EP 384 - This week Daniel Priestley discusses how we build a new role for Britain post Brexit (yes, we dropped the B-Word in 2025). Basically Britain faces a choice between being that, a lapdog for the US or the sixth best Scandinavian country.

The way he says it, it makes sense. Particularly when he is talking about how hard it is now to grow a business with “escape velocity” in the UK these days.

Serial entrepreneur Daniel also talks us through:

The importance of personal brand and why it is replacing geography in business decision making

His 7-11-4 model for growing your personal brand

How AI is here to supercharge small businesses (and rightsize large ones)

He also said that long-form podcasts are AI resistant. Which is lucky.

*For Apple Podcast chapters, access them from the menu in the bottom right corner of your player*

Spotify Video Chapters:

00:00 BWB with Daniel Priestley

01:17 Meet Daniel

02:16 Daniel's Entrepreneurial Journey

03:40 The Rise of Personal Brands in Business

06:46 AI's Role in Business and Employment

12:35 Daniel's Current Ventures and Business Insights

19:22 The UK's Business Environment and Future Prospects

41:37 Entrepreneurial Spirit in the UK

42:52 UK vs. US Business Landscape

45:48 The Role of AI and Technology in Business

48:34 Future of Education and High-Velocity Careers

59:38 Strategies for Attracting High-Value Clients

01:03:31 Failures and Lessons in Entrepreneurship

01:05:14 The 7-11-4 Rule for Building Relationships

01:13:26 Quickfire - Get To Know Daniel

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If you're already very rich, the UK is a great place to come back to.

Right?

That's the problem.

The problem is that it's not a great place now to start something and scale up.

You can't get escape velocity here in the UK, there's too many taxes.

The other thing is 15% of additional tax on every hire.

It's basically like having VAT on everyone's employment.

You're absolutely right.

What's even more bizarre is it's done on a heading of growth.

We are a nation of entrepreneurs, small businesses.

You know, it's so frustrating.

Well, the problem with the UK is the decision's already made.

The decision is already made by the bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy already tells the government, this is what you're going to pass.

These are the cliff notes.

You're going to get this across the line.

Here's what's dangerous.

What's dangerous is that technology creates wealth inequality.

What's the value of doing eight years of university to become a specialist doctor when we're moving to a world where a lot of LLMs are going to do a lot of that work, like the world is changing and then add to that robots that can physically do stuff.

We're going to have to learn new ways of adapting.

Let me talk about the probably the most important thing that's going to change.

Hi and welcome to Business Without Bullshit.

We're here to help the founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, anyone who wrestles with the job of being in charge.

And if you like what we do here, please rate and review us on Spotify and Apple and come say hi on YouTube if you fancy watching us in action.

Links are in the episode description or just search for PWB London.

This week I chatted to serial entrepreneur Daniel Priestley, who's rather become Gary Stevenson's nemesis after Dari of CEO.

It was a wide ranging chat and involves very little about Gary.

Daniel speaks very passionately about helping the UK to shape itself into entrepreneur island.

And by that he doesn't mean turning it into a theme park, but a serious suggestion for the role we can play in a post Brexit world that doesn't involve becoming the bag man for the US or just the sixth best Scandinavian country.

He also says that long form podcasts are AI resistant, which is lucky.

Strap in.

It's A good chat.

I am Andy Oury and today we are joined by Daniel Priestley.

Daniel is a distinguished entrepreneur, best selling author and international speaker.

Starting his entrepreneurial journey at 21, Daniel has built and sold businesses across Australia, Singapore and the uk and is now the co founder of Dent Global, a leading business accelerator that helps entrepreneurs stand out and scale.

Daniel has authored four bestselling books including Key Person of Influence and Entrepreneur Revolution which have educated and inspired countless professionals worldwide.

Daniel, welcome to the podcast.

That was a very chatgpt style introduction.

Yeah, yeah, it's a bit out of date.

There's been extra books, there's new businesses.

Well, tell us, get us up to date, give us an overview of what you're doing right now.

Daniel.

Well, Dent Global is an amazing entrepreneur accelerator and that's great.

Is that based in London or.

It's global.

We got, we got, we got entrepreneurs in 20 countries who, who have come through that.

It's essentially, you know, at the moment it's really positive to have a personal brand attached to a good business model.

So we actually really explore that with entrepreneurs.

So that's kind of what we talk about.

We've been going for 15 years, five and a half thousand companies have come through it.

But look, most of what I do is actually I'm an entrepreneur myself.

I've got software companies, I've got a couple of agencies, group of seven different businesses.

I did have eight, but I sold one recently.

Yeah.

So I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years.

It's curiously the rise of the personal brand.

I mean my British brain gets slightly irritated with the whole concept.

But is that where we are now?

That to be a successful business as CEO has got to be a personal brand?

We've all got to be.

So why do what, why can't we just be a company?

Why do we need.

You seem like you're annoyed by this, but you here you are doing a podcast.

Well, I'm not doing it for that reason though.

You've got your name on this, on the.

Well, it's.

My grandfather set it up.

Fantastic.

And your big contribution is to launch the podcast?

Honestly, you know, I'm doing it out of curiosity just because it's a way of trying to understand.

Good way to me.

Well, it seems that way, doesn't it?

I mean, you know, Trump kind of won the election off the back of a series of podcasts that went really big and now every CEO in the world is getting on podcast podcasts.

You see the Microsoft and Google and Tim Cook and all these People are now clamoring to get themselves on the big podcasts.

The idea of personal brand, it's really, it's replacing the role of geography, weirdly so.

You know, up until recently, we used to define our businesses by geography.

We used to say, I'm a shoe shop in Wimbledon or where, you know, I'm a baker in Kensington, I'm a, you know, whatever it is in this particular geography.

And now we live in this world where it's like, well, the business exists in the digital environment, so how do you define the business?

And the way that we start to define the business is through these abstractions like intellectual property and the problem that I solve and all of that sort of stuff.

And it's very hard for the human brain to understand what does all that mean?

Who is your business and what is it all about?

And the human brain is built for personal relationships.

And essentially it's an engine for pumping a personal brand out in front of a lot of people.

So the businesses that have done very, very well have essentially had a person who talks about their intellectual property and their ideal customer Persona, and they basically bring that to life online and then their business booms as a result.

And everyone's starting to notice that if you've got 2 to 20,000 followers, then your business tends to have an edge and it does better than businesses that don't have that.

We used to hide behind the business logo and hide behind the business brand.

And yeah, had a personality on itself.

We sort of tried to attach human.

And it doesn't, doesn't work.

So if you go on LinkedIn and you set up a business account and you set up a personal account, the personal account gets 20 times the number of followers per post than the business account.

So the reach is 20x on a personal account.

So if you think about the old school business used to be business, product, person.

So you walk into Walmart, you see the products on the shelves and you talk to a person.

Third, the online digital business is person, product, business.

So you see a person on a podcast, you think, I wonder what they're selling, what's their book, what's their thing that they do?

You might check that out and then you go, oh, actually they have a business, and I'll go and check the business out.

So it's, it's kind of reversed the order.

Is it possible we're going to get to a stage that this social media just sort of eats itself.

There's just a sort of level at which AI is pumping out content that it will just comes and we all, we all recognize it.

Like smoking.

You know, we're getting closer and closer to the point where if you don't have a personal brand, it's going to be so hard to cut through the noise.

You know, it's kind of almost like a fog comes in and you can't take off any new airplanes, but if you're up in the air, you're fine.

It's a little bit like that.

If AI is going to create so much entry level noise that the typical people, if they just see something new, they'll just ignore it.

But if you've already built a personal brand, then probably, if you can, if you've hit escape velocity with your personal brand, you'll be fine.

I think personal brand will still be a big moat in an AI world and it'll be one of those things where businesses either have to partner with someone who's got a personal brand or, you know, include them in on the cap table.

Gosh, that's so powerful what you're saying.

I mean, it's a bit like what happened in music industry.

You know, were you a band created before social media?

You know, Coldplay?

I went to university with Chris and he's in our band from.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah.

I remember that era that bands could create, be created and radio stations were controlled and nowadays they.

People do break through but God, it's hard.

Yeah.

Because everyone's got the microphone, everyone's got a loudspeaker.

Yeah.

Let's just say in terms of would we really.

Okay, so you're going to need a personal brand for a business.

But I mean AI is going to get to the stage, you're not even going to know.

You're going to know if it's a person or not.

I mean it's going to get to that stage that.

Well, this is what I mean.

The AI created algorithm.

Oh the.

Sorry, the AI created avatars.

They are so good at creating just any person that looks like a person that the, like, once we know that this is the game, we're going to just discount it.

We're going to see someone new.

If we don't know them, we just assume.

Right.

But, but if we see someone we are familiar with, then we go, oh, okay, I will listen to that particular person.

The other reason that long form podcasts have become a really big deal is because they're kind of like AI resistant.

So take a look at this Trump campaign with Trump versus Kamala.

And I'm not talking about politically right, just talking from a business marketing perspective.

In the AI noise, that landscape, Trump comes along and says, hey, I'm going to go on Joe Rogan.

You can ask me anything at all.

I'll go in any random direction.

We'll talk for three hours and you can just put the whole thing out unedited.

And then Kamala comes along and says, I'm going to do seven minutes.

You need to submit the questions in advance and we're going to stick to the message, stick to the script.

Oh, and by the way, I want to edit it if I want to edit it and I want to rescind it if I want to rescind it.

So what went on?

I did listen to some of that Joe Rogan Trump podcast where he just rambled away about.

He did ramble away, right?

But, but here's what happened.

The voters basically kind of went, hey, I don't trust any of this media.

I don't trust the short videos, I don't trust the posts, I don't trust the mainstream.

I want to see the raw footage, I want to see the unedited rambling.

And I'll make my own mind up.

24 million people watched that within a couple of days.

I think it was, it was like crazy.

It was just like people wanted to see.

They've heard on mainstream media that there's this cartoon version personified low resolution view of the guy.

And then it's like, okay, let me have a look at what he's like unedited.

So that was immune to AI.

Can you.

Because they got AI that creates podcasts.

But is it, I mean, and they sound.

The 10 seconds I've listened to sound very convincing.

Yeah, they do.

Until you've heard a few of them and they all sound the same.

Oh, do they?

And also, you know, it's Joe Rogan, it's high definition, it's the studio, it's Donald Trump, and it's kind of signed off that this is actually him.

So.

And then, yeah, unfortunately, I hate to say it, but like Kamala, because I watched both.

Kamala was very much like a McKinsey consultant.

It was so professional and like staged.

So I think voters really want to see what is the unedited version.

And by the way, this is a long term thing that trends in US Presidential elections really impact the business landscape.

Obama was the first president to run on social media and that really tipped social media as the thing to build a business JFK with the live television debate with Nixon.

So presidential elections really set the marketing strategy for the following 10 years afterwards.

So it was Cambridge Analytica.

It was highly targeted data analytics.

Should Care be thinking about this?

Should he be going and talking a bit more?

You know, Kier did go on a couple of podcasts.

I have seen him on a couple of podcasts.

The only time I really liked the guy because I'm not really a big Keir Starmer guy, but when I saw him on a long form podcast and he was talking about the really difficult situation with his mother passing away and how that impacted him and his family and all that sort of stuff, for the first time ever, I'm like, okay, I'm warming to this guy.

I'm actually.

He's a human being.

He's not a politician.

I know from someone who knows him well, he's a deeply decent human being.

They said maybe not the world's leading.

Politician, but you don't pick up on that in the political environment.

You know, you don't see that when they're standing there in the House of Commons and they're arguing with each other and when he's delivering a speech from the podium.

But on that podcast format, the one time I saw him on that long form podcast, I did actually go, okay, this guy is a decent human being.

Regardless of whether I agree or disagree with him politically, there's something, there's some depth to who he is that I could get behind or I could connect with.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, the identity point.

You know, people are just craving truth, aren't they?

So nobody cares.

Almost the crapper it looks.

The more unedited is, the more we're engaging with it.

Now we're sort of, you know, doing this full circle, aren't we?

If it's important, that's what we want.

Let's do.

Do something slightly different of all these businesses you're running at the moment.

What I mean, they're software businesses mostly.

Are they?

Are they, they particular favor.

Yeah.

So the scoreapp.com won a major award for being one of the top 50 fastest growing companies in the UK, which obviously is not saying much at the moment because we're, we don't have a particularly growing economy, but we're a very fast growth business.

We have 8,000 customers around the world in 150 countries.

What does it do?

It scores apps.

Does it?

No, it actually, it does online surveys, Quizzes, Assess assessments.

We can use AI to generate surveys, quizzes and assessments.

We crunch a lot of data, we collect millions of points of data about customers every month and then we use AI to crunch that and produce reports.

I love quizzes.

You'd be amazed at.

How much do you know?

I was talking to the a guy who's on the board of a 200 million pound business public listed company and I showed him score app as a potential thing and I was thinking, I wonder if he'll connect with it.

And he looks at it and he goes, oh, I love filling in online quizzes.

Forms.

People like forms as well.

What people?

No one likes forms.

But people love answering questions to get an immediate result about themselves.

So if I like what's something you're into?

Hip hop.

Hip hop.

Right.

So test your hip hop knowledge and get an immediate score.

Might be something that you do.

Or are you on track to grow your podcast at 50% year on year growth?

Take this scorecard to find out if you're utilizing the growth strategies that will grow your podcast.

So you could have the podcast growth strategy scorecard and then people would go through, they answer 20, 30 questions, you would answer 20, 30 questions and then it gives you a score and it says you're 72% for your growth strategy for your podcast.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just sort of immediacy, isn't it?

It's the immediacy.

So no one wants to fill in a form.

If you fill it in and then it doesn't give you anything.

But they love filling them in.

If you fill it in and it gives you a result straight away.

Okay.

And then you monetize this because companies can find out about their customers, basically.

Yeah, well, it's a, it's a subscription service.

So we, we have basically it's a SA model software as a service.

And the other companies you do similarly?

Yeah, we've got BookMagic AI, which is AI that helps you to write a book.

97% of people who want to write a book fail at writing a book.

So it's, you know, a business is built on an unmet need.

And it turns out that AI is phenomenally good at guiding you through the process of writing a book.

It doesn't write it for you in our software, it actually just guides you through, keeping you on track for answering the reader's questions and structuring that into chapters.

And so we have this software called bookmagic IO AI.

And that's been a really great successful launch.

And you know, we're, we're really proud of the fact that people are writing their books twice as fast and twice as well using AI software as a support tool.

We've got a startup in the, in production at the moment.

I've got a couple of agencies.

So we have marketing or.

Yeah, we have a PR agency that I bought.

I've just sold a software, a technology, what's called a managed service provider.

Which is it?

Where's this all come from?

Daniel, if you, if you always, you've just.

What was your.

Where, where did you get into all this?

Started my first company when I was 21.

From 19 to 21 I worked living here then no, Australian by birth.

Born in a very normal household.

Moved out of home at 18 in one week.

Worked McDonald's, pizza delivery, door knocking, late night bartending, all of that sort of stuff.

Started running nightclub parties, which is the gateway drug for entrepreneurship for most people.

So I started running night nightclub parties and then I got noticed by a guy who was starting a new agency, new company, and he said, look, I'm going to start something new.

I've just sold a business, I'm going to start something new.

I get roped in as employee number three on a business that doesn't have a bank account or a name and we go into fast growth.

So we hire 60 people, we get up to 6 million of revenue and from 19 to 21 I just get mentored by an experienced entrepreneur.

And then at 21 years old, I say, hey, John, can I get shares in your company?

Because I was here at the beginning, he kind of indignantly just looks at me like he says, if you want shares in a company, go start your own.

And I'm like, oh, wow, he's given me his blessing.

And he didn't give me his blessing at all.

He was like, f off, get back in your books.

But I then went out and started my first company and it took off.

So I.

We did 1.3 million in the first year, 10.7 million in year three.

Wow.

What was that software?

It was an agency.

Yeah.

So we were marketing.

We were a marketing agency with a very like niche focus.

You seem quite lucky in your world.

You know, you make your own luck and all of that.

But, you know, is the, when you, sometimes the first thing goes right.

Did you then have the difficult second album kind of thing?

Yeah, I mean, it was within, by, by the end of year three.

I got offered $14 million for the business and we got to heads of terms and we literally.

The, the company that was acquiring us was going public and then buying us for 14 million.

And I then proceeded to pick a fight with the board and tell them all sorts of stuff about how.

What they were doing wrong.

Board of the public company.

Yeah.

And then the deal was off and I, I called an end to the relationship, actually.

I don't know why I did this.

Right.

It was like, well, I do know why I did this.

There were plenty of reasons why I did this.

Would you have done it today?

I guess is the question.

No, pragmatically there was a good argument for shut up and take the money.

And I took a principled approach that their strategy wasn't right and blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, so the fire of youth, perhaps the, in a way, the confidence or arrogance of youth.

Yeah.

So 24 years old.

So that was my first business collapse in the sense that they were our major client.

We had concentrated client risk in terms of.

They were, they were about 80% of our revenue.

And I, My business just dumped like we went from million a month plus to back to a couple hundred grand a month with 17, 18 employees and all this sort of stuff.

So when I, when that happened to me, I went to a mentor of mine and explained I've got to restart the business and I got to like start from scratch.

Basically.

He said, why don't you start in London?

He said, because Australia is like 20 million people, like UK, 60 million people and the pound is worth three times as much as the dollar.

Yeah.

So he said, just go relaunch, but relaunch in London.

Okay.

Yeah.

And the heady days, you know, there's.

Good times, really good times.

Think that was the end of labor.

I think it was Gordon Brown, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, yeah.

But I mean there was entrepreneurs Relief.

Every bank had an entrepreneur division, a co working space.

Well, they understood then.

They understood that we were a nation of entrepreneurs.

I don't know quite.

Oh, they've lost plot.

Yeah.

I don't know quite how it's so forgotten.

Completely lost the plot now, you know, I mean, everyone's leaving.

Well, you've seen the employment bill.

I'm sure that's coming through, which I was just reading more.

I was really getting into some detail on it last night because I was like, what is these unfair dismissal rules?

So, you know, immediate immediately impossible to fire someone.

And then I was like, well, what is the probationary period?

So the probationary period is about if you can show that they haven't got the right skills for the job, they don't fit the job.

And I'm like, half the times you fight far people because they're not the right cultural fit.

You know, you just find them a bit to prove that they're not the right skills for a job.

Well, that's the easier bit to tell from a CV and stuff.

You can't tell from a CV because.

Well, you can't.

People are using ChatGPT with their CVs now.

Yeah.

So you get this incredible CV through from a, from a younger person and it's like, wow, they, they really match this role.

And then you discover, oh God, I.

Didn'T thought that they said write me a CV that would fit that role.

Yes.

Yeah.

So you discover a month later that the person who wrote this incredible CV was actually ChatGPT discovered that this person isn't at all who they said they were.

You know, this can happen to a businesses really easily.

Yeah.

Even, I mean it's a pretty.

In a profession's legal and accounting, there's obviously various qualifications.

Culture fit like.

Culture fit.

Yeah.

Well, you won't be able to file and from what I read last night, you're not going to be able to fire on that basis.

And well, the impact of that is you're not going to hire.

Yeah.

And you know what if they make it really?

Because they're like, well, we won't allow people to do contracting stuff.

Okay, well I'll hire overseas.

You can't stop that.

Like what roles can you not hire overseas now?

You know, I, I mean, I'll be honest with you.

We have our customer success team in the Philippines, we have our developers in other parts of Europe.

We like everyone's working remotely.

I've got some of my best salespeople who are dotted all over the world.

Like half my employees ask the question, can I do this role from anywhere in the world?

Is that okay?

And it's like, yeah, absolutely.

I've hired people in the UK and then they've immediately moved somewhere else and still do the, still do the role, but they're living in a cheaper location.

You can look at Amber online right now if you're interested to go look on the government site and they've got the impact assessment which I was particularly interested on the one thing, this immediate employment rights, which I think will kill entrepreneurialism even more in the uk because you know, in good conscience people are just going to be like, well, I mean, I can't build a risky business.

I'm going to be stuck arguing, have.

They put any distinction between a bigger business and a smaller business?

It's going to apply to everyone and it's going to switch on like that box autumn next year.

But then the impact assessment was like unknown, unknown, wrong.

It's basically, there's no benefit the employer.

The whole thing is written by someone who's never been an employee.

This is so ridiculous because if you've got 10 employees and you make a bad hire on the 11th, that's.

Well, if you've got nine and you make a bad hire on THE 10th, that's 10% of your workforce are now the wrong hire.

Now if you imagine Tesco, right, with 300,000, imagine they accidentally hired 30,000 people that were the wrong and they needed to do something about that.

Like for a big company, like you know, a public listed company or a big company, if they get it wrong with an employee, it's a tiny fraction of their workforce that is, is wrong hired or mishired, they can afford to put it through a process.

But for a small business, if you've got five, six, seven people, if you screw up at one hire, that's 1/7 of your, you know, workforce that is now causing dramas, causing trouble like they have to be able to distinguish because the percent like each hire represents a certain percentage of your workforce.

You're absolutely right.

And I, I find it really bizarre.

I think what's even more bizarre is it's done on a heading of growth.

I would, I would be more okay with it in a way if they said we're socialists.

Yes.

And we, and we, and this is, we want rights for employees and we want to.

The country's gonna get more inefficient and we're gonna be less competitive, but no one's gonna lose their job and everyone's gonna earn a measly amount.

It's crazy.

It's like saying I'm really pro driving fast, which is why I slam on the br.

It's like, okay, you do realize that taxes, regulations and it like all of.

These things trying to lose regulation to be fair.

Well, employment law is going to get tougher.

But they are sort of, you know.

What are they losing regulation on well.

Planning permission and things like that.

So for real estate, okay, fine, you.

Know, they're doing bits.

But does real estate grow our economy?

No.

Real estate inflates the value of the economy.

Well, it's, you know, our mutual friend, Mr.

James Sinclair, I think he makes this, that statistic he often quotes.

I think, you know, I've ended up quoting it a lot.

I think it's a very fair point understanding that there's, you know, 5.5 million businesses with less than 250 and I think it's gone up now.

There's 8,000 businesses with more than 250 employees.

And you've got to sort of really get your head around.

We are a nation of entrepreneurs, small businesses.

You know, it's.

By the way, the flip side would be that if you created a situation that supports those 5.5 million with the AI revolution.

I'll tell you what's happening with AI.

AI is going to expose big companies from hiring too many people doing too narrow jobs and they're gonna, they're gonna lose employees, right?

So we're gonna see big companies go from 17,000 down to 14, 000.

That's gonna happen across industries.

Big companies are gonna get rid of people because of AI.

But small businesses have under hired because they can't find a person who can do all the things they need them to do.

And it's very, very difficult going from 0 to 1 or 1 to 3.

But with AI, it actually helps you bridge the gap of talent and it.

Actually, it really get 10 people worth 20 people.

Yeah, business.

So if you were to get excited about, hey, we've got this new technology, these 5.5 million businesses, they could all hire one extra person who, who's super powered by AI and provided you don't screw it up with terrible regulations that make it hard, you know you're going to end up with a pot with a, an employment boom off the back of the small businesses now.

But small businesses are not doing that because of regulations.

The other thing is 15% percent of additional tax on every hire.

So you know, national insurance is now.

It's basically like having VAT on everyone's employment also.

Meanwhile, as the NHS sadly falls apart, private health care becomes more and more important.

Other costs.

Well, joyful, happy, like excited to be part of a team.

Great positive influence on the culture.

No dramas, no, no like, crazy stuff about, by the way, my, you know, my preference, my preferences.

This is my emotional support.

Hamster and all of this sort of stuff.

None of that.

Dee's got one of them.

I think we, we had the good pleasure of having Alex to pledge.

He's a brilliant entrepreneur from Bradford on the pod.

And she knows Rachel Reeves, so it was great.

You know, she's putting some tough entrepreneurs in front of her, but I was like, she's.

I mean, she's so.

Look, she's in a government that doesn't understand business, in a cabinet with nobody who's ever been in business.

And they are socialists by mindset.

Yeah, of course they are.

She's fighting.

She's.

She's fighting an uphill battle to try and do anything.

Because you can imagine trying to say, hey, why don't we guys, why don't we lower tax?

I think people are.

That's ridiculous.

You know, people just.

You and me, it's like preaching the converter.

But we're just, we're just like.

It's this, it's the.

For me, it's a frustration when you.

Do accounting and law.

Are you noticing people are leaving?

Well, when we also, we specialize in overseas business.

Coming here, I know I have clients leaving the country.

Yeah, 100.

Because also people like, what about their patriotic instinct?

Screw them.

And they want to leave.

And I'm like, most people I know, like you in London, a lot of them are.

They're not even British, you know, they're Australian, American, you know, so now they're.

And also they're entrepreneurs.

So they need a place of opportunity.

So they will just say, okay, I'll go over here.

Yeah, entrepreneurs.

Look, there's definitely an element of patriotism, but also a very patriotic thing to do is to send the signal to the government, this isn't going to work.

And I'm going to go build a business where it does work.

That is a very powerful signal.

So, you know, for example, if you've got someone who's acting out in a very toxic way, cutting off ties with them is actually a thing to do.

Right.

Like, so there is a patriotic signal where you say, hey, because I'm patriotic, I'm not going to allow the country to go down this.

This road.

I'm going to build a very affluent, very successful business, and when the economy changes, I'm going to come back and rebase my business.

Yeah, will they come back?

I mean, the interesting thing is if you create a good environment, people do come back.

Crazy thing is that A lot of people love London and love, love the uk.

Like, the UK is a beautiful place.

It's an amazing time zone.

It's got incredible, talented, amazing people.

There are many, many positive things about the uk.

But if you make it anti entrepreneur, unfortunately, it's kind of like if you, if you implemented a series of policies that made it very, very difficult to be a dentist and very hard to be a dentist and like, no point being a dentist.

Well, unfortunately, as patriotic as you might be, the dentists are going to go and leave.

That's a great way.

It's such an interesting way.

I've illustrated that because it's such a simple change in the language, but it sort of hits home people, more entrepreneurs, this sort of fuzzy thing to people, you know, it's like, oh, well, they're all rich people.

You know, it's like, I mean, we talked about it came on air because you were discussing your chat you'd had with Gary Stevenson.

But you know, I think my, I have a real problem.

When anyone ever starts the conversation on I'm left or I'm right, we need to all be in the middle.

The moment you'll start, I'm left.

So I have rich people, I'm right, so therefore I hate poor people.

I mean, I know that's not what it means, but that's kind of how you end up sort of down.

It's like we just stop hating each other.

Okay, you know why?

I mean, there's some of this stuff, as you say.

The reaction to what's going on is thankfully changing the narrative from bringing out some of these things.

This line I've heard in multiple sources now, and people do step back, say the top 1% of the country pay 30% of the tax.

And people are like, oh, right, 53% of people take out more money than they put in.

And it's like, oh, right.

Okay, so I'm in that group and like other people are paying everything for.

Every one millionaire that leaves.

And we get a thousand millionaires who are leaving a month.

For every one millionaire, you need 55 people at the middle who can cover the taxes that one millionaires there takes away.

So when a thousand millionaires leave each month, we need 55, 000 people on about 30 or 40 grand who are going to replace the taxes.

No, we're not.

We obviously have tall poppy syndrome.

So does Australia, you know, is it this sort of relationship with money?

Because I, I wonder underneath it that actually I love our humbleness, I love the humor.

You know, these are Part of what it is to be British, you know, and to not talk about money and.

But I just wonder is, is this narrative that we've ended do with this sort of uncomfortableness with success?

There's.

There's two things that I've noticed about the British as someone who's from the outside, who's come in and who's lived here for 19 years.

There is a historical, cultural memory that wealthy people would landed gentry who were born into it, who didn't deserve it, and who reigned over everyone with their, you know, entitlement of, hey, I was born into this, so I'm better than you.

And that is a cultural memory that the UK has about rich people.

But that's a long time ago, but it's still kind of like the shadow of that is still being cast.

The Americans have a very different relationship with wealth.

The American dream.

People arriving with nothing, building.

If.

If they see someone who's achieved success, their assumption is, you built something, you built something of value.

I went and spoke at a conference in.

In America, and they picked me up in a Rolls Royce.

Now, as someone who lives in the uk, I was like, oh, no, right, I'm going to arrive at the conference in a Rolls Royce.

This is going to be embarrassing, right?

So, like, mortified.

And sure enough, there's all the delegates from the conference.

They're arriving and they're all there.

And I'm like, oh, you know, because as a British person, you would just.

It's embarrassing.

Twat.

Yeah, right.

So I get there and they're like, hey, Dan, can we get a selfie in front of the Rolls Royce?

And like, their whole attitude is like, that'll be me one day.

I'm gonna have a Rolls Royce.

So there's like, super pumped.

They're super, super.

The greatest, weirdest thing about America, America is all the brands they love, that symbolize success are British brands.

They love.

They love Range Rover, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, McLaren.

The cars.

We do well with that, you know.

They also love, like, Burberry and, you know, like.

And, like, British, you know, British.

Yeah, like all of that.

Like, the outsiders looking at the uk, they love Britishness, and yet we, you know, we have this weird relationship with it.

The second thing I've noticed about the uk, uk, and this is kind of strange, is that because it's a little island, a lot of people who are ambitious leave and, you know, like, historically, over the last couple of hundred years, so there was a mass exit to Australia.

My grandfather was what's called a 10 pound pom pom.

So he came back from World War II, he was actually a Palestinian, right policeman in, in Israel, Palestine.

He got back to London, he felt probably some ptsd.

He, he decided that he just didn't fit with the culture at time and he saw this opportunity to go one way to Australia, onto the other side of the world and just rock up to Australia having known no one.

And you know, there's something about that that the ambitious or the risk taker or the, you know, rebel, the misfit gets on a, gets on a plane and leaves or gets on a boat actually in his case and leaves.

So you know, that was a big trend.

A lot of people went to Australia because it was the land of opportunity and I'm just going to head off to Australia.

That wasn't that long ago ago but that probably cleaned out a ton of people who would have built business.

My grandfather actually built a travel agency business in Australia.

Well we actually counter it with tax.

The non dom thing which I was just, we just did something on that's in post Napoleon.

We went, Christ, we need to attract some people to the uk.

Let's tell them we won't tax them on anything.

That's not British.

If they come in were very.

I don't know if other countries did it first but again people don't appreciate this is an international competition.

They see it in the press here and they're like, I don't like it.

It's like, well be there paying tax somewhere else.

Be there a foreign corona.

See all countries do this.

And by the way, our system is quite aggressive and not very attractive.

There's lots that are warmer and better and more attractive.

I do do wonder to myself, and I don't know about you, when people say, well I'm going to go overseas, then I go, well where are you going to go?

Everyone's going to Dubai.

But that ain't for me.

That's not for me.

Yeah, I love to, I mean I love Dubai but not for my kids and not for my wife.

So well look, you can go to Italy and you just pay a flat rate of 200 grand, the northern Italy thing.

But doing business in Italy is tricky.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter anymore.

We all run digital businesses.

You can live in Italy and enjoy Italy and have the beauty of Italy and be like in the Alps on, on a train in an hour and you can have your clients in the US or wherever you want to, although.

And people ignore it.

But from tax purposes, if you're the person running the business.

Your business is taxable and fully in Italy because that's where you are.

Not necessarily.

For example, let's say you set up a company in Ireland, Ireland, and that is technology company.

And you're the director or the shareholder or the, or the interim executive consultant to that business and then you just pull out as much money as you need to live.

In Italy, people do this stuff.

But the truth is Ireland's very heavy on substance because the low corporation tax, you've got to have all your people and you.

In Ireland, you can't.

People do it all the time.

There's these huge bombs everywhere.

But a company is res.

Well, Apple has 5,000 people or something.

But your company is resident for tax where it's governed.

But you can, you can hire four or five people and fly in and do quarterly.

Quarterly directors.

Meaning.

Yeah, this is what people are doing.

By the way, I'm not denying what you're.

You, what you're saying is absolutely right.

Technically there's issues with it as far.

As your income is concerned.

You know, Italy says you pay 200 grand and that's it.

Yeah.

Then you've got Spain and Portugal, both of which.

Spain has a six year Beckham rule.

So you can hang out in Spain for six years and not get taxed on your overseas earnings and all of.

That sort of clients just moving to Portugal.

The golden visa's got on.

But there's still, you know, good stuff there.

Yeah, that's quite relaxed.

You know, you, they don't tax you on Bitcoin as long as you've held it for a year.

You can, you know, if you want to get adventurous, you can do Cyprus or Malta where you only have to be there for less than like 90 days or something and you're a tax resident.

Then you can live wherever else you like, same as Dubai.

You only actually have to be there for 90 days.

People don't realize there are, there are plenty of options then.

Okay, here's another one.

The other one is move to the US and get an entrepreneur's visa to go into the US US because even though you are paying high taxes, quite.

Low as individuals, but yeah, there's plenty.

Of taxes business, there's plenty of taxes there.

Just.

And for Comparison, in the UK you start paying 40% at £50,000.

You pay 40% at $700,000 in America.

Right.

So.

Or inheritance tax kicks in at 10 million as opposed to 350,000.

Yeah, 325.

So you go to the US and okay, let's say it was parity.

Let's say the taxes were the same, but you've got a bigger opportunity, you got a bigger market.

So there are plenty of entrepreneurs now moving to the US because they're saying, oh well, I'm still going to pay a lot of taxes, but I'm in America, I'm in the biggest market.

Well, actually there's some vaguely.

The Trump thing is driving some people here now, actually, because when they.

Americans, Americans and Canadians a little bit, or Canadians are now sort of looking here to do business more, move here.

If you're already very rich.

Rich.

The UK is a great place to come back to.

Yeah, right.

That's the problem.

The problem is, is that it's not a great place now to start something and scale up.

You can't get Escape Velocity here in the uk.

There's too many taxes you like.

I spoke to two young entrepreneurs who are, I met with just outside before and they said, should we stay here or go to Dubai?

And I said, the problem is you're not going to be able to accumulate any capital to get started here because as soon as you make it, they take it.

Yeah, you know, you're going to pay 40 on your income, then 20 when you spend it and then there's like all these other taxes.

So I said, you know, you guys don't have any money, so if you go to the uae, you're going to get your first hundred thousand pounds in the bank and then you can buy a house and get a deposit.

But you're not going to ever get a hundred thousand pounds here.

You'll never get Escape Velocity in London.

And the funding's dried up.

Yeah, it was so much more difficult, you know.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I mean, it's very, very sad what's going on, I guess.

Well, there'll be few of us with kids that we're sort of stuck here, as it were, I guess.

But I don't know, I just wish we know the answers to these questions.

If you, you know, you would hope in societies you've got a question, you go to people who know what they're talking about, they say, well, way to get this country to grow is to do this, that and the other.

So God knows what happens in these rooms.

I mean, they did the employment bill, they went to business and said, you're leaning on an open door.

We're listening.

Well, the business said, you're crazy.

Okay?

You're absolutely crazy.

And then they, at the end, I read it, at the end, they said, yeah, Actually we decided to ignore all of that because we heard some terrible stories.

So they then heard a couple of bad stories about big company.

I don't know what these stories were.

They didn't say like, oh well I heard some lady, you know, she was there, some awful story.

Yeah, it's going to be awful stories.

And so therefore we're going to ignore all the other information we've had and we're going to double down.

Well, the problem with the UK is the decisions already made.

The decision is already made by the bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy already tells the government, this is what you're going to pass.

These are the Cliff Notes.

You're going to get this across the line.

Your job is, you're meaning the Civil.

Service is already sort of.

Yeah, the bureaucracy tell like, you know, it came out, it came out through Dominic Cummings that he basically said in these major cabinet meetings we would receive a folder that said these are the findings, this is what you're going to pass.

These are the resolutions discuss and resolve.

And it was already written by the bureaucracy, this is what you're going to do.

So like, you know, and, and Liz Truss confirmed it as well in her experience that it was basically the bureaucracy tells the Prime Minister.

It's kind of like in school you've got the head teacher and then you got the, you know, the, the, you know, the prefects or whatever, the school captain and they basically the school captain gets to choose where the Coke or Pepsi is in the, in the machine.

Right.

But no real decisions.

The, the grown ups make the real decisions and then you're just going to go and give the speech in front of the kids and tell them, tell them what?

What's what.

So we're not having a real democracy, we're having a real bureaucracy in this country.

What we're lacking is a vision for the uk.

So here's what the current vision for the UK by default is to be the sixth Scandinavian country.

So we're drifting towards socialist, high tax, high welfare state, state type economy with low growth, which kind of like fits the Scandinavian model.

We used to be the head office of the eu.

So pre, pre Brexit, if you were an, an American company you wanted to set up in Europe, yes, London was the place or even Milton Keynes or even Birmingham or even Manchester.

But it was basically the best place to put your company if you were going to set up a European head office was the uk.

That was the most obvious place from anywhere else outside.

And then so we, we gave up that position.

Position.

So we're so we're either got three positions we could play.

We can be the sixth Scandinavian country.

We could be the USA's back office lap dog that, you know, so we follow the order, get in lockstep with the Americans, or we could become Entrepreneur Island.

We could basically say we're the Singapore of Europe.

We are the Singapore on steroids.

Yeah, you just pick up the Singaporean model or Swiss model and you say, we're gonna, we're gonna benchmark ourselves against Switzerland and we're gonna benchmark ourselves against Singapore, which is not a no tax environment.

This is not like Dubai.

Right.

This is, hey, you know, you pay taxes 20, 25%, you've got a high degree of safety.

You know, we really double down on security and safety.

And this is a entrepreneurial, highly entrepreneurial place.

We believe in entrepreneurship, we believe in growth.

We are a nation of entrepreneurs.

So it's like, let's get back to our roots and become.

And it's kind of who we are.

Yes, it's like, it's how we feel and who we are, man.

I couldn't agree more with the point you're making though, because when you lay out those three options, I think they're kind of right.

I mean, we had Martin Wolf on here and he was like, you know, I think he was saying, look, we have to work out what we're good at.

And we're very good at some things.

Life sciences you mentioned, you know, you could say creative industries and things.

And, you know, he said Singapore on Singapore on steroids was wrong for multiple of reasons.

But ultimately we're a little island on our own now.

We got to focus on what we're really good at.

And entrepreneurialism, we're actually really good at that.

There's so many strengths on this.

Time zone is a strength, universities are a strength, access to, you know, markets.

All of these kind of things have been strengths for the UK to do this.

The interesting thing about the us, the US is actually a really hard place to do business and scale up because it's so ultra competitive.

And essentially you come up with something, something, and you either scale it real fast or someone's on it and they're doing it too.

And you're in competition with people and all that sort of stuff.

Now the UK is great because the US doesn't pay attention to anything outside of the us so you can actually launch a little business in the uk, get some traction, get Your first couple of million of revenue, scale up to 20, 30 million without really being on anyone's radar and then get bought by a US company or go into the US and scale.

So think about like if, if you thought about the UK as the best place in the world to launch something and get to 100 million of value, that like, that's actually a really good fit for who we are.

It's very competitive here.

I mean, I work a lot with Aussie businesses and Australia is interesting that it's not.

It's just not as much competition as.

Not as many.

Australia is a bubble.

Yeah.

So it's like there's no real connection to the other.

The rest of the world.

Everyone on the same time zone doesn't like Asian countries are all in the same time zone.

You have to, you know, you, you fly for six hours and you're still over Australia.

Yeah.

So it's a bubble.

Yeah.

But it's an interesting point you make because I always think, you know, UK is a tough place to do business, but it is kind of, if you can, you can get it going here.

Like, we like small businesses, we're very encouraging about.

Even with all the crap recently actually, you know, only countries in the world you just.

Well, not, not only, but one of the only that you can form a company with no one.

No UK director if you want and have it, but, you know, little details, but you can get it going and you're right then competitively, if you can like take it forward.

Yeah.

They do this in music too.

For many years.

Jimmy Hen.

Yeah, yeah.

Breaking into Danger Mouse.

Ceelo even.

I went to Lenny Kravitz concert the other night.

Lenny Kravitz was sent to the uk where they toured him in the uk, getting him ready to go to the us.

So yeah, UK is a really good testing market.

And British, sorry, British companies are easily bought by UK US companies.

So like the interface is that you will easily get an American company that will happily come and buy a British company and buy it and bring it into the us.

So once you hit a certain scale, let's say you hit 20 million of value to 100 million of value, you can find a US company that'll pay cash and buy you up and take you into the us.

They love the fact that you have tried tested good quality design, good product, all of those kind of things that the Americans love about Britain.

It's like, yeah, okay, you've done something.

Let's, let's roll it out.

So like, Entrepreneur island would be a really Cool.

Kind of guiding principle.

If we were to go, they could.

Release a Grand Theft Auto version of that, couldn't they?

You know, sort of like chasing people down with stacks of stacks of money.

And, you know, pound fights.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Interesting.

You did the book Entrepreneur Revolution, you know, and you've done a new edition.

You know what's new in the book to reflect how entrepreneurship has changed.

Like, okay, we've seen that work from home happened, remote work happen.

Did you, did you nail all of it?

Yeah.

AI, AI driven.

Did you do it?

Like say.

Yeah, well, there is a bit of that.

Like if you read version one, it's like everything's going to the cloud, Everything's going to be AI enabled.

SaaS, businesses, personal brand is going to be.

Why do you see these things?

How, what do you, you lie in the bath and these things pop into your head.

I, I think, I think I tend to be in that early adopter curve and I can feel things lifting.

And when I see stuff like, because, because I operate very small businesses that are in the, like, early millions, it's like if I see something that's consistently going from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and I see that around, so I can see that that's going to extrapolate out.

So I can see, I see trends early because I work with large groups of entrepreneurs.

I guess I have the similar privilege that I work with lots of entrepreneurs.

So you do get to see patterns, isn't it?

You see what's kind of taking off.

So the first version, you predicted a lot of things, is it?

Yeah, well, yeah, you can see that there are chapters in there that talk about there, there are going to be, there's going to be more job security in a small entrepreneurial business than a large corporate.

Large corporates are not going to want to compete, they're going to downsize, they're going to make a lot of People redundant.

We're moving towards a global world rather than a localized geography world.

Everything's going to be cloud based, social media powers.

And what do you see now?

Well, it's a continuation of that trend, but we're also now going to have the, the AI in a way that no one saw coming.

We also, there's going to be a, there's going to be an iPhone moment for robots.

Right.

Robots sound really crazy, but realistically we're not that far away from having home robots.

You could see it online.

You see these robots packing your laundry or whatever.

Totally, totally.

Yeah.

You will have, you know, the, the size and form factors have got to be, you know, acceptable, but it will be very like.

It's obviously within the next 10 years that most homes are going to have a home service robot that just walks around stacking the dishwasher.

And how does that though integrate with the whole.

Is Amazon listening?

Large corporations, government access to everything.

Yeah, we're moving into.

Well, what's happening is that we've got the dynamic trying industrial age, which is office jobs and jobs for life.

Let me talk about the, probably the most important thing that's going to change the, the education system that we all went through, the schooling system, university system.

It imagines this arc and what it imagines is that you have a period of learning called school and university, then you are a junior employee and then you work a major, you're a worker and then you end up as a manager or leader, then you go into retirement.

Right.

So it kind of imagines this 40 year arc of work and you know, a 10 year, 15 year arc of learning.

And it kind of like that's the, that's the, the thing what's happening is that we're going to go through a high velocity economy or we're moving towards a high velocity economy with little loops and the loop will look like, identify a problem, research the problem, assemble a small team of people on that problem, create a solution, scale the solution, commercialize the solution, and then either take a break, mini retirement or get onto the next problem or perhaps never work again.

And essentially what we need is a schooling system that prepares us for this high velocity economy.

So high velocity careers I suppose you would call, or high velocity opportunities, loops.

If you look at anyone who has an expectation about job security for life and all those kind of things, even if it's a subconscious expectation, they're very upset about the current economy.

If you look at people who are quite comfortable with this idea of opportunity, solution, commercialization onto the next thing.

It's like, wow, this is great.

Like I love this.

And it really is just an education problem that we haven't at all educated kids for this economy.

That we're, that we're change education really at all.

What would be the main things?

I mean, I'm asking you difficult questions, you know, to waiver, you know, to, to be able to work out exactly what the education system should look like.

But what are the main skills you teach someone?

Like, like that?

Yeah.

So what you what?

Well, the main skill is identifying a problem and then essentially getting them so almost.

Critical thinking.

Almost, you know.

Yeah, critical thinking.

Being, being.

So we have to learn about how to go through these loops, these fast cycles.

So guide guiding kids through these like quickly and also mostly letting them form teams and go be self directed with coaching and mental mentoring.

You know, that's, that's kind of like the new, you know, the new model.

I mean it's, it's a very entrepreneurial model.

There, I mean it's is in.

Are there are the groups of people that may, you know, struggle with that.

I get, I mean, I guess I'm alluding to, you know, leader and follower.

Everyone, everyone's going to struggle because our whole society was built around this industrial model.

The industrial model basically says that humans have to become standardized parts.

We have to become machines, replaceable little machines.

It's called componen labor.

Component labor is like labor that can just plug into anything and like I can just move you through the machine and you know, you can be an unskilled person or a highly skilled person, but you're essentially a component.

Anything that's special or unique about you, we want to get rid of that so that you fit within any organization or local geography.

The worst words are attention seeker.

But in the current economy, being an attention seeker actually pays a lot of bills.

If you can get attention, you do very well.

Being disruptive, they'll put you on the front cover of Inc.

Magazine for being disruptive.

They'll put you in detention.

If you're disruptive in a school system.

Getting the smart kid to do your homework, that's called cheating.

It's actually called having a cfo.

Right.

So we have a school system that is teaching us that all the things that are highly productive are wrong.

And then you have to then go and forget all of that and relearn all of that when you get out.

I Could argue because university seems like mostly a waste of time because mostly just people get wasted.

But I could argue some of those skills you get out of university, sort of how to get by.

Yeah.

But the problem is there's two slightly slow now it's too slow.

You can't have three years to learn a set of skills that Chat GPT can do in 14 seconds.

You know, like we've, in the last 12 months, we've had several little illnesses in our family.

We go straight to Chat GPT.

We don't even dream of going to try and get a GP appointment, you know, we go straight and get a Chat GPT appointment, you know.

And what's weird, I got a blood test and came back with all the different results.

I dragged the PDF into to Chat GBT and it spat out all of the, you know, things that it noticed about my blood test and I, I started talking to it and asking it, literally voice talking to it and asking it about this and you know, what, what are your thoughts on this and how do I approach this?

So I'm having this great conversation.

I went for a walk around the block, which was over an hour, and the whole time I've got my headphones in, I'm talking to Chat GBT and it's telling me about, you know, this type of enzyme and this type of thing and how do you bring that level down and how do you increase this?

So we're talking, talking away, then a week later I get a 20 minute talk with a GP who says all the exact same stuff that Chat GPT said, no different.

But, you know, I had to wait two weeks.

And if we go to an AI world, then not only will the AI see your blood test, it will have an entire backlog of where you live, what other people in that area are suffering from.

Perfect memory two of everything, and including the new trends which are hard for doctors to keep up on.

It can look in Twitter and see if anything's trending as people complaining with symptoms in certain areas.

It can actually just search a database of thousands of potential things that it could be.

It can ask you questions, so it can do all of that sort of stuff.

Now, I know this sounds crazy, but why send someone to university?

Or what's the value of doing eight years of university to become a specialist doctor when we're moving to a world where a lot of LLMs are going to do a lot of that work?

I'm with you.

Look as an efficiency point, Chat gbt I use all the time.

Yeah, you know and then, you know, extrapolate that with lawyers.

I didn't.

I did an acquisition recently where we bought a company.

We had Zoom Calls.

We'd never been in the same room as the acquisition.

We had Zoom calls.

We had an AI transcription that transcribed it.

From the transcription, it automatically created a heads of terms or a letter of intent.

We then did the draft agreements and then we engaged a lawyer to kind of look, to look over it and see are we, you know, is there anything we need to do slightly different.

The lawyer came in and made a few suggestions which were great.

We went with it.

But we probably shaved 75% of the cost of the lawyers fees down.

So like the world is changing.

And then add to that robots that can physically do stuff, you know, we're going to have to learn new ways of adapting.

Adapting.

It's funny, as you say, we're not units of production in an industrial age anymore, but this cycle and then sort of the mini retirement problem solved.

Problem team to is, is, isn't this sort of there's those who will win and those who have a lot of job insecurity or something or, you know, the jobs will come and go potentially.

We don't know.

We don't know.

It could be that the 5.5 million businesses that are in the UK become twice as productive.

They want to hire someone, they can hire a low skilled person and makes them skill because they're AI enabled.

It could be that you only need someone who's passionate with a bit of agency, with a little bit of pizzazz, a little bit of intelligence to understand roughly what you're trying to achieve as a vision and the AI does the rest, you know, so it could be that, you know, humans get superpowers, low skilled people become geniuses because they're AI enabled.

It could be that 5 million businesses hire one extra person each because they can make use of that person with AI.

Like, yeah, of course, because suddenly, yeah, suddenly it would take me too long to teach and train this person.

But you know, I mean, I, I find it, you know, interesting this point too about sort of how covert changed us.

Because I feel like the effect of COVID is that people don't want to work like they did anymore.

Not just working from home, but like nobody wants to work like a dog anymore.

Yeah, it's an excellent, it was an accelerant.

Not no one wants to work like a dog, but, but no one wants to do the really repeatable stuff that, you know, like the, the, the real kind of dehumanizing stuff.

I'm seeing lots of entrepreneurs who put in the 60, 70 hour weeks, but they're doing stuff like podcasts and media and they're like creating software and they're like putting together a team.

One thing that will blow most people's mind.

It's becoming really common to see people with multiple businesses.

So it used to be unheard of.

Like Richard Branson had multiple businesses.

Like that was the only person who had multiple businesses.

Very, very rare.

Even Steve Jobs had like at one point Pixar and Apple and you know, like he was involved in two things.

But it is now really common to see entrepreneurial people with like 4, 5, 6, 7.

That's not AI doing that.

Well, AI helps with that because it really.

It's been like that a little while, hasn't it?

I feel slightly before this AI pandemic.

Yeah, yeah, post pandemic, I'm seeing people like, I'm seeing like take Stephen Barlett, you know, he's involved in half a dozen different businesses and like it's the AI that allows you to stay on top of it, to get things done, to provide continuity across this sort of stuff.

Like it's going to be really interesting that people who are on the curve of this, that they're going to have plural careers, multiple projects, all this sort of stuff.

Here's what's dangerous.

What's dangerous is that technology creates wealth inequality.

So essentially, if two people are running a marathon race and one person gets a bicycle, you know, that person finishes first every single time.

If one person gets a car and what someone's riding, someone's running a marathon race, that person crosses the finishing line in no time with air conditioning, doesn't even break a sweat.

So what we're now seeing is, we're seeing a bifurcation of society where you will have entrepreneurial people embracing technology, embracing AI, building a brand online, doing all that sort of of stuff, these people will be able to make a million a month while people are struggling to make 50 grand a year, you know, so like we're going to see this bifurcation of society and then it drives.

This resentment and then it drives this sort of, you know, politics of envy and, you know.

Yeah, sort of.

But rich people don't care, they just move.

Yeah, yeah, they just leave.

Well, I mean, and it's so anecdotal, but you know, a lot of the people who, who are from most.

This is very anecdotal from my life.

The people who have the biggest problem with it, the people who are more lazy you know, it's, it's not the people putting in the hours, it's the p.

It's my friends who, I'm like, you know, they complain.

I'm like, mate, you know, you really work very hard, you know, and you're very annoyed about everyone else.

But that's, isn't that the way human nature works?

Isn't it?

You're sort of jealous of what you're fault from, you know.

Yeah.

And everyone has upward, everyone looks up.

Like, you know, most people who are frustrated with this stuff, they don't look down, they just look up.

Who's got it better than I do?

Who's, who's more successful?

Yeah, I mean it'll be interesting.

We will see just a bit of a bifurcation.

We'll see, see those two things happening.

I mean in the same way of the bifurcation, you know, you've talked about strategies for landing the big ticket projects and attracting the right clients.

The waiting list paradox.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who want to attract these high value clients?

I guess instead of just crappy.

Yeah, high value clients is a really important thing.

A lot of people when they think, think of a business, they think of cheap like cupcakes or selling pizzas or.

I was in.

Imagine a business like.

Yeah, if you say to most people, you know, imagine a business, they think of selling, you know, some trinket, some or something that's five pounds, ten pounds.

Because that's most of the business we interact with coffee and juices and cupcakes and like beauty products and all this kind of stuff.

But the vast majority of the economy is, is big ticket items and it's business to business sales, it's, and it's consulting services and you know, professional service and all that sort of stuff and bigger sales and selling to businesses, especially the successful small businesses do that.

So yeah, most businesses that we work with, we try and get them to go for the upper part of the market.

There's some new data that we've seen that says the top 10% of any audience has 60% of the spending power and 40% of the spending power is split between 90% of the people who, who might follow you.

So you go top 10% and you end up with a more opportunity.

So positioning businesses for that top 10%.

We use a number of ways to build campaigns for this.

So anything that essentially can segment your audience like a, like a quiz, like an assessment, like a waiting list with questions that help with segmentation.

So we're, we're we're really big on this idea that collect more data, you'll make more sales.

Right.

And the reason you collect more data is so you can have.

Have visibility as to.

Are you the right type of customer who's got the right budget?

Yeah, yeah, you're.

The customer is going to waste me 90 of my time or the one who's just going to come in and buy it.

Totally.

Right.

Because wouldn't it be great if you can sell to one customer who spends 20 grand and has the same expectations as someone spending 2 grand who's freaking out about every little thing?

We see it, I mean, even in professional, in professional services, a bit easier.

You've got a lot of data on them, but you definitely see it.

Yeah, more data, better sales.

Some of the clients who just love to just, you know, complain.

I don't know.

I don't know.

You know, they're exhausting.

Well, we see, we see this with 8,000 customers at Score App.

Our 8,000 customers generate an average of 350,000 warm leads.

They're mostly professional service providers and they generate 350,000 warm leads a month.

So we actually can see them doing segmentation in real time.

Well, they're like accountants.

Professional service.

Yeah, accountants, lawyers, coaches, consultants.

I'm surprised they do that because it feels sort of a bit unprofessional, a bit sort of opposite.

Opposite.

If I went to your website and it said, are you considering expanding international.

Answer these 40 questions to find out whether it would be a good idea or not.

Oh, that's a good, interesting way of phrasing it.

Like free advice almost.

You know, am I doing the right thing?

Yeah, it's like, take it, take a, take an assessment.

Yeah, well, we, we do a lot of them that are red light, yellow light, green light.

So it gives you an immediate response.

So should you hire someone in a foreign jurisdiction, should you relocate your head office to Ireland?

You, you mentioned before, there are issues most people don't realize.

So should you relocate your business, Are you willing to do this?

Are you open to do this?

Are you happy to comply with this?

And then it's like, oh, I better talk to them because it sounds like there's a bunch of stuff I have.

I, Yeah, I mean, I've been a fan of that for ages.

We've got quick, loads of quick guides on the first page of Google because I'm just like, just give it away.

So turn your quick guides into quizzes and scorecards so that rather than people having to read the guide, they just answer Questions and then it tells them the answer.

And part of the answer is come to us and we'll set it up for you.

Great advice.

I mean, of all these things that you, you've done in your life, what's been the biggest failure?

What did it teach you?

I've had non stop failures.

You know, like, just ask the wife.

Yeah, exactly.

Entrepreneurship is just loads of failures.

After you get punched in the face over and over and over again, it's like asking, you know, a martial artist.

It's like, oh, you know, have you ever been punched in the face?

It's like all the time.

That's, that's the job.

So, you know, we've had campaigns that fail.

We've had, you know, launches that have failed.

We've, you know, I've had business partnerships that have, that have failed.

You know, you just have to fail forward.

It's no, there's no particularly gleaming failure that jumps to mind.

I guess you're almost saying it like you say there's too many of them, like they're just part of pile up.

And, and we just pivot with them.

So, you know, like prior to the pandemic, we had seven offices around the world in cities or you know, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore.

And then in the pandemic, we had to just take the whole business digital.

We put everyone on furlough, then one by one we brought back our team.

We realized that the world was not going to be geographical so we had to shut down all of these offices and then we relaunched as a digital business and now we're crushing it.

Yeah.

So which one was that?

The score?

That was the entrepreneur accelerator.

Right, right.

Dent.

Yeah.

And you know, I've, I've semi launched things where we didn't get a good result, but I, yeah, it's like asking a scientist, oh, tell me about the failures.

It's like, well, that's science.

You know, you get data that this.

Is, I'm there to prove it wrong.

The position of science is that nothing's correct.

Entrepreneurship is the same.

I love, like if I get data that says this isn't going to fly, happy days.

It's something I don't have to do.

It's, you know, like, so I'm really big on the idea that you should embrace the data that says this is a shit idea and just kill it.

You talk a lot about this thing 711 4.

What's 711 4?

7114 is how humans bond.

So we, we bond Once we've spent 7 hours, 11 interactions for platforms so think about it like a minimum effective dose for us being friends, right?

So in order for you and I to hang out and remember each other and, and all of that, we.

So on this, we've probably spent a couple of hours together.

It's very likely because we only spend two hours together that in a month, two months, three months, we just completely forget that each other exists.

Right.

That's how our human brain brains work.

But if we continued past two hours, I'm devastated as well.

If we continued past two hours and we got the seven hours of hanging out, let's say we caught up again a couple of times, then it's highly likely if we hit the seven hour mark that we'll stay friends, we'll keep in touch.

I will immediately put a name and a face to like, if I see you, I know who it is and everything about you.

Right?

So all of that starts to become relevant at about the 7 hour mark or 11 interactions.

If we met 11 times, that would happen happen as well.

Google had some research called Zero Moments of Truth and it says 11 little interactions are required for you to remember a brand or for you to remember a website.

So it says if you follow someone on LinkedIn and you see a few of their posts, very forgettable.

But by the time you see 11 of their posts, you, you actually remember them and you remember what they do.

So name, you know, face and something about them.

Is it about 11 interactions?

So what's interesting about the digital environment is that the human brain doesn't know the difference between digital and analog.

So If I watch 10 podcasts, sorry, seven hours worth of podcasts.

So I bet here's the thing, you've probably got some podcast watches audience who have watched several of your podcasts clocked up seven hours with you by just listening and watching podcasts.

And then as a result of that, they've formed what's called a parasocial relationship with you.

And that means they know you, but you don't know them.

It's a one sided relationship.

So if they were to bump into you on the street, they're like, hey, I watch your podcast and there's kind of this weird fame moment.

And basically building a personal brand requires 711 for ing enough people that you have a critical mass of people who know you like you, trust you, they know who you are, they know what you do.

They can send opportunities your way, they can defend you or endorse force you.

There's a feeling of knowing, no.

Yeah.

Even though we struggle to know ourselves, people feel that they know you, you know, and you.

It's quite interesting.

You've just done this podcast that's blowing up.

You said, with Mr.

Gary Stevenson on Darva CFO.

Why were you asked to do it?

Because Stephen Bartlett brought Gary onto the show, but he felt that Gary had a lot of big, provocative ideas, but no one was challenging him on those ideas.

So Stephen said, I think this would be better as a discussion so that someone can either discuss or challenge, he said, because when he watched the.

The Gary on podcast, he was saying Gary would just say big, provocative things without too.

Too many answers.

Yeah.

So I think Stephen basically thought maybe a better format would be this debate format.

But it sound like it got heated.

It got it.

Yeah.

It got.

It got heated.

Yeah.

You need a cigarette and a whiskey after watching it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you feel at the end of it there was a positive.

You know, I mean, I don't think.

It'Ll change anyone's mind if you.

If you came in with Team Gary, you're gonna.

You're gonna be leaving Team Gary and same with me.

But what it does do is it helps you to broaden your perspective in terms of you're going to hear an opposing point of view, and at le.

At the very least, you're going to have a better understanding of what the opposite view would be.

So someone who's in an entrepreneurial bubble, like myself, you're going to hear someone who's very upset, very emotional, really raising the volume on people's structure, struggles.

Now, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about people's struggles.

I just think about business and opportunities all the time.

I'm in a positivity bubble.

Like, I'm constant.

Like, if you said, oh, you know, what do you think about all the time?

It's like, opportunities and scale and hiring and like, all that.

That's my bubble.

So Gary's like, really raising the volume on.

I can't put on the heating because I can't afford to heat the house.

You know, I'm struggling.

I need more support from the government.

I.

You know, I wish rich people were taxed more, and I wish the government did more for me.

Me.

Right.

So that's not, like, a view that I hear very often.

There's no one in my circle who talks that way, so.

So by listening to Gary, at least, I'm at least exposing myself to an alternative view.

And then Gary's followers might hear an entrepreneur who's basically saying, if you tax me too much, I just leave and you'll have nothing.

Yeah.

Because that's Gary's solution.

Put tax up.

Yeah.

And.

And it's.

And it's.

For me, it's the same point I would make.

It's not a national game, it's an international.

Yeah.

It's internationally competitive.

Stop.

Stop making it difficult here.

Because we don't, you know.

You know.

Yeah.

It's like if the British Premier League said, oh, we're going to put a cap on how much we pay footballers.

You know, you can only pay 100 grand a year for footballers.

Okay.

But the best footballers won't come here.

That's just it.

Right.

Like it's an international game now.

So you will not have professional footballers who are the best come and play in the Premier League.

Any great advice you've been given that you would share?

Loads.

That's why I write books.

Six books worth.

Now, what do you want advice on?

Well, what's the best advice you think you've been given?

A tough question for entrepreneurship.

Let's go there.

The best advice is this business is a balance of demand and supply, right?

So economics 101, you've essentially got the supply of something.

As the supply goes up, the price goes down.

So if we had bananas and we have a hundred bananas, if we had 200 bananas, it would drive the price down.

If we had 500 bananas, it would drive the price down even further because you got to sell the bananas or they go off and then there's demand.

If we had 100 bananas and 500 people wanting bananas, then the price is going up.

So people forget this fundamental basics of business, that demand and supply tensions at the price.

If there's no tension, there's no profit, there's no price rise.

So airplanes should be super profitable, but they're not because there's no demand and supply tension.

There's always a seat available if you want to fly.

Rolexes are a stupid business business because we don't even need a watch anymore.

But because Rolex are really good at constraining supply, apparently you can't order one.

You can't even.

You got to wait three months, six months, right?

So they've got to dance.

They do the whole game.

So Rolex understands demand and supply tension creates profit.

They've got like 70, 80 margins.

So we.

We forget that demand and supply tension is everything.

You take an ice cream truck, if that ice cream truck goes into a park and opens its door and people come up one at a time, they'll ask for a discount.

If you close the door and ask people to line up because we're opening soon and we're going to sell out.

No one asks for a discount because they can see there's a lineup.

So the best advice I've got is most entrepreneurs view their business through the lens of supply side.

They think about themselves as a supplier of something and they have to start thinking about themselves as the manufacturer of demand that you have to get good at manufacturing the demand for what you do.

And you have to constrain supply and ramp up demand.

Someone has to miss out.

Right.

So you actually have to have 30 clients you could take on and there's 60 people who want those 30 spots and 30 people miss out.

And if you can build a business around demand and supply tension, then you actually get a very, very, very profitable business that grows.

And most, most people don't think about business in those terms.

Saying no is powerful.

Yeah.

And you've got to, you've got to politely decline and say I'm really sorry we don't have availability to take you.

On as that drives people mad.

Oh, they want it so bad.

It's like oh, right.

As a, as a, as a guy, you know that as soon as you get a girlfriend all the other girls come out of the woodwork.

Right?

Yeah.

People want what they can't have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a good one.

And then the other one is more data, More sales or better sales.

Collect more data, run scorecards and assessments, have waiting lists, have discussion groups, collect the data.

If you collect more data you will make more sales.

So we're just going to do a quick fire round, ask you a few personal questions.

Should be easy and punchy.

Descuring some music.

What was Your first job?

McDonald's.

Working at McDonald's.

I loved it.

Yeah.

Did you learn about service culture?

Oh, I learned about service and production of food and like systems.

Like I, I was 14 and 14 and nine months running a multi million dollar kitchen.

Yeah.

I, one of our staff here is amazing.

I said why are you so good at service?

She said McDonald's and I burst out laughing.

She's like oh really Andy?

I work there.

When I was 16 it changed us.

Our still remember the six steps of service.

So like it's all, it's all in.

There because they had to get the food in two minutes or something.

They train, smile, greet the customer, take the order suggestive sell or sell up, assemble the order, present the order, ask for repeat business.

So like it's still in there because I was trained on it.

So, so Often.

What was your worst job?

Worst job was a bar job that I had where the guy had hated me, My manager hated me because I'd worked at McDonald's.

It's the hair.

It's the hair, isn't it?

It's that.

That beautiful, wavy hair.

I'd worked at McDonald's and I had this trained into me.

If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean.

So I would just walk around cleaning stuff and doing stuff.

And he said, are you on speed?

Are you on drugs?

And anyway, he hated the fact that I was so positive and so hardworking and I made him look bad, so.

So he gave me just the worst jobs.

Clean the drains out.

Clean the gutters out.

Clean under the fridge.

Right.

Total asshole.

And then he fired me after getting me to bleach all the stuff that needed bleaching.

That was disgusting.

At the end of that shift, he then fired me.

Wow.

Favorite subject at school.

Film and television.

I didn't get to do that at school.

I know.

It was an actual real subject.

I can't believe it.

But it was amazing.

That's not fair.

That doesn't care.

That's some Australian madness.

Some Australia.

We also had surfing as a subject.

What are you, a Sydney Melbourne boy?

I grew up on the Sunshine coast.

Oh, okay.

A beachside community.

Very nice.

What's your special skill?

Special skill is enrolling talented people and somehow getting amazing talented people to come and join my team.

I actually have zero skills.

I have.

I only have a driver's license.

That's my only qualification in life.

I can't code.

I can't edit.

I can't.

Can't really do much.