What can a life spent at the frontline of business teach you about how to be a success in business? Here are Five Big Life lessons I recently shared with the students at Stowe School.
An elite audience
Stowe School is an elite British public school. Despite only opening in the 1920s, the school numbers the likes of artist David Shepherd, athlete Miranda Okoro, jazz musician George Melly and actor David Niven among its former pupils. Not to mention Prince Rainer of Monaco. I was asked to come and speak to a group of older students about my life, and shared my Five Life Lessons that could help them find success when they leave school!
5 Life Lessons to Make a Success in Business
Number One – get a mentor
There have always been different people in different stages of my life. It began with my dad, then reading books – by Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, and even Donald Trump! To become a success in business, the right mentor can make all the difference. You need to find someone and try to get them to work with you, share their stories, and learn from their mistakes.
Even now I still get inspiration every day from all kinds of people – in business, and sports – there’s always someone that you can learn something from. That’s one of the main reasons I love doing my podcasts so much – because I get to talk to some of my heroes, the people who still inspire me every single day! I get to sit and chat with them, learn from them and share our insights. It’s a unique privilege.
First (mis)steps in business
My first attempt at business was when I was about 15 years old. I’m ageing myself now, but a friend bought the domain name Spicegirls.com.
Now, this was back at the very beginning of the internet. He managed to sell email addresses on the domain, and then ultimately got around to sending it to the Spice Girls record company and they paid him 250,000 quid!
I thought I could do the same. And at the time I was a big fan of Natalie Imbruglia. Unfortunately, it didn’t go to plan. I bought the domain name, but her record company decided I was blackmailing them and wanted nothing to do with me. I ended up selling it to a fellow fan for 500 quid. Technically I just about turned a profit, but it wasn’t the start I was looking for! I could have done with some good advice back then, and not simply tried to copy someone else.
Number Two – be passionate
If be a success in business, you’ve got to find something that you’re passionate about. You can’t be successful without passion. It doesn’t really matter what that is. If I look back at all the businesses I started, I went into all of them absolutely passionate about that business. Maybe I didn’t understand them at the time, but I knew that one way or the other I would find a way to make them successful – because it would never feel like work.
Magic opportunity
One of my first jobs was as a table magician. When I was a kid, magic was a real passion of mine. So, I decided to go and be a magician in a local restaurant.
I worked every Friday and Saturday night and I used to get paid one garlic bread each night. However, I was good. I used to walk out with maybe £300 a night in tips. And this is £300 twenty-five years ago! I also got lots of private gigs from all the wealthy people from the local area who ate there too.
It taught me to follow my passion, ignore the salary, go where the right people are – and network. This brings me to:
Number Three – build your network
To become a success in business, it’s vital to build your own network. Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. If you get to know the right people, you’ve got the right network around you, and there is ultimately nothing that you can’t achieve. I look at my career over the last 20-odd years, and I can see five or six career-defining moments. Each one of those moments that has helped me move on to the next level has been a result of my relationship with a particular person.
Number Four – take action
Often, when you look at the difference between being successful or unsuccessful, in any walk of life, the missing ingredient is people just not taking action.
We all know people who talk about starting a business, or whatever it may be. But they’ve done nothing about it. It’s human nature. People do not like uncertainty. Starting anything is the hardest step because you don’t know what is going to happen. But the difference between winning and losing is often just taking action.
The experience of taking control
Once I’d decided magic wasn’t going to be my future, I convinced my parents to let me have a gap year. Round about then my dad had invested in a business. It was a clothing company that made uniforms for security guards and bus drivers – you know the kind of thing
I went to work in sales for him. And I could see what was going on. I was going home every night to my dad and saying. ‘These guys at work are taking advantage!’. But he had just retired, so he really couldn’t be bothered. After a full six months of me banging my hands on the dinner table every night, he finally told me he was going to just let me run it.
Well, I went to work the next day and fired everybody – apart from the old guy who ran the warehouse – and started the business from scratch with a new business model and with a completely new ethos.
Over three years we went from losing £300k a year to making £30k. It wasn’t exciting money, but it was so formative for the rest of my career – to be thrown in at the deep end and turn a business around. I’d had to deal with every conceivable problem any business owner could possibly meet – I had customers who didn’t want to deal with us, suppliers who didn’t want to supply us, banks who wouldn’t touch us, staff who were demoralised (or non-existent!). It was tough on all fronts, but just the best learning curve that I could possibly ask for.
I think that’s where I discovered my interest in business was in solving problems, having ideas and delivering them.
Number Five – make sure you have support
It’s so important to have the right support around you – your friends, your family, and your partner. I’ve had that support all my life and it has been instrumental in helping me get through some big challenges and inspired me to succeed. It’s impossible to be successful if the people around you are pushing or pulling in a different direction.
After building up a thriving hospitality business of pubs, clubs, restaurants and bars, in June 2008 we had the rug pulled from under us. The banks decided they were not going to be doing any more lending. And it all came down like a house of cards.
In September 2008 all my businesses went into bankruptcy, and I was declared personally bankrupt as well.
I’d been building an empire every day, earning a fortune, spending a fortune and living the high life. And it literally stopped overnight. I found myself with no business, no job, a one-year-old daughter and no idea what I was going to do next. I thought my life was over at 27!
A chance to focus
The worst thing was I’d lost my credibility. Would a bank ever go near me again? At the time I thought I’ve got two things I can do here. I can sit at home and watch Jeremy Kyle all day, or I can get out to work and earn some money. After all, I had a wife and a daughter who needed to be provided for, but I also knew that I wasn’t born to be poor.
So, I began rebuilding the leisure businesses. But, while running the leisure businesses, I’d started to become a bit of a finance broker as well. It turns out that I’d spent so much time borrowing from alternative lenders over the years, I’d learned how to be a lender, by being a borrower.
I used this skill set – my understanding of how to structure loans, and how to match borrowers and lenders – and slowly built up a small finance brokerage.
Fast forward to now, and that’s how I have spent my time – being a lender and investing in other businesses. This time I have done it from a position of having learned from my mistakes. Big mistakes!
Sharing the knowledge
Over the past decade, I’ve financed hundreds of UK businesses to the tune of tens of millions of pounds. All businesses have got a story, it doesn’t matter what sector it is, what the problem is, or what your story is, as long as there is a solid business idea and someone who’s capable of delivering it.
I like being able to teach my clients, mentor them, and see where they might go wrong. Sometimes people think they just need money, but sometimes they just need the right support.
When I look at some of these other businesses, I can see what’s gone wrong – or what’s going to go wrong – for them. That’s where I can really add value in a way that other people can’t.
For me, that’s what makes me excited. It gets me up in the morning. I will be doing this business until the day I die because I never feel like I am working – this is my passion – and it brings me both happiness and wealth.
Well, there you have it. My 5 BIG lessons in business. Some came at a cost, but in the long run, all were invaluable to how I operate now.
If you like these lessons and want to learn more about business, send me a message and I’d be more than happy to help.
