Misfit Founders
Misfit Founders
Harry's Journey: Building a B2B Lead Generation Business in Just 12 Months
Harry shares his journey from competitive powerlifting and mechanical engineering to building a successful B2B lead generation business in just over a year.
• Transitioning from corporate job to entrepreneurship at age 24
• Evolution from social media management to lead generation through trial and error
• Building a team strategically by identifying bottlenecks in business operations
• Balancing personal purchases with financial discipline in a growing business
• Learning from clients as valuable sources of business knowledge
• YouTube as a powerful learning resource for entrepreneurs
• Creating systems for qualification of leads to improve conversion rates
• Shifting from desperate hustle to strategic, sustainable growth
• Finding pride in family moments rather than just business achievements
If you're thinking about making the leap to entrepreneurship, remember that experience is where knowledge is truly gained. The right opportunities will present themselves when you put the right systems in place and make thoughtful decisions.
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Mr Harry, how's it going? I'm good, I'm very good, thank you. You've been doing a lot of video content, haven't you? I have? I saw some Instagram posts in a very exotic place. Where were you? Oh, greece, with Mr Chris back there.
Speaker 2:Mr Chris back there, was there as well. Yeah, we went to a place called Kalamata in Greece, about an hour away from Athens. Okay, I was there for about five weeks, just. I think sometimes it's good to try new places out, explore new places, figure out new perspectives, but and enjoy the sun.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean to be honest, if you want to do some salesy videos, that's the type of place to do it, isn't it? It is Sun, yeah, beach, nice views. Salesy videos yeah, that's the type of place that to do it, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it is sun, yeah, beach, nice view, lifestyle, yeah, that's the stuff that people, but where you're in instagram true, very true, but were you working, just working there, or did you, took some time off as well?
Speaker 2:I was taking some time off on the weekends. I honestly, so far since I started it just over here, I've just been working non-stop. Um, I did manage to take a few days off on the weekends and things like that, but it was mainly work. To be honest, um, just because, in all honesty, I haven't had assistance in place with the business to actually have everything run without me. That's what I'm trying to focus on now got a big drive to focus on how old are you?
Speaker 1:24, 24 yeah, at that age is all about um running, running, running, running. You also have the stamina I've got, I've got the energy. I'm old nowadays I don't have the stamina anymore. I need to sit down and rest from time to time.
Speaker 2:You're not old at all, but yeah, I think there's a certain amount of longevity, though, with doing everything yourself and as a business it's not like a sellable. It's not really scalable if you're the failure point of it or when you do everything. So it's good, you can get a lot of stuff done, you can do it yourself, but it's not a real proper business, is it?
Speaker 1:so harry, tell me a bit about yourself, like about myself. Yes, yeah, so who's harry?
Speaker 2:harry, okay, yeah, harry, okay yeah. Harry is just a normal 24-year-old guy, to be honest, but honestly very hungry. I think I'm very driven for performance in effectively whatever I do. So I used to do powerlifting, competitive powerlifting, oh did you. Yeah, yeah. That's why you're built so stocky, Always been quite stocky. So I used to play football and rugby and I went to uni To study engineering. That's probably another story. I was going to be an engineer.
Speaker 2:It was really what my family Sort of not like they told me to do, but it was the way that everyone in the family Was like an engineer or in a corporate job, so I thought that was the path I had to follow. But I always wanted to do something that was driven on performance. I just really like high performance like stuff, like pushing yourself to the limit, whatever it is, whether it's football, rugby. Then I got into powerlifting at uni because I wasn't playing rugby there and just wanted to push that. I was training like five, six, six times a week, really heavy, ended up competing at like a UK event Didn't take it as far as I wanted to, but I think I came 10th in the UK for my weight category when I was doing powerlifting.
Speaker 1:That's not bad. For how long have you been training?
Speaker 2:Powerlifting. Before that it was like two, three years Okay, so I'd always, always been to the gym.
Speaker 1:I've never done um competitive, um training or anything like that. But you know, two, three years and then placing 10, that's not bad yeah, it wasn't bad.
Speaker 2:There was. I think it's because the uni I went to, loughborough, was such a high performance, that environment. I was one of the weak people there. Everyone was like the people who were at that uni were just winning all the competitions. So it was like, oh man, I just may be training even harder because I knew like here back home, I'm always one of the strongest people. You go there and I'm one of the weakest. I'm like, damn, I need to up my game a little bit, right, yeah, which? Um, I quite like that feeling because it means you. It's the feeling of like growth, I think you know it means you can grow even if you're not the biggest strongest, whatever it is, in the new environment, and the environment will help you adapt, you know. So, yeah, I've done that, really, really, really enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:But I started just pick up and like I started turning to-upping. I started turning into an old man. Basically my back started going, knees started going. I was like, oh man, I don't know if I can do this forever. So that was around the time I was in my engineering job for like 6 to 12 months I stopped doing powerlifting stuff and then I was like, oh man, I was just in some job that was just 95, was sort of what I wanted to do, but I always felt like there was more and then wasn't doing powerlifting because of my injuries. So I was like I just need to do something. Basically how?
Speaker 1:old were you at that point? I was 21, 22. So around two years ago yeah, about two years ago You've done so many things and, way the way your story goes, it sounds like it's been all across like 10, 20 years back in the days when I was doing power lifting, like two years ago, three years ago it's been pretty condensed.
Speaker 2:I like to try to do a lot of stuff, but, um, yeah, it's all happened pretty quickly, to be honest, but it was just because I I really don't like being comfortable in one place too long. I knew when I wasn't doing the powerlifting and I wasn't competing at a decent level and I was just stuck in a job where I couldn't really even compete. If there was opportunity to compete at that job as well and level up, I think I would have stayed there. It's just there wasn't that competitive environment. So started looking into entrepreneurship, like online digital marketing, that sort of stuff, and something just clicked with me and I said I'm just going to try and make this work, no matter what, and just try and um, start my thing, basically. And then about four or five months into that since I had that sort of like, um, not revelation, but since I wanted to start it, it was about four or five months went on, got a couple of clients here and there. It wasn't really anything special, but I knew what I needed to do to take it to the next level was leave the job. So that was the big next step for me.
Speaker 2:Um, it was interesting actually because that job. When I got it it was my first job after uni and they gave you they give you like a two grand sign-on bonus when you start. Okay, they said if you leave the job within two years you have to give it back. Really, yes, they basically try and trap you in, so I didn't. It got to a point it was a year and a half in I was like I physically cannot, just I just my mindset, I just couldn't do it. I felt like I couldn't do it right, so I had to basically give him the money back for the bonus, just to leave.
Speaker 1:It was still my best decision, I mean at the end of the year, that's the thing is like.
Speaker 2:You have to weigh things, um, yeah, and figure out is two grand worth another six months of misery, yeah it wasn't, it absolutely wasn't so, but I just found that so, like cheeky of them, come on, man, this is what they do now. Um, so it's bad. But yeah, and then took that leap of faith and that was like sparked even more of a, I guess, a fire inside me, a catalyst, and I was like just spending all day um researching how can I learn, how can I do this, trying new things, testing it, and, yeah, just really sort of started going up from there. To be honest, um, so what was it?
Speaker 1:so when you decided, screw this, I'm not doing the whole job thing. It's enslaving me and I hate it, especially this job that I have. Let me get into entrepreneurship. What was the process and the thinking there Did? You knew exactly what kind of business you wanted to have, or how did you get to the business that?
Speaker 2:you have today? Yeah, good question. So, to start, I definitely didn't know what type of business I wanted to have. I think, in all honesty, it probably came from watching. I remember that summer I started watching tons of YouTube videos around people running their own business. What, like, was the best business model to start?
Speaker 2:I knew I wanted to start something, but I had no idea what it was basically, and I must have watched like hours and hours and hours of youtube videos, just researching, basically just seeing what I thought would make the most sense for me. For me, it was something where I didn't want to have to invest a ton of money into it to start, where I didn't have a ton of money and I just didn't want to take on capital and take those risks, whilst I knew it was just going to be like a few hours in the evening. So I knew it would be something related to like marketing or an agency, not something like dropshipping or something like trading. So I didn't have the money to start it. So I knew it'd be that sort of direction and I sort of was in the mindset of I don't know what the business is gonna be like in six, three or even twelve months. I wasn't even thinking too far ahead, in all honesty. I just thought I need to get to the market, see what people want and see what I can actually sell. Right, so I think that's.
Speaker 2:I realized I'd only have a business if people actually want what I was selling. So I could either spend loads of time planning what the perfect thing was or just go out there and see what demand is basically. So I think I started doing literally just social media posts, like Instagram posts that you make on Canva. It was absolutely atrocious, but I just got some feedback from the market. I got a couple of clients on it was really a small amount of money, but it was clients nonetheless and then very, very quickly realized okay, people don't necessarily or the businesses I was working with don't necessarily want a few posts here and there what they actually want. The core end result of it is more business to be generated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you started as kind of like a social media manager exactly and evolved your business into you know, helping uh businesses and uh founders get more leads, exactly through social media so it was, or how does that evolve?
Speaker 2:yeah, so it starts. So as soon as I had that sort of realization of, okay, I'm not going to get paid to make a pretty post or two, I need to get paid to actually help them make clients, get clients sorry, it was okay, what's the best way to do this now? So I knew social media would still be a good way to do it, but I knew that would be the new end goal help them get clients. But the more I posted, the more I put out there. It just didn't seem to work. Nothing seems to stick.
Speaker 2:So I thought, okay, I think the problem here I was looking at it. I'm working with really small companies like solo founders, and they just don't have the traffic on their sites to actually lead to conversions. I started researching. You probably need don't know. For example, say, if only 50 people were seeing your instagram post a month, it's not going to lead to many clients. If it's the perfect audience, then maybe. But I just thought, okay, we could like. The problem here is, I just need to be able to get more traffic to them quicker.
Speaker 2:So once again, it was either the other the options there, I, but continue to just post more, which wasn't really working, run paid ads which me or my clients didn't have money for, or start doing like direct outbound selling.
Speaker 2:So that was what I started trying. Next, I started looking into how do we do this and the first thing I tried was email marketing so like outbound email, cold email stuff. So I bought a few domains, which is is really cheap, hooked them up to a software and I think within a couple weeks of doing that, I was already getting meetings in the calendar. Oh damn, this this seems to work so effectively. Just realized that it was more of a. Instead of trying to create people like social media posts and put them on their page, it was more okay, I just need to get them in front of the right people with the right message and that's going to bring them success. So it's really more trial and error, to be honest, and they found something that did work and then go okay, I'm just going to double down with this and what have.
Speaker 1:Um, what were the kind of like the sources of knowledge that you used, while kind of like becoming an entrepreneur and starting to get into Because it does sound like you know you didn't have a trajectory that a lot of entrepreneurs with a expertise have. With a expertise have which is, oh well, I hopped from job to job and at those jobs I've done XYZ, and then I figured out that I like this more and I like that more, and now I'm offering that as a service to others. But you started your business thinking you're gonna do social media posts for for customers to make a buck, right yeah, and then slowly transition into but hold on, cuz into the realization that what people, what companies need, is leads, not, you know content just for the sake of content, and you've gotten better and better at generating leads. You had to work to learn on the job, right, in a sense. So what were some of your sources where you would go and learn? Research books well, platforms, yeah.
Speaker 2:Courses yeah, it's a really, really good question. I think you're right. A lot of the learning that I that happened, a lot of learning that I I went through, was through trial and error, but at the same time I was doing tons of research, as much research as I could. I was always slightly against like courses. I don't know if it was just like a belief system I had where I thought people were just selling this for them to make money. I'm not really going to gain much value.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of value in the rights or courses, but after speaking with a few people, I tried to do as much research as I do as I can before I make decisions. But a lot of the content, uh, that people were posting on youtube, people who had the courses said it was the same sort of stuff, right. They basically said, just stick to the youtube stuff. You can learn just as much. Uh, courses will be very good for, like, the mentorship side of things if you're speaking with someone, if you've got an account manager or something like that. But a lot of my knowledge came honestly, from just youtube videos, right, which is interesting.
Speaker 1:So put it here. That's. That's my way of learning as well.
Speaker 2:Youtube it's, everything's out there. It's just, I think a lot of people don't realize how much gold there is on youtube because it's posted there for free. What you gotta do is take action.
Speaker 1:The other, thing is, you know when, when people ask me you know, because I'm doing this whole film production company and I was like, oh you, you're in the industry, or what, what did you do? What um majors did you do what? Uh, education, you have what classes, courses and stuff, and when I tell them, well, I've learned everything from youtube, they kind of look at me a bit like strange yeah but here's the thing I've spent probably overall like three 000 4 000 hours learning on youtube and the thing is that that's how I digest information the best.
Speaker 1:I'm not that good at learning kind of like worded instructions and stuff. Yeah, and there's a lot of visual people and a lot of people that prefer audio and visual and that's how they learn. And and I'm surprised that when I tell people in this day of age, where you know internet, youtube is a big thing and courses and visual storytelling is a big thing, that people still raise an eyebrow. What you didn't do any, you don't have any diploma or anything.
Speaker 2:Dude, we're not in the 50s anymore it's just the old school, like corporate way of looking at things. I think and I I think there's so much more value on youtube videos than whole like university courses have to be honest. It's just it's like usually youtube thing I like about it is a lot of people making content, actually really in the field, doing their thing right. And now that, honestly, I don't think you get that from a lot of university stuff now, like people teaching business, you're usually, if you're going to watch a youtube video, it's from someone who's built a business and they're telling you their lessons, yeah right. Whereas university a lot of people teaching business haven't even run a business and maybe run a little side hustle or something, but they they just they're talking out of a textbook, as you say, rather than from their experience. I think experience is actually where the knowledge is gained rather than just from, like, a textbook or theory or something like that, right.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's why I'm not, and actually I've done um, a review, a review, a review, a sum up of the books that um founders recommended in their um, uh, in the podcast episodes that I had with them, and the one thing that I mentioned was that I, what I realized, is that I like to read books that tell stories, as in, like you know, I realized that the books that I enjoyed the most are from founders that build something great and then they kind of tell the story of how they build that, versus books that have a lot of research and a lot of white paper type of structure in and yeah, so I think I agree it sounds like you're kind of the same in that sense yeah, a hundred percent, I think, like, just like you say, learning from experience.
Speaker 2:I think it's so important. I love to hear stories as well, and that was another source of knowledge, not just youtube. Took me a while to get to this point where I had to drop my ego, basically, and say I can actually learn a lot from my clients. I'm meant to be the one selling them their expertise, but it's a start. In reality, they had the expertise and even though I sold to them, there was, you know, I could provide value by teaching specific softwares that they may not know, but I didn't want to be so naive to think there's nothing I can learn from them. So I did actually get a lot of knowledge and some of our top performing campaigns when I first got started were literally ones that clients gave me like a script or a template and said you know what? Try this, work with this, and it worked really, really well.
Speaker 2:So I tried to learn from, yeah, youtube and like clients, because basically, they were already doing it. They had already done it, so they just needed a little bit of help here and there. So I thought that would be a good place to learn, um, but, yeah, I had to get over my own like ego basically to try, and I didn't want to sound like I didn't know what I was doing, basically, but I think the fact I went to clients and said, look, we're, you know, relatively new company trying to learn all of this stuff. It'll be great to learn from your experience in the market. I think they like that as well, because you're both working towards the same end outcome, right, yeah, um, but yeah, learning from clients was actually a really big thing for me and I still try to learn from some big clients where I can, in all honesty. So yeah, we definitely don't know absolutely everything and I'm always open to learning more, so that was a good thing for us, for sure.
Speaker 1:You mentioned something interesting, which was that you wanted to become a software engineer. Yes, tell me a bit about that. Did you do something in school around engineering and such I did, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I was actually a mechanical engineer, not quite a software engineer, but I've done some software stuff at uni so I've always been good with numbers. I always liked maths at school. I was one of those weird freaks that like maths. So, um, I I knew I wanted to do something number orientated. If it was going to be a job, um, and then, uh, I was basically picking what course to do or what path to take at uni and engineering just seemed like the one that made the most sense to me, like more mechanical engineering, doing work with cars oh, mechanical engineering software engineering, yeah, mechanical, mechanical.
Speaker 2:So, um, just wanted to understand how things working, like work on cars, motorbikes, that sort of thing always been interested in that. So, yeah, went to loughborough uni to study mechanical engineering, um, and actually really enjoyed that, to be honest, like quite a lot of it, because it was just really interesting learning the way things work and I thought I like to as it comes back to the beginning, I like to do sort of try and do higher performance stuff and I think I get a lot of pleasure from trying to solve problems that are hard to solve. I think that's what I got from engineering. Sometimes it was really really hard to figure out this equation or solve this problem, but when you eventually crack it it's like a very, very rewarding feeling. Yeah, so that's what I enjoyed. So, yeah, done that. Got a little distracted, in all honesty, during uni, done a bit too much part in in the first couple years and stuff like that. So it's the first year doesn't actually count towards your degree, so does it, does it not?
Speaker 1:it doesn't. I don't know how it works here in the uk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the one, the course that I had three years, uh, and the first year basically doesn't count. I don't know why they made you do it. To be honest, it's more of like to get used to the uni sort of lifestyle. I guess. I don't know, but everyone just uses an excuse to drink too much, basically. So fell into that trap. But the results weren't bad. For my first year, I think, I got like a 2-1, which is, you know, okay. So I thought, okay, I can just do the same stuff in my second year, drink a bit too much, but still turn up to some lectures and then get away a bit. I got a big shock in the first semester. So, like the first half of the second year, you basically I think a 2-1 is you need 60%, a first you need 70%, I think. For a 2-2 you need 50% and basically just to stay on the course you need 40%. My average was like 43. It was really really, really bad. So I thought, oh man, I need to change something around it. So as soon as I saw that, I was like, okay, I'm gonna stop playing around as much, really actually start working hard. And then from there. Basically the grades started to improve.
Speaker 2:And then went into my final year, the third year, and we had to pick some uh like dissertation projects. So you write a big paper on it. Yeah, mine, looking back at at it now, everyone probably finds this the most boring thing in the world, but I was basically analysing how adding nanotechnology into engine lubricants affects performance of cars there's a mouthful to even say it, but it was something really, really complex. I actually really enjoyed that because, once again, it was something that it was very difficult to figure out, but I just got a lot of joy from trying to figure out.
Speaker 2:So, done that it was all mechanical stuff and then basically landed a job with a company called triumph who make motorbikes, and that was really where the uh engineering like career started. I thought I was going to go into it as be the same like unit. I was going to be solving really, really high-end problems, working on performance stuff, be out in the field, testing all of this, and then, pretty much like the first couple days into the job, I realized, oh, I'm just going to be sitting behind a desk clicking a few buttons on a computer all day, right, it wasn't quite what I'd thought. So that's the reason why I started thinking about the other stuff entrepreneurship um, because it just wasn't. It wasn't quite what I expected when I actually got there.
Speaker 1:To be honest, like I'm getting, like I've already. When he told me about the place, I was thinking to myself that's very interesting, I should check it out. Now. I'm convinced that I need to book myself. It is awesome, so peaceful, it is Like I feel like you can really focus in a place like this, a hundred percent, so super cool A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Well, let's get back to our conversation. One thing that I didn't ask you is to give me an elevator pitch of your business. Do you want to do that now? Yeah, of course, of course. So what we do is we help effectively b2b companies, mainly recruitment companies, basically automize, um, automate, systemize and scale their outbound prospecting, so help them with client acquisition, just through removing the need to do everything manually using automation and just scaling it up, so getting more leads in a more innovative way than just cold calling right, okay, so do you have any examples of hey, um, one of our don't have to mention names or anything with one of our customers, we set up xyz and we got them this kind of results yeah, 100.
Speaker 2:So with the recruitment specific campaigns we often find that usually the issue for them is not actually getting leads. It sounds interesting because what we've seen we worked with a lot of recruitment companies, for example one called Parker Beth so her name's Jennifer and we managed to get a ton of leads, like I think we set up campaign in the email automation software. Two months later like 50 leads came through. Right, she signed a load of contracts, but then we realized that actually there's a more fundamental problem, which was the market. She was in right, so the market basically wasn't providing the opportunities. She was getting leads in and signing contracts, but basically the people in that market she does recruitments they weren't hiring. She was able to sign contracts with them, she would be their preferred like trusted partner, but they just had no job openings.
Speaker 2:It was just a really bad market. So now we've sort of transitioned and we're helping not only recruitment companies scale but identify the right markets to allow growth. So an example of that is we helped a guy called chris who's working in the tech space. We're doing automation for him, getting leads through, but like effectively just couldn't generate revenue off the back of it. It's all getting leads, but if you can't generate revenue off the back of it, there's no point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, true, so I think that's, this is, and I I suppose this is something that you find out on the job as well. You know you're generating leads for her and realize, oh, but you know it's not going anywhere, it's not turning into sales, into customers, right, because there's one thing to generate leads, there's another to convert that into customers. And this is one of the things that I've seen so often. We in our company, we had the exact same thing. We were getting so many people in the door starting a trial of our software and then there was a big drop in trials and then there was also a big drop of churn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because, especially with you know, when you do services and when you have to sign contracts and get invoices paid and so on manually, that's different. You feel, it feels like you can, you can catch an unsuitable lead at that point because they're like well, I can't pay you because this doesn't work for me. Sure, in sas, when someone starts a trial and they put their credit card in already at the trial version, which most of the software does, um, a lot of them converting to paying without even being the suited customer sure because they just, you know, forget about it.
Speaker 1:a lot of these big companies just start paying for stuff and they have no idea what they're paying for, and that's even harder to figure out. So that's a really big problem, where it's like you need to validate, you need to qualify leads right, and that's the market that you're in right now as well.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent Cause we actually had this problem ourself.
Speaker 2:A lot of the things that we do for our clients, like you said, we learned through trial and error, through just doing it ourself. So we knew we could book a ton of sales calls, get a ton of leads in, because it was just the system we were using. But then we started to realize, oh, qualification of leads it's slightly an issue Like when I was looking on, I bought a closer to close some of the calls and the close rate was really really low, not really due to sales ability of the closer, just because, as you mentioned, the qualification process before the call it just wasn't really there. So we noticed ah, if this is happening in our system, it makes sense what's happening with all the clients as well. So it's like find that issue qualification which I think in b2b like service selling, not a sales selling services is one of the most difficult things to do is to qualify the right lead, because there's so many reasons why it could be the wrong time for them. It could be you know, not the right fit.
Speaker 2:They could have a manager who's he doesn't approve this, like there's so many ways that it could um not go through if that makes sense. So it's trying to make sure all of the objections, everything's out the way before the actual sales call and stuff is taken. That's what we've noticed at least. So trying to qualify a lot more before people jump on the call, you know leads to better revenue generation, more sales and stuff or in the off, serve it that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And how do you, how do you convince customers nowadays to customer leads, yeah, to become customers? What are some of the tactics? Do you um show previous results? How do you convince them that for them to be like, oh, you're the real deal?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think this depends on the audience you're selling to quite a bit. So I've basically seen from all sorts of stuff that I see online, you've got B2B selling right and you've got B2C, which is more like the people selling courses. I think there's a very clear discrepancy between the two. We sell B2B and we've started to understand that it's pretty much logic based selling, like if we have the right things in place, if we can tick, tick off this number of, we get this many emails sent out with this conversion, this how many leads you'll get if your close rate is this this the amount of revenue. So we've got basically like visual calculators to help leads understand, or our prospects understand, what it would look like for them.
Speaker 2:Um, but the majority of it, as you say, will be off past results yeah, right, and your track record, whereas I think in the b2c world, everyone's more of it's more of like the traditional sales, like trying to develop this dream that people want. I think in the b2b world, everyone is a business. It's yeah, people are sad, but you don't want me to get them like that. So I think all it comes down to is numbers, logical selling and showing them what you can do for them and then backing up how you've done it before and why you think it would work for them.
Speaker 1:Right. So basically showing them the fact that if they pay you, they actually make more money. Exactly One and two, in order to build the trust, is here's results that we had with previous customers.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So. It's making them think it's possible and then making them think it's probable. Yeah, those are the two things we want to do. So the possibility is like here's the numbers, here's the calculator, and then the probability is okay, here's someone just like you that we've done it for. Do you think you're so different to this person that it won't work?
Speaker 1:I like that first make them uh understand that it's possible and then make them think that it's probable yeah, with this two tier type of um approach. Yeah, very, very good stuff, um. So I suppose you started on your own. How's your setup now? Are you still um solopreneur, and on your own, or do you have a team?
Speaker 2:I've got a team now, so I knew that, yeah, I wasn't going to be able to get to the level I wanted just by myself. So I think every you know business owner at some point if they're looking to grow has that realization. So I'll quickly identify what's taking up the most of my time and then just try and place someone there. So it's a start. It was. I was doing everything manually creating all these email accounts, domains, setting them up to the software, basically a lot of admin tasks. So I brought on some virtual assistants to help me with that for the first um this is maybe three or four months in um and then quickly realized that actually they're so they're just as dependent on me as me doing the tasks themselves, like they just need to step by step.
Speaker 2:Exactly, this is what you do. I might as well just do it myself, yeah. So I was like okay, that's probably not the best hire. So then I made another hire. It was actually my brother, my younger brother, and he's more of like the director of operations and fulfillment, so managing everything. And then he was now in charge of these virtual assistants okay, teaching them or showing them what to do step by step. He's more managing it, right, if that makes sense this is like.
Speaker 1:This is so, so cool to me because you're you're experiencing the um kind of like level build-up of of an organization by, by the need and the pain points, right. So that is the most common reason and need why people start hiring teams and then start hiring managers to manage those teams. Because you realize, you know people think that founders hire teams because they're lazy and then they don't want to do anything. But the reality is that you need to start delegating in order to be able to grow your business. And as you start delegating, you realize but now I'm spending all of my time managing these people, so I need to get someone to manage that. And then you start creating these clusters of teams for various reasons and you have these managers of those teams and then the next level is like well, now I'm spending too much time managing the manager, so I need someone. So it's like that's how it organizationally comes layers.
Speaker 1:But you know, I've had, I've had I've talked to some people that have never like I've always been employed and have this kind of like us against establishment mentality which is like, oh well, my boss keeps on hiring managers and people because he doesn't want to do the job doing a variety of of tasks, rather than you know, like I would say, um, your time costs a specific number of dollars. Right, if you continue to do the, the lower end stuff, that you can pay someone a, you know, a tent or like a five percent of what your time costs, then you delegate that and you know, you start growing a business, um, in that sense. So now you, you, you have your brother that's managing the, the team of, let's say, um doers, the people, the assistants that create all of those templates and do all of the logistics bits yeah, exactly, and so that was really, that was a really good hire.
Speaker 2:So my brother James was helping a lot got to a good point where, as you say, things were getting delegated, getting done, which is good, and then I realized, okay, all of my time now is just spent taking sales calls. And that's the next thing. I was like, okay, I need to remove myself slightly from this process. So you start to bring in a salesperson to take the sales calls. So I've done that. Around three months ago I brought my first sales person um, and it's really just as like a closer basically to close the calls coming in and then from there, like you say, there's another bottleneck which identified which you only identified sort of recently in the last month or two, which was the qualification process that we just talked about.
Speaker 2:So the close is saying, okay, the leads are coming in, we're making money, but there's some questions they're answering which should they shouldn't be answering on, or they shouldn't be asking on this call, like it should be addressed before they join the call, basically. So, okay, there's an issue there. Once again, I don't want to spend, I don't really have the time to be doing that and, in all honesty, there's people who can do it better than me as well. So it just makes sense bring in more of like a setter that will set up the closer for success. So that's where we're up to now. So we've got setter. One setter on board, one closer, my brother in the back end and then a few virtual assistants floating around and how?
Speaker 1:what was the time span of you know you doing things on your own to today? So how much time did it took you to grow?
Speaker 2:to this team. Uh, so yeah, about 12 months 12 months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there, there's an. There's an interesting question that I want to ask you as well, which I get asked all the time, and and I used to have this question and this concern as well when you start. It's a really big step when you start hiring people because you need to feed these mouths, right? So it's like, oh, I'm hiring this person, shit, I need to make sure that I make enough revenue to pay for their salary. And then more people, and then more people, and so on. How do you, for your business, how do you create that, that financial certainty to be able to hire these people?
Speaker 2:Great question, and this is something, once again, I'm learning as we go on. I didn't realize how expensive it would be to run a business. I didn't go into business. I thought I'd be making a ton of money, not looking at this amount going out every month, but, like you say, they're the one that driving the business as well, so we need to pay them.
Speaker 2:Um, so far it's just been of projected, basically, revenue growth, like how much money we're making? Okay, have we still got the buffer for the team? Yes, the margins, things like that. Now, as of last week, I just brought on a fractional cfo to try and help with that. So, laid down everything for the team, all of the team costs, what, what revenue needs to look like to maintain all this.
Speaker 2:So I think for me luckily, because with, like my engineering and maths background, always sort of known the numbers in my head don't need to spend loads of time going through and mapping everything out to loads of detail. I just know if I have a certain buffer, we're okay. Things start to get really bad then, yeah, maybe need to have hard conversations, but yeah, touch wood, it hasn't been like that so far. It was just making sure I have a buffer and always the thing that I've noticed as well. Honestly, since I started the business, I've just paid myself basically minimum wage, so I've been very reserved with the cash, um, just because I just rather have the stability there and I always want to have months of running expenses should things go dry, should things. So I know we're going to run into issues that we already have, like not severe issues, but problems happen, yeah right, so I don't want to.
Speaker 1:I basically never want to play it too fine or close to the wire, so well, the thing yeah, that it's that you want to save money because you know dark days and so on, but, at the same time, one thing that that I would say is I don't know if you shared the same thinking and values is you own the company right?
Speaker 1:From my perspective, it would be the wrong attitude for you to pay yourself the biggest salary of them all. Right, um, you have the biggest to gain by having a team that's motivated and works really hard and grows the value of that company to the next level. At the end of the day, you can also eventually, at some point, if you don't want to sell the company, you can start taking dividends right and cash in on that and things like that. We my partner and I we were the the lowest paying in our company for the duration of five years, of four or five years of the business until we sold. We, we had the biggest to gain by far yeah, right from from selling the business from a shares and equity perspective, but we basically sacrificed four years of our lives and not having not paying ourselves a lot in order to grow a business where someone looks at it and says that's an amazing team and those are amazing products, I'm gonna give you x millions for it, and then it is.
Speaker 1:So we consider as an investment not taking money out of the business for a long, very long time and I know, the thing is, when you're young, there's a lot of things that can capture your eyes, like a fancy car, this holidays, crazy holidays and things like that. But I think I've done that and I've run a couple of businesses in the ground by doing that, by just not being careful, and you know, it sounds like you have your financials in place with the forecasting and making sure that you can pay people and you're making enough revenue to sustain the business. I didn't have that, but I also had the mentality when I was in my early twenties of but you know, I have money, I can buy a fancy car, I can go to parties, I can throw money left and right and so on, because I'm a businessman right and that run me to the ground for in those early days of being a foolish entrepreneur. So I started my business with my co-founder, the business that I sold two years ago.
Speaker 1:Um, when I was 30 I was, I already went through like my 20s of doing rubbish, moves and so on, and now I'm like I don't need anything, I can be locked in the house for the next two, three, four years, four years, however long it's going to take and we're going to sell this business for millions and make our money. Yeah, it's a sacrifice, but at the end of the day, you know, it's a bigger gain than the sacrifice that you're making. And that's not for everyone, right, but it does seem like you're very. You just told me earlier that I would ask you what did you do with your holiday in greece, was it? Uh, it's like I just work most of the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how it goes, but no, I think, I think that's a crucial point. Like I, I probably need to do a better job of that, of just reinforcing that mindset, because it's easy to get distracted sometimes. I the main reason I did buy something. I bought a watch for myself, which was the most expensive thing I ever done. I made sure it wasn't too much of a foolish decision but at the same time, it probably could. When did you get into the business? I've got a rolex, um, a gmt one. So, yeah, it's nice. But the thing with that as well. I don't know if you experience the same thing. Maybe not, but when you put so much important I put a lot of importance onto that because I wanted it for a long time and then it comes around. You spend money, you get it and then, like the next day, it's like oh, it's done. Now, what sort of thing you know. So it's always the strive for for more. Always get you.
Speaker 2:I think and if you start spending a lot of money, it's just not going to satisfy you it is, and I can tell you that even now, like after exit and so on, got.
Speaker 1:So I got my first watch, the Cartier, and then I was like I got into a rabbit hole of watches and I'm like, oh, and now I have three watches, right, and it's always, it's very easy to get out of hand. But I think as long as you have that that way of thinking of rationalizing stuff, then you should be okay, right, you might be spending a dime here, a dime there, right, it's like, oh, a watch, right, I go to a meeting or something like that. People see, notice, the watch is like, it just elevates your status and if you're selling and if you're doing this and you're really trying to get um, customers, the well-being of you, right, how healthy you look, how well you're dressed, how you know you convey, that's success right that kind of conveys success.
Speaker 1:It's sad because we live in in a very artificial world, but the reality is when you go and and and have these conversations and potential, potential business, uh decisions, how you present yourself matters a lot, so you know they get getting a watch, getting this, and I was even laughing, even with Chris a while ago, I was like man. When I pull up to to a film production with with my Range Rover and start taking stuff out of the Range Rover, people are like damn, like your company is doing really well if you're using a range over as a band right, yeah, a hundred percent so it is important and that's like you have to live a bit and get the stuff that you like, but I also think it's it there's a there's a limit of.
Speaker 1:Does this make sense? Right, because, like I, I want a crazy fast sports car, but I couldn't rationalize it in my head so far and I'm like.
Speaker 1:I already have a very nice and, um, usable car and and one that's kind of like can be used in multiple ways. Um, my partner, nikki, she wants her own car and stuff. There's no point of getting a third car that's a sports car just to have it in the parking lot and so on and keep money frozen there, right. So is this kind of like logical things to that that helps, helps you not get out of hand with expenditure and yeah, things like that 100.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, that's a really good way to look at it. It's like, what's the the use of it going to be? Like you say, I think sometimes of a car or a watch, it can actually help, like even just from, uh, like you say, it shouldn't be like this, but perception and people's judgment. Yes, they exist and you can, you know, not like take advantage of it, but at least to help it, play to your strengths right and play to your way of the good old saying fake it until you make it, do you make it.
Speaker 2:There you go exactly um, but yeah, I think I would agree. I think it's good to delay gratification, definitely like you're done with your company. That shows why it was such a huge success. Uh, but at the same time, something here and now. I think it's okay yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:It is for for sure, for sure. Um, well, since we're talking about these things, what's, what's the goal here for you? What's the end goal? What's the vision? I know you're very early in the journey and it's perfectly okay not to have a like oh, in the next 10 years, I want to be doing this, or in the next five years, my business and this and this and that. But for you personally, what's your motivation and what's your vision around yourself as a person? Now, your business, oh, I want to help these many yourself as a, as a professional good question.
Speaker 2:It's something I honestly haven't really thought a whole lot about. I've just been in like drive mode. I'm trying to do so much, but I do think about it and ultimately, the long-term goal and I really think about what I want to do, is just be able to live on my own terms at some point, without external pressure to go to a job to do this, to do that, and probably just have a family, a place in a place like this, right in the countryside, in nature, and just live stress-free. That's like the long, long-term goal. I think I've got to go for a lot of pain, suffering and hard work to get there, yeah, which I'm willing to do, but I think the long-term goal is, yeah, just uh, honestly, probably more family orientated. There's not like a specific number of money I want to get to.
Speaker 2:You know there is, but I wouldn't say that drives me more than just I'd say, probably more having a yeah a family um, and just being able to wake up when I want live how I want some x amount of years in the future.
Speaker 1:I think it's a good goal for me that's a very sane goal and I think that's you know, especially in the early years of of running a business is. I mean, there's two type of people. There's like I want to. I want a nice peaceful life with my family and not have these crazy external pressures. That's basically what nikki and I, at the end of the day, were for my partner and I. Then there's the other type, which is like I want to jet sit and I want to have yachts and boats and things like that. But the one thing that I would say it doesn't really matter, right, because in your early days it's like when you were a kid and you say you want to be a fireman, right, than you say you want to be a fireman, right like it. You haven't gone through various stages of life to be like this is the specific thing that I want in my life in the next two, three years. But the one thing that I would say is that experience, um, kind of like bundles and you start the five like I'm 37 but I still feel like there's so much to discover about myself. I have days where I'm like who the fuck am I? I feel like I should have more of a stronger opinion on this and more of a this that continues to grow. I think how you celebrate and how you perceive your journey is very important, and this is you know it's. It's not like, oh, I'm so much older than you and I'm giving you wise words or anything like that, but my story when I was your age, I had a a very unhealthy relationship with myself where I was on a tangent of I'm either going to become this crazy successful person and this is my con, my idea of what a crazy successful person means or I'm gonna die trying right and and working way too hard, um, being super unhealthy and all of these things. And it took me a lot of soul searching to realize that that was the wrong approach. So I wasn't enjoying the journey, I was just trying to get to the end result right. And the journey is so much I've realized it's important.
Speaker 1:People say, oh, enjoy the journey, but there's a very specific reason why people don't talk about it. That just don't talk about it that much. The reason why you should enjoy the journey is because at the end of your life, you realize that that's what made you happy and made you who you are right, not that one single point in time You're talking about your watch, right, you got your watch and you're like now, what next? Now, what's next? Right? So those are just flashes, right? So even when you get to a point if let's say, oh, I want to have two, um, two houses and a boat, so until I have two houses and a boat, I'm gonna just work my ass off and'm going to be grumpy and miserable and slice and dice left and right, and you reach that point and you realize that you lived 40 years of your life completely miserable and stress and with a lot of stress. And that's one thing that I realized.
Speaker 1:And when I realized that, I was I think I was 25 when I realized that and I completely changed. I got a job. I left a lot of the stuff behind and I realized that just enjoying every single moment. Why am I saying that? Because let's take you, for example. Right, you've achieved a lot. You're 24 and you have a team. You left the job. What two years ago? Was it two years ago? Just over one.
Speaker 2:One year ago.
Speaker 1:You left your job one year ago, you started this business and and now you have a whole ass team that's working with you. Here's the thing even if tomorrow this I don't think that's going to happen because you're very determined, but all of this crumbles and goes away, right, you're. This years of you building something solid is ingrained in your history and that's going to help you in your future as well, in a new role, opening a new business, starting a new thing. When Nikki and I decided to quit our jobs and focus full time on our business, it was when we got investment and we got like $200,000 investment which made our business worth around $800,000. We were that's like. It doesn't matter if, in six months from now or a year from now, we close off, we achieve that, I can go in and wave that flag.
Speaker 1:I built a business value to a million or 800,000. I have this experience and that experience. So you have to pay me a ton of money to work for you, right? So you've, you've already reached that state where I you know, in my opinion, if you were to be like, well, you know, I want stability, or I don't want to stress financially, um stability, or I don't want to stress financially um, this business, I've closed it up. You still be able to get a really good salary because you have all of this experience and you build this business to a specific level. That's what I'm saying just to conclude, because I'm chatting, talking too much here, is it? It's about looking at all of these achievements and thinking to yourself I have this right, I've reached another level and there's no way back from here, unless I have a very poor mentality around this. But I know that I've achieved this. I'm a professional that has various titles right now, so I can do whatever I want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this, this conversation, has come at the perfect time for me in all honesty, because up until probably like a couple of weeks ago, I was in such a mentality of just do more, do more, do more, do more, like just nothing but work. And chris probably knows as well, like when we've been on holidays, that I've just been taking calls probably 12, 15 hours of them non-stop, and it's just to get to specific like goal, to get to a specific number and just see the business grow month on month, which for the first 12 months where up until we are now, it's happened, it's just growing every single month and hit like a decent number, but it's been. I've just started to realize now it's like okay, that's done out of the way. This is not sustainable. I, I can either I'm either going to be forced to have a downturn and have to get my way out of it or strategically think about how I can actually stop going for the mentality of just like churn and burn. You. Think about building something longer term. So I recognize that because it's just, the growth we've had has been good, but it's not sustainable without the right systems in place, and this is what I've started to notice myself a little bit. So, yeah, I think, and honestly probably ask asking me that question, maybe even like a month ago what the goal was probably was something a bit more extravagant than just a family on a farm or something.
Speaker 2:But, um, yeah, I think, definitely the last few weeks, thinking about the way everything's been the last 12 months, how I want to move forward is that, like you say, it's been amazing experience. Even if everything else go like, goes wrong, goes bad, we've still got that experience which, like you say, as a professional, you can use to go into your next venture and build upon from that. Yeah, so you don't want that to happen with this business. I'm sure it won't, but just having that insight and hitting certain numbers that I dreamed of a year ago, it's now okay. Like you can do this. Now we've got to do this properly and make it last for the long term rather than just have this.
Speaker 2:In all honesty, it came from, probably, desperation. I was so desperate to make it work that I'd done anything, and that's great. It can get you to a certain point, but that's not going to last forever and, like you say, with a team, your team is not going to care as much as you. At the end of the day, they're not going to feel the pain and the fire in my belly that I've got, which they don't need to, because it's not their baby, right? But I think, yeah, having that mindset shift from okay, we've achieved a decent amount here. Now we need to try and build proper foundations, proper systems and make this something that we can strategically grow over the long term. And it's going to take longer and it's going to take time. Things will go wrong and that's okay, something I'm trying to get to terms with.
Speaker 1:It's very different from how I've been thinking today and I, you will always have moments of stress and desperation, like fuck, this is not working, that's not. Ah right, you want to punch the wall. But I think having the attitude that you're having, which is the the wiser way to go about building business, is having those moments in times and those breaks where you think to where you are today, what you have become and what you've achieved, and treat it as a positive. Because when you have those moments, it kind of like relaxes you a bit. Right, it's like well, I've done really well so far. Look at all of these things that I've achieved so far. I'm good, no matter what, I'm good, I'm in a good position.
Speaker 1:What that, what that does to your subconscious, is you'll be able to afterwards go into the next decisions and the next um uh, battle a lot more relaxed and with a bit more peace of mind, because if you're, if you have because I've had this with a lot of other businesses in the past it's like it's life and death type of attitude. It's like, fuck, I'm gonna lose this business. I need to to fight more. Oh, I'm gonna lose 30 of business. I'm a failure. I need to to fight more. Oh, I'm going to lose 30 of business. I'm a failure. I need to to work harder. And that's the attitude that you have all the time you're going to fail it's a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. I've literally I've probably, as I said, the last 12 months I've had that attitude, like I've had like a chip on my shoulder and a bit of like a fuck you attitude, like I want this, like nothing's going to stop me. But it gets to the point where you push so hard and in reality you push so hard for something. If you try and make something work, that's just not meant to happen. The opposite happens. You end up just hurting yourself as well. Like you just can't place too much emphasis and importance on things. I think it's like, yeah, like you say, the mentality I've got now is the right thing will happen with the right systems in place for the right decisions, but that like just extreme aggression and like this needs to happen or thing oftentimes will not happen.
Speaker 1:You take the wrong decisions right, because you take decisions under extreme pressure that you put in yourself and it doesn't One thing. The other thing that I've learned is you get opportunities from the most unexpected places if you have if you have patience and you continue and you progress and so on, there will be opportunities bigger than you ever thought. You're thinking that you're going to take the business down this road and here's a huge opportunity that just came because you were in the market and you've you've been resilient for such a long time exactly.
Speaker 2:I think those opportunities always present themselves at the right time as well. That's just obviously short experience I've had I had in business. It's like always when you think, oh man, something just needs to come through. You're right at the end of you've set yourself a goal. It doesn't look like it's going to happen at the right time. If you let things happen, I think the right thing will always happen, right. Um, yeah, if you put put the right thing to place. But yeah, there's opportunity everywhere.
Speaker 1:That's what I found what's the proudest moment for you so far in this short span of one year and a bit of running a business?
Speaker 2:good question um, there's probably a couple. Uh, one of them was, um, for christmas, I basically booked a little holiday for me and my mom to go to prague and we spent a few days in prague together. It was just basically being able to take time out for myself and time out for my mom and buy her like a holiday was really proud. It probably does more come down to, like I said, maybe this is where my goals come from family orientated, but just hearing from my parents, my grandparents, that they're proud, it's probably the best thing in all honesty. Obviously, getting a watch is cool and seeing revenue being generated, yes, is really cool and that does definitely make me proud. But by far it's probably just being able to spend time with my parents, my family, and just hearing from them that you're doing the right thing, you know.
Speaker 1:That's probably in all honesty oh yeah, parent support is is great, um, and the fact that you're appreciating it is is great as well, because, like, there are people that have their parents backing and they sit, and when you don't have it, you're like, oh, I wish I, I wish it's a strong motivator for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's more motivating and financial stuff in my opinion awesome. Thank you so much for joining I think the wind is picking up the whole thing is starting to move left and right, uh.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much. I'm really keen to see you at your, let's say, three year mark, yeah, and see how that evolves, and we'll overlap one year harry in business versus three years, let's go.
Speaker 2:Hopefully a little growth to come.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it will, because you have the right attitude and that's all. All that it is about amazing cheers. Appreciate you, man, awesome.
