In this episode Bob welcomes James Church, an expert in pitching and business development. James is the founder of a leading pitch agency in the UK, specializing in helping entrepreneurs refine their pitches and secure investment.

Together, they dive into the world of pitching, offering valuable insights and strategies for founders seeking to attract investors. From structuring a pitch to engaging both the head and the heart, James shares his expertise and guides listeners on the path to becoming pitch-ready.

Join us as we explore the art of persuasion and learn how to leave a lasting impression in the competitive world of entrepreneurship.

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Welcome to Amplify. The personal brand entrepreneur show. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with James Church. The pitch is the key to opening the door of the safe. It's not the tool to get you says to the capital. The pitch is just the thing that initially opens the door. And if you can spend 3 to 5 minutes giving a top level pitch that covers all of the key elements they're looking forward to tick off their checklist of, like, there's enough here for me to warrant my time to invest my time in finding out more you're never really pitching for their capital in that moment. You're you're pitching for their time. And if they're willing to invest their time in finding out more after that pitch, the pitch has done its job.

Hi there and welcome back to the personal brand business show. My name is Bob Gentlemen. Every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing and monetizing your expertise, intentionally growing a unique personal brand and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new, then while you still have your device on your hand, take a second to subscribe, That way, you won't miss a single episode. But if you're a regular listener or viewer, then consider sharing this show with just one person It's the very best way you can help to show grow and help me reach more people. And if you are watching on YouTube, again, hello. You are the best while you're feeling good about me because I said that, hit subscribe and also give the video a thumbs up and consider a comment. Even before you've seen a thing, just telling everyone on YouTube show is awesome because the YouTube algorithm needs that kind of cuddling. So money makes the world go around. And if you have big expansion plans or your ideas take a lot of money to build, you might well need some money from someone else. Today on the show, I'm talking to James Church about getting pitch ready. And if I know one thing to be true about business, whether you're looking for investment or not, life's a pitch. So James, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me through to through speed. So I joke about life being a pitch, but honestly, I think at every stage of business, you have to persuade other people that what you have and what you bring to the market is a good idea. Whether you want customers or you want people to invest in your business. And this is really your area of specialism, and we're gonna have a lot of fun with this today. But for the listener who's maybe meeting you for the first time, could you maybe tell us a little bit about who you are, where you are, and the kind of work you do.

So forty times more likely to receive investment. That is not insignificant. I was reading earlier that apparently, it's something like 1% of people who attempt to get investment actually achieve it. So if you can increase that to a 40% likelihood, that's really, really significant.

Usually, yeah, massively significant. It's tough. Right? It's tough to tough to raise the investment that that you're looking for. There's a lot of competition out there, more competition than ever, and you gotta be able to through the noise, you've gotta be able to pitch in a way that that gets those investors to sit up, take notice. And then and I ultimately want to close the deal with you. It's it does go beyond the pitch. We used to boast that we got 10 times better as a success rate. We had a 10 x success rate, and that was when we focused just on pitching. We were just a pitching and see. And then we realized that our clients were getting great responses from their pitch. They were getting into meetings with investors, but still we didn't feel enough of them were closing the deal. We looked into why that was, and that led to the full kind of strategy that we implement now, which is not just the pitch, but also so the financial projections, the business case having the whole narrative from initial conversation and initial pitch all the way through to the due diligence and closing around. And if you can communicate your your business in in the right way. Every step of that funding journey, you're you're massively going to increase your your chances.

So One question I have, I guess, is one of the issues with startup businesses before they've had any investments is they typically don't have any money. And I'm wondering at what point are you typically getting involved in a business because of you you can't work for no money. So what does that look like? Or -- Yeah. -- where do you get involved? Yeah. So, obviously, the the startup ecosystem is extremely

broad, and and there are startups out there with no money at all. And that's fine. That's what the book is for. That's what our free downloads. Our free resources are for. We want to support the full you know, the whole ecosystem, any founder who's looking to seek investment. And there's loads of free resources and advice and support out there that that we've created to support those founders. Typically speaking, we're working with founders that that do have some capital to spend. They've they've perhaps left a corporate role saves up a bit of a startup budget, and they've kind of launched a business that's probably solving a problem. They they identified in that corporate role. or they're a serial entrepreneur, then perhaps already have a consultancy business. They've built a they they've built some technology within their business to to improve their own efficiencies or or something like that and they're spinning that out as its own kind of product that they could sell to the to the market or or or similar similar kind of ideas to that. So there so there tend to be people in terms of our consulting services that that are that that have some capital to invest in in raising the money that they need. But we also have kind of lower cost programs where you can join us for 12 week sprint to to get yourself investment ready. We do some mentoring services, which are which are, you know, a different price point to our full kind of done for you consulting. So we try to we try to offer a number of different options from free advice and support all the way up to to done for you consulting to to support founders with various different appetites and and budgets.

So Something I'm I'm wondering about. I'm I have lots of questions. I think the the first one, I guess, is from an investor's perspective, what kind of ROI do they expect? Because not all ideas have got the same potential. You can have an idea that you think, yes, this makes perfect perfect logical sense. I can see how this can turn into a business, but I can't see how this can turn into necessarily a multimillion pound It might be too niche. Are there any ideas that you come across? This is an amazing idea. We know it's going to work. We know it's unique, but it's not big enough to really

become investable. Is is that a real problem, or is that just in my mind? That that happens all all the time. And You're then in that chicken and egg situation as a founder of you know, I need to get some capsules to get this off the ground. but I'm probably not in a position where I'm attractive enough to an investor. So I need to look at alternative sources of of funding and and, you know, debt may not be an option because you don't have any revenues to pay back that that that debt. So then it kind of, you know, it only really leaves you to to bootstrapping, and and it probably means that You know? If you can't get it off the ground in some other way without a huge initial capital expenditure and the market's quite small, it's probably not particularly viable business, and perhaps you need to look at different ways of solving that problem that that you can get off the ground in a boot strapped manner if it's too small a niche. Or you need to look at repositioning this concept to a larger more scalable opportunity into a different market or a number of different markets could this initial niche niche project just be the kind of route to market, the the kind of proof of concept And then once you've established it in that niche, are there a number of other sectors and and markets and verticals in which you could expand into using the same technology but in a slightly different way, and then maybe that creates a more scalable and investable opportunity. But but in terms of ROI, It really does depend on sector and these sorts of investors you're looking to looking for. So there's no straight answer to this. But just to give some examples, if you're a high growth tech company, than an angel investor, a high net worth individual investing in an early stage round might be looking for, ultimately, a 10 to 30 times return on their investment. knowing that about 80% of their portfolio will fail, and and the 10% that succeed will deliver them all to all the returns and pay the money lost. If you were talking to a VC firm, a venture capital firm in the tech space, they might be looking for sort of 50 to a hundred times return on their investment. They take much bigger risks. They want much higher scale, but they only have about 1% of their portfolio succeed. So they have to pay back 99% of the losses from one that will make that turn so that one shining star in their portfolio pays back all of their losses. If you then switch that to something like a consultancy or a restaurant business, maybe a 5 x return would be really well received by investors in that sector. So it's all about understanding your own niche, what investors expect in your niche, and your stage of development, and what they expect if they're investing in sort of an early stage or or a later stage kind of round. So there's no straight answer, but but you should be able to kind of get to talking to some investors and and figure out what's what's needed in in your niche.

So I guess as somebody who is paying attention to pitches on a regular basis, I'm curious to know from you what are the most common pitfalls or failures to execute that you experience? And I guess this is true of people who are pitching for investment. But if somebody has tuned in to the pitch, also in a more broad context, maybe failing to really bring your point across. What are the most common, yeah, pitfalls that you see?

I think structure, the structure of the narrative is a is an area that a lot of founders struggle. They they jump. They they jump across different kind of sections. There's not that's not clear kind of narrative. So so we use a structure that initially kind of by sells in the the heart, it kinda gets the emotional across, and then we kinda sell in the logical kind of strategic stuff in the in the business. And and we kind of use this this structure that kind of engages emotionally first, gets their buy into the vision, and then and then starts to think more strategically about the business. So you're speaking to the head and the heart and and I think a lot of founders kinda mix those messages up in the business in in the pitch, and your your mind can't almost keep up, and it's kind of sort of one minute. It's like it's emotional, and now we're into some logic and and then I'm a bit. You know? It it does just doesn't create such a nice flow to the to the content. I think the the other thing is the content itself, like writing too much, not being articulate enough. I think we're we're always told at school that everything should have a beginning middle and end. when we when we talk to right. And when it comes to articular pitch content, you cut out the middle. You just need the beginning in the end. You need you need a headline. You need a headline that's not like call it the setup and score format, and and you kind of need a headline in your pitch. There isn't the solution or our problem. The problem we're solving on there. But that that headline needs to be an engaging almost like the conclusion of what you want the the reader, the audience to come to when you're when you're pitching that concepts. So instead of key milestones, it might be proof of concept launch and proof of concept achieved and and ready to launch. first customers adopted and ready to scale, not key milestone. So I can go through every slide of the pitch and just read the headlines, and I should get a summary of what you're trying to tell me. So your headline's the conclusion, and then you just have a few short, snappy points that that get across, like, that backup, that statement. cut out in the middle. You just have the end and the and the beginning. And so they're they're probably the the 2 biggest, and and then just clarity. Just just refine not spending the time refining the content for clarity and making sure you're getting rid of anything that's unnecessary you got the right structure, you got the right content, you've got clarity, and then finally, sort of the design, really. The design has a huge impact and and not enough people are really, really investing enough in in the the way their pitch looks where slides look when they deliver that pitch? Because, ultimately, you wanna look like this kind of successful unicorn business that you're promising to become. if it looks uninspiring, if it looks it looks a little bit run of the mill, then the initial reaction from the investor within 4 seconds is, oh, this looks a bit in half. I suppose I better give it a go, and and they read through it, and you're trying to convince them from that negative perception. Whereas if their initial reaction is what this looks awesome, you've already got them in a positive mindset, and and they're gonna absorb your content in a very different way. So psychologically, the design can have a huge huge impacts on the way on the way that your message is perceived. So, yeah, they're probably the Four areas that I see founders struggle with when it comes to pitching.

I I think the brand element is so easy to underestimate because people think it's a great idea. It's a great product. The logic is flawless. But if the brand isn't there, then people have to decide, here's the decision people are making. My reaction has been positive. So now I'm going to have to find a reason to exclude you. Or has has my reaction been negative at which point I have to find a reason to include you? Which one do you want to be? You want to be the one where people are gonna have to find a reason to not include you. And if you get the branding and the positioning right, your odds of success are much much higher. I guess I'm kinda curious. And I think a lot of people probably wonder the same. Let's imagine I've got a prototype prod a product. it's fairly unique in the market. It's solving an obvious problem. I maybe need £510,000,000 to really help with the marketing budget. How long should I expect to be pitching on average? What I mean by that is in a pit I'm in I'm in a pitch. I'm in a room now. Oh, okay. -- virtually. Yep. The clock has started. How long would that pitch normally last?

Again, I wish I could give you you a straight answer on this one, but it will really depend on on the style of the investor you're you're pitching to or the relationship you have with them. So sometimes you might be invited in for a more formal pitch event, and and you're presenting to a room of decision makers in that fund. And, hopefully, before then, you have prequalified what that meeting entails. How long have I got to pitch? How long is the q and a? What happens next so you know what you're getting yourself into, and you can prepare for those time slots. I like to when when you're talking more to individual angels and high net worth individuals, and perhaps it's less formalized than a fun, I would always try and take the initiative as a founder and do what you think you're most comfortable with. So if you've got a 5 minute script or a 3 minute script that you can pitch, and you you're really comfortable with with that and then taking q and a because you feel it builds a better rapport. then if you've got a half hour meeting books with an investor, I'd be setting an upfront contract and say, right, the way I tend to run-in these meetings, even if it's your first one. Right? way I tend to run these these meetings is give you an initial sort of 5 minute pitch with some slides, then open it up to some q and a. And then at the end of the we can decide whether or not there's a there's a interest here, and and we can book next steps. Is is that okay with you? And then they'll say yes or they'll say Well, to be honest, I'd rather you just send me your pitch prior to the meeting. I'll read through it, and we'll just have a chat. and that's how I prefer to make. I I rather I'd rather get to know you. I don't want you hidden behind some slides and a script. Send me the details. Send me the full pitch. We'll then have a conversation in that in that call, and then we'll make a decision from there. And you can decide whether that's okay for you or not. So it's about just being open and understanding. But generally speaking, you don't wanna be pitching for more than 5 minutes if can do it in 3 great, the more time you've got for questions afterwards. I talk about it like the like the pitch is the key to opening the door of the safe, it's not the tool that gets you access to the capital. The pitch is just the thing that initially opens the door. And if you can spend 3 to 5 minutes giving a top level pitch covers all the key elements they're looking for to tick off their checklist of, like, there's enough here for me to warrant my time to invest my time in finding out more. So you're never really pitching for their capital in that moment. You're you're pitching for their time. And if they're willing to invest their time in finding out more after that pitch, the pictures done its job. So it's just about opening the door, giving them enough information to go. I can drill into that in a in a further conversation. They've got something here. They've they've thought through the strategy. They've thought through the concept. Let's talk through the value proposition. There's enough here to warrant my time investing in in finding out more about this before I decide to invest my capital. So, yeah, that's the general rule.

And one of the things I love about your business is how tight you've niched. Because in many respects, if you look through the glasses of somebody who maybe doesn't really know the industry, you could be accused of just being another creative agency. And I think a lot of people would traditionally go to a creative agency and have the kind of work that you do done, but it's done at huge risk. Because have they done it before? Do they know what works? What doesn't work? When you really niche in a tight, you deliver one solution to one person additionally. And this is one of the things that I know looking around your website is you build a team of people who are designed to deliver exactly what your customer needs. if I came to you as a bakery, you would not be able to help me. And I would be showing the door quite quickly. But unless I was looking for investment, I guess, but you're not going to work with anybody other than the ones in your niche. Yeah. And when you visit, the website, what that allows you to do is build a resource that speaks for you. There's so many resources on your website that most people would find completely useless. But your ideal customer, It's a gold mine. There's so many things on your website that would be attractive to only your potential customers. And I think anybody even if even if you're listening or watching and you're thinking, this interview is not relevant to me. It's relevant to you. Go and look at James's website.

and understand how well this is put together for your customers and your customers only. It's a master class in tight niching. Yeah. I mean, it's probably one of the best decisions we made was was to niche. We started life as a full service, creative agency. We were a brand communications agent see. And we we did radio ads. We did some TV ads. We did brochures and websites and all of this stuff just to get work through the door And my cofounder is very much the lead on brand. He he's he's the the expert around branding. And we spotted this opportunity. We we had some some advisers who are also investors. We had some clients that were also startups. You said, can you help me with your pitch? we were a young agency needed some work and said, yeah. Of course, we can. We've seen dragons. Then how hard could it be. Right? So we we put that pitch together, and we figured out what needs to go in it. They've got some great success and then our advisers saw the work. And we're like, if you like, this isn't outstanding compared to what we get. our inbox every day as angel investors. Like, if you can package this up in some way, you could have a really nice little pop projects or products here that you could you could offer. we kind of explored that. We created a secondary website. We explored it as its as a nation, and that led to these insights. It led to the book. And then we took the decision that, actually, we were making such headway in that part of that niche versus trying to spread ourselves so thinly with with being a sort of full service creative agency that it made sense for us to really niche in on that and just go all in, and we compute we sort of did that pivot then of of kind of making that our our primary primary objective, and and it's you know, we we saw instant results from from that because of the tight communication you can create. We understood our customers once and needs problems so much better, and we could communicate them so much better without worrying that we were turning away people that might know interest. So so, yeah, absolutely. It sounds it feels scary because it feels like you're reducing your scope to win work. but actually increases your scope's framework because you very quickly become the go to expert. Within 6 months, we do a recognized by a number of key part key kind of businesses and and brands in the industry as the UK's leading pitch agency. That happened within that people are calling us that. We're like, right. We're having that. That's going on the website. But but it didn't take long because we'd niched so much, and then it wasn't really anyone else doing what we were doing, so he had to be the UK's leading pitch agents in here at the time because there was we didn't have much competition. We we do now. But that we didn't lend. So, yeah, it it really, really helps. I think when you niche like that, yeah, there will always be competition. You might get to dance to yourself for a while, but it won't take long. But I think

even with competition, there are so many startups all the time. so many people looking for for investment, that there's plenty opportunity. And I think This is, I guess, where the personal branding element starts to come into it. That it's all very well-being known as UK's leading agency. But if you yourself are known as one of the UK's leading experts because you're willing to invest of yourself and take personal risks coming on a podcast, writing a book. These aren't for the faint hearted a lot of the time. What you find is most of the time, your competitors aren't willing to make themselves uncomfortable to that degree. And it's that discomfort that actually is at the competitive advantage a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. I think I mean, the personal brand

element that we sort of layered in probably sort of 18 months, 2 years after we decided to niche this space was an absolute game changer. I think after writing the book, which kind of was the launch of the personal brand, really, we saw revenue grow about 300 percent in the 12 months that followed as a as a result of of having that personal brand associated with the with the business. Because people buy from people. They don't buy from brands. You look at I don't know, Virgin, and you compare the number of Twitter followers Richard Branson has versus Virgin or or Elon Musk versus SpaceX. Like, people buy from people. They wanna follow individuals with faces, not not necessary logos. So you've got 3 tiers of brand of new. You've got the the the business brand, the product, brand and the personal brand, and and every or most successful businesses will have the personal brand as as part of that and and it absolutely was the catalyst for for us to to go to level up to the next to the next level of our development for sure.

And in your business, one of the questions I'm always curious to ask is how opportunity actually finds you in a very practical sense because In most businesses, it's gonna be one of four routes. It's gonna come through outbound sales activity, ads content and content marketing, or relationships. How does that typically look in your business, I guess, now? And how does that contrast perhaps to how it used to be? Yeah. So we currently use all of those,

but we started I think I think we started when most consultants and agents see starting that's relationships, and it was referral partnerships. And there was a lot of getting to know key players in the industry and and showcasing our values. we we developed relationships with partners like Seed Legals And Crowd Cube And CEDERS, who have big names in the industry and and and did work with exactly the same customers, but with very different products, some will crowd funding platforms. Others are legal platforms, but they will do it for start up seeking funding. And and we were the sort of the missing piece to that to the to the core. You know, you've got 3 things you need. You need someone to do your legal, someone to to do your pitch, and and someone to get you and we were kind of the missing piece. So we kind of slotted in there really nicely. And and as we built those relationships with them, shared content with them, shared our results with them. We became their trusted partners, and they started sending clients our way. We were doing partnership events with them. So we did put on talks and events for their audience and vice versa. So we do kind of lead swapping and then that kind of thing. And and that just built and then really kick started up our business. So it's very much partnerships and relationships to begin with. The next thing we did was then go right. We need inbound. We we can't we can't sustain can't grow this business off partnerships alone. So we've got a bit more capital now because we've got this this business motoring, so we're gonna invest in in inbound. And that was that's through Facebook ads that that don't sell our service. It's about what we see ourselves as to friend the allies to founders. We're we're a guide. We're a supporter. So we don't wanna go straight in with a hard sell. Our Facebook ads are basically, if you're looking throughout his capsule, here's a here's a free copy of a of a best selling book, and all you have to do is complete this this short quiz. that's going to give you a a a a report on your investment readiness. So you get this bundle of value in return for clicking this ad. And then from there, we have a sophisticated funnel that takes them, nurtures them, and and turns those leads into into sales. So that's that's very much about ads, but ads add value as opposed to selling a product. Yeah. We do plenty of we do we've just started with some outbound, which is which is a new thing for us. So, yeah, we we pretty much use a lot all of those things. But, yeah, the ads and partnerships are probably the 2 key. drivers for our for our growth.

And you have your own podcast as well. I I think that's not that's not your baby, is it? That's your your your colleagues, baby. But as an organization, you have the podcast as well.

Yeah. So we have a we have a podcast the art and communication podcast, which is more around brand and how to how to develop kind of brand stories and and and we're looking at kind of leading communicators in their in their fields. So that's an extension of our vision, which is you know, to see we want to see great ideas and innovations flourish, and we get frustrated when we see great ideas fail because of poor communication. They're there, and that's our bit in our mission. And then it sets an extension of that that that expresses it in a different way than just talking about investment all the while. kinda talks more broadly around the principles of communication and and brand.

And we we've mentioned the book a few times. And whenever I meet somebody who's written a book, I'm always curious to understand a little bit about what that was like. Obviously, it's quite a process producing a book. Did you self publish that, or was it through a traditional publisher?

Yeah. It was a hybrid publisher. So it's sort of semi self published. but with someone who knows what they're doing, basically. So so, yeah, they they supported me through it, gave me the kind of support around the structure and how to how to begin the writing process. And then I wrote the book, and they they copy how to see it or or what do they yeah, the the editing. They did the editing and the publishing part. But I found it really, really useful, really therapeutic quite enjoyable. It was a lot of work. I did it. I wrote the book over a period of about 6 months in in the evenings after putting the kids to bed. So I'd like kids to bed at 7, and I'd work on the book twice a week till about 2 in the morning. And then I'd then I'd that that was just how I because I I didn't have time during the day. I was running a business. Right? So That that's how I managed to do it. And and I just got into that habit every week doing that on these 2 set days. I would I would write the book. And I actually found it really therapeutic because it allowed me to get everything all of this information that I've collected over the years on how to pitch for investment and and and and and allowed me to express it in a formulaic way that allowed me made me better at public speaking, mainly better sales pitches may be better in in all kinds of scenarios dealing with clients and explaining why we do what we do to clients because I had all of these analogies and stories and processes and and steps that I've written about in the in the book. And and that so it kinda really helped me structure and formulate what was sort of swimming around in my head and getting it out on paper. I didn't have to remember it anymore. It was just kind of there, and I could it was almost a reference tool for for me and my team around everything we'd learn. over over the last few years. So, yeah, really, really enjoyable and therapeutic exercise I felt.

Another thing I noticed was that Daniel Priestley is one of your investors. Yes. 1 of the advisers. And I've had Daniel on the show, and I asked him what his process for getting involved in or starting up other businesses was like. And he described it as being a bit like a bank robbery. I don't know if he's ever used this analogy with you before, but he said, you you need your driver. You need the the wheel you need you need the the safe guy, and then you need somebody who knows the the layout of the bank. And then you just you get together, you plan the job, and you do the job, I'm not doing it just justice, Daniel, if you're listening. I'm sorry. But I'm curious to know what that look like from your side and what the story was of how that came to be. Anybody who doesn't know who Daniel Priestley is listening or watching, he's written a ton of books about business small business growth, marketing. You name it. He is a very well known. So I'm curious to know what what's the backstory?

So in terms of how he got involved. Yeah. So I think at the time, Dan was going through a process with his dent accelerator, which is flagship program is the key person of influence accelerator, which is about personal personal branding. And and we built this business, and we didn't have the personal brand element. And he was initially introduced. We've been a fan of his for a while. He didn't know that at the time, and and he we got introduced to to him by a mutual friend or colleague and partner. And Dan was interested in this whole idea of pitching because one of his key principles in his personal branding is the pitching element of it. And and he was looking for strategic partners who could deliver on core aspects of his program, and he had a publisher that could help with published the book, but he didn't have anyone in pitching. So he wanted to talk to us about about that. And and and so we were talking to him. I was kind of super excited to meet him because I've been a fan for years, but I tried to play Cool. And and he was asking some questions, and he quite quickly established that his perception of us through our our company brand and our website at the time was that we were much bigger than we were and that we we had some kind of superpower there and we had something lying in weight that just needed the right key to unlock its potential. I think he might have a different opinion, but that's how I felt the conversation went So very quickly, the conversation went from how can we do do a kind of referral partnership to how can I get involved in the business and help you unblock the potential that I see here because you've got so much you should based on what I've seen, you should be ten times bigger as a business than you are right now. So he came on board and helped us unlock that potential, and and here we are today. So, yeah, that that's kinda how that came about. It it's sort of a a happy happy coincidence, I suppose, is a a a a a nice referral from from a particular individual. And and, yeah, now he's in a now he's the shareholder and and and guides us through through through our growth. So yeah. I mean, that's quite an asset because, yeah, he he has a great eye for business. It's It's a really rare thing. Yeah. He's very, very good, very talented. So, yeah, if if he's not come across Daniel, definitely read his books because they're a game changer for us. So

speaking of game changing, I think one thing we know about business is it's never standing still. it's nice to look back at what brought a business into being. It's nice to look at what it's doing now. But you're ambitious. You've got Daniel Priestley as part of the gang. Obviously, you're looking for bigger and better things. So what does your vision of the future look like for the business? And at the same time, I'm assuming that vision of the future is going to require you to continue to be uncomfortable in doing things you haven't done before and what that looks like.

Yeah. So, I mean, our ambitions are are pretty clear we we want to achieve initially achieve substantial growth. And then when the time is right, achieve a a nice exit for ourselves and repay Daniel his faith. So so that's that's kind of the the strategic vision sort of from a from a long term financial perspective. I think we very much want to be you know, we've already kind of working globally with clients we're winning global awards for for what we do, but I think we want to establish ourselves more on a global scale rather than the odd client from outside the UK. We wanna definitely be more established in Europe, and and we want to we want to probably have a much more of a presence in the states. to wanna have start having that global presence at some point. And then we want to continue supporting our clients, so it's always looking at opportunities as to what what comes next in their journey. So so we started by pitching, helping them with their pitch. We will then transition from a pitching agency to an investment readiness agency, and we now help them business planning and their forecasts. Last earlier, this year, we we launched a investor outreach service to help them then go and reach out and find prospective investors to have conversations with. So we're we're we're always developing and looking at what's next in the journey that we can do to help improve the success rates of our clients and ultimately help them longer turn in the journey in the journey. So there's loads of ideas and things out there that that we're exploring from investor relations, to exit services, to all kinds of things that that we've got in the in the back of our minds as to where this could go. But all of those things are things that, you know, ultimately, we come from a brand, marketing and communication background, and and we're having to to bring in the fruities who who we can leverage to to package up and and and develop a a service that's you know, the the risk and the scary bit is is making sure that we maintain the quality as we expand in both the services we're doing now and bring on new services to support found is through that entrepreneurial journey, we don't dilute dilute our niche, dilute positioning and and dilute our credibility in terms of the level of service we provide and start offering, stuff that we can't deliver very well. that's always the risk. That's the that's the scary thing to me is keeping you know, we're we've got a great reputation, and we don't wanna ruin that reputation by trying to trying to push the business too far in in a direction where we're not sure about. I think it must be a terrible temptation that you have these clients that you brought on, you you get them pitch ready. They pitch. They win their pitch.

And then they you could potentially continue working them with them for a decade. But then they need different services. You need different team. You have different processes.

It must be quite a temptation to resist. They because there's, yeah, there's loads of opportunities. Like, once you've raised funding, you you potentially need a fractional CFO or and we build their forecast. So we could quite easily offer fractional CFO services, but it just doesn't feel like us. We're we're a heart or a communications agency. So it needs to it needs to fit with the brand and the vision. And, yeah, we have to do it in the right way even if it means losing out on potential revenues, I think. Yes. Well, I think it's potential revenue today at the cost of your future.

Exactly. Exactly. The reality that you're understanding very clearly. Yeah. If anybody's listening and they're thinking, I like the sound of this. I guess it's probably quite important for you to maybe say, what does an ideal client look like for you in order that people could think? I need to refer or that's me or

whatever. So that I mean, we we work with to use some industry terminology pre seed seed and series a founders, stage founders. So that means it's your 1st round of investment where you're looking to get your concept the ground, or you've got some early traction, some first users, some first revenues, and you're looking for a a round of investment to grow the business to a point where you have you have hitting some substantial revenues and and perhaps even profitability, or you're at that profitable stage or you're at sort of a 1,000,000 in revenues and you're looking for some growth caps or to to kinda 10 x the business from from the there. They're they're typically the types of businesses that we're working with. So all the way from early stage concept to those that are doing around about 1,000,000 in revenue If you're doing 10, 20,000,000 in revenues and looking for for for funding to to go on to a 100 or 200,000,000 in revenues, that would probably not work. Right? the right fit. So that that's our kind of key area. So it's it's founders really who have who know they need to raise capital. have never done this before. Don't really understand how the whole process works because it's a murky world of lots of misinformation, and it's not something we talk in school, even people within an MBA will end up doing an afternoon's lecture on different different sources of funding, but they're never really taught how to do this. stuff. So so if if you or someone you know kind of fits that mold, then it's well worth checking us out and having a conversation, I think. And if nothing else, you have

all the goodies on your website. For anybody that's in that position -- Yeah. -- we've been thinking about it. So many things, value proposition calculators, financial forecasts, it's it was surprising how much was there. So well done with it. We've invested a lot in in,

I say, really following through on on our our ethos as a business to to be the friends, allies, and and guides for for startup founders who are who are figuring this whole investment thing out for the first time. So we've we've invested a line providing a lot of useful resources.

So I guess both personally and as the company, where did you hang out online the most if people want to connect with you? And, I guess, we need to be clear, we actually give the website address on -- Yeah. -- your business because I forget. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, link in is the best place to get a hold of me. I I kind of post on on all kind of the major channels, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, follow robot mask on YouTube, subscribe. And there's regular videos that go out for me with with support and advice. But LinkedIn is the main place to hang out and where you'll get you'll get through to me quickest. And, yeah, the the website's where I got mascot.co.uk, there's there's resources there for you. If you go to pitch ready.co.uk, that that will take you to our scorecard where you can benchmark your investment readiness, how how ready you are for investment and offer back of that, you'll be able to order a free copy of my book directly to your to your door if you're in the UK. Every outside of the UK, there's a there's a PDF or audio book version you can access, but you'll get a free copy of the book opportunity to to come along to one of my strategy sessions. I do regular funding strategy sessions. You'll get a complimentary ticket one of those. So so you just go to pitch ready.co.uk, and you'll get a whole bundle of goodies to help you figure out whether raising investment is right for you. And if it is what you need to do to to get yourself ready for it. And I guess that

does bring us to a nice place to end. I think I've had a lot of fun. Anybody that's listening will have got a lot of value out of this. I think your business story is a lot. there. I think your your personal journey within that business is really interesting. And just I think it's it's a departure from where we normally go and show Usually, we're focused on the the online entrepreneur, the the sort of the expert business that, actually, you are at the end of the day. You are an expert business coming at it from an agency perspective, and you've done a phenomenal job with it. And I think reflecting on that, there's gonna be a lot of lessons for everybody. I guess a good place to end, and I often forget I don't forget that off. But I need to ask the question,

what's one thing you do now you wish you started 5 years ago. Yeah. So I think can I say 2 things? Yes. You can. We've mentioned them we've mentioned them both in in today's kind of podcast. But the first is is I wish we hadn't found our niche in niche earlier. Had the had the be brave enough to niche earlier. So that's the first thing. And the second thing would would be to be, again, be brave enough to develop a personal brand earlier. It took us it had 5 years of just about getting by before we even got a glimpse of some form of of what you could call success. There were there were 5 long tough years of of barely scraping by, and and there's lots of stories around, you know, sitting there at Christmas, me and my cofounder looking at the bank account and saying we can't we can't pay ourselves. And then suddenly, someone walks through the door of our office and they want to work with us, and and it's literally because we were next door to where they lived, and they can be bothered to walk to to search around. And it was just like that like, without that, we wouldn't have been able to pay ourselves before Christmas type of thing. So there's all these sorts of stories of really tough times. And and our mistakes, I think, were, 1, not niching soon enough and 2, not real not building a personal brand when we when we did. And if we had done those things earlier,

would be 5 years further ahead where we are now. So, yeah, that sort of thing. I absolutely echo everything you just said. I was there as well. running an agency for 6, 7 years was a hamster wheel of pain and, yes, put off niching because I was scared of it, put off the personal brand. I had my podcast mic for 4 years before I ever recorded a thing. The day that I did that, everything changed. So, yeah, I absolutely echo that. James Church from Robot Master, and you have been great fun. Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to Avenue on the show again at some point in the future. Opano, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.