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Wild Moos
Welcome to Wild Moos, the no-holds-barred podcast where the boardroom meets the playroom.
Hosted by Amy of Mooeys and Nicole from Wild Bird Marketing, this podcast dives into the messy, joyful, and often chaotic life of being a mother and a business owner.
Every episode is a candid exploration of the trials and triumphs that come with juggling spreadsheets and sippy cups.
From start-up stories that defy the "perfect mum" myth to scaling a business without sacrificing sanity, Amy and Nicole share it all.
Expect laughter, tears, and plenty of swear words as they peel back the curtain on what it really takes to thrive in the dual worlds of business and motherhood.
Wild Moos is a community, a confession booth, and your cheerleading squad all rolled into one.
Whether you're knee-deep in nappies, drafting business plans, or just dreaming about what could be, Wild Moos is the podcast for every mum who’s ever had to lock the bathroom door just to answer an email.
Tune in for your regular dose of inspiration, commiseration, and a reminder that you're not alone on this wild ride of entrepreneurship and motherhood.
Wild Moos
Wild Moos Podcast Episode 15: Richard Stone's Blueprint for Success in Business and Life
Welcome to our final episode of our first ever season!
Ever found yourself wondering how a young kid from a pub kitchen could climb the ranks to become a titan in the construction and hospitality industries? Richard Stone's gripping story of growth from his humble beginnings in Birmingham and Bristol to a mentor and innovator in business will leave you both inspired and entertained. With his down-to-earth humor, Richard peels back the curtain on the lessons learned from his early days, his journey through the perils and achievements in construction, and his pivot to mentoring and safety training with the development of his PMB system.
Navigating the complexities of rapid business growth and the murky waters of rescuing distressed businesses, Richard doesn't hold back on the darker challenges faced along the way. His candid recount of a high-stakes career in construction that eventually led him to prioritize peace of mind over profit is a raw reminder of the personal sacrifices often made for success. Yet, his resilience is palpable as he shares how these experiences fueled his passion for safety and paved the way for his innovative training system, proving that the true value lies in uplifting others.
Join us for a whirlwind ride through Richard's life where every turn is a lesson in business acumen, the power of coaching, and the importance of community. From the rooftop wine adventure that built a mastermind group to the silent struggles with mental health among friends, Richard's stories affirm the significance of a well-rounded life. His insights on affirmations, overcoming resistance, and the subtle art of collaboration are peppered with wit and wisdom. This episode isn't just a conversation—it's a masterclass in learning to balance the scales of life, work, and the unexpected relationships that shape our journeys.
SHOW NOTES:
Project Blueprint - Richard and Gemma Stone
https://pmbootcamp.kartra.com/page/JDP1
Panasonic Bread maker
https://amzn.eu/d/5dgEjyi
Nicole Bilham of WildBird Marketing Agency
https://wildbirdmarketing.co.uk/
Amy Lewis of The Mooeys Group
www.mooeys.co.uk | www.mooeysfranchise.co.uk | www.mooskin.co
We are into episode 15 and we are not on our own. Today. We have a guest. Have a guest Richard Stone.
Speaker 3:Hello.
Speaker 1:Welcome.
Speaker 3:Look forward to the conversation.
Speaker 1:Wow, how exciting, I know. Do you want to? Should we kick off with a bit about you? I feel like you should intro him because you know him so well. I don't know. I'm actually looking forward to getting to know things that I don't know about you. But Richard and I, and your wonderful wife and business partner, have been working together since November.
Speaker 3:Indeed, we have.
Speaker 1:And it's getting deeper and deeper and deeper Only since November you started this business.
Speaker 3:No, no, no. So we launched a course in November 22. We did an event in 22. Right, so, yeah, I wrote the course. I'd spent pretty much the whole of the year writing the course in 2022. Apart from like six bits of consumption.
Speaker 2:I don't know why.
Speaker 1:I thought you'd been doing this for years, but you are so comfortable and confident at delivering your content I don't talk about shit.
Speaker 3:I don't know, like, if you ask me a question on like neuroscience or something, you do know something about neuroscience a little bit yeah but not. I don't talk about stuff I'm not confident about. I'll be like do you know what?
Speaker 3:I'll signpost you to that person I'm just I'm not into bullshit, I'd rather just go. Do you know what? That's not my jam. I'm quite happy to listen if you want to talk at me, because I love learning, but I wouldn't be offering opinions and stuff, because opinions are a bit like arseholes everyone's got one but most of them stink is that like your best joke?
Speaker 3:no, no, I quite often on I get chastised quite a lot for for making people laugh. When I'm speaking, I'm meant to be delivering content and when I deliver, my course. Like people are like this is just a riot. It's like what the fuck? Where, where to get all these like comments from? Like I've been in the industry 40 years it's just a life in one industry, so tell us about it, because I don't know anything.
Speaker 2:Do you mind? Because I don't know anything about your background at all. Okay, I don't mind so I so.
Speaker 3:I was born in Birmingham, so I used to sound like a Brummie yeah, what happened to your? Brummie accent.
Speaker 2:I had elocution lessons did you no lessons, did you no?
Speaker 3:oh, I'm so gullible, don't do that, richard I had the elocution lessons of life yeah, so I left birmingham when I was eight and I moved to bristol so I went from talking like a brummie yeah I can't read and I can't write, but I can drive a tractor. And I got really badly bullied because I spoke really differently yeah and here's the thing about different parts of the country.
Speaker 3:The education system moves at different paces. So I was in school in Bristol at eight and I was about three years ahead of a lot of the kids in that school because I'd covered different stuff in Birmingham that they'd not covered. Oh wow. So some people bullied me because I sounded like a thick fucker from Birmingham, and other people bullied me because I sounded like a thick fucker from Birmingham and other people bullied me because it was a swap, it was all lose-lose.
Speaker 1:I couldn't really win.
Speaker 3:So it wasn't the most enjoyable part of my life when I was first there and then, when I was 11, I got a job in the pub at the end of my road, washing up in the kitchen. At 11? At 11, yeah. So I'd done a trial shift and they were like, yeah, so it was for a job in the pub at the end of our road but washing up in the kitchen at 11 at 11, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I was like I'd done a trial shift and they were like, yeah, so it was on a Saturday. So we were like, right, okay, so come back next Friday. So I went back Friday, done Friday and I just said to my mum and dad, like I do dishes at home, but this is like a kitchen, what do I do? Be on time or be early, be 15 minutes early, like I was today, because them lessons you learn when you're a kid that serve you. You always, always go back to and just work hard and if you finish what they ask you to do, just say, right, okay, I've done that, now what can I do next? So I did that.
Speaker 3:So I ended up within about three weeks doing thursday night, friday night, saturday night, sunday lunch, and I used to get a 10-hour shift when I started, and really quickly, they were like you just work, you're way more grown up than your years.
Speaker 3:You work, you fit into the team and the guy that used to come in the pub early in the morning and do the bottling up, so pulling all the stuff forward You'd call it merchandising now, I suppose, but bottling up just didn't turn up one day. So they come and chat my door and were, like, can you come and do the bottling up tomorrow? So I was like, well, how much are you going to pay me? So we agreed a price and that was what we got done. But I got paid an amount for doing it, not for how many hours I was there, whereas when I was washing up I got paid quicker. So I was like, right, how can I be quicker? So like I used to have to take all the stinky old empties down and sort them out in the cellar, so I rearranged all their cellar so that I could work as hard, could be quicker. So I had to get home and wash to go school yeah so I was like how can I make this quicker for myself?
Speaker 3:so I did that and I'm like this is cool, we like him. So they obviously I mean I didn't know, but they were obviously sort of talking amongst themselves as a family and a couple of weeks later the landlord and landlady had got a son and daughter.
Speaker 3:The son did scaffolding and the daughter her boyfriend was a landscaper right so the son said to me on saturday on my label can't work tomorrow. Do you want to come in and help me? Like you look like quite big and strong. So I did that and they were arguing in the lorry about how much they don't, because they'd put a free scaffold around three sides of the house.
Speaker 3:And they were arguing about how much they don't and like they'd worked it out with a nail on the back of a fag box right, I was like and stan and marge have passed away now so I can say it like geez is saturday lunchtime sitting in a scaffold lorry, done their work, earned their money. They weren't exactly like white and white, you know. There was a few different things going on some cigarettes, a few cans of Stella and a few other bits, but they couldn't. They were arguing that they'd not earned enough money between them, but they'd only charged for one lift so they should have charged for three and a half lifts.
Speaker 3:So I was like that's where you put on there like what fuck off, who do you think you are?
Speaker 2:and how old are you then?
Speaker 3:um, it's probably about 11 and a half 12. Yeah, it wasn't very old, but I knew maths, yeah, and ironically, I used to get shouted at by my math teachers for, like, getting ahead in my math book. Because I liked maths I still do. That's why I trained as a qs. So they were we want you to do our numbers for us and help us. So I did that.
Speaker 3:So I was like I would go in and work with them some days instead of going to school like weekends, like I could go and earn 100 quid and be back in the pub by three o'clock but I'd have to go back to the pub at night wash up for like 10, well, I think I've got. So it was like this is fucking mad. But I just loved working. I loved being around adults, because being around kids was just. They were just horrible and not nice. So I started using some of my wages to just placate them and just get them to fuck off and just I'd just give them like a fiver to go and buy some sweets and shit. So that kind of worked.
Speaker 3:And when I was 13 my dad got promoted. This is good news, right? What part of this is good news? Like my life is sweet. This is not good news like in any way shape or form, and it's kind of. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation in life where you say something coming from a good place but it has really unintended consequences for someone else. And that was how that felt, because I didn't want to go. So at 13 we moved. We moved from bristol to a place called wing in buckinghamshire, which would be a nice place for a salon yes, because it's quite weird.
Speaker 2:I was brought up in cumberland, my way yeah, how is that?
Speaker 3:it's just down the road, I know. So we moved to Wing, didn't know anyone again like so bullying started. It was pretty horrible. And then one of the neighbours down our road wanted some painting and stuff done. So I painted the outside of his house on price right, which was quite nice, wow. And I said to him look like this paint. It's going to be five years. You're a driving instructor, so I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll do it for the same price in five years. And he's going to strive and he's like what I said, well, I'll give you a fixed price now. And he's like what, how old are you?
Speaker 3:I'll give you a fixed price. Now me through my driving test because I want out of this village. So we've done a deal, shook hands and that was it. Job done, brilliant.
Speaker 1:So it's uh so good to negotiate a constant yeah, even at that age I love it.
Speaker 3:I love doing this. Why I love? I love what I do. I love construction because that's pretty much about it, like they used to call me, the deal maker. That is about putting deals together. Whether you're, whether you're selling to a client, that that's a deal, that's a negotiation. You know, like a small construction contract's 50 pages for like a JCT. Minor works, like the complicated ones, go to hundreds of pages. But if you're buying from a subcontractor, that's a proper negotiation. That's like I love it. That's like, oh yeah, that's a bit of a deal. Doing deals and making money.
Speaker 2:That's what I like doing doing deals, making money that's what I like doing doing deals making money. What trade were you in?
Speaker 3:so fencing and then scaffolding as well. So yeah, I didn't. I've never done my tickets, but I've put up some pretty big jobs struck some even bigger ones fell through eight floors once did you yeah, in the middle of Bedford, survived.
Speaker 2:Obviously, absolutely yeah yeah, but did you have any like, do you? Obviously.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm still in it. Yeah, yeah, but did you have any like broken bones? No, I got to. I had a few bruises like instantaneous bruises. We were striking a building and one of the labourers what?
Speaker 2:does that mean striking, Taking the scaffolding?
Speaker 3:Oh right, and one of the labourers was coming by and taking some of the gear out and he took some of the transoms out and I stood, went bang, wobbled down, yeah wobbled down oh god, so yeah, but I had my trusted Reebok classics and my cut off Versace shorts.
Speaker 2:I can totally see you in the Reebok classics. Oh so then, how did? How long were you in construction for or in that industry before you went? Because you were self-employed the whole time, right so no.
Speaker 3:So so I was self-employed for a while. So I worked on the tools for a while and then decided you know what, this is not for me. So I put myself through college. I did at onc hnc at college. What's that? Um, so, ordinary national certificate. So for people that didn't go to uni uni I didn't do a levels, didn't go to uni. Oh right, I didn't do A-levels, didn't go to uni. That was not a pathway I wanted to take. I was interested in earning money.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because I'd seen that I could earn good money with my hands and I was like, if I can sit in a classroom for another three years, I didn't want to be in that one. I don't, that's not me, but I did realise thankfully probably through my first ever real. He wasn't a mentor, he was, he was my ex-wife's best friend's husband right, but he was a qs for a house builder.
Speaker 2:What's the qs?
Speaker 3:quantity right, okay, money, person, money contracts. And he said look all the stuff you do. You've clearly got a really good business brain, but your body is only going to get you so far. Yeah, your body, like like some people think of your body being a vehicle for your head you're you're burning your body out only going to get you so far.
Speaker 3:Yeah, your body, like some people think of your body being a vehicle for your head. You're burning your body out. Before you're going to burn your brain out, you need to try and like think about what you're doing. So I put myself through college and it was really bizarre because, like all my college work was like all written out like, and it was a nightmare because I'm really anal about presentation. I know we say we can't talk about anal, but I'm really anal about presentation. I had to get it in there somewhere.
Speaker 1:Don't ever tell me not to do something.
Speaker 3:So I would literally write all my college. But I was on site during the day so I left it at the night time, so I was doing my college work. I got good grades at college because I wanted to be there.
Speaker 3:I was paying for college work. I got good grades at college because I wanted to be there. I was paying for my own place, but there was a lot of people there that were there because their company was putting them there and it was like they were just the divs that just didn't want to get on with it. They couldn't see the opportunity they'd been given and I did fall out of a few of them a few straighteners with them, like just fucking go and sit back in the room.
Speaker 2:Don't waste our time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it was really interesting because one of our lecturers actually got exposed as being a fraud. Yeah, he was teaching stuff he wasn't qualified to teach.
Speaker 3:No yeah it was really bizarre, yeah, and I knew because I was training at Langs and the stuff I was being taught on site. These fuckers are building, like the structures around the world, like, and they put them in the right place at the right height. How can that be the polar opposite of what you're telling me? And he just kept saying look, shut up, you don't know what you're talking about. And it was only like when I bumped into Chris Lawrence, who's got really good mates, with whom we met at college, he actually went the whole nine yards and proved that start and he weren't qualified either well done, chris yeah, so, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I put myself through college and then, when I'd done that, I was still working on the tools and it was alright. I enjoyed it, but it was hard. It was hard to make money on price work and it was the winter time as well, which didn't help. And I was talking to my ex-wife's husband and he was like, why don't you just put your CV out? I was like what the fuck's a CV? And I actually said to him what have French cars got to do with?
Speaker 3:my situation and he was like what are you talking about? I went well, it's a car, innit, it's a French car CV. He was like no, it's a curriculum VTi, which I now know. Now know what it is. And he'd just been given like a laptop computer with his job which to be fair was about that thick, yeah, yeah, massive it was huge.
Speaker 3:This thing was like needed its own power supply and he helped me, like write out a CV. And I was like, okay, that's great, I've got this thing, it's on the screen. How do I like? Because I didn't even know, like, what a printer was, like none of that stuff, stuff, because it just wasn't in my, wasn't in my world. So he printed out some copies and he went I'm gonna send it to a recruitment consultant. It's like what, what are you on about? What's a recruitment consultant? Like? It's almost like it was like a frenchman talking swahili to a dutchman. It was like, okay, you didn't have a clue what he was talking about. So, anyway, he was like okay, so he sent it, sent it off to this person that he knew who he used to recruit staff for his business. And they got me four interviews and I remember like even now, like if I do something I will anchor how I feel. So if I go back into the future, I can remember how I felt at that time, but I can remember sitting in there.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? Anchor how you feel.
Speaker 3:So I haven't done it today, but, like before I did my first live summit in Milton Keynes, I actually recorded a voice note to a video of me how I felt about the event before when I stayed.
Speaker 2:Why did you do that?
Speaker 3:So that if it's a failure, I can go back and go. Well, actually, okay, that's why. And if it's a fucking rip-roaring success, I can go. Well, that's how I felt about it. Wow, Because you can't do that after you've done the event, because you're not the same person.
Speaker 2:No, you're not.
Speaker 3:And it doesn't matter whether it's an awkward conversation with a partner you know going and seeing someone who's had a life-changing illness, it doesn't matter what it is, it changes you. So just by doing that, it's like, okay, I can go back and I'll go back and listen to that when do you learn that from, or is it just something you create? I learned it from one of my mindset coaches. Did you, yeah? So yeah, I've got a few different people that I work with for different stuff.
Speaker 1:I work with four different coaches. Yeah, this is fascinating.
Speaker 3:I mean. But I coach and mentor people and I very much believe one of my strongest values I would never ask someone to do something I wouldn't do myself. So if I'm saying to people, right, that's the investment to work with me, what fucking right have I got to do that if I'm not living what I'm actually saying? That's why I work with our coaches, because I want to be like. None of us know how good we can be Like I know I can see. See, ever since I started listening to a podcast, how big your business is going to be, not how big you think it's going to be. How fucking big is going to be. I can see that.
Speaker 2:I can visualize it how big do you think it's going to be, richard?
Speaker 3:I'll have that conversation with you okay, but the same with nicole yeah, I agree I know exactly and that's why I'm so excited to work like quite deep stuff we're doing together, because I know where that's going to end up. But that's as a result of doing the work on ourselves how long have you been working with coaches? Um mentors, probably like unofficial, unofficial mentors all my life, um proper, proper coaches, probably six or seven years, maybe something like that can I ask what kind of style you like to like all coaches office?
Speaker 3:classical I'm very much the OG definitely do. You know what? I had to ask someone what that meant, because people keep calling me it and I was like what OG? Yeah, I was like why are you calling me own goal?
Speaker 3:like that's what I thought it meant. I mean I hate football, but my brother's in professional sport and professional football yeah. So I know a little bit of the lingo, but like I just tune out. I'm like just I'd rather go and listen to Kate Bush or something than watch a game of football, and I fucking can't stand Kate Bush. So that's how much I don't like football.
Speaker 1:So lots of coaches have lots of different styles. Yes, is there a particular style that works better for you, that pushes you, that you recognise?
Speaker 3:Wow, that's not a question I've ever been asked so well done, first of all, because that's not a question I've ever been asked so well done first of all because that's a really good question thanks is there a particular style?
Speaker 3:I'm a very visual person, like like off the scale, like 75 of people are visual learners. I'm off the scale, visual, so I don't, I don't, I don't. I love reading. I love listening to books. I did 110 books last year. I love reading. I love listening to books. I did 110 books last year like written and listened to. But I'm very much a visual learner. So infographics is why so much of my course is like story but also infographics. So for me it's about actually bringing something to life. So if somebody wants to explain something to me, bring it to life. Tell me what does it look like, what does it feel like, what does it smell like, what does?
Speaker 3:it look like what does it feel like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? What was the experience like? Who can you show me that's gone through that, that I can go? Okay, I can, because I won't believe anything. I got taught by one of my first ever mentors believe nothing of what you hear and only 5% of what you can physically read or see and you won't go far wrong. So I'm always like well, show me someone who's walked that path, show me someone who's done that and I'll go and work with.
Speaker 3:Like most of the people I've worked with no one's ever heard of, but I've worked with them for a specific thing, like the guy that I worked with on my TEDx talk no one's ever heard of him, but he's curated hundreds of TEDx talks. I think I'm not playing for his ego.
Speaker 2:I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've talked about that before, haven't we? About the same coaches and men. Anybody, you've got to walk the walk. There's so much bullshit out there. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there is.
Speaker 2:There's so much yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's the confidence, it's the balls on it, the audacity to say I've fucking done like come and pay me to do this. Yeah, I know, Where's the evidence? Fuck yeah, exactly one day karma will get him. Yeah, it is a bitch.
Speaker 2:I find it really interesting because you know that I work with liz, my coach, who you've met. Who you've met last week yeah, she's a legend who is amazing.
Speaker 1:But I've also had coaches, mentors throughout my career and throughout my um wild bird life as well that have tried to push me, but in the way that doesn't work.
Speaker 2:They're not reading me yeah yeah, I really struggle with this because I've only had one mentor, yeah, which is debbie lewis yeah. Or coach, yeah, she coached. Um, she's the only time I've ever experienced a coach and I've never had a mentor, because there's nobody in the beauty industry I can go to. So I really struggled, I've really struggled. So I feel like I give a lot to other people but I haven't got that for myself. And then I'm like I don't even know what I'd need or what I want. And then there was a company called Action Coach. They reached out. We're trying to help me and I really respect them for what they're doing, but it just wasn't the right fit for me and it felt very forced into sales.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah and it was like I'm going to work with you on a percentage basis of franchise and then you're going to I'm going to push you to sell these and convert salons. And I was like I know that is, it's not. It wasn't the path that I wanted to go down. The. The reason I created Franchise was for a very different reason to provide especially women. But like really support women having their own business and help them, you know, be fully self-sufficient and such. But there were so many reasons but that wasn't it. Like Convert, it wasn't all about just sales. So, yeah, I've got Tim, but I haven't started working with him yet. But I just don't really understand. I'm not really part of this world of mentoring. I feel like I'm missing out, I think potentially, I think, for two reasons.
Speaker 3:I think, undoubtedly, you are probably missing out, but the world is missing out as well, and I'll explain why in a minute. But going back a level, there's a fundamental difference between coaching and mentoring, because coaching is about asking somebody the right questions that are very specific to that person, to get them, to bring out of them what they can do I just felt like I came away with a bigger to-do list.
Speaker 2:Every time I'd had a session I was like, oh god, here we go, more work to do. You know, it's just yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Whereas mentoring, yeah, yeah. Whereas mentoring is you need somebody. That is, two, five, ten, twenty steps on that journey. Now you made the interesting point about there's no one in my industry, but you're in the industry of being in business.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's the most important thing. So you want someone that actually can. That's been, you know, not necessarily gone from bootstrap to like a million pound plus turnover business, but somebody that's definitely gone from where you are now to the next step. But in business they don't necessarily need to know your industry and your like the micro niche you operate in.
Speaker 3:They just need to know what is the business model, what are the metrics, what are the key result areas and where do you want to go and what is the roadmap to do that yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 2:I think it because it's the industry, is the only thing I've known for so long and I know that I need to step out of that now and well, that's why I'm doing it in the franchise world.
Speaker 1:But yes, I think it's interesting with coaches as well. A lot of it depends on um chemistry.
Speaker 3:I'm just going to revisit.
Speaker 1:It's all about yeah you said I'll tell you why the world is missing out on amy yeah.
Speaker 3:So if it's over to you, I think one. I think you could get further, faster by working with people, undoubtedly, but I think also you've got an awful lot of value that you could actually share to help other people get to, because, trust me, there's a fucking lot of people looking at you right now going I wish I was there, I wish I was that person. How did that person get to where they are now?
Speaker 2:yeah, and I feel like we've talked about mentoring or coaching in the future, haven't we and I? I would love to do it, but I'm just not ready yet. I feel like I need to be yeah, I will know, and I just just I want to do it when I've got even more information. Yeah, do you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the only thing I would say to that. I understand why, and you've got to be comfortable in your own skin to do it, but the thing is you're here right now, so you're here. When you get that information, you're going to be there, but these poor people are still going to be back here, so you're almost in danger of actually getting to the point where you know richard branson's an amazing coach and mentor, but there's very few people that would get value from being coached or mental or could afford him or could afford him, because he's here and most people are here, so just be mindful, you don't want to get too far down that well it's also intimidating as well, because if you've
Speaker 2:got massive part of it yeah, if you've got people starting out, and I think there's an area, there's an element that my two um hurdles with mentoring and coaching is the cost when you're bootstrapping a business. I know it's an investment, I know it's what you should spend money on, but when you're bootstrapping it, like, do I spend money on salary to drive the revenue? Or me, like, where do I put it when I'm in that position? Now, we probably could afford it. I'd make it, I'd find a way of affording it.
Speaker 3:You'd find it, yeah, and then time the thing is that working with anybody, they will get you much further faster and the results will provide and will pay for that investment. And taking that back a step, the people that are setting themselves up in business now, if they've got I don't know, say like five grand to set up their business and they invested I don't know a thousand pound in a 12-week program with you on Zoom. You could save them a thousand pounds in this conversation, five grand in that conversation, 20 grand in that conversation. That's going to get them much further up their hockey stick than going and putting a grand bullet into a load of products that are going to sit on the shelf because they don't have any customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get that. Yes, and it is intimidating as well, isn't it? It is intimidating finding someone that's superior or that you see as superior.
Speaker 3:But leadership is. I collapsed at an event February 47. So probably 15 years ago. I had 25 direct reports and a team of close to a thousand people across sites and I stood in Pizza Express in Bishop's Thought Food this year or last year? 25 years ago to deliver a team talk to this whole team of people and I stood up and I was like what the fuck I'm responsible for a team this big I could cope. I was blacked out, bang from the floor. I've never told anyone. There you go.
Speaker 1:Didn't know Wow.
Speaker 3:I don't even know why. I just confessed to her. So how old were you?
Speaker 1:I guess I must be comfortable, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how old were you then?
Speaker 3:I was mid-20s.
Speaker 2:Such a responsibility at that time, that massive amount of pressure.
Speaker 3:So coming back to that CV. So we've kind of gone full circle. So Andrew faxed off my CV to a recruitment company. They got me four interviews. I had four lined up.
Speaker 3:I was meant to go to one on Monday and they rescheduled it to the Friday. The one on the Tuesday I left three hours to get from home to where it was for a two-hour journey and the M25 was a massive accident. I got there an hour and a half late. The guy that I was meant to see had had to leave to go into London for a meeting. So I got interviewed by someone else and they offered me a job as a site manager. I drove back from the interview I went to see my mum and I remember big picture window in their old house and said they've offered me this job and I was so excited because they gave me a laptop and a digital camera. This, like this olympus digital camera, was like that big, it was huge, it was like two megapixels. The shittiest phone probably has got a better camera now you met, did you feel like you made it?
Speaker 1:I felt like I'd arrived.
Speaker 3:I felt the dog's bollocks. My mum looked at me and she went I'll give it a week, you'll fuck it up. Yeah, and I was like, wow, and for a lot of years I was really angry about it yeah but through the work I've done on my mindset and understanding my brain, I now realize that actually I don't know where that came from. I'm not really bothered now where it came from, but it served me in a different way because it was the fucking fuel for my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like fuck you, I'm going to. It was like a thousand litres of air.
Speaker 3:It was like I'm going to prove you wrong.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, yeah. So to come back to answer your question, so I started as site manager. I was site manager for a year and and on one of our projects, my QS was always in his late 60s and I had to basically take over the quantity swam and the job. So then they were like, right, we need to teach you quantity swam. So I then learned over the next three years to do quantity swam. So I went from site manager, contracts manager, qs, managing QS, operations manager, and then 10 of us were doing a management buyout and we were basically using bank-backed finance to buy the shares in the company and we were probably about two weeks away from doing the deal and the chairman said you're not doing it.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 3:I'm not allowing you all to put your houses on the line to do it, and it's really weird, because I'll tell you why in a minute. But it essentially came down to in order for us to be able to do that, we needed to grow that business. We had quite a good, goodish brand. We were quite contractual. We didn't fuck about If someone owed us money, we wanted it and we wanted to pay it. Now you know, we used to buy. We used to sell on 14 to 30 and we used to buy on 90 to 120 days. So we had a massive buffer and all of our terms that I had written. Everything was set up for cash preservation.
Speaker 3:So it was a really good business, but he wouldn't allow us to grow it because he couldn't handle the fact that You've done it better.
Speaker 3:What we've been sort of told now is that we would have had to grow it and he would have been like, oh my God, why didn't I do that it? And he would have been like, oh my god, why didn't I do that? Yeah, so I left. So I left and I went consulting for a number of years, got changed out to um.
Speaker 3:So I went up to liverpool so I was working for a venture capitalist who's an accountant, used to go around buying construction companies, but he was buying businesses for a broker for a pound that were like quite often distressed and you know he's got like 45 construction but it was almost kind of like a lifestyle business. You know he'd got six kids. They'd all got like lease cars for the companies. There was management charges flying around left, right and centre and it's classic Geico. You know, garbage in, garbage out. With a business that big, with that amount of different things, you can hide a lot of shit. And I started to unravel a lot of the shit and he bought a company in Liverpool for a pound from a family that was basically mullered to the tune of about 7 million quid what do you mean?
Speaker 3:it was skint. They had revenue 1.7 million for VAT. They had a million pound in employee tax. They'd got about four and a half million quid off subcontractor bills. They've not paid.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's why they sold it for a pound, because of how much debt it had.
Speaker 3:They knew that they didn't disclose that when they sold it, so he bought it for a pound.
Speaker 2:How can they not disclose that information? Because?
Speaker 3:so here's the thing People that buy businesses for a pound.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's their mindset. Well, I've risked a pound because they don't understand the level of risk that they're actually taking.
Speaker 2:But if they're buying that limited company, they're buying the debt as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly yeah. So I went off up to the north to go meet him and met the outgoing owner on day one and was like, okay, nice to meet you, what's the situation? And he was ill, he wasn't long for this world and it was a family-run company. So his wife was head of accounts, his daughter worked in the accounts department. So I was like, okay, right, I need to meet the department heads, I need to look at the numbers. Can you get me the asset list? Can you get me the printouts for me? And I want to see, like all the department heads.
Speaker 3:So I sat in the ballroom with the head of estimating whilst I'm mentally getting these reports run off and I'm having a conversation with this guy and I said to him so like, what's the pipeline looking like? And he's like, what? And his proper like tumbleweed moment, what do you mean? What? What's your pipeline look like? What pipeline of opportunities you've got coming in that you're going to be pricing? What stuff are you in negotiation with? What stuff have you secured? But haven't got a contract yet? And he's just got no confidence of what I was talking about. So I was like that was like red flag number one. So okay. So I said talk to me about markup, like where's, where's the market at right now, because you do a lot of work that's not quite by negotiation, but almost so what's the market like in terms of prices? And he's like, what do you mean? I said well, like, are you pricing up? Are you pricing down? Are you winning more than you're losing? What's your strike rate? And it was the most bizarre one-sided conversation I think I've probably ever had with a professional in construction, because he didn't have the answers to the questions. And they were. You know, they weren't like super deep tech. I'm fucking, I'm the brummy that from eight years old. You know. I'm not asking technical, detailed questions. This is basic business metrics. And they couldn't answer them so. So I said listen, I need you to go away and produce a report on like you're estimating, like how long have been there. I can't remember if you've been there a number of years. So I want a report by the end of the day. So I've got an idea on what the future looks like.
Speaker 3:And he got up to leave and as he opened the door to walk out, the lady from the accounts came in and she'd got like pages of handwritten notes. I was like okay, that's not exactly what I asked for. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, maybe it was my accent, but what I would like is the Sage printout. So I'd like the P&L and the asset list and the creditors and debt list. I just want it printed out of Sage. I don't need any handwriting stuff or anything like that. It's great, but it's not what I asked for. I don't know how to use it. What I said, I don't know how to use it. We don't even turn that thing on. So they've got sage that they're paying for. I don't even use it. All their books are manual.
Speaker 3:So I was like, right, okay, so I'd taken my PA with me, so I got her to literally bash all this data into Excel, just literally sorted it by value, sorted it by value of what the balance was. I said, right, I want the contact details for all these people. So they went and got the contact details and I just hit the phone for an hour and I just phoned. Well, what I'd allowed for was an hour in between meetings. I spent four hours on the phone because where they'd got a balance of 200k to one subbie, the balance was 800 000 pounds just for one subcontractor there was was another one. The balance was 150 grand, it was over 500. And I got to. I think I got about six or seven, because these are not five minute phone calls you can imagine.
Speaker 3:I'm phoning up saying, yeah, I've been bought into something.
Speaker 2:And they're like thank God, right, this is how much you actually owe me.
Speaker 3:But actually you owe me a fuck ton of money and by the way what happened, okay. So loads of meetings, loads of confrontation. There was no recovery strategy from it. It was so mulled you just couldn't do anything with it. So the finance director set up a conference call with the business owners and the finance director who had not even been into the building at this point Lovely lady who I now speak to a lot we reconnected in Clubhouse during lockdown.
Speaker 2:Oh, good old.
Speaker 3:Clubhouse. Yeah, so the long story short. We had to appoint an administrator, did you? Yeah, it was Mullard. So I had to sit and tell all the staff that this is the situation this is what's happened.
Speaker 2:They must have known something was going to come from that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but have you ever heard the phrase? It's always a messenger that gets shot.
Speaker 2:Mm.
Speaker 3:So I had quite a lot of hostile meetings. I had people phone me and tell me they knew what hotel I was staying in.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it wasn't nice. So we appointed an administrator. The administrator sent letters out to all the creditors. So I'd got people phoning up friends to kill me and all sorts. So I was like, right, fuck this, and I've got a company credit card for that. I'd got that six for the different businesses. I was put to flight and I was like right, just phoned up, I said right, egypt, I went to Luxor.
Speaker 3:So I was sitting in a cafe in this little back street on the morning after I'd flown out there I was sitting there. I was sitting there having a fag and a coffee and I'd got I mean, I guess nowadays you'd call it a burner phone. But because my phone was a company phone, I didn't want to take it with me. So I just bought a phone from Tesco. It was just like a pay-as-you-go phone. So I was sitting and the only other person who had it even my parents didn't have his phone number was the finance director. Because I felt really sorry for her because she'd actually been put on as a guarantor for some of the loans but she didn't even know it. Oh god, yeah, one of the other directors had put her on as a guarantor for some of the loans oh that's awful
Speaker 2:yeah that's giving me goosebumps. And she was the daughter, or she was no, she was nothing to do with it.
Speaker 3:She was just a poor soul just a poor soul. Yeah, and signed paperwork that she didn't even know she didn't even know she'd not actually inked the signature of someone who'd actually done it on their behalf oh my god so she was the only other person who had that phone number and what happened? So I was sitting in this cafe just like having this rank cup of coffee. It was a bit like that fucking Starbucks. I got on the way here, to be fair, Costa.
Speaker 2:Don't diss Starbucks please.
Speaker 3:Don't diss Starbucks, don't diss the Starbucks.
Speaker 1:It's your face.
Speaker 3:To be fair, Starbucks is naughty. I do love a Starbucks. That's how Gemini's.
Speaker 3:I've got to progressive because like it's like Starling four pounds you've had breakfast, so sitting in a cafe and this phone rung and I was picked up and answered it because I thought it's Georgina and like we needed to like, because there's there's lots of. I don't know if you've ever been involved in an insolvency, but there's lots of moving parts, there's lots of things that need to get and also I was worried about that, you know. Yeah, we'd worked together for two or three years, you know, and I did feel I felt responsible, even though it was All I've done is go in there and say this is mullered.
Speaker 2:But that person that sold that company for £1.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that has got them in all this debt.
Speaker 2:They knew exactly what they were doing yeah, they know.
Speaker 3:So I answered the phone because I thought, well, that's a bit weird, because it's like eight o'clock in the morning as well, it's like proper early and I don't think. At that point I even consciously thought like what time the uk time was. I was just like, right, okay, I need to be there. And this voice just said if you think you can escape what you've done, think again. Stand up and turn around. And I can still feel how I felt when I did it. And I stood up and turned around. There was a giz like Rachel, you might think you can go to Egypt and escape this, but we'll always find you. And he walked off up straight.
Speaker 1:What happened to the woman? Why has he had her phone?
Speaker 3:They'd got her phone, yeah.
Speaker 1:Where is she? Is she okay, she's in the UK.
Speaker 3:She's right now yeah, this is horrific. Yeah, that's why even now, it still feels really raw yeah so and you asked about like coaches and stuff yeah so. So I came home like, dealt with all the questions from the administrator, gave them every bit of information I could. They were absolutely fine with it. But there was some of the biggest creditors actually had got credit insurance, so they didn't actually end up losing any money but, they were some of the ones that were the most hostile towards us because they'd got a lot of resources.
Speaker 3:You know, some of these businesses like were in the millions and millions of pounds a week in sales, like the services they provided. So, yeah, they weren't very nice. Some of the services they provided gave them links into other parts of the UK business structure where they've got access to information that can be quite beneficial if you're trying to attract people, which is not very helpful and actually I think it's fundamentally wrong that they should be able to access that information. So, yeah, it was quite challenging. So I went back on the tools. I was like fuck this, I don't need it. I've, like worked my bollocks off to basically to build my career to this point and in a heartbeat it could just get dashed.
Speaker 1:I was like I'm out of this, I'm done but also at this point you had a family as well, like that must have. That weight must have contributed to that decision to go.
Speaker 3:No, thank you, I'm sorry one of the calls I had I've never shared this with anyone was a text message sent to my Blackberry with a picture of Bode's Air Lower School in Llanbowza no way, oh my god you said you wanted to get to know me oh, richard, jesus Christ this is what people don't get is people meander into the property industry or the construction industry and everything's great when the money's flowing.
Speaker 3:But if the money stops flowing, there's a very, very dark underbelly to construction yeah, which has got massive links to organized crime yeah which means that you can have the best contract in the world. But the rule book gets torn up at that point and the gloves come off yeah and people will do anything if they don't care, they're not interested what the contract says, they just want their money I am learning this, like with the work that we are doing together.
Speaker 1:Not that, anything that, but the stories that you have shared and the stories of other people that are part of your network. That you have shared. It is can be brilliant, as you say, but also can be really, really dark.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, definitely it's high. You know it's high reward, but it's high risk as well.
Speaker 1:And that's what it's sharky like. It feels sharky.
Speaker 3:Yeah, rewards, but it's high risk as well, and that's what a lot of people don't get.
Speaker 1:Is that it can be so you went back to the tools yes, I went back on the tools like literally scaffolding no, fencing, fencing, yeah.
Speaker 3:I went back, fencing, yeah, just to get away from it.
Speaker 2:No stress, I just wanted money. You don't matter when you've got all that, I just didn't care. I literally didn't care.
Speaker 3:I literally didn't care. So the company owed me I think it was about 47 grand, because we'd got care home, we'd got new builds, we were building blocks of flats, we were doing massive council contracts, we'd done all sorts of different types of projects across all of the different businesses. And when you're trying to manage that amount of diversity across a group of businesses, sometimes the supply chain gets a bit tight. So, like on occasion, we'd buy materials or we'd put stuff on a personal credit card and then when the money came in it just kept paying back, and we've been doing it for years. It was absolutely fine. We'd gone through two hmrc audits.
Speaker 2:They were absolutely fine with it yeah because obviously from like it can look like a director's loan and that sort of stuff so you've got to be pretty clear with it.
Speaker 3:So we've gone through all that and then when that happened, I got hit with basically we can't pay this bill. So I've got 46 and a half grand worth of personal credit card debt.
Speaker 2:So not only had you, you're going to have to leave this industry not this industry, but this job. You had all of this aggro and you were scared, Were you?
Speaker 3:I don't think I was ever scared for me. I was scared for the people around me.
Speaker 2:Of course, and for this lady that had.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh God, yeah, I was really worried about it. Yeah, I cried.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised at all.
Speaker 3:More than one occasion.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, it's the weight of the responsibility. Although it's not your responsibility, it's the oh it's huge.
Speaker 3:So I went back on the tools and worked on the tools for a good few years and it was really funny because one of the companies I subbed work off of as a labour only fencing contractor I'd worked for them as a labour only subbie probably like 15 years before, but when the father and I owned it and he was like within two I went from being like proper Tim Lewin wanker in a suit pinstripe suit, cufflinks, all the fucking gear, no idea to being on the tools. I lost two stone in two weeks, yeah.
Speaker 2:I bet.
Speaker 3:It was brutal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And he was like I think at the end of the first month I phoned him to say like what's the crack with my invoice? Because I've not even get a UTR number than it was as an English taxpayer citizen to get one, so I couldn't get any wages. So I was like literally I was living right, had to get some money Right.
Speaker 1:This is how that like.
Speaker 3:Gemma talks about the stone brand of like that blue and it being Tesco value.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Like I don't know why that is so important to me, but I think I might have just discovered part of the answer sitting here. Yeah, because at that point in time my diet was Tesco value bread.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And Tesco value plum tomatoes on toast Because I could get two meals out of one can and the can was 4p Because I had to put diesel in the van to go to work. Yeah, because if I didn't, I couldn't keep going, because you couldn't get paid.
Speaker 3:And I'd taken three guys on to work labour only as subbies to me, so I'd got to pay them, but I wasn't getting any money in. So yeah, so I did that for a good while and then I was doing a project and I'd go all over the country. I wasn't bothered, I'd go. We did a whole housing estate in Norwich. No one else would go near it like about 1500 houses. We did every bit of fencing on that site. It was like a three-hour journey.
Speaker 3:I was like I don't care, I was beast in geezers, getting them up at like 3, 4 o'clock in the morning to drive. I was like I don't care, just get in the van and go to sleep. I don't give a fuck, just go to sleep. I'm not bothered.
Speaker 3:I don't have to pay you until we get to sighting that one morning and it was like I don't know where I was going. I was going somewhere and it must have been quite nearby, because it was 5.30 in the morning and I was still in the bathroom brushing my teeth and doing my mouthwash and I've got my phone. My phone was in my pocket and somehow a pocket doled geezer I used to wear before I used to be my general manager when I was like what the fuck's that noise and I realised I'm belling this geyser. So I'm like fuck. So I just ended the call and I left it like an hour. So I went I'm really sorry. Like I phoned about nine hours in the morning. He phoned me and I was like working, I was on a break or something, so I didn't hear it and I told him he was like are you fucking serious? I went. What he said are you fucking serious? He went with your brains, you're digging holes. He went this is mental. He said come and meet me for dinner in Cambridge. I'll show you to dinner.
Speaker 3:So I went and met him and he'd got a construction consultancy company providing construction like contracts, management, commercial management, pre-tender stuff to like loads of different construction businesses. It was like what are you earning a week? So I told him he was like, if I could give you a third of that for a day, would you give him three days a week? I was like, let me think about that for a second. So we struck a deal so I was doing so. I was meant to do three days a week.
Speaker 3:In the first week I did six and a half days and then within so I did, I worked for about five clients through him for about a month and then he got he's got a client he's working with in Essex and all of a sudden the demand went, went up. So he'd gone in there to look at a couple of opportunities initially and then realized that they needed like commercial procedures, bringing in operational procedures, um, so they brought me in to do that. So I was there for about 18 months. It was a proper baptism of fire because they literally got no process.
Speaker 3:So we brought all that stuff in and, um, they said to him that we want to buy, we want this gadget to work for us directly. And um, he was like, well, he's a consultant for me, he's like one of my highest paid consultants. He went, I'll buy him out of his contract. So he paid the consultant, see, to buy me out of contracts. Wow. And then we agreed the package and I stayed there for about three and a half years, nearly died three times no, four times while I was there.
Speaker 3:How come Because it was 85 miles away. So I was leaving home at like half three, four in the morning in tracksuit bottoms, getting there, going for a run around the industrial estate, jumping in the shower in the office, jumping in the shower at my desk for seven. I had like 25 mil P&L responsibility and it was fucking insane. I loved the family of bits. They're a proper nice family. They come from East London. They come from like fuck all.
Speaker 3:And the dad literally went from being a plasterer to being worth about 50 million quid in a few years, but he was proper savvy and then he handed the business over to his son and then it was a bit of a different dynamic. Let's probably just say, but yeah, it was, it was good, but it was proper stressful. You know, it was one of them businesses where you could tell we just won this contract for a million quid, there's 300 grand profit in it, and then the next thing they were going to spend the 300 grand before we'd done the job and had the money. So yeah it, it was challenging. I had a lot of responsibility which I kind of like relished, I enjoyed it. But people quite often say to me, like you're always like doing stuff, you're always working. It must be really amazing to love what you do. And I'm not sitting here saying it's not because I would hate to be in a job that I don't like, I couldn't do it.
Speaker 3:I'd love what I do, but it can be a bit of a curse and I know you've alluded to this before as well about, actually, because you love what you do, it doesn't even feel like work so the boundaries get massively skewed.
Speaker 3:So much yeah so, so yeah, I had three um, three episodes where they thought I was dying of a heart attack, um, and then the fourth one I was driving to the office, I was in the M25 and I was I don't know if you've ever done a car journey and you get out of the other end and you're like I do that all the time.
Speaker 2:I don't even remember that. I don't know how I got that. Yeah, it's like robotic. I do that all the time.
Speaker 3:It's really bad so I was driving around the M25 it was about half five in the days before our family had live 360 tracking, so let's just say I was fully on the wrong side of 100 miles an hour and I had a blowout in the outside lane, oh fuck, and I spun and spun and spun and spun and spun. So, yeah, I had to be recovered off the motorway. So it was pretty lucky.
Speaker 2:Very lucky it wasn't your time, that's for sure.
Speaker 3:Do you know what? I'm a massive believer in that yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:You've got more stuff to do, haven't you? Oh?
Speaker 3:god, yeah, I'm not even started. I'm not even 5% of how good I want to be and the amount of people I want to help.
Speaker 2:So hence the training that you're doing now right yeah you're using all yeah, skills, knowledge and experience. I love the strapline. I will keep you out of prison.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's fucking powerful. Who came up with that? It's so true Me, was it, you yeah? It's really powerful, because all you're doing you will only attract the people that give a shit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly yeah, I'm not interested in anyone else.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:I get sent pictures all the time of fucking helmets. Send pictures all the time of fucking helmets. I've got sent one this morning. Gays has got a treble ladder out of the back of his van carrying a bucket of asphalt up a fucking ladder and someone pushing a shopping trolley underneath it. Like what part of fucking stupid are you?
Speaker 3:yeah I can't, you can't. I've got an acronym called focus, and there's a few people on this planet called oxygen thieves, and if I meet one, that's what I end up just saying look, just focus, fuck off, because you're stupid, because there are some people you just cannot educate because they don't want to be educated, they don't want to improve. They've either always done it this way, or I would clamp my painful scaffold, or well, health and safety is not for me Brilliant. Crack on, it's just your life, but it's also your funeral.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's what people don't get. So tell me about the transition into pmb what, how and when did it come about? I know it's your brainchild. You had a year of it in creating it in testing yeah, but tell me about that, the transition into that my journey in transitioning.
Speaker 3:Wow, that's not a topic I thought we'd cover, so it started on a retreat actually, and I do love a retreat and then not a holiday. I'm just putting it out there we want this, don't we?
Speaker 1:we want retreats.
Speaker 3:I want a business retreat so two of the people, two of probably the most influential people in the second phase of my life, if you like, are Tony Gargan, who's my speaker coach, and Andy Hubbard, who's one of my mentors in this phase of my life, and they both said to me that the knowledge that you've got could help so many people who are like so far back down that line. If you only gave them like 0.01 of what you know, they're still gonna know 100 more than they know right now. And I was like, really, does anybody really want to know that? It's just shit rattling around, my sweet like, why does anybody want to know that? Really, really? And I don't know. I think they just abused me so much and just beat me so much to the point. I was like, okay, I'll give it a go. So I spent 11 months speaking, so I did quite a lot of like testing. So I started going to more like networking events, like in the property space and in the new build space, like sort of doing a bit of like I guess you might call it in the property space and in the new build space, sort of doing a bit of I guess you might call it soft market research.
Speaker 3:I just ask people questions and I didn't. Very often I would always go with GPS, not sat-nav. Gratitude, perspective and service. So thanks, I'm really grateful for the opportunity. Perspective, I'm here to serve you. I've been in construction 40 years. What do you want to know? What can I help you with? To get your and the kind of questions that people were asking me. I was like, alright, the answer to that's that, okay, what? The answer to that's that? Okay, the answer it wasn't right, I'll go away, I need to go and do fuck tons of research.
Speaker 3:It was all like really straightforward stuff to me yeah, yeah so I'd give them the answer and it was like, okay, maybe they've got something, maybe maybe that actually people do need to know this stuff. And then, because I started answering questions, it's kind of it's like when things when people know you're the person, it sort of like goes and you start getting asked more questions, but they weren't really like the the level of complexity of question never sort of really escalated, it was just like the volume of questions. So I had a conversation with tony about and she was like well, you need to teach people this stuff. They might want to learn a property strategy, but they need to do it properly. And andy was sort of saying the same thing.
Speaker 3:So I worked out, so I went back over I think I picked about 180 jobs that were in like our digital archive and I went through them and I looked at the ones that have been really successful in a few different metrics, because we always had like a balanced scorecard. So where did the site team happy? Was the client happy? Did we make money?
Speaker 3:yeah and if one of those things didn't, why not? And I identified, like on the ones that we didn't, where one of those outcomes was missing. But what was the thing that was missing? And then I looked at the ones that were good, what were the touch points that were always there and that was like the birthplace of where the course came from that's huge.
Speaker 1:So you've got market research along with data no, I just had some conversations.
Speaker 3:I didn't mean to call it market research.
Speaker 1:No, it's 100% market research. You're checking for the demand aren't you. You're seeing right. What do you need? Where is the gas?
Speaker 3:That's really interesting because I think it's like and I talk about this all the time and I did a post the other week with a picture of Dolly Parton and I've got loads of shit about it because I made reference to Double D and it wasn't like anything to do with cleavage, it was due diligence, but it was an image to get people to stop yeah and it is so true, but demand is one thing, but desire is something totally fucking different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they might need it, but they don't know. They, and this is the problem it's an unknown, unknown yeah they don't know. They don't know that stuff that's going to send them a fucking prison, potentially for gross negligence, manslaughter I have sat your course and I am not in construction at all, like Like I've tree top view.
Speaker 1:I've worked with one client in construction and that even that was mega niche. It's like a mind virus. I can't unsee or unlearn any of what you share and the knowledge that you impart on that course. But it's also terrifying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it can be because of the exposure to potential contractors that don't know yeah, the things that they're walking into because they don't know yeah, they don't know, and that's the thing and the and the crazy thing with it is as well, is that, especially like in the day and I mean this is 2024, so it didn't happen if it's not on social media, right, and the amount of trades that put pictures of like what they perceive to be their really good work on social media. I'm like one, two, three, four, there's six reasons that you go to prison. Four, there's a five figure, fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they're like look, this is my amazing job. Brilliant, looks fucking great, but actually you might have done it a hundred times. But if you fall off that roof tomorrow on 101, what's going to happen to your family? Oh, by the way, your insurance will be invalid because you've got no sofa work in the house.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't understand it and it's a really unregulated industry, isn't it?
Speaker 3:It's like bandit country and the property industry is worse and the domestic home environment is worse because there is zero bar to entry. And COVID was the worst thing in the world because anybody that had painted their kitchen could go and buy a van, go to Wix and buy a ladder and call themselves a decorator.
Speaker 2:And you can get insurance even without a qualification.
Speaker 3:Exactly which is just really insane.
Speaker 1:So there's absolutely a need for it and it's yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? How do you feel about pmb and everything that?
Speaker 3:you've achieved since. How do I feel about what? How do I feel about sitting here today? Yeah, um, it changes every day. Um, you know, this started off as something as a course that I wrote that was on my computer, and when I'd written it, I then spoke to three people that were very, very senior in construction One was an old boss and two were previous mentors, and the reason I'm just taking a moment is because one of those people passed away recently.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I didn't know.
Speaker 3:And he was probably the person that I wouldn't say was like the biggest champion, but was the most supportive, but also he would never say well, you need to do it this way.
Speaker 3:He'd be, like, just have a think about that, and as a site manager, he was wicked like that. He'd never. He wasn't one of them. Don't get me wrong. I've been in some proper scrapes with a geezer. Talk about like 40 people drinking 50 bowls of red wine on the roof of a building and then trying to get down down the ladder. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, we had some wild time, yeah, but he was really really sort of helpful in that initial process and up until very, very recently I think it felt like, yeah, we've got a course, it's a product. The work we've done recently around, like the brand, the values, the community stuff yeah, it feels very different now it's huge yeah, I'm getting emotional because yeah you must be proud of what you've done, though am I proud of it?
Speaker 3:I'm not proud of it. I'm proud of the results people have got from implementing it. You know, I've had a call with someone this morning who's fighting against his dad and his brother because he wants to do it the right way and the other two are like no, we need to just get on with this. I'm proud for them, the people that are out there trying to do it once again that's what I'm proud about and that's what that's what I want my legacy to be is about. What am I doing so much?
Speaker 3:that's what I want my legacy to be it's always my time of the month is about actually changing the shape of the industry for the better and actually having like a because most people have a stereotypical idea in their head of a builder is this thick twat who's like his arse cracked, hanging out, driving around in a wanked out van with loads of shit on the dash.
Speaker 2:Really good, yeah, really good vision.
Speaker 3:You know that's most people. If you ask people to draw a caricature of a builder, that's what it would be. It would be a square box van like 20 B&H in a box of matches, with a ladder on the roof, and that's what it would be like To those people that think that, come and sit in your mastermind sessions.
Speaker 1:Come and sit and see what those mentees are saying about what they want to achieve, what they want to do, why they want to be different, because they are not that stereotypical they're the exact opposite.
Speaker 3:Oh they're amazing, they're all amazing seeing results they're getting in their businesses and and and it's for me, it's not always like it's not always the key tangible things like business metrics that you can put in a spreadsheet don't go. I love a spreadsheet and I love a pivot table and a graph oh no, you're talking my language but it's also about some of the softer stuff, like people that are, like now, able to go and pick their children up from school yeah you know, their mindset has shifted, because skill set without mindset just equals upset right, you've got to have the right mindset.
Speaker 3:So people whose mindset is no longer I'm having a day off today to do paperwork in the office because they now realize that actually that's work, that's important, they need to do that, so they need to build it into their working week. For me, it's about those sorts of shifts are more important as about the business improvement and the safety improvement and the commercials and all that stuff, because that's what's going to get them a better, more balanced life, and then they're going to be more successful I really see like having the exposure to you when you're working with those individuals.
Speaker 1:One of your passions which you I don't think you've said up until this point but I see is that your love for developing others and seeing that growth, check them, change in that time and grow as a person, because you're so invested in their own journeys I know we hate the words, but you're so invested in what they're trying to achieve and we ran it effectively.
Speaker 1:Well, we ran the avatar exercise, but we got the pleasure of doing it to someone in in your group we did um the original in your group who was the first into into your um brand he's just renewed for another year over there yes, he has um along with others, and it was really special because you and jemma got to see and feel what it's like for them to be part of. Pmb.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's something I'll never forget.
Speaker 1:Absolutely amazing and it is all about that community, it is all about that family feel. But it's about getting really serious about their businesses. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:It's not a playground. We're there to talk business and to get results for people. But across the whole, I mean I've actually got the Wheel of Life on my watch because it's so important to me and it is so important and I'm shit at achieving it. I'm not pretending I'm perfect, but it is about actually trying to achieve balance across all of those eight sections, to actually get to the point where because there's no point smashing it and being a 10 or a 15 or a 100, whatever your zero to whatever number is in one sector of that wheel if everything else is at zero.
Speaker 1:We might need to explain a bit about Wheel of Life, because I'm not sure that everyone is familiar with that. I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's so good, really so Wheel of Life, and I'm probably getting this wrong. So Wheel of Life, and I'm probably getting this wrong. So it's about work, it's about family, it's about health, it's about emotional well-being, it's about spiritual well-being, it's about friendships, it's about relationships, and it's also about your relationship with yourself.
Speaker 1:So it's 0 to 10 circle. Whatever the scale can be, whatever you want, the ones that I've done before are 0 to 10, and then you've got each little segment you mark, and then you've got each little segment you mark, and then you draw, you, you line the well, you join the dots up and you can see the areas of your life that aren't quite as balanced as they should be. I love that and I really want to do it.
Speaker 2:It's very, very similar template, thank you it's really good.
Speaker 3:I mean I've got it on my watch. I mean I've got that and some other, some other digital assets I use for, um, like reprogramming my self-conscious. So stuff like the system that I use for speaking is one of them. There's pictures of my children on there. There's pictures of Gemma on there. There's pictures of my friends on there. So, consciously, it's like if I look at that, I'm like, oh, I've not spoken to him for a week. Oh, my way of life, right, I've not checked in with that person.
Speaker 2:Right, and objecting to that person Like what the hell is going?
Speaker 3:on and it's really powerful.
Speaker 2:It's all the important things to you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, massively. And it's also the important things to other people. Like there was a guy who I know quite well through networking. We're friends, I would say, probably Not really tight friends, but friends, more than kind of like, if you think, acquaintance-y friendship. We're probably there, sort of just gone from acquaintances to friends and I love the like dedication to.
Speaker 1:I just need to tell you where they sit in the, because I think the context is important to what I'm going to say yep so, and I don't normally say stuff that's not got some context to- it
Speaker 3:so me and Gemma noticed that the guy had not posted on socials for probably a month and I also know that he's got a day job that's very, very demanding. I'm not going to say what it is, but it's a very, very demanding blue-collar job, which you know his life is quite often in the balance and he was absent and I just literally just sent him a voice note. I said hi, mate, not seeing you around much. Gage was on the phone crying. You're the only person out of 30,000 connections I've got on social media that's noticed I'm not there. That's the power, yeah, of having that with a life on my watch is he okay?
Speaker 3:yeah, he's fine, he's alright. He's just caught off in his own world, but it's almost not. It's important whether he's or isn't okay, but the message in that really is actually about noticing when someone's not there, because I've lost two of my best friends to suicide. Wow, that's what my TEDx talks about. You've watched it. Yes, I.
Speaker 1:You've watched it, haven't you? Yes, I have, it's massive.
Speaker 3:I'm really hyper-vigilant about people that are normally really loud and go quiet, or people where there'll be some kind of subtle behavioural change.
Speaker 1:You do it to me all the time. What's?
Speaker 3:going on for that person.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And also supporting people and saying thank you when someone does something, even if it's just their job.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know being grateful that, but I'm super grateful we get to work with you. I'm super fucking grateful that you guys created this podcast, because I've learned so much from listening to you. Yeah, mostly about how not to be.
Speaker 2:You're a cheeky father. No, I've learned loads. I'm a cheeky buzzer no, I've learnt loads.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've learnt tons yeah, yeah, every day's a school day.
Speaker 2:If you work up the right attitude.
Speaker 3:you can always learn, but now I'm really grateful for the people I get to work with massively.
Speaker 2:I think gratitude is an incredibly powerful thing.
Speaker 3:It changes the world. If you come from everything, from a place of gratitude, it changes it totally does, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does, it changes your perception, it changes the people you meet. It changes absolutely everything.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm probably the least woo person in the world, but I do increasingly believe in the spiritual stuff. I mean, we had a session last week, didn't we, with someone looking at a funnel for a product, yeah, and I had a call from her yesterday, which should have been about six minutes, and she was basically asking what she could do as a next step for the work she's doing for us. And I was like right, fucking stop. Right, where are you at? What are you doing with this? Like, what have you done with the next step? I haven't had the time to do it.
Speaker 3:I'm working on your work, right, stop, no, no, what are we doing on your stuff? It's like, really, it's absolutely. Let's focus on sorting this out, because then we can get you further faster. I'm really grateful to get to work with her. I'm really grateful I work with people that I want to work with, and that's what I love is. I wouldn't like a lot of people are like it's my life, it's my rules, the laptop lifestyle in fucking Bermuda, and I don't believe in all that bollocks.
Speaker 2:I do believe in working with people you want to work with by choice, I feel like it's actually a big facade and I think a lot of people are faking it yeah.
Speaker 3:I got hammered for this the other day because I did a post last week. I think it was about why fake it till you make it's bollocks? I agree and and it's also really dangerous. It is because it's so toxic.
Speaker 2:It's the same as social media and it causes all of the anxiety and all the problems, because then everyone thinks that they have to be perfect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you want to go and tell the world you're some amazing fitness fucking guru and you're not, fine, chances are you're probably not going to kill someone. But if you want to go and tell someone you're a builder and you're not, you could kill someone.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you might not kill them today. You might kill them because you've not designed the building properly and there's a roof light that nobody can get to to maintain because there's not a principal designer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It might be that actually you send someone to work on a scaffold. That's not safe. But faking it till you make it as a property developer or a project manager is fucking lethal for for lots of different people for lots of different reasons.
Speaker 1:So I think it's really toxic. It's like a behavior massively. Yeah, I do. I believe in feeling the fear and doing it anyway I believe in, like pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. I believe in that. There is so much to learn and so much to develop in that little growth space, or large growth space, however far you push yourself out, but no inauthenticity, absolutely no I can't stand it no, I did say that's what, but I thought that we would talk about today, but we actually haven't covered it we haven't have we no.
Speaker 1:What authenticity yeah, we have yeah, we did have one question. I put a poll out last night to ask some questions. I'm gonna tell you what it was and you have to guess who it is.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:Because it's a bit tongue in cheek.
Speaker 3:Right, okay.
Speaker 1:Do you enjoy salad? Do you know who it is, do I?
Speaker 3:enjoy salad. Do I know who it is? I think it could be. Can I name them? Yeah, it could be my wife.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:It could be Liam Spencer. No, it could be my wife. No, it could be Liam Spencer. No, it could be Heidi Martin. I think he's probably the culprit. Yeah, here's the honest truth about salad. I like salad If it's my salad, so I like iceberg lettuce. I like onion, tomato chopped carrot celery Absolutely fucking love it. I could go to war with enough celery for the garden.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Love it, don't. It could go to war with like enough celery for the garden. Yeah, love it. Don't give me any poncy, pretentious, fucking european shit. I can't stand it and I'd rather have a salad than a wood, a plate of vegetables yeah, interesting but, people class is european shit.
Speaker 2:Are you talking like rocket?
Speaker 3:yeah, all them fucking fake types of lettuce.
Speaker 2:A lettuce is a fucking iceberg lettuce not even a bit of cost less it no, no, no, just a simple like I would.
Speaker 3:Literally I could live on salad. It would not bother me to live on salad, oh, no, no, no, as long as you've got some meat with it. I could not have. I can't have these like meals without meat. Like what is that about? It's not a meal, is it? A meal is like a combination of shit together. That's not a meal for me.
Speaker 1:So it's great. What are you saying? Heidi did also ask about sushi. What's your stance?
Speaker 3:on sushi. I love stamping all over sushi. I can't stand it, do you not? No, I don't like it. It stinks.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love sushi. What about the non-raw fish sushi? No.
Speaker 3:I'm not a fan, not bobbed. Do you like a?
Speaker 2:poke bowl. What? What do you like? A poke bowl.
Speaker 1:We've spoke about poking. I'm married. What is a?
Speaker 2:poke bowl. So a poke bowl is like rice and vegetables, normally chicken or salmon yeah, I'd give it a blast it's like normally in the sushi section, but poke bowl's good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've never tried it really good. I'm not. I'm not like setting my ways, but there's a few things I don't like, and since I've been diagnosed with colitis, my relationship with food has changed yeah, there's a lot of triggers, isn't there? Yeah, massively yeah, and sugar.
Speaker 2:Is that a big one sugar's one dairy dairy's a massive one bread bread.
Speaker 3:This is being recorded, but I will admit it. But I am in a bit of a weird relationship with that because what with bread? Yeah, because one of the first things that my colitis nurse said to me was one of the like you can't have steak and red wine together because that just absolutely fucking ruins me you don't drink anyway, do you steak and red wine no, because of my colitis well my liver only functions at 10% as well.
Speaker 1:I don't get drunk huh, you can't get drunk, like your body won't let you.
Speaker 3:I don't get drunk, gemma's. The last time I had a proper drink was Gemma's dad's 70th birthday and I had 25 pints of Guinness, sorry, and we had a bottle of champagne to celebrate his birthday as well and you weren't pissed no, I was sober as a judge why did your liver behave like that? Because it only functions at 10%. I don't know why.
Speaker 2:But what happens? I don't understand how that affects you from being drunk, because it will still go in your bloodstream.
Speaker 3:I don't know, it's one of the side effects of it.
Speaker 3:apparently I didn't know it was a thing I only found out about 12, 13 years ago, I think it was when me and Gemma first got together and she came to stay and she was like why do you get up in the night for a wee? That's just wrong. I was like what the fuck are you talking about? I've done it for years. It's just part of like my age. It's like it's really not. But because I don't know, because I had this weird relationship with my age for such a long time, I've kind of never really thought about it. And so I went to the doctors. I had like loads of piss tests and blood tests and like this doctor came back to me and went yeah, your liver's like functioning at 10%. He said it's not, you haven't ruined it, it's just it functions at 10% and that's one of the side effects have you never been able to get drunk?
Speaker 3:no, I don't ever remember being drunk in my life wow like people have these, like people go such a good night, but I don't remember it. I'm like, well, actually that was a good night and why don't you remember it? What the fuck? How do you not remember you went out and I went out? What did you just take your fucking brain out? Show me how to do it. I'd love to be able to do it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've experienced that a few times.
Speaker 3:I've had a few wild nights out, but, yeah, not ones that I remember much of my childhood also memory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, memory is a weird thing because you have to. It's like deep-rooted and I feel like the older you get, the more you have to pull at those memories yeah, it's like a filing cabinet, the more you put in front of it. It's like actually it's for the best. Yeah, precisely how did we get onto that from?
Speaker 1:sushi, I don't know I don't know. You asked that sushi thank you, heidi, for asking those two beautiful questions, I think they're really steak.
Speaker 2:Just give me steak really I love a steak.
Speaker 3:I love a steak steaks are food of gods, I'd steak for a night.
Speaker 2:I could do a podcast just talking about food yeah, same here.
Speaker 3:We were talking about where we're going to go when we make our Vigilians, aren't we?
Speaker 3:yes make your what Vigilians, alright so when me, when me and Nicole started working together we'd already met a couple of times, hadn't we? Yes, we had a really interesting meeting. It was a non-meeting. When I was absolutely not at my best, I turned up and was just kind of meeting with her for a chat and a coffee. It wasn't even to do any work, it was just a chat. And we walked in and there was someone else in the room as well.
Speaker 1:And then there was this really quiet person in the corner of the room who didn't really speak, and we were like we were chatting and and I was like just me, no airs and graces, I've got fucking fucking shorts and a t-shirt and you're very different. You were very, very different then to now that well, it was wow, that's interesting I didn't know you on the same level as I know you now. Did pmb exist then? No, no, you the quiet person in the corner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was working she was diligently key tapping doing something, because then occasionally she just go and I was like who the fuck is she? I was literally that's what went through my head. I was like who the fuck is she? Well, I think it was like who the fuck are you actually? But like, no, because it's like because of who it was, there was no like introductions, this is such and such or anything. Anyway, like however long I was there, I can't remember, and he was like, oh, I'm going now. And he was like, oh, by the way, this is Nicole. I was like, oh, nice to meet you. So we said goodbye instead of saying hello.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was really odd, wasn't it? It was weird. That was when we first met, wasn't it? And then I can't remember why we started. What kick-started us working together? Andy Riversley's time, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was Riversley, I don't remember why.
Speaker 1:What the spark was.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was Riversley, and that was in November last year, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then we met in person and I said and she went, and we met in person, and I said Virgilians, and she went. What Did you say, virgilians? And I went no, but it can be.
Speaker 3:Right, but yeah, so the context was we were setting up a WhatsApp group so the three of us could like, share, like why any other reasons to have a WhatsApp group? And they were like what should we call it? And I know this because it's when you phone her I'm like there's boss bitch billum. Yeah, yeah, the amazing super bitch boss, because she's brilliant, absolutely fucking brilliant.
Speaker 2:So don't give her a compliment. She can't bear it.
Speaker 3:I know she hides, so. So, yeah, that's where. That's kind of where it started. And you guys were like what do we call it? You're like right, okay, are we aiming for? Like, like, what are we aiming for in terms of sales? Is it millions? And it was just like we just called it Virgilians.
Speaker 1:Do you have any other questions for Richard Stone? Oh?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. I want to know what's the relationship with bread? You never finished that. Oh, yeah, with bread. Yeah, you said I've got a funny relationship with bread.
Speaker 3:So my colitis nurse said to me like the things that are like ironing you out, these things like wheat, like bread with like seeds and all that stuff, all that like pochartas and stuff, she went, the best thing you can do is have white bread. I was like I'm a fucking sun blessed boy. I was brought out of a council to have fucking like white bread, like thin white bread that was like the governor and the other thing is bacon. I was like are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 2:she said no, but bacon's good bacon's good for me, apparently so I was like.
Speaker 3:So what you've told me is fuck all this, all brand shit bacon sandwich bacon sandwich is seven days away for the rest of my life pen no pen, you're fucking going to die.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so that was what she said. Slightly ironic that we've now I mean, I've got probably 25 grams worth of power tools in my garage me and Martin were talking about it the other day but the best power tool we've ever bought in our house is a Panasonic bread maker. Like off the scale, like I would. I would worship that thing, and if it broke I would just go to the end of the aftercare and have one, because the bread that comes out of it is unbelievable.
Speaker 1:White bread. It's so easy, white bread.
Speaker 3:Any bread.
Speaker 1:We've got a bread maker, but has it got to be the Panasonic?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I feel like we need to put this in the show notes yeah. I think we're going to have to share I want a Panasonic bread maker. Honestly, it's not even 300 quid. Literally, I mean, I don't even do it, gemma does it, but literally you tip the shit in the top of it and a fucking amazing loaf of bread comes out.
Speaker 2:Do you put it on at night?
Speaker 3:Sometimes, or sometimes during the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So the kids now have. Because Ruby had long COVID and she couldn't eat. Literally her appetite just dropped to zero. So she now has homemade bread rolls for school. So does Charlie, like I've had like white toast before I come out, but the house just smells of bread all the time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's fucking amazing.
Speaker 2:Get in my belly so yes, we need recipe and link to oh, there's loads of recipes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but no white bread, love it wow, how about that?
Speaker 2:we've gone, we've covered.
Speaker 1:So much today. I don't even know how you would summarise that as an episode. I don't.
Speaker 2:I've absolutely loved it, yeah so have I. I've loved getting to know you me too.
Speaker 3:I've loved the questions. I think you know it's really interesting the types of questions that you sort of brought out, and it's really interesting because I watched your interview with Martin and the questions you asked him. You ask of each other. So I was really kind of like just whatever. And like you said to me before we hit record, like is there anything you won't talk about? And I'm like there's nothing I won't talk about. So thank you for giving me this place to answer your questions thank you for being so open and vulnerable there's only one way to be, isn't there?
Speaker 2:I've only got one life, hey gotta live it 95% left. No, I've got 95% left.
Speaker 1:That's what I said 95% oh sorry, well, I hope so and, and, and, and, and, and. We only play big.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've changed mine.
Speaker 1:now it's on my phone.
Speaker 3:It's on my phone. It comes up like every hour.
Speaker 1:Every hour.
Speaker 3:Every hour. I get that with mine, yeah. Oh, mine's at 9am, but, yeah, every hour at the base Because it's there subconsciously all the time. It does make a difference. It makes a big difference. Language is huge.
Speaker 1:I'm learning the power of affirmations and I've got this one affirmation which I've shared with you both, and every time I start to feel like, oh God, it's not happening, it's not going the way that I want it to which I'm feeling a lot at the minute because I'm way out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 3:It really snaps me back. Yeah, it's amazing, yeah, really, really powerful. I was talking to rebecca yesterday, um, so for people that are watching.
Speaker 1:They won't know rebecca page.
Speaker 3:An amazing funnel builder and like what. What resilience has one human being got to go through?
Speaker 1:what she's gone through. My fucking god, what a story you ought to do an interview I was going to say it would be epic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was talking to her yesterday about affirmations and she was going, and it's really weird. She's going right. She's like where are you? I'm at my desk in the office. She's like, okay, right, stand up. And we're doing these different affirmations about like releasing, like resistance to stuff yeah oh my god, like God, like how powerful.
Speaker 3:But that's part of the work she's done with people that have got the biggest results is because they've actually, because doing all those like mind maps and shit is great. If you don't work on the resistance to it, it'll never work. You've got to get rid of the resistance to it.
Speaker 1:Well, this is interesting because I kind of don't know what you're talking about, but I'm really intrigued. Energy Energy.
Speaker 3:You were just talking about energy or what you're putting out into the world, and sometimes it can be like a blocker to what you actually want to achieve.
Speaker 1:So we did a. She was incredible. We did a mind map on the whole of your brand and your business and there was something that was festering away that felt like a little side thing. But when we spoke to her about it she was like, oh my god, she just kept going back to it, kept going back to it, kept going back to it, but at the same time said I'm feeling some resistance here. I'm feeling some resistance. She said it two or three times and we need to combat that. And I was like what the fuck is she talking about? Because she's we're talking strategy. And then she just went. But there's a bit of resistance there, like you're almost at full moon ceremony at the same time as having a fucking business meeting. It was incredible, wow, but it was so fast, like we're trying to cover so much in such a short space of time and I'm going.
Speaker 1:I've got to go back to get the kids. I've got to go back and sort the kids out we had.
Speaker 3:So we had, I think we had. We were meant to have an hour, we ended up having about two and a half hours. So in that we sort of split into three really. So we split into six, say so the first six was like hi, getting to know, because I'd met rebecca, I'd spent three days on the course you guys had never met.
Speaker 3:Then we did, I drew out like the pmb and all the bits that fit around it as I see it, and then we talked about the new product that me and nicole and jemma's working on. So we had like two different kind of like mind maps, if you like, and she was like great, okay, is that everything? And we're like not sure. But it was kind of like a bit woo. So we were like right, we'll go with that. She then completely redrew it all as two funnels. So that was the second. It's like that was probably the middle, four, sixth of the of the session. But during that she was like she was so in tune to people's eye contact, people's body language, the words that we were using. She was like there's this bit here, there's resistance around this bit and it's. It's quite unnerving if you've never done that before, but oh my god, how powerful what was the resistance, though?
Speaker 2:did you, did you so?
Speaker 3:some, yeah some, of it's around price oh right so some of it's around price because a lot of it comes back to wanting to serve a particular. So my blueprint course we've got two. We've got three avatars. Yeah, we've got three avatars. We've got a small to medium builder and then their partner, because they're different avatars for different reasons. And then we've got a property investor.
Speaker 3:So, they're the three avatars for that. I'm a tradesman at heart. That's my audience. My mastermind is probably 75% of people that are like that They've got a certain budget and there's certain limitations around that and I want to serve that budget. So I've got a certain budget and there's certain limitations around that and I want to serve that budget. So I've got people saying to me my course should be like four times the price it is, and maybe, maybe that's their price point. Well, it's not. Maybe I know it is their price point, but I'm comfortable with my price point Because you're serving the people you want to serve, because I'm serving the people I want to serve.
Speaker 2:But also you're going to have the biggest impact.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me this is not about filling my bank account. It's about actually creating legacy and helping people facilitate change. But she's like I can feel the resistance there. I'm like, okay, and then when I was talking to yesterday, she was like we need to like work on this, we need to get rid of the resistance. You might still have the context around it, which is fine, but if we don't get rid of the resistance, you might still have the context around it, which is fine, but if we don't get rid of the resistance, the sales won't happen.
Speaker 1:And it will never reach its potential.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This woman sounds incredible.
Speaker 3:She took a business from nothing to a $21 million valuation in just under 24 months, and then she's done it multiple other times as well. She's properly clever, is she? Mm-hmm? Yeah, and then she's done it multiple other times as well she's properly clever, is she?
Speaker 2:yeah? And she's from New Zealand. Oh, I love New Zealand.
Speaker 3:She's got a wicked accent and she's so down, honestly, she's so down to earth. Like she walked in, I was like I thought you were getting out of bed for the meeting and she was like fuck off, stop winding me up like I've only known her three days yeah, but we just get on.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that.
Speaker 3:I love it when you meet people like that so yeah, I'm sure there's probably I think there'd be some value in you two having a conversation, definitely for the online stuff, without each other, without, because that's a, that's a mastery yeah, I definitely need help with that and she's in beta stage at the moment very, very open to negotiation.
Speaker 2:I would probably need her help with franchise. To be honest, how?
Speaker 1:exciting Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Do you know what? I feel like we could just do this forever, couldn't we? Yeah, don't pick a subject, let's have a chat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, let's have a chat, let's get an Uber Eats and let's just crack on. What do you want to talk about?
Speaker 1:When then uber eats, crack on, have another chat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm up for that.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, thank you. Thank you amazing for being here toucan, toucan.
Speaker 3:I'm loving the branding that's wicked.
Speaker 1:I said this, I said brand colors.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, wow love it brand colors.
Speaker 2:My daughter chose it. She was like I want you to wear the orange and the toucans today. I was like, okay, pop it whatever you say, love her to pieces anyway.
Speaker 3:Thanks guys thank you, bye, bye.
