when we're  

thinking about our own careers we've got to  ask ourselves that question which is are we  

a specialist that should be going into a company  where there's 50 60 70 people or are we that kind  

of Swiss army knife that should be playing in  startups and then going from zero to one versus  

like one to two yeah I have I've had to wrestle  that with that myself I personally absolutely  

adore the first 2 million of Revenue that's that  is where my fun that for me is fun it's where I  

find it exciting I become almost pathologically  distracted once we hit 2 million of Revenue and I  

have to remind myself oh wait a second we've got  a fast growth business here stop thinking about  

other things I really enjoy getting businesses  past that first couple hundred thousand a month  

and then for whatever reason I'm like dreaming  of a blank page I just want some like what if  

we did this what if we did that but here's the  cool thing there are so many amazing people who  

are phenomenal at the 2 to 20 million jump so at  the moment the person who's leading Dent Global  

is Glenn Carlson Glenn is I've known him since I  was 14 years old and actually what he's phenomenal  

at at the moment we've discovered is that he's  really really good at driving that next jump the  

2 to 20 million jump so there's the Z to there's  the 0 to 200 Grand like testing there's the 200  

Grand to 2 million which is like yeah okay this  thing's got some legs there's the 2 million to  

20 million jump which is we're professionalizing  we're become a proper business um we're becoming  

valuable we're getting all the right people  what's shocked me because I've known Glenn  

for so many years is that we've just recently  discovered that that's what he's suited to he's  

really good at the 2 to 20 million jump he's so  good at recruiting talented people he's so good  

at pushing them through a process that weeds  out like 15 amazing people down to two amazing  

people down to one how would you make the case  to someone that's just heard what you've said  

about your companies and that you like that 0  to2 million phas what case would you make to me  

to admit what I'm not good at for the sake of my  business because everyone can relate like I don't  

mean to share this without asking him but I'm  sure like he's in control of the edit so he can  

take it out if he doesn't like it did you think I  was going to do it Jack turned around to our team  

the other day and it was I've actually spoken to  so many people about this moment since he said  

it Jack said you know what um Jack's run this  podcast from zero so zero subscribers to where  

it is now 5 million subscribers Jack turned around  at 5 million subscribers and was like I'm not the  

best in the world at doing lighting so what I've  done is I've gone out and I found someone who's  

the best at lighting and they're going to teach  me they're going to redesign my set 5 million  

subscribers he's getting someone else to redesign  a set so that the lighting is amazing it takes a  

certain kind of person to put winning over ego I  love that yeah you know what I mean and and I I  

think about there's so many You Know Jack probably  didn't know the profoundness of that moment to me  

but someone who is applauded from every oh you've  built the best you know whatever for him to go you  

know what there's so much I don't know he he role  modeled humility and he role modeled um the idea  

of winning is better than uh being right right  yeah um and overing is not underlings that a great  

company is great because you bring in overing not  underlings uh so an underling is someone who's not  

as good as you are and an overing is someone who's  way better than you are so it's that confidence  

to bring in the overing um all of my businesses  have been great because overing run them uh every  

everyone who is in my organization is way better  than me at the thing they're doing and I feel like  

like the conductor in the orchestra can't play  all the instruments and probably maybe is okay  

at one instrument but actually their ability  to bring in the best in the world uh at that  

instrument is what is what makes them a great  conductor the ability to enroll people so the  

first thing I'd say is that there's value to be  made at every level if you're watching this and  

you're you know you're not a founder and you're  sitting there going all the people who make the  

money are the people who start from scratch and  get something off the ground and look at Daniel  

and look at Steven those guys are the zero to one  guys wouldn't it be great if I was one of those  

but I'm not well actually that's not true the  truth is that there's there's incredible wealth  

to be created if you can take something from  2 to 20 million there's amazing wealth if you  

can take something from 20 to 200 million do you  know this is worth mentioning one of the biggest  

opportunities in the world right now biggest there  there's two major opportunities in the world but  

one of the biggest opportunities in the world at  the moment is Baby Boomers who want to retire and  

a typical scenario is you get someone who's late  60s early 7s the business had a high Watermark of  

a couple of million and now it's dropped down  to maybe a million or six High six figures  

because the person's semi-retiring and because the  business has been on decline it's almost unsalable  

the person wants to retire and they just want  to hand over the keys and they just want that  

business to go to someone who's fresh um and what  they're willing to do is to do a vendor sale exit  

Cody Sanchez who had she talks about this I've  done deals like this um and actually Jeremy with  

the 100 foot yacht that's how that's how he does  it so you essentially you buy a business that  

the person wants to retire and you take over that  business with fresh energy and you bring it back  

to its high Watermark so there are so many people  who what would be suited for is not starting with  

a blank sheet of paper like me but they would  actually go and find you know Bill and Sarah who  

want to retire and they want to do a deal where  they get paid out over five years to hand over the  

keys to the business let's zoom in on this because  a lot of people don't understand the concept of  

like a management buyout so I see Bill and Sarah  they're running a laundry mat yeah well here's  

a real life example a real life example from a  friend of mine uh is called kit King and basically  

he uh approached someone who had that business  they built it up to I think a few million and then  

he the guy was ready to retire when when he walked  in the orders would get printed out and put onto  

a spike and Spike number one was like this is an  order and then when it was fulfilled it goes onto  

the fulfilled Spike uh piece of paper and then you  know he this young guy comes in and he digitizes  

the business and he gets all the automated order  thing flowing cost about 25 Grand to get in a  

specialist who could do all of that and then he  basically re-engage the team the team were totally  

un I think there's about a dozen people and they'd  not had a team meeting in ages they' not they  

was no vision for the business they' not gone  and spoken to customers in in forever and then  

he comes in goes and talks to customers starts  hosting some online events starts um sending out  

messages starts digitizing builds a bit of the  brand and that business has I think grown like  

500% in like 2 years it's massively successful but  he started with something that had been going for  

30 years in that example you don't necessarily  need any money no no no this was no money down  

so you can create a multi-million pound business  theoretically starting with zero money remember  

that remember that money is just a database so  it's a database of the value so what you do is  

like if I want to buy a house I go to the bank  and they lend me the money to buy the house if  

I want to buy a business the person who already  owns the business is probably the most likely  

person to see the value in funding the business a  bank probably won't but the person who is selling  

it let's say I let's say I go to Bill and Sarah  I say look there's no question your business is  

worth 1.2 million I don't have 1.2 million I have  a little bit of money that I'm going to invest  

into the business to grow it uh can I pay you the  1.2 million over 6 years 7 years and what we will  

do is this is my business plan you will be the  board members chairperson of the board and the  

business will uh be the security for that loan so  if we screw grew up and we can't make our payments  

you take the whole business back with everything  that we've thrown at it everything that we've done  

at it you'll be able to take it back and sell  it to somebody else if we skip our payments um  

so you're securing the purchase of the business  with the business itself you're doing a business  

plan where it makes sense that the business could  make the payments now think about it from Bill and  

Sarah's point of view they've got this thing  that's driving them crazy they want to retire  

they want they want to go south of France they  want to go spend time with the grandkids and now  

someone's coming along and saying yeah we're going  to pay you 120 Grand a year for the next s years  

and if we don't then you your business back and  if we don't you get the business back and if they  

believe you which is the key part if they believe  in your ability to execute because and if there's  

and if there's no one else offering anything else  they believe you and there's no other options it's  

a great deal now there are here's here's a crazy  thing 65% of the value of all business equity in  

the economy is owned by Baby Boomers right now so  if you were to take if you were to throw a dart  

board at all the valuation of every company in the  UK or the USA there's a 65% chance that you hit a  

baby boomer right so it's it's it's incredible  now all of those businesses have to be passed  

on somewhere now all of these young people they  all want to have the latest psychedelic startup  

or you know something like that and they're like  oh I don't want the elevator repair business that  

does 8 million a year you know it's like go get  get involved in that right so that that's a huge  

opportunity mive the Arbitrage and opportunity  here is boring businesses boring businesses that  

you can you can bring something to it you can  digitize it you can make it interesting you can  

create a culture that's exciting the thing about  a boring business boring Boomer business boring  

Boomer business right that get the URL I said  that first trademark yeah could you guys grab  

the URL wait a second I'll get so the boring B  business uh the bbbs what you know a business  

can be exciting it can do a boring thing but  still be an exciting business you the way you  

run the team and the culture the the the the money  that it spits out can be exciting you can use that  

business to sponsor a charity you know I've got  a a friend and a client called Sebastian Bates  

he's got an amazing martial arts school that's  in the UK and Dubai called Warrior Academy and  

he's used all of his he's very profitable he's now  set up martial arts schools in Kenya Nepal all of  

these different areas that are um struggling areas  now have a martial arts academy he set up his own  

charity and he's basically doing martial arts uh  schools for kids who have never had any look out  

for them they're often Street kids and homeless  kids they come into martial arts and they get  

taught life skills and martial arts and confidence  and character but the point is is you can take a  

boring business and the way that you run it you  can do you can launch a charity uh associated  

with it you could hire young people who are coming  out of prison and give them a second chance to get  

started and that could be part of the excitement  of the business there are so many ways to make  

a boring business an exciting business most of  the times Bill and Sarah have given up on that  

they're just you know they've been doing it for 20  30 years they're not fresh um and the business has  

been in Decline anyway that's a huge opportunity  massive way bigger than starting something new  

like if if I was starting from scratch that's  probably actually where I'd probably start it's  

so funny that that never dawned on me when I was  penniless in Manchester and I was very persuasive  

but my strategy for World creation was to pitch a  brand new tech company because i' just seen that  

Social Network movie with Mark Zuckerberg whereas  really I could have just you as you'd said gone  

for Bill's business and presented a young fresh  dig to social First Vision um and and mitigated  

his Risk by and even if you wanted to do social  chain you could have started by buying a marketing  

agency that was was already doing 2 million that's  high water mark was 4 million and it's hared over  

the last six s years but it still has a core team  and it's got a 20-year reputation and it has a  

contract with AWS and it has a contract with  Harper Collins and it's like oh yeah we've got  

all these things in place you buy that business  that's doing 2 million as a starting point point  

and then you say now I'm going to do social chain  on top of that so now you go from two to you know  

whatever but rather than starting from absolute  scratch you could you could actually start with  

a couple of million of Revenue just by just by  going in and doing a deal with someone who's  

already got a starting point two key skills here  the first skill is sales we've talked about that  

you have to be persuasive and the second key skill  is even understanding the structuring of that deal  

MH you know and those are two different things  but they're imperative what I've come to learn  

over the last 5 years is the people in my life  that are the best wealth creators have those  

two skills they understand how to structure a deal  and they understand how to sell the deal yes yeah  

sales is sales that demand creation the the doing  the deal and structuring uh phenomenal skills um  

and everything that you want is on the other side  of a structure that exists so with scor app uh 20  

22 AI comes out and I go oh my God AI changes the  fundamental nature of this business we need to be  

on AI I thought the first thing I want to do is  bring someone onto the team who is an AI expert  

so I approach Professor Andy parau who's the head  of AI for war University and I say we're setting  

up an AI Advisory Board would you like to be on  our AI Advisory Board here's how much we pay per  

year and would you like to join the board and  he's like yeah I'll join The Advisory board so  

he comes and joins our Advisory board he starts  making some recommendations about how we adapt  

to the AI challenge we didn't need anyone else  that was absolutely perfect he brought with him  

a team of researchers who came in and worked on  the back end of our system as well but what was  

interesting is that that happened in two weeks so  from two weeks we went from no AI uh integration  

to having Professor Andy poto who's a PhD of AI  who's got 25 year background of AI as our adviser  

because we set up an Advisory Board um so I just  knew what structure to structure it is MH you know  

so how do I say can you help me I need to figure  this out yeah you no but how do you someone that's  

you at the very start of their Journey they don't  understand all these they don't have structures I  

mean it's hard because in theory you you know  you go talk to a CFO and you basically talk to  

an experience CFO who's done a lot of m&a and you  just say oh actually do you know it's even wild  

today you don't even need a CFO you go on chat DV  act as a CFO explain to me what structures I would  

use to to do this um how would I structure a deal  how would I structure a deal with this explain to  

me I would like to buy a business uh an existing  20-year-old business I would like to buy it so  

that um I don't have to pay anything up front and  that the owners of the business finance my new  

ownership of the business act as a CFO and advise  me on how to do that transaction and uh what's  

amazing is chat gbt will do a good job of that or  a good starting point draft the heads of terms you  

can ask chaty PT today yeah dra draft the heads of  terms for that deal review the draft of heads of  

terms to see if there's any emissions or mistakes  would you have ch now that you've seen that would  

you do anything differently yeah I would change  this send the email draft an email to the finance  

director of this company proposing that we acquire  the business with no money down right asking for a  

meeting yeah yeah isn't it crazy that we live in  this new era where the possibilities in terms of  

communication storytelling persuasion and the cost  of um a sale have completely completely changed  

Dynamics have shifted a is changing everything  we haven't realized yet have we if you think  

about how we're behaving no no no we haven't quite  realized the potential of the technology we have  

we are like on the movie the Titanic when they hit  the iceberg and they're all just like dancing on  

the thing and someone says oh it's an unsinkable  ship and the guy with a white face uh says it's  

made of steel it will go down it'll sink when I  first saw AI do what AI does I had that moment of  

like oh no this changes everything we've just hid  an iceberg this is a fundamental general purpose  

technology that is going to change everything  it's going to change every industry top to bottom  

everything's going to have to reorganize itself  around an AI landscape but we're all pretending  

like it doesn't exist we're all pretending like  this thing isn't doing what it's doing um but  

yeah there's one thing that AI disagrees with you  on when I say AI I means Sam Alman um from chat  

GPT you said earlier business is a team sport now  he has a WhatsApp group Sam mman the founder of  

chat GPT and in that WhatsApp group he's got a bet  with some friends that they'll be the first ever  

one person billion doll company soon and they're  guessing on the date of the first ever one person  

billion dollar company because with AI the team  sport becomes you and a large language model like  

a chat P2 I think that it's directionally correct  what he's saying the one person AI business will  

be beaten by the 10 person AI business and that  like yes it probably will happen it like assuming  

out of course it will happen there will be a  person who creates something using Ai and it and  

it'll be a standout thing but to replicate that  again and again having what we will see a lot of  

is five person teams with a CEO CTO coo CMO CFO  who work together as five people doing the work  

of 500 people using AI that'll happen definitely  and that'll be rep you know that'll reproduce but  

to a degree business is is always going to be a  team sport that essentially five or six people  

will always beat one because they're they're  they're talking to each other and they're covering  

different angles and whatever AI strengths AI is  very good at content but not context and having  

five people who share context and create a context  together then the content can happen using ai ai  

without that context it doesn't know what to do  so it doesn't have any purpose right now yeah  

to a degree it can start to it still needs a first  mover on what is the context why are we doing this  

in the first place right now so well that's the  one person um yeah I I agree with you that there  

is like we are at a time in where we can't see  around the corner um we don't know what Society  

will look like but here's a few things I do know  about I do know that as it as it stands right  

now humans are great at context and AI is good at  content and if you can provide AI with an amazing  

context of to what it's meant to be doing it will  fill in all the blanks but it needs the context  

first I know that Vitality versus functionality  AI is great at functionality but it needs someone  

to breathe life force into it it's the human life  force that we that we breathe that we breathe into  

things so it still needs Vitality even though  AI does a lot of functionality and the warning  

that I have for people is that AI is very good  at turning you into a Creator or a consumer so  

it essentially figures you out and it says oh Tik  Tok huh uh how about we get you to spend 16 hours  

on Tik Tok um and and hypnotize you into spending  way longer than you thought on this thing and the  

AI is really good at saying we'll drive you down  the to the edges of how much someone can consume  

but it will also drive you to the edges of how  much someone can create and one thing that is  

going to happen in the next few years is everyone  is going to have to make a conscious decision do  

I want to be a Creator or a consumer when it in  relationship to AI because if if you allow AI to  

use you it'll just turn you into a consumer you'll  listen to more stuff watch more stuff do more like  

spend more money because AI is good at that  or if you use it to build stuff and make stuff  

and produce stuff you will be doing super human  levels of creativity because of AI but it's going  

to divide Society into consumers and creators okay  very important announcement waited a long time to  

tell you about this last year I launched my very  own private Equity Fund called flight fund with  

the aim of investing in great companies that  are working to bring about a better future at  

flight fund we're committed to empowering the  most Innovative Founders by providing not just  

funding but mentorship guidance and a network that  fuels their growth since launching the fund we've  

invested in disruptors like SpaceX Zoey Hu whoop  until and many many more and today I'm excited to  

announce that flight fund is now live on Cedar  head to the link in the description below on  

this episode it will say flight fund and you  can learn more about flight fund and why we've  

you're about to hear a lot of jargon and words  across all types of media when it comes to diet  

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kit and do it right now work life balance Daniel  oh work life balance um is it a thing is there is  

it possible to be wildly successful and not work  exceptionally hard the people who talk about work  

life balance as a as an important thing they  normally worked their asses off to the extent  

that they almost burnt themselves out then they  had a to Jesus moment and then they now espouse  

work life balance in hindsight after having a  massive breakthrough from the massive amounts  

of work that they did and that is typically the  pathway towards the work life balance Guru so  

here's the unfortunate thing you've got to look at  what you got to look at the statistics people who  

earn over 100 Grand uh typically work 55 hours but  per week but there's work and there's work so you  

and I work enormous amounts of hours but we're not  digging up roads we're not laying cables we're not  

doing boring repetitive stuff in most cases our  work is creativity it's publishing things it's  

pitching deals it's sitting there in Dragon's Den  analyzing what's going on it's doing interviews  

so there's a new style of work so when people get  angry about work life balance and they say damn it  

work life balance has to be a thing it's normally  because their Association to work is that work is  

such a negative thing and work is something you  have to do in order to make money and when people  

say oh I do 55 hours a week and I love it they go  well something's deeply wrong with you it's like  

you're toxic yeah you're toxic well actually  it's app apples and oranges yeah I'm enjoying  

I'm doing something that's deeply fulfilling and  passionate and I could do it from home and I do it  

online and it's digital and I see my kids all the  time while I'm doing it and I actually don't feel  

like I even work that hard I'm just enjoying it  but I am but I am doing that stuff keep in mind  

this if you're doing a lot of hard work that  doesn't develop an asset simultaneously it's  

probably going to end up toxic you may burn out  if you do a lot of hard work that simultaneously  

develops an asset the asset value eventually takes  over and then you're working completely by choice  

so simplify that as if I was a 10-year-old if  you create podcasts and those podcasts go onto  

YouTube and that people can watch them a year  later 2 years 3 years later you've developed  

something that has a life of its own and it's  going to continue to create value without you  

having to physically be there so if your work is  creating a byproduct of an asset if you own the  

company that you started and you own the shares  in that company and that company becomes more and  

more successful and the equity value becomes  more and more valuable you're building your  

work is creating a valuable asset um if uh like my  wife you renovate horrible properties into amazing  

properties her work creates income and an asset  simultaneously what's the opposite of that where  

you're working but you're not creating any assets  well Uber driver I used to work in McDonald's for  

two days I worked in McDonald's as well I loved  working at McDonald's the asset that I created  

was a deep uh appreciation for systems but the the  problem with being an Uber driver is that you can  

actually do 16-hour days however at the end of 16  hour days that's it you've earned that amount of  

money and you've not developed any additional  asset uh you've just performed a role um so  

you're not building simultaneously an asset the  people who love their work and don't burn out are  

the people whose work creates income and asset at  the same time and they're doing something that's  

fulfilling and passionate and an asset could  be reputation skill deep skills yeah something  

something that has a life of its own something  that lives beyond the the day that you created it  

Daniel thank you so much um we do have a closing  tradition on this podcast where the last guest  

leaves a question for the next guest not knowing  who they're leaving it for and the question left  

for you is what is the one thing you'd wish  you'd known about sex and relationships in your  

youth that you later learned the the a lot of the  enjoyment of sex is the relationship that you're  

having with someone outside of that moment um so  in my youth I saw sex as a standalone thing that  

was a compartmentalized thing and essentially you  know if you can pick up and have sex then that's  

a win but you discover pretty quickly it's  actually empty and meaningless and and also  

awkward and really awkward the following day and  all of that sort of stuff whereas when you find  

someone who you really love and you're building  a life with them and you're uh sharing highs and  

lows with them and there's a deep connection then  it's actually something that is it's almost like  

an ingredient that is infused through all of that  um so it's it's very linked to love and connection  

and life does that fit into your framework of  function and functionality and vitality yes so  

so it's either done from a space of love and life  force energy or it's done as something that's  

functional probably something that people have to  go through to experientially learn I think that um  

you know that there's you know the the other thing  for for young men is that that that the the way  

that sex happens for a man is different to how it  happens for a woman and that you you know you may  

have a feeling or I had a feeling when I was uh a  young young guy in my late teens early 20s that I  

was lovable and unattractive and um and that no  one would want to have sex with me so I'd have  

to trick them into you know having sex through  pickup lines or things like that and actually  

when I built my confidence and when I built who I  was as a person then it actually became much more  

of a natural experience um and uh I'm not sure  what I'm trying to say here it's not go energy  

you were describing the way you don't necessarily  need the sale yeah with or without you energy that  

definitely happened um yeah so you know when I  became an entrepreneur and I was speaking in front  

of big audiences and wrote bestselling books and  all of those sorts of things I had much more With  

or Without You energy and the beauty was is that  when I met my wife I was in a really great space  

where I you know she was she had wither without  you energy I had wither without you energy and we  

recognized each other as um great an amazing force  of collaboration and partnership and we realized  

that one and one would be 11 in this situation and  actually it was it was uh a magic moment I knew  

I was going to marry her within about 12 hours  Daniel thank you so much for your time you have so  

many the incredible books um that are real Smash  Hits and it's funny that these books are growing  

in popularity despite the fact that times are  changing which I think speaks to how Timeless they  

are and you create a lot of content so I think if  people want to hear more from you on an ongoing  

Bas basis and continue with this sort of Education  that we've had today then they should definitely  

check out your social media channels because I  followed them and the way that you create content  

is very much like the way you speak very good  at taking large complex ideas distilling them  

down into sort of simple relatable understandable  Concepts and delivering them to people in a way  

that's actionable and accessible that's what your  books do that's what your content does and that's  

what you do so well so thank you Daniel for being  on my show there is a huge compliment coming from  

you thank you oh no you're you're a master of  what you do so I appreciate you Daniel thank you

cheers the key to growing a business is making  sure that it's scalable and this comes with  

integrating into the right platforms early in  the game to support your growth a platform that's  

helped me and my team to do this is Shopify  who I'm sure you know by now because they  

do sponsor this podcast Shopify is a Commerce  platform revolutionizing millions of businesses  

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