 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. I had a difficult upbringing, a very, very difficult upbringing. My dad was a raging alcoholic. We'd drink three or four bottles of wine a night, didn't work, was quite a violent man. So the business that I started off the back of reading his book three years later, that same billionaire bought 50% of the company for a quarter of a million pound. So from 22, one man in Havana started. Fast forward to 29 years of age, I was running the largest independent boiler installation company in the UK. Doing a million in sales a month, we had 100 employees. We operated in every major city in the UK. It was a crazy, crazy journey. And I took major sacrifices. I had a girl from four years, within eight weeks, she was gone. Yeah, gone. Because she just was like, fuck this. You never hear anymore. And I was like, look, I ain't going to be around. This is how it's going to be now. From here on in, not a year, not two years. This is how it's going to be. This is my life now. I'm building an empire. You'll never see me. I want to build an empire and it comes with sacrifice. It comes with sacrifice on physical health, mental health, relationships, everything, right? But how bad do you want is the question, you know, you look at Elon Musk and what he's achieved, that guy sleeping on the floor doing 22 hours of days in these factories. We won national installed of the year in 2019, September. And then by December, we were in bad trouble. And I was like, fuck, man, I'm going to lose this business. I'm going to go into the press. I'm going to be the first apprentice that failed. It was horrible. It was horrible what I was going through. How are we going? And today's guest, we've got apprentice winner Joe Valente. Thanks for having me, Joe. Good to see you. Excellent. Looking very colorful today. Looking good. I know. I thought I'd come down and make an impact. It's great outside, isn't it? So I wanted to bring you some sun. Good man. But when the apprentice 2015, but a roller coaster life that took your business, I think you were the first apprentice to buy your business back off of Lord Sugar, is that correct? That's right. Yeah. So I was in business with him for two years, two and a half years. And, you know, it was an amazing experience. I really, really blessed to have been given the opportunity. But after like two and a half years, I kind of found that there was only so far that I was going to go being Lord Sugar's business partner. Yeah, there are a lot of restrictions in place, things you're allowed to do, things you're allowed to say, activity you're allowed to do on social media, other business ventures. So I decided to, I started to speak to him and just say, look, you know, do you want me to go this far on in the podcast straight away now? Yeah, just go back to Bob's name and we'll go back to him. Yeah, okay. Cool. So, yeah. So I decided after two and a half years that, you know, there were restrictions in place. Everybody was saying to me, you're Lord Sugar's business partner. I was like, no, I'm Joseph Valente. I wanted to be known as my own brand. And they'd helped me quite a bit in the business, but actually I found that they were limiting me. You know, I wanted to become a national plumbing and heating business. And Lord Sugar wanted me to make a bit of profit, tick along in the background, come out every year on the your hide show. And so he could say, look at my apprentice winners, they're making some money. And you know, I quit my job and started a business in 2012 at 22 years of age, because I read Lord Sugar's book. And he inspired me because he was a guy that had built a billion dollar empire. And I was never going to build a billion dollar empire, James, by being in his shadow, you know, and I wanted to go big. And I genuinely believe that he was afraid of that risk by growing too quickly. So I said to him, one day, listen, if you don't want to take the risk on, let me buy you out. I'll go it alone. And if it fails, it's all on my shoulders. A lot of pressure, bro. I always go back to the start of my guests, where you grew up and how it all began. Okay. So I grew up in a city called Peterborough, a working class family. I had a difficult upbringing, a very, very difficult upbringing. My dad was a raging alcoholic. We'd drink three or four bottles of wine a night, didn't work, was quite a violent man. My mum works three jobs to keep our family alive, to keep food on the table. She did cleaning, she did a lady, all these low paying jobs that she could kind of squeeze in between running the family as well. And, you know, we really, really struggled. We didn't have gone holidays, didn't go on school trips, didn't have new stuff. And I remember thinking very early on, kind of from like four or five years of age, that this isn't what life is all about. You know, why are we struggling? Why are there other people out there that can have whatever they want? And yet, we seem to always be under so much pressure, so much stress. And I made a decision very, very early on, very early on, that I was never, ever going to live my life in the way that I was growing up, ever. And I had an uncle who was very, very wealthy, very wealthy. He'd built an incredible career, started from the bottom, had built his way up through corporate. And I used to see him twice a year. Big tall guy, six foot three, full head of hair, would walk into a room in an amazing suit, strong, confident, wherever we, wherever we went, everybody would respect him. And he would come down in a brand new car, you know, we would have some banged out, A-Redge, Sierra, or Fiesta, or whatever car we could afford at the time. And I remember looking at my dad, and then I'd look at my uncle. And my uncle was my mum's brother, and my dad was from Italy. And I'd look at the two guys, and I'd say, how does one man have this existence? And how does one man have this existence? And why are they different? What is it about these two men that he's gone so far wrong, and he's done so fantastically well? And so I decided to mimic my uncle. I didn't want to become like my dad. I was embarrassed of my dad. I kind of hated my dad, but I wanted to become my uncle. And so I think I was very blessed in the fact that I saw somebody that was close to me that had broke the system, yeah, and that had been able to achieve success. So I believed it was possible for me. How are you at school? Do you have that mindset at school, though, seeing things differently with you? A lot of people who can be daydreamers where school doesn't fit in with like you say it's a system, but is to break away from that system and be conditioned from a very young age to just go by society's rules and regulations where if you're a young kid and seeing that way not between your uncle and your dad and going, why is your dad doing that? So how were you at school? Did you see things differently as a kid with your owner? I was a really good student up until probably year four or year five. As soon as I hit like 10 years of age, started to get cocky, started to get confident, wanted to break all of the rules, started to answer my dad back. I was afraid of him when I was young. Yeah, and then I started to answer him back, started to push him, would get a slap, get a beating, and I wanted to just keep pushing it. I was like, screw this, right? I don't want to be told what to do. I don't want to come here. I don't like half of these lessons. Actually, I don't like 80% of these lessons. I'm bored here. Like you said, daydreaming, wanting to do the things that I wanted to do. I always had a very strong mind, always been very, very strong willed. So my dad left at 13. And as soon as he left, that was it, clubs are off. I became an absolute delinquent. I was out till three, four in the morning. My mum couldn't control me. I was doing whatever I wanted. I was hanging around with 16, 18, 20-year-olds as a 13, 14-year-old. And my life wasn't going anywhere fast. I was getting in a lot of trouble. I was getting arrested all the time. Things were not looking good for me. I was skype in school pretty much every day. I was doing whatever I could to not go there. And I was doing anything I could to be excluded. And then when kind of 14 and a half here, nearly 15, they expelled me. And it was kind of the worst and best thing that ever happened to me. Because I walked out of the, because if you tell me that I can't do something, then I will prove to you that I can do it. And I had a mindset at the time where everybody said that I was bad. Everybody said that I was going to end up in prison. Everybody said that my life was going nowhere. And I remember thinking, right, okay, you think I'm a bad child, watch how bad I can be. If you're going to label me that, I'm going to show you. Then I came out of the headmaster's office. My mum was crying. And I love my mum to bits. She's an incredible woman. And I remember it really hurt me. And I was looking at her and she just looked so fed up, so disappointed. And she just looked at me and she said, what are you going to do now? What are you actually going to do? You're finished. Yeah. And she wrote me off at 15 and said I was finished because I'd been expelled from this system where I didn't believe I was actually getting any value anyway. Why are you telling me to go to an art lesson when I can't draw? I'm never going to get good at drawing. So I don't see the point of coming here once a week and being told I'm no good at it, right? So I couldn't see the value in it anyway. And I remember looking back at her and saying to her, don't worry mum, I'm going to make it. Yeah. And then at that moment, James, I realized that up until this point, I blamed everybody for why everything was going wrong in my life. My dad, my mum, my stepdad, schools, teachers, everything was everybody else's fault. And I said, I'm sick and tired of your excuses. I said that to myself, sick and tired of your excuses. Everybody has left you now. You've got nobody left to go to. You're on your own and the cavalry isn't coming my friend. Okay, there's no one coming to save you and no one gives a shit about what you've got to say anymore. So it was like, right, I'm on my own now. So what am I going to do about it? If I carry on going this way, right, it's going to be game over for me. Or if I take that same passion, that same energy, that same enthusiasm that I have for all these bad things I was creating in my life and put that into something good, then wow, I can become somebody incredible. And so I chose that day to stop going to the park every single day, hanging around with these kids, doing things that I shouldn't be doing. And I decided to go to work. How hard was it for your mum, like obviously losing her husband as well, alcoholic, and then seeing her son, being expelled, that she must have worried at that time that you could have potentially chose the same path as your dad at a young age? Like how hard does that for a woman that I know how much you care about? Obviously we'll touch on later on then of you, but you would do anything for her, but also adding that pressure on to her life of pain, basically. You know what, up until probably very recently, my dad passed away about four weeks ago. It's okay. And I didn't really realise up until I'm 32 now, I'm nearly 33. And I didn't actually realise probably what the real reasons for his alcoholism was. I didn't understand mental health. I didn't know probably what was going on. You're a kid, you don't really understand these things. And so for me, at that time I didn't care. My dad left and our home growing up to 13 was hell on a daily basis. It was a horrible place to be. And then my mum went and found a new partner and within six months, she was with a new man. And she wasn't jumping around men. She's not that type of woman at all. But she looked after her family. She's probably worried about finances. She met this new guy. She had such a terrible time. But then I became an outcast in the family. I didn't want to go home. There was this new guy in my house and I just hated everyone. I was so angry, so pissed off. And I probably didn't care. Now I look back and I think I was not a good person. But I was in a very angry young teenager that was pissed off with the world and had a chip on his shoulder. And now I do really understand. And I think I'm forever trying to make amends with my mum and try and give her a nice life now for all of the bad stuff that I probably put her for and what she had to deal with as we were growing up. Yeah, that's all you can do now. So you decided to make a change, not hang about with the bad boys, not be drinking in the park. What was the next steps for you then to progress in life? So there was this really cool guy. His name was Darren Bordman. He was 25 years of age, good looking, always had in the local area the best girl. He had a BMW and he was a plumber. And he just started his own business. And he had quite a reputation locally. And I was his best friends with his cousin. And I was like, right, I'm going to go and ask him if I can come and work with him. I actually got sent to like a school for delinquents after I was expelled from like normal school. And it was like the craziest thing, right? Let's put every single nutcase in the city in one place, right? Because that's where they should all go, right? Let's put them all together. And then that's going to work really well. So I went to this other school, this unit called Leap. And it was just chaos, you know, every, every terrible kid just doing whatever they wanted. I was like, this is just not for me. It was out of control. I wasn't getting anywhere. It was worse than school. And so I decided to just quit. And I quit and literally no one contacted me. I just stopped going. I went there for about two months and stopped going, approached Darren and I said, look, I should be in school. I don't want to go back. Can I come and work for you for free for a year? Teach me everything you know about plumbing. When I turned 16, start paying me and put me into college. He just started his business. He didn't have a lot of money. So, you know, having a free work was great for him and having an apprentice. And then for me, it was amazing. So I got to hang around with him because he was a cool dude and I wanted to be like him anyway. And I also got to learn a trade. And that was such a pivotal moment for me. I went to work every single day. I was there on time. You know, I did everything I was told to do, never answered back, never any problems. And, you know, that changed my life that very moment. And that's what set me on this career to do what I do now in construction. Why do you think you held a job like going on time and actually listening, but you never done that at school? Because it's what I wanted to do. It's what I wanted to do. You know, it was simply because it was what I wanted to do. It's kind of my way or the highway. You know, and I wanted to be there, right? You know, and school, you're forced to go. I always find if anybody forces me to try and do anything, it kind of makes me get claustrophobic, right? And after just lash out or, you know, leave or whatever it may be, whereas this, it was my choice. No one was making me. You felt suffocated. Yeah. If somebody was putting pressure on you. Always I do, yeah. So when did you get into the boiler stuff? So fast forward two years, 18, qualified plumber, 19, qualified gas engineer. At that point I was making 50 grand a year at 19. I'd done really well, making double the teachers were making and, you know, everybody had wrote me off. And so, you know, my career had moved on quite quickly. Yeah. And then hit 21. And I was doing well against still making 50k servicing boilers every day. And I was like, what am I doing with my life here? Right? Just doing this every single day. I felt like I've already hit the ceiling and as far as I could go. So I was like, this can't just be it. I'd grown up in Peterborough. I'd lived in Peterborough for 21 years. And I said, right, I'm going to Australia. So I sold up, sold everything that I had, quit my job and moved over to Australia for six months. What'd you do there? Partied. Yeah. Traveled, worked, experienced life. Yeah. It was the most amazing experience. And anyone listening to this podcast is like, you know, in their late teens or early 20s or even mid 20s, right? Get out to Australia. Go and experience it. You know, there's plenty to do when you get home. You can build your career when you get home. But you only get, you know, that one shot at that youth and that freedom and that experience where nothing matters other than, you know, kind of where you're going to go and party the next night or what you're going to go and do the next day. So it was incredible. Do you think there's a lot of pressure on kids now working in 95 and just staying at that desk for the rest of their life? Like what people don't experience life? People go to Ibiza and go for five days or they go to Crete or Kavos or whatever as they go and they'll think they're living a high life. But like you say, traveling the world experienced different people experiencing like just different scenarios and learning from yourself. Like that life experience, you can't be taught that in college, school, university. It's like just understanding people and having communication skills and being bold enough to do things alone is where I believe your growth is. That's where you'll find out who you truly are as a person when you're alone and try to figure it out when you're surrounded by too many people, too many opinions, too many thoughts. It can drown you out your own noise and you follow other people's paths. Like how hard do you think it is for kids now to see the world a bit differently because there's so much conditioning from even their phones. I'm addicted to my phone and the shit that you're watching. It's just recommended to you and you actually start watching it and then before you know it, the brain's like a sponge. It absorbs everything. Do you think it's tough for kids now to make choices to try and stay free? I think everybody's too safe now. They're too safe. I left home when I was 17 and that forced me to learn the world very, very quickly. My mum threw me out. I wasn't good at 17. I left home at 17 and granted it wasn't the best scenario and I don't want that for everybody listening to this. That's the way to do it. But the younger that you can leave home, the faster that you can become independent. People staying at home till the 25, 28, 30, you're around your family, you're around your parents, your mum's still going to be doing everything for you and so it's too safe. I don't think people want to get out of their comfort zone enough. I do believe again, the school system has so much pressure, GCSEs, A-levels, go to university. When is the time to stop? There isn't really people have gap years but the problem is with a gap year is you feel like, I feel like you're losing time when they're trying to build their careers. They feel like they've got to do it so quickly. There's so much pressure to get those degrees at an early age and I think that people need to get out there and they need to go and see the world 100% because I went at 21 so I'd done my kind of my version of university which was going to Plumman College and going to Gas College, MVQ level through it. I'd done like two and a half years of education and then I realized that if I want to serve this boy this for the next 40 years, I can at least lose a year and come back and do the thing. I've got the qualification now and quite luckily I had a higher paying job so I knew that I could go to Australia, come straight back and get a job and I do believe that that's probably a comfort blanket that I had knowing that I could come back and get paid straight away. Kids that leave for uni that are already in a lot of debt that leave uni and struggle to get a job, they're probably looking at it and going well what am I going to do when I get back? How am I going to walk straight back into a job? So finance is a big factor for sure. So if you're making 50 grand a year and everything going well that we're not scared to to take that break in case because it is hard to pull back because we can get lazy we can get complacent where you take the foot off the gas sometimes it fuzzles out but we're not scared of coming back and losing that what you had built. No because I knew that I could rebuild it and I don't know whether psychologically I'd had this thing imprinted in me that was you can get a trade for life, a trade is for life they used to say in the town that I grew up you get that skill you'll never be out of a job you know it was never going to build a business no one I was around was like go and be a multi millionaire go and be a billionaire you can build an empire it was have a job for life I don't want a fucking job for life right I want to be a billionaire so um so um so no I wasn't worried because the skill was there and it was high in demand so I knew I could easily walk back and and do it and also again you know I always I get bored very very quickly and if I'm not creating the next thing if there isn't something exciting in my life major depression kicks in very very fast I've like I've got to be fed with um something exciting all of the time or you know it ends up becoming destructive for me and mine can slip yeah so when you come back what was the steps then to then build a multi million point business so I came back um got straight back into the same job literally the the company took me straight back got a house and um I was like wow wasn't a week I was literally just like I'd seen my friends hadn't seen in a while exciting for a couple of days and it was like shit I'm back like you know I've just left an amazing country and here I am and um I was not happy at all when I was thinking man you know this can't be it again and then my and then this is where everything changed for me everything changed for me so excuse me so my mum got me Lord Sugar's autobiography for Christmas it was 2011 big thick book like that what you see is what you get and um I read it over that period between Christmas and New Year yeah yeah and I was employed so I had like two or three weeks off companies to shut down and I remember I'd always used to tell everybody that I was going to win the apprentice I was an avid fan of the apprentice I watched it year in year out I used to vision those um black cars pulling up and me getting out and me sat in the back of that Rolls Royce you know I used to get so excited when I'd hear um the music come on and see all of the skyline and it going around the guck and it was just like that was my vibe I wanted to be in that moment experience that and so once you got me the book I was like well look I love Lord Sugar I don't really know his story but I'm a big apprentice fan I'm gonna try it first page in I was addicted addicted and I hadn't read a book for like 20 years you know crazy it's like year four year five um year three maybe I don't know I wasn't a big reader anyway so I didn't read books and um I read this book and I was literally staying up till like three four five in the morning every night I just couldn't put this book down and I was just be I would this story was unfolding in front of me about how a guy came from a council estate in London with nothing and was able to build a billion dollar empire and up until that point I'd always justified other people's success by them being silver spoon or given an opportunity that I didn't have or they had a better family name or they were the rich and I'm the poor and you know we're different and it's good for them but it's not good for me we don't get those opportunities that hate that jealousy that we impart on other people's success because we don't have the same and it was a horrible mindset to have and it's not one that I have anymore um but you know it was always justified reason why somebody else had what they had and why we couldn't have it was always their fault not ours um in my home and and around the people that I was around um and I was and I was made this excuse that they were on a pedestal I put successful people on a pedestal these people that had achieved incredible things they weren't like me they couldn't be like me how could they be like me they were sent by God given the gifts of the gods they were the special amongst us right and so anyway I read this book and what I saw in this book was actually that this was just a man like me he started with nothing there was no um there was nothing godlike about this man he was just another man and I'm another man so if this man can do it why can't I do it and I saw how he built this empire and then all of a sudden bang you know my DNA changed my mindset changed it changed that much that um I've only been back from Australia for three months at the end of the Christmas period I was like I'm done I'm out of this employed game yeah I'm going to start a business so I went on Tesco's um personal loans took out a 15 000 pound loan quit my job called my boss said look I'm out I'm starting a company and um that's when impregas was born how long did take it about that so um fast forward three years I um had uh seven people working for me doing half a million a year that's when I applied for the apprentice at 25 um and that's when Lord Sugar bought half of my company between 250 grand so the business that I started off the back of reading his book three years later that same billionaire bought 50% of the company for a quarter of a million pound yeah and then fast forward to 30 years of age so from 22 one man in Havana started fast forward to 29 years of age I was running the largest independent boiler installation company in the UK doing a million in sales a month we had a hundred employees we operated in every major city in the UK it was a um crazy crazy journey how does somebody drops out of school then run a multi-million pound business like that what do you think it comes down to because you're clearly confident anyway no matter if you lost it all again today you would pick it back up within 12 months I believe that yeah what do you think that ingredient is for someone who has dropped out of school like you say thinking everybody who's successful have had the silver spoon but majority people who are successful are come from fuck all yeah the ones with the silver spoon kind of destroy everything that maybe gets put in their way because they've already got it it's yeah there's got to be some sort of chase a buzzer to get up and go mentality but who do you think that ingredient is for someone to be successful great question I mean I just want to say quite hard times create strong men strong men create good times good times um uh so I've got that wrong hang on strong men um hard times create strong men strong men create good times good times create weak men yeah so you're absolutely right that generational wealth you know those people that get that wealth two or three um generations down end up wasting it right because they don't it's not built with the same principles that that person in the family used to build that wealth from the start so how did it how did I do it um by not putting it on a pedestal it's not actually as hard as what people think is right it really isn't and as much as it was difficult it wasn't that difficult now I started the business as a plumber yeah one business now trains businesses how to build a business yeah because most people start a business plumber starts a plumbing business hairdresser starts a salon accountant starts an accounting practice lawyer starts a law firm but they do that because they're fantastic at the job James right they don't do it because they know anything about running a business you can go and register a limited company for 20 pounds become a director managing director and the next day you've got an organization this is why so many businesses fail because people go in and just start companies without any idea of what it takes to run a company because they were a fantastic graphic designer now they think they can be a graphic designer and business owner right so I did it by being a plumber running of a plumbing business and um the first thing that I did was just went for it took that leap it's like well with this fails everybody's scared of protecting the little that they have well what if this goes wrong I could lose my house or I could lose this or I could lose that well what about if you get to 70 and you've wasted your whole damn life live an average I'd say that's a lot more scary than just losing your house would you not agree yeah so that motivation to just go for it is absolutely fundamental you know you are going to die we are not getting out alive so do not get to the end look back and think I never even tried you know that's point number one um then number two um is get perfect later people want to put all of the all of the steps in place so they can see the roadmap starting a business and Elon must describes it like staring into the abyss and eating glass yeah you're staring into the abyss you can't see the roadmap in front of you you don't know how this thing is going to go um and so you got to just have the confidence that the dots are going to connect moving forward that you're going to be going down the right path and it's difficult to know the first time that you've built a business um you know what it's actually what's what it's going to look like so I just went for it then I started making moves that were taking me on quantum leaps not taking baby steps I'm going quantum leaps so I in my mind I had that I wouldn't employ somebody for like two years yeah when I'm two years in I'll employ someone I ended up winning two contracts within the first week of being in business of 600 houses the exploded my company I had to employ an apprentice within a week a plumber within a month an office within two months an office staff within six months five plumbers within a year and so I'm taking these giant leaps um to grow my organization not waiting lot years and years and years to make small steps so it's those quantum leaps it's risking everything to get to the next level I'm willing to put it all on the line I'll put everything I own today on the line without any fear to get to the next level you know and I don't see fear um I I see I make calculated risks now not wild risks I used to just risk everything blindly um but you know I'm here to make I'm here to make an impact and you've got to make big big steps to get there seem you're taking those risks you need to invest more money into the business I take it then everything money and time you know improv to get it from a one man in a van to a national company in seven years I was when I tell you that I was spending a hundred hours a week in the first couple of years in that van I didn't leave the van I was going to work at six five six in the morning getting home at two three in the morning sleeping for three hours on repeat seven days a week it was insanity work insanity work you know I remember laying in the bath in the morning just like I can't I can't even move my body so but I was so um I was so motivated to get my moment of retirement like I started my company originally to put my moment of retirement it was like the number one thing I've got to treat her well I've got to look after her I've got to get I've got to give her a good life before she dies I don't want it to work till 75 by 55 she's got to be in retirement so she's got time to spend the money you know and so that was my main motivation and that drove me to insane levels it was insane levels that I was prepared to go to to make that happen and then of course applying for the apprentice was like I talk about quantum leaps just in the general moves that I was making that propelled me into you know another universe it was just crazy that platform and what it did for my organization yeah because they say they have this work as will be the successful but if that was the case then nurses and tradesmen would be the richest people on the planet like you can you can work so hard but still have a plateau where you're not improving but the risk for yourself you believe is investing more money into the business taking more risk believing in yourself how hard is it as well when you're working a hundred hours a week though like with the mindset like how do you find the balance is it just one way to burn in yourself out to try and create something special or do you then take some time off and recharge because recharging and people can say like what 20 hours a day up at 4 a.m. understand that I do it myself sometimes we're on the road consistently trying to build a podcast and other businesses but sometimes it can be so fucking draining to your mental health like and that's the most important thing in my eyes but how do you then find the balance is it just straight away until you succeed and then you can take the foot off the gas or is it just non-stop Tom you know well I mean I started at 22 so I was quite lucky that I had youth on my side so I had a lot of energy got ADHD anyway right so I've got an abundance of energy to tap into it's like an unlimited energy source which is pretty beneficial when you need to do that amount of work so I was young right and I took major sacrifices I had a girl from four years within eight weeks she was gone yeah gone because she just was like fuck this you never hear anymore and I was like look I ain't gonna be around this is how it's gonna be now from here on in not a year not two years this is how it's going to be this is my life now I'm building an empire you'll never see me right and you're either with me or you're not right and so you know I was eating one microwave meal a day I wasn't going to the gym I didn't see anybody I just worked non-stop it was just insanity I sacrificed my health I sacrificed relationship I sacrificed friendships I sacrificed everything but the business meant so much to me like it was all I cared about it's all I it's all I it's all I could think about I didn't think about anything else I didn't want to do anything else now used to be interested in football and care about that anymore everything was gone there was no other interest in running a company it was really crazy and now I'm 32 and have a little boy he's one year and two weeks old now and I love him to bits you know but it haven't slowed down you know I'm definitely not getting in at two o'clock in the morning anymore but I'm still back at nine o'clock I'm leaving at six o'clock I'm out six days a week I commit Sundays to spending the time with him to make sure I get the time of him and I get a little bit of time of him in the mornings each day but I'm still here I'm building an empire I want to build an empire and it comes with sacrifice it comes with sacrifice on physical health mental health relationships everything right but how bad do you want it is the question you know you look at Elon Musk and what he's achieved that guy sleeping on the floor doing 22 hours a day is in these factories and he's just achieved in insane things so you've always got a you've always got to ask yourself how bad do you really want it and what are you prepared to do because work balance is absolutely key but balance gets in the way of building the dream in my eyes and it's a really hard one because you know you do need to protect your mental health and you have I go to the gym every night now I'm a lot more I do a lot more for me than I did in my 20s now in my 30s a hundred percent and I enjoy it a lot more but sometimes I still beat myself up and say I'm not working anywhere near hard enough we're going to do a PT at seven o'clock for an hour and I'm like why am I still not in the office I should be in the office right now you're slacking you're getting lazy why are you leaving this early you know do you think that helps though when you're exercising more do you think it gives you a better stability to see the vision better and clearer but if you're training and exercising and you're thinking I should be in the office like but these few benefits after exercising you think are you thinking you're losing an hour an hour and a half exercise then showering to then get to the office do you see the progress in that or do you constantly think you should yeah no I'm definitely seeing the progress in it you know I'd be lying if I said that this is now taken over the more than me being in the office I know I could be in the office for another hour another two hours another three hours but to what end you know you only keep making money and then you know just keep making more and more money so at the moment I'm quite satisfied with the amount that I'm working and the amount I'm spending on myself because I don't want to just be a shell of a man you know not eating and being skinny and tired and just like yeah I've got loads of cash and my business is doing really well but you know I'm just a shell of a human building this organization I don't really want that again and I do definitely believe there were parts of my 20s where I was like that a hundred percent so you're turning over a half a million a year you've read Lord Sugar's book you're buzzing like you've he's changed your life basically yeah how did that happen it's come about so I'm a big believer in the law of attraction I live my life by the law of attraction I see everything in my mind before it happens everything I visualize everything I believe I've got an ability to visualize stuff before it comes true I usually see it and probably a year or so before it happens and I'm getting even better at it now I can do it much faster I really do practice the law of attraction so much more and I can affirm things into my life very very quickly but so I'd plateaued hit my ceiling half a million a year I was a plumber running a plumbing business I had good money nice car nice house things were going well but I was miserable you know I was just doing the same thing I didn't I didn't know what to do next the skills as a businessman half a million year had capped out and so I knew I needed mentorship I needed somebody to show me the way to the next level I couldn't do it on my own and this is another big factor of how I did it yeah is that I got opened up to people that have been where I want to be yeah I'm success leaves clues yeah success leaves clues if they've done it how did they do it and how can I get the how can I use what they've done to fast track my success use their failures so I don't make the same mistakes because failing in business costs a lot of time a lot of money a lot of emotion reputation there's a lot that can come with failing at a big level so if anybody listening to this is in business or wants to go to business or wants to start business go and seek out those that failed right and learn why they failed so you don't make the same mistake success is easy yeah forget about the success bit because that's easy it's the failure that you want to fast track because every failure that you overcome the quicker that you get to success um so I came into my home it was nine o'clock January the night of 2015 Lord sugar's page came up um and it said find or a chance to apply for the apprentice I knew at that very moment I'd won before I'd even applied I knew I'd won people say you crazy what do you mean you knew you won that was my sign from the universe well I believe the universe sends us signs all of the time but most people are on autopilot every single day yeah your eyes are open but they're not really open you're just getting up going through the motions going to work driving in traffic there could be a billboard that god or the divine power up there has wrote something specifically to you to look at and you could be staring at it and it could be telling you something and you could just be taking that as if that's what it is or you could be taking that as a sign if you're looking for it um results go where energy flows see can you will find it's done unto you as you believe this stuff's all in the bible right so um so I knew that was my moment I applied for the show I heard back within a couple of weeks um and um I I got on and went through the motions 60 000 people applied and they whittled it down to 18 18 get accepted um and I was one of those guys unbelievable that skill drop out to then one in apprentice and Alan sugar buying half your business like it's an unbelievable achievement you should be proud man like genuinely like what was the steps and processes every week that you feel stronger every week or yeah that sometimes like ADHD that you can I'd imagine doubt yourself as well as we're positive and see the world differently like you feel as if maybe you're not doing enough did you did you just get stronger or did you did the ADHD kick in as well so um between January and April the 26th is when you go away and you go on the show and you disappear for nine weeks you disappear off the face of the earth yeah and my business at the time I was like the epicenter my phone rang a thousand times a day yeah and um we had lots of contracts all property management companies reactive maintenance it was a chaotic model to run anyway and they say you can only tell four people so I was like well what I'm going to do about my company and all these customers these agents that keep ringing me all the time um to send my guys out and so on so um uh I had to go away for nine weeks so I made a big sacrifice and I'm going to come back to that um but when you go when you go through the process you know a lot of people go there to be on TV yeah then they don't seriously believe they can win I went as a competitor I went to compete to win the show um to build a business I wasn't interested in the TV stuff the TV stuff was fucking awesome post-winning yeah and while it was on I loved it it was the best time in my life um but I went to build a business because I saw that as long term if I can build finance in business I can build a career and I can and I can build wealth which is what I wanted to do so um I really I really believed genuinely believed I could win it was almost like I say genuinely believed like it was not even an option for me to lose and I don't want people to think that's arrogant because it isn't you go into any competition you have got to go believe and you can win yeah who's saying bolt does not go into um uh the hundred meters thinking that he might come third that guy's won before it's happened any competition that you ever enter into you must back yourself people say but did you really think you could win did you really think I'm like are you crazy course I fucking did do you think that I waste my time entering competitions that I don't think I'm gonna win who enters to come third do you know what I'm saying who enters to come third or second I don't I go to win and I was able to pull it off um but maybe I could have lost I don't know but in my mind it wasn't even an option it was just not an option yeah um so each week you go through the tasks and I was way out of my comfort zone way out of my comfort zone you know I was the plumber running a plumbing business I didn't know about marketing properly I didn't know about sales I didn't know about pitching presenting you know I'm quite rough around the edges I wasn't like the other guys that had gone to great schools and had been in corporate careers and you know it was I was a kind of I was the underdog the wild card you know I am an underdog and um and I was the I was the rogue the one that shouldn't win right so um so each week I went for it but you're right I've got more confident each week because I realized that most people there were just there because um they wanted to be on the show there was only one or two serious contenders that were going to be that were going to have an opportunity to try and challenge me and I identified those within 48 hours so I did my thing the the process was brutal it's nothing like it looks on tv 18 hours a day six days a week horrendous filming schedule um really difficult tasks the odds are stacked against you and these guys that were coming out of a job where they're working for banks or law firms you know they used to finish in at four five o'clock I was used to do in 18 hour days so they would drop in like flies off the back of this just the work ethic alone that we were having to do you know was um completely wiping them out so each week the numbers were just going down and down and down and down and I was getting closer and closer and all this this belief that I'd convinced myself that I was going to win was becoming more real every day every day I was getting one step closer um yeah one step closer how do you feel when you get so self-doubt because no matter how confident we be and how much we believe we're going to achieve in life self-doubt always creeps in how do you deal with that go into them go and stand in front of the mirror and tell myself I'm a fucking champion 10 times it's the only way I gotta drill it back in have to drill it back in um I said to my partner yesterday morning I was like I'm getting soft I'm getting soft you know I could just I feel myself getting soft um I push stales very very hard in my business and um the last couple of weeks I've not I've been distracted doing a few other things and I just got something you've got to remind yourself you've got to remind yourself who you are what you're capable of what have you been through you know what have you what have you been able to overcome you could do anything you could do anything that you set your mind to what's stopping you you know and there's all these things out there um the kind of pushes down or suppress us and neg us out you know I'm trying to stay away from all negative anything that's negative is removed from my life anything that doesn't serve me to make me feel great to make me feel like a champion to make me feel like I can do it I need people telling me that I need to tell myself that I need to be watching um amazing content great um stories like you have on your podcast you know all of these guests with amazing stories that's powerful you know using other people's journeys and how they've overcome really helps me um you know and um you just gotta you gotta beat it out as soon as it comes it's like a cancer if you leave that doubt to creep in and you don't beat it out very very quickly cut it out do whatever you can to destroy it grows quickly right so 25 like we've said before you dropped out of school you've read sugar's book you believed you were going to win it straight away you eventually won it like as if your stars are lined and people who don't believe in a lot of attraction people who don't believe in belief and it's genuinely like you say it's you can people can get confidence mixed up with arrogance yeah and that's down to them who fucking cares but it's all down to the individual what you want to achieve so when you win that your mum thinking you're going to be a failure at 15 maybe going down the same route as your old boy but your old dad was a bad person but going down that addiction avenue and then wanting that like how was that feeling not just for you but your mum i had the the best feeling um that i could i had the best moment probably one of the best moments in my life other than my son being born um when i came out on the your hired show yeah and um the winning version of it i'm walking out and they're cheering me to the winner come out jack d's like the presenter at the time it's been dara brin and a few others over the years he was there and um i came out and my mum would obviously come down to the show and she was sat in the audience and she was down there on the right hand side and i looked over at her tears in her eyes i had an amazing suit on i i strode out of there like i was on top of cloud nine and i looked at her and she was crying and i looked her in the eyes and i just was propelled 10 years back when i walked out of the headmaster's office and she was crying and i was like i told you i was not it wasn't a told you so moment it was a um i've made you proud again i've made you proud again and she looked to me like fuck man how has this kid done this you know and there was a moment because when i when i left you got away for nine weeks yeah and i told all of the businesses and everybody around me that my auntie in italy was ill and she lived on a goat farm in the mountains and there was no wi-fi so i said i've got to go away it's an emergency i don't know when i'm coming back yeah and um so um my mum dropped me off at the train station and i look back at her and i was like right next time you see me i'm going to be the winner take care she's like yep son you'll do well you do well i know she didn't believe i was going to win it just like when i told her i'd applied she didn't think i was going to get on um and i was like no no mum i'm telling you the next time you see me i'm going to be the winner she was like oh god go and do your best go and do your best and um and um she messaged me about a year and a half after after the show and she said to me just the random texts came through she's like joe i'm just watching the rerun on the i player and she was like who would have actually known that you could have won this and then she messaged back saying you did yeah and then that was my moment where i knew that she knew that i wasn't just full of shit and i actually genuinely believed that it was going to happen the law of attraction is is the most um powerful tool that we can use as humans and when i first came across it my business partner when i was 23 um said to me i said to chris listen i keep um having these powerful visions and shit just keeps coming true i wanted to get an m3 convertible i've got one i wanted to do this business i've got one loads of things happening he's like joe that sounds like the law of attraction and i'm not even joking i went on to youtube typed in the law of attraction then i came across oprah winfrey jim carrey wil smith bob proctor they're all talking about this thing called the law of attraction and it was almost like i'd stumbled across the secret you know it was a fucking secret i'm like hang on why have i not been told about this you're telling me this is a hack the metaphysical law a hack that you can hack the universe and you can attract what you want to become and there's a way that you can practice this shit and it comes real and it's not voodoo magic right and all these successful people are talking about it so clearly it works because i remember going to some people close to me at the time and i was like hey man i fucking stumbled on something here i'm on to something right and i showed them and they were like what a load of bollocks what is that bullshit and i'm like what do you mean i was like look at the people that are talking about it this can't be bullshit yeah they have used it so that's when i decided to screw everybody and i don't tell anybody anymore about anything that i'm doing that isn't going to give me a positive response i don't want to ever hear can't oh no you shouldn't do that blah blah blah blah i'm i'm not interested in sharing my dreams and with people um that you know that can't share the same vision yeah because i can dim your light without i don't i mean like jim carrey i think he wrote a cheque for 10 million dollars put a date on it put it in his wallet and then five years later he opened it up and just before he'd opened it up he'd got a cheque for 10 million dollars for dumb and dumber yeah five years later yeah writing it down becomes more clearer it's called spelling for a reason like your pretty spells into the universe if you write it down it becomes 50 percent or 70 percent more clearer and the mind and it's more likely to happen like but just so dumbed down by even radios and tv newspapers and politics and all the bullshit of the day where it's just suppressing your mind and you can't think for yourself step back out that fucking comfort zone step back out your life like see the world a bit differently visualize what you want for that trade trades me now it's been working for somebody for 10 20 years start your own business become your own boss and hire your own people you listen a lot of people are just happy and content with their life and working for someone else and that's fine if you're happy then so be it but if you're driving that lorry or whatever you're doing like you can own that business you can get your own lorry you can get your own work your staff like anything is possible like you say that you've not just got a good energy good certainly you've got a good belief system which is the core to then achieving anything you want in life how much is allen sugar involved in in the show is he just there for following or is he more hands-on than people think turns up at the beginning when he tells you the task and then disappears and you go off for two or three days and go and deliver the task you know we were talking about alpha males on the train down here and this guy honestly i've never seen anything like it right he's a small guy right and just the aura and the presence that he has of this not to be fucked with it was just incredible to watch and yeah so he's there and then he's there in the boardroom and so you don't get to see that much of him you know i used to hate it when i want a task because if you win a task you go in the boardroom you get to tell him about the good highlights that you've done yeah and then off you go back to the house well the guys that got to lose they got to sit and battle it out in front of him for another three hours i mean the boardroom seems like 20 minutes on the show but on and the actual day it's like four hours of just in the boardroom so i actually wanted to lose i wanted to be in front of him because i wanted to talk to the guy i wanted him to know who the fuck i was he wasn't going to learn who i was and know that i was his right business partner if i couldn't actually talk to him so i quite enjoyed getting um being on the losing team um believe it or not because i was so confident that what the biggest mistake everybody makes on that show and maybe in life um is that they're so focused on what everybody else is doing yeah um and why that other person did something wrong um and they're nowhere focused on why what they're doing and what they've done right so i chose to say right people pulling people back in the boardroom going yeah he did this read that it's like what did you do um and then with me it was right i'm gonna focus on every task i'm gonna smash a minimum of one thing they're so better than everybody else that when he comes to me i'm gonna talk about me i don't want to talk about why dave has done a shit job i want to talk about why i've done such a fucking good job do you know what i mean so people are pulling other people down all the time focused on everybody else they're not focused on themselves you know we talk about all of the distractions that are happening in the world right now how many people are on their phone every day scrolling through looking at news looking at the Kardashians worrying about energy prices getting involved in politics you're spending you know 80 of your 24 hours a day giving your consciousness to something else that isn't you your con your consciousness is being distracted if you took back that 80 percent and just channeled it into why what you can do well this is why people don't get the results they want because there's so many distractions and the same with the apprentice they're focused on all the other people what they're doing wrong and not why they can do it right um so you know um i wanted to get back in the boardroom so i could spend more time with the guy so i could get to know him and um i think i had a really good relationship with him i think he quite liked me i was very honest i didn't bullshit once if i fucked up i said it you know and everybody again tries to mask why they screwed up or they don't own that they don't own their mistakes they don't own their fuck ups you know people don't realize the owning your fuck ups in life is the biggest superpower that you can ever possess yeah you failed doing this yeah i know what a fucking amazing experience that was they're like what they're trying to take the piss out of me for failing at something i'm saying it was the best thing that ever happened to me automatically you've removed their power just like a bully at school saying that you're a fat kid you know i'm a fat bastard right automatically you've killed their power yeah so there's nothing that they can say anymore so owning your weaknesses and utilizing them as your strengths is um what i recommend that everybody does so what happens when you win then what does the pay up some benefits what do you get when you win the apprentice 250 grand in a bank within a week um not tax free now straight into the bank yeah and um also they the cheeky bastards they charge you back like they give you 250 grand and then you get his accounting team and his finance team and then they charge you for it i couldn't believe it i was being charged back by his business for pr services for accounting services for um payroll services i was like what you're taking two and a half grand a month back of the 250 you've given me so we're within a year you've already clawed 25 grand back it was crazy but it was the best thing ever he chose me didn't have to choose me right he changed my life and i'm forever in his debt forever grateful regardless of me splitting with him and everything else so he becomes my business partner you get to go and meet him after the show and then you get to see him once a month it was an hour once a month now it was great um he had a good team but they're all finance people you got an fd assistant fd accountant and um him and but mostly his team and all they helped me really to do with put a financial infrastructure in place in my business it was a weird one james because the guy that won the year before me mark right was in um seo google paper click all business to business and he worked and lived out of london fucking phenomenal using your lord sugar's name to you know get your business contacts i worked in the consumer market selling boilers to mrs smith you know so when you have lord sugar's name attached to it yes it helped us drive more sales but it also didn't have the same weight you know so it was a service industry that i worked for consumer not business so you know i probably they didn't add as much value as i wanted so after two year and a half years every time i kept going there i was like look i want to be national i want to do this i want to do that how can we grow how can we go faster you know p in his book it said that he made all of his his biggest wealth in the back end of his 20s so i was like i was obsessed with it i was like i've got to do that you're with me i'm now going to replicate what you've done yeah every time i was going there he's telling me to slow down we're not doing this we're not doing that and it became actually quite negative for me and his team were pissing me off because it would they were always trying to score points it was bordering politics it was really weird you know for i'd never been in an environment like that and i was just like one day i was just like right fuck this i was like look i want to be a national business you clearly don't want me to be right but i am not going to keep coming here and every week trying to tell you what the next move is and you telling me that i can't do it if you're afraid of me failing which there is a big chance that i probably will because i want to grow quickly then i understand you don't want your reputation and damage by it so let me buy you out and i'll go it alone he looked back at me and said look no one ever spoke to me like that before um let me give you i'll give give me 48 hours and i'll come back to you 48 hours we agreed a deal and i was out two and a half years in first apprentice to do it you know and i look back and i had about 40 people 40 30 40 people working for me at the time you know and i was 27 and i was like Jesus Christ you know it was a real ballsy moment for me because then it hit the papers put a apprentice winner splits with lord sugar first person to have done it then like people are like is everything okay is the business in a fun financially strong is it failing is that why you've split and i was like no no no it's none of that these are the reasons my team are great they stuck with me and i think i bought them out when we were doing somewhere in the region of like two million a year then fast forward two years we were doing a million a month so a ballsy decision that obviously paid off but why did he not free the reins a bit for you to then do what you set out to do like obviously being as a kid you've always flow solo anyway yeah everything you've achieved you've done yourself like how was that choice in your mind like you said probably felt suffocated then when you feel like that you don't like it so yeah you just wanted to get the shackles off but when you'd make that decision that why did he not back you well i think there's two things he's very smart in business so maybe he understood that there were big risks associated to growing at the pace that i wanted to and to go to build a national company you need a lot of finance to do it and i don't think he was and he probably thought that you know because he tells you at the beginning straight down the line put 250 grinding you're not getting any more this guy is a very shrewd businessman when he fucking says it he is not breaking what he said there's one thing that i came to learn yeah so that was it so he's like thinking this guy wants to go national i'm gonna have to give you need a few million to get national you're gonna do it on 250 grand 250 grand at one point in time to me was like wow quarter of a million it's nothing you know when you're building a multi-million pound business in the service industry it's getting eaten up like that in a second right um so so um i believe that he maybe saw the risks of failure and i knew it it's an obvious fast growing business is a risk and secondly i genuinely believe that he had a different motivator it became weird you know when you can see something for what it is and you understand something i saw that he didn't want me to go big he didn't want the headache he wanted me to be a good little boy the um did what he was told the came came to the board meet in every month and didn't argue no challenges no ag and just plod along make a couple hundred grand a year report some all right numbers at the end of each year so it looked good on him so he could do is on the show and i'm like fuck this i'm not being paraded or hiding in the shadow here i want to go for it um so i don't believe his driver was the same as mine and people are like yeah but it wasn't a billionaire tycoon i'm like yeah but his drivers are completely different his motivators are completely different and whenever you're in a business partnership you know people get emotional about being in a partnership i'm like if you're in a business partnership it serves you until a point in time then when that point in time is up like it was for me i was like well i've took the money i've got the exposure now i've had the financial infrastructure you're not really doing anything else for me other than holding me back and having half my business so you know i'm pretty confident to make the decision now it's time to split so it was the right time for us and and we split yeah you felt it was a right moment especially if he's a bogey now and all honesty they probably don't give a fuck about you obviously he's not 250 grand fuck all with him but he can make more doing whatever he's doing in the sideline so when you're that status and being a billionaire their time is precious they don't want to be wasting time talking about 200 grand 500 grand arguing with a 25 year old that's cocky and you know he thinks he knows it all i did have probably approached it wrong sometimes but there i was you know i should have been better i did have a know it all attitude and i do what wish i didn't throw the opportunity away because i i took it for what it was and i've done very very well off the back of it but look now like lord chagor is a lord you know he's in a sir he's in some very very elite prestigious clubs you know the order of the garter if you're a sir i think there's only like 150 of them there's a league club to the queen like i'm a big um secret society guy um i want to you know and these very prestigious circles and now i know what i know i'm like shit i did not take those opportunities i should have been better um but hey here's what it is so see when you're when they're pretty much how many do you only get to see him once a month once a month for how long an hour and that would have been a lifetime of one hours if you were still in business basically yeah how many people at the table five a lot of people would pay 100 grand 200 grand for a couple hours i'd imagine completely yeah and it would be nice to have it now now i'm in the business of business what it'd be great to say lord chagor was my business partner still but i can't say that anymore i can say he was you know and um it is it is what it is but but do you think he would have respected that decision for you to just go fuck it i'm going to do it i think so i think i gave him a way to get i think i gave him a good exit he gave i gave him a good exit do you think obviously he can't pull away because of the show yeah i think so he's not going to be out he doesn't want to pull away and then there was a trend after about a year later somebody else did it because no one had done it up until the point that i'd done it um and so then they everybody started to follow suit i think he's split from like three or four now of winners post me like the original ones like leo mark ricky tom pelaroo he's still with those guys um for 10 years 12 years yeah he's still been with them a long time yeah fair fucking play as well yeah but everybody's thought process is different exactly doesn't go with your flow and fuck off and change it change the game do you not mean that so when you then created the business to then making turning over a million a month what you think and then that you've set out to everything you've achieved and then you won the apprentice like when you're doing that you talk about depression when did your depression seep in well i mean the winning the show was an anti-climax for sure i mean i had this buzz and it was like the highest high that i've ever had and then all of a sudden after you win and the press stops and everything else you come crashing back down to earth and realize you just got to go and run a plumbing business so from 25 i went on this mission to to achieve right not just in business i needed to find big things that i could do that match the size of the apprentice so that i had something to get up for i love to push myself and compete so then i wrote this book and it was like my autobiography expelled from the classroom to building their boardroom got that as a number one best song on amazon it was cool i did it you know these were like they were good things that i wanted to do but they were cheap frills i was trying to match the buzz of winning this show right i then did a podcast that went to number one in the world um on apple social entrepreneur in 2017 and um i did three episodes got it to number one it stayed there for 24 hours got the screenshot and then quit the podcast yeah and i'm like right that was it done that one now then i went to Forbes Forbes 30 and the 30 i got into that 18 000 candidates in europe i was one of the 30 that was appointed into that did that then i kept applying for all these entrepreneur awards anything i could do to just try and feel that um champion status again and i don't really think i found anything yet nothing has matched that um and i'm trying to look for something now that i can do what can i actually do now that is as big as an achievement as that that's got much attention and is as well respected and these just comes with all of the things that came with it i'm struggling to find it and um i just went on this mission and then i really pushed impra you know i got i exited from him i'm like right fuck you watch what i'm going to do now watch how big i'm going to take this business but i always dreamed james to make that national company from 22 when i started i had visions of making it a national and i was going to get it national if it killed me yeah i was going to go national if it killed me and that clouded my judgment yeah because i was so obsessed with building a national company it clouded my judgment so i hit 29 we're doing a million a month we won national wing stroller of the year and um september 2019 i knew that we were financially in trouble we'd go i'd literally put everything on the line to get to um this big business it was a monstrous organization it was huge we had to do like 60 thousand in sales a day new sales a day just to break even it was like some serious serious pressure um and we'd expanded very quickly i was overexposed i was operating in every major city in the uk and then we had a really warm winter we had brexit happen people stopped buying boilers to the same level and so the business really struggled sales really decreased cash flow took a massive here and i was like shit you know this could go down yeah this i'm going to lose this right and um it was probably the hardest time of my life the hardest because i was really worried about what was going to happen because if i lost the company you know i'd gone national i'd shown this amazing picture of success all all up until this point up until 29 everything i fucking touched turned to gold yeah everything i said i was going to do i achieved and i'm sure everybody watching was like how is this kid doing this how was he how is he doing this yeah and what i didn't realize at that time that what goes up must come down right and um you know i'd got um i'll feel best you've had him on yeah and um he's a mentor of mine and um and he speaks at some of my events and he says you know don't believe your own hype and i believed my own hype yeah and i thought that i could just do anything i didn't i didn't even know what failure was at that point it was didn't even know existed right so we won national installed of the year in 2019 september and then by december we were in bad trouble and i was like fuck man i'm going to lose this business going i'm going to go into the press i'm going to be the first apprentice that have failed it was horrible it was horrible what i was going through i was worried about my staff i was worried about everything um i was worried about the people that we owed money to there was so much pressure right um and then i was like well this business is going to go down i can put it into liquidation and just walk away from it um because we were running out of cash i didn't have enough time to find investment to prop it up the sales had dropped so substantially it hits us like out of nowhere there's the thing that you can't control in business is the market when markets change doesn't matter um how good your business is if the demand stops for the product and as you've got multiple products and multiple demands or a current revenue and everything else and our business was just way too young to have all of that in place we'd done it on pure hardcore sales growth right they just kept going and going and going and so when the sales stopped we were in trouble and so i had to um find someone to buy the business i found a recovery specialist to buy the business and um i wasn't going to get a lot for it and the deal that we had to structure wasn't great it meant that i had to um voluntary liquidate part of the business which meant i shut it down with that um and i had to sell part of the business i sold the brand i sold the assets i sold all of the contract so all of the people that had service contracts with us maintenance contracts with us the new company took all of that on so the customers were going to be looked after that was a big priority of mine the number one priority of mine was that all of my staff kept their jobs and the new co that bought my business said that all of the staff were going to keep their jobs which was amazing it was around christmas it would have been terrible news if i'd have told them that they were losing their jobs at that point and um and um also that there was going to be this new company that the suppliers that were going to lose money were able to trade with right um and recoup some of those lost profits back and so that's what happened and then january the tenth i um sold an exited part of the business i shut down part of the business um and then all of a sudden i was out but it was a very weird scenario because it was almost like i've sold part of it and all my staff have kept their jobs and everything else and this new company's going to go on and trade but there's this debt associated to it that's going to come back to hit me um it wasn't my personal debt limited company debt that's going to come back on me um and i'm not really going to walk away with any of the millions that i expected to i expected to walk away with 50 million of what built this company and it's going to be national someone's going to buy it and by the time i'm 30 i'm going to be a multi multi multi millionaire and set for life because i was planning to exit um and um it didn't happen and it was like all of a sudden i came crashing back down to earth at the fastest i never felt anything like it the knocked off my pedestal i believe that i'd got too confident too complacent too cocky and the universe right hooked me um and um put me back down and said right you need to go and learn a lesson and i think it was all taken away from me on purpose um because i think i'd got too comfortable maybe i don't know and um yeah so um the short term i got press release out sold the business was great and everything else then um uh then uh another article came out that found out that we shut the business down with two million quids worth of debt basically so we'd closed it off with two million quids worth of debt course the paper's picked up apprentice winner goes bust yeah i'm fucking front page of the sun then it was um uh uh it wasn't even front page but headline on whatever it was online or whatever right um and then it was on the sun there was on the daily mouth then it was on everything else oh my god i remember when it hit the press it was like the worst feeling ever but january when i exited you know and i want i want my story to inspire people to believe that they can get back up that you can come back yeah going to rock bottom is i actually think that going to rock bottom is good as long as you don't stay there sometimes we need to go there to reevaluate um what it is that we really want and what our purpose here is on this planet and where it is that we're trying to get to so i don't mind going to rock bottom um if i deserve to go there but damn you can't stay there um and i and and january the 10th you know i'd had this big empire then all of a sudden it was gone and i was like fuck shit what am i gonna do now i i went into a very bad depression didn't leave my apartment for like four weeks i was just locked in couldn't get up really demotivated you know i was thinking i was a terrible failure it was just horrible um i felt sorry for myself um it was just like why do i deserve this i've worked so hard for 10 years like this shouldn't have how this isn't how it should have been you know all of these all of these emotions and everything else and um i remember one day i was like fuck you've got to snap out of this you've got to snap out of this like there were read this isn't just your fault this wasn't just your fault that this happened the market changed you're not a bad businessman you can redo it then i read an article on Forbes about this woman who built this company lost everything and then was able to get back up then i started searching for articles of failure and there wasn't actually that many but the big guys the bransons the sugars the peter jones's they all got rich very early in their 20s like i was able to lost it all and then very quickly came back so i was like fuck it man i can do this and then all of a sudden i just woke up one day and went on to twitter and now this is where lord sugar came to save me again and i don't know every knows that he did it right but he came to save me again indirectly so he put a tweet out tweeting one of the articles saying of the one that said joseph valente apprentice when it goes past he retweeted it and wrote you can't win them all and now this fella because at the time i've gone into i'd like very quickly then said what i'm going to train businesses now and how to scale i've learned free failure and success i'm going to teach businesses and he's like now this fella thinks he can teach businesses how to grow and it was like the most muggy um statement that he could have put you know just kicking me when i was down and i looked at it and i was like right it just it filled me with fire it filled me with fire i shot out of bed and i was like fucking right i literally cannot have this watch what i'm gonna go and do now watch what i'm gonna go and do now so it's like the greatest motivation this guy that i idolized for so long was now mocking me that i'd lost everything at 30 and my business had gone down and kicked me when i was down but he actually kicked me up the arse and i got back up um do you think that's maybe why you've done it though because i knew your personality maybe even though you think it was mocking maybe it was a case of it ain't fucking over but you knew who you were as a person that you could have been or do you just think he was just being a muggy bastard i hope so that he did it for the right reason why would you do that somebody loses their business like he's being there he's probably lost businesses that alpha best senior he was a multi-millionaire lost it all sleeping in his van again but that moment changed his life to then he's now a billionaire that how hard does that then for you to think you could have been still working with him do you think that was a case of that's what happens when you leave me or i think it was a fuck you yeah yeah i don't think it was a nice thing you watch his tweets and the way that he approached his stuff it definitely wasn't a nice thing he never reached out to me and said joe man look i'm hope you're all right or whatever like he wasn't that type of man it wasn't don't worry so you can get back up and do it again like you would expect a mentor of that status to do but look whatever it was it fucking helped me and um it was the best motivation you can ask for when someone tells you you can't it can't be done and you've got a character like mine i don't want it's gonna be okay don't fucking tell me it's gonna be okay tell me i'm a fucking i'm weak i'm pathetic and i'm a loser and then i'll go and prove to you why i'm the baddest man on the fucking planet that's how i see it you know i don't want to be i don't want to be cuddled and so he did me a massive massive favor and then i got back up and i was like right watch what i'm gonna do next and so i decided to use my my um experience i think the greatest entrepreneurs are the ones out there that solve real life problems yeah and i realized that you know you asked me very early on how does a guy start and then become a CEO of a national business in seven years that was expelled from school very little education and um no business experience well i was a plumber that started a plumbing business yeah i was not a businessman i was a tradesman good at the job terrible about running a business but i'd spent thousands of hours across that journey um investing in myself personal development training courses reading books learning sales learning management learning finance you know getting around mentors surrounding myself with the right people i invested a huge amounts of time in myself so i was leveling up myself at the same pace that my business was growing most businesses go pop because the business owners in the way and they can't control it it outgrows them they don't know what to do yeah so most business owners are in their own way and um i realized that i was pretty good at leveling up and somehow i'd got to this national level but a national it was probably beyond me at that point and my it was too big for me you know to be able to control and then i said well i've failed um dramatically yeah and um i've had an insane level of success so surely this is valuable to people people that are the plumber that's doing 500 grand a year 250 grand a year and wants to learn how to do a million or two million if he buys my blueprint gets mentored by me gets coached by me i'm going to be out of fast track his success and also tell him what to avoid i had a mentor that lost a 50 million pound car business by the time he was 31 um mentoring me at the back end when impera was going down and that guy was the greatest um um support that i could ever ask for because he knew what to do to protect yourself when the business goes down you know that you've got to be very careful in business that you're not putting personal assets and wealth and everything on the line that you're doing everything by the book you know you don't get expelled as a director so you can't continue to carry on your career and all these other things so he told me what to do now if i just had a success mentor a guy that continued to achieve all the time then the reality is he wouldn't have been able to help me in that scenario adam had so he protected me and he made me feel better about the whole thing and so i see that people educating people around failure is probably better than success and you need people that have been through failure the best mentors have seen both success and they've seen both failure and they can evaluate the two and recommend and the best of the backs i started i started after a couple of weeks right um i've got a new apartment i broke up my missus my missus left me you know i broke up my missus i moved back to peter borough got an apartment and um i took two staff with me from impera i took my pa and i took a social media um apprentice with me because i was like right i'm gonna start hitting social i've got my pa to help me organize stuff she's quite good at doing everything and um and um so we started this company called the trade mastermind the secret to scaling your construction business well i started doing lives on my phone this is as simple as i built this business started doing lives on my phone with a whiteboard talking to people about growing their business the amount of plumbers that were watching it were all over it i started charging a thousand pound an hour to teach them how to build a plumbing business yeah so within three weeks i'd gone from um having a fuckload of money my company was paying for everything for me i was taking big salaries from it but i hadn't really built any personal wealth up until that point because i put it all into the business i didn't think this business was going to go right so i didn't leave with huge um assets and i didn't leave with huge sums of money in the bank but within three weeks of that company going down me exiting and walking away i was making 20 grand a month in coaching fees for 20 hours work so i'd literally within weeks got back into the game very very quickly i then launched an event business um which we started in march of 2020 lockdown hit wiped it out stopped it immediately and then i flipped online started doing webinars from my apartment selling an online course that taught plumbing companies construction businesses how to sell in the customer's home because they just go around and give quotes or prices and scrappy bits of paper and my business was phenomenal at sales at impra we had the best most professional workforce on the planet it was incredible what we were able to do with sales because i'd built this formula by doing thousands of in-home sales appointments myself and um i knew this was worth money so i was doing these webinars i was making 25 000 pound an hour from my apartment right in the middle of lockdown once a week i was putting a hundred grand a month profit right only three months after losing my fucking business so i'd like turn this thing around i couldn't believe what was happening there was all these construction businesses that were worried about lockdown that wanted to have a competitive advantage and here i am with a huge branding construction a well-known built the largest independent boil installation company in the uk and i'm selling my knowledge and they're eating it up the good thing is though we have got we they started to get really good results then lockdown opened up we launched masterminds we've launched so many online training courses our trade accelerator university and fast forward to now two and a half years on i've been able to do five million in those two years i've been able to create 25 jobs i've got two and a half channels and clients i've launched a recruitment business i've launched a website business i've got a separate coaching business i've got trade mastermind and we're just about to expand our blueprints and our strategies and our techniques into all business so you know two and a half years on i'm back in the game i'm wealthy again my life's fantastic i've learned incredible lessons i've got an amazing business i've got an amazing team got great offices and um you know i'm back do you think that decision with sugar do you then think that he knew what he was talking about once you did eventually lose it obviously you went solo and you've learned so much from it no money you can never replace how much knowledge you've learned from yeah as well your growth is but do you think he seen what could have happened when he told you to slow it down yeah oh yeah definitely definitely it was kind of growing quickly in business is um risky it really is it's a massive risk you know and everybody that came on the journey with me you know and this is a really important lesson because when you go down in business and especially if you go down knowing people supply is money or whatever it may be they they people come to the ceo with the pitchforks yeah the pitchforks and the burning torches they're coming after you right and so i had a lot of people that wanted my blood they wanted my blood they wanted to see me um you know nailed on the cross it felt like you know i was the worst person on the planet like i'd done it on purpose no it's not it was like i was a crook and i'd robbed them right the market had changed things didn't work sales stopped and it broke apart it wasn't like you know i'd done anything untoward and um but they still wanted my blood and you know i remember um whenever a business goes down and this is education for everybody it's just important i tell the story right whenever a business goes down you have to do a creditors meeting so i'd like 50 businesses come and i had to sit at the front on a table by myself right with this liquid data sat here and 50 people in the audience effectively wanting to see me you know a shot and um you know their temp and right and so they've lost money they're emotional temperatures are fucking uh uh tempers are high and i just said to it and everybody was shouting at me and they listened out in the other and you know people were venting and i was just like listen i told each and every one of you okay that we were going to grow fast yeah and if you come and do business with me it's going to be a risk we are going quickly and we're going to be national now each and every one of you understood the risk if you didn't that means that you um need to take responsibility because it means you're uneducated in business to be able to have leverage as much credit as you did if you couldn't afford to lose it you knew that we were on a journey for growth you knew that was going to be a risk and when things were going great i was your best friend okay and i couldn't do anything wrong now that it's gone down it's all my fault you know so um just remember that everybody played a part in this and that this is a risk when you're back a fast growing business and it pretty much silenced the audience and um and it pretty much silenced them all because i was like i'm not being um told that you know uh that this is all me and they knew the consequences of back in a fast growing business and back in a fast growing business it's major risk you know it really really is and and that's just business but people get very very emotional about business businesses i'm not personal business is business now you know losing money in business is horrendous and i would never want anybody to lose money and i'm really sorry for all of those people that lost money but they also understood that there was a there was a potential that that could happen so you know you've got to own it as a business and if you're a business trading with a fast growing business be careful um and um if you're a business that is fast growing you know you've got to make sure that you've got cash businesses that make a loss businesses that make a profit can stay in business businesses that run out of cash it's game over for anybody that is watching or now that's starting off a business and wants to take it to the extreme levels like what advice would you give for them now that's the knowledge that you know build a team build a team first what usually happens is a business owner starts gets it to a level then starts to bring people in yeah as he goes when the business can afford to do that and what that means is it's like you're trying to underpin the growth every time you get there you could pick the wrong people they could have the wrong skills and so i was saying this to my business partner through the day like you know we're trying to build a billion dollar empire by the time of 40 so we've got eight years to do it right and i'm like if you look at somebody like in silicon valley they go and get fine funding right but they go and hire the team first yeah and that's all well and good if you've got fun then if you're starting from scratch it's difficult because you haven't got the money to fund it but if you're starting with equity investment or investment you can go and get the team first so before they've even sold a product invented a product or made a sale right they've already got the CEO they've already got the chief marketing officer they've already got the head of sales they've already got product development finance and so on so they've got the right team giving them the best chance to succeed you need to bring in people the um can help you on the journey you know it's knowledge and expertise is what it's all about knowledge and expertise and if you can't amass a team surround yourself with a mentor you know we can it's been a funny experience training um educating because we are the reason it trade marshmallows done so well yeah in such a short period of time it's done phenomenal right i pioneered the training space in construction there's no one doing it i was the first in the space i'm still pretty much the only one in the space and um and um and and that's why it's been so successful because people um know that they are only going to go as far as their knowledge can take them yeah but investing in training or knowledge or a mentor to try and help to guarantee your success is what i recommend every business owner should do but so many businesses that i speak to are like yeah but you know i'm only if i'm only like a year or two in probably i'll come back and get a mentor when i've done like three or four years i'm like that could be three or four years i're fucking up get the mentor now yeah no Mike Tyson didn't start his boxing career training himself for five years did he and then go and get a coach you get a coach from day one so a business is no different you need a business coach straight away because they're able to give you the roadmap of how you're going to get there they're able to um be that um voice of opinion that sometimes you may not want to hear shoulder to cry on um somebody to celebrate the success with and um you know that's what you need to do you need to invest so somebody who's had the money being a multi-millionaire lost that had it back now you want to be a billion dollar company like when is enough enough is it just to chase is it adrenaline rush for you like what is that then what does it all come down to because money is an illusion as well obviously we need this to survive and get things but there's people out there who are happier than me and you put together they have fuck all yeah when is enough as i'm not gonna be a billionaire for the money believe it or not i want to be a billionaire for the status it's an achievement it's something that i can measure that's only a very few people have done on the planet so for me it's like if i get to a billionaire rime i can i'll have achieved something great and look i get my kicks from helping people yeah i love personal development and training because i love to see people win you know i'm a positive guy and i thrive off other people's success like you know all i want to do is see other people win each one teach one reach back pull somebody else up yeah knowledge gains is knowledge shared you know and and when you've come from a place that i have you know you want everybody to go up i'm forever trying to bring my family my friends everyone i meet i'm like we're all going up you know i'm trying to drag everybody up all the time but you know my best um my best time is when i give my money i'll give my you know i put my mum into retirement when i was 28 years of age proudest moment of my life right i'm she able to quit a job i gave her a load of cash and then i gave away a salary and money each month and still do and it's been amazing you've got to spend all of the time with the grandkids my sister's kids and everything else it's been incredible um i have my son and my partner and um and people around me i love to give my money to them i want to give my money to other people i want to help other people you know i said to you i'm going to go pick up a lambo right that's a cheap thrill for me it's a cheap thrill yeah it's cool but it's just a cheap thrill i'll get bored of it in a second but what i don't get bored of is knowing that the money that i have created can change somebody else's life me knowing that my mum got to sit at home while i worked 14 hour days and she got to spend time with my grandkids gives you the greatest feeling ever to keep going right not oh i can go and buy this at the end of the month because i've got the money i don't really care about that stuff for me yeah and if you get a billion pounds yeah or a 100 billion pounds you can help a billion people so i've only got a million i can only help a few people right a lot of people's businesses have failed especially with lockdown rex it um i know a lot of businesses are even when i walk along the streets in glasgo there's a lot of closed down shops and what advice would you have for somebody who's lost their business and think there's no way out of a field you can you can you can get back up yeah you can get back up remember money's in abundance money is in abundance and um it's not difficult to get it if you add value to the marketplace so you have to dust yourself off you've got a stop feeling sorry for yourself you need to see cow because loads of businesses will have failed but it's not their fault covid has wiped out so many and the other thing that i come to realize james was i was like well if i had once i'd um left improv i was like maybe it was i grew too quickly and then all of a sudden covid happened within like a couple of months and then i was like wow there was businesses that are like let's say you've got i don't know a family run butchers or whatever right and you've been doing it for 20 years and you've played it safe and you've made a good living and you've kept a good brand and everything else then all of a sudden something comes along and wipes you out and your whole ethos over those 20 years was i'm gonna go steady and safe and then something way out of your control comes and wipes you out anyway so it immediately made me think you've got to go for it yeah you've got to go for it because there's so many things outside of our control um that are going to come and wipe us out then there is no point in going slow there is no point in playing it safe use your experience as a business owner and the failures that you've been through and package it and sell it there are so many people out there now that are willing to pay alternative forms of education you know we launched a podcast um training business recently yeah and we're charging 15 000 pounds to teach our construction business clients how to launch a podcast right people are willing to pay for the knowledge you know um they're willing to pay for the knowledge they want alternative forms of education what can what can you teach that is going to you know you've got a small um selection of shops how can you how can you take that and give somebody else that's a independent news agents the blueprint or the model to scale or you know whatever it can be a gyms or you know whatever you've got to you've got to shake your experiences and package it into education and sell it as a product plans for the future joseph plans for the future are um become the best version of me live my potential keep pushing keep raising the bar keep raising the bar you know i've spent the last two years coming back from the ground up i'm in a strong position now good finances again big team underneath me so i just i'm going on a mission now to start really tackling um you know the big things out there i want to go and achieve some shit i want my name to be in lights again and i want to um you know i want to do the i want to do the undoable for anybody that's watching your battle with depression yourself like i've said you've been a multi-mo you know you've lost it you've clawed it back like for anybody that's in the struggle right now what advice would you have for them you can get back up but you've got to get back up stop blaming own it um it's water under the bridge go again you've got to go again for anybody that's wanting me to be getting contact with you watch our social media platforms at mr joseph valente tiktok instagram would you like to finish up on anything brother um i'd just like to say thank you very much for having me on um i really hope the audience enjoyed the podcast please use my story as a shining example of that you can get back up you know that's what i want to inspire people to do and remember it's not going to come to you don't wait for opportunity to create it for coming on today but i'm telling you a story thank you so much i wish you all the best for your future mate keep hustling you too god bless