From Side Hustles to Acquisitions | Andy Hooper on Scaling GEE Capital

Join us as we dive into the journey of building multiple businesses from humble side hustles to a powerful acquisition machine and what it truly takes to scale, lead and learn through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

Chapters:

[00:00:00] Introduction
 [00:03:45] From Financial Struggles to Side Hustles
 [00:10:20] Building Global E-Commerce Experts
 [00:18:00] Leadership Lessons and Mistakes
 [00:27:40] Acquisitions and Scaling GEE Capital
 [00:36:10] Mindset, Control, and Personal Growth
 [00:45:00] Reflection and Advice to His Younger Self

💡 Topics Covered:
✅ How Andy turned credit-card debt and a dog-walking side hustle into a global business

 ✅ The early grind of e-commerce and learning by doing

 ✅ The importance of empowerment and how giving it to the wrong people can backfire

 ✅ Learning from mistakes, frustration, and failures in leadership

 ✅ Why patience, small changes, and alignment of values are key to growth

 ✅ How acquiring businesses can multiply your value, even with little capital

 ✅ Andy’s mindset on control, adaptability, and building a scalable business model

 ✅ Why documenting your journey and celebrating small wins matters

🔥 Quotes:

🔥 “Most business owners think they can do it all by themselves. I did — until I realised the right partner could have fast-tracked my growth.”

💬 “You can’t control the wind or the tide — only your own sail. Business is exactly the same.”

🚀 “There’s no overnight success. It’s 20 years of 1% improvements, showing up every single day.”

📌 If you’ve ever thought about scaling your business, exploring acquisitions, or just want to hear the real, unfiltered truth about what it takes to grow from side hustles to a multi-business empire — this episode is for you.

Discover more about GEE Capital

Follow Global E-Commerce Experts:
https://linkedin.com/company/global-ecommerce-experts
https://instagram.com/global_ecommerce_experts

Guest: Andy Hooper 

Host: Carina McLeod, Founder of eCommerce Nurse

#Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #Ecommerce #Acquisitions #YourMindYourBusiness #GEECapital #AndyHooper #BusinessPodcast #EntrepreneurPodcast #ScalingBusiness #LeadershipJourney

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Transcript

I think in hindsight, I probably should have let some equity go to some people that were ahead of me on the journey in a better way. Because I could have fast tracked some of that learning with the right equity partner to support me. And that's probably one of the things I've learned along this journey now is how do you bring in an equity partner that can support you that's further ahead of you on the journey that can enable your growth to be sped up.

Because I think over the last 20 years, had I done that, I could have been. Further ahead than I am. 

 Welcome to your mind, your business, the podcast that dives into the real grit of entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Corina McLeod, CEO, and founder of e-Commerce Nurse and e-Commerce Growth Agency, and today we have a special guest, Andy Hooper from GE Capital, ge.

Ge EE Capital.

We got there. Excellent.

in the end. I was like thinking the pressure of getting it right. Welcome Andy.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Much appreciated.

I'm guessing, let's start off and share with the audience who Andy is, and then I'm gonna go and hit rewind, right to that very start of your entrepreneurial journey.

Alright, let me give you the high level piece right as we sit today. run a business called GE Capital. we've acquired 12 businesses over the past three years, but we've acquired those into a group of businesses we've already had. So we've got, we've had 18 businesses. We've then reduced them down and slimmed them down and sold some, got rid of some.

And we got 12 businesses. We run them all with a framework we call stems, which is our operating and management system. We run across all of our businesses and we've just set up our own private equity fund. And I started all of that from side hustles, when I had a job 20 years ago,

Wow. There's a lot there. There's a lot. So we're gonna come onto that. I dunno how much time we'll go through all of those businesses, but, you, mentioned the word hustle, I think, which is interesting 'cause I guess if we go back to the start of your journey, there's gonna be some hustling going on there to be able to get to where you are at now.

So let's, talk about what was that first moment in your career?

So 2008, 2009, financial crisis, crash crisis. I had a job for working for British Sailing. I loved my job. My job was to teach, not teach, to get more people into sailing and find the next Olympic athletes for sailing and windsurfing. Now, when you do a job that you love. Sailing windsurfing, right?

Talking about that all day. It's really not that difficult of a job. In fact, you love doing it, but 2008, nine crash happened. And I had 5,000 pound on a credit card. And at the time, what you could do is you could bump it from n percent to N percent So we'd, spent 5,000 pound on, I don't know, nonsense, right?

And I was bumping it from N percent to N percent credit cards. but then what happened when the crash came, they basically stopped that and then whacked on 40% interest. So all of a sudden I couldn't afford. Even the interest on the 5,000 pound, let alone the repayment. So I walked into the office, tapped on the CEOs and said, I need a pay rise.

And you're unlucky mate. There's a recession. No one's having a pay rise. I mean I'm abbreviating a, bit more of a protracted conversation.

And I was like, that's a problem 'cause I've got no money and I'm skinny and I'm thinking back to becoming bankrupt 'cause I've got no money. So at that point I realized, okay, I've gotta do something about it.

So we set up a dog walking business and a dog weekend, I dunno what you call it, but we looked after people's dogs when they went on holiday for 

the weekend. So we had these dogs. Problem with that was my dog, my wife loved the dogs. So we then bought a dog. So I'm making money on one hand and my wife's spending it on the other hand.

so we did that for a little bit. we then did car boot sales. So we go to a car boot cell, just get everyone to give us all their rubbish, then go to a car boot cell and, and my goal was to always make 150 pounds on a Sunday. That was like the target. And you think about it, 600 pound extra a month, which is a decent bit of action.

Bear in mind, there, there's, you're just selling stuff that you've got. so it's 600 pound of cash. And then when I was at these, car boot sales, I started seeing these things and I was like, you could make more money than that. So then I started selling those on eBay. So I, I started flipping things onto eBay, which is where the e-commerce stuff starts to come in.

And then I started selling things on eBay, and then I'd start doing arbitrage where I'd go into shops, buy stuff and start selling on eBay and Amazon. And then I started buying things from. China and selling them on Amazon mainly. So that's how that all kickstarted from that sort of initial potentially going bankrupt, had no money to then starting these little side hustles on the side.

and there was a ton of others, but I know that's a decent starting point. So

So what was it? Because you're talking about if we look at where you are at now, we're talking in millions probably, whereas you are talking sort of thousands when you started off

Hundreds, like tens of which is such, so different, like over probably a coup two or so decades. So what was that then part where you're doing this e-commerce stuff but then you're like, no, there's more here.

I wanna go bigger.

Yes, I don't think at any point I've thought I want to go bigger,

but what I do I'm hungry for is progress.

Right.

So I'm constantly looking at how do I get to the next, not. How do I get to the next step? And I had these businesses where I had wedding photography businesses where I set up a wedding photography business, which then gave me the real cash to, to, set up on my own.

But while I was doing all of those things, the wedding photography particularly, I didn't know how to. To do a wedding. I'm quite good at organizing groups like the sailing thing. I can organize groups, I can get a load of people, put 'em all together and take control. That's not really probably one of my, issues.

I got a lot of them, but that's not one of them. And weddings is just like crowd organization. So I end up photographing a wedding for my cousin with my dad, and then a friends, and then it just escalated from there. But while I was doing that, the one thing you'd I'd use is YouTube. Go to YouTube, how to pose a bride, how to edit a photo.

And then from there I'm then using YouTube as this training ground. And then I think what happened from there was then things started coming to me. I'd start looking at, I think you marketing things would start coming to me of ClickFunnels and different businesses that are trying to sell you get rich quick type schemes.

And I just started going down this journey of learning. 'cause I thought that education was something you did at school and I didn't like school. I didn't like education in the form that it was for someone like me. It doesn't, fit my mindset and my model. So I started educating myself more and more and then just over the years I've educated myself more and more, more. I've networked with more people. You surround yourself with different people, learning what other people are doing, and that's how you just, bit by bit. Yeah, there was no rule moment until I got to 40 and I got to 40, which obviously wasn't that long ago.

But I got to 40 and looked back over the previous 10 years and thought, 'cause Tony Robbins has this thing of you can achieve a lot more in 10 years than you think, but less in one year than you can think or what to that effect. I was like, what have I achieved in the last 10 years and what do I wanna achieve in the next 10 years?

So I sat down at 40 and went, okay, where do I wanna be in 10 years time when I get to 50? What does that really look like? So that was probably the first time I really tried to engineer.

What I want to achieve as an outcome

So you started GE Global?

globally. Commerce experts.

Yep. Or global e-commerce experts.

that? That was the end of 2016. Begin 2017, off of the back of, I was doing some management consultancy for, my accountant because I weren't earning enough money doing the job, the businesses I had, so I started doing some management consulting.

Yes. Off the back of that, we could see this e-commerce thing happening. And what happened was in two th December, 2016, HMRC said to Amazon, you've got all these sellers that are based overseas and none of them are VAT registered. If they're not v, if you don't give us their VAT number, you are gonna pay the VAT.

So we saw this happening and we set up a VAT compliance business to help at the start, Americans expand overseas. But to get a VAT number for Amazon, and that's how that started. So the, rule came in December, 2016 and when the business sort of started gaining traction, mid 2017.

such, so different, like over probably a coup two or so decades. So what was that then part where you're doing this e-commerce stuff but then you're like, no, there's more here.

I wanna go bigger.

Yeah, so it was, the accountant I was doing some work with and consultancy with was starting to do some work in the e-commerce space. They found it out by luck, chance? I'm not quite sure how that really happened. And it was like, Andy, you understand this Amazon piece? Like you've been selling stuff on Amazon. We understand the accounting piece. Why don't we do some stuff together here? Could work really well. And that's how that came about. It wasn't like there was a like brainwave moment. and, these things never come from these brainwave, you occasionally have them right, but it's just.

Hungry for knowledge and, learning what other people are doing. That's it.

Because when you've then set up global eCommerce experts and that's when you start recruiting, right? And growing a team, and I'm guessing that was the part where the business became quite a size. How did you. Did you feel about and manage that? Because it's different when you start bringing people on, the journey with you.

yeah. That we were relatively lucky, fortunate with some LinkedIn outreach, managing a contract with Amazon to support sellers expanding overseas. We basically doubled every year. So first year we did two 50, then it was 500, then it was a million, then it was two, then it was four, then it was eight, and it just kept done ramping like it was mental.

But I think that the recruitment piece was, what are we. Really want from this business and how do we do that? So when we started doing the VAT, I started doing it. Then we basically brought some people in and took, a small amount of investment on to, I think it was 30 5K right, to help set it up.

and off the back of that 30 5K we brought a person in who would do the, VAT returns. So we almost set it up with that in mind because we could see the numbers. All the other businesses I'd done, it was just me scrambling around. Yeah. But I was like, I wanna do this one properly. How do we do this?

So we took a small amount of cash on that would give us money for the year, basically to employ someone. So the 30 5K was to employ someone to do it so I could focus on business development, marketing, and everything else.

How did it feel? Because when you are like. As you say, hustling, you're in control of your own destiny in the sense that you know, you know you're gonna get it done no matter what, because you got that fighter instinct in you. And then as soon as you're like, I'm gonna go and, borrow some money and I'm also passing over something over to somebody else, I'm less in control.

How was that?

I made a lot of mistakes. One of the mistakes was that. I believe in empowerment. So you wanna empower the team to feel like they've got some ownership and some credibility and empowerment within the business. The problem with that is that if you give the wrong person that empowerment, they think they run the business, not you.

Right.

And what happened was we brought this person on who could do the VAT returns, and then, we started bringing in apprentices to support that, which was perfectly reasonable, perfectly great way of doing it. But we empowered the wrong person and the power just went to their head and they thought there was a moment in a meeting where they, I was saying that, this is where we want to go and what we want to do, and where are we going?

And they're like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm like, you're an employee of the business so you I can do it, or, leave was the point. it wasn't as brutal as that. So I've made a lot of mistakes like that. and. I'm relatively good at letting people just get on with it.

Yeah.

Yep.

Probably too much,

Okay.

right? Because I'm, not, I'm a big picture. 

Yeah, I'm an 80% not 20%. The problem with that is I'm happy to let people get on with it, but I think they're getting on and doing the 20%, and the reality is they're not doing the 20% is the truth of it. So you end up with lots of things happening, but no one really focusing on the detail if you're not careful, and because I'm not detail orientated, I need somebody else to do that, not me.

Okay. So I guess that's where, you say you learn from, those mistakes. Do you find that when you do make mistakes, do you beat yourself up? Or do you like, nah, I'll just carry on. I know what needs to be done.

Yeah, I don't let it affect me. Hmm. There are, some things that do affect me and that is you providing crap service for clients. I remember waking up, looking at my phone and seeing another complaint from clients. That gets me. that, that gets to me, that eats me up.

And there was one instance, it's a bit embarrassing one, but I know this is what this

podcast is for. 

Get real. 

the warehouse guy comes into me and says, we've, never, we've made another cock up, this has happened. All the rest of it. anyway, he leaves, the room, and I've got a keyboard in front of.

And I pick up the keyboard and I literally throw it at the door. Keyboard smashes into a thousand pieces. It's all, it's one of the little Mac one about this big, right? Yeah. Bent in half. All the keys are flying out of it. There's a dent in the door. it's not my proudest moment, but you get so frustrated with the ability of people not basically following a process, is what it boils down to is what gets me.

so I think that for me is the most, is the bit that really gets me, rather than. Anything else?

Yeah, and I think that's interesting, like you say, with that frustration because it's almost like you can, you've got the vision in your head and it's like we are going there and then you see But we can't go there because we've got a deal now with all of this crap in front of us. So how do you then, how did you change that?

So you had your like kind of fury moment of let it all out. How do you then change that, to make sure that you don't lose, that path that you are heading

okay. So I think that, yeah, one is just down rigid on it. Yeah. I think one thing I did, I had a 3D printing business and I shared an office with an, an ex Olympian. One thing I realized from that was that those people that want those goals are completely selfish. They're completely focused on what they're doing for their business, where they want to go and what they're trying to achieve.

Nothing gets in the way of it. You take, high-end fitness athletes, you CrossFit, you're still doing CrossFit or 

I do. Yeah. I used to do high rocks and running and yeah.

Typically the people at the top of their game, like they would go to a wedding and say that my diet is chicken, broccoli and rice. So they'd go to a wedding and want chicken, broccoli, and rice as an example.

And I'm not saying that's you, but that's the sort of people that you are. They're completely focused on their. What they're trying to achieve and nothing else can get in the way. And I think what I took from that was you, there's an element of that you need to have in running a business.

And as you grow, you need to bring people in that see the same vision. They understand the vision, they understand where you're going, and what you're doing is you're bringing people along that journey and you are trying to get them involved in every step of the plan along the way to make sure that.

They buy into the same vision. So when it comes to, you know where you are heading, you've got everyone just aligned. And typically what I see is that when people leave and there's, it hasn't quite worked. It's normally 'cause the values aren't aligned, but the values just aren't aligned of where you're trying to take the business to.

And they don't really. Agree with it or want it or like it, and it's about that. For me, it's about making sure values and vision are aligned with people as they come in.

And I guess that's the learning, right? Because nobody hands you that book at the start when you're starting out your business to go, You need to be focused on values. This is how you hire this, and that. And it all comes from, realizing that you did it the other way.

Yeah, no one teaches this stuff. I think in hindsight, I probably should have let some equity go to some people that were ahead of me on the journey in a better way. Because I could have fast tracked some of that learning with the right equity partner to support me. And that's probably one of the things I've learned along this journey now is how do you bring in an equity partner that can support you that's further ahead of you on the journey that can enable your growth to be sped up.

Because I think over the last 20 years, had I done that, I could have been. Further ahead than I am. I dunno how, you don't dunno how far further, but I could definitely have been further ahead. I could have fast track some of that success, but most business owners and a hundred percent me, you're so focused on what you're doing.

Like I can do this all by myself. I don't need to lose any equity. And I was a hundred percent there, but I understand now how you can do that differently. And I think that for me is the power that most business owners don't realize until too late. And I think I'm fortunate, I've realized that. Relatively soon.

I say within 20 years. I mean like you can argue whether that's early or not.

Yeah, but you've figured it out, and so I'm in and interested to know how you were feeling with that, because there is that part right where you are, right? I can do this alone. I'm a hundred percent stakeholder, or I've got a majority. I'm a majority stakeholder. Letting go and finding that right person, I guess could be quite scary, right?

Because there's risk there as well.

hundred percent. And I think that comes down to that marriage.

'cause it is a marriage and it's about finding the right person. But it's also about un trying to understand where you need the support and help. Where is it that you need that? What is it you are looking for? What is it you need and adapt.

or re-engineer what's missing to make that work? And we've done that in some businesses, not others. we've done, and I think I'm lucky that with all the learnings along the journey, in my mind, I could see where I wanted it to be. I knew what perfect looked like or best in class. Yeah. So it's about how do we work out what best in class is and adapt it.

So you've never had any of those, like when you start giving share or start changing that model an oh crap moment, what have I done?

Yeah, I've had some ship business

partners. I've had some business partners that haven't worked. we did a shipping business, and we went into the shipping business where, hey, look, you are a shipping expert. We are an e-com expert. Why don't we set up a business together where, you do the shipping, we bring the e-comm clients.

It's a really nice marriage. we could, we, and we did 3 million in the first year. It was amazing. Now, we'll just caveat, that was during COVID and the container was 28 grand. So you know, it's overinflated in that way, but it was still an amazing business. We did, but the problem was, is values, Traditions weren't aligned. The way e-comm moves is very different to a freight forwarding

business and the speed in which you wanna move and react is very different. The service you want to give is very different, and because of that, it just didn't work. Yeah. So we ended up acquiring all of the business and buying out and moving forwards with it, which is works.

Worked out much better for us. We gained the knowledge and experience and moved on. So you do have to be careful. But at the same time, you just need to be realistic with people when you are starting these

things. Yeah,

And just say, look, this is what I'm gonna do. This is what you are gonna do.

Yeah. Do we agree with that? Great. 

yeah. How did it feel then? Turning around and saying, actually this isn't working. did, was that something that played on your mind, that you had that feeling that it was coming?

Yeah. he's coming. You know that, oh, this just things just great. It's almost like. you, are on a bike and you are, turning, you're turning, but the gears aren't quite aligning. Like you can still move forwards, but everything's just a little bit harder work than it needs to be.

It's a bit noisier than it should be. Like everything's just not quite aligned and you, just get that sense and I think there's times where we've done that quickly now, and there's times where we haven't done that quickly and you everything affects it because of it. but I think you need to understand what is it you're trying to achieve out of it.

Those joint ventures, partnerships are, yeah, they're a marriage, I use that word and it is exactly that. You've, you, gotta jump into bed with these people and you gotta make sure you're gonna get along.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And you seem someone that seems pretty upbeat and you are just like, if something isn't working, you'll handle it. Do you, is your head always spinning, does it ever stop or do you find that, sleepless nights and that does that, is that something that happens with you?

I've never had a sleepless night ever. I'm very fortunate that my head hits the pillow and as my head is falling to the pillow, I'm asleep. I'm just not one of those people that struggles with stuff like that. And I don't really beat myself up about stuff. just stuff happens. 

Yeah. 

It's just I have this whole control. The controllables, which I learned from sailing you, you can control what's in your sphere. You can't control anything out of it. You control what you bring to the party, your ownership. And there's a book called Extreme Ownership, which is really good. Just basically own it.

Yeah. everything happens is basically your fault. So the moment you realize that, the moment you go, oh yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, I won't do that again. Or you find a way of adapting to it. I'm quite good at adapting. I think the big lesson I learned probably in the last few years is we used to get an issue and we'd do knee-jerk reactions away from it.

And the problem, what happens is that when your team are going in one direction, the bigger the team you've got, the bigger the problem. This is

you've got a hundred people all going in one direction. Something isn't working. Let's start a system or process. You knee jerk. to solve the problem.

And what happens is you bring a new system in, a new process, a new piece of software, whatever, and you end up diverting 45 degrees in the opposite direction and going in the opposite direction. And you think because you've done it, everyone knows it when no one knows it. And it takes them two years to remember to, embed it.

So one of the things I've learned is instead of 45 degree changes is one degree change, 1% differences. Just don't do knee jerk reactions. It never works. Really do small incremental changes, which makes a bigger difference.

Yeah, because you mentioned earlier like you are 80% your visionary and you're not in the details. Yep. how do you make sure that you 

don't distract right people within your business with your ideas just to, make sure that you don't unsettle?

A hundred percent that's happened. I've got this new idea. We're all going in this direction. Come back to that 45 degree. We're all going in this direction. So what we do now is we have a plan, and if there's something new we want to do, no problem, or something new Andy wants to do.

Yep. It needs to go in the plan and needs to be planned in. So does that fit into this quarter? Does it fit into next quarter? Or you, whatever that plan looks like? So it has to be planned in because all too often I, as the business owner, see you, you get the silvers object and off you go in a slightly different direction and it just screws everything up.

Every single time. Now I'm not, I still do this. I'm not perfect at it, but I've come better at managing it. And where we've built a syst a, a group of businesses in an ecosystem, it's much easier to do that because I'm not involved in any of the businesses day to day. So the advantage of that is the businesses don't get that input.

They get a much more strategic level. Strategy of, okay, where is the business going and what are they doing led by the business owner or the COO or the MD of that business. And then from there, I work with them strategically. So I have zero contact with sort of members of the team pretty much, because otherwise I'd be going to the sales head of sales and saying, oh, we need to be doing this.

Yeah, and the MD of that business is yeah, nice idea, but I dunno about, it screws everything up. So you have to have, as you extract yourself from a business, you need to have a business operating system that enables the business to run a, without you as the business owner. But secondly, so that those sort of things can't happen.

Does that ever get frustrating though? 'cause you can have an idea and it's I've got an idea, and it's almost like you wanna implement the idea, but you wanna implement it almost like yesterday, but it's no, Andy, it needs to go in the plan and it's not going in the plan this quarter or the second.

You've gotta wait till the third quarter, but you're there's part of you that just wants it done and wants to do it.

a hundred percent. I have a problem with that because I'm a fast implementer, so I want to do everything now

Yeah.

and. I get frustrated in most of the businesses with the speed it takes to do stuff. And the problem is when you are the business owner, you are in the business, right? And there's a team of 10.

It's very easy for you to go and just make those things happen. As that business scales to 30 plus, it's impossible for that to happen. And the problem with that is it just screws everything up. So you need to make sure that you are much more strategic in your focus that. Business operator, owner runner, when you are involved in everything, is a great place to be because you know everything in the business, but you have no freedom from the business.

You're completely tied to it. There's no value in the business 'cause you are the owner. Also, it's easier to implement that stuff so you can make those changes. So there's the bonus, the downside is there's no value in the business 'cause you are running it. Whereas further down as you get to those 30 people, the, benefit is there's probably value in the business.

You can't implement changes as quickly and you have to be strategic in how you do it. Otherwise, people just leave because you are, just going in like a bull in a China shop and they're like, mate. I can't do it work like this.

Yeah. 

So you have to be careful who you get.

You've got a huge amount of knowledge. Business knowledge. And if we look back at what you've gone through, where you started out selling on eBay, doing your car boot, how did you gain a lot of that sort of business knowledge? Because of course, also running a business, as you say, when you've got a team of 10 versus what you're doing now, how did you 

I think the secret is doing it in incremental stages and not rushing it. So yeah, the acquisition piece that we do, I'm a member of a number of different acquisition communities and there's people that come in having never run a business that try to acquire a business. 90% of the time they screw it up because they've, they haven't learned the little steps along the way.

When you start off doing car boot sales, you're not running a business, but you're running some bus, you're learning some business techniques. I'm gonna save some money and I'm gonna invest the money, and how do I invest this money for future? You start running a wedding photography business, you've gotta build a website, social media, like you start learning those skills.

Then you get a, the next business like 3D printing up. Partnerships could work really well here. How do we build partners out? Then it's, Each business, I've learned something different that's built up over 20 years and everyone's oh, it looks like it's overnight success. There's no overnight success. There's no fast track other than bringing someone in to support you along that journey, but you've still gotta go through the grind. Yeah. We've still got businesses where the business owners don't even know how to build a website. you can go to, and this is a, I was at a conference, my wife and I were at a conference.

And I had this idea and we walked back to the hotel room that night and we set up a business. We buy any business.com. It was a bit of a joke. We'd had a couple of glasses of wine and we went back to the hotel room. And we are like, it was in Dubai, right? So we buy any business, go to GoDaddy.

who does all of our hosting? This is this, we're not sponsored by GoDaddy, but there others are available. Went to GoDaddy. You, we buy any business.com. we buy any business.io I think actually to be fair, in case anyone wants to, but anyway, 

Yeah. 

Went on. And then in the settings to goad was, you just.

You answered a few questions and it just built the website. I literally built the website in 30 minutes and now, that was three years ago. Was

Was that URL? We buy any business available. 

Yeah, we buy any business.io.

oh.io. Interesting.

right? So I just, I literally bought it. It was like 10 quid or whatever it was, and just set it up there.

and then since then, that has generated probably 10 leads a month. it's not life changing, amount of leads, but it's 10 leads a month consistently, roughly, that just trickle into the business, right? Most of them are rubbish. But actually it just shows you that most business owners don't now sell a website yet.

You can do it just by giving a few commands.

And there's skills you need to learn. Like how does a website actually operate? So there's no fast track to that success. People buy a business thinking they're gonna, okay, now I've got a business. It is totally true. You can buy a business and then you've got a business.

But if you buy a business with 10 or more people, you're gonna struggle 'cause you dunno how to run a business.

that's fascinating. The part about it's no overnight success because it's true. And that's the part where people go, oh, I can see Andy where you are at now and how successful you are with your businesses and your buying more businesses and how you're going into, private equity, et cetera.

But there's this huge part that people don't know about and whether or not people are willing to go through all of that to get to that destination.

People don't have patience. People ask, I tried entrepreneurship. I had this, it was, oh. Andy, can I, can I have a, chat with you? this was a few years ago. I've tried entrepreneurship and it didn't work out well. One, what is entrepreneurship? I have a bit of a problem with this word, right?

But, I tried it, it didn't work. It's not a job. It's grind. Like it's when we, when I, did the wedding photography business specifically, right? I was working nine Monday to Friday, nine till five. my job included weekends and evening work, so I got time off in lieu, but I was working and my kids were young. And we had a, loft. We didn't have anywhere to work from home, so I put a desk in the loft. Anyone who follows me on LinkedIn would've seen this. Probably this photo probably comes out once a year or something. But I've got a desk in the loft. It's dark in the summer. It's boiling hot in the winter.

It's freezing cold.

Can I just help visualize this loft? Is it one where you've got like all the insulation around or is 

it completely Boarded, 

I had boarded, I boarded the floor, to just, but just in, probably a four meter square. We're not talking big enough to put a hundred pound IKEA desk on to give you some sort of. Context and you, I'd finish work at five o'clock and I'd go up, i'd, there was no AI involved in building a website then.

you had to, I had a YouTube video that I was watching on how to build a website and you'd go through watching, watch the video, put it in, watch the next bit pulls like, and I was, gonna bed at one, two in the morning. Every single night, it was like 18, 20 hour days for five years, just trying to get something up, up and going.

And people don't wanna put in that hard graft. They wanna set up a website now at a click of a button, great. And start selling something. They think like Amazon businesses, I can buy something. I'm gonna be a millionaire by Christmas. They don't realize that the average business takes three years to even make money.

To start making profit. They just don't realize that.

So I guess there, there's a huge amount of drive there, right? to be able to go through all of that. You mentioned progression as being a driver for you. Is there anything else that, keeps that fire in your belly? Because after you've been running a business, it takes its toll, right? Of being like, I always say punch left, and center, but you're still going, you're going strong, and I'm sure you've got bigger plans in your mind.

that punching piece, I've definitely been affected by you feel like you get let down by everybody. And you know when you, the more people you employ, the more supplies you work with. The more customers you have, the more you realize that no one gives a monkeys about you or your business, the employees.

The main don't really care. They just want a salary. The suppliers just want them to be paid, and the customers just want you to deliver on what you say you're gonna deliver. No one cares about your business other than you. And then what happens is over the years, I've definitely been affected by a lack of trust in people.

I used to trust everybody. But I've definitely been affected by that grind of people letting you down again and again and again and again. And I think that definitely affects me, that ability for me to trust people as much as I did. I have less faith in people. Which is completely wrong, but I definitely suffer from that.

so I think that's definitely the big thing. But I think the progression piece, the bit that gives me the hunger, if you like, is, my kids, my family. you want to, you wanna show your kids that anything's possible. And we had you, we were renting a house 20 years ago, and you go through those stages of we rent a house now.

whether the kids really know that or then, you buy your first house. And the whole reason we're setting the business up was to get enough money for a deposit to buy our first house. That was the whole, that was the first thing. I can't save any money. Let's do a side hustle and save some money, pay off the credit card and put a deposit down on the first house.

that was how that was the first drive. And then the next drive is, you wanna start a business. The next drive is, okay, what? What's this acquisition thing about? Let's start acquiring businesses. And then the next thing is, you wanna retire at 50. So my 10 year plan was to get to 50 originally, was to get to 50 with the ability and freedom to do what I want. But as the years have gone on, that's changed to sell around the world. So the drive now is how do you build that all up and, have enough capital events to be able to buy a boat to sell around the world and take two years off to do it. Yeah. 

It's addictive though, isn't it? Because you say you get to one step, and I'm guessing you probably would, you have imagined, if you go back 10 years ago or 20 years ago,

where you are.

you are today.

No, and I think I'd probably have been petrified if you told me. And I remember there was a one, one of my best friends, I remember a conversation with him and we were sat, I know with a cigar around a fire. He lives in the states now and we sat round and this is, 20 odd years ago.

And he said, the problem with you and I hoops is, this is always gonna be our life. we're always gonna just earn, we're always gonna be an employee. We're always just gonna be, have an average life. I was like, and at the time I didn't think anything of it and I was like, yeah.

Nice. Yeah, nice. We sat there smoking a cigar and sat by the fire having a gin and tonic or whatever it was, It was just a really nice moment actually, and that it didn't play on me, but it did play on me. I was like. I don't necessarily think that's the true at the time. You're just like, yeah, And I was like, I don't think that's true. Anyway, five years ago or so. Do you remember that conversation? He said? He said, no, I don't remember it. I was like, come on, do you remember that? He went, I do vaguely remember it. I think some people just pigeonhole themselves into a certain thing, so I don't think I would ever have pictured myself anywhere.

I think that's, some people have this whole visualize where you want to be. I think there's a lot of old nonsense, like I think just turn up every day, do the best you can, and feel like you are progressing even in a small way. Those 1% differences every single day over a 20 year period are gonna culminate in something amazing.

Yeah, I think that's fascinating. I was speaking with someone and I asked about, they had this huge following and I was like, how did that happen? It's like people just see it like it was overnight. I've been doing it for five years, and when you look at the percentage growth, it isn't. Crazy growth numbers is consistency, which is the part that's often mis missing, and especially with social media.

So on the subject of social media, how do you find, do you get distracted by it? You're on there a lot. You, produce good content.

Yeah. LinkedIn for me is where I produce leads, most importantly from a business perspective. But where I spend all my time, I've got stuff on TikTok and Instagram and all the rest of it. I try and delete all of that off my phone 'cause it's divergent and when it's on my phone, I'll just look at rubbish.

So I try to have those off LinkedIn's where I put most of those on. Come back to your point there about the, scale. 

this you, I was on. 7,000 followers at the beginning of this year and I was like, I really want to get to 10 this year. And I was real, real focused and now I'm on like 12.

But interestingly when I got past 10, it everything, just the views on everything there. There's a chart in the back of LinkedIn about impressions and views. And they've now got it. So it's a cumulative, so you can see it's a really nice little graph, whereas it used to be all horrible. And what you can see is at the beginning of the year when I started putting.

Different content out there was a nice, literally an increase. And then when I hit 10,000, there was a massive increase on the impressions, just natural impressions, organic traffic just went through the roof. So managing it, how I do it is I have one person comes and videos for me one day a month, four hours.

We, we take a day and have some lunch and stuff. That's the day I then do all the content. So it takes me one day, a month, everyone else does all the posting. I used to do a lot of the posting myself, but I have somebody else to do it. I don't do any of it myself. I can focus on coming, doing stuff like 

this, which is the big difference for me.

I enjoy doing these things and I'd rather spend my time doing things I enjoy, like I have a rule. I never wanna answer an email again. That is my golden rule. I don't want to do, why do I need an email? Is only someone else giving you a to-do list. Yeah. So I don't want it, I never, I don't respond to emails.

I literally don't. It's pointless. So social media for me is that,

yeah. Yeah. Do you, with with, social 

media, do you get distracted by the noise of others, like competition? Because I'm guessing in your space, I'm like, say competition. I'm trying to think what is competition, because you've got so many different businesses, so I guess you've got competition in so many different spaces, but not in as a business overall.

I don't, yeah, see I don't look 'em as comp I, I don't look at anyone as a competitor. I look at what are they doing that I can learn from. I think that's interesting. Could that work for us? Yeah. Because there's always gonna be, there's always a bigger fish. And there's always gonna be a bigger fish. So what can you learn from that bigger fish?

I think you're right. I've got lots of different businesses and I think I'm just so focused on how do we grow value into our businesses? And one of the things I learned was businesses need a management operating system. So how do you put a management operating system into those business? We created this thing called stems that we implemented, right?

But by doing that, it means we can just focus on the job we are doing. Because what that whole control the controllables thing, as soon as you start looking outside of your controllables, it is, it's bonkers. You, so I learned this control, the controllables thing in sailing where. You can't control the wind, you can't control the tide.

You can't control what other boats are gonna do. You can control that you've checked the rigging to make sure it's not gonna fall down. You can make sure you are in physical shape as best as you possibly the this thing you can do. And business is exactly the same as that. You've gotta focus on what your business can do.

you can manage how much content you can put out. You can manage how many cold calls you do. You can, manage the quality of the delivery of your clients. What you can't control is Trump's terrace. You can't control dickhead Rachel from accounts and a little red case. Like you just can't control that.

And everyone focuses all their time and energy on that instead of the business.

Yeah.

And that for me is what? What is the missing link? They don't focus on what's going on in their own business. They're looking at the competition around, oh, so and so Look, they've got 3000 more followers than me on social media.

Who cares? They could have bought those 3000 followers. It's not a metric you need to go by.

Yeah, and it, I always find that quite fascinating 'cause quite a few guests that have been on, is, it is almost stay in your lane because otherwise you're filling your mind with the wrong things. And you can only fill it with a certain amount. To, be able, and if it's filled with the right things, it's gonna push your business forward.

Because if you get distracted,

That. That's exactly it. Yeah. That's because you just end up looking at everybody else. There's just no need. Yeah. Look at what they're doing to learn what they're doing. You reverse engineer, okay, how did they do that? How did that come about? How did they get, that partnership with those people?

Or how did that happen? Don't be jealous or see it as competition. Take it as an opportunity to learn from it. we've all got, every business is doing something great. and you, I can see you and say, all of our business, we've got this framework we use. They're all amazing. They're all amazing, but they're not all perfect.

Yeah. There's there's a lot of walks in there that mean that most of 'em don't operate as perfect as they could or should. So it's about how you. Manage that. Every business has got problems. everyone's, I don't think I'm successful, but someone else will look at me and think, you are, I am successful.

And I look at someone else and think they're successful and they'll think they're not successful. Everyone's got this whole imposter syndrome of, oh, I'm not as good as I could be and all the rest of it. I think you've just gotta enjoy life.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. and enjoy running the rollercoaster of running a 

business. It is completely, and I guess there's this part right now that you've gone into acquiring businesses. Now, for 

me, 

acquiring businesses almost feels a little bit scary because you've gotta have finances to some degree.

To do that. So you are having to take more money from others potentially. And then you're going and, there's another responsibility there isn't there, of acquiring a business. How have 

gone through 

that Yeah, so I, during COVID, I set up a podcast, and on that podcast I wanted to learn from other business owners what they were doing. Guy comes onto my podcast and says, I had business doing 1,000,001 day, and the next day I had a business doing 2 million quid. I was like, what? He said, I just bought a business doing a million quid, so all of a sudden I acquired a business and I've got a 2 million pound business overnight.

I was like, oh. I, hadn't even heard of it before then. interestingly, we had acquired a bus, an IT business. That was a complete cockup. That's another story for another day. But that was you. I'd already done it. Hadn't realized it. I. And then I was like, okay, this makes sense. How do we, so you acquiring a business is scary, if you own houses not an order, how are you gonna deal with another business?

And there's definitely a bit of that. so you have to have in my mind, and everyone's completely different, but that's how we end up coming without these frameworks of what does a, how should a business run and what does that look like in Andy's head and in the businesses we were running and then created it.

I was always jealous of. Did you come back to those? I'd see other people, jealous is probably not the right word, but I'd look at other people and I'd see that they had like frameworks of how they did stuff. Yeah. And I was like, I just need a framework across the business. So over a three year period, everything we did, we put into frameworks.

Yeah. Okay, if we're gonna do sales, we do this process, we do marketing in this process. And then of course we were doing all these frameworks. We weren't looking about how we run the business.

So it's how do we synchronize all that together? So we ended up with this scale structure, systems stability, synchronization process, right?

And when we acquire a business, we go in and we use our oats process, framework, process, observers, track shift. So you go in, you think it's gonna be scary, it is scary, but you just gotta get on with it. And coming back to the finance piece is, it's not always about. Lots of cash. It's about being clever with how you reverse engineer what the owner wants.

And you can do two things. You can either buy a distress business for not a lot of cash, or you can buy a decent business for a lot of cash, and you've gotta decide where in that scale you want to play. And to start with, we did the more distressed ones because they were cheap and easy. But the good news with that is if you screw it up, it doesn't matter 'cause you haven't lost anything.

And then as you get better. Yeah, you can then play a big, play a bigger game. And for me that's exactly, typically, if I look back, actually coming to one of your earlier questions, how I've progressed, I'll, play at something and learn it and then do further. So one of the first acquisitions we did was, in fact the software company, it was distress deal.

We paid 15,000 pound for the, for a software company because it was distressed.

Wow.

but, there was a lot of things that happened oh, 15, I'm going boss. There's a lot more to 

it than that, but ultimately that's what happened. You transformed our business, if you take Yeah, we were probably doing about a million in ebit, a year at that time.

And it was probably a five times multiple. you could argue whether it's a three or a five or whatever. Let's call it five, by making us a software company. It doesn't matter whether the multiples. You 10, 15, 20, 25 of revenue profit. That doesn't matter. Ultimately, by that 15,000 pound, investment, it increased our multiple. So we went from a 5 million business to a 10, 15 or 20 million pound business just by one 15,000 pound acquisition. And so it's actually how you play at the

numbers. some of the others we've had to put more money down. So you put some money up front and then you then defer money. So there's lots of different ways you can engineer it unless you are private equity where you can come in and give more the money on day one, which is why we're now setting up our own private equity fund to go and get our own money to give 'cause you'll be able to do better deals.

that's fascinating. And it's more the case, the way you've gone through because you, you hear it as in acquiring businesses, ah, that's like scary. But the gradual part, it's been a gradual learning, which I think is fascinating. And, and we, are hitting time, so I wanted to ask you one last question, which I always ask guests when we wrap up, is if you were to go back to the start of that journey.

What would be that little bit of advice that you would give Andy?

What would I give Andy? I think the biggest thing is there's probably several things in there, right? One is patience, right? I think you, not everything happens overnight and just enjoy the journey because I don't think that, looking back, I enjoyed the journey enough because it's always like when, you get to the first million, you're like, oh, maybe I could get to 10. When you get to 10, it's oh, maybe I can get to 20, maybe I can get to a hundred. There's, I don't, I personally, I would look back and say, put those milestones in and celebrate those milestones more than what we, than what I did. I don't think, I, we didn't have a party when we hit a million.

We should have done, we didn't hit a party when we hit two or five or 10. We should have done, we should have done those things. We probably didn't have parties when we had birthdays or whatever. Like I don't, like business birthdays. 

Yeah. 

I'm not talking about, I've had a few parties for, but you, I think I would go back and say, just celebrate the success, but at the beginning look to see what success might look like, because.

I just went on a journey. I didn't really know what success looks like. I still don't really know what success looks like. I know where I want to get to when I get to 50 for my 10 year plan. That to me, will be the success. Getting to 50 with the ability and freedom to do what I want. I'm already there 'cause I've now got the, I don't run any businesses, so I've got the ability and freedom to do what I want.

So I've achieved that a lot earlier than the 10 year plan, but I haven't celebrated that. So I think you, I think I would put in things to go back and say, you need to celebrate the success along the journey. And then the other thing is, every time you learn something, write it down. 'cause you never write it down. You, it's in there. But okay, that was cock up. Write it down, cock up, write it down, cock up, write it down. And then you've then got this book of cockups. Which becomes stories later on because when you are on a podcast like this, you can go,

okay, lemme tell you about that

story because you can't remember every single story.

And I think the other thing is perhaps document the journey. I've I've gone in and out of that,

Yeah.

I ha I've a 10th documented some of the journey. Yeah.

I love that it's very reflective and as you say, when you are on the journey, you don't really reflect 'cause you're just, you're going for it. And as you say, you're not celebrating those wins or you just. And what does success look like? but I just wanna say congratulations because you've, you are obviously doing, whether, you see success in yourself and you're still going for your ultimate goal, the journey that you've come through is fascinating to see from like where you started out to where you are now with your business.

So yeah, congratulations. It's awesome. And I hope you get to sail around the world for two years. 

like 

you're almost there.

my wife's not, but I am.

Awesome. But thank you so much. Thank you for sharing 

your story and 

I'm sure you've inspired our listeners today.

you for having me on. Much appreciated

And thank 

you everyone for listening.