EPISODE OVERVIEW

Duration: Approximately 45 minutes

Best For: Business owners drowning in marketing tasks who cannot justify full-time executive hires but desperately need strategic direction

Key Outcome: Understand how fractional leadership models give you a complete marketing infrastructure tailored to your constraints so you can stop being the bottleneck

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you have been trying to handle marketing yourself while running everything else in your business, you already know the result: scattered efforts, inconsistent results, and more hours stolen from your family and health. Charleh Knighton built an award-winning fractional agency specifically for business owners turning over one to five million who want to reach ten million without adding complexity. Her model pairs you with a fractional Chief Marketing Officer backed by specialist freelancers and AI-powered systems, giving you an entire marketing department that scales with you on 90-day cycles. This is not about adding another vendor to manage. This is about plugging in a team that runs without you micromanaging every detail.

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU

You will discover how to access senior marketing leadership at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire, freeing capital and mental bandwidth

Learn the exact framework Charleh uses to help businesses grow from two to thirty people in under twelve months without the founder working harder

Understand how to structure your calendar around energy so you stop ending every day wondering what you actually accomplished

Hear the real cost of staying skeptical about new approaches while your competitors adopt them and pull ahead

KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY

Calendar structure determines success: Block your highest-energy morning hours for strategic thinking and stack client calls when you naturally need less mental horsepower

The fractional model eliminates the hiring trap: Get a CMO, revenue officer, and specialist team without payroll burden or management overhead

New revenue fixes almost everything: As long as cash keeps flowing in, you buy yourself time to solve every other problem in the business

Direction beats perfection: You do not need a massive business plan. A general goal gives you a filter for the hundred micro-decisions you face daily

Learn something hard outside business first: Mastering a difficult skill like a language, instrument, or sport builds the resilience muscle before the stakes get high

GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING

"As long as you have got new revenue coming in, you can fix anything." - Charleh Knighton

"The only hard part about business is the emotions that you carry as you go through the journey." - Charleh Knighton

"We have to make these micro little decisions every day. Where is your goal post on what you benchmark your decisions on?" - Charleh Knighton

"Go and learn something hard first. What that teaches you is the gratification of learning a little victory as you go on a singular goal." - Charleh Knighton

"If you can not do that, you will not be resilient enough and the potential of losing your income, your house, your lifestyle, those risks are far higher than learning an advanced skill." - Charleh Knighton

QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS

00:00 - Introduction: Meet Charleh Knighton and the fractional agency model that gives you a full team without full-time overhead

03:45 - From Elite Athlete to Entrepreneur: How chronic health challenges forced a different path and sparked the first business at nineteen

08:20 - The Brownie Business and Brexit Pivot: Lessons from closing a business overnight and redirecting energy fast

14:30 - Why Entrepreneurs See Opportunities Not Problems: The mindset shift that separates those who quit from those who rebuild

18:15 - Calendar Architecture for Energy Management: How to structure your week around time zones, focus blocks, and mandatory rest

25:40 - AI as Amplifier Not Replacement: The sheer volume and quality of work possible now versus ten years ago

32:10 - The Gray Zone of Technology Shifts: Pros, cons, and the character development question for future generations

38:00 - Two Rules for Growing Any Business: Revenue solves problems and direction beats a perfect plan

42:30 - The One Thing for New Entrepreneurs: Why learning something hard before starting protects you from collapse

44:45 - Conclusion: Where to connect with Charleh and take your next step toward freedom

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Name: Charleh Knighton

Bio: Charleh Knighton is an award-winning entrepreneur, fractional CMO, and strategic growth partner specializing in B2B businesses. She helps founders scale from two to thirty people in under twelve months while boosting revenue per client and building genuine confidence in their marketing direction. Her fractional agency model combines executive leadership with specialist freelancers and AI-powered systems.

Connect with Charleh:

Website: kub-digital.io

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlehdickinson/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charlsknighton/

YOUR NEXT ACTIONS

This Week: Audit your calendar and identify your highest-energy window. Block two hours there for strategic work only, with no calls or emails allowed.

This Month: List every marketing task you personally handle. Circle the ones that require your specific expertise versus tasks a specialist could own.

This Quarter: Research fractional leadership options in your weakest operational area. Calculate the cost of not having expert direction versus the investment in getting it.

EPISODE RESOURCES

Ikigai Framework: Japanese methodology for finding your purpose through what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you are good at

Hedgehog Model: Modern business framework for finding your sweet spot of passion, skill, and market demand

Charleh with Friends Podcast: Available on YouTube and Spotify

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READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?

Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/

Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalized roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.

Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.atpbos.com/contact

Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.

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CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN

Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of Elevate360, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to scale without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI automation, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.

Website: www.atpbos.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd

Hey, power movers, how are we doing? So today we

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have Charlie from KUB Digital, is that right? That's the

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one. Nice to meet you. Great. Thank you for joining

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me back in the journey of taking lessons from all

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these business owners and entrepreneurs that are out there. And

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we've spoken a few times now and every time it's

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an interesting conversation. We're going to have to make sure

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we don't go on for three hours, as we tend

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to do that. And welcome. And yeah, just tell us

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a little bit about yourself, what you do and how

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you do it. Oh, absolutely. Right now. Because I was

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probably going to learn through today. Had many careers as

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the typical entrepreneur can fall into. No, we're basically what

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KUB is. We're. It's called a fractional agency. It's a

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new term if I can imagine. Many people don't know

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what that is, but I like to keep things nice

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and simple. So if you're a 1 to 5 million

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turnover business and you want to get to that magical

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10 million, I will then pair you up with a

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fractional Chief Marketing Officer or a fractional Chief Revenue Officer.

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We then underpin that with a full team of freelancers

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who are specialists in their area of marketing and sales.

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And that is all, again, supported by systems and AI

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and automation. And what the result is, you get a

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whole plug and play team all tailored to what is

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the needs of your business, what's the constraints that's stopping

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you from getting where you need to be. And we

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will run on a cycle every 90 days to keep

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working up, how we can keep leveling you up. As

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a real short snapshot, it's different, it's unusual, but it's

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very of the best of all the worlds that we

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have in our gig economy that we have now, now

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these days in 2025. You've done this before, I can

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tell. I've done this before. Let's dig in. Let's dig

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in. Let's go back to the beginning. My favorite little

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story of how you started. How did you decide to

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go away from being the non entrepreneur to the entrepreneur?

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I didn't even. I wasn't even the non entrepreneur. We

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skipped over that phase fast. So if we, yeah,

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if we go back 15, 15 years now for context

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to the listeners. I, as a child and as a

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teenager was an elite athlete. So my main sports was

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in swimming and I was grateful enough to be in

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that top 1%. So I was went to the British

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champs, I was doing international engagements, going to. I went

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to the Olympic trials, for example, which was a really

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big highlight of my career. The reason why I mentioned

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it is I always struggled with allergies, so

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I always struggled with dairy allergy from a kid typically,

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like, I was always that kid that kind of had

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eczema, you see, running around and things. But there was

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an incident when I was 16, 15, 16, where I

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decided to swim the English Channel. Now, if anybody has

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ever swam in any of the English waters, you will

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know that it is not just by. Itself that bears

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mentioning. Just by itself. Just better say, you know, it's.

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We're not talking lovely blue holiday waters here. We're talking

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the real grimy stuff. And I can confirm it is,

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in fact grimy and grim. Anyway, to cut a short,

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long story short, I got very sick from that. And

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what then actually, what actually then happened was having a

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dairy allergy where I had celiacs in my genes. It

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fired the gun, the gene, the genome gun, to then

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really then go and turn it into Celiacs. And then

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what that has turned into over recent years, what's called

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mast cell syndrome, essentially. I like to keep things simple.

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It's the immune system basically wants to attack everything constantly.

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So you have very high inflammation in the body. You

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then get lots and lots of different symptoms, from brain

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fog to gut issues to skin issues. It has all

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of these different things that affect your life. And obviously,

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if I was trying to be top 1%, top 0.5%

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in different sport, in sports, that's going to have an

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impact on your training, it's going to have an impact

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on your life and travel and stuff. And at that

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age of 16, 17, when you're just trying to figure

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out hormones at school and life, I can tell you

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there was a lot going on in that period of

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time. Sounds like it. My reaction to all

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of these things happening to me was to start a

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blog because. And this was when Instagram was

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just. It was a thing that just launched. So we're.

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We're talking like 2012, 1112. And

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my reaction was, I can't be the only one going

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through this experience. There has to be other people also

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going through this experience where I was having to change

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my diet, I was having to change what I was

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doing, I was having to figure all of these things

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out. So I started documenting what that was. So being

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at 7, like I said, 16, 17, 18, that's what

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I did. I was just like really getting into photography.

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I was really getting into the writing, blogging, SEO, building

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websites. I was getting my brain into all of this.

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And so on my 19th birthday my dad bought me

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a business. He bought me a limited company with

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the certificate and everything to then make it into something

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that could start to turn change into making revenue and

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things. Now this is what I was saying, like we

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completely skipped over the whole non entrepreneurial bit. So for

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again extra context, my dad has always been an entrepreneur.

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He's always had, he's always run the family business. And

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so I'd already been doing things in the family business

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from the age of five. So for me to naturally

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just go and do these things and go hey, yeah,

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cool, we've got a business at 19. It was, to

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me it wasn't risky, it wasn't anything, it was just

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normal. It was very normalized in the family when you're

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surrounded by entrepreneurs that then evolved into a healthy brownie

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made from organic ingredients. This was peak Paleo time in

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America and I was importing and exporting brownies to mainly

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maybe obviously England, Italy and Portugal because they

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had such a bigger audio gluten free audience. And then

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my factory, this wonderful factory in Ireland, it was big

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supportive of me and we, I decided to close that

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business because of this very little thing called Brexit, might

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have heard of it. And if you're importing, exporting on

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a very tiny island, you have to make some decisions

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on where you need to go next of how this.

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Because that business model just was gone essentially overnight and

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I had to make some tough decisions there. So that

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was 2000, obviously 2016, 2017. So how was it going

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before you did that? Where were you, where were you

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in the journey? So I'd gone from product developing and

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making all of the brownies myself from the kitchen to

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say I was with the fact, working with the factory,

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with them, doing then the production of it. And I

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just had made that leap as well. So I just

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had made that, that kind of scary jump from yay,

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I'm out, I'm out of the kitchen. Because there was

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a few kitchens before that went from the kitchen, went

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from the home kitchen, it went. I

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managed to get some EU funding to go into a

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commerce like a co, almost like a CO working commercial

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space kitchen which was fantastic to have an hour down

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the road from us. And then yeah, I'd gone through

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the whole process of finding a factory now to do,

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not to labor the point but to go into a,

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to be a BSC accredited factory where I was non

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competing with other products within their factory as well as

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using high organic materials with a very innovative way of

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making this product. There Was. It was the only place

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I could find. It was. It took me about a

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year to find this place. So you can imagine the

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sheer amount of work had gone into all of this

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to then have to make that decision where I had

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to stop it. I just like, literally had to stop

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it. I love about entrepreneurs, right? Yeah, we don't see

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problems. Yeah, we. There are problems there, but we don't

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see problems. You're like, okay, so how can I fix

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this? How can I fix this? How can I fix

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this? How can I. What's the opportunity I have now

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to do something? You went from, okay, here's a massive

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problem. Brexit, not something you could fix, let's do something

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else. Pretty much. Yeah. That's just. There's a. Such a

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positive energy with so many entrepreneurs as they go through

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the journey because, yeah, we have to be able to

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see things in the way of. Okay, yeah. If you

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were to get knocked down by every single little problem,

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oh, my. God, there be nothing left of you. Like,

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Monday morning by 10 o', clock, you're done. Yeah, absolutely.

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And I struggle a lot with this whole Instagram hustle

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culture that entrepreneurship is glamorized. And yes, there is some

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great stuff about it. We literally were just talking about,

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we like to travel and my friends call me up

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and go, where are you? Rather than asking me like,

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how are you? Because we have that ability, that mobility

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to go anywhere we want and still be able to

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do what we love and things. But it does come

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with so much grit and resilience. That's really the only

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hard part about business. It's not really actually solving the

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problems or doing the work. It's the emotions that you

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carry as you go through the journey. Yeah. And that

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for me is such a. An important part of the

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journey, actually understanding that you are a mental being in

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a mental body and you have to look off your

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own mental health and wellness. And you obviously had the

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challenges with your health. And I hope that's all going

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well now. You look amazing. What is. Thank you very

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much. I am in my 30s. It's the skincare routine.

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No, I have, have. I do have now a really

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fantastic nutrition coach because it's one of those things that's

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never going to constantly stay the same. It does slightly

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evolve and change, and it will evolve and change over

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again at the time. But I recognize if I didn't

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have some level of control around, was going to negatively

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spiral. And I'd rather it. What it does is, remains

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the same or actually sometimes positively spirals. And so we

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can get onto like why coaches are so important. And

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so I've worked with my nutrition coach like last three

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years and just having that person in your corner supporting

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you, just helping you just level the brain when the

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brain's spiraling or I have. I'll have a flare up

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or something that just saves so much time in brain

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energy that I focus then on the business. I love

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that. Yeah. That brain energy point. I'm going to dig

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into that quickly. So we wake up in the morning,

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right. And we've only got so much energy for today.

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Oh, yeah. We're going to get so many. Only so

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many spoons is how I say it's okay. So many

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spoons. I haven't used that one before. And yeah. If

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we're not. If we're not in the most positive frame

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of mind, if we're not in the most physically powerful

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frame of mind and if we're not clearing our minds

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out for all the stuff that we don't need to

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worry about, we don't need to worry about tomorrow, we

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don't need to worry about yesterday, then we lose all

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that energy during the day. Yeah. You get to the

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end of that day and I've been there, I've been

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there many times. You get to the end of the

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day and you're like, what have I actually done today?

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Yeah, I know what I've done. And typically all I've

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done is worried about tomorrow and worried about yesterday. Exactly.

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So then you start, but then you carry on that

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spiral and you like, then turns into a week, that

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then turns into a month, that then turns into a

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year and before you know it, you're actually further away

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from your goal than actually you want it to be.

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So I will put it out there. 100. I'm not

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perfect, but I do at least try and do the

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1%. At least try. Like for instance, my calendar management,

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that is one of the biggest determining factors to whether

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you're going to be successful or not. So at least

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look at how my calendar is structured and am I

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achieving that structure 80% of the time? I'm not even

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looking for perfection because it's not going to happen. I'm

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just looking for the. At least 80% of the time

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we're hitting to a structure. And is that structure helping

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me go to where I need to go. Do you?

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I do something with my calendar based around the energy.

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So I schedule meetings in the afternoon because that's

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where I need less energy. I schedule my brain thinking

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stuff when I finish My morning routine and we'll ask

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you about yours after this. But when I finish my

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morning routine I got from 7 o' clock until 10

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or 11 o' clock that I'm on fire. I go.

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So I put the stuff that I need to design

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and go and do in that time. Do you have

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it? Yeah, it is, it's. So I'll go through it.

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Oh yeah, I'll go through it because it's structured around

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energy but it's also structured around time zones as well.

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Because I work a lot of my UK clients are

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actually UAE now these days I live obviously in New

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York so I'm on eastern time zone so obviously having

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lots of European, uk, Irish clients and then I have

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a lot of west coast, East Coast, American, Canada. That

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isn't make it easy for yourself did you? No. That's

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a 16 hour day people. No, but this is the

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point, this is the point of why I have a

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team and I'm very grateful for them. So my structure

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is Monday morning is pretty much all internal. So from

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probably 7:30 to about 1:30 it's working with the team,

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making sure the team are all set up, they have

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everything, they feel supported and we haven't that great relationship

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then so Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday again from 7:30 to

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about 12 is, is pretty much back to back meetings

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because that's when I've got the most energy as well

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to be talking and engaging with people to be able

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to. To fire and things like that. And yeah so

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then in the afternoon it is my deep focus, get

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things done. Let's be pragmatic. In the summertime I'm an

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outdoors person so I'll go sit in the outside and

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do all of that work. So then I'm giving myself

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energy in different ways. In the winter is obviously a

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lot more challenging so that I might head to a

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co working space. So I change up the environment to

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yeah, you make sure I am working in the most

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focused way. And then Friday afternoons is primarily about clean

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cleaning the week off. So making sure the important things

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are boxed off. Anything that is not important gets eliminated

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and that is so that my weekends is prioritized for

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rest and that can be social rest, that can be

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active rest, that can be fun rest, that can be.

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I went to climbed a mountain last week, went to

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the beach. It's is that athlete brain of with five

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days on, two days off. Five days on, two days

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off. And that works for me. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Where

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are we going? Where are we going as a society

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as we step into this next two years of total

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unknown with AI, with the entire I try and stay

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so far away from the negative of it because I

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think we have such a positive tool we can use.

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And it's almost like a constant battle to keep the

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negative out. Just I can do what I can do

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with it. Where do you think? Where do you think

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we're going? How are you seeing it? You like to

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ask the big questions, Roy. There's a short answer for

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me. This probably just more represents my brain. It's somewhere

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in the gray. I don't believe this is an absolute

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of black and white. When you have any societal behavior

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changes, there is always going to be pros and cons

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with it. So just quickly pro at

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the sheer amount of work and volume of work and

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quality of work that I've done this year in comparison

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to the last 10 years is not even quantifiable. It

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is astounding. Just like the speed of which you can

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go if you've just got that backing of knowledge of

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a subject so you know how to ask and ask

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the right questions. So I feel fortunate that I developed

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a good skill and I do. I really have worked

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out this. So I feel confident to say that I'm

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good at it. About knowing how to ask the right

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question questions, whether it's an audience or whether it's a

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tool like AI. The negatives that

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I could probably perceive, which could be very tailored to

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an individual personality is when we go to university or

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when we go to building a business and solving problems,

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when we go into thinking through some of the hard

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challenges that determine our character. So obviously going through a

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whole bunch of hard work and resilience through. I would

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done it through sports, I've done it through business. It

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create. It does create a certain character of yourself and

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your identity. If the younger generation have been given a

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tool like AI, which will gives them convenience, it's not

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going to challenge them to the same level. So they're

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not going to get the same level of resilience and

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hard work. And the conversation we had, I had recently,

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which could be like the comparable is so I climbed

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about. Me and my husband climbed a mountain. It's a

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very small mountain by the way, but very still a

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mountain. I got the blisters. It counts in

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upstate New York last week and we were just talking

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about orienteering. So as a child I've got great, great

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spatial awareness. So the being in the car navigating for

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my mum with the big road map and then doing

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orienteering at school, I was was actually really very good

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because just had that visual brain that could just anticipate

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the next steps. And I loved it. I actually loved,

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actually do love doing it. That was obviously like the

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map format. Now we have G, we have gps, we

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have sat navs, we have all of these guidance systems,

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we satellite phones and things. And you almost lose that

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critical thinking on how do you read a map in

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order to determine where you are of where you need

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to be because. So it's great, it's a great tool.

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I love my sat nav. But one thing that's been

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noticeable with just this use case is people no longer

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just knowing how to read signs on the motorway or

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on the road in order to get to a location.

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So as soon as that tool goes away, then they're

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lost. And that's the income use case parable of what

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could potentially happen. But you, I don't know, I'm going.

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To take it a slightly different way. Right? Yeah, yeah,

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go for it. Because I could be very much wrong

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on this. We don't know. The way that we learned

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how to do things. Okay. Yeah. Growing up, the way

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we learned was a certain way. Right. The way that,

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yeah, we learned how to think. We were taught to

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think. Yeah. In, in school where we just actually had

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to learn the books and do the stuff and do

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a couple of things. Now we don't have to think

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like that anymore. Does that open up the power for

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the young generation to actually have a whole new way

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of thinking? Yeah, I'm looking at AI now and I'm

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seeing how, yeah, I'm having an evolution of my own

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thinking. My thinking is becoming so much better and so

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much more powerful because I'm able to think outside my

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brain. And when I say think outside my brain beforehand,

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I used to absorb the information, read books and do,

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do the work and do the studies and then I'd

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process inside, then yeah, output out. But now I'm more

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and more seeing, okay, I don't have to do all

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of that. I guess. This week I've been learning how

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to code more on NH10 and broad code and all

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these things. And what I'm noticing is there's an AI

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architect type role that's out there. I call it the

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vca. So it's a virtual Chief AI Officer. There's this

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role that's out there that yeah, the more you have

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the experience you're talking about, the more you have the

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various things you can draw in, the more you can

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get out of it. So does that mean that the

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People that are entrepreneurs are driven towards it, they will

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find that way of working. There's always going to be

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those people that are more lazy and those people. Yeah,

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yeah. And yeah, that's fine, that's just them. But I

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think there's going to be a whole bunch of people

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that learn a different way of thinking. This is. And

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that's why I do so say when we get down

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to the individual level, it really is going to be

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a chasm. There's going to be such a massive gap

380

of how people approach it and then this is where

381

my brain goes because my. I went to a very

382

old style traditional school way of schooling. Like the curriculum

383

hadn't really changed from the 19 since the 1950s and

384

any generation or any generation older than me as well

385

also going to have a very similar way of going

386

through the rote Dickensian school system. So is really

387

the problem with AI or is it actually with the

388

schooling system and are they going to be able to

389

keep up? That'll be my first kind of question mark.

390

Secondly, in the past month I've met, I think about,

391

I'd say five or six 19, 20 year old entrepreneurs

392

who was me as well 10 years ago and the

393

sheer quality that they are producing compared to what I

394

was doing 10 years ago and the speed of which

395

they are nailing every little detail is phenomenal. It's

396

mind blowing to me in that the things I work

397

with for a 40 year old or a 50 year

398

old or 60 year old, very experienced business person and

399

CEO, not marketing specialist because obviously that's why I'm on

400

board. These people I'm talking to are they are trying

401

to be the marketing specialist but since they've already got

402

four or five years worth of experience at 19 and

403

20, because they're all starting at 16 in their bedroom

404

and they've got their hands on all of these tools

405

like said, learning to code, learning what the frameworks are,

406

they've got all of this free content on YouTube of

407

anything that they want to learn. And like you said,

408

if they've got any, and if the person has any

409

problem solving skills or they've got any drive behind them,

410

the speed to market is phenomenal. So I

411

could go on more and more of just do. If

412

we're using the same tools and we're using tools the

413

same way, are we going to basically just have the

414

same things as the output or is like said because

415

the admin is being done a lot more, do we

416

allow ourselves time and more room for creativity to be

417

more Maverick. I think that creativity piece. Yeah. I. I

418

have to believe. I believe, yeah deeply inside my soul

419

that we're now going into the stage of humanity where

420

the run of the mill stuff that we had to

421

do all the time, that doesn't have to be done

422

anymore. AI can take that away. And we now, instead

423

of having a company where we have to work eight

424

hours or 10 hours a day, you can have a

425

company where your staff work four or five hours a

426

day and they can live a better life. I'm going

427

to actually disagree on this one. I don't think that

428

I would love that to happen. I'd absolutely love that

429

to be the, like the case of when it happens.

430

Because I know we've mentioned big Star Trek fan and

431

there's this world of possibility where the whole world is

432

united in order to do a bigger task and things.

433

And the reason why I just wanted to cut in

434

and be like, I think it's gonna happen because after

435

having. If you. I'm a big fan of studying history

436

patterns in behavior, you can tell why I'm a marketeer.

437

But. And that is. If we look over the past

438

hundred years of the technology evolution that we've had already,

439

we've gone from a single, single income household of predominantly

440

one gender doing the main workforce then working. We have

441

the nine to five because of the industrial area with

442

the factories in order so that people would turn up

443

on time. We have a rotationary shift in order to

444

maximize the efficiency of that time. Then obviously computers came

445

in, mobiles has come in and ex. And extended the

446

work hours in order in. In order for this goal

447

of efficiency and capitalism to grow more. And so we've

448

had this more mentality within Western cultures. By the way,

449

I can only speak. I'm not going to speak. I

450

don't know enough about Eastern cultures or any other cultures.

451

I can only speak predominantly, obviously Europe and the Americas

452

to be trying to maximize the amount of hours in

453

the day towards a common goal. And so unless there

454

is this big culture shift which we have started to

455

see, and that's why I'm like, I'm hoping it does

456

happen where people are seeing that we are humans, that

457

we are complex house plants, that we do should only

458

really be working four hours a day these days. Four

459

hours a week, sorry, these days as a workforce, because

460

we're not an industrial area anymore. A lot's happened in

461

100, 120 years and obviously this big shift with AI,

462

but there will always still be the organizations and the

463

companies that will want to work and push for the

464

12 hours a day. Like I only have to talk

465

about VC firms, people in finance, Wall Street. I live

466

in New York. You can see that culture is ingrained

467

into behaviors and almost people are addicted to that behavior

468

as well. I hear you. And. Yeah. Because here's the

469

thing. Right. Yeah. Tell me otherwise because I'll be happy

470

for this. I want it. Here's the thing. Yeah. Our

471

society is going to keep us doing culturally, we're going

472

to keep on doing that what we know and have

473

done. Right. We stay in the comfort. People. People don't

474

like to change. But when. I hate the word but

475

it's. That doesn't mind when we have. It's used appropriately

476

when we have the. Situation that there just isn't the

477

work to do. Yeah. Because now we're taking away. So

478

we're automating 80% of any given company. So what are

479

we going to do then? We're going to have this

480

time of really a little bit of messiness that I

481

don't know what to do. Yeah. And I think Diary

482

of a CEO, they had a conversation about. And Raoul

483

Powell, I think also had a conversation about. Right. What

484

happens now when the food comes a lot easier because

485

AI is growing more efficiently. We've worked out the power

486

pieces and the processing pieces. Because AI is worked out

487

more easily. We don't have to do any of the

488

jobs we're doing in the offices anymore. The humans have

489

come to the surface wherever they can. So there's more

490

customer service roles. There's more talking and doing. So then

491

there just isn't the work anymore. Yeah. What happens then?

492

Then we have. We're forced as a society to change.

493

Yeah. And this. The force will happen, I believe, because

494

it is such a big change happening so quickly. And

495

this is the total unknown. This is where people are

496

going to get nervous and scared and there's a messy

497

time coming. That after we come out, the messy time,

498

government's going to have to come out and say, right,

499

here's a living wage for you because how do you

500

make money otherwise? When money is not much of a

501

problem anymore? Because we have food and because we have.

502

Yeah. For sure. There's the die. Hard to say. Okay,

503

yeah. Yeah. The big corporations are going to take everything

504

and everybody else is going to just be poor. But

505

without the whole range of challenges we've had, they're Talking

506

about in 10 years time, there will not be any

507

medicine that any disease left because yeah. They're going to

508

fix every medical problem they're talking about in two years

509

time turning the genome off so that you can actually

510

go back and get younger again. Yeah, this is already.

511

Yeah, yeah. I've heard some of the stuff about AI

512

in the medical space. Yeah. The human testing is already

513

coming. They can take rats and mice that are old,

514

the genes around so that they become young and can

515

see again and then the hair color goes back again.

516

And so where are we, we can't even see where

517

are we going to be in two years time out

518

of. All of this, one thing we definitely agree on

519

is there's going to be a messy time. There's going

520

to be like it's going to be very messy time.

521

But it's just popped into my head as you've been

522

talking and that is like you said, we've our

523

brains as humans definitely love to think in the, in

524

the abundance as in we almost think we're infinite. We

525

forget that we are a little bit finite. And you

526

might be, I'm lucky. That'S true. But what I was

527

thinking is some of the people who may have previously

528

not been able to or been limited by or been

529

scared to, we could see this increase of gig economy

530

that's happening in people becoming more like micro businesses.

531

It might actually spur, actually spur on the entrepreneurial spirit

532

because like you said, things that would have had to

533

taken five people to do. I'm already seeing this, to

534

be honest. We're already seeing it. It's the start of

535

this. It's taking five people or 10 people can now

536

be done by one person. And because it can be

537

done by one person, if they're already in an employment

538

or they've been made unemployed, they're obviously going to have

539

more likely to go and start something again. The use

540

case for that 2020 lockdown happened, people went on furlough,

541

had some life changing conversations with the head tools, with

542

the businesses before 2020 and businesses after 20 very different.

543

And we could see a lot more of this, yeah

544

gig economy, boutique economy rather than necessarily these massive organizations.

545

That's been proven. We're now in this massive age of

546

information. Right. Where beforehand in order to get information we

547

had to pay for it. And this is the other

548

big piece that we were playing. So we're. When I

549

first started doing it stuff in the late 90s in

550

the, in London, I went and got myself a big

551

fat book this. There was no Internet, you couldn't go

552

and look at the stuff online. And I paid my

553

70 quid for my CCNP book and I read it

554

15 times. Yeah. And then I went into the exam

555

and so we had to pay for information. When we

556

put the printing press in, you had to pay a

557

lot of money for books. Now we have information is

558

freely available, and any information you could possibly want anywhere

559

is freely available. So with this age of information, what

560

are going to be the experiences that people want to

561

grow and scale and go into? And yeah, everybody had

562

a conversation earlier on today with somebody that helps with

563

membership sites, which is awesome, right? Yeah, I've also had

564

a conversation. One of my clients is a chap that

565

is in nature and he's in Norway and he helps

566

young kids get back to nature and he helps business

567

owners get back to nature. And do we see a

568

real growth of that? Do we see us going back

569

to nature and being more kind of grounded and. Yeah,

570

I hope so. I'm there for it. I hope so.

571

And we just have to leave these possibilities open, don't

572

we? Oh, absolutely. But. And like you said, get a

573

positive mindset, see these as tools, see these things as

574

ways to help and support you on where you wanted

575

to go. And, and almost in my head is as

576

long as you've got like a. That learning mentality, like

577

you've just got that openness to keep learning, whether it

578

takes you a long time or you're super quick at

579

it, just be on that path. Now, growing

580

your business, growing and scaling your business. What are your

581

biggest lessons? Number one, as long as you've

582

got new revenue coming in, you can fix anything. And

583

that's all you need to do. That's true. Huh? It

584

is you, you really, at the end of the day,

585

you have to just win 24 hours and then you're

586

just gonna win the next 24 hours. Next 24 hours.

587

Suddenly that those 24 hours turn into 15 years and

588

it's break it down a little bit more like the

589

new revenue is coming in. So you've got, you've always

590

got cash going into the cash cushion. So as long

591

as you disciplined about saving, that will give you the

592

security to get. And time. That's it really. We're just

593

talking about time to then solve the problem, do the

594

research, figure out where you need to go, how do

595

you need to restructure things. And then, which leads me

596

on to point number two. It's have a direction. That

597

sounds really simple. Literally the call before this,

598

I was having the conversation, know where you're going. How

599

are you going? Like, it doesn't need to be completely,

600

absolutely finite with this massive business plan. Just A general

601

goal is good enough. Because when in my head I'm

602

just like, if you have to make 101 micro little

603

decisions every little day, it goes back to our previous

604

conversation. So we have to make these micro little decisions

605

every day, which then goes in obviously. How many decisions

606

have to make over a week? How many decisions you

607

have to make over a month? Where's your goal post

608

more than anything on what you benchmark in your decisions

609

on? Is this thing going to help me? Yes or

610

no? Is this a distraction? Is this, I don't know,

611

is this, Do I actually have to do this? For

612

example, you start then breaking it down and analyzing what

613

it is. You're like, how do you then look at

614

your calendar? Is it structured in the way that's going

615

towards the goal? I want it to be. So the

616

business I have now is certainly not the business I

617

want in five, five to 10 years time, but it

618

is a certainly a stepping stone to the direction I

619

want to go. So I'm pretty happy with it needing

620

to. So I know exactly what revenue it needs to

621

be making in 12 months time in order to do

622

the next stepping stone of where I wanted to go

623

to where I wanted to grow and scale and then

624

also boiling it back down. Where do I spend my

625

time in the nicest way possible? I don't really want

626

to be doing marketing for the next 20 to 30

627

years, but there is certainly stuff that's in and around

628

marketing, sales, business strategy that I absolutely do want to

629

do and hence why I need to keep up with

630

the times or if. Or how is the employee structure

631

working? Marketing's very gig economy at the moment. How is

632

business? What's the constraints that are stopping businesses? What tools

633

are they available? All that jazz and things. So yeah,

634

those are the two. I could go on, but I'd

635

say those are the two biggest businesses because they say,

636

I think that's viral. So awesome. I mean, yeah, we

637

teach people. We're gonna get people to really know what

638

their vision is. What is your vision? Yeah, because if

639

you have to have the energy to take you through

640

the journey and yeah, if you have your vision that

641

you're actually helping and you're facing a problem in the

642

world and making a difference in people's lives, whatever that

643

vision is. Because that's what we do as entrepreneurs, right?

644

We bring problem solving to people that need it. That's

645

it. Right? Yeah. And yeah, but then if this is

646

your vision, how do your goals bring you to your

647

vision and just try and follow that path? And it

648

just makes life so much more. Yeah. Or less messy,

649

should we say? Because the other thing that we do

650

as an entrepreneurs, I have a real shiny problem. Don't

651

worry, we're all marketing. How

652

do I make sure I keep myself on the track

653

and I do come back to it today. Yeah, absolutely.

654

There's two things I always say. There's two things of

655

why growing a business is hard. Because actually the fundamentals

656

of the work. It's not actually that hard if you

657

really just sit down. If you can just sit down

658

and be disciplined eight hours a day and you just

659

know what the roadmap or path is, what the systems

660

are and what everything is. That's actually not. That's not

661

hard. You just have to do it. It's the. Obviously,

662

what we mentioned previously, it's the emotional roller coaster that

663

you go through on that journey because you're doing so

664

much work for no results, for a long period of

665

time with a big uncertainty whether those results will actually

666

even come through after all of this work. And I

667

can tell you, sometimes they don't, but sometimes you do

668

stuff and those results will come bouncing back two months

669

down the line in a very different version. But you

670

already did the prep, so it was fine anyway. But

671

the. I digress a little bit. But the second bit

672

of what's really hard is there is. Now we're in

673

this age of information. There is so much information. There

674

is so many different things you can do. There is

675

so much. And that's. I'm just. I was listing it

676

off. That's overwhelming. We say to AI, okay, I've got

677

this great idea. Yeah. He'll tell you, yes, it's a

678

great. Idea, like you said. What's it you say? It's

679

your yes, man. Yeah. So it is really getting your

680

own charity and owning your own power. So I'm conscious

681

of time and we could probably carry on talking for

682

another hour. But, yeah, let's. You give us your one

683

thing about business. What is the one thing? If somebody's

684

starting out their business right now or thinking about starting

685

out the business, what's one thing you'd say to them

686

to drive them through the journey and experience that they

687

have got to come? What's the one thing? Can I

688

have two? Okay, you can have two. You'll see why.

689

If you're going to do. If you're going to be

690

gonna do a business, and I've had a few friends

691

say they want to do business and admittedly, I'm like

692

their biggest supporter, I'M like yes, go do this but

693

it comes with an asterisk and a bit and a

694

caveat and I'm gonna set some real expectations for them

695

in one thing I do say to them is go

696

and learn something hard first. And I don't

697

it doesn't matter what that is. So whether that is

698

go and learn a new skill as an adult whether

699

that's you think perceived as really hard. So I do

700

crossfit muscle ups are really hard. Go and learn a

701

muscle up. Go and learn toes to bar. Go. If

702

you're more musically inclined go learn an instrument and learn

703

it to a very competent level. Go and learn a

704

language. Go and learn I'm trying to think what's comparables

705

are go and learn really some high skill advanced best

706

part of art. So I love doing realistic pencil drawing.

707

Go and learn that skill. And when I so what

708

that teaches you is it teaches you how to keep

709

problem solving it keeps take it teaches you the gratification

710

of learning a little victory, a little step as you

711

go on a very singular goal a common vision of

712

what you're looking to trying to achieve and and but

713

it's the safety net because the only thing that will

714

go wrong about learning this skill or advanced skill and

715

things it's only your ego that's going to get hurt

716

if you don't do it. And if because if you

717

can't do that you can't do it. I just, I

718

don't think you can do. You won't have the skills

719

to go and do a business. You won't be resilient

720

enough and the potential of you running and growing a

721

business loot and obviously you're losing your income, you're losing

722

your house house. You're losing your car, you're losing your

723

lifestyle. Those risks are far higher than learning an advanced

724

skill. So it's almost giving you a safety net to

725

go and figure some of those details out before it

726

the it gets really tough. So that's my main one

727

and the reason why I said can I have two

728

Is the second one is go and do icky guy

729

and go and do the hedgehog model. So the Ikigai

730

is the very old Japanese methodology and approach Hedgehog model

731

is the modern business one. Principally they do the same

732

things and it's again back to this energy focus. So

733

it's what do you love doing? What will people pay

734

for? What does the world need? Who are you trying

735

to solve? You'll find that once you do this Venn

736

diagram you spend some time in the Venn diagram, you'll

737

find in the the middle that you'll be your sweet

738

spot and you'll know where to then spend your energy

739

when you go on to that entrepreneurship. Amazing. Thank you.

740

Thank you very much for joining me. Where can people

741

find you? And I will put some links and stuff

742

around. Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, the big one is Dean. So

743

it is just Charlie Knighton, pretty big on Instagram. Like,

744

I was not big on Instagram, but like I'm always

745

on my Instagram. So again, that's also Charles Knighton. And

746

you can also get me on my website. I have

747

a main corporate one, parent one, which is kub-kub-uk.net but

748

if you want more specific information around the fractional agency,

749

it's more of our global website. It is kub-digital IO.

750

And then finally, I also have a podcast, which is

751

very easy. It's Charlie with friends. It's on YouTube, it's

752

on Spotify, and if you just pipe in my name,

753

the way I spell it, it will crop up. So

754

C H A R L E H. Yeah. Thank you

755

very much for your time. It's always a pleasure to

756

chat and hopefully we'll do this again soon. Sometime. Yeah,

757

absolutely. Thank you for having me.