From Buckingham Palace Rejection to Starting Again on Purpose

Starting a business at a young age can be a daunting yet rewarding experience. In this post, we’ll explore the journey of Ben Bowden, who took the plunge into entrepreneurship at just fifteen years old. He shares insights on balancing education and business, navigating social pressures, and the lessons learned along the way.

The Early Start: Launching a Business at 15
Ben’s journey into entrepreneurship began in his teens, driven by a passion for graphic design and a supportive community. With his father and grandfather being well-known figures in their local area, opportunities naturally presented themselves. Ben started taking on small projects for friends and family, which laid the groundwork for his first business venture.

How It All Began
At fifteen, Ben didn’t see himself as a business owner. Instead, he viewed it as a side gig where he could apply his graphic design skills. Initially focused on making a few extra pounds while juggling school, he soon realized the potential of turning his passion into a lucrative endeavor. The joy of earning money from something he loved ignited a spark that would shape his future.

Social Dynamics and Peer Pressure
Navigating teenage life while running a business came with its challenges. While friends were focused on their GCSEs and typical teen activities, Ben was already thinking about his future. He admits that the social aspect became more complex when he fully committed to his business at twenty-one, after university. As his peers settled into typical corporate jobs, Ben faced the reality of financial constraints and the pressures of entrepreneurship. This contrast taught him valuable lessons about patience and long-term vision.

Finding the Balance: Education and Business
Balancing education and entrepreneurship is no small feat. Ben managed to maintain focus on his studies while exploring business opportunities. This dual commitment not only enriched his skill set but also provided him with a competitive edge when he eventually moved into full-time business operations.

The Role of Education
Ben attributes part of his success to the resources available at his university. The institution offered support through an enterprise team that helped students navigate the business landscape, providing grants, advice, and networking opportunities. This environment encouraged Ben to think outside the traditional corporate pathway and explore entrepreneurship as a viable career.

The Transition to Full-Time Entrepreneurship
At twenty-one, Ben made the leap to run his graphic design business full-time. This transition was both thrilling and intimidating.

The Shift in Mindset
The shift from part-time to full-time entrepreneurship required a significant change in mindset. Ben had to adapt to the realities of running a business, including financial management, client relations, and self-discipline. This experience was a steep learning curve but ultimately shaped him into the entrepreneur he is today.

The Importance of Resilience
Resilience became a key theme in Ben’s journey. He learned to embrace challenges as opportunities for growth, recognizing that not every venture would yield immediate success. This perspective is vital for anyone considering entrepreneurship, especially at a young age.

Key Takeaways for Aspiring Young Entrepreneurs
Ben’s story offers valuable insights for those looking to start their own business early in life.

Start Small: Begin with manageable projects to build confidence and experience.

Seek Support: Utilize available resources, such as university programs or community networks.

Stay Focused: Balance your education and business commitments to maximize your potential.

Embrace Challenges: View setbacks as opportunities for learning and growth.

In conclusion, Ben Bowden’s journey illustrates the power of starting young and the resilience needed to navigate the entrepreneurial landscape. Whether you’re still in school or contemplating a career change, his experiences remind us that with dedication and the right mindset, success is achievable.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome everybody to another episode of Business Life and Other Ballocks. I'm your host, Mike Dunn. Today I'm joined by a guest who started business at the age of only 15 years old. A man that has worked pretty much in some extraordinary places, now self-employed, um, running one of the UK's fastest growing marketing agencies. Um Ben Bowden joins us. Uh Ben, how are you feeling? Yeah, I'm alright.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

I'm uh I'm surrounded by Liverpool stuff, which is a bit of a bit of a tore point as a manager.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Oh mate, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. We can't all be perfect. Um Ben, I I'm looking forward to this. There's a couple of things we're gonna cover. Obviously, starting a business at 15, getting rejected at Buckingham Palace by Prince Andrew. Yeah. And there's gonna be people that go, oh, hang on a minute. I fucking we need to tune into this one because I've got a lot of questions about sweat, um, getting sick from burnout, and why the idea of job security in your eyes is complete bollocks. Yeah. All right. So you said uh everything bad in life happens for a reason. Yeah, but we're gonna test that today. So I want to start straight off with not the Prince Andrew thing, because trust me, we're gonna need an extra hour for that. Uh I want to start uh the 15 years old because when I was 15, I still wasn't sure, like a lot of people, what I wanted to do. I wasn't sure where I wanted to work, what I wanted to do with myself. I think, in fact, I remember my business studies teacher actually telling me, you carry on the way you are, you're gonna end up on the bins. And I thought, fuck you, but then I thought, oh shit, he might actually be right here. Because I didn't have a clue. So you're 15, set up your own business. Tell me what that is.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Um, so basically, all like my dad's very well known in the community that we live in. So he volunteers in a lot of different projects, so did my granddad. My granddad was like very well known in our community as well. Everyone sort of knew that I was I had an interest in graphic design, I was studying graphic design. So then more and more people started saying, Oh, well, can your Ben do a bit of this? I started just doing odd bits here and there locally, posting it online, and then people had just sort of come to me through online as well. So, yeah, it just started like that, really. Obviously, at that age, you're not you are running a business, but you're not running a business to like, I'm not one of these plumbing kids online who's making a million quid a year who's 15-year-old or whatever. I'm one of them who's like, I'm making, you know, a couple hundred quid here and there alongside school or whatever. But at that age, you know, you get someone pays you 50 quid, you're buzzing with it, aren't you?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

My dad was in the building game and he used to take me to uh building sites sweeping up all just carrying bricks, and I'd be given like a tenner. I'd be over the fucking moon. So so you're 15 years old, so young to look at this, and you set up your own business. You you'd be set up your own company basically, didn't you?

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

What was it like with your friends about worrying about GCSEs? What where was your head space at?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Um, I obviously I worried about all that then because I think back when I was 15, I didn't really see it as a business as such. I saw it as, oh, I've got this skill set and people are paying me for this skill set, which I never really um initially saw graphic design because it's a creative thing. I never really saw that as oh, you can make money out of this. It was only once people started paying me to do it. But then I was like, I was still focused on like studies, everything like that. Like that, it wasn't my main focus then, but it definitely planted the seed for what was to come later on because I knew that I had the capability of doing it. What was it like socially though? Um, so 15, I mean, it didn't impact me as much at 15 as it did when I set up properly full-time when I was 21. When I set up properly full-time at 21, that's very difficult because obviously I just left university and people are sort of um they're living life basically. Everyone wants to go out every weekend, everyone wants to do all these things, and you're sort of the one who everyone else has left university, join big companies, and they're going, This is a route you should go down. And I'm sort of like, Oh, I've not got any money to do anything this weekend, and I'm living with my parents and I'm doing all this stuff which you don't see any immediate reward for, but I think I sort of learnt very early on off other people that you do a lot of the stuff without immediate reward. Because the thing is, right, is most of those people who I'm comparing myself to at that age, they alright, they start quicker, but then they plateau quicker. Is there anyone in particular you you use to compare yourself to? Just just friends. Oh right, okay. Just local friends. So I I mean it I mean sort of like you see your YouTube course mates and you see them go on and they have the job, they get promoted, they do all those different things, and they're working with brands that you want to work with, so they get that immediate reward quicker. But I think that if you look at the wrong long run, they're gonna plateau a lot quicker as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas I only even now I just see myself as just starting to where I could possibly go to because like if you look at it, you know, I'm 27 now, like if you look at it by the time I'm 40, you put 13 years of work into something, like you're gonna be, you know, in a very good place.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Unless you're a parent, mate, when your kids stay fucking 10. You see great, you're bald in, fucking stressed. Well no, I do know what you mean. And it's a good mindset to have. It sounds like you were always sort of thinking ahead. Is that the way to describe it?

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, as I say, I think I was very lucky in terms of the university I went to. So they had a quiet.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Which one did you go to? Oxfield. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

So they had a um enterprise team, and what that was was basically they had a section of the university where alumni and current students could go to, they get business support, they get business advice, they get business grants, funding, lawyers, everything. Jesus they sort of had that pathway um, which I wouldn't have necessarily have thought about because it's obviously, I mean, all of university traditionally is geared around which sort of grad scheme can you get on, which job can you get on, and it's not necessarily the traditional route to go down because everyone goes, Oh, you need a bit of experience when in reality I think something like marketing, you know, I think it plays the young people's strength sort of.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah, yeah. So you set your foot you set your probably business up at twenty-one.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

And what was that graphic design?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah, so that was graphic design for sort of anyone and everyone. Obviously, I specialise in construction now, but that's just off experiences that I've had within that uh within sort of the rest of my career. Um but yeah, that was just initially anyone and everyone, and then I did a bit of towards the end of that business, it was uh heavily in financed.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

But truth be told, your passion wasn't always graphic design, was it?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

No, it's sports, so so badminton, right? Yeah, yeah. Tell us about badminton. Um, so basically, I was very late to playing it. So in my household, we're a cricket household, right? So um everyone on my dad's side of the family, both the men and women have played at some level from you know county level down to the local leagues. So like my first starting when I was born was become a member of the local cricket club. That's just how it's always been. Um but I played for a season cricket, and I obviously I played every sport under the sun, so like football, you know, running, athletics, all that sort of stuff. But it got to I was 15 and I went to an open day at the sports centre, and this this old bloat was there, and he was sort of just running a taste of session for it. And I had to go and bear in mind that obviously I'd done once or twice in PE, I'd played. He was like, Oh, I think you should uh I coached Rochdale actually, I think you should come down. But he said, We've got a session this weekend if you want to come. So I went down and like basically like the first hour, I can't remember the exact timings, but the first hour was you know the beginners, and then the second hour was the actual team who represented Rochdale, they played in like the greater Manchester County League and everything like that. I went down for one session and he's like, Oh, you need to stay for the second hour. And it was the literally, it was the first time I played Badminton for any real length. Um so yeah, within six months of six months of about eight months of starting playing Badminton because the season was eight months at the time. We uh we won the great Manchester under sixteens league, unbeaten uh in every matching game, and we're the only team to ever do that. And I did that within eight months of playing Badminton. So I was like, I want to do something here because you know, all the like the other lads from that team have been playing an awful lot longer and they'd gone on to you know, play for Lancashire and things like that, which was sort of the natural competition in Badminton. But then when I went to university that just went to a whole new level because obviously you get different cultures, you get sponsorships, you get training, you get to go in a lot of different types of tournaments. Um we happened to have a very, very good team in a rubbish league. So it it just so happened the year before they were gonna close the the badminton society at most yeah. So it meant that we had to start from the bottom. Well, I mean, in that team we had two lads who played for the equivalent of Chinese counties. Um and then the rest of the players, bar me, basically, it all played county badminton at some level at that point. Um so I was playing with better and better people, and then we got the following year like a lad who played for India nationally and and other sorts of stuff like that, which obviously for them it's it's like almost national sports. The standard even of like the county players is well beyond our level of county players as well. So yeah, we we played there. Um I got to captain the team after my first year at university and then went on to uh I played at British Nationals twice as well, down at the English Institute of Sport. Um how I always describe it, I mean I know this is your uh your your swearing podcast, so I can say this. Um this is your swearing podcast. But basically, I always describe it as I am the shit of the good people, right? So I can say that I've played at British Nationals and all this sort of stuff, however, in the first round I played against Hong Kong's number two at the time, and we lost in the first round, which obviously you'd expect that, but then we lost. I think at the time it was I can't remember the exact score, I think it was like 21-10 and 21-12 to him, and it was doubles, and because of what I'm like, I sulked like mad. We were men the night out afterwards, and I sulked. I was in a horrific mood. I was like, I should have wiped the floor with this guy. Was it like the time Liverpool beat United 7-1? I don't remember that actually, but um somewhere yeah, no, I don't just don't know what you're on about that. Yeah, come on, yeah. Um, but yeah, it it I I always had this thing with Badminton. I I think it was um obviously if you look at it from a realistic level, like in Badminton there's only probably for males, there's probably less than 10 in the country go pro and become a full-time career as a badminton player. What's the money like in badminton? So one of the big things that happened whilst I was at university is they cut the funding away from it. Like a lot of sports, it's lottery funded like a lot of Olympians are. And they basically cut that away from badminton because they said they didn't have enough of a medal prospect.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Olympic sport though, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah. But you have to you have to have a medal prospect to be able to keep receiving the funding to the same level. They cut that, which meant that because obviously the main base of badminton is over in Asia, it meant that people were having to travel to games and without like if you didn't have sponsorship who'd be willing to pay for you to get there and things like that, or if you didn't win a tournament over in Asia, you'd lost money. So it wasn't necessarily as straightforward as that. Um I mean I I I obviously I never got to that level where I was playing in Asia or anything like that, but like some of the lads I was training with, like I used to go to summer camps where we play for you know five days a week and you'd go there at like nine o'clock in the morning and finish at five o'clock in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

And Badminton's not a slow sport either, is it?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Uh it's well, depending on who you ask, it's the fastest sport in the world.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Well, it's uh so if you put it in kilometers.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Someone's gonna listen to this and go, you cheeky bastard.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

If you if you put it in kilometres, right, the fastest smash, I don't know whether this is current, but when I was at university, the fastest spash used to be 495 kilometers an hour. Alright.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Alright. It's uh in my words, I'm done if I know you're right. This is a swearing podcast. Fucking hell. So so was your dream to go in, was this your dream?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

I think quietly, I always thought I'd have some sort of career in sport, whether it was playing, being involved. I mean, something else to note is that you can do your quality coaching qualifications and you can get like level one, level two, level three. I for the level one one, I actually become like, at the time, I don't know whether this is official, but the people on the course I always used to say I was the youngest level one coach in the country at the time because I did it something like two weeks after I was, I think it was 16 when um which was the minimum age you're allowed to do it at. So I was like, oh well, you know, even if I don't play at that level, I can probably coach or I can probably get a job in even like, you know, um, like even punditry. I looked at like journalism, everything like that.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Like, I could say it, you this was something you were really passionate about then.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Well yeah, I thought about dropping out a graphic design at Union Sports Journalism, yeah. Because it was um for me, I think I always wanted something in sport and then I saw like how competitive it was. Uh not obviously on the court but off the court to get into it in the in the back room sort of jobs and um that sort of put me off in a way, because I remember looking at jobs um when I left university and there was one that was like it was Crystal Palace and they wanted uh it was something like it either six or eight years experience, and obviously England like Crystal Palace is based in London for that amount of experience they wanted a graphic designer on like 28 grand a year, and I was like if that's like the progression route in football, I don't really think I want to go into it because they've got the thing of supply and demand, so there's always going to be someone who takes a dream of working with a football club. So they're never gonna be short of suitors, are they? But um, they just take advantage of that because if you look at how much money's in football, they just sort of see it as a thing of do you want experiences with a football club or do you want this it's almost how they say it's bottom of the run.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Yeah, which is fucking pretty shitty, really. It is because the if you go on all the social medias now of all these Premier League football clubs, people are drawn by the hooks and the designs and the illustrations.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Of course they and it's um the thing is as well, is a lot of them, like I had a couple of interviews for some clubs, and um the thing is is they want unsociable hours, so they want you on a game day because they want you to be able to react to stuff that goes on in the match and they want sort of reactionary content, or if it's a transfer window, you might have to stay up till late at night or whatever. It's like it's a big sacrifice, and you have to absolutely love football, which obviously I do absolutely love football, but I also at the end of the day like your social life. Well, I like my social life. I'm not too bothered about that, though. Well, yeah, right, yeah. I think um for me, I want progression and I want things where I'm rewarded and valued for what I do, and I don't think necessarily that football does that.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

So you dropped out of Badminton. Did you when when you finished Badminton, was it through injury or decision?

SPEAKER_00 17:20

A bit of both. I decided to um when I left uni, I played like local leagues and stuff, but the issue of local leagues is when you hold yourself to a certain standard in your head, when you go and play with people who are rubbish and they uh have to cheat to win, there's a lot there's a lot more cheating in local leagues than there is at higher levels.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

You've got to hit a shortcock over the top of the thing, I mean yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah, but it's like in and out, they call stuff that's out that isn't all that sort of stuff. Like I used to um believe it or not, you probably won't believe this, but I actually have a very, very short temper when it comes to badminton.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

I don't you fuck oh right, badminton, yeah. I said to you before, you're that laid back, you could be in a coma. I've never met a man that's like it's alright. Whereas I'm like, you see me on the way, I was stressed in, a sweat was pissing out of me, and you're just like, I can have my chicken nuggets and see what cup I've got my McDonald's World Cup, yeah. Honestly, got on me as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, I did get on me, but yeah, I used to be I used to be really, really bad at it. Like, I used to like when we got to the worst of the worst, I used to snap rackets in half when I was loser. You rebel. Yeah, Ben McInnoe. No, no, no, but when you when you're paying for your own racket, like I had a couple of I got one racket for free ever, and I I still got that to this day. Yeah, no, no, no. But the other ones, like badminton rackets on a high end can cost like 200 an odd way to go. So like it's not it's not an advisable thing to do.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

No, well I remember I remember playing golf once with my old man, and I fuck it. Oh my god, I lost my shit, and I wrap my seven iron round a tree, and he just is bouncing like he fucking little shit, and I and the ball, I wasn't even a bad shot, but I just I oh shame will will back me up. I've got a really short views, but then I I can be as nice as pie, but there's just take certain things like when you get your fucking co-court and the door handle and you can't get it off. That happens to me maybe once a day. And I sit in the car and think, why can't I just fucking do things normally? But there we go. So so you you badminton, did you feel so you you said it was a bit of bow?

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah, a bit of bow.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

So uh you quit badminton and you got an injured. You got an injury as well, though, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Uh I've had a few. So literally when I was playing six times a week, I never got injured really, and then that's slowed down and only started playing local leagues, and then I'm I'm literally only just coming back from one now, so I don't know if it's start playing again or not. But um, yeah, in about the space of 18 months, I I tore my right meniscus and then come back and I tore my left ankle ligaments, and then I come back again and I tore ligaments in my left knee. So I'm I'm literally like I I'm on strength training for my legs at the moment because I'm I'm trying to come back and do like some form of some form of sport and play seriously, because I I find more enjoyment nowadays in playing like uh squash, uh football, bit of running sometimes, because I have no expectation with those whereas when I played Badminton, like because I've played at that level, you still hold yourself to that standard, and when when you can't do things that you once thought you do, like if I turn around to try to do a backhand and then it didn't go anywhere, you get fuming at that because you know you can't do it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Do you find that the level of detail you put into badminton complements because I've seen you work with graphic design? Do you feel that there's a a pattern? Do you do you like is do you feel like there's an OCD or there's something there which is telling you I have to do it a certain way?

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, so if you look, I mean there's a massive trend at the moment on LinkedIn, for example, of ex-sports stars. I'm not calling myself a sports star, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Um but there's a lot of ex-sports people he wants his picture on this.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

It'd be better than half the stuff around here, anyway. But there's a lot of ex-sports people go on and do successful businesses, and it's because a lot of the values that you have to learn are the same, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah, a lot I know called Phil, Phil Joseph, a very good friend of mine. He sort of GLR energy, and I feel because he was a professional rugby player, Phil's implemented uh a lot of what he's learned being regimented in rugby, in particular, into his business, and you can see the passion and the quality. Sorry, go on, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

But yeah, yeah, it's it's the same thing though. Like obviously when I play in Badminton, you do all you do when you train in Badminton, well, a lot of what you do is like technique based. So it's like you do the same shot like hundreds of times in a row and that's all you do for like half an hour or whatever. And it's like that discipline of like trying to get that finder detail right, it's the repetition, it's the it's the thing of oh, I've got to turn up and train today, and then you don't really wanna train all the time and it's about there's also that element of like game day performance, so you think you're putting in all this work so that you can perform when it matters, and but but you know, in a business that's you know, you craft your offering, and then when you get given an opportunity, it might be like a big meeting or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That that's your game day, then that's your opportunity to deliver, and someone gives you a chance, and then you're like, right, I need to push on and do that. So it's about being able to deliver under pressure, but then understanding why you're doing things and like having that discipline to keep doing it, and and like it's also balancing value as well, because obviously, as much as I sit here and say, Oh, I was pretty good at that. I also, as I've mentioned before, I've I've lost some pretty big games as well. It's the fact of like what do you do the next game? Like, how do you recover? How do you go back to the next game? And I mean, you'll you'll know obviously the game of sales is like get rejected more than winning.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

I've had more no's than I've had, yeah. But I I always find that the no's make me push harder. Yeah. Like we've had clients, big clients leave us because they just can't afford it. Previously I took that to heart, whereas now I'm just like, okay, well, that's part of business. But I think in any industry, any any business, any sport, you have to get beaten a few times. I mean, you know, Ronaldo always says with John Ronaldo, probably arguably the greatest footballer's who ever lived. He he said he's I know there's gonna be people that go, it's messy, and I'm not getting into that now. Um, but he says that he's lost more finals than he's won. You know, he last night before the game kicked off, they were talking about him, oh, he's this and he's that. He scored two goals, and then Roy Key said, now look at him, he's the best thing since Lives Bread. Because people only remember, or they want to talk about the times when you lost. No one wants to fucking you only you want to talk about the moments where you excelled and went and meant above and beyond, but everyone else likes to talk about the shit times you had, and then people are normally the ones that haven't done it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yeah, of course. I mean, football's rife within it. It's um football you get players who perform at a good level, but as soon as they do one thing wrong, especially in the social media age, it's just they get slaughtered. Yeah, yeah. You look at people who perform consistently. I mean, I know you won't like this example, but like Bruno Fernandez performs consistently and has performed consistently since he's turned up at United, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:41

I don't agree at all. From what I've seen, he's had uh his best season was last year, otherwise he would have won the what the award he's won every year. Whereas that man up there has performed consistently every year until they left. Yeah, but he's and he's got the trophy cabinet to prove it.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Yeah, but he's gonna end up in Saudi now because he's washed. But um but anyway join us episode two in a minute.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

I I do, yeah, I know what you mean. There's consistency and there's one-offs.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah, but like you you've got to say, like, as much as as soon as Salah does something bad, he's had a he's not had a starting standard of season up to his own level, he's probably still had a a season that most footballers would dream of having, right? But because of that, as a rival fan, you best believe I've slaughtered Salah all season.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Of course I have. I think a lot of Liverpool fans did as well. Yeah. Um does that come down, okay. So if that's the case then, because there was a time when United fans said all Fernandez did was lie on the floor and wave his arms around. Yeah. That was only last season, that was no, that was two seasons ago. Does that come down to the man management side of it? Because it does it when you're let's say you take a team in Badminton, someone makes you a captain, you feel like you have purpose, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

When you're not captain there, you're looking at the captain. And that captain is managed by that captain is led by examples by the person above them, right? Yeah. So does a player get better by the way the manager controls their play? And does a business get better by the way the management controls a team? At the moment you've got no staff, right? I've had 20 staff, I've had 20. When I'm in a bad mood, my staff, unfortunately for them, past and present, feel it.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

So is it a case of when the pressure's on any business from any sport, it everyone feels it?

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

So I don't know, by the way, I'm asking you.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so like you're the sports staff.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Well, export staff. Well, I didn't play Vavin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Played once or twice. Um when I were when I were captain, I didn't take it as like, so you have different types of captains. So I feel like you have some who are more passive and they they try and lead by example in the way in which they implement themselves. So I know that when I was in, for example, the university team I was in, I would argue that on paper I was the worst player there, right, out of those six starters, right? Right. But I knew that I worked harder than every single one of them. And the reason I worked harder than every single one of them partly was because we had one player in particular who was uh the guy who played for India nationally, and he relied very much on his talent and it got him out of a lot of situations. And when you have talent, you can get very lazy, right? So I knew that if I set the example and I was like, right, okay, I've got to work harder than everyone else, everyone else goes, Well, he's working harder than us, we need to do that. I think it's it's a lot about setting standards, and it's leadership as well, isn't it? It is, it's I think you need to have different approaches with different people because like I know even I mean, I know in a business context as well. The way you give feedback to people is completely different. So as much as everyone says, Oh, you've got to treat everyone the same, you do to an extent. But like one person who you get on the back and you're like, oh, that ain't good enough, like you should be doing this, you should be doing that. Another person might you know curl up in a ball and be rubbish after that, and they might not recover from that.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

I I I'll be honest with you though, I I have been guilty of that. I've had to learn the hard way about my management because I'm only six and a half years into this, so I'm you know, I'm like a child that's just gone to primary school. That's where I see myself in a business world, is like I've gone through learning to walk to learning to talk, and now I'm past that, and now I'm in that primary school stage, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:40

Where I'm now learning the basics of what I'm meant to be doing.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

And not and some people get it right first time, but even your Stephen Bartlett's and your Dominic McGregor's, they haven't got it right the first time. And that that's what makes them so successful. And it's like Badminton, you're not gonna get it right every time, you're not gonna win every final, you're not gonna win every game. Ronaldo, Messi, Fernandez, Salah, they've never ever won every single game. And but what happens is they come back, they bounce back, and they come stronger. So if you were badminton, you leave it. Did you obviously you said you still play a little bit now, not that level? What was that? Was it hard to accept then to say I'm not gonna get anywhere with this passion am I?

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Yeah, because so I think even though I'm obviously relatively young, I've gone through different stages of my life where I'm known for different things, right? So it becomes the identity thing. When you do something that many times, okay. If I'm playing badminton six times a week, you go to university, you become known as Ben from Badminton, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Is that what your tattoo is on your back?

SPEAKER_00 29:49

No, that's something else.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Um I did wonder what the uh the registration was, anyway. You're right, you are right. You be you be get a reputation, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, yeah. So you become Ben from Badminton, so like the small talk of people who know me on a very high-level basis becomes oh, you still play Badminton house. And that's like the thing that they go to. And then when you don't have that anymore, it becomes what's the next thing? So like for me then when I left university, I become oh Ben has a business, Ben becomes a business owner. So like I become Ben the business owner for three years, who was also, you know, I was also doing the public speaking stuff as well. So that yeah, you have known for doing that as well.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we had a doctor on here, uh Dr. Tom. I don't I mean similar, you know, everyone calls him the doctor of longevity. His name's Tom, so it's like, oh, you are you still doing the longevity thing? Are you still being still so I can imagine it being the same thing for him? Mine's still, are you Mike the dickhead from uh from Chester? So that's all people have done me to MVP, and I just I own that. So uh you know, yeah. Well no, I you know I think it's admirable the fact you've been quite honest because there's a there's a lot of times when people do lose their ability to keep playing sports, and you seem to have. I like the way that you you'd like you said at the start, everything happens for a reason. I like the way you've owned that and you've uh do you know what it's happened, and I'm happy to it, and I think you set your standards so high, which is why your your business has has done so well, if I'm honest with you, so far. Um I want to touch on the palace story. So you spent three weeks living out of a hotel in London, grinding for a break, and ended up interviewing inside Buckingham Palace for Prince Andrew. You still didn't get the job.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Yeah, so the the hotel story is actually a different company in Leeds. Alright. So it's not the same company. That was that was I worked in sports, doing sports websites and everything like that. So I did sports teams at some websites for the best part of the month.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

But yeah, the the Prince Andrew thing was everyone is sat here now thinking, all lee shit, he's been to Epstein Island. No what was it like?

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Um no, I signed an NDA. Um nothing here, mate. No, I uh so basically, you know how there's a Duke of Edinburgh Award for like outdoor skills and everything like that. Did you win it? No. Oh. So Prince Andrew has his had had, should I say had, he had a he had a award for IT skills. Oh. So it's technological skills, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Was it to hide emails?

SPEAKER_00 32:33

So maybe chapter miners online. Um but anyway, we uh but anyway, we uh basically at the time, my university, you have a chancellor emeritus. So that is basically like a chancellor of the university who's in the public eye. And for the majority of my time at university, it was um what's it called? Patrick Stewart, you know, Captain Kirk, Star Trek.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

From American Dad. Yes, oh yes, he's fantastic. I love how you reeled off like Star Trek, and I was like American Dad.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Right, so yeah, he he was the guy who would give you your degree at university. Oh Jesus. However, they then changed it to Prince Andrew in my final year of university, right? And then we had a link to his businesses. I I I applied for this job, and he obviously had sent that I was for the sphere investing. I got all of uh I got through, so I had to have a load and load of checks. And basically a lot of people don't know this, but in the side of Buckingham Palace, I don't know whether this is a security breach that I'm about to tell people, but there's offices in the side, you go through the side door, and there's offices and living quarters for some of the staff, right? So I had to go into these offices, so I walked up to the side door of Buckingham Palace, and obviously there's like four blokes with submachine guns staring at me, and I'm like, Oh, I'm here for a job interview. And they're like, Okay, what's your name? And then they have a list, and they'd obviously check me for like about a month before. They checked all my background.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

Just make sure he's not been to that island.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Once you're inside, you can do what you want. Um but anyway, I'm only on Diet Hog. Um but anyway, we um we I got inside, and then they escort you through to this reception area that's like the separate outbuilding. And once you get there, you put everything that you own into these lockers, right? Because you're not allowed anything that hasn't been security checked through the next part. So it's a bit like a bank. You then get escorted through. So you one door closes before you open the next door, and then you get escorted through all these things that are like they're a bit like mazes, really. It's a long, real, uh confusing, windy corridor. And funnily enough, the person who was showing me around is now my current flatmate who actually works there for a year and lived in his living quarters for a year. Um, so yeah. Um she did a placement year there. So and I So many of so many questions.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Oh my fucking god. I haven't got the time to fucking the money finally done it, Sean. I've finally got the entire one in. I was gonna say, is this going online? Fucking right.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

But um, yeah, she basically took me to this interview room and I got left in this like there was basically a table and a chair, nothing else in there. And then the two people eventually come into this room with me, give me a laptop, and then went they asked me a few questions and I said, Right, you're gonna do a like a design task. You're gonna design this flyer for us. We're gonna go outside for 20 minutes, 15 minutes, we're gonna come back and we want it done. And I was like, I was thinking that ain't long enough to come up with anything. So anyway, they walk out, they leave me in this room, and I believe my flat mate at the time was just like stood next to the door, like outside the door, just watching the door. And then I was just left in this room, so I had to do this design task under like obviously it's under immense pressure because your bumming sat in Buckingham Palace doing a bumming design for a poster.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

What does it smell like in?

SPEAKER_00 36:59

I don't really remember.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

It's a bit I can imagine smelling musky, like you know, like a fucking I mean like your your grandparents' house on a Sunday, you just had that weird fucking smell, like a Sunday dinner, like well, as far as I remember, this room was like it was a bit like you know, like a cricket club carpet.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

You know, like sort of that thin like little carpet, like a little felty sort of thing, and and it was just like a real basic table, a real basic chair, and like yeah, I think it was just like keep things as minimal as possible. Yeah. Did you did you meet him? No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 37:32

I I met two people who were like moving on, then I can't be half of the fucking fucking cut. I would cause a ruckus.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

I would cause a ruckus throwing fucking pigs and blankets at people and all sorts. Not when you live there, you un you don't live with me, you don't know what I'm like, you know. Um so you do this task, what did you do? What was the task? What what was the task?

SPEAKER_00 38:15

It was like design a flyer for some for just a random event, and uh they come back after like 15 minutes, and obviously it was only part dunk, so that is not enough time to design a flyer. So yeah, I I I didn't hear back from him, but obviously, well, I did hear back from I heard back from him to say I wasn't gonna get it, but coincidentally it was around the time where a lot of funding got cut from his charity for reasons unbeknownst to me.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

Yeah, I heard about that. God knows what happened there. Fucking watch the news. So when that happened, we're gonna get done for this. This will be my last ever episode, guys. Um, so that happens. You leave the palace, you've been there for three weeks in living out of a hotel.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

No, no, no. So as I say, that was a separate job.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Oh, right, okay. Oh, right, sorry, apologies.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

But the palace, I literally just in and out for the interview, that was uh stayed overnight.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

So when you left the palace and you told you what did you feel? Did you feel a bit of a failure? Did you feel like fuck's sake, something else now? Like the first is a badminton, it's the business when I'm younger now, it's a badminton and now it's this, but you're like, what the fuck is going on?

SPEAKER_00 39:25

I think for me, it was just like it was really hard to get a first break in business, like getting a getting a job.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

That's what I mean. Did you feel like when am I gonna get the opportunity? Because I can imagine there's a wild moment there you're thinking maybe I can do this professionally with badminton. Your brain must start when you're playing at levels, any look, when if Sunday League footballer, you think you're getting a further mean, you were playing with some big, you know, pretty good players. You must have thought and I decided to yourself, I reckon I can take this all the way.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Yeah, I mean, there's obviously that thing in the back of your mind, otherwise, you won't keep going to tournaments, you won't keep entering stuff like that's obviously why you do it at the end of the day to see how far you can take it. Did I think there was people a lot better than me? Of course it was. Like those summer camps I mentioned before. At that time, there was a thing called the National Badminton League, it's someone just come back this year, but at the time that was on Sky Sports every Monday night. Yeah, yeah. And those lads I was playing with were on Sky Sports every Monday night. Yeah. And like, there's obviously opportunities there, but I knew most of those guys either were on the badminton England like uh well, I didn't know each colour, but basically it's a team where you're allowed to go full time with it. But some of them just had jobs. And it's like I knew the the chances were thin, but obviously I wanted to try, give that a go. But as I said before, I think my main thing around that time, around the sort of time of that interview at Buckingham Palace, was it's the identity crisis sort of thing. So I obviously went from right, it's Badminton Ben, to Ben's playing at local leagues, like, and I'm playing for rubbish teams who aren't winning.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

You could have been Buckingham Palace Ben.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Well, I could BPB. Yeah, yeah. I don't know whether that's not n like notoriety or not. I was stuck by it. Yeah, I mean it yeah. But yeah, it was a tough time for me really, because I mean it'll go on to something that I I talk about later, but I think for me, I was just I was living for still trying to be a student, so I was like, I was going out every weekend with my friends, and I was I'd like at that point I'd got buzz cut, I'd shaved all my hair off. Because I was like identity crisis sort of thing. And yeah, I was just I didn't really know when full on Britney Spears meltdown. Yeah, I didn't I didn't know like she's come back with a bat. Yeah, nothing wrong with it. Yeah, I mean, no, uh like everyone tells me I've got lovely hair now, and like I don't think it would have grown back the same if I didn't get it. Yeah, if it happens for a reason. Exactly, exactly. So even though I I I did that haircut about two weeks before going to the palace, right? I shaved all my hair off. And my mum went, you go into the palace and you look like a thug. So I don't know whether that was a good thing or not.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Introduced into the palace? Jar hair. So let let's let's go move forward a bit. So COVID comes around and you sort of accidentally fell into the business, didn't you, in COVID? So you were you didn't intend on taking the or getting the business serious, but it you sort of fell into it, didn't you? What happened there?

SPEAKER_00 42:27

So it obviously I'd had all these interviews and it got to about obviously early, early around that year when COVID kicked in. I can't remember the exact year, was it 2020?

SPEAKER_02 42:40

I remember it, yeah. 2020. So I set my business up in January 2020.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Right. So I I I was April 2020, so when it was all really kicking off. And I I sort of thought, right, I'm not gonna get a job here. I saw it as a it is in a weird way, I saw it as an opportunity, right? So it led to more outsourcing, and I thought, right, if it leads to more outsourcing, I'm going to capitalize on that and I'm gonna be I'm gonna give it a go as a stop gap. I knew that obviously when you're 21, you you don't know people, and it's very hard to get uh an opportunity to get people to start paying you money, especially enough money that you can make a living off it. I obviously I had the the safety net of I was living at home and I didn't really have any outgoings and things like that. So I I it was a it was a fairly safe decision and a fairly good sort of playground to be able to go and experiment with things. So I thought, right, I'll give this a go. So I knew the power of like networking and things, because I knew that like obviously I'm from Rochdale, so you don't find many like uh not successful people, that's probably a wrong word to say, but it's it's a heavily deprived area. And I always saw it as like big, uh, rich people all know each other already and they've all got this network and it's like all boys network sort of thing. So I knew that it's who you know, it's not it's not what you know. And I thought, right, I'm gonna sit on like calls, I'm gonna take advantage of COVID. So I used to sit on calls for about six months from six o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, every single day, back-to-back calls, and all I'd do is be like, right, I'm gonna have conversations with loads and loads of people today. Obviously, loads of them didn't lead to anything. I never spoke to some of those people after that. However, it it mounts up, it's a snowball effect, so I knew that if I got all those calls in every single day, particularly due to my age and what I was doing, I was gonna be more memorable. So I was like, I just need to get in front of enough people, be as memorable as possible, and I can build up this network. And then as I'm going into these calls throughout the six months, I'm gonna I'm gonna see you know cross-tangents of people where I can go, oh, I had a conversation with a guy like two months ago who'd be relevant for you. And I was like, if I can just try and like help out a load of people for no reason, surely that's gonna lead to someone introducing me to the right person. And like every single call, I was like, Oh, do you know anyone else who I could speak to? Or anyone else who'd give me some advice and stuff, and that's that's just what I did for six months.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

I think that's I think anyone listening to that will say that is an incredible way of starting a business. I mean, we I I wouldn't say this was similar. I worked for free for three months with three of our clients. Two are still with us now. So the fact that you thought I was out of the box at that age, well, I mean, you say that with 21 now, a lot of business owners are starting, aren't they? 21, 20, 19. You go to Dragon's Dead now and you know, making edible socks and they're 18. People are funding it. But then something happened, didn't it? You you got seriously ill. Yeah, so or rather, the breaking point, you there was a bit of a bit of mix there, is it? And I say the dark side of the hustle. You got ill, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Yeah, so after I did that business for three years, right? It wasn't like mega successful, it was enough that I could get by for three years, because you don't do something for three years if you you know you're not you're not making enough money to get by. But basically, I there were a few things. I had a undiagnosed gluten intolerance, which took ages to work out because it was an intolerance rather than an allergy, and it meant that you could only do it by process of elimination of foods, and you were going for all these tests, but it doesn't really solve anything. So that I was ill for like sort of probably the best part of three months. So it basically I'd get to mid-afternoon and then I'd be like keeling over in pain, and like my stomach would really hurt, and I wouldn't be able to do as much as I wanted to do, and I was like getting behind on stuff that I was doing. And at that point it was really, it was it was difficult really because at the start of that year, so I ended it in the April of that year, well, at the start of that year I'd started quoting for bigger stuff. That was my that was like my real big breakup. I've been working for like two and a bit years, and I felt like now I was getting opportunities like I was quoting for work that was worth like sort of thousands of pounds instead of hundreds of pounds. And uh yeah, it was difficult because like when you've got your own problems going on, you maybe don't chase the work as much as you should do, and then you don't finish off the work as often as or as quickly as you should be doing. And it was very difficult to be honest. Like there was that, and then that sort of triggered the fact that I then um even though you say I'm very chilled out on the inside, I'm naturally a massive like overthinker worrier. I'm a very like very anxious person. And um, yeah, it just that shocked my nervous system and made it a lot worse. So I developed like sort of the IBS side of things and everything like that, and that really didn't help with anything as well. So um yeah, I I I was constantly like worrying about like things were dropping behind, and I was like, well, how how do I get them back on track? Um, so that was partly why I ended up going back in house, was because I just wanted something where this sounds sort of uh not derogatory about people who work in house, but I wanted something easy where I could sort of sit there and be like, I didn't have the stress of where's this paycheck coming from? I didn't have the stress of where am I finding work. I just I could go from nine to five every day, and like I just I was comfortable, I knew what I had to do, and I knew that I was capable of doing it.

SPEAKER_02 48:44

Look, I think when you say go back to in-house and it's easy, I've said this on a few different episodes. I sometimes say, I wish I could talk in at nine, have me sandwiches midday, fuck off at five, and I'll have some worry. Yeah. The hustle or the the busyness that comes with running a business of any size is incredibly hard. And not just that, when you're already dealing with an illness that's underlying and you don't really understand it, it's amplified, right? So kudos to you, mate, again for recognising that. But I think it takes someone, it takes a brave person to go, I need to go back. So some normality almost. Because if you're doing this on your own and you're not getting anywhere, you're not feeling good, then you're probably thinking, how much more can my body take of this? Because you're stressed with work and you're stressed with what's going on elsewhere, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:32

Yeah, so I think the other thing is for me is you've got to bear in mind at this point, I'd never had a real job, so to speak. So I'd got to the age of 23 and I'd never actually worked for anyone more than coming three weeks.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Yeah, yeah. So that's hard, isn't it, to go from working basically for yourself to 15, 8 years ended going to a job.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Yeah, so I I mean, I mentioned to you before, like I've been on loads and loads of podcasts back in the day, back when I was like sort of 21, 22, 23. I there is certain podcasts, particularly one that I appeared on in America, where I've openly said I'll never work for anyone again. And then I obviously then went back in-house after that, which you know, initially that this is what I mean by like a loss of identity. So I obviously went through the Badminton thing where I was like, right, okay, I'm not Badminton Ben. Now I'm just like another guy who's trying to get a job and trying to work for people. Like, I'm just everyone else now. And then I was like, right, I'm business Ben, and then I'm going into public speaking Ben, and everyone's like, oh, he's the young business owner, like that's his that's his big thing.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

It sounds like you've had you've always been it sounds to me like I might be completely wrong. I don't know if anyone listening agrees. It sounds like you've always trying to compare yourself to being something other than just Ben.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

Oh yeah, of course. Like you just you just I think you're just Ben.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

Yeah, yeah, well and that's a brilliant thing to be.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

Of course, I think I I come to accept that over time, but like for me, it's because I fully in in like uh I fully threw myself into things like with the badminton, it's not halves, it's six days a week. With the business, it's like, oh, we didn't just do it part-time, we just went full-time at 21. Like and then obviously you become known for that. So then when I went back in house, I was a bit like oh, is this it now? Like, is this just what I'm doing?

SPEAKER_02 51:29

And have I have I sort of hit the ceiling?

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Well, it it's not just that, but it's like I realized how comfortable my life could be if I'd have stayed in house. And I I in some elements of it I really enjoyed that because I thought, you know, I I worked hard during the day, and then my social life was better than ever when I first started first started working for someone else again, and you obviously had the funds to then back it up, and it's it's really good. But after a while, that's sort of it it started to scare me a little bit because I'm like I I mean it'll get it'll go into what you're saying later, but like I I feel like being average, I I I nothing scares me more in life than being average and like You don't have the average Ben, do you?

SPEAKER_02 52:15

No, of course I don't like you're fucking sports Ben, badminton Ben, business Ben. Imagine if someone said, Oh, you're just average Ben now.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

Yeah, well that that's the thing, like it's like I I just could have been Prince Ben. Well, yeah, I'm not gonna say that comment, but yeah. Um, but I just think like just routine and routine to an extent, but boring routine, it just like it scares me. Like I don't want to be in the same place all the time. I don't want to be doing the same thing all the time.

SPEAKER_02 52:50

You sound like someone that likes to be busy.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Yeah. I I I my brain struggles with not being busy. Like I I can't watch up until more recently. I can't watch films, I can't watch TV series, I can't do anything like that because I I can't like You sound like my wife, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

If we put a if we put a film on that's two and a half hours long, it turns into a mini-series. I am not fucking joking yet. We watch half an hour and it stops. We actually went on channel four about this. I'm gonna tell you this story quickly. So a couple of years ago, we were watching Yellowstone, and she kept falling asleep, and I I see my ass in the end. I was like, I'm sick of it. So I watched a couple of episodes about her and then watched them all the way back through again. And she was like, Have you watched this? I said, Yeah. And she went fucking mad. But our PR company, Moda, who have also been on the show, they got us on Steph's bat lunch, and we went on this segment called Walk the Plank. Basically, if they thought I was in the wrong, I walked the plank and jumped into fucking lead stuff. And if they thought Sham was wrong, she walked the plank and jumped into fucking well, she was wrong. Because she'd done it that many times. So anyway, go on, mate. What were you saying about uh focusing that?

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Yeah, yeah, I just I just struggled. So like if people say, Oh, I'll watch film, like I've watched films before. Like at university, I lived with like a big group of people, they'll be like, oh, let's go watch film or we'll have a film night or we'll go cinema or whatever. I'll do it to appease other people, but like I would never or hardly ever, I do occasionally now sit home and go, right, I'm gonna watch film, because my brain goes insane and I'm like, well, I could just do something else. Like, I've not gained anything from this. The only thing that I ever find any sort of escaping is video games, and that's because I see something in terms of you're achieving something, you're working towards something, and there's something to like everything in life. I feel like I tried gamify it because that's how I work. I work towards like the next thing.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

What's your favorite game?

SPEAKER_00 54:54

Oh. So back in the day, I was just like a FIFA triad. Like I was really mad into FIFA. However, more recently, so I've been playing a really quite an old game now recently. I've been playing Far Cry 4.

SPEAKER_03 55:10

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

Um, but like my so my favorite two games of all time, a Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 5, which I'm I'm super excited about.

SPEAKER_02 55:20

I was about to say you must be absolutely buzzing for GTA 6. Yeah, yeah. You're probably gonna need to buy, like, I've been reading people saying that you're gonna need to buy a separate PlayStation 4 because of the size. Yeah, yeah. So like they know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

Yeah, of course they do. I mean, I'm still on old gen and they're only releasing it on next gen, so I'm like, I'm I am literally buying a new console specifically for that.

SPEAKER_02 55:41

Like uh I was saying to you before in the in the bar, obviously you guys can't see over there, but we've got a PlayStation 1, a PlayStation 2, a Nintendo Wii, you know, we've got a games console with like hundreds of thousands. I love retro gaming. Yeah, yeah. And I agree with you, like I sometimes throw myself into a PS5 and I'll I'll start like The Witcher from scratch. Because it's an open world game, and some people listening have been, what the fuck are you talking about? But I like games where there's I almost prefer when there's no level, yeah, and it's just uh a continue flying it. Um but um so so yeah, so obviously you got ill, you went back to work, went about to office, but then you completely stepped away from drinking at 25, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00 56:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

And business networking, football, sports, you're drenched in alcohol. How was that?

SPEAKER_01 56:35

Um, so I'd gone through phases of it before, so I I was never really a big drinker, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

At university, I did it again because I feel like unfortunately, at university in particular, if you don't drink, you won't have much of a social life. Because that's what all of university life is based around. It's based around going out, particularly obviously for the sports teams. There's a lot of like bravado and everything like that involved in it. You go out every Wednesday, you dress up in fancy dress every Wednesday. So yeah, that's that's all I did it through there. Um around the COVID time when I started my first business, I didn't drink for a year, and then everything opened back up again, and I was like, right, I want to experience life a little bit and I'll I'll go out and do stuff. So I did drink for a good couple of years, and then it just got to about, as I say, yeah, about 25 because I've not drunk in just over a year and a half now. And I just thought I don't really like the um environments that you go in to drink anyway. Like I become a day drinker, like not not in a patholic way.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

I mean in the sense of like But you're saying I'm sorry, I've I'm on my second beer.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

But I just I just mean in the sense of like I prefer going out in the day and then rather than going out at night. I'm the same.

SPEAKER_02 57:58

Um the nighttime scares me.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

Yeah, that's the thing. So like I moved into Manchester City Centre, and I'd go out at night, and I just thought like I don't because as I mentioned before, I'm quite an anxious person, I don't enjoy the environments that put you in. So like when you're in a nightclub, there's thousands, well not thousands, hundreds of people. And I don't like that because you know, particularly, you know, I've I've been out in some fairly rough areas in particular. If it kicks off, I just I don't enjoy other people being drunk, I don't enjoy being around that. I don't some people are okay, but there's a lot of people who aren't.

SPEAKER_02 58:36

Yeah, I I I completely agree. It scares me because like my my wife will say to me, When you get drunk, you're the nicest person ever. Everyone becomes your friend, you just want to have fun, then I do. But there's always some arsehole that spoils it. There's always someone that's has to be Conor McGregor or and there's the people who do it for no reason, they attract trouble, they they they they invite it, they welcome it, and it's never their fault. And they're the ones who will throw the first punch and get away with it.

SPEAKER_00 59:03

Yeah, of course they will. I mean, I never I've never gotten any fights on a night out, but I've obviously seen hundreds and hundreds of them. I mean, the nightclub we used to go to at Huddersfield, actually it got closed down for too many stabbins in the actual nightclub. So that's you know, about as bad as you can get.

SPEAKER_02 59:21

But um little tally chart on the wall up number.

SPEAKER_00 59:24

I shouldn't say that as I know some people listen by knife family, but it's um yeah, I I just the key thing is, right, is so as I say, I l I live in Manchester round the corner, sometimes on a weekend, because I don't I don't have like the biggest social life in the world, obviously running my own business at this age. Sometimes I just go walk around the city centre because it's something to do, and I enjoy like a little walk, and I enjoy the busyness of the city, I enjoy like people watching, observing, like all that sort of stuff. If you do that on a Saturday, no matter what time, whether you go from lunchtime through to an evening walk, there's always people. So there's a street called Dean's Gate, which is basically like a massive long strip of bar. And I live like two minutes from there, right? If I walk down there, you see people who are like two o'clock in the afternoon and like on the floor, like people are having to carry them up and stuff. And I think I come up with a thing the other day that I was saying to someone, and I basically said, I see a load of particularly the bravado in in in males on nights out. I think a lot of people want to be like the hero on a night out, they want to be the big man on the night out.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:41

I wholeheartedly agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

But if it get if you're the big man on a Saturday night, when it gets to a Monday morning, you probably go back to being the loser again. And that's like that's the thing in my head, is like a lot of people use it as an escape route. Yeah. It's like if I see someone like, as I mentioned before, when I first left university, I was living for going out with my mates on weekends because I didn't have a job, I was going out on Wednesday on student night still when I left university, and you're thinking that's just because you're trying to avoid the fact that you're not got a job and you you're not feeling great about it. And I think a lot of people don't like the jobs, they don't like what they do, and then the majority of the week they don't particularly like it. So then they just think, right, I'm gonna go out on a weekend, I'm gonna get plastered.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

It's like an escape, innit? Yeah, of course it's the problem is I I look I'll I'm I'm de I'm I'm a lot older than you. As you can tell. Um, but I've been guilty of it. You know, even now, like I come home from work on a Thursday or a Friday and they've bothered. Every week's good, like this has been a really good week. Two weeks ago, it was one of the worst weeks I've ever had. I've just had a few glasses of wine. I wouldn't go out. I'd stay at home and do it. But it's an escape, innit? Some people are stuck in the rap race. And Marcus that was um on here, I don't know if you listened to his podcast. No, it was a fantastic podcast. You know, he's a what he's been through, how he's recovered, and we're we're doing a bit of work together now. And he think he was a prime example of saying, if it was a good week, I'd do it. If it was a bad week, I'd do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:11

Because once you're stuck in that rook, it takes something quite big to get you out, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

It does, yeah. And I mean, obviously, the thing is, is right, with my age group in particular, people in the 20s, every single social event revolves around drinking, right? Yeah. So it's not a matter of let's go out and I don't know, go for a walk. It might it might be. Some people do, but a lot of people it's like, oh, you're coming out Saturday night, are you doing this? Everyone's birthday is going for drinks, or it's a pub crawl, or it's something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

How does that make you feel though if you're stuck in that? Like I said before, you so you're sat in basically what is a a pub now. You you're absolutely fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:55

How do you feel and you're in that environment?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:59

Um I think the key thing is knowing when you need to leave. I think the other thing as well is you you surround yourself with people who you know are okay when they've had a drink. Yeah. So like I have people who are friends who I mean they might say this, but I'm not gonna name any names, so that'll help. But uh I I have some friends who I prefer when they're drunk to others. And it's because, you know, you know what lads are like, they've had a drink, and then some of them will be like more boisterous, they might be like making a bit of a scene, you might have to look after them, they could be like starting fights with people, and I'm like, that's not as a super one. You you end up mopping up after that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:45

But sometimes it's even the drunk ones that end up mopping up because they don't want to know. Like I'm one of them. If I if I went to a bar with someone who I'm with and they purposely start a fight, then we're done. Yeah. Because I do not I do not want to be around that. I've got two children in these, mate. No matter how drunk I get, no matter where I am, they come first. And if someone's gonna jeopardize that, then that's on them. And of course, I don't want to see people getting hurt. No one wants to see anybody getting hurt, but I know the thing, if you're not adult enough to control yourself on a night out, then you're not my problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

Yeah, yeah, I think one of the things is like when I go to, I mean, it's a massive issue within business as well. So I every single like evening networking event, in my opinion, many of them are an excuse for this is gonna upset a few people, it's an excuse for a lot of middle-aged BDMs to replace the social life.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:39

Yeah, it it's gonna upset people, but as a previous BDM, I I agree.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:45

Yeah, so the thing is, is right, you you go to these events, most of the people in the room already know each other, and then all that happens is they have loads of drinks, and like, is business done in that way? No, it's not. So like I think that I've learned when I go to those events, I will go to one if someone invites me, but I'll probably leave at like nine o'clock or or ten o'clock because once you get past that point, nothing good happens. I know everyone goes, oh well, you know, it's like, for example, um UK Reef, which happened recently. All the stories I hear about that is oh, everyone has to go to UK Reef, it's a massive event, it's the biggest event. However, stories that everyone tells me from it are like, oh, we stayed out till 4 a.m., we stayed out to do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, okay, cool, but what's the benefit? Well, what's the benefit? But also, like, not not to be horrible, like obviously I have made people who I've met people who I've become friends with through business. Yeah, yeah. However, when I go to a networking event, I'm not purely there to make friends. Like, I'd I'd I'm not there because oh I I I haven't got any plans tonight. I just want to go out and just have a few drinks.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

Makes sense, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:00

I don't see it in that in that way. Um, and I think a lot of business events are now tailored around like, for example, loads of business events, I don't get the uh return on investment ticket wise. Because they usually come and they go, Oh, you get like a load of free drinks when you first turn up. And I'm like, Oh drink. I'm having like a I'm having a Coca-Cola that probably costs like two quid and you've just charged me 30 quid for a free drink.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

Like, what's the point in that? Uh I I get it. I I completely get it. Um, I wanna something that really interests me was I I I think it's a broken hiring process. And tell me if I'm wrong. Is it true you walked into a corporate role to build a marketing team entirely off a recommendation with no CV? Yeah. So basically, yeah, no formal interview, nothing.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:53

So, in my eyes, is the traditional way of hiring broken?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:59

Yeah, so I mean that example there that you gave, basically, when I said that I spent six months building a network, one of the so I know a lot of people don't like B and I, right? However, when I first six months into my business, I got Manchester's, I believe Manchester's only membership grant for a year to be able to go into BNI based on my business plan. And at that age, what I will say about that, as much as everyone likes, you know, those those sort of networking.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

But they're BNI. No, I think BNI is good.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:37

A lot of people have very mixed opinions on them, but what I think is that it teaches you the fundamentals of networking, it teaches you how to network, and it teaches you what you're there to achieve. Which I've now still implement to this day. And in BI, I met a guy called Steve Watson, who's a business coach. And I left BI, so I was really heavily involved. I was, you know, I was running chapters and all that sort of stuff. I was on leadership teams. I left my chapter, and an hour after the call, because I was obviously closing my business down, Steve rung me and he went, Oh, uh, one of my clients, who he's a business coach for, he said, they're an architect and they're paying someone X amount per month as a marketing agency, they want to bring it in-house. And he went, they want you to be the first tire to go and do that. So literally, I hadn't even finished my business. I'd only just left the last networking event. It was literally within an hour of the last networking event, and I got this conversation out of nothing. Like, all I literally did was I went in, they didn't ask for a portfolio, they didn't ask to see anything. They just went, like, showed me what they did, and it was almost like they were pitching to me. It was a weird color dynamite, and then they were just like, Oh, what sort of money do you want? Told them, Oh, you want to start on Monday? Yeah, sure, crack on. And that was it. Like, I think the thing now is particularly with hiring, is that I've worked with obviously a lot of a lot of businesses throughout my career, and what I'm seeing more and more often is people bringing people in who they already know through other, you know, other avenues. Like you mentioned before, you've worked with some of the guys who you actually employ currently previously.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:24

Yeah, yeah. Mike trained me up 20 years ago in sales, Steve was my old team manager. You know, I uh these guys have kind of engineered and guided me to where I am now. So you're back to your point. Everything happens for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:39

Of course, it does, and I think the thing is, right, is if you look at this way of hiring now, a lot of it's online. You can post something. I know I used to um head up sort of the the hiring efforts when I was at the architects, right? And we'd post something on LinkedIn or we'd post something on a job platform. You get a lot of applications, and a lot of them are useless, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:05

Yeah, we've done it, we've put a fucking job spec up the other day for a client account manager. We were getting applications from India, which I've got no problem with. Um and we said UK only, India, and it was like, I said just take it down. It takes so much time to scroll through CVs and we we've got a recruitment division of our business. Fuck now, you think why you're not reading the job spec properly?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

Yeah, yeah, but I think the thing is people are getting a bit fed up with that. So, like, you know, everyone's saying unemployment's at high and everything, but like people come to me all the time and they're like, Oh, what advice would you give for getting a job? And for one, I always say, I don't know because I've never actually got a job properly. The reason I set up two businesses is because I couldn't get one.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:49

But then you're asking the wrong person, Mike, Mike, can you give this guy a hand?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:54

I I then sit there and I'm like, Well, the other thing is I said, What are you actually applying for? And they're like, Oh, I'm scrolling through the job websites all the time. And I went, Well, number one, I said, have you thought of maybe turning up to a networking event? Because every single person there is going to be either a business owner or a decent level in the business where they can have some form of influence. Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing I said is, have you tried actually approaching people who aren't actively putting out their hiring? Because it's like I was mentioning before with marketing, right? You need to find the path of least resistance, right? And if you're applying for a job where they've got 500 applicants, and let's say 90% of those are absolutely useless, they're probably not really going to be paying full attention by the time they get to yours. So you might as well just try just try different ways of getting out.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:49

I'm I'm in total agreement with you. When I lived in New Zealand, I I didn't know where to start, and I just put my fucking CV in every shop window going. Old school. You've got a rule. If someone's worked at McDonald's, we go straight in for an interview. I'm not interested in anything else. I don't care where they've worked, I don't care, I certainly don't care about qualifications because I haven't got a single one. I think my GCSE is about help. They'll fudge, to be honest with you. But um, people from McDonald's, they're read their uniforms, they're fast thinkers, they used to deal with the general public the worst, and they hold themselves in a certain way because everything's been done, everything is done in a way. So you get someone from McDonald's into your business. And I've had a we've employed a couple of people from there, okay. They're not with us now, but they were fantastic. They came in, they they they dressed, always dressed as Mahist. They were the ones that got in on time and got the work done. So I think sometimes we focus too much on someone's experience. When I always think that you know you can train ability, but um sorry, you can train someone up, but it's more about someone's enthusiasm, someone's willingness to learn. And you've obviously you're a fucking strong-minded person, mate. You've been through in your own right a lot, and you've kept going. And that kind of you know, I've got a bit of about when you told me about like a myth of security with with you know, you spent three years in a stable house, you know, stable in-house job, suddenly your hours get caught. It is this is what I mean because I went on my LinkedIn the other day. Redundancy was the most used word in all of my connections, about 42%. Right. So in some ways, is is stable employment actually riskier than running your own business? Because in employment you've got a single point of failure, one boss, one company, but in business, you control all M different levels.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:45

I think the key differences, right, is uh you understand the pipeline, you understand when things are coming and you're in your own business. I think like for example, when I got my hours cut, I obviously I I I still speak very highly about that company because they gave me an opportunity when I was at a really low point in my life. However, I didn't expect that to happen when it did. And when you own your own business, you know what works coming in, you know if it's going slow, you understand like because you don't just okay, there is the odd occasion where people say close a business overnight. However, you tend to know what's coming, and it's just it's a slow process to close a business. Like it's not like uh, oh, one day I just give up and that's it. It's a oh, we've not got enough work, let's try, grind it out of it, and then it sort of happens. So I think notice is one element of it, but the thing that I find really interesting about working for myself is like, because people comment all the time, like my flatmate comments, you know, I might be working on the kitchen table until like, you know, nine, ten o'clock at night. And like people always comment on, you know, you work weekends, you you know, you work really long hours. But for me, like I mentioned before, like, I see it all as like a big game. So I I I understand the reward, and like for me, as a business owner, you get that, you get a high level of reward, you get the immediate reward. It's like if I put it back to a video game sensor, right? It's like in a in GTA, you find a massive lump sum of money on the side of the road, you always take it back to the NPC, and they'll be like, But you've just given me 10 grand. It's a hundred pounds.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:43

And it's like, that is like what being an employee is. Whereas when you're the business owner, it's like, okay, I've just found the 10 grand on the side of the road. 10 grand goes in my business, and then we go and obviously you don't pocket that. That's another massive misconception that people have about.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:58

Everyone thinks when you're a business owner, you're a multimillionaire. Yeah. And they think that you've got money coming out your ears, and they don't realise the stress. You know, you paid last year, you paid the least, you very rarely have a good night's kit because you're worrying about were you going to cover everything else? There's a massive misconception. Um, talking about GC Fab, I actually met the blow that plays Trevor. Who right? Stephen Quig. I met him in London. Oh wow. Yeah. And he he sees just the way he is in the game. He's a great, he was doing brilliant Walking Dead as well. So you've gone through all this and you've been through a fair bit, but then you set up Sub Sable. Yeah. There you go, got it right. And that's Latin, right? Yeah. Uplift. Uplift, I was gonna say rise. I'm getting there. Um you've launched this company, but this time you've launched it on purpose, not by accident. So what's what's the biggest boundary or rule you're gonna enforce on your business today that, you know, the 15-year-old didn't do or the COVID era version of you would have broken?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:59

Um, I think the biggest thing is not working with everyone. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:04

They have, you know, the particular nose 21. People know when you're 21 that you probably, you know, you're just starting out, you need the work. And people take advantage of that. You know, I I got burnt incredibly badly by a couple of people um back when I was 21. And, you know, they I I look back now and like, ridiculous. Like one guy, for example, if I I raised my prices, this was very long time ago. This is not a reflection of my prices now, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:36

Um if it was, it's sure your your your price is your price then.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:39

No, I don't know. But this was if I went over a hundred pounds to do anything, yeah, they would kick off and say they were never gonna work with me again because I charged too much and someone else could do it for cheaper. And the thing is, right, is I look back now, and if someone would have said that to me, like, you know, obviously I don't charge £100 now, I charge quite a lot more than that. Okay, I hope so.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:00

Yeah. See you work.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:01

Yeah. But the thing is, is right now I would just be like, right, crack on, go get the other person.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:07

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:08

Whereas back in the day I was very much like, oh no, please give me a chance.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:12

Like we yeah, we had it, mate. We had it. Uh a company met us recently. They actually we'd worked with them in the past. They'd been the touristly bad payers, and I met with my principal because the person that was now heading the show actually, if it hadn't been for that person, I probably wouldn't be sat across from you now because she really believed in me, right? So I met out of principal and respect, told them how we work, told them ourselves, told them the money, and she just went, I don't think they're gonna go off. I said, That's fine. I said, We don't work together. She was like, Oh, I was like, I I said, I haven't worked, I've worked with hundreds of thousands of businesses. I said, and in the top five, the top five payers, non-payers, said, You're in the top three of them. I said, I'm here from respect. I'm here because I said that is the setup, that is the cost, and that is not gonna change. And she was ultimately respected that decision more than just so okay, don't worry about it, we'll do it your way. You can't work with everyone. We I always think that people I always look at a business and think, do they have the same values as us? Do they can do they hold themselves in the same decorum? Yeah, are they would they cause us problems? All these questions come from experience, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:22

Yeah, also do.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:22

And that's why when you say we wouldn't work with everyone, we're the same. My god, you've worked with this company, we work with the Department of Education. Fuck me, mate. Department of Education, I've never ever experienced a rigmarole like it. Late paying, didn't process the invoice, it was just a non-stop, continuous streal of bullshit. So, um, alright, so look. Gone over a lot. It's been a brilliant, brilliant episode. So, I've got a question for you. This is for me. Everything so you said everything happens for a reason. I believe it does. Looking back at the Buckingham Palace rejection, Buckingham Palace rejection, the sports ceiling, the illness, the corporate hours cut, how did every single one of those losses directly build a guy that's sitting across from me today?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:15

The the badminton element of things is it actually probably gave me the time to focus on my first business a lot more in a weird sort of way. Um the Buckingham Palace thing, obviously, I would have been in a job and I wouldn't have started what I was doing. Yeah. Uh the illness side of things, I think I gained a lot from going in-house. As much as I, you know, I earlier, you know, it's made the thing that it was a it was an easy ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's uh you learn a lot from operating from a business that's bigger than you. Those guys gave they had an awful lot of trust in me and they uh got me involved at a very high level within a business. You know, it was a multi-million pound business, and for the age of 23 to get that exposure and get that experience, and you know, I actually even set up like a within six months of working for them, I set up a an actual separate partnership business for them. Pretty much me and one other guy on our own. So to get given that level of trust, I think it for me after a really tough time, it really helped me regain my confidence in my own ability. Yeah. Because I was doing it not just at like when I was working before, I was doing it with smaller companies and then would to go into a company of that size and see like everyone sort of within that industry talking about like, oh, we've seen the impact that you've had on that business. Yeah. You know, I I obviously I I I touched on before I've done speaking stuff. I I never thought I'd get the opportunity to do it when I was in-house. Yeah. However, Manchester Society of Architects actually reached out to me based on the fact that they had seen the growth of that company under under my marketing and asked me to go and speak for them. Now they are the largest society of architects in the world, or so they claim. And they had me go and speaking to, you know, lots of different, you know, architectural practices. And the people who are alongside me in those talks were like people at companies like, you know, AHR, like BDP, like these are companies which, you know, uh hundreds of staff, you know, tens of millions of pounds, if not hundreds of millions of pounds, of turnover. And their heads of marketing are sat next to me doing a talk. Like for me, that's like it helped me regain my own confidence. So much so that after three years, I was taken away and I was like, How how do I then like what's the next step? What do I do now? And the cutting in of hours was actually a blessing in disguise because it gave me a platform that I wouldn't have had otherwise, because most people don't have the opportunity to be lucky enough to stage or come back to the business. So I obviously the role that I had for them paid for.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:20

At that time, I took nothing out.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:22

I put it all back into the business. So I was just constantly being able to then grow the business and grow the like the cash within the business, which came as quite a shock actually when I went full-time, because I was then like, hang on a minute, I've got to take money out of it now, like I've got to pay myself and then you go out.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:42

Sounds like you did it the right way though.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm a bit I'm trying to do it in a very sensible way, because I think what what my big thing is, is like this is a whole different, deeper topic, but people's um like approach to money is based on their upbringing, like their upbringing shapes their psychological output uh or or outlook on money. Like, obviously for me, as I say, I grew up in Rochdale, we grew up below the breadline. Like, money has always been one of those things where like don't get me wrong, I I was obviously an only child, so I was I was spoiled, but I wasn't spoiled till like within the means of what we had. But you were well looked after.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:27

You were uh look mate, there's two ways of looking at it. You were you could say you were spoiled, but you could say you were loved. Yeah, I had four brothers, mate. I was the eldest of five, and people probably look at me and say, God, you were spoiled. We had nothing, but my mum and dad made it work for them, so fuck what people think.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:40

Of course, of course, yeah, that's exactly the same. But like, because of that though, like we sort of saved and saved, and we we sort of made work what you have. Like, you it isn't like uh, you know, some people get it where oh I want this, like you get it. Like for me, it was like birthdays, Christmases, and you know, they'd save a long time for those sorts of things. So when you then come into a business, obviously, even when I first got paid when I went in-house, you start seeing levels of money that like isn't normal where you come from. And like that can be a big of a bit of a psychological thing. So I've seen it with you know, business owners of of any age, where they maybe win a bigger contract or they start getting lump sums of money at once, and they then go down the route of oh, I've got all this money, like let's go and spend it. But like the way I've always been brought up is like you don't spend money like unless you absolutely have to. Like, unless my clothes, like my planet always jokes, I've walled that like some of the clothes I have I've had since I'm in sixth form, right? And that the reason for that is because I've always been brought up, unless it's like the holes in it, unless it's fallen apart, you don't need a new one.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:53

So I I've always it's it's been a learning curve for me in business because I've always been scared to spend money, right? So now, like when it's like, oh, you need to invest in this or you need to do that to grow the business. It previously, when I was like 21, I shied away from doing that massively and I never put the money back into the business. Yeah, but equally I didn't take it out. I just left it sat there, and someone I was like, as long as we've got money, we're okay, but it you don't speculation like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:27

We have this conversation all the time with people looking to do lead generation. Oh, I've got no budget, and I always say, well, if money wasn't an issue, would you do it? They're like, Yeah, I'm like so if you've got no money to spend, but you need to make more money, what is the outcome?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:40

Yeah. You know, like uh I don't. Yeah, well it's it's it's a big, it's a very British thing, and I think something that uh I used to be good friends with a with a sales trainer, and he he actually taught me was like people who have money grow up around other people talking about money, they they openly talk about it because it's not it's not a resource that's you know it's not a touchy suit. Yeah. Whereas people who are poorer, you know, usually like, you know, if you're poor, your parents might hide things away from you and they might just, you know, they don't tell you how bad an extent of the situation is. People then they're almost scared to talk about money. Like it's like, you know, if you go in a shop and you know, it might be like, oh, you go and you look at a price tag like sneakily so that no one knows that you're like putting it back if it's like too much or whatever. All that has like psychological effects on you. So like when you go into business, I know when I first gone into business, like you are scared to like put numbers out on the table. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like in my first business, this was when I so towards the end of it, I was like twenty one, twenty no, sorry, twenty two, twenty three. And I got one of my first bigger clients who I still work with them to this day who just started a new project. And I remember at the time I quoted him something, which it was it was a few thousand pounds. It wasn't like anything massive. But I lived at home at the time. I remember going downtown my mum and she freaked out that I just charged someone a few thousand pounds to do something. But she looks at it from the perspective of like she's worked in the same place since she left school, right? So she she did 40 years of service a couple of years ago. So she looks at it from the perspective of if she was paying me, I can't remember the exact sum, let's say like £3,000. If she was paying me £3,000, that's more than she earns a month. And like she's panicking from that perspective. But when I sort of sit down and I go, you know, from a business perspective, that's like a drop in the ocean for some businesses. Like it's it's getting your head around that because you know, everyone has imposter syndrome, but then when you get to the thing of, oh well, I'm now trying to charge people figures that feel uncomfortable to me, that's uh it's a very difficult thing to get around.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:07

What would you say? Feel free to say if you don't want to answer this, I ask everyone this question, what's been the hardest moment so far uh of your life or your career?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:18

I'd probably say closing that first business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:25

Because as I say, I think I used to obviously I was very big into the networking and I used to do all that sort of stuff and I very much felt like when I then started going to events because part of my role at the architects was PD I felt a bit like people would look at me differently because they were like, oh that kid tried something and he failed something. And like the reality was is that obviously there are a few people who like sort of turn the nose a bit or whatever, but like the majority of people were like, Oh fair play, you're still young, but like you tried something out, like you did something different to like everyone else is doing. Because no one like realistically knew and does it on the first time. No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:10

I openly admit it now. Our business failed, and that's because I wasn't doing it right. Listen, no one judges you more than someone who's never tried them. So the shit we got online, mate, the shit we went through. We had people dealing drugs and somehow we were the we were the problem. They were doing it in the office. We had posts going out of bottles online, we had someone stealing stuff from us when he was when he left. At the end of the day, mate, none of these. I I was I seen a quote the other day. I would never I don't admire anyone's life that I don't speak to. That's my I don't admire anyone's life. But yeah, closing businesses is hard. But you come through it.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:47

Yeah, yeah, of course. I did. I think, as I say that.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:50

As much as you know, I I always I jokingly said before, well it it's true, I put out on several podcasts that I would never work for anyone. Mm-hmm. I don't regret the fact that I did because I think that the confidence that it gave me in my own ability and regaining that belief was like was meant to be. Yeah, it's really important for getting me to come back to where I am now.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:12

I think you've I think you've done incredible. I think I've known you for six months. I met you once before this, but we speak quite a bit on the phone. Um and you quite openly admitted to me you're more of an introvert, but as I've got to know you, you've come out your shell, and you I think you you offer something to this industry that we both work in that a lot of people don't have, and I think your approach is so you're such a young, you're so young, but you've got such a old head on your shoulders, and that's a testament to you, by the way. But look, so so we always asked the previous guest to ask this question to the next one. Marcus, Marcus's question to you is why should your story be told?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:52

Because I think the reason I always used to so the reason I actually got into public speaking originally was because I want young people to know that there's not one career path that you've got to take. So people always think, oh, you know, you set up a business, you've got to get all this experience, you've got to do all this stuff. Like the reality is, is like you create your own experience. Like I learn a lot quicker after going into companies, and you know, when I was 21, I I'll admit now that like I took on jobs which I probably shouldn't have took on, and I I made mistakes and I maybe underdelivered back then. Like some of those things that I did, I I didn't always do to the level maybe they wanted it to be. Yeah, yeah. But I think that's part and parcel of it. I think any business owner, it takes a while to get things right, and I think it's like I said before, you've got to fail fast and move on from it in a tight fight.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:44

Fail fail fast, fail hard, fail over and over. I prefer to fail and get it right sometimes. Yeah, and it's like with this. So people might look at the podcast and go, oh my god, it's filmed on his phone, it's in his it's in his shed forward slash bar, it's a bar, not a shed. You know, it's not diary of the CEO, it's not this beauty podcast, and I'm sat there going, I wouldn't give a shit. I'm doing everything I wanted to do, but if I've the first one I did with Sarah, it's absolutely shite. But it's fine because I learned from it.

unknown 1:33:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:16

People still viewed it, it's still our most downloaded podcast. So yeah, I agree. Fail often, fail fast. And I and I agree your story does deserve to be told.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:26

Yeah, yeah, I think it's um it's look, I I think as I mentioned before, all the talks I used to do I'm more particular in the talks that I do now in terms of I try and do them to try and grow the business. So I try and do them to the right audiences. But all the talks I did back then, which is something I'm still passionate about, but it's obviously I don't let it overtake the day job, if you will, um, was when I was like 21 through to 23, I was speaking to people in colleges, universities, you know, people in their early careers, and I was basically just doing all these talks on all these different platforms, and I was sort of saying to them, like, look, I I'm doing it. And I said, you know, I I viewed some of their portfolios and stuff, and I'll be honest with you, some of them are better than me, like design-wise, they just don't have the ability to back themselves. And I was saying this to someone the other day, right? So there is much better graphic designers out there than me, but there's people that are off way like Unicorse and things like that, they've tried to do freelance, they've tried to run their own business, and they failed. And the reason is, is because running a business is way more than being good at the skill that you're actually selling.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:41

A hundred percent. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:42

And it's like, if you ask me to just do graphic design, if it if all I had to do was sell graphic design, alright, I'd do I'd do okay at it, but would I grow to the level of you know, would I surpass some of the people who I've surpassed? Absolutely not. But because I have all these different like tangents and things that you know I've even been through, or I have all these different traits that you know supplement what makes a decent business owner, I probably go a lot further than a lot of designers who are awful lot better than me.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:15

So obviously, we always give the the current guest the opportunity to ask the next guest. Our next guest is Michael Robinson. He is uh professional professional bodybuilder, played football with him when we were younger. Um he was always athletic, but he is he's a he's done. I was gonna say he's a tanker, but he's he's also one of the nicest guys you ever wish to meet. Um and I'm really looking forward to getting him on the show because I haven't seen him for a long time, but his transformation has been amazing and he helps people as well. What questions do you have for him?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:48

So I think one thing that I would like to ask, I'm just trying to think of how to articulate it, is around how do you think health uh benefits other areas of your life beyond physical fitness? Because you know, I mentioned before about you know being ill and things like that, and that made me realise that, you know, if you're not if you're not fully, you know, firing yourself, you've not really you've not got it affects so many different areas of your life. Yeah, yeah. It'd be interesting to know like what he feels being someone in that space is the wider benefits of keeping healthy and maintaining yourself.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:31

Yeah, yeah, no, that's fine. We can actually and you know he's a he's a fountain of knowledge. Yeah, we've had PTs on here, we've had the Doctor of Longevity Tom, we've got uh Katie coming on in a few weeks' time. She's um she's fantastic, she focuses on helping people with burnout and stuff. So that'll be a really interesting. Every conversation we're trying to have is is different, and that's that's the most important thing. And you know, it's um it's it's been good having you on. I really enjoyed it, thank you. And I do know what I end this, and I said at the start we were gonna put it test. I do believe everything happens for a reason, and I think you'll live and proof that perseverance is is key, not just to being a business owner, but to everything we're trying to do, isn't it? Thank you. And well done to you, mate. You you've you you s say again, I was gonna say it Sablevo. Sablevo. So is yeah, the website is www.suble.com.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:24

Oh, he's changed it.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:27

Okay, that you KK.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:28

Um I do own the dot com one as well, though, so the redirect. You're fine, you're fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:33

So um when you're next at the palace. It's uh you know you should have done a flyer for like a anti-sweat vest or something like that. Oh, housemate's gonna fucking hate me because I am gonna go to town on oh I mean, she'll she'll probably she'll probably watch it. Tell her to come on, I've got questions. What's her name?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:54

Come on, lad say that.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:56

It's uh it's Katie. Katie. Katie, come and have a sea love. I've been pretty sure everyone watching's got questions. I'm any mess, I'm any mess in love, right? So, Ben, thank you very much for joining us today. Uh uh, this has been fantastic. Actually, it's our second one today, isn't it? Yeah, we did our first one construct the cast this morning, which is completely different to this. Um, and now we've done business life with other bollocks, so yeah, thank you, mate. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:19

No always, thank you for having me on. I'm not uh I'm not sweating as much on this one.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:23

It's a bit weird, isn't it? Yeah, in the boardroom earlier, fuck me, it was uh so everyone, that concludes another fantastic episode. But like I think it's fantastic anyway. Of business, life and other bollocks. Um Ben has been fantastic, and I think everything he said, if you're listening to this and you've had moments of doubt, failure, setbacks, illness, keep going, right? When I watch my children learn to walk, they don't just fall over the first time and go, oh well, fuck it, I may as well stop. They keep going. Perseverance pays off. Believe in yourself, all right, and don't give up. Thank you, everybody. I look forward to seeing you all soon.