The business wasn't built to help them.

The business was to help me make money, and so I just changed it and I said well, this business is built to help you get rich too, and these are the ways I can help you get rich.

If I just try to make myself rich, you don't get as rich.

It's 1 plus 1 equals 11.

In 35 years of doing business, I've never missed payroll.

I would have done if I hadn't had the right person in my life at that moment, showing me the difference between right and wrong.

Branding is where value is build a brand, not a business.

People are going to talk about you if you're in the room or not, and frankly.

So, first thing, what's your definition of success like?

How do you define it?

well, it's changed over the years.

You know, when I was 15 and I I didn't have any money or anywhere to live, you know like success was like having enough money to pay for a room to sleep in that's warm at night yeah, you know that was success.

And I remember feeling like it took me eight weeks to go from homeless to having a place to stay, and I remember feeling like a success the day I could actually have somewhere to stay.

So, and as I've got older, I think you know you fill your own bucket up.

You get to a point where you're no longer.

I got to a point where I'm no longer worrying about money.

I think really I was about 40 when I first felt like I don't have to worry about money anymore and I think that changed my brain, because you come out of fight or flight and you no longer just try to survive.

Yeah, I remember when I first filled my own bucket and then I thought maybe I need a bigger bucket.

Yeah, I think that happened to me.

I tried the bigger bucket things and didn't get any more.

Yeah, what's a bigger bucket Like?

For me it's like buying a fancy car, you know, buying a fancy house, and these are all the things that we think are going to break make us happy and I think, you know, in a way they do and in a way they don't.

It's temporarily, definitely.

Oh, definitely.

Well, like this is amazing.

And then slowly it got a scratch I'd take to the garage.

I'm like this thing now owns me.

I'm having to like show it to people to prove somehow I'm successful.

It's really weird.

Yeah, yeah, I I do love my cars, but I don't drive them to show on social and stuff.

I drive them because I love that car, I feel good about and you know, I think I felt proud about the fact that I could do that for myself.

I exactly had exactly the same, exactly the same.

So I mean, people say money doesn't buy you happiness.

I think the truth is it does, if you're already happy.

Yeah.

That's the irony.

I've found money to be a great multiplier, like fame and money are multipliers.

If you're a jerk and you get a lot of money, you're a complete ass.

That is true.

By that point it ours, by that point it just multiplies who you are.

So you got to that point of filling your own bucket.

How did it go from there?

Because what was that shift in your brain when you went from fight or flight?

Yeah, just to say, I think I filled my own bucket and one of the reasons that bucket really filled up big was because I think if you want to get rich, you've got to help other people get rich.

So throughout my kind of career of career, people that work with me have also got rich.

So if I just try to make myself rich, you don't get as rich.

It's one plus one equals 11, so I think I filled my own bucket.

But what was great is I feel like I also filled up a lot of other people's buckets, so my business partner, helen griffiths.

When we sold the company, we both got mega rich, but the good news is that she then became my wife, so we became partners and we were super rich.

I think that's kind of like you know, that's the holy grail of it all.

It's like you don't really want to be at the top of the hill on your own.

You know the view is amazing, but then you all go back and tell everyone what it was like.

And they were like shut the, I've got five kids, I better rich.

Well, I've got one and I'm tired.

I don't know how you're doing five, but I think success now for me, now, personally, now, if I look back, I'd probably advise the younger me to have this strategy.

I've got now a bit earlier, which is what problem can I solve in the world, as opposed to fill a market gap or do something that I can make money out of.

It's like I want to work with people I really like working with.

I don't want to work with dickheads.

I want to.

I want to work on something that matters in my case, fix the education system.

And I want to make money, but not just for myself, but for everybody around me, including the people I'm trying to help.

So that people hate me saying is I believe everyone could get rich, and I actually want everyone to get rich.

And people are like well, if everyone's rich, who's going to take out the rubbish Robots, faux, fucking crappy robots, why not?

It's cheaper for humans to do it.

The interesting thing is like use that taking out the rubbish.

Example there's a company in the United States that hired a bunch of people to take out the trash that wanted to be fit Right.

that hired a bunch of people to take out the trash that wanted to be fit Right and they treated it as a fitness thing.

I like that.

It's about reframing, yeah, the framing of it, because if everyone is wealthy, and because rich is great, money, wealthy time, money, all of those things there's always going to be a desire to work.

Humans have an innate need to be doing something that's COVID proved If we're sitting at home doing nothing, we go mad.

We need something to do and hopefully COVID's shown everyone that we need a thing to go and do, which is what's scaring me about AI, because a lot of people aren't retraining or preparing for that change, because no one's quite sure what it looks like and no one's being honest Like my delivery driver.

I know my delivery driver, who delivered my food to my house this morning.

That vehicle in six years time will be driving itself to my house, but no one's telling him that because they need him for the next six years to keep delivering that stuff to their house.

So the truth can't be told because there's mass panic.

I think with AI and it's my way of approaching a lot of things is just play with it.

Just get in and start playing with it, like pick an app, and even if it's just an app to make music, that's AI.

At least start learning something, play with it, get comfortable.

Most people that slag off social media have never leveraged it properly.

So most people that are saying how bad it is, how awful it is, most of them don't understand how it actually works.

It's the same with AI and all that.

If you actually understand how these things work, you can understand how to leverage them for good.

So social media for social good, ai for social good.

But if you understand how they work, you can make your world more efficient.

It's like having a mobile phone.

Today, people can't imagine not having a mobile phone.

Today you can remote work.

But people have got fearful of technology for some reason, typically technology have got fearful of technology for some reason.

Typically, technology has actually freed humans up.

Now, of course, there's always going to be the naysayers saying, well, I'm always on my phone now.

Well, yeah, it's still probably better than two hours getting into work and two hours getting home and sitting in an office all day because you've got to go have a desktop.

People don't realize how much freedom this stuff can bring you.

But, to your point, you have to play with it.

I love seeing the photos of everyone going.

Look everyone's on their phone and you go back 50 years.

Everyone's reading the newspaper.

Right yeah.

Exactly yeah, it's not really changed in a lot of ways.

It's just the tech.

People have never wanted to talk to each other.

It's always been that way.

It's great because it removes scarcity.

So you know, when I was, you learn that in economics it's the study of the allocation of scarce resources.

Well, scarcity is a fallacy when you introduce technology because we have a scarcity of food.

No, we don't.

We can grow food in a high road Throw so much food away.

Every day.

The supermarkets and cafes are throwing tons of food away.

Well, you and I were young.

Do you remember that Time magazine came out and said we're going to run out of oil in 90 years?

Yeah, I remember that.

And then we went to minicar.

We're never going to run out of oil.

We're going to be not needing oil before we run out of it.

Yeah, I think, of course, and exactly, but that's why these things need to be discussed, though, openly and honestly.

We do need to transition.

So AI is going to take people's jobs?

I hope it is, and that's great, exactly.

But a dishwashing machine took three people's jobs, I know.

And now you put it in a machine and it comes out the other end.

Well, those three people can go on and be trained to be great waiters, or they can go on to be trained to be masseuses, or they can go on to be trained to be….

Well, go and do what they love.

To your point.

Not retraining is the challenge.

That's the problem.

You're to your point.

Not retraining is the challenge, that's the problem.

You're gonna have six careers in your lifetime, minimum, right, and I remember when buckminster fuller said that way back when he's you know, past, many years ago.

But he said you're gonna have six careers in your lifetime because, on average, if you're born after this, you're gonna live to 100, 140 sort of thing.

And people seem to think you're gonna do one thing.

My kids always, you know.

People ask to think you're going to do one thing.

My kids always, you know.

People ask them what do you want to do with your life?

I said no, no, kid, what do you want to try first?

Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, what's your?

What's?

Stage one, stage two, stage one for me at 15, I was a gardener.

Yeah, now stage.

I think I'm stage five.

I'm going to guess I've done one more.

I'm a tech owner, media platform owner.

I think people do need to frame it that way.

It's so true.

I think that's why I really hate at school when they ask you what will you do when you grow up, because it tries to make you pick a thing and I think the better question is what problem will you solve?

Because you can widen your net and do many different things to get around that problem.

Later in life, you know like you don't have to do one thing.

You thing you don't have to be labeled as a lawyer or a doctor.

You can be many things.

Yeah, I got friends of mine that were doctors and now they're entrepreneurs Well, exactly the companies and a friend of mine who was a lawyer and now he's a massive property investor.

This is what I mean.

That's the part.

You're going to have multiple careers, and maybe it's six, maybe it's 10.

It doesn't really matter.

You just got to understand that every five to 10 years you're probably going to change the thing you're doing today.

And if your listeners are business owners, they've also got to watch out, because they can also get trapped by their own business.

Oh yeah.

They get in the wrong way.

Business as the product yeah, and you make yourself invaluable in the business, for example, then you can't grow to find out what your next stage is.

Yeah, and I had this experience myself.

My first company that was really successful Fluid.

It took me 10 years to realize I was no longer the right leader for that company.

I think people sometimes are their own worst enemy.

So I then realized I started investing in businesses.

I was running a service agency before and I started investing in business.

I realized my next stage was to become an angel investor.

But I had to start that next stage to let go of the old stage, because a lot of people get trapped by their old ways.

Yeah, I almost running Action Coach.

10 years in, I almost burnt out.

Luckily, my daughter was born and I just decided you know what, hand it over to my CEO, who was my COO at the time.

Just hand it over.

Let him run it and went and be a full-time dad for a few years and, thank God, I'd rebuilt my business so that it could work with us, but not enough people are doing that.

By the way, I've been on a mission to teach everyone you got to build it.

My definition of a business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you.

Yes, and to be really blunt and I had to learn this as a young man, if I have to go in there, it's not a business, it's a job, and I work for an idiot and I just had to learn that my job as the owner was to build people so that the people built the business.

It's very liberating as well if you frame it this way, because otherwise you will build something that traps you like a job, traps other people 100%, and so you've got to make sure that you're building Now.

That doesn't mean to say you basically want to wake up every day with the option to work in your business.

So I like working in my business, I like adding value to my business, but if I walked away today, the strength of whether or not it's a successful business is will it survive without me?

Now, by the way, this is in direct conflict with personal brand right.

It is, and it's not, and I want to.

You do a lot of building your people.

You do a lot of making sure your people grow.

Was that a conscious choice?

How did that?

happen.

I was just tired in the early years of my career of people leaving.

So I trained people up.

I mean, my first agency business that was, you know, making a lot of money.

I had clients coming out of my ears, but the talent to execute on the work was hard to hold on to.

And so first stage was I used to hire fresh grads and then I can make them my culture.

This is my first idea.

This failed because people come in and they're like oh, I've had two years experience here, but now I want to go work at a big company, you know JP Morgan or whatever, and so I lost them.

I trained them and then I'd lose them.

So this strategy of getting so.

Then I switched it to people that were working at JP Morgan, were tired of working in those corporate selfish organizations, and then they'd come and work with me, and that worked for a while, because then they were having a refreshing new experience, not in a big conglomerate.

And then I realized I was still losing people and it turned out that the basic crux of it was the business wasn't built to help them.

The business was to help me make money.

And so I just changed it and I said well, this business is built to help you get rich too, and these are the ways I can help you get rich.

Of course, obviously, things like profit share that's one element but equity ownership Because I would rather have 51% of Facebook than 100% of MySpace and so this equity thing.

People get really confused and they're like, oh, I'm holding on to 100% equity.

Well, you've got 100% of the responsibility.

Then Just keep in mind, because no one's ever going to care about the business as much as you do if they don't own it.

And no matter what you say, we're part of a team, let's do it together.

You're still the one getting the yacht, yeah, so you've got to pick your lane as an owner of a business.

And if you want to own 100%, you're 100% responsible.

And if you've got staff turnover problems, well, you deserve it.

So I just changed, I started giving equity to people and being like not just saying they're going to make it along with me.

I made sure that they did.

I know, like with Action Coach, we're a partnership business.

We use a franchise model and franchise partnerships all over the world and it's brought me some of the best people and I've had many of them with me 20 and almost 30 years.

What would they?

need?

I don't think like.

I meet thousands of people that want to start a business and the reality is that it's much better to join with someone else's business, because you can save years of your life, but the truth is not enough.

People give you equity in that business, so it is better you start it yourself, because then you get equity and equity is where the value comes over time.

Right, I've made all my money from equity, well capitalization is the key fundamental for wealth.

Right Cash flow is not going to produce.

It pays the bills and allows you to fund a growth of equity.

And once you capitalize then you can recapitalize again 100%.

I mean, you can joke about Elon Musk all you want, but that first capitalization allowed him to capitalize three major events.

That then is allowed to capitalize.

And I think he's now an 8% shareholder in Tesla.

So people are stupid.

They think that they Jeff Bezos talked about this.

He's a 7% shareholder on Amazon.

You know you don't have a hundred percent.

Nobody who's a billionaire from their business has a hundred percent.

It's just dumb.

Yeah, you know you cannot build a business if you think that way and you want to build a community.

You want a community to own your business.

You're also going to need capital if you want to be that big.

Yes, you're going to need venture capital or hedge fund capital.

You're going to need an investment partner if you want to grow that big 100%, and the bank is not going to lend you money at that.

The only people who are crazy enough to risk with you are the ones who get the payoff from the equity increase and to loop what you're saying back around.

I think the other thing that kind of blew my mind I wish someone had told me this when I was younger is that it's actually easier to manage a big business than a small business.

Oh yeah, but people think that running a small business is better because they don't know the difference.

When you're running a small business, it's very hard to go on holiday.

It's very hard to hire people that really know what they're doing and if are you know hard to.

If you stop working, you probably stop earning money.

A big business allows you to bring in brilliant people, so fight to build a big business.

It's not easy to build a big business, but I think it's so much easier to run a big business.

It's worth the pain in the early days to do it.

If I take two kids and I take a kid that grew up in, say, silicon Valley and parents were in Google and and you know they saw all of that around, and then I take a kid who grew up where I did, brisbane Australia and ask them to write a business plan, which one's going to write me a billion dollar business plan.

You know the kid from Silicon Valley thinks a billion size business is just normal and that's where I think a lot of us have never been around that size to be able to dream that big sort of thing.

So true, I love living in Las Vegas now and once a year I invite 10 companies in and I help them all create a billion dollar business plan, or at least a billion.

And I love doing it in Vegas because I can walk out the door and point out and go hey, see that, yeah, that was a billion, see that that was two billion.

See that that was two billion, see that that's another billion.

And like I think this environment is so underrated for people to understand where they're going to be successful.

I think there's a couple of important.

One is the people you end up with.

Like my wife, I'm successful today in large part because I got the right partner.

She supports me, she, she just backed my crazy ideas and and people don't understand how important that is they don't.

On tinder, it should be a profile, you know, category like can you help me be successful?

Yeah, are you willing?

Are you?

willing to work together to yes exactly you're willing for the pain along with me.

You know, like I think.

The second element I think is where you are based.

So I got lucky.

I moved to hong kong at 23 years old and, like said, I look out the window and there's a building that someone in their head came up with the idea and it's worth a billion dollars, or probably more than that trillions in front of me every day and I just look at that city.

In particular, hong Kong has no natural resources, so it's all built on brainpower.

It's all built on someone had an idea, whether it's trading or export or whatever it was, and they made it and then that generated that wealth.

Because that's what people understand about entrepreneurship, the people that hate on entrepreneurship.

We're not taking wealth out of the economy, we're creating wealth.

Well, who creates jobs Exactly.

Entrepreneurs take their entire life savings and they risk it all to provide jobs and build an economy for the community and people go.

That's bad.

No, that's the best thing ever.

That's why I started this event Totally To celebrate business owners, because I think they get beat up way, way, way too much.

Talk about beating up Social media.

Yes, it gets beat up all the time.

You can't get beat up on it.

I get beat up every day.

There's some really great parts about social media.

I think that it's one of those things that I get a fight Sometimes.

I like playing around with conspiracy theories because it's fun.

Most things, you can prove whether it's true or not by following where the money goes, because most of it is just about who's making money out of that particular story or that particular lie or that particular take on things.

And, let's be honest, it's black state, blackstone state street and vanguard.

They're three that are making money out of every day.

They they damn.

Oh, I think I'm not gonna make money out of this podcast.

I don't think.

I don't know, I might be wrong, um, but but they're probably fine.

I'm sure we're putting this on us.

I'm sure these phone mics are made by them.

I mean they own all of the social media platforms between them.

They own what?

7%, 10%, 20% of the social media platforms?

That's true.

Well, the reason they own it….

You're making them money right now.

Yeah, just listening to this, you're making them money.

But I think you know this is the thing.

I don't think there's anything wrong with people making money.

I think it's great, I think it's important.

Actually, I think wealth… I have this.

I honestly believe if we can make.

I watched, I went to Hong Kong in 1997.

And when Hong Kong's being handed back to the Chinese by the British and I watched 400 million people come out of poverty into middle class in China, and that's why we don't have a war today.

That fact that we we China, not me China managed to help 400 million people come out of poverty is the reason China is not at war with America today.

It is the reason Because people don't want a war.

China is winning because they don't go to war.

They don't spend all of that money on war.

They go and spend it all on investing in things.

That's the whole political side that I've studied a lot about.

Soft power is incredibly powerful.

They have you.

Political debate that I've studied a lot about Soft power is incredibly powerful, they have.

You're right.

But I think this is the thing, isn't it?

If you want to make a difference in this world, you've got to invest in people and things, and then, if you do that, you'll make money, and I think there should be nothing wrong with that.

And again, my conspiracy theory point around social media is it's actually a big leveling up tool.

So so actually, social media, as much as it might have people in it that are bad players, it's a chance, if you're listening to this, to break through and beat walmart you.

I get more views on my social media channel than the bbc, right, with all their staff and all their broadcasting, their tv license income.

We get more views than them, right, tell me a time in history Okay, you can't buy a fucking house.

Forget that.

You can't buy a house.

Joe Rogan won the election.

Of course Not on TV but going on a podcast.

That's what I mean.

This is what I mean, but people are starting waking up to it, but they're not taking action quick enough, because what's going to happen is this is this is like the wild wild West.

It's like a gold rush and you're going to be in the future Personal brand and and I have a personal brand is going to eat any other marketing strategy completely up.

It's it's and it's a big opportunity.

If you are someone listening to this podcast right now and you want to make something happen, you can be the biggest companies in the world if you can go and leverage social media.

And so I put one video up yesterday 60 million views in less than 12 hours.

Sixty million people have heard about my product and what I'm doing for free, in fact.

No, no, worse than that, I made money.

I made a video.

It wasn't free.

You made money.

It wasn't free.

People are like, oh, it's not free, is it?

It's not free, you're right.

You're right, it's not free.

I already owned the phone that I recorded it on, and then I actually did pay an editor.

We have to pay the staff.

But hold on a minute.

The video itself is making at the moment around 20,000 pounds.

Cost of execution is a thousand.

So my marketing has made me profit, plus it's free marketing.

I don't think people understand, though, the TikTokification change of social media it used to be you had to have the followers and if you didn't have followers, it didn't matter what you did, you couldn't blow up.

Now, with the interest-based algorithms, I can make a video and if it's a great content and a great subject, that's timely that people want.

Anyone now that is has been no good at it can still blow up and viral right now 100, right, and I think that's the thing.

But people don't realize that you don't even know.

You don't even need to over engineer the video either, don't?

The best videos are ones literally cat on skateboard, you know, like, if you can.

Ones literally cat on skateboard, you know like, if you can catch a cat on a skateboard and put it up on TikTok, you'll probably make money.

You know, if your whole life Skateboard, drinking juice, playing the right song.

But that's what I mean.

It's like it's sometimes more about creativity than it is about execution of the actual editing and cameras.

And you know, and that's true, I've got 14.8 million followers.

It's a useful metric from a point of view of like.

Are we attracting people to our community?

I see them as community.

That number is a community.

But the actual videos themselves some get hundreds of millions of views and some get less than 10,000 views.

You're not getting hundreds of millions unless it gets fed to non-followers.

Right, it's got to be fed to non-followers, which means your followers watch enough of it to show the algorithm.

This is a good video and I want to hop on video for a second.

Your genius video.

People are still doing photographs and memes and stuff like that.

How do we get people to just understand it's video today?

It's a bit like you know, radio didn't die and radio will reach a certain amount of people.

I listen to the radio in the morning when I'm going to take my son off to his forest stuff or whatever.

So there's a moment when I listen to radio.

So radio didn't die, because there will always be a moment when people are listening to it.

I think social media and generally content frameworks well to it.

I think social media and generally content frameworks.

What I've noticed LinkedIn last week is really now pushing video.

If you open up LinkedIn now, it's video Will they go to?

30 minutes, though that's my problem with Go to 30 minutes LinkedIn, if you're watching 30 minutes.

Yeah, they'll be listening.

I think Will they be listening, and LinkedIn do listen to me because they keep featuring me in their newsletter, so I know they're listening.

I think you should never restrict a user that makes total.

If you've got a minute video, you've got a 30 minute video again.

I have put up a video two hours and 26 minutes on YouTube.

Everybody told me no one will watch it, and 10 million people have watched that video in the last six months, and so if you can put value into two hours and 26 minutes, you can put value into two hours and 26 minutes.

You can put it up and people will watch it.

But if your value is only one minute, then put up one minute.

If you put up a one minute one video on TikTok, you can make money.

You put a one minute video up, you won't make money.

People don't?

They make mistake of making one minute, one second to get the money, and that's when the video doesn't do as well.

Yeah, because that last 15 seconds no one watched.

Exactly.

So when it comes to content, you do want to put as much value.

Again, people doing posts about like I see this all the time very successful people.

Oh, I've just won this award, I've just won that award, and they feel good putting it up about themselves.

No one fucking cares, right?

Well, you can put that in your stories, but don't make it a real post.

Exactly, I think people you know don't be selfish.

Put content up that people value.

Maybe you're speaking Australian.

You're welcome.

I'm hanging out with a feeling Australian right now.

People don't realise when they're doing social media you're actually trying to entertain, yeah, so you want to put something up that's going to teach someone something?

make them laugh or help them grow.

Yeah, the three E's entertainment, education or emotion.

Exactly exactly and so, but again, I know Do all three, actually, if you can do all three and people can't help themselves.

I know someone's going to listen to this right now and they're still going to post.

Oh, I just, you know, I just won this award.

Look, look, maybe you can say how you won the award.

Yeah, that'll Tell you the story of what made this happen yeah, stories, people Stories and then how this award has affected your business, because that might make people go for an award Like teach people something, the story of the customer you served that made the award happen Exactly.

You know, tell a story, the economics around the award, anything other than you're brilliant.

Yeah, you know, like people don't want to hear it, but that's 90% of content on social media.

And then people tell me I don't get any views, don't get any likes.

People send me links all the time.

Now, please like my post.

I look at them and I'm like I don't like the post.

Oh, what if I like the post?

Oh, but please, if you like it, more people will watch it.

If I like it, I'm endorsing it and I don't like it.

You know so, yeah, so social media, I think it's.

There's a lot of people using social media for bad, so people need to get in there and make it.

The internet is good and bad.

Right, the history repeats itself.

There are a lot of dark things happening on the internet.

There's also a lot of really amazing positive things.

Someone's raising money right now on GoFundMe to fix problems in an earthquake zone.

You know the internet can do incredible good, but you need to be in the arena making these tools do good.

I tell this to people all the time.

There's a lot of people lobbying at the moment to ban social media for kids, and I totally understand why.

But I'd say, if you put that much energy instead of taking, I don't understand why, instead of taking the tool away from kids, why not help them leverage it for kids?

So get in there.

That's going to help those kids.

That's what I'm doing.

Yeah, instead of saying right, no, kids, don't go on TikTok, it's really bad for you.

I'm putting content in there, that's helping them.

Yeah, my team have asked me to start a new podcast called my Rich Uncle Right, and it's like all I would do is talk to young people about.

Well, just pretend I'm your rich uncle who actually gives you advice, because every kid needs a rich uncle.

Yeah, totally, they need someone that can tell them the actual reality of how money is made and how things work, and how your first job should be to get a mentor.

Your first job shouldn't be about how much money you make.

It should be about who you're going to learn from.

You're like the more successful Australian version of me, because when we started this five years ago, I did a brand profile of myself.

I'm basically, I am the rich uncle that my brothers and sisters' kids respect.

So they come to you and say, simon, I don't want to do my GCCs, what should I do?

You're like, how do I make money?

You know, like that profile is quite, you know who can you turn to?

It isn't bullshit.

It's going to tell you the fucking truth.

It's going to help you understand things from your point of view I built.

The action coach foundation was built for one purpose and that was to help young people learn that you don't have to leave school and get a job.

You can leave school and give people a job.

Yeah, be.

Don't be an employee, be an entrepreneur.

Yeah, and because for me I didn't fit in as an employee.

As a kid like I lost a lot I was I was asked to move on from a lot of positions very early in my career because I didn't know how to be a good employee.

I just was not.

But as an entrepreneur I went oh, this is where I'm supposed to be.

That that didn't work for me, this works for me.

So so I am.

I'll ask you a question.

I get a lot of hate from people who say I'm saying everyone can be an entrepreneur.

Not everyone should be.

I think everyone has the ability to if they're given the tools.

There's different types of entrepreneurs.

There's the Elon Musks of this world on one extreme, and then you've got people that just want to do a flower business and enjoy it.

I will agree with them on one, because my definition of an entrepreneur is probably different to most.

A business owner has one business.

An entrepreneur buys and sells businesses, has multiple companies.

There's a distinction in my mind.

Everyone can be a business owner.

Everyone can be self-employed.

In this day and age, there is absolutely zero reason why you've got a desk and a phone and a laptop, start your own business Don't even need the laptop, but get good at something though.

Yeah, fair If you want to start your own business, don't even need the laptop, but get good at something though.

Yeah, fair If you want to start your own business.

And it could be.

You're good at buying businesses.

You don't even have to be an operator.

You can be good at buying businesses Absolutely.

I've taught many people over the years how to buy companies and in this day and age in fact right now is the biggest boom potential for that, because you've got baby boomers who own the majority of employer-based businesses.

So companies with employees are owned by people who are wanting to retire right now.

Now most of them won't be able to find a buyer because there's not enough entrepreneurialism in the next generation down and the generation below that.

But if you learn how to buy them, you will actually be able to convince that seller to lend you the money to buy their business vendor financing because they won't have another buyer.

This is financial literacy you're touching on.

Here too, people think they need money to start a business or buy a business.

No, you don't.

In fact, if you're hungry because you don't have money, more charts will be successful than those that have got money and not as hungry.

It's easier if you've got money but you don't have money.

More charts will be successful than those that have got money and not as hungry.

It's easier if you've got money but you don't have to.

By the way, I've invested in over 80 companies and my experience has been sometimes the companies with too much money fail.

Oh yeah, because they buy brand new desks, brand new everything you look at WeWorks.

WeWorks isn't even checking the leases it's signing.

Yeah, you know they've got something like 20 billion in investment.

Like this is not healthy.

I think you've got to be innovative.

Like I act like I've got no money, I actually tell myself I've got no money.

I have got money but I tell myself I don't have it.

Because I actually want to be innovative, I wouldn't have gone on TikTok, I wouldn't go into the street.

I talk to my other millionaire friends about going into the.

Why do you go into the street and ask people what do you need, what help do you need?

And so I wouldn't have done that if I thought you know what?

I'm going to hire a marketing company and a pr company.

I'm going to sit in my ivory tower, my fancy office, and I'm not going to get out there and actually like dig it, dig it, dig this business into success.

You know.

The disease of looking good, going nowhere is.

Right, there's a lot of people in that.

That's a lot of people in jobs.

They hate.

You know.

I remember a guy wrote to me one time and he said you know I need your help.

My kids are in a private school and I have to drive a BMW to drive them off.

But I'm going broke, yeah.

And I wrote back and go, dude, get out of the BMW, put your kids in a normal school here you can afford, but my kids won't have the opportunity and all that sort of stuff.

You know what.

Your kids will have as much opportunity as they want, absolutely, you know.

You've just got to be a better example of taking care of money.

And the number one thing I tell people is like get your costs down.

Like most people are trapped by their own.

That private school thing is a really big problem.

I see a lot of people that are in bank jobs.

They hate it.

They're not helping society.

Often they're having to extract money from people that can't afford it through things like bad mortgage structures and they are literally like only doing all of that, that thing.

They hate to put their kids in private school and they never see their kids because of it.

I've got a seven-year-old.

All he really wants is my time.

Kids, kids spell love.

T-i-m-e.

Right, that's how they spell it.

Yeah, if you sit on the floor With your kid, they are more loved Than if you bring them home Some gift.

Yeah, you can do both.

It's good I've discovered.

My kid loves Lego, definite and person.

Yeah, I wanted a new car.

And people say what car are you getting rid of?

It's just an and yeah, it's just an and no, I think, having the option to do it.

I think to me, the definition of entrepreneurship, by the way, is owning your own time and being able to buy time, not sell time.

I think owning time time is the most valuable asset.

Like, I just think that that is one.

People don't spend enough money on buying themselves time.

Someone said to me when I was a kid poor people spend time to save money.

Rich people spend money to save time Totally.

Yeah, I went to a restaurant yesterday and there was a 20 minute wait.

So I said to the waiter I'll give you 10,000 pounds to sit me now, because that's the only thing a value money brings Saves you 20 minutes.

Did he take it?

He didn't take it, and I understand why.

It's like an ethics thing right, I get it, but you know, I think what I wanted to do.

He said no, I can't, that's not right.

I was like, listen, this is what you should do.

You should take half of this money and go to the table you were about to sit down and say do they want £5,000 and to wait 20 minutes?

Yeah, 100% guarantee you they'll do it.

They would have said 100.

And then you make five grand by making those people wait 20 minutes.

Yeah, but I know the only thing of value is that 20 minutes.

It's crazy that we live in an age where social media connects so much of us but loneliness has become sort of an epidemic out there in the world.

What are you seeing with that and how that's playing out?

It's quite scary and this is why, again, I believe social media has the chance to fix and not be the problem.

I have literally made friends through my social media.

I've never met them.

Now, I think this started during COVID, because if you'd asked me before COVID, can you make friends with someone without meeting them?

I'd say no, I need to sit with you, touch you, see you.

All right, I get it, I get it and it does, it does, it does have something to it.

But equally, I have now realized that connection is connection, yeah, and when someone is your type of person and or has that thing that you connect to, it does.

So social media has the chance for you to make friends, and that's what's happening for a lot of young kids, by the way.

This is what they're doing.

They're going on social media to have a connection because they're in a school and the school itself, the people in that school.

They don't have a connection to them for whatever reason.

They're being bullied or this or that.

So where are they going for connection?

They're looking for other people that have been bullied, or they're looking for other people who feel disenfranchised as a young man, not feeling like they're understood, and they're then ending up sometimes in the wrong algorithms, being told by the wrong influencers what to do, and that again another reason that we need to do wrong videos and then they're fed a million wrong videos.

Well, that's it.

But that connection is there.

That connection is there and I think we need to accept that that's going to happen and then again, educate people, especially young people, about what life they could have and use that community.

So, for example, I've recently started going back to the gym quite a lot.

Accountability is really powerful.

So if you are in a community on social media where you're all going to the gym and you're putting up a video each day of you going to the gym, I don't have to live in the same country as you even for that to feel like we're in it together.

Yeah, you're getting fit, I'm getting fit.

I put my video up there.

You put your video up today.

I didn't put my video up why I got sick, are you okay?

Community, you know like I think it's such a powerful opportunity if we frame it properly.

Of course, we can say oh well, you know, my kids are watching the wrong person.

That's true.

Educate your kids.

Don't take the phone off them and tell them not to do it.

Educate them the difference, make them understand the difference between a good algorithm and a bad algorithm.

It's.

You know, raising kids is a lot of work because you have to do those things, you have to have the conversations and I know with my older kids how well I listened to them when they were young, determined, how well they listened to me as they got older and I told them all at some stage you're going to recognize dad is stupid, teenage years, it's going to happen, and then somewhere in your 20s you're going to recognize that maybe I'm not as dumb as you thought I was.

Hopefully I've hoped my kid will.

Will I live that long before my kid will?

see that my experience shows that so far out of the five, it's it's coming true that way.

Yeah, no, that's so true.

My seven year old is definitely smarter than me.

I mean, kids teach you stuff.

I think that's the beautiful thing about having kids.

I never quite understood You're not really there to teach them stuff.

He reminds me of, like, how cool the double-decker bus is.

I forgot how cool of liquor buses.

I thought they were a bit annoying and they were very loud.

He's like, look, that is cool, isn't it?

I'm like, actually it is cool, you know.

So they teach you stuff, don't?

they.

So final area then, personal branding.

You've touched on it a couple of times.

Why do it?

How to do it.

Okay.

So first of all, if I tell your listeners you must start personal branding you, a lot of people go oh, I can't be bothered with social media.

It's not really about social media.

People are going to talk about you, if you're in the room or not, and you know, and, frankly, depending on your business, that whole like attraction can create businesses.

So, for example, you know what's the line it's like.

You can talk bad about me or you can talk good about me, just be talking about me.

You know, and I think I think that kind of like personifies.

If you look at history and the success of businesses in the last, say, 20 years, you know facebook started off by creating attention.

Everyone comes to a platform.

This is kind of the first wave of modern marketing, right?

Facebook becomes it and all these apps, all these platforms become trillion dollar companies.

They basically create attention.

Attention goes to the platform.

They become worth trillions of dollars.

The next phase was layered on top.

You've got like snap, let's say, or TikTok.

These are apps that sit in a similar space.

They also then attract the attention and become trillion dollar businesses the next big one right in front of our face that no one seems to quite see and I see it because I'm in it is personal brand.

So I have 14.8 million followers.

I get 450 plus million views a month.

I can launch a business today for zero marketing costs that can be bigger than most people listening to this business that have been running it for 10 years.

I can launch a chocolate brand.

I can launch a.

This is what's happened with Mr Beast.

He launched a chocolate brand.

It's now one of the biggest chocolate brands in the world.

I can launch a drinks brand Travis.

My son wanted the Mr Beast chocolates.

This is what I'm talking about.

But personal brand, let's just take step one.

For those that are listening and think I can't be bothered to go on social media.

First of all, shake that from your subconscious because it's just stupid.

But let's just say that step one you don't want to go into social media.

What is your personal brand?

Have you written down a business plan for your personal brand?

Who are you?

What are your values?

What are your red lines?

What's your kind of purpose?

Why are you here?

How are you going to do it when you're not in the room?

What do you want people to say about you?

And so people don't do that.

They do it maybe for a company.

Not even everyone does that.

Branding is totally overlooked in most businesses.

Branding is where value is.

Build a brand, not a business.

Brand is where the value is.

We see this in hundreds and hundreds of examples the Jenners, the Kardashians.

Oh, there's more and more of you.

That kid became a billionaire overnight because of her personal brand.

Now her mom had taught her to have a personal brand for 20 years.

But the problem with those case studies is that people that are listening are thinking well, I'm not a Kardashian, am I?

But here's the thing.

There is.

Now it's.

You don't have to be on television.

What took luck and Connections, connections Don't need it now and someone taking you and the universe all aligning for you to get on television.

Exactly right, you don't need it anymore.

You just need to be good at something and communicate it to the world and it could be good at crafting something with wood and you've got live streaming of it or you're videoing it.

It doesn't have to be your face on camera.

Don't get sucked into like talking heads.

That's the only way you know the anonymous channels make as much or more money Much more.

There's a guy on YouTube who's doing fireplaces.

He's making millions a week.

He just recorded fireplaces and then people put that fireplace on their TV.

He's making millions a week.

Good for him, it's a whole new world.

I remember the guys that went and played pianos out in the middle of the woods, right, and it's like I like listening to pianos and watching photographs of the….

There's a guy that records the plows farming the fields.

Oh yeah, and he's making… the lawnmower guy.

The lawnmower guy.

I get sucked into the lawnmower guy every day.

Let me tell you, he does power washing and it's like holy shit, I'm a power washing guy now.

Really, I'm watching that.

But this is the thing I think whoever's listening.

Please remove your subconscious bias to all this stuff, because if you are finding it hard to make ends meet and you can't own a home, it is very frustrating for people.

But the exciting news is that, although right now you can't own a home, you have this access to this reach and to this ability to create a business that can compete with Walmart in a week.

You can be competing with Walmart in a week.

You just need one video to go viral.

You're competing with Walmart in a week.

This is amazing, and that's why I think everyone can be an entrepreneur.

If you've got a phone you're probably listening to this on a phone.

You've got all the infrastructure you need.

Fucking.

Go Do it now.

I love that TikTok finally started rewarding at a level that made sense for content creators.

Do you think the other guys will ever catch?

up.

Tiktok is not paying people enough for their content.

I'm part of that creative fund.

They're not, but again, they're paying more than everybody else.

Youtube's paying number one yeah, youtube's number one.

Snapchat's making a big push.

Instagram you make no money on any of the content, but it's all about brand deals and partnerships.

You see, see the matrix of making money on social media.

If you don't have a product to sell which is probably the low-hanging fruit is, you know, have a product to sell.

It could be someone else's product.

Have a product to sell.

That's the low-hanging fruit.

With things like tiktok shop, you can make a lot of money on there.

I had this recently a marketing person being five years studying marketing, a very well university, very well-known university, spent £65,000 on this education.

I said to him what are the four ways you make money on TikTok?

They've got no fucking idea.

So let me quickly tell you what a £60,000 marketing degree should look like.

You make money going live.

People like what you're saying, they like what you're offering, they like what you're talking about.

They believe in you.

They just like you.

You make them laugh.

They'll give you tips instantly, right?

I did one live a little while ago.

I got about eight thousand pounds in an hour.

Right now I give all my money away.

I have a different strategy, that's up to me.

But what I'm saying is, if you're a single mother sitting at home right now struggling, maybe you can make a bit of money from that.

So tipping second element is the videos themselves.

Let's say, tiktok in particular does pay per view.

So if you make business content you get more money than if, you, say, make lifestyle content.

So the per view revenue is dictated by the type of content you put out there.

But if you get a million view video, you're going to make on average a couple of thousand pounds.

Then the final thing that I think people don't understand is there's so many brands out there that are so shit on social media.

No one wants to hear from any of these brands.

They need you, yeah, so you will get brand deals coming out your backside because they can't go on tv anymore.

No one's watching it.

So what do they do?

They'll find you on social media.

So then that's just instantly, three instant ways.

There's loads of other things about it, like product placement opportunities to do, you know, co-branded communities.

You can get subscribers which pay you a monthly fee.

I mean, I've got subscribers paying me a monthly fee and I give them nothing.

I give them nothing and they're doing it to support what I'm doing.

I didn't even ask them to and they're paying me $5.99 a month like I'm Netflix.

It's crazy and I think it's exciting because communities can support you.

If you're a single mother struggling right now, there's a community out there that will support you.

There'll be people that will get behind you.

If you're genuine and you're honest and you're doing it as a trick and you need a bit of help, people are nice.

These platforms give you a chance to touch that If you're a single mother struggling telling your it will work, Just tell them what you're going through.

People love story.

They love getting in with other people.

I want to help.

I always finish with one thing Best advice you ever got on success and who gave it to you and why is it important to you?

I think well, I'll reframe the question slightly, if it's okay.

I think the most important thing that ever happened to me is I accidentally got a wife as a mentor.

So my wife, helen.

We've been together 23 years now.

When I first started building Fluid, this agency that did really well, I was quite selfish and she made me a better person In 2003,.

We had SARS in Hong Kong, which is kind of COVID 1.0 for those that don't know.

It was the beginnings of that kind of problem where a disease hit the city and the whole city had to shut down.

And we had a financial problem where we couldn't pay our staff and my instinct back then was we have to pay ourselves as business owners because otherwise, you know, we need to put our own oxygen masks on first.

This is what we're taught, right?

I have to put my own oxygen mask on first because if I don't survive, it all dies and we'll pay everyone else later.

And Helen said to me she said no, simon, these people have mortgages and responsibility and rent to pay.

And we said to me she said no, simon, these people have mortgages and responsibility and rent to pay, and we had to pay them first because we promised them we would Right.

So I drained our bank account to pay everybody on the first of the month and then we had no money for ourselves, literally no money.

No money for food, no money to pay our rent, nothing.

And I was like this is a nightmare.

Now what?

And luckily everyone kept working.

A client who owed us a lot of money paid us despite saying they couldn't, and it all eased up and we had about 20 days where me and Helen were behind on everything.

We got paid.

It all worked out.

Now the important thing is in 35 years of doing business, I've never missed payroll.

I would have done that day.

I would have done if I hadn't had the right person in my life at that moment showing me the difference between right and wrong.

Right Because I was taught to put my own mask on first.

But if I had done that, those people would have lost faith that I was there to help them and they would have seen I was just there to help myself and they would have left.

And if they'd left I wouldn't have done the work, I wouldn't have got paid, we would have died.

I would have died putting my own mask on first, and so I reframe it a little, because I think it's not one person necessarily, or one bit of advice.

It's an experience I've had that actually helping other people has helped me survive, and I think we have that now, right now, today.

If we don't help other people, I don't care how poor you are, you've got four minutes to help someone today.

Stop making excuses, and if you help someone today for four minutes, they'll help you.

Someone will help you, right, we can all help someone today.

So I think, yeah, like I think for me it was helen.

But that bit, the experience of like don't what you think you think is true isn't true.

Question everything probably the line I question everything, probably a line I give people as advice.

Question everything, everything you think is true.

What your subconscious has told you is true is probably not true.

We'll be back next week with more of your success.

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