Business Principles 101

Jonny and Yusef from PropaneFitness.com join me for the start of a brand new series. We're talking all things careers and entrepreneurship as we call on our combined 30+ years of operating and failing at business. Expect to learn how you decide whether to stay in your job or leave to do your own thing, the inception stories behind PropaneFitness and Voodoo Events, our thoughts on how helpful a university education is in giving you skills for business, and a lot more. I really enjoyed recording this episode, expect to see many more of these in future! Extra Stuff: Anton Kreil on Teachers - https://youtu.be/hzFl0uDwAQY?t=1919 Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #business #fitpro #entrepreneurship - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Today we are starting a new series, Business Principles 101.

• 0:04Jonny?

  If you just want to replace your income by doing something you enjoy doing, you can absolutely sell some kind of expertise or even sell what you're currently doing, but package it in a business.

• 0:13Chris Williamson?

  If you want to become good at business, a formal education is in no way mandatory. People love the idea of being an entrepreneur or a business owner more than they like the idea of doing business because they want the title without the graft. If the title could be attained overnight, in that case, it's not worth anything. So you shouldn't want it.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  I've seen people set up a blog or a YouTube channel and really plough money into it and try and get the production quality working and just get nothing out of it because you can't rely on organic traffic being a thing.

• 0:45Chris Williamson?

  Not anymore, man.

• 0:46Jonny?

  If you just do for a living what you find intensely interesting, then immediately you have a massive advantage over everybody else.

• 0:54Chris Williamson?

  I'm not actually that good at business, but we've made 13 years of mistakes that we only made once.

• 1:03Chris Williamson?

  I'm joined by none other than Jonny and Yusef from propanefitness.com.

• 1:10Chris Williamson?

  Welcome back, man. Welcome back.

• 1:11Jonny?

  Welcome back.

• 1:12Chris Williamson?

  Welcome back indeed. Today we are starting a new series, Business Principles 101. We have all had a lot of experience. I've done 13 years of business operating. You've had nearly a decade now?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  11, yeah.

• 1:27Chris Williamson?

  11, Jonny, something similar. It's like 30 years of combined running and failing at business.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Lots of failure.

• 1:35Chris Williamson?

  Mostly failing. We get quite a lot of requests for advice for entrepreneurship and stuff like that. And I figured the wealth of experience that we have, both good and bad, could be pretty valuable to people and there should be some golden stories that come out of this. Also, all of us did business degrees of one sort or another.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Sort of, yeah.

• 1:56Chris Williamson?

  Accounting, what was your actual degree?

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Economics.

• 1:59Chris Williamson?

  Is it? Yeah. And then you did.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Mine was maths and business, both totally useless as far as application, but we can certainly get into that. I think something that's really useful as well of hearing our failings that are to come is that.

• 2:14Jonny?

  If you ever want to learn something from someone, I think if you've got a choice between learning from someone who is a natural and just struck lucky first time compared to someone who was terrible or may failed multiple times and grew into a stage that that you've seen this progression. There's so much more to be learned from that person. Like, like we were saying in Relationships one O three, where the guy who's been divorced fifteen times knows a lot more about marriage than.

• 2:41Chris Williamson?

  The guy that just happened to look into a harmonious one. You always say this about mobility, right? You want to learn from the guy who couldn't get into good squat position.

• 2:48Jonny?

  Bench press.

• 2:48Chris Williamson?

  Bench press.

• 2:49Jonny?

  Yeah, you don't want to learn from the guy with little arms. You want to learn from the guy who's world record level, but it's got really long arms.

• 2:55Chris Williamson?

  Grinded it out. Yeah, yeah. Cool. So, um, where do we start with business principles? I guess, come on, I'm, I don't want to hot potato you, Johnny.

• 3:03Jonny?

  You are going.

• 3:05Chris Williamson?

  Sorry, I apologize. Uh, also, before we get, before we get cracking, in the comments below or message me on Instagram, if there's any particular areas of business that you want us to cover, any stories you want us to elaborate on, any advice you'd like us to go for with entrepreneurship or our experiences, or if you need an accountant, I've got Mint Accountant as well, so just, you know, Magic Man Chris Sires. Um, so Johnny, what was your first foray into entrepreneurship or business operating?

• 3:35Jonny?

  So I, I was sat watching TV one summer, I think still at school, perhaps, and used to read T Nation, Bodybuilding.com a lot. And clearly you remember the thought of that that can't be that difficult to do. Like, it's just a website with.

• 3:56Chris Williamson?

  Blog, fitness blog.

• 3:57Jonny?

  Yeah, let's do that. Text you stuff. Well, I actually started one myself on like Blogspot.com. Like one of these like really old now, um, websites that allow you to set up a really bad website. Text you stuff and said, um, shall we set up a website? We'll call it OptimumFitnessSystems.com. And you, I remember. You were like, you were super keen.

• 4:20Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:21Jonny?

  Um, but you Googled how many results optimum fitness systems came up and it was like hundreds, thousands.

• 4:28Chris Williamson?

  And this is probably what, like two thousand and eight, two thousand six?

• 4:31Jonny?

  Probably before that.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, two thousand six, two thousand seven.

• 4:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Jeez.

• 4:33Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 4:34Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Chris Williamson?

  So now optimum, if you are thinking, there's our first piece of advice. If you are thinking.

• 4:38Jonny?

  For god's sake.

• 4:39Chris Williamson?

  Do not call it optimum, optimum fitness system.

• 4:42Jonny?

  Yeah. Yeah, so that was it. That was it. And it didn't become a business until twenty eleven.

• 4:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so, yeah, cause for you guys, you just started the blog as like, oh, we do fitness. People ask us, when are you getting hassle blowed about?

• 4:56Jonny?

  Yeah, well, I think when you're like the, the fit one in your friends, in your friendship group, people ask you like, you know.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  How do I get big arms?

• 5:06Jonny?

  Oh, way in the morning, two scoops, strawberry.

• 5:08Chris Williamson?

  Strawberry.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Oh, I get cornered in the gym if people are being like, oh, excuse me, I just, uh, cause just so you know, I have, uh, me, me breakfast, seven AM.

• 5:18Jonny?

  Strawberry, two scoops.

• 5:22Jonny?

  I love the just so you know, like, no, no context, just.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  You know, you know.

• 5:26Jonny?

  Just tell you.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  And he's like, well, it's too rude to interject at this point, so I don't have to wait until he makes his point.

• 5:32Chris Williamson?

  What's the?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  But then he just takes ages going through his entire day. You're like, oh, I'll have me oats, thirty grams, uh, the Scottish rolled oats.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  And I have two egg whites.

• 5:45Jonny?

  Not the instant pot.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  No, no, the rolled ones and, uh, organic.

• 5:48Chris Williamson?

  Lord GI.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  I'm in between sat here.

• 5:52Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Some girl outside of Voodoo on Saturday opened every sentence that she said to me, said about maybe five different things. Every sentence was opened with not being funny.

• 6:03Jonny?

  Oh.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 6:05Jonny?

  Really? I just assumed you had to.

• 6:07Chris Williamson?

  Dean, make, make it replay it and then zoom in on his mouth and you'll hear him go, not being funny.

• 6:13Chris Williamson?

  Every sentence was opened with not being funny.

• 6:15Jonny?

  Oh.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Let's see, that, that was just a, a private joke because, uh, we were at a thing where there's a guy constantly.

• 6:22Chris Williamson?

  Who brought it up.

• 6:23Jonny?

  So I'm not being funny, right? But like. What about what you just said? Was in any way funny?

• 6:30Chris Williamson?

  Why are you warning us? Why, like, no one, no one laughed? So there was no danger of anyone thinking it was funny anyway?

• 6:36Jonny?

  This is hilarious, but I promise you, it's not intended to be humorous at all. Just a preface.

• 6:41Chris Williamson?

  Early warning system has been activated.

• 6:43Jonny?

  Yeah, it's really weird.

• 6:45Chris Williamson?

  Um, so yeah, that was, what about you, Yusuf? Did you do anything before that?

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I used to drop ship batteries on eBay.

• 6:51Jonny?

  What the?

• 6:52Chris Williamson?

  Here we go. Excuse me. We need to ring the Yusuf alarm.

• 6:58Jonny?

  What was the last, this was when you, it was on Life Fails when you told us that you'd been going to like Bly for 12 weeks.

• 7:04Chris Williamson?

  For a cult. Right. And so you've been drop ship, drop shipping, I bet you're still doing that.

• 7:10Jonny?

  You'd have gone to a drop shipping battery conference last weekend.

• 7:14Chris Williamson?

  That's where you were, you weren't with your girlfriend in the, in the cottage somewhere, that was just a cover story.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  I was in the warehouse in Slough. Trying to arrange a deal for Taiwan.

• 7:24Chris Williamson?

  First principles, man, yeah.

• 7:25Jonny?

  You drop shipped batteries.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Actually, I've misused the word drop ship. I, um, arbitrage them.

• 7:32Chris Williamson?

  That's even worse. So you never actually owned them?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Well, I, I owned them for, for a short time. So I used to buy batteries in bulk, the little, um, C137 or whatever they're called.

• 7:40Jonny?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 7:41Chris Williamson?

  For scales.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:42Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 7:43Jonny?

  I used to buy one recently for my car key.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Oh, I should have bought one of me.

• 7:47Chris Williamson?

  Don't you worry, happy B.

• 7:48Jonny?

  Drop your fucking gold petrol station.

• 7:50Chris Williamson?

  I tell you, fuck bastard.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  No packaging, okay?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  No, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry.

• 7:58Jonny?

  It's coming like a little piece of cling film.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it.

• 8:01Jonny?

  Just a pen written on it.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  No, it's good stuff, it's good, don't worry. So, yeah, I used to buy them in bulk and then resell them. And he was such a bore, like, actually, that, so that was lesson number one. Time is money. And just because you can make a markup on something, doesn't mean that that profit is worth your time. Because if you translate that into, if I, if you just get a job in a pub or in Costa or something, you'd probably make more per hour with less stress. And so.

• 8:27Jonny?

  What was your markup on the battery?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  It was, it was. I can't remember now. It it wasn't worth my time.

• 8:33Jonny?

  Not left to continue doing.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  No, just because of the amount of ball acreage that.

• 8:39Chris Williamson?

  So talking about um the issue of time, I think this paralysis by analysis issue that we came up against. Or what me and uh one of the guys, part of the Modern Wisdom Project, Jordan dubbed uh the planner's dilemma. Similar to the prisoner's dilemma is a lot of people are averse to starting a business because they would rather plan. And think, yeah, the perfect business, whereas definitely, um we we will all agree that. A lot of the skills that you learn in business just occur from operating something.

• 9:15Jonny?

  Yep.

• 9:16Chris Williamson?

  Like just having to deal with the situations which arise as a byproduct of having a business. And they become so robust and transferable.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  So great principle for this is idea is the constant and execution is the multiplier. Whereas a lot of people who haven't done something like this before thinks that think that the idea is like. Oh mate, I've got this really sick idea, but you've got to sign a non-disclosure agreement if you're going to talk about it with me because I'll have to kill you with it. And it's like. No one cares about your stupid little idea because unless you actually execute it well, it don't like. Uh Amazon selling stuff, selling items online. It's not, it's not a groundbreaking idea, but it's executed so well.

• 9:54Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  That it becomes so um I think that's something that and and it comes into the planner's dilemma because people think that like if they craft this perfect idea, it's like. But actually, if they just got moving and doing things and then fail forward into stuff and then you figure out what works and what doesn't.

• 10:10Jonny?

  I think the best description I've heard of business operation is just professional problem solving.

• 10:15Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:15Jonny?

  Yeah. And like you, all all that happens is you are trying to make something continue happening. And happen more or faster, more often or at bigger, bigger scale and loads of problems happen.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  It feels each time something happens, each time you.

• 10:30Jonny?

  Oh, there's a problem. Oh, I've got a financial issue. Oh, that's created another problem.

• 10:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it feels like to me controlled falling business. Like someone's pushed you at the top of an infinite set of stairs and all you're doing is going.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  That's what Ben is so good at. So we have a friend who ran a bike company and he was consulted. He got a phone call the other day of someone being like, oh, you're right, mate. Something's gone wrong in the labs, like the inducer isn't working through the thing and it's letting off this blue steam. And Ben was like, okay, so maybe just try this and then I'll get Christian to write a bit of code so that it only functions intermittently. I'm like, Ben, what, how do you know about lab equipment? He was like, I don't really, it's just kind of.

• 11:11Chris Williamson?

  Just systems, isn't it?

• 11:12Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Chris Williamson?

  At some point in his history, he's come up with something that links to this. But yeah, controlled falling, man. Like, again, a lot of people that think they're, or that perceive professionals, high performing professionals as being good at business, would be so amazed to realise how little of a clue they have about what they're doing. So I was listening to, and this is a really fucking good podcast, and I haven't lost my mind. Logan Paul, Logan Paul's podcast, really, he's got some, he's got some shy guests on, like, he'll probably have like Nicki Minaj or something.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  But even so, fair fucking play.

• 11:47Chris Williamson?

  Man, he had, he had, he had the real wolf of Wall Street on.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Really?

• 11:51Chris Williamson?

  Like, giving sales advice, motherfucker. So, anyway, and he was talking about, all of the guys in the room were talking about the fact that all of them have pitched themselves into meetings with people that are super successful. And said that they are the best at social media in all of LA when they've never done social media or digital marketing before. And then they've just had to learn on their feet. And I think that you can overshoot, and this goes back to what you were saying about just getting started with something. If you're going to start a business, I think starting small, i.e. do not, I repeat, do not ring me and tell me that you've remortgaged your entire house to start a business when you have no business experience.

• 12:34Chris Williamson?

  I.e. start with a low amount of financial liability.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I've seen that before, it's terrifying.

• 12:39Chris Williamson?

  You've never run a business before and you've put fifty percent of your net worth into this business?

• 12:43Jonny?

  See, I'm tracking it down a lot, if you ever watch that.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  People that just go, all chips on the table.

• 12:48Jonny?

  When they're asking for investment, they haven't made many sales, it's like, how much have you invested? Like, oh, a hundred thousand of my own money, I've remortgaged my house twice.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  You know, I.

• 12:56Jonny?

  You know, you.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  This is great optimism.

• 12:58Chris Williamson?

  Well, I've got to pay, like, once I take off the child support and my divorce settlement, like, yeah, painful. Everyone just thinks they're gonna be Levi roots, don't they?

• 13:05Jonny?

  Well, yeah, like the one diamond in the rough success story.

• 13:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Jonny?

  But it's it's kind of why the the Gary Vaynerchuk advice of of like, you know, the people asking the question like, I'm I'm twenty nine and I've got this idea, but I think it's too late to start. And he's like, fuck you. You know, he's like, of course, it's not too late to start. It's like, well, Gary, that's fine. Uh, and until it's negligent, until like the person actually doesn't have a really good idea and they ruin their life.

• 13:31Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 13:32Jonny?

  Pursuing this like, well, I just need to keep trying and keep investing and keep going.

• 13:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:36Jonny?

  So, but you only know that if you just, well, it's the Facebook thing of move, move fast, break it.

• 13:41Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 13:41Jonny?

  And then go back to what you do.

• 13:42Chris Williamson?

  In interesting point here, David Epstein, guy that wrote Range. He said that he'd done an analysis of when the uh of the average age of the CEOs of industry changing businesses. So he asked, what's the average age of of uh CEOs in industry changing businesses when they founded the company? So not when it went public, none of that shit. What's the average age? And they asked this at this like super stardy, uppy Silicon Valley Quantified Self Vegan Bullshit Conference somewhere.

• 14:17Jonny?

  Like, bathrobe tiff on the walls, basketball hoops everywhere.

• 14:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah. Um, and.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Foosball.

• 14:23Chris Williamson?

  Foosball, fucking loads of foosball, yeah, exactly. Asked this question and the room was like, uh, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five. Because everyone knows the Mark Zuckerberg story about he was, I think, twenty three when he started Facebook. Average age, forty four.

• 14:37Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 14:38Jonny?

  I've heard that before.

• 14:39Chris Williamson?

  Bill Gates and um that era of CEOs seemed to play around in a number of different industries before they get to something.

• 14:50Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 14:50Chris Williamson?

  But what have they got? Weaths of experience.

• 14:53Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 14:54Chris Williamson?

  And masses of failures. As well, probably.

• 14:57Jonny?

  Well, even even like on a really PG, like BBC level, Dragons Den again.

• 15:02Chris Williamson?

  Um hum.

• 15:02Jonny?

  If you watch that lineup, like, none of them are such and such founded a business when he was eighteen. It was the first business he did and he went on to be a multimillionaire. Like, all of them had, like, eight businesses that, like, spectacularly failed. And then the ninth one just went all right.

• 15:17Chris Williamson?

  So as a, to try and give some of my genesis story, I guess with this, which is a little bit contrary to what we've said so far. The first ever business that I started was when I sat down at my first seminar for uni in Freshers Week. Sat next to my business partner, my when would be business partner, said, I'm skinned. I've spent all of my money in Freshers Week drinking. This is when, like, maintenance loan was like three, two and a half grand or something in pennies. But then also accommodation was also pennies. I sat next to him and he said, oh, well, there's this company that I used to work for in Leeds called Voodoo. You can come and get a flyering job with me later on, like, do you want to come to the meeting this week? And then from then, we started working together.

• 16:00Chris Williamson?

  And that that was my first ever business, first day of university, sat next to my business partner, thirteen years later, still together.

• 16:07Jonny?

  So there's a key difference there, though, isn't there, as to why that was successful? And the people who quit their job and remortgaged their house before they've fathomed an idea. Why, why that was successful.

• 16:20Chris Williamson?

  We very delicately treaded in and moved up through the business. So definitely one of the principles, I think, that people need to keep a hold of is that if you've never run a business before, or if you're wanting to start a business, you have to, as far as I'm concerned, especially small businesses. If you are a specialist in logistics or something like that, there's no reason that you couldn't, after a lot of time doing logistics, then jump from perhaps management to ownership. That's a fairly easy one. But for a lot of SMEs, my best bit of advice in terms of starting is to learn every phase of your business from the ground floor up.

• 16:59Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Chris Williamson?

  So the lineage of a typical club promoter would be start as a flyer boy, be good at flyering, then maybe become. Like a senior flyboy where you manage the other PR staff, then junior event manager, event manager, senior event manager, city manager, maybe business development manager or something like that, then director. And once you've done through all of those different stages, you understand you've got a bird's eye view of recruitment, of marketing, of HR, of accounting, of B two B, of B two C, all that sort of shit. And then when one of your employees comes to you with an issue, you can deal with it because you have seen every single thing and you've got a process.

• 17:43Chris Williamson?

  So there we go. Another principle is as you move through the business, as you encounter particular issues, write down your solution that you gave to those issues because now for me and Darren, again, one of the things that we talk about with our business is that we're not actually that good at business, but we've made 13 years of mistakes that we only made once.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:06Chris Williamson?

  And now we have a process for this very rarely, very, very rarely that I come up against. And this will be the same. I know it's the same for you guys because I've seen your auto responder email.

• 18:18Chris Williamson?

  That very rarely do you encounter a situation after running a business for maybe more than five years, which you haven't encountered before. There's something quite symbolic about that as well, that the vast majority of problems that people believe is this unique curse bestowed upon them alone, are actually just really representative of what everyone suffers with.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  We, we get that with, because we, we offer business coaching as well. And sometimes you'll get an inquiry from someone that's like, hey, guys, I was gonna sign up for your program, but my situation is like really unique and different and special. So I need customized. I need something that's more bespoke. And then they describe their situation. You're like, that is the most standard of standard businesses.

• 19:00Chris Williamson?

  Like you and the other 10 people who emailed this week with exactly the same specific. Yeah. Did you listen to the Tiago Forte podcast? He said that his first ever business was fixing people's Windows XP computers. Everyone had this very unique problem that they came. To him with.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  You just Googled it.

• 19:17Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, he just did uninstall the operating system. Put it back in, restarted, he gave it to them. He hardly sat there like, really, yes, yes, so like, oh, like, yes, so what what's the problem that you've got, oh, yes, yeah, oh, it's difficult when that it does. It's difficult, yeah, exactly, one solution fits all.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Like, there there there's something to be said for that, like, in offering any service, obviously, my, like, background is in delivering healthcare service, but it's the same thing that there is, there is an evidence basis behind, and this is seen behind the the wall now. Behind when a doctor asks you.

• 19:55Chris Williamson?

  Oh, God, this is how medicine works.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the the doctor will ask you, what what do you think it is? Okay, do you have any particular big worries about?

• 20:02Chris Williamson?

  Is that the same, is that the same as when a policeman pulls you over and goes, do you know I've pulled you over? Hang on, mate, I'm not hitting a fucking hamstring myself. Fuck off, man, yeah, you tell me what I was doing.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Like, the those are the the three evidence-based questions.

• 20:15Chris Williamson?

  Ain't no grass, yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  I'm not a grass, I'm not a fucking grass man. That will improve, uh, like, patient satisfaction, is you just ask them, what do you think it is? Any big concerns? What's your expectation for today? Ice. Now, the doctor doesn't care about your answers.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  It's just because it it on the data shows that that makes people happier. So with service, like, what Tiago was doing there, rather than being like, right, don't care, what I'm gonna do is uninstall the operating system, instead, it's like, hmm. Okay.

• 20:47Chris Williamson?

  So tell me, how is the natalogy?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  And I'm taking notes on it and then doing what you want, because it doesn't matter to to them, it's the black box, Tiago's come in, fix my computer, I'm happy.

• 20:56Jonny?

  I'd far rather that they didn't even ask me, you just fixed it.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Really?

• 21:00Jonny?

  Because I I would rather just feel like they understand what's going on.

• 21:03Chris Williamson?

  I think you're very unemotional when it comes to this stuff, which, again, like, being unemotional in business.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  I don't know, I think I am quite emotional.

• 21:11Chris Williamson?

  You're quite transactional with stuff, though. You just want in input, process, outcome.

• 21:16Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah, but it's it's idiocy to want anything else.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Because you know that when you're paying someone to fix a computer.

• 21:22Jonny?

  I want I want to fix.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Precisely what you're paying it for.

• 21:24Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  You don't like.

• 21:25Jonny?

  I want this like.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Like, I can imagine you give them the key to the house and she'd be like.

• 21:29Jonny?

  Yeah, I don't know. I have a story about it. Just fix a fucking computer. So, yeah, so we've got E-Myth revisited.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Just just thinking.

• 21:36Jonny?

  Basically describes exactly what you've just said. E-Myth.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  What what are the three stages? You become you're the technician when you start.

• 21:42Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so who writes it? It'll be in the show notes below.

• 21:44Jonny?

  Ah.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I can't remember.

• 21:47Chris Williamson?

  We'll find it.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  It'll be in the show notes below, don't worry.

• 21:48Jonny?

  The entrepreneurial myth. So he describes a situation of this woman who um works for worked in a baker's, loves baking cakes. She's like, right, I'm going to set up my own bakery, set up her own bakery because she loves making cakes.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 22:00Jonny?

  And then realizes like, oh, fuck, like, I need to, like, clean the surfaces, do the books. Oh, God, I need to set up all these systems and and do and manage my advertising and I need an employee. So then she brings someone in to help and the manager then does everything, hires all the systems. And 10 years later, it's this massive bakery and she goes in and tries to speak to one of the employees and the employee goes, who are you? And she and she's like, oh, um.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  She hasn't baked a cake.

• 22:25Jonny?

  I'll help with this. They're like, oh, no, no, this is how we do it. And she's lost complete control of the business because she didn't do every step.

• 22:31Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 22:32Jonny?

  So it that is 101. Like, if you want to, if you look, it's because I think the the the most common movement into business for most people is they are doing something or they see the way something is done and think I can do that or I can do that better or whatever. But they often miss like the the rest of the picture.

• 22:52Chris Williamson?

  It's the same as what we talk about a lot here, which is a lot of people want quick fixes. They want the fat loss pill not to consistently do calorie deficit with some cardiovascular.

• 23:01Jonny?

  Dieting, yeah.

• 23:03Chris Williamson?

  And it's the same for this. People love the idea of being an entrepreneur or a business owner more than they like the idea of doing business. Means they want the title without the graft. And unfortunately, the titles only were if the title could be attained.

• 23:21Chris Williamson?

  Overnight.

• 23:21Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 23:22Chris Williamson?

  In that case, it's not worth anything, so you shouldn't want it.

• 23:25Jonny?

  Ronnie Coleman was right all along, wasn't he?

• 23:27Chris Williamson?

  Everybody wants to be a power letter, power letter.

• 23:29Jonny?

  Bodybuilder, but nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight.

• 23:31Chris Williamson?

  They don't. Everybody want to be a businessman.

• 23:34Jonny?

  You realise slowly that he is just, everything he said, you look at him, think, what a weirdo, but all of it is profound.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Banana leggings.

• 23:41Chris Williamson?

  What about nothing but a peanut? What about that?

• 23:43Jonny?

  Precisely.

• 23:44Chris Williamson?

  Wasn't anything but a peanut?

• 23:46Jonny?

  That's just this unbreakable attitude of like, it doesn't matter.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  It just, he sees the impermanence of life. It just ain't nothing but a peanut.

• 23:51Chris Williamson?

  Ain't nothing but a peanut.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  It's everything's all complexity and difficulty and like reduced down to a peanut.

• 23:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  And he's like.

• 23:59Jonny?

  Yeah. There's a man about a squat, eight hundred, solid ass pounds.

• 24:02Chris Williamson?

  Solid ass pounds.

• 24:03Jonny?

  And he's still going like.

• 24:06Jonny?

  I'm doing two, like.

• 24:08Chris Williamson?

  Ronnie, don't do it mate.

• 24:09Jonny?

  That's really heavy. He's like.

• 24:13Jonny?

  What a great attitude.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  It's incredible.

• 24:15Jonny?

  You should do business mentoring.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, hundred percent.

• 24:19Jonny?

  Have you seen him now?

• 24:20Chris Williamson?

  Ronald Coleman, business mentor. Yeah, he's fucked now, isn't he?

• 24:25Jonny?

  But he, but even still, like I've seen him, have you seen his YouTube channel? He like sneaks up behind people. Yeah, like someone sat at their desk.

• 24:33Chris Williamson?

  He's going like. Well, like ronniecolemansupplements.com or whatever.

• 24:37Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:38Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. Can you imagine being one of the staff that works at Ronnie Coleman Supplements?

• 24:42Jonny?

  Yes.

• 24:43Chris Williamson?

  Can you?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Well, you've been on edge all the time with you.

• 24:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. Fuck, is Ronald in the building? Oh shit.

• 24:48Jonny?

  There'd be a bit of a worry that like he would just run out of cash and not realise. I think that, that's how that business would, would ultimately be run.

• 24:55Chris Williamson?

  I know, having seen the Ronnie Coleman documentary, that he is spending a lot of money on pain pills.

• 25:00Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Chris Williamson?

  Like a lot of money. Like he is bouncing off the limiter of how much he can take in terms of pain pills.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  He needs to order them in from the UK, doesn't he?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Rather than pay a thousand pounds a pop in the States.

• 25:11Jonny?

  Why don't you arbitrage it?

• 25:12Chris Williamson?

  Arbitrage it? Yeah. You've got access now?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:15Chris Williamson?

  Can, oh, actually also.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Please get in touch.

• 25:18Chris Williamson?

  Hang on. Congratulations.

• 25:20Jonny?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:20Chris Williamson?

  Yusef's a doctor.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Finally.

• 25:23Jonny?

  Double high five. Three, two, one.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 25:28Chris Williamson?

  Yes. Congrats, man.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 25:31Jonny?

  Should have done that catch up. Should have had a special memorial catch up.

• 25:34Chris Williamson?

  For Yusuf's education career. How many years you been in uni?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Eleven.

• 25:41Chris Williamson?

  So how many years you been in full time education?

• 25:44Jonny?

  The vast majority.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Sorry, ten. Uh, yeah. And then full time, I don't know, like that.

• 25:49Jonny?

  Since you were like.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Plus the baseline that you have to do.

• 25:52Jonny?

  What is it? Five, four?

• 25:53Chris Williamson?

  Eleven. No, plus college, so.

• 25:56Jonny?

  No, what time do you like?

• 25:57Chris Williamson?

  Five, five until eighteen you did, so that's another thirteen.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, so. Let's say.

• 26:04Jonny?

  Lots.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Lots. Now.

• 26:06Chris Williamson?

  I believe we broke down all of the elements of the equation to come up with the answer.

• 26:10Jonny?

  It is lots, isn't it?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  And none of it had any relevance for the stuff that for any success or failure.

• 26:17Chris Williamson?

  So there we go. There's another one. All three of us did business or business related degrees.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Conventional education, like, listen to Anton. Seek alternative education.

• 26:27Chris Williamson?

  Do you know, do you know who I will put in the show notes? I will. I'll put Anton Creel and I'll put Sam Ovens. I will put.

• 26:32Jonny?

  You put Sam Ovens in?

• 26:33Chris Williamson?

  I've put him in already.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 26:35Jonny?

  We have made some ground.

• 26:37Chris Williamson?

  I'm not gonna watch him, but I'll put him in the show notes.

• 26:40Jonny?

  Cause a virgin.

• 26:42Chris Williamson?

  Sam, if you're listening, you just need to get laid, man, like.

• 26:47Jonny?

  So his latest video, he's got like long hair and he's a mess. He's clearly just been in the hole.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  In the hole.

• 26:52Chris Williamson?

  No women in it, is there?

• 26:53Jonny?

  There is no women.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  He can't be a virgin and a sex offender, like.

• 26:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Jonny?

  Give me a wannabe sex offender.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I see. Or like, uh, uh, one of the people with the.

• 27:00Chris Williamson?

  Flasher, yeah. Anyway, back to business. So I think definitely one of the things that we've touched on there, which is super important is if you want to become good at business, a formal education is in no way mandatory.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  I think it's unhelpful because it's a waste of time that you could be spending doing other things. Like, the ability to learn and assimilate information is the useful part, but the content that you you have to learn in a business degree is useless. I did a module in entrepreneurship, because I thought.

• 27:27Chris Williamson?

  I did, I did one as well.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Did you? It was like, I turned up and it was totally misadvertised, basically. It was like the history of entrepreneurship in the nineteen thirties America. And like, there was nothing applicable. You're just like.

• 27:38Jonny?

  You did a marketing master.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:40Jonny?

  Is that, do you use that?

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Masters.

• 27:42Chris Williamson?

  Never once.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Really?

• 27:44Chris Williamson?

  Never once. So the reason that I did a extra degree, a post grad was because I knew that the first half was covering things that I'd done in my degree. It was the same, some of the modules were given the same names that I'd just finished in my third year. Some of them, yeah. So I was like, oh, I just repurposed my existing coursework that I did either one of the last three years. And then sure enough, did that. The only thing I needed to do was a, um, uh, what's the dissertation at the end of it? I mean, that's, that's obviously how much I concentrated on it.

• 28:18Jonny?

  I can remember you doing the dissertation. I can remember being in the flat while you were doing the dissertation.

• 28:23Chris Williamson?

  Was it that thirty six hour period?

• 28:25Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that was a very.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Two types of people in this world, the ones who do the dissertation in thirty six hours and the ones who do it in a year.

• 28:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. I did mine in thirty six hours.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  With like ten Red Bulls and.

• 28:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, all the rest of it.

• 28:37Jonny?

  Got it done, didn't you?

• 28:38Chris Williamson?

  Got it done, gone, finished it.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Gone, done it.

• 28:40Jonny?

  Gone, done it.

• 28:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I don't think formal education at all needed. Like, it's not a prerequisite. If I was to design someone that was going to be good at business, they'd be good at selling.

• 28:51Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 28:51Chris Williamson?

  Copywriting, um, have a good eye for, for marketing.

• 28:55Jonny?

  It is all just marketing, isn't it?

• 28:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. People, people, you've got to be good with people, you've got to have good communication skills.

• 29:01Jonny?

  All marketing really is, is communication, isn't it? It's the ability to communicate a concept, idea, message.

• 29:08Chris Williamson?

  But it's different. So advertising and marketing are quite distinct.

• 29:11Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Chris Williamson?

  And advertising is a, a, an important part of your business. But yeah, so formal education, again, I was doing a business degree and very quickly became disenfranchised, disenchanted with academia. Because at the age of eighteen, as a fresher in uni, I was being shown one particular world of business in academics and experiencing another. And there was no overlap.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  You slowly realise that people teaching you about business have never had any success in business.

• 29:43Chris Williamson?

  What the fuck would they be teaching you for if they were successful in business?

• 29:46Jonny?

  Anton again. We need that clip.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  We leave our children in the hands of these fucking failures for eight hours a day and.

• 29:53Jonny?

  How many of them have had a successful relationship? Or run a bit, or wealthy, none of them.

• 29:57Chris Williamson?

  How many of the teachers are millionaires?

• 29:59Speaker 02

  So this is one of the things.

• 30:00Jonny?

  We shouldn't be harsh on teachers.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  But teachers.

• 30:02Jonny?

  Because there are some fantastic teachers.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Just quoting Anton.

• 30:05Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  I think teachers do it very noble.

• 30:06Chris Williamson?

  This is not, these views do not represent mine, Judith or Johnny's or that of modern wisdom. They're just repurposing.

• 30:12Jonny?

  Try and complain to Anton, but he won't get your email and he doesn't care.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Because he's got a phone.

• 30:16Chris Williamson?

  His little, his little Singaporean right wife might pass it on to him. I swear he's on Twitter though. Anyway, so yeah, you are right. The, one of the things that's a little bit weirder is when I look at America and I see you could go learn psychology from Dr. Jordan Peterson, or you could go and learn like evolutionary biology from Nicholas Christakis, or astronomy from Professor Adam Frank.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  We're in an incredible age, isn't it? Like you can now just have full access to the best teaching anywhere all the time.

• 30:43Jonny?

  In the American.

• 30:44Chris Williamson?

  University, education, because they, all those guys, up until not long ago, University of Waterloo still had Dr. Stuart McGill. I mean, up until five years ago, you could go learn biomechanics from Dr. Stuart McGill.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  You can do it all online now. That's, that's what I mean, like.

• 30:59Chris Williamson?

  Well, again, so if you want to find out about that, stay tuned for the week of the third of August. Scott H. Young on his new book Ultra Learning, uh, will be coming out. I've recorded it, but I can't release it. He said I can't release it, but that's self-directed learning, being able to learn the four-year MIT computer science program in six months, past the exam.

• 31:21Jonny?

  That's an intense month.

• 31:22Chris Williamson?

  No, sorry, in one year, past the exams. He was doing one module per week and a half.

• 31:27Jonny?

  So I, I remember I had a lecturer at uni who was basically like best mates with the two guys. There was something called the Arrow de Bree model in economics and that you like, he was teaching this thing and then you look at.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  This is the man with the small face?

• 31:43Jonny?

  No, that's, that's a different man.

• 31:45Chris Williamson?

  Let's learn about it.

• 31:46Jonny?

  He was, he was brilliant. Um, but you look up on Wikipedia, Arrow de Bree model, and there's a photo of Arrow de Bree. And then the bloke teaching it in the middle sat around a table in France having a coffee. But, so like, he's a big dick, but like, a big dick in what? Theoretical economics, like, I'm sure to him, and I'm sure in some way, that does feed through into progression, but like, has that helped me in my life?

• 32:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Jonny?

  No, not really.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  If if your goal is not to be an academic, then it instantly becomes.

• 32:15Jonny?

  An A C A, accountancy qualification, I do think is worth it. But you have to view it. So so basically, in doing an A C A, you are put into, so you're learning, you're trained to be an auditor essentially of of businesses, but in that process, you, well, if you do audit at an accountancy firm and do your A C A at the same time, then you're doing, you're spending a lot of time in in businesses, usually pretty big businesses.

• 32:41Chris Williamson?

  Um.

• 32:41Jonny?

  As long as you try and learn how they're running and see what they do, like, everything down from like, how is a new employee added to the system to like, how do they process a payment? Or and all the way up to the top of how the financial statements are prepared. Um, you have to want to learn about that stuff. It doesn't get put upon you, but I think that is of of everything I've done. Those three years were the most valuable, but even then, I'd be clutching it, like, the most valuable thing is everything I've learned about marketing and selling.

• 33:13Chris Williamson?

  Compare that with.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  From self-directed stuff.

• 33:15Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Chris Williamson?

  What you've had to stumble through.

• 33:17Jonny?

  Well, so we started and we had no clue, like, not a clue, because.

• 33:22Chris Williamson?

  How did you begin to monetize? So people will be listening, they'll think, oh, I could do a this, I draw, or I sing, or I am good at writing, or arbitraging batteries.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  So so that, yeah, that's it's an interesting point, because we, when we started, internet was much younger, like, a year in internet land is obviously ten years in normal, yeah. And so we started in two thousand eight, two thousand nine, where by the by dint of just creating a blog and posting content, it would start to reach the top page on.

• 33:53Chris Williamson?

  Like YouTube six years ago.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:55Chris Williamson?

  Or like podcasts now.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  And so like, yeah, if you look at old school YouTube, things like Power Thirst and those kind of old school viral videos that just went.

• 34:03Chris Williamson?

  Crazy.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Because they were the only content.

• 34:04Jonny?

  Cheap quality, but.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:06Chris Williamson?

  First mover advantage.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  So so instantly, like, by just by having a website, you suddenly are seen as an authority, and it was very demand driven for us. So we started to get. Inquiries just off the back of that. So we didn't, we then were almost spoiled by not having to learn marketing and not having to do anything apart from create content.

• 34:22Chris Williamson?

  You're just getting organic traffic through the blog posts.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:25Chris Williamson?

  Didn't you write something, isn't, isn't your best performing article on caffeine?

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Ramadan.

• 34:29Chris Williamson?

  Ramad- Ramad- Ramadan.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Say it again. Ramadan.

• 34:32Chris Williamson?

  Bless you. Rock. I'm sorry. I rock.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Well, don't worry, I mean. Where- whereas now that strategy would just absolutely not work. And I've seen people set up a, a blog or a YouTube channel and really plough money into it and try and get the production calls you're working and just get nothing out of it. Because you can't rely reliably on organic traffic being a, a thing.

• 34:59Chris Williamson?

  Not anymore, man.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:00Chris Williamson?

  I mean, this is your area and I'm sure we will get on to this. Again, I'm going to keep on rinsing this because this series is new for us. But we could do, I mean, I could leave you guys to do five episodes on your own about Facebook ads, paid marketing, how it ties in with organic, all that sort of stuff.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  This is it. And unfortunately you have to be a polymath of all of those things. You have to know S E O, web design, marketing, content creation, communication, market, uh, Facebook ads, Google ads, you know, you, you have to read all of these different moving parts of the business, a- accounts, um, operations, you have to really know all of that stuff, at least to a basic level.

• 35:36Chris Williamson?

  Ask Yusuf anything about WordPress. Just ask him a question. And like say something like, oh, I think this about WordPress. You'll either get angry, laugh. Yeah. Or do this.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:51Chris Williamson?

  For the listeners, that is a short intake of breath with the lips pursing and then pulling apart. It's like a. You might see him do it.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:59Chris Williamson?

  If things get heated, you'll see him do it. But I think so that, that got us to the point where we were making like.

• 36:05Jonny?

  Probably like a couple. So I remember, I remember this conversation with someone at uni where we'd like, we did this blog on the side and we had four grand in the bank account, really clearly remember the amount. And someone went like, do you guys even like, what do you even do? I'm like, oh, we've just made like our first like four thousand pounds. I'm like, what, what the fuck? Like, how, how have you done that? How did you do that? What were you selling? We, we got up to that point. Twelve pound consultation. Yeah, we started right at the bottom, which was eleven ninety nine, nine ninety. I think so, yeah. So how long were you, what was this Skype call? That was a week of, you got a, a training plan, diet plan and coaching for a week. When someone bought it, we were like, right, open up a document in Microsoft Word. Oh, God.

• 36:49Jonny?

  Name, Monday, that, that was it. And we, three of us coached this person at once. And then we had a gold plan that was a hundred quid and a platinum that was two hundred and fifty quid. What did you get for the platinum? That was our YOLOs. We didn't know. So this is, this is probably the iconic story of propane. So driving to the gym one morning, still at uni, on the way to train. Boodloo, PayPal notification, two hundred and fifty pounds. Right, Yusef, I was like, Yusef, someone's just bought platinum. And obviously erupts into laughter because platinum didn't exist. What the fuck's platinum? So I then didn't train and had to sit and make this guy, which was basically just like my, like

• 37:33Jonny?

  wank log of everything I was interested in at the time with. It was amazing because you, you drew a graph of like the cortisol. I did have a graph. I was really, but it was really, it was just like every, I was like, fucking hell, I need to give this guy two hundred and fifty. What was your turnaround time? I did it that day. One day? Yeah. Two hundred and fifty quid. Did you pay two hundred and fifty quid? That's still.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  He wrote his magnum opus just on the.

• 37:53Jonny?

  Because I was bursting, like it was, it was like coming up my pores, this stuff, like I read so much about it. Um, but yeah, and then, but I think we never really got above, we would never have been able to do it full time. If we, and the income never really got to any point where it was meaningful until we learned marketing. And the first, we spent a thousand quid on a course from Paul Maud on how to do e- email. Email marketing.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  And then, um, so, so you know, you were saying it's a series of problems that you solve.

• 38:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  So the bottleneck was revenue and sales not coming in. So we fixed.

• 38:29Chris Williamson?

  So what was that due to traffic, due to volume?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, like a traffic and.

• 38:32Chris Williamson?

  Conversions?

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Both. So, so, so we improved both from the, from the traffic. So you improved it from the, um, course, from the marketing course. So then you improve traffic and conversions. Then suddenly you've got revenue coming in, more client demand, but we can't actually cater to them all. And so we end up just getting less and less sleep and taking more sales calls at like two in the morning to someone in America and like, just, and you can see on the videos, there's a period in our YouTube channel where both me and Johnny just start looking more like that.

• 39:00Chris Williamson?

  Sullen.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Um.

• 39:01Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever seen Brian Cox go into a centrifuge?

• 39:07Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen it?

• 39:10Chris Williamson?

  Have you seen it?

• 39:10Jonny?

  I think I might have seen the video.

• 39:11Chris Williamson?

  Dean, can you make, can you make Brian Cox appear in the centrifuge appear just here, please? Thank you. At his face.

• 39:18Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Chris Williamson?

  Hang on. Bing, bing.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  He won't. Brian Cox is not gonna.

• 39:24Chris Williamson?

  Actually, someone, someone called us out on one of the videos and said, I swear that you say video guy Dean's going to do loads of things that he doesn't do.

• 39:31Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 39:32Chris Williamson?

  Fucking video guy Dean.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  I guess we'll, we'll find out what actually.

• 39:35Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, um, um, you were saying.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so there, there's a series of problems that solve and we've solved one bottleneck. It opened up then the capacity problem, but the ability to deliver that service to the clients. And we just didn't know what to do, didn't have a scalable operational system to deal with it.

• 39:51Chris Williamson?

  And also were terrified of putting the price up to bring demand down.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Terrible. Yeah. Which, which we'll go on to.

• 39:56Chris Williamson?

  Great story.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Chris's advice for us. And so.

• 39:59Jonny?

  It felt like, you know, that, that exercise, which is like a rope and a weighted ball. And you see people go like this with on the wall. It felt like that.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  I thought that's what you do at CrossFit.

• 40:07Jonny?

  You think that's what, you think that's what a wall ball is, don't you?

• 40:10Chris Williamson?

  You're more balls.

• 40:11Jonny?

  More balls. Wall ball's much more gentle. But yeah, so you, you finally, it's like you've been, you've been like. Like underneath a tap for ages with a screwdriver, like trying to unplug it. And then you unplug it.

• 40:23Jonny?

  Fuck. Then you've got a very different problem of like, the house is gonna flood. Ysef, the house is flooding.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  You're right. I've run out of buckets. We've used all of the buckets. That's the best analogy, because it's suddenly a problem that you you've only got a screwdriver to try and fix the water in your face. And you're like, well, I don't know. Chumasku plu. Because you do it really fast to try and like, so and so we ended up sleep deprived, just feeling horrendous.

• 40:47Jonny?

  What year was this?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Twenty two thousand and fourteen.

• 40:51Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  So.

• 40:52Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Um, and it was only really having Chris's advice and a series of mentors and business coaches that we hired over the following few years. That finally got us to develop a scaled leverage approach to delivering service to clients without them suffering. Like they actually got a better service as a result, rather than them getting like a sleep deprived coach that writes them out a program that they. Halfway through Ramadan, yeah. Yeah. Ramadan.

• 41:22Jonny?

  So I think that that the lesson, the business lesson from that is, and I think this is what it took us a long time to realise is that you don't really. People like people set up a company and do something really manually themselves and think I have a business. But if they went on holiday, all of the aspects of the business from like selling, delivery, everything stop. That's just a job with loads of risk, like with with no with no holiday pay, no pension, no maternity or paternity leave.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  It probably pays less as well.

• 41:55Jonny?

  I work in Cafe Nero, man. So like I'm my own boss. Like you have got nothing in the way of uh uh systems or an actual business. So for it to be a business, you have to be able to not do the selling and it's still s- sales still happen. Not bring in the the traffic or the attention and that still happens, not actually deliver the product and that still happens. And only when you like slowly step away and all stuff is like.

• 42:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but you do, it's it's kind of a little bit, I imagine, or it is for me, like, putting a baby to sleep and very slowly stepping out of the room, like the handle, closing it, allowing it to just. But inevitably. Shut it.

• 42:38Chris Williamson?

  Fucking hell, yeah. Get back off holiday.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  But there's sometimes you just hear a thud from inside the room, you're like, oh no.

• 42:43Chris Williamson?

  Baby's fallen out. Or like a loud bang. Yeah. What happened then? Don't know. What happened to the baby? Like the. Frag grenade.

• 42:55Chris Williamson?

  Tom Clancy, Ring of Six. Yeah. Ring of Six, straight through the door. Or like it's like bang, bang, bang, oh police, you're like, oh my god. The baby's turning in, N Y P. So, um, a good, a couple of good stories to start framing this. I guess the principle, we should probably try and either before or after a principle, try and summarize it. And I guess what we're talking about here is the art of delegating or the art of scaling, because the art of delegating is a massive topic that we need to get on to, which is bringing in people who fill in the gaps in your particular skill set. And that's probably a full episode on its own. Um, but a fairly charming story to do with this is

• 43:35Chris Williamson?

  I worked two hundred and four Saturdays in a row without stopping. Um, didn't miss a single Saturday. So when we.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Four years of.

• 43:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, four years. So when we first launched our first ever weekly event, that was the

• 43:53Chris Williamson?

  what is, to the listeners at home, Yosef has lifted his leg in the air like a cat.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Had a repair.

• 43:57Chris Williamson?

  You've patched your pants. Do you, right. I mean.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Carry on. I I didn't mean to distract you from your story.

• 44:03Chris Williamson?

  Jesus Christ.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  A little bit stiff.

• 44:05Chris Williamson?

  That's gonna have to be cut out, isn't it? Just leave it. And Lydia Mandine will have cut all this out by now. As long as he's put something over your crotch. So I worked, I worked, um, over two hundred Saturdays in a row without taking a break. That included, that wasn't just me working on the night time and being kind of the slightly more swan around boss that I am now. That was getting up at ten in the morning, going to the club for eleven a m., putting up the inflatable that goes up in the main room, like plugging up.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  The, the, the big goose that you have to.

• 44:38Chris Williamson?

  Plug, plugging in all of the DJ decks upstairs, like a job which with a written process could have taken anyone.

• 44:48Chris Williamson?

  Three hours to do would have cost us eighteen quid a week, but oh no, because I was terrified. I was so neurotic about the business and I think this is something which is.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  You're like, I can do this well and if I can get someone else, they would.

• 45:00Chris Williamson?

  The problem is, if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 45:04Chris Williamson?

  Is true.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:06Chris Williamson?

  And the conversation that I had, pardon me, with Stephen Wolfram the other week was he, a lot of the time, because he understands coding, right, from the ground floor. He goes into Wolfram Language or Wolfram Mathematica and just checks out the code. So he'll go on to like wolframalpha.com and just look at the code and just code check shit and debug shit. And you're like, hang on, you're the CEO, eight hundred people work on this. Do you know who wrote that bit of code? Like some spotty teenager in San Francisco who works off his, like out of his mum's basement or something like that, because everyone's remote pretty much in Wolfram. And you've got the CEO going in and just being like, he'll drop an email and be like, oh, just checked out the code.

• 45:49Chris Williamson?

  There's a little bit of debugging to be done in here, ten minutes and he'll do it.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  But the, the problem there is that he has set up his life so that he can do that because that's what he loves.

• 45:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  But that's not the way that most people would want to run a business. You know, like he's, he's an odd character because.

• 46:04Chris Williamson?

  Very much so.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:05Chris Williamson?

  Very unique.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  His life so that he can code more, whereas.

• 46:08Chris Williamson?

  Most people want to do it so they can do less.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, like what we're saying about the, the e-myth concept is that you graduate from technician to franchise owner, where actually you're not breaking the bread at all, you don't even see the flower anymore. You wrote the process and then someone else is carrying it out and you've got people.

• 46:25Jonny?

  I remember what, so the day I quit, or maybe like the week before I quit, sat there.

• 46:32Chris Williamson?

  Sat down there. December time.

• 46:35Jonny?

  KPMG sat in where, where nobody can see, but behind the camera in this mystical land of.

• 46:41Chris Williamson?

  This is a set. Let's not forget that this isn't actually my living room. This is a podcast studio built to look exactly like my living room. But that's actually just all open walls there.

• 46:51Jonny?

  It's just black space.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  We're, we're made of cardboard, so like it's just.

• 46:55Jonny?

  This is going to become like as famous as like the casting couch, isn't it? So like if there's someone, you know, in.

• 47:01Chris Williamson?

  I wanna come, I wanna come up and see the, see, I wanna come up and see the, the couch.

• 47:05Jonny?

  You know when?

• 47:06Chris Williamson?

  I wanna sit where Johnny sits. You don't wanna sit where Johnny sits.

• 47:09Jonny?

  Yeah, they'll just be a big dick.

• 47:10Chris Williamson?

  Huge.

• 47:11Jonny?

  There was a thing on Facebook for ages where people uploaded like the famous casting couch set on Facebook and, and the caption was like, every guy in the UK knows exactly what this.

• 47:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  You're blanking.

• 47:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you don't, you just doesn't know what it is. I've seen another one, I've seen another one with the real fake taxi that's for sale.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 47:30Chris Williamson?

  Lauren was in fake taxi.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 47:32Chris Williamson?

  Female fake taxi.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  What, what's her stage name?

• 47:36Chris Williamson?

  Sienna Day.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Sienna Day.

• 47:37Chris Williamson?

  Anybody wants to have a watch of some adult entertainment, just.

• 47:42Jonny?

  With Chris's, with Chris's mate in it.

• 47:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, Pornhub.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  She made it big time then.

• 47:46Chris Williamson?

  Sienna Day, she's done good, man.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  She done good.

• 47:48Jonny?

  It's weird. There's a hierarchy, that, that's, that's totally irrelevant. What was I, what was I saying?

• 47:53Speaker 02

  That's a huge bit.

• 47:53Jonny?

  Couch behind her, oh yeah, sat there and you said to me, um, I used to tell people to go to clubs. Now I tell people who tell people who tell people.

• 48:03Chris Williamson?

  To go to.

• 48:04Jonny?

  To go to clubs. And I was like, okay. I think I understand it now.

• 48:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Jonny?

  But that is actually the, the goal, isn't it?

• 48:13Speaker 02

  The only reason why, if you wanted to be wool from about it, was if you really liked giving people flyers.

• 48:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Then you'd be like, you know what, one day a week, I'm gonna go down Northumberland Street and.

• 48:22Chris Williamson?

  Give out flyers. But what you would have done then is you would have brought in everybody else that did everything that wasn't giving out flyers. So the business still.

• 48:31Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 48:31Chris Williamson?

  Acts on your behalf.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  You have to give out so many flyers that if you were the only flyer giver.

• 48:35Chris Williamson?

  You don't give that many out, man. Print, print media's dead. There we go, business principle, print media, fuck off. No one looks at a flyer anymore.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  One of the rotating elastic bands that just fires flyers.

• 48:44Chris Williamson?

  Actually, I'm gonna do, we, we can do a little quick fire round. I think we're about, I'd started and we've got loads of outtakes at the beginning, so. Uh, I think we're about maybe fifty minutes in. Couple of things, just some quick principles off the bat. Um, mail shots through the door, as far as I'm concerned, if you are launching your business, nah, fuck off. No one wants your, like, if you put junk mail through someone's letterbox, you're probably just either wasting money or damaging your brand.

• 49:09Jonny?

  How do you feel about junk mail, Lisa?

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Absolutely terrible. I mean, we've, we've, we've heard, if you've not heard the, is it Life Fails? Where we talk about.

• 49:17Chris Williamson?

  It was a catch up episode.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Catch up, yeah.

• 49:20Jonny?

  On his letterbox, he has written.

• 49:21Chris Williamson?

  No junk.

• 49:22Jonny?

  No junk mail, because never has there been a more effective deterrent.

• 49:26Chris Williamson?

  Someone whose job is to give you junk mail.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  It works pretty well. The only people that get through are Otean and Farm Foods now. I, I used to have like.

• 49:34Jonny?

  That one bro.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:35Chris Williamson?

  You've got a little sack on the other side of your door, haven't you?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  I have a sack and I, I chase people down the road if they.

• 49:40Jonny?

  And then you have a musket, don't you, on a light, light.

• 49:44Chris Williamson?

  But his, his goes across the top of the yeti, your yeti that's in there. Actually, you've just got, the, the line of sight is directly.

• 49:52Jonny?

  Single shot. So don't do mail shots, don't do.

• 49:55Chris Williamson?

  Don't do print, print media is fucking dead, man. Like unless you are a club promoter who has uh, one advantage that we have at between the hours of 10pm and one in the morning. The only people that exist on the street are our crowd. So our market's been filtered by temporarily.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:14Chris Williamson?

  And spatially.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Great, I can raise.

• 50:17Chris Williamson?

  If you're walking, if you're walking through Newcastle's big market or Manchester's Dean's Gate.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Custom audience.

• 50:23Chris Williamson?

  At one, at twelve, at twelve midday.

• 50:26Jonny?

  Unfortunately, my translator.

• 50:27Chris Williamson?

  Twelve, twelve midnight. Like you're there because you're, you're ready to go on a night out. And if you're not ready to go on a night out.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Retargeting.

• 50:36Chris Williamson?

  This is an upsell, this is technically an upsell or a cross sell.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  I see.

• 50:39Chris Williamson?

  Um.

• 50:40Jonny?

  We need to map this out and lucid charts really high.

• 50:44Chris Williamson?

  But yeah, so print media fucking dead. I wouldn't, I would, really would not waste your time with it. That would include big advertising, like if you have a look at the price to get a JC decor.

• 50:54Jonny?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:55Chris Williamson?

  And you've got minimum of like 10 sites, minimum of this many weeks, this many exposures. And it's like, unless you're selling the new fucking Kia Picanto.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Kia Picanto.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  That's exactly what I was used for.

• 51:10Jonny?

  Two with C.

• 51:12Chris Williamson?

  Um, so yeah, I think traditional media with regards to that, like you can sell so well just off the back of becoming your own brand. And we can move into personal branding, humanizing the brand, all that sort of stuff.

• 51:23Jonny?

  So I have some points on.

• 51:24Chris Williamson?

  Oh, great.

• 51:25Jonny?

  The, thanks.

• 51:26Chris Williamson?

  Um.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Just, you're just glad he's got points.

• 51:28Chris Williamson?

  I'm surprised that you're.

• 51:29Jonny?

  The, the, the, the basics of this of like, if you're sat listening to this and you're thinking, so this isn't for people who have a business who are looking to improve it. It's for people who are like, working.

• 51:38Chris Williamson?

  That'll be next episode. That'll be one of the future episodes.

• 51:40Jonny?

  Yeah, we could, so we could do start.

• 51:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, we're moving through chronologically.

• 51:43Jonny?

  Build, scale, et cetera.

• 51:45Chris Williamson?

  The millionaire.

• 51:47Jonny?

  Scale.

• 51:49Jonny?

  Love scale. Um, so people, I, I think, you know, the whole Gary Vee thing of like, there's never been a better time to start a business.

• 51:58Chris Williamson?

  The best time to start a business was 10 years ago.

• 52:00Jonny?

  Well, yeah.

• 52:00Chris Williamson?

  The second best time is.

• 52:01Jonny?

  Is today.

• 52:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Jonny?

  But I, I do really think that.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Trading quote.

• 52:04Jonny?

  Yeah, second best time to learn.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  I suppose that definitely applies to business as well, doesn't it?

• 52:08Jonny?

  Well, but it's so, it's so easy. Like you, if you just want to replace your income by doing something you enjoy doing, you can absolutely sell some kind of expertise or even sell what you're currently doing, but package it in a business. So the point I've written here is that people don't do it because they think jobs are the safe route. I have quite a nihilistic view on this, but I think realistically, most jobs will be automated within 10 years. Like the vast majority, especially shit like finance, accountancy, anything admin, like realistically is not the safe.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Like.

• 52:43Jonny?

  Accountancy. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's listed, the economist thinks it's like one of the most likely industries to be automated. Painting and like plumbing and shit like that, carp, carpentry, those are the most safe industries, but.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Well, but so painting, I wonder if they're going to have this, that drone that comes in a room.

• 52:59Jonny?

  It's just that.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  That's.

• 53:00Jonny?

  It's just that every, every room is every room of different dimensions and people have very specific requirements.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  So you, you, you use the Dulux app where you fill in certain walls.

• 53:09Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  It detects the walls, it maps out like the, the lines and stuff and it just flies around and just.

• 53:14Chris Williamson?

  Why not go orthogonal with this and just everyone get VR to the point where it's such high quality that your VR thing changes the things in your room.

• 53:22Jonny?

  Well, if it's that high quality, you don't, you live your life.

• 53:26Chris Williamson?

  Just line of bed. Exactly. There we go.

• 53:27Jonny?

  I, to be honest, I can't wait for that. I'll be.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Everyone will be so fat.

• 53:30Jonny?

  Be nice, be nice to have a rest, to be honest.

• 53:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'd love a rest.

• 53:33Jonny?

  So. Sell whatever you're doing, like there is an opportunity to do that and there are a few resources I listen to. So there's an Alan Watts video. Is that right?

• 53:43Speaker 02

  I did not expect you to suggest.

• 53:44Chris Williamson?

  Alan Watts wisdom.

• 53:45Jonny?

  Yeah, where he talks, he talks about like how to decide what to do. And he uses an example of like, well, you know, if you like what you do and you can command a good fee for it and you like what you do. If you're for the money, that's madness. And so he talks about that and just basically logically walks you through like why working in a job that you don't like, because you think it's a safe route is lunacy. Anton Creel, the clip from that I assume you're gonna share.

• 54:11Chris Williamson?

  It's already been in once, but.

• 54:12Jonny?

  Has it? So that, that video convinced me to quit my job.

• 54:17Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 54:17Jonny?

  He talks about viewing, viewing quitting your job to start something in a trading analogy. So he's like, look at your downside and your upside. So you earn twenty grand a year and you want to start your own business. You quit your job, people think I have a downside or I stand to lose twenty grand a year. Actually, you probably stand to lose like two grand a year because you could go back into a job for eighteen, let's say. Your upside is potentially unlimited. So like, let's say you quit and you become the next Jeff Bezos, unlikely but possible, like never going to happen in your current situation. Might happen if you quit and try. So you you're exposing yourself to unlimited upside with it, like a two grand downside.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Because then if you.

• 55:02Jonny?

  That is.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  It's like, if you fail after say a year, and you want to go find another job, yeah, worst case you can find a job for.

• 55:09Jonny?

  A bit less.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:10Chris Williamson?

  The asymmetry in that particular trade, if any trader saw that opportunity.

• 55:14Jonny?

  Take it every day.

• 55:15Chris Williamson?

  Motherfucking margin.

• 55:16Jonny?

  So he just says, put yourself in situations like that for the rest of your life and you'll become very wealthy, very wealthy indeed.

• 55:24Chris Williamson?

  Uh, what other bits have you got down there? Have you got anything else?

• 55:26Jonny?

  I mean, I go into like emotional management.

• 55:28Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so.

• 55:28Jonny?

  But that, I mean, but yeah, so I think, don't, don't. I, I was going to stay in a job that I, that I was told by everyone around me was the safe route. Because, you know, quitting and starting your own thing is stupid.

• 55:42Chris Williamson?

  And many of your coworkers are still there.

• 55:44Jonny?

  Still there, yeah. And some of them, some of them like it, some of them don't. Um, but I think, like. Let's say like our parents' generation, like for them to start a business, really difficult to do.

• 55:57Chris Williamson?

  Lot of barriers to entry, very friction, high friction.

• 56:01Jonny?

  Like you need to produce a widget in a factory and you know, get a loan from a bank, like very traditional. Now, you can essentially sell information digitally for and make a good, good income doing it. So why, if you have an inkling of thinking about it, at least fucking give it a go.

• 56:17Chris Williamson?

  The other thing as well is that most businesses like this, like you did, you were able to do multiple things at once. Yeah, if you are looking to do something that occurs very specifically within office hours, you've seen that in your um particular area, there is a market for window cleaners, let's say. And you happen to, you happen to have the expertise or the inclination, you just fucking love getting after windows. And you're like, right, but I've got a nine to five in some typical retail store. Okay, you just, you've got a little bit of conflict. Whereas for the most part, what we're going to be talking about here is some small sort of craft, someone's um unique skill or a marketing opportunity or coaching or whatever it might be.

• 57:02Chris Williamson?

  Um, there's no reason that you can't begin to dip your toe alongside whatever the job is at the moment.

• 57:09Jonny?

  And I, I think like, so the Alan Watts thing of if you just do for a living what you find intensely interesting, then immediately you have a massive advantage over everybody else. So like, the thing I remember thinking was, I remember s- sitting in the office and I wanted to leave at five o'clock because I wanted to train, I wanted to do propane, see friends, whatever. Other people wanted to stay, so I'm thinking like, well, because I don't want to, so immediately.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  The odds are already stacked against you.

• 57:36Jonny?

  Yeah, I'm not gonna get a promotion, I'm not gonna be a partner or whatever. So like, I'm gonna go find the thing that I don't mind doing till midnight, that actually I would choose to do.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Because then even if you don't, you end up in the top one percent.

• 57:47Jonny?

  That's still great.

• 57:47Chris Williamson?

  Did you, did both of you listen to the James Clear podcast? He talks about Steffi Graf. So he talks about um Steffi Graf, one of the greatest female tennis players of all time, I think she's German and.

• 57:57Jonny?

  Sounds German.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  I did listen to this.

• 57:59Chris Williamson?

  So when she was about. Twelve or fourteen, they went and did um two broad area tests on the youth uh players in the uh German tennis team. And one of them was on skill and aptitude, and the other was on passion and motivation. And she scored the highest on both. So you're like, right, good, good fucking luck beating her. Because even if you're more skilled, she'll outwork you at training and catch up and then overtake you. And to her, it'll feel like fun. Another example, Sarah Sigmundsdottir, uh Catherine David's daughter, one of the fittest women on the planet for the last few years in the CrossFit Games. And someone said to her, how do you find the motivation to do what you do every day? She said, if you gave me any life in the world, I would choose what I'm doing right now.

• 58:43Chris Williamson?

  Like, motherfucker, like, you try and beat her. You try and will yourself to beat someone for whom work feels like fun. And that's what James Clear says, that if you can find the thing which to you feels like play, but to everyone else feels like work. You're laughing. And that for me, at the moment, is this podcast. Ten years ago, for me, it was filling and running clubs.

• 59:03Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 59:04Chris Williamson?

  And if you're, if you do it sufficiently well, and we can get on to this lineage a little bit more in future episodes, but if you do it sufficiently well, you can do to a much more successful, successful degree than I have. But you can scale businesses which you have conquered. Build them to a degree where they're sufficiently self-sufficient, leave them off to one side and then take the next conquest on.

• 59:28Jonny?

  Yep, do other stuff.

• 59:29Chris Williamson?

  And you're like, right, okay, so fuck it, now I'm going to add a podcast on. Okay, so fuck it, now I'm going to start to do for me modeling. Or I'm going to start to do, I DJed for a while, or I'm going to start to do this or that or the other. But the foundation needs to be a business which you can scale.

• 59:41Jonny?

  I mean, so you can do this within, so like, you don't have to set up a business just in something you enjoy. Like you could, so that uh Cal Newport has a book called So Good They Can't Ignore You, which he wrote before all the stuff he's written. It is Cal Newport's?

• 59:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 59:54Jonny?

  Yeah. Yeah. So that he talks about finding um.

• 59:59Jonny?

  So you talk about, you use the Steve Jobs thing of like, find your passion and how that's actually not correct in that that doesn't correlate with happiness. And actually, if people have autonomy and feel good at something, feel valued, they get just as much satisfaction from a career and a job as they would from a business. You can, there's loads of examples in that book, but you can get the same thing from that. But most people, I think it's fair to say the vast majority don't consider work as something that they genuinely love doing.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Fifteen percent of people do, apparently.

• 1:00:27Jonny?

  Love it.

• 1:00:28Chris Williamson?

  Fifteen percent of people say that they are actively engaged in their job.

• 1:00:31Jonny?

  Right.

• 1:00:31Chris Williamson?

  Eighty five percent of people are either actively disengaged or agnostic.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  That's so grim, isn't it?

• 1:00:38Chris Williamson?

  About work. Yeah, man. Especially when you think that's forty hours of your life, minimum, every week, plus travel to and from work, plus all of the mincy stuff that you've got to do around it.

• 1:00:49Jonny?

  Like the office politics.

• 1:00:51Chris Williamson?

  Social connections, the taking your work home with you.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Nescafe coffee.

• 1:00:55Chris Williamson?

  Nescafe coffee, fucking bullshit.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  If you take out.

• 1:00:57Chris Williamson?

  Fuck popo, popo pops, mate.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  If you take out sleep time, which you're unconscious, so you can't really count that towards time spent in your life, it's such an overwhelming.

• 1:01:07Chris Williamson?

  Fifty percent of your life.

• 1:01:08Jonny?

  But then this is why, like, people, like, on a Friday night, you just get, like, battered, because the reality of the situation is just too overwhelming to think about. When you actually really sit and think about it, you just wanna cry, so you get drunk.

• 1:01:17Chris Williamson?

  I wanna escape it. Yeah, so I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go out this week.

• 1:01:20Jonny?

  People often cry, uh, drunk and then get cry, and then get cry, get drunk and then cry.

• 1:01:24Chris Williamson?

  And then get cry.

• 1:01:25Jonny?

  And then get cry after that.

• 1:01:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Jonny?

  And then do drunking. And the, um, Tim Urban, Tim Urban's podcast with Tim Ferriss, they talk about happiness. And his definition of happiness is like crushing a Tuesday, having a mint Tuesday.

• 1:01:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's what this podcast was gonna be called.

• 1:01:39Jonny?

  Crushing a Tuesday.

• 1:01:40Chris Williamson?

  Crushing a Tuesday.

• 1:01:41Jonny?

  Or, do I have to go and get Lex?

• 1:01:43Chris Williamson?

  Do I need to?

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Which is like, you must call it that. I'm not coming on the podcast.

• 1:01:48Chris Williamson?

  Do I have to go and get Lex?

• 1:01:50Jonny?

  But I think if you don't thoroughly, if you don't regularly have Tuesdays where you're like, that was good.

• 1:01:54Chris Williamson?

  Fucking nailed that.

• 1:01:56Jonny?

  Do, do something else.

• 1:01:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Jonny?

  For the love of God.

• 1:01:59Chris Williamson?

  I mean, so at the beginning of the next episode, some of the listeners will be familiar with this, but the beginning of the next business principles, I'm going to do the experiment you can do at home where you whittle away your wage down. And I'm pretty certain that if we ask enough questions, we will be able to get you to pay us to come to work.

• 1:02:19Chris Williamson?

  I'm pretty sure that we'll be able to do that. So I think we might as well call it there. That I really enjoyed this. I think that a lot of people are interested in entrepreneurship and stuff like that. As I've already said, if there's areas you want us to cover, fuck me from like scaling specific stuff. I know a lot of people have actual questions about how to run club promo. I don't, I don't treat any of our trade secrets as that secret. Online marketing is available everywhere. If you want to know about Facebook ads, if you want to know about staff management, problem solving, emotional control, how to scale a business, pricing strategy, whatever it is.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  We give questions.

• 1:02:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  If you ask something that's boring to answer in a podcast, we're probably not going to answer it. But if it's something that's like that.

• 1:03:02Chris Williamson?

  Cool. Well, what do you want to know? What is it that you want to know? What, what questions have you got either about sort of personal questions for our particular career history? Yeah. Gives a message. As always, thank you very much for tuning in. Like, share, subscribe. I would really appreciate it. Okay.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:03:21Chris Williamson?

  Dan.