 the more confident that I get, and the more I realize how the world works, the more I realize, if you're going to think, you might as well think big. And the bigger you think, actually, the easier it gets. If you look at how some of the biggest operators in the world succeed, it's because they think big. And people think that running a small company is easier than running a big company. No, it's not. Running a big company is a lot easier. People think working for someone else is easier than working for themselves. No, it's not. No, it's not. That's why anyone that's worked for themselves for a year often will never want to go back working for someone else. Why? Welcome everybody to The Sevo Show. We have an amazing guest on today. His name's Simon Squibb from the UK. Someone that just loves to give back. And as part of my personal philanthropic goals, he's someone that I aspire to become and his own values. And I'm learning so much from him. And he's blown up on the social media, just doing what he loves. And he retired at 40. So let's start with that, Simon. Thank you for coming on the show. How are you feeling? Good. Thanks for such a nice intro. I'm feeling good. Thank you. So Simon, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you started and how you got here. So I guess I often start my story at the saddest point in my life, which was at 15 years old, my father at just the age of 56 died suddenly of a heart attack right in front of me. And then a very short period of time after that, I had a big argument with my mum, and she kind of said, it's my way or the highway. And I said, I take that highway and combination of her kicking me out, I mean, walking out the door, I found myself homeless. And at that moment, it was, of course, an incredibly sad time in my life, incredibly difficult time in my life. But I often tell people that if I hadn't had that hard life, that difficult moment, I wouldn't be where I am today, which is in a place of happiness, contentment, and having a purpose. And I needed that bad luck to have good luck. And so it turns out that sometimes bad luck is good luck in disguise. And it turns out that good luck is sometimes bad luck in disguise. And so that's where it all started. I basically had no choice at 15 years old, but to start a business, never crossed my mind, school never taught me about business, I never understood anything about what an entrepreneur meant or was. And I had no choice but to become one because I didn't have a national insurance card for those living in England, they'll know what that is, but basically a card that gives me permission to work. I didn't have that, I didn't have an address to get one of those. And therefore, I literally had no choice but to start a business. I started a gardening company, and luckily it worked. And that business generated money for me to get out of homelessness, to where I am today, a multimillionaire able to give back and help others and feel useful in the world by helping others. That's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. With your retirement age, some people in the comments, I would read the comments, don't understand what you mean by retired at 40. What is your definition of retirement? So for me, it's not having to work unless I want to and having the ability to work on what I want to work on regardless of money. So that's sort of privilege where I'm not having to say yes to certain things to earn money. I can say yes to things because they feel right, I can say yes to things because it matches my mobile code, but I don't have to say yes to anything. I don't need the income. And I think it's quite a privilege and a powerful place to be, and that's how I define retirement. People misunderstand it as I'm sitting on a beach all day doing nothing or playing golf all day. That's not a purpose for life in my mind. At 40, I reached financial freedom and was able to do whatever I want to do. It's not just income, but it's also having the means to do big things, like start a platform that helps people for free, build their own business as I am doing today. I think that's what retirement to me is, is that freedom to do what you want. Retirement from the old way of thinking, retirement from this concept that the way to live is to earn a certain amount of money each month. I retired from that existence. I love that. And when you did hit that spot, how did you know it was that day? Do you remember that day? To be honest, it wasn't any particular day. I think it was a process. So I sold a company called Fluid that I'd built up to Price Waterhouse Cooper. And that process of selling that company took about a year. And once the company was sold and the money dropped in my bank account, I carried on working as normal. And I had another business, which was an investment business. We invested in startups. I carried on working that business. And about six months into that process, I thought I haven't spent a single pound dollar of the money that I had earned from selling my company. And I realized that perhaps I needed to take a break, stop for a while, and reassess what was important to me. And so that's what I did. And in that kind of, I guess, pause, I termed it as retirement. It kind of freed me from the constraints of what do you do when everybody sees you later? What do you do? And I just said I was retired for a while to give myself some breathing room to figure out what it is I wanted to do next. And in that breathing room period of time, COVID hit. And that hit me as I was reading about all these people that were losing their jobs, especially in the FNB industry. They didn't know what the future would look like. We're worried. At the same time, I was reading about how technology is going to disrupt us in the future. Cars are going to drive themselves. That means lorry drivers out of work, taxi drivers out of work. A lot of the people, ironically, that were actually relying on during times like COVID, all these jobs are going to get replaced by machines. And so yes, it's probably 10 years away, but that isn't that long. And my brain basically clicked into this idea, well, what if we give everybody the ability, if they wish, to start a business of their own, small or big, something purposeful that you can own. That's where my mind went. And then I realized, of course, back to the younger me, how education had let me down. Education system doesn't teach people business. It doesn't teach people financial literacy. People's first experience as young people is with debt. And I wanted to change that. So I set about trying to do that. And I think I think I've got the same exact kind of process being an educator, being a former high school teacher in maths. My classroom was surrounded by problem solving, featuring maths. That was the concept. And a lot of it was surrounding life lessons. And almost every time, every class, no matter what the age, from grade seven all the way through to grade 12, I would be telling people, right, financial maths is the most useful maths you can have forever. And if I was to restructure the education system, it would be focusing on self-awareness as early as possible, looking at financial fitness to then elevate to financial freedom. And with those two complementing each other, you have the third item, which is pivoting, being able to pivot to do something, anything you want at any time, because your self-awareness evolves, which is complemented by financial fitness, and then hopefully freedom to then go, right, actually, I want to try beer barista. It's going to be 12 months. Maybe I won't like hospitality, but I'm going to give it a go because if I fail, I still have that financial fitness slash freedom. Now, you said that you sold your company and you had the money in the bank. Doesn't the money get eaten up by inflation? It's not sitting there, is it Simon? So I think this narrative of how inflation eats your money is both true and not true. So of course, you can buy a house with that money, for example, and that house value go down. Don't call it inflation, we call it price devaluation. I can buy stocks and shares, and those stocks and shares can go down. Well, then I've lost money. We're not calling it inflation, we're calling it something else. I picked the wrong stock. So if I bought Netflix, I would have lost 80% of my money, right? So the narrative of how having money means you lose it to inflation somehow gives you the feeling that the only other alternative is to somehow invest it. Now, if you're investing it, you are risking it. I don't care how many times people tell me how solid the stock market is. We have never seen this time in history. We've never seen so many tech companies doing so many innovative, crazy things. That means today they're worth a billion and tomorrow they could be worth nothing. We have never seen such volatility in all sectors of society, thanks to the internet. So what did I do? Frankly, yes, I did what every financial advisor told me not to do, sat on the money. And what it did for me was a couple of important things that aren't talked about enough in society. First of all, it gave me my full focus, my brain, full focus on something more important than how much more money I could make. I wasn't busy checking my stock portfolio, my property portfolio, and managing the money coming in and counting how much more I had. I wasn't distracted by more. I was instead focused on something more important, purpose. Back to your point earlier, inward thinking, what makes me tick? What makes me happy? And what can I do to make the world a better place for my son? If I make more money and give him more money when I die, will the world be a better place? Well, not if I don't spend time with him, not if I don't teach him values that are important to the future. If I don't, kids don't do what you say, they do what you do. And so it was very tempting to listen to all these financial advisors and all these people who know money so well, telling me, well, Simon, deploy that money and make more money. Yes. But what about the impact on society? So I decided instead of just giving money to charity and ticking a box that I would do the hard thing instead, I will build a structure that fixed a problem that matters to me, a problem that I think ultimately if fixed can actually make the world a much better place, fix the education system so people financially literate, fix the systems for people asked, what is your purpose younger? Help people figure out what their purpose is and then give them the tools to have what I call informed consent. When you leave school, you should have an option to start your own business or work for someone else. 99% of people feel they have no choice but to go get experience working for someone else. And that's because we haven't given them the experience within the education experience. So coming back to your question, I initially sat on the money and yes, inflation at 4.5% of it. Yeah. And when you have something like the legacy that you're building for your son and others, when someone does start a business and it becomes successful and then all of a sudden, let's say they want to pivot and let's say they sell the business and again, hypothetically, the money that they get from it probably can get them X amount of years to build their own legacy. But that red line is creeping. Should they worry about it or should they look at it where something does tick over and makes more money for them just in case? The secret to success and I've interviewed over 200 the world's most successful entrepreneurs and personally built 18 companies invested in 76 startups and this is the lesson I've learned. You have to go all in if you want to succeed. You have to be willing to risk it all. You have to go up to the red line and laugh and jump. If you don't believe, who else is going to? Yeah, people get distracted with plan B. The Vikings used to call it burning the boats. You land on an island called England. You burn the boats behind you. You will conquer that land. If you have the boats to go back on at some point, you'll panic and go back on those boats and you will lose. You have to go all in and this is a concept that people don't understand. They're not playing life like a video game. They should. You have to go all in. Yes, you might fail, but you went all in. You won't have a regret trying. People only regret what they don't do, not what they do do. There's no contingency plan only going forward. There is no option. I learned this at 15 years old because I had no choice but to make my first business work. I had no experience, no money, no network. I made it work because I had no choice but to make it work. With that gardening business, how did you fund it further to grow it? It's so simple and it's a formula that I have literally copied and pasted my whole life since. I learned it by accident and it's simply this. The number one thing I think that people don't give themselves the time to learn that will change their lives. If they changed their opinion about this word and understood how powerful it was to build anything, they would do it. That word is sales. Everybody can sell. It's often your own mind that tells you you can't. An artist can sell. All they have to do is paint something and show it. They don't even have to speak. You need to get attention on it. Sales is what built my life up. I knocked on someone's door and said, hey, looks like you've got a messy garden. Can I take care of it for you? They said, sure, how much do you charge? I said, £200 a month. They said, great. When can you start? From that moment, I then learned, okay, I need a deposit, 50%. They agreed and gave me the deposit. Then I went and got 12 people like that in a day. I used that money from that deposit to buy, no, I rented the equipment at first to rent the equipment. Then I did a bar to deal with a local cricket club to give me a shed to keep all that equipment in. In return, I would cut the grass of that club. I actually ended up living in that clubhouse and having all my equipment in that clubhouse. My office rent was free. My home rent was free. The money I had coming in from the business started to grow and I built a business. When competition came along with millions of pounds of funding, I beat them because I already had the relationship with a client. I already started servicing it to a good standard and I was lower than they could be because they had all this million pound overhead income expectation. I won because I risked everything. I had nothing to lose and I followed that exact formula, both cash flow-wise and mentality-wise. My whole career sense and it has made me rich. It's something I know for sure. Everybody out there that says they can't start a business because they've got no money should realize it's a competitive advantage having no money. Love that. You mentioned you built a relationship. Can you briefly cover your importance of networking? I think the word network is your network. This kind of sentence is networking things a little bit overplayed. This is actually the argument I hear for why people should go to university. Spend four years of your life and get into debt, learning marketing, which you can learn in real world in a month and you'll build a network. Well, I personally have built networks around the purpose of my business. A big network is pointless unless it has a focus. For example, the gardening company, I built a network of clients and then I asked those clients to recommend me to their neighbors. Great. Then I hired people to help me do the gardens and their networks I tapped into and then I hired someone from a marketing background to support me and teach me marketing and I became a marketing expert eventually myself but I learned from them and I got their network. You don't need to spend four years at university building a network. I love that. You said build four years building a business and the network becomes your business. Yeah, exactly. Go into the practical side of it. Even work for free at the start if you have to to get the runs on the board and go from there. If your work is good and you believe in your product or service, they will pay you eventually. You just got to prove your worth and that's the other thing that I tell my students, say, how do you get started? What if I don't have experience? Get it because if you offer it for free, you can't compete against free work and that's what I did with my photography. They're saying photography is a saturated market. They say wedding photography is a saturated market and I went in and went, you know what? I'm just going to teach couples what they need to know for their wedding day and I'm going to pepper in that I'm a wedding photographer. I did that on TikTok booked out for two years and now I'm consulting other businesses on how to do it. I learned marketing but with that speaking of consulting because that's really what I'm getting into. I love the whole helping businesses and problem solving. Again, back to that maths thing, right? It's a bit of a selfish question for me personally. I can do sales but for some reason I feel like I believe in my product and I'm compassionate about it but I am so much more comfortable when I get approached from people saying, hey, saw you from this person or saw you online. Can we work together? Can you teach me? And that happens already and I've made five times my school salary within two years so I'm successful in that department but if I wanted to scale and grow further I have to actually sell myself now to really cast the net out and the question is why do I feel hesitant to want to sell? Why do I feel that I don't provide enough value even though I've got the runs on the board? What advice would you have for me? By the way, I think what you're talking about a lot of people will relate to and this is what I mean. If I say the word sales people almost repel. Everyone wants to buy something and no one wants to sell something. So if you can learn to sell you're going to have a leg up and like anything if you if when I was younger of course I wanted beautiful women to just come up to me and start talking to me of course. I love this analogy already. So who would have want to just stand there and then beautiful women come up to you say, hey, can I can I just ask you a question Simon? Of course, wouldn't that feel good? Wouldn't that feed my ego? Let's be real. The world doesn't work this way. So there's two ways to get what you want in sales. There is what we call reactive sales and proactive sales. Reactive sales is the natural instinct of everybody. You come and pitch to me and I'll make a decision whether or not I'm going to buy from you. You want someone to come and sell to you. There's the irony. There's the irony. You want someone to come and pitch to you. Hey, I saw you. You're amazing. Would you mind doing my wedding? You want the very thing you don't like to do to happen to you. So reactive sales is pretty easy for everybody. Proactive sales is what separates great businesses from crap businesses, in my opinion. Businesses, one man ban businesses, you can often get away with this kind of people will approach you mindset. But if you want to grow and if you want to build a life that's sustainable, you need to learn that sales is just a process like any other. It's just a process. Stop making it emotional. It's a process. You have to have a process for selling yourself. Now one element of that process could be making a TikTok. One element of that process can be putting up a social media post. But we've also got to realize that that is not as effective as we wish it to be. We've got to be sometimes very straightforward, like knock on someone's door and say, I hear, see, you have a messy garden. Let me take care of it. Your window cleaning company, you see dirty windows knock on the door. If you're in a help someone dress better business and someone walks by you and they're messily dressed, you stop them and you give them your car. Step up. Sell. Be proud. Sales is a process. It is a very, very simple process. People just do it all the wrong way around. When they do it all the way the wrong way around, they get rejected and we find rejection hard. But if you can learn to accept rejection, then you can learn to win. And that's all it is. It's just toughening up. And then once you do it, life changes in dramatic ways. You'll stop saying you need money to start a business because you don't. You need other people's money to start a business. You need people to buy your product so that you've got a business. That's what you actually need most of the time. Such gold. Such gold. It reminds me of my very first $100,000 client I got last year. They reached out to me to do a collaboration on TikTok. Now they reached out to me for my services already. But then I monitored and had a look at what they were doing on their end, which wasn't much. So I came up to them and pitched, said, hey, who's monitoring your TikTok account? You're a 260 plus franchise restaurant in Australia. Who's monitoring your TikTok? And then they said, can you do it for us? I'm like, yes, I can. And they said, how much? I was at that point, I was caught offside, but I still went in. I followed that process. And it's a natural thing, but there's still times of hesitation because I want to almost guarantee that they will succeed. And in the marketing world, I'm hesitant because I'm seeing a lot of one, snake or salesman, and two agencies that have a creative, have a good idea, but there's no real tangible way to measure that creative and that success besides vanity metrics, but doesn't put the money in the pockets of those clients. And that's where I'm kind of still hesitant because I know I can fill the top of the funnel. I know I can get attention. I've done it with myself, done it with many other clients. And going back to my school days as a teacher, I would still put some of the failure of the students on me. Had I done enough? And I think that there is me walking on eggshells now, going, okay, if I onboard this business, because I'm not just doing the content for them now, I'd rather just consult and teach internal marketing teams. But is there success or failure completely about me? And I think that's where I'm still hesitant on pulling the trigger as often. What are your thoughts on that? So a lot of what you're talking about is self-confidence, to be honest. It's wrapped up in a good model code. You don't want to promise something that can't be done. I think that's a great attitude to have. I would say, however, that you have to believe in what you can do. And then as long as you're clear about what you can definitely do, and let's say for argument sake, come up with a creative concept, and what the result of that will be, are two separate things. Because luck is very important in life, not talked about enough. Luck is key to almost everything. So you can't predict in that moment whether or not it will definitely fill the final for those folks. But you can make a good prediction and limit expectations. Now, what I used to do towards the end of my, I guess, fully fledged income career, is I used to put my money where my mouth was. And instead of saying to a client or a partner, hey, I will charge you to do this creative and I will charge you to then press the go button. I would go one step further and say what I actually want to do is buy equity in your business and then take that money and spend it on this campaign. And if the business does well, I make money. If it doesn't, I make nothing as well. If your company doesn't grow, doesn't do well, my equity is worthless. So I think almost having so much confidence in what you do that you actually end up being a part of what you're doing and not benefiting unless the organization that you're working with, all the individual that you're working with benefits is true confidence and alignment. So I always saw my clients as partners and I have that philosophy in everything I do today. Everybody I help, their success is my success. I don't make anything from helping people. And they don't do well, then I don't do well. It's that simple. Yeah, I feel the same. I say to them, my end result is you telling me we got a lot of attention from this if I'm doing the top of the funnel part or better, we made money from you, Seth. Thank you so much. Let's do it again. That's my end goal. And without that, I don't feel like I've achieved what I wanted to achieve. And I've had clients hire me to fill the top of the funnel, get a lot of attention. I have a client who is a builder, a building company, a residential building company, and they are the most followed builder now on social media. And they have the most followed TikTok page in Australia and started at zero before I came in. So that's a big accolade. Going back to your life and thank you for the wisdom, what was your biggest setback before escaping the rat race? I think my biggest setback is always just myself. I think we all go through this. I have had many points in my life, a sense of imposter syndrome. And when you come from nothing and you're homeless and you have no education, then sometimes I've sat in rooms where I'm advising CNN on their marketing strategy. And I have had moments where I'm sitting there thinking, well, what do I know? How is this happening? I've had almost like a detached moment where I look up at this. I feel that. Yeah. And I think sometimes in those moments, you either lean into that imposter syndrome and live on the expectation or you get scared and stop thinking big. And so I have the more confident that I get. And the more I realize how the world works, the more I realize, if you're going to think, you might also think big. And the bigger you think, actually the easier it gets. And if you look at how some of the biggest operators in the world succeed, it's because they think big. And people think that running a small company is easier than running a big company. No, it's not. Running a big company is a lot easier. People think working for someone else is easier than working for themselves. No, it's not. That's why anyone that's worked for themselves for a year often will never want to go back working for someone else. Why? You want market research, 99% of people will be that way. They might moan about being an entrepreneur. I kind of feel like... I moan every day. Of course. But you'd moan every day if you worked for someone in a different time. I would moan harder. I would moan harder, Simon. Absolutely. It would be a different type of moan. It would be a mute kill my soul type of moan. Exactly. Because when you moan about your own business, it's actually bringing you alive. It's making you fight. It's telling your subconscious to get on with it. It's an important moan. And I think that's the differential that isn't highlighted enough. When entrepreneurs moan about how hard it is, what we're actually saying is we feel very lucky to be here and we don't want it to slip away. Absolutely. I feel that. And I work best when my back's against the wall and I have nobody else to go, hey, someone above me, can you help? No, it's all me. I ask for help of other professionals in the same league, in the same industry. And that's where collaborative networking in the same field helps. Not competing. I am very competitive too. But at the end of the day, there's plenty of clients for everybody. And we can't possibly all serve every client. Talking about marketing and your blow up on TikTok over the last year, what made you pull the trigger on short form content? Well, I was retired when I started on TikTok. And I was, and I guess kind of still am, somewhat of a full-time parent in my mind. I had a little boy who I adore. And I absolutely love looking after him and spending time with him and felt very privileged that I could do so. But I felt like I needed human connection. I think we all did, I guess, during COVID as well. And I heard about two things. Clubhouse. Yeah, exactly. And so I kind of jumped in, really wanting to socialize when I had time to. And I had time to when my little baby was asleep. And that baby was often asleep on my chest. So I could go on to social media platforms and make posts on TikTok and upload it. It wasn't live really then. And I uploaded content that I felt might be useful to those people out there that were struggling, those that didn't have a job, or those that couldn't find one. I wanted to give them tools to create one for themselves. And it felt good to upload that video. And then I would go live on Clubhouse and talk to people who had issues and needed help. And that felt good. I felt like I had a human connection. And I actually made real friends during that time online that turned into real world friends. And so I guess as now COVID almost feels like it's in the mirror, which is great. I feel like I kind of got into a good habit of putting up content regularly to bring value to the people that I felt needed it and to make me feel useful and make me feel seen. And so like you said about fitness, health, business, financial health, I feel like the same about social media health. I learned that to be healthy on social media, you need to be regular and you need to be persistent. Consistency and patience as well. And patience. Yeah. I mean, I still have it today. I have a video that got 22 million views and I have a video that's had 5,000 views. It is what it is. It doesn't matter. And I think that's part of the reason I've got a video that's got 22 million views, because it took two years to get a video that has 22 million views. I love that. And you build the brand. You build the brand. You build the consistency. You learn how to do it. I'm still learning how to do it. I'm still playing around with it. I'm still making mistakes with it. And I think that's what a lot of companies struggle with. They're like, oh, we want to do the perfect post and we want to make it go viral. That's my issue right now with company clients. They hire me to help them. And then when I give them their content pillars, the ones that are disruptive and different to the rest of their competitors, they go, oh, no, no, no, we can't do that. Nobody else is doing that. And what do you mean? That's a good thing. How do I break through that? Don't try to convince clients to do it. Just do it yourself. And I have done that and it worked and then they took the praise, which is fine because I still got paid. But yeah, it's an interesting one. I think the rise of individuals is quite exciting. I believe that businesses like Google and Facebook are going to get disrupted by someone who's going live on TikTok today. And they might not see it. These big companies won't see it. But you only have to look at little shoots of this starting to happen with folks like the Kardashians becoming the largest makeup brands in the world and so on. Influence and attention is going to beat these brands. And people won't want to use Google anymore. They won't want to use Facebook anymore because they won't know who's behind them. Yeah, they want to create a to get word of mouth from because that's really what it is. They're just using creators. But that's not the same as what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like someone like yourself and the people listening. They can be the next Google and people get their head around this, the influence and connection and the ability now to reach tens of millions of people for free in the next five minutes is mind blowing. It's ridiculous. So you've started making content and you're making a lot of content. You go down the street and doing the interviews and you have a content team now. I would imagine a videographer and an editor or all of the above in one person. How do you structure your social media team to help you produce this content now? Yeah. So just to say, I started out just me. I'm phoned in front of my face. I remember the selfie walk along. Excuse me. Ask your question. And so sometimes people overthink it. And I know from experience that best thing to do is just start. And as I did it and it got traction, I realized that I personally like to do things in a high quality way. And therefore it's okay to do it initially in a what we call MVP, minimum viable product way. But there comes a moment where you either do it right or don't do it. And I think I love the idea of, and I've done this with every business, you start off keeping costs low and trying to figure out what the formula is for success. And once, because you don't know how long that can take. So you need to keep your costs low until you know what the formula is. And then once you find a formula, then you must invest in scaling up. Because if you found a formula and you don't scale up, one of two things happen. Either you burn out because you cannot handle it all on your own. I'm there right now. Yeah, it happens. And or someone else does it and you lose. Yeah, I'm literally there right now, not burnout, but starting to delegate and expand my help. I've got a helper, an assistant who's a brilliant creator himself. And he's appointing, I'm appointing him as the creative director of my brand. Whilst I run the mill of my consulting and my workshops for how to utilize TikTok reels and shorts for one's business. But I also want to keep my own personal brand going, run the mill of Seth and my connection with the kids. Because my philanthropic goals are, much like yourself, give back and educate them that they can live the life that they've always wanted. Sorry, my dogs are barking for some reason. Moving into the philanthropical stuff as well, what is the biggest thing about your social media that has done for you on a philanthropical level? Well, I really like the idea of making social media have social good. And I think there's a lot of negative about social media and there is a lot of negative to be said about social media. But I want to focus on the power it has to make a difference. So an example would be, for me, two things. One, I don't want a social media following for my own ego's sake. It certainly feels good to have something that's working. But I love the idea that my platform is there to highlight other people's dreams and to help other people's dreams happen. And that's really exciting to me. I can build up a following and that following then can be leveraged to help someone's dream come true. Then I feel like that makes the social media worth it. The other side of it I find really exciting is this kind of idea that let's say I've got 1.2 million followers on TikTok at the moment. Let's say every single one of those people joined me in this give about take idea and did one kind gesture for a stranger today, whatever that is, listened to someone that needed some listening to, bought the person behind you a coffee, did something nice for a stranger. Imagine if 1.2 million people did that today. A couple of amazing things would happen. The people that actually gave that help would sleep better because giving is something if you feel deep. The second thing is the person you actually gave help to would feel good. And the third thing is that person that actually was helped would remember that that's in us and would help someone else. Domino effect would be huge. Absolutely. And so that's why I try to encourage in my community, let's not judge. Let's not judge each other. Let's help each other. Help without expectations. Very powerful. I've made a big mistake in my life under this concept of give and take. Give and take is wrong. If I give someone something and I expect something in return, I've often been disappointed. It's transactional. It's transactional. They didn't pay me the money back. They didn't give me enough respect. They didn't say thank you enough. You know, whatever it they lied to me, whatever it is, you end up disappointed. It's why you end up having follow up sayings like no good D goes unpunished. Well, that's because you had expectation. Right. In fact, the key is not give and take, but give without take. Help someone because it's the right thing to do. Absolutely. And if you can and do it because it will make you feel good if you want to build a selfish element into it. And so, yeah, that that's something I feel very strongly about. And when you asked me about the effect of social media, is that the ability to affect change and affect change in a way that, you know, literally can solve world hunger? You know, if everybody followed everybody's kind gesture today, everybody that wasn't having food in their hand today probably would by the end of the day. That's amazing. So speaking of feeding hands and feeding your own hand as well. What would you say to people who are hesitant to start showcasing their business on on a platform like TikTok? So I think the most important element of social media is that you you enjoy it. And so if if you genuinely don't enjoy doing it, then get someone else to do it or don't do it. There are plenty of ways to get noticed. And for example, again, you know, knocking on someone's door as I did and saying, Hi, I'd like to clean your windows or I like to do your gun. You know, sometimes people are overlooking this very simple approach. But social media has the power to reach a lot of people quickly. So make sure that you're not avoiding fear. Make sure you lean into fear because fear is actually an asset. It's misunderstood in today's society. People think that theory is something you're meant to turn off when someone asks you to do something and you feel fear and you can just say no, right? You're not meant to say no, you're meant to say yes, you're meant to lean into fear. It's an asset, originally designed. Alliance coming towards you, you see it coming towards you. You can run faster. You can think differently. It is actually a superpower. So I think, you know, be careful with social media. If you're not doing it through fear, then overcome that fear, lean into it. If you're doing it because you don't enjoy it, that's different. If you're an introvert, for example, maybe write good blogs and post them on platforms like LinkedIn. Learn to leverage your superpower and apply it so it's sustainable. Don't have to do short form content just because that's the trendy thing right now. Do what suits you because long term it's about sustainability. It's about persistence and consistency. I love that. If we can go into the deep dives of the three characters in my mind from your socials, the first one being the guy that you interviewed last week, the one that went really viral, the big one. I couldn't catch his name. David A. The black pill. No, not the chef, the one that was holding the sign. Right. Yes. So all right. So for people who aren't aware, I interviewed someone. I interviewed people every day, pretty much every day in the street, and I asked people what their dreams are. They tell me those dreams and we try to figure out a way to make them happen. That's the premise of most of the content. Now, in the amazing amount of incredible people that I've interviewed in the street, not everyone agrees with my philosophy that anyone can be if they wish an entrepreneur. Not everyone agrees with this philosophy. And I love debating it, right? Because, of course, people will say to me quite often, well, Simon, if everyone becomes an entrepreneur, who's going to pick up the rubbish? And I think it's a really sad narrative that somehow if we give everybody knowledge, that means we don't have slaves anymore. To me, that's what the translation is. It's like, well, we need people to do all those shit things, Simon. So let's not give everybody the knowledge because then they won't do the shit things. And I think that's really dangerous. And so, however, there are people that have a job that I would consider not enjoyable, that they enjoy. And if they do, then great. And recently, I interviewed a man who was standing, it was actually sitting on a stool holding a sign that said, get a university debt, zero percent interest free for six months, sign. And he was just standing there, or sorry, he was sitting on a stool holding the sign. It was a sunny day, which always helps when that's your job, I think. And I was interested in why he was doing that job and how he felt about it. So we've all probably seen these folks standing in the streets holding these signs. And I thought it'd be interesting to go and ask him. And he basically replied, I said, it's a three minute video, so I'll try to sum up. I asked him, why do you do this job? And long story short, he basically said, I love this job. This is the best job I've ever had. My ambitions is just to hold this sign. I love it. And some people have described this like the Matrix movie. It's like the blue pill meets the red pill. I believe the human being is an incredible thing and that we are capable of anything, absolutely anything. And I do think that a human being, as incredible as they are, being then a replacement for a brick that could hold that sign, a brick could hold that sign up, right? And then I think how amazing a human is, you know, like Elon Musk invented a human tomorrow, it would cost him a trillion dollars and it would be worldwide headlines. A trillion dollars he's made a human, we'd be amazed, he's created a being that can think for itself and then we get them to hold a sign in the middle of the street, something a brick couldn't do, right? Now, I cannot compute with it, but he said he enjoyed it. So there was literally a 50-50 split when I put the video up and I put the video up for a reason. It wasn't my traditional video actually. My traditional video is someone tells me their dream and we make it happen. But I put the video up because I think it's important to have this discussion about the red pill and the blue pill, right? And back to the narrative that everyone will tell you that being an entrepreneur is so hard. The next day, that guy is standing in the pouring rain holding the sign. The day after that, his boss says there's no job for you anymore, right? And so to me, his moment of happiness holding that sign, very important to live in the now, is amazing. But equally, there is an element of me that feels like he's not aware that he can have control. So I attempted to give him control. I attempted to suggest, well, why don't I help you start your own sign business, right? Have your own fishing boat, because people use the fishing boat with energy about the guy that wanted to. Take him how to fish. Have loads of restaurants. I wasn't saying open loads of restaurants. I was saying, have your own destiny in your own hands. And he basically said no. I really like just holding someone else's sign and sitting here in the sunshine with, you know, no responsibility. I'm happy. And although I think I was very respectful, but definitely his philosophy isn't a philosophy that I feel is good for society. And I, yes, I, again, in the comments, people were saying, oh, Simon's script looks more stressed than the guy holding the sign. As if having no stress equals a better life. And the narrative I'm trying to push is that we are here to challenge ourselves. We're here to leverage this incredible brain and ability to move humanity forward and create. And the education system on top of the debt system has almost tried to dumb us down into batteries for the system. Robots that are willing to do jobs to please the, without getting into conspiracy theories, but the financial 1%, right? The financial 1%, because everything is driven by economics. And of course, they need someone to do these jobs. And so, but I'm here to tell the truth. I have nothing to gain by telling everyone they should work for themselves. I mean, what do I gain? No one wants to work for me because I'm telling everyone to work for themselves, right? So even in my own colleagues, my own team that you mentioned earlier, I give them all equity in the business, right? Because I feel like that's the only way to unlock what we have recreated is slavery. We have recreated slavery under this context of minimum wage, right? And so all I'm saying is if you are not a slave, I want to give you choice. And here is the option. Here's the education to give you choice. So you can go to an employer if you wish. And that's great. That makes you happy. But I don't want you to be forced to do that, because you've got no other options. And that that video symbolizes that struggle, I guess, that I have explaining this narrative. Because a lot of people would default to, well, he's happy. He's enjoying holding that sign. And I completely understand that. But equally, I was happy the next day not having to hold that sign. And instead being able to take my brain power and help another human being, something he was not able to do, hold that sign in the rain. That's what his boss told him to do. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't force it to drink it as well. I hardly think my job is to show the water and the horse and the horse that's not drinking and the horse that does and what happens if you don't drink as a horse? Yeah, I have that contrast. I really appreciate your really extended answers and rants. I do have a few more questions. But if you're ticking over for time, just let me know. I did want to dive, do a mini deep dive into Andrea and Davide. But just quickly with Andrea, where is she at now? So I just got off the phone from Andrea before this call. And she had accommodation for the last six weeks. But the accommodation structures just run out. And so she's now back on the streets. And I was just talking to her about how we can get her back off the streets. And it's kind of a trap that someone like her is in, a trap that a lot of people are in. And just for the people listening, I don't care who you are, you're three steps away from being homeless potentially. You know, if something happens to your family, you're going to start drinking. If you can't make your bill payments this month, your household will get reclaimed. I know what it's like to be homeless. And I promise you everybody listening, I don't care who you are, you're three steps away from it. So have some compassion. Now, I cannot control the ridiculous government structure that's in place to help the homeless. And Andrea is caught in that system. But I am helping her break free through a couple of things. I've given her more money today to get accommodation again. And I, you know, there are complications around Andrea's story like everybody has complications around their story. And I am trying very hard to solve, help her solve the problems that she faces. So for example, she can't get a bank account. We've raised nearly 3 million. Let me get this number one. We've raised nearly 3,000 pounds in her GoFundMe that she cannot access because she doesn't have a bank account. So she wouldn't be on the street if the system that shouts that it offers homeless people bank accounts actually offered homeless people bank accounts because she's actually got the money to get a flat, right? Sitting on her public GoFundMe page. Anyone can go and see it, right? But because she can't get access to that, I'm personally funding her situation. And equally at the same time, the accommodation side is very frustrating. And it's a complicated story again, but getting accommodation for someone that's homeless, it's a very strange waiting list structure because there's too many people and not enough accommodation. So anyway, we have done a couple of great things for Andrea. She's taken these things and run with them. We have built her a social media presence in 48 hours. She went from never knowing how TikTok works to having a social media following of 110,000 people, which allows her to create monetization on TikTok, a combination of creative fund and gifting, and as you know as well, potential partnerships. She has a social media presence like no other homeless person in the UK and that community is supporting her. So that we have some structure that at least gives her some income and gives her access. And we bought her a phone so she has a good phone to operate these things on. She can get free Wi-Fi by standing outside certain F&B locations. And so we're almost there though. We're almost there. Accommodation is almost sorted. Access to the funds raised almost in her hands. And she has me and my team supporting her whenever she needs it. It is a frustrating situation the way the homelessness structure is built. And I know it's a global problem, not just in the UK. Very much so. In Australia also. Yeah, it's been an incredible learning curve for me. For someone that was actually homeless, I still don't understand how some of the systems are still so broken. And I get quite angry when someone like Andrea can't get a bank account and then therefore can't get the accommodation she needs. And we end up in this strange, repetitive, broken merry-go-round. The system isn't set up for you to succeed, but it's set up for you to fail even further once you do. Yeah. It's an astounding thing. And I mean, I've had situations in my mind with homeless, with ideas like, what if we trained the homeless with phones that have the cameras to make content for businesses in exchange for food, first and foremost. Social media is in demand, content is in demand, attention is one of the biggest, more valuable than oil, apparently. Why not use that as a thing? I completely agree. I mean, this is one of the narratives I'm trying to educate people on. People tell me I shouldn't be filming helping people. Well, my point is, if I hadn't filmed what's happening with Andrea, there wouldn't be awareness of what's happening. And that equally, Andrea wouldn't have a community and wouldn't have an income stream. And I feel like we've got to raise awareness. The old system doesn't work this whole like, I'm helping people behind closed doors and not telling anyone about it. It's not helping. That's what I'm seeing as well. And I'm not shitting on these people, but they just go, hey, I'm going to do a good deed today. Here's me doing a good deed. Please. Hopefully, there's going to be some views and followers behind this. It's such a trending thing. And then someone like yourself comes along and goes, I actually want to teach you how to fish. That's the difference. And as well-hearted, these kids are coming out and giving away hundreds of dollars just as a good deed. There needs to be more in terms of that teaching how to fish. And teaching how to fish, you're doing that with Davide. Quick update on him? Yes. So this story is so heartwarming. I saw a man walking towards me with a bounce in his step. And as he walked towards me, I said, what's your dream? And he almost walked by me. And he just turned and said, my dream is to open up a restaurant. And I basically said to him, well, how can we make it happen? And the video went crazy viral. I mean, and TikTok, it got 22 million views on Instagram. I think it's 12 million views on Facebook. It's 11 million views. Just huge, half the population of the UK have seen that video. And so incredible. And then basically, he cooked for me and my team at Entrepreneur House. And the food was mind-blowingly good. And yes, exactly. Which is what everyone wanted to hear. And it was true. It was amazing. And we recorded it and we created a YouTube video about it. People can go and watch it. And then from that, we're like, right, what's the next step to make David's dream happen? And what I really love about what David wants to do is a large part of what he wants to do is build a F&B business that actually cares about the staff. Because most of the F&B businesses, you know, we all probably know how badly treated a lot of the F&B people are. If you go to any chain restaurant quite often, the staff don't even get the tips, you know, and then they're long hours and not allowed to call in sick and stuff like this. So David's whole thing is like building an incredible experience for customers, of course. But the restaurant model is about looking after the people that work there. And I really love that it's needed. He's a chef who feels, you know, he's seen it all and how badly treated staff have been in F&B locations. And he wants to change that and prove that that could be a profitable thing to do. Amazing. Looking at building a business with somebody else, you were your latest post is about partnering with someone to potentially raise a billion dollar business. Someone that is ahead of you in that scope. How do you know, obviously, besides the success and the experience, that they're the right fit for you as a partner to accelerate or excel you and go the next step further? Yeah. So this question to me is like asking, how do I know the person I'm dating right now is the one I should marry? Pretty much. Yeah. I think sometimes like in business, it's very similar to like your personal life and relationships. You have to date people. And I think people rush into things, but equally, they don't make decisions when the time feels right. You know, like there's always going to be potential problems in a marriage, as there would be with if you teamed up with someone in business. I think the most important thing you've got to do is check out someone's mobile code. You got to understand, no agreement is going to protect you from a bad person. So what you want to do is figure out if this person is good or bad, that's it. And good or bad is subjective, but what matters to you? What's the red line to you? So my first business partner, Helen, I learned something very important about her. We had one month where cash flow was bad. And I said to Helen, I can either pay you or I can pay the staff. Now you're, you know, my partner, I know you've got bills should pay you first. And she said, I will find a way of sorting out my bills. We have to pay the people in this company first. And, you know, those sorts of moments can't be faked. You know, those sorts of moments where people do cause personal pain for themselves to make sure no pain is inflicted on the people around them is the sort of people I want to be in business with. And so, you know, there's things that happen to determine, I think, mobile code, but you need to look out for it. And that's the only thing you need to worry about when it comes to business partners. Do these people have the same mobile code as you? Are they narcissist or not? Are they going to be fair and reasonable when problems come up? Because I promise you problems are going to come up. And that's key. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. What's on the horizon for you in the next few years or months? I will continue to build the platform that I'm building. I will never charge people for help. I will, I will rather go bankrupt than go back on that promise. I am trying to build a sustainable model that helps people who have a dream make it happen. And it's a big task. And I'm going to every single day get better at that task by 1% until I deliver on this fate I feel that I've been given to make sure that anyone that has a dream can actually have the tools and resources and privilege to make it happen. And make sure people have the chance. And you said at the beginning of this interview to actually think about what their purpose is earlier on in their lives. Give them a chance to realize whatever their dream is, it is possible. It is possible. And don't let anyone tell you, we can't do it. You can. And that's what I'm going to spend the next 20 years trying to build. And how would you want your son and your future grandchildren, hopefully to remember you? So I often say this, you know, kids don't do what you say they do what you do. They don't do what you say they do what you do. It is so true. So I would love it if my son remembers that to give about take will make him happy. And if he sees people being kind because of this movement that me in the community behind me are trying to pursue, then I'll be proud and happy. He will be happier. I know it if he learns that having all my money in his bank account so he can buy a Ferrari and do what he wants might feel good temporarily, but actually will not make him happy or the world a better place long term. And I think he already knows this. And so I want him if he watches this recording later to know I'm already very proud of him. He's the most amazing five year old boy ever ever ever known. He's kind and generous and sweet. And I want him to continue to be that way as an adult. I love it. It's a perfect ending to a really wonderful interview. And thank you so much for the chat. I could talk for hours and I know it's morning for you here over there in the UK on a Monday. A Monday morning where the sun is shining and you're ready for the day. Something that I always say, if you're not happy with your Monday, you have to change your circumstances because the circumstances are what drives you towards your happiness. And you have to make sure you make that shift. Otherwise you live with regret or end up having regretful things looking back in when you're 80 years old. Yeah, I've I've managed to do it one hour just a bit over. Thank you so much for your time, Simon. And I look forward to continuing. I'm super glad that I came across you on I think it was Clubhouse we first interacted. That's where I learned how to talk to people and practice and pitch and not even pitch and never call it pitching just the sales thing and just talk my mind. Speak with confidence and compassion and really believe in myself. And that's something I always drive for people with their business. Whatever business that you want to start, you have to make sure that there's some good intent there. All of its good intent. Because if you don't, then you're just trying to make money as fast as possible. One, that doesn't really fulfill you anyway. And two, the people that you serve, they're going to be hard done by or felt hard done by. So I'd love to have an update in a year's time or so. And I look forward to it. And thank you for everybody that's watching. You can find Simon Squibb in the direct caption of this episode. And feel free to hit him up. He's probably bombarded all the time. But a great man. And I look up to him and I'm inspired by him. And thanks again, Simon. Thank you very much. And you're doing a great job too. Keep up the good work. Thank you.