 Right are you ready? Yep. You've got a cup of tea? No, no that's all right. Oh okay well thank you so much for joining us for the Brand Brains interview today. It's really great that we've managed to capture you because you're international high-flier now aren't you? You've just opened up in another country haven't you? Yeah we just opened Singapore. Brilliant. So which was which was fantastic. We used the Singaporean Dramatic Arts Centre. It's a beautiful theatre. We had over 400 people come along to our first event so yeah it was really really exciting. Oh amazing and you've obviously got two books out now so you're a best-selling author of two titles. How's that going? Phenomenal. So the one that was released over a year ago, Entrepreneur Revolution was actually back at number one. It's been a top 10 book all year but they Amazon made a book of the day and it became number one for all business categories and number 76 for all books. Wow. Yeah as a result of the promotion so it was nice because it was number one when it was first launched and it had always been in top 10 but it was very nice to be back in the top 100 books. Fantastic. Obviously I mean I really was inspired to come on your key person of influence program because I read your book KPI. It must be five or six years ago. I mean it was quite a long time that I read it and I've always had copies of it in my boardroom and when clients came and did their strategy meetings like Marianne, Marianne Page, she came to do a strategy session. I said you got to read this book so she read the book and then went on the course and so we've always recommended the course because it's beautiful with what we do. I've just completed the revised edition of key person of influence. There's a chapter in the book called your best thinking five years ago as your baggage today and I thought well goodness it's been five years almost since we've written the book so time to revise it and I actually was shocked at how much stuff I wanted to change so it's so true. I yeah so I went through and I rewrote the book has gone from the new edition will be more than 10,000 words longer. Wow. And that's after cutting a whole bunch of stuff out. Oh that's amazing that's amazing so I want to ask you some questions about that a bit later on. With your entrepreneur revolution book I just wanted to ask you what inspired you to write that one? So the thing that inspires me and the thing that I'm most passionate about is the times that we're living in. I think that you know after 10,000 years of human civilization that's mostly built upon geography and unless you were born in the right family you don't have much power. We now live in a world where you can be anywhere you like sell anything to anyone anywhere in the world like share an idea with anyone anywhere in the world have a voice have a message connect with the kind of people that inspire you no matter where they are in the world and I feel incredibly grateful and incredibly fortunate to be living in these times and I wanted a way of processing it myself and being able to think about it and I began to write that book. I actually began writing entrepreneur revolution before I wrote key person of influence. Really? Yeah and it was in the process of you know sort of clarifying my thinking that I realized that the first step that everyone has to take in this times that we're living in is to become a key person of influence. If you're not doing those things then you don't have the key to the door for the times that we're in and then the second step is about leverage and entrepreneur revolution is about leveraging through entrepreneurship and it's about setting up businesses and it's about taking advantage of the times that we're in so it's you know it's a book designed to outline instead of context for these radically changing times be to outline what are the key opportunities and then how would you make the most of that some of the mindsets and some of the strategies. Yeah that's brilliant because in your book you do talk about now being the age of the entrepreneur and don't get left behind. What would you say is a really important thing because there are a lot of business owners now who they're not necessarily taking control of their brand and they're letting their business run them. What would you say is a really important thing take away for them those people. Well the idea is if you look at the times you're in right now we have everything from voice recognition and conversation recognition software right through to automation software marketing channels that you know that spread very far and wide and put you in competition with people very far and wide so it's not only by the way it's not only the opportunity that you've got to spread a message far and wide someone who lives in Miami could be taking your customers here in London or someone who lives in Sydney, Australia could be your best supplier or someone who you know your marketplace could dry up because of a new entrant in Hong Kong. So the times that we're in are almost like a big wave and this wave is just building and building and building and has been for the last 10 years and it's really at that point where it starts to turn into a breaking wave and you either end up on the surfing side or you end up on the side to get swept out to sea. That's how it works with a wave. So really I mean to me it's almost it's almost beyond talking to people who are totally head in the sand. If they're head in the sand then they're not ready to surf this wave anyway and they're on the swept out the sea side and that's just the reality of the situation now. But for people who are open and people who have been you know getting excited about this and taking small steps and surfing small waves and you know then now's the time to get around a great group of people and surf this transformation that's happening. Yeah and well Carthage couldn't be true enough. We meet business owners all the time who they think that branding is Coca-Cola or Apple or Nike or some massive great big company. They don't think that branding is for them. They don't realize that as a small business their brand is just as important. What would you say to those people? Well first of all I understand it. I understand that a small business you know by the nature of it's being small is thinking very transactionally. They just want to make sales and when you're small you think to yourself you know I really don't want to invest money into branding because I can't you know I can't directly see how that would make any sales. Yeah you know I just want to do stuff that is is is tactical so that I can make more sales. So it requires you to have a have a different view of branding and a brand is a brand is about a consistency and about a promise and it actually does lead to a lot more sales. So you know investing in that that clarity of communication and investing in that quality of communication which is you know largely what branding is about does actually translate to new sales. So I think what I would say to anyone who's starting up and who's thinking about branding in those terms is I'd say hey I understand where you're coming from. I really understand that sales are important right now and that it's really important to make sales. I also understand that this will actually lead you to making a lot more sales faster and that for an investment in the way you look and the way you communicate and the quality of what you're getting across this will provide you with a competitive advantage. And I guess you know all about that kind of starting from scratch because I love your story landed in the UK not knowing anybody and really building well using yourself as that test ground becoming the key person of influence literally from scratch. So I mean I think that's absolutely amazing and so many people they're very privileged that they're already in their country and they already know people and they can already set up a business. You literally started from scratch so what would you say are the top three things that gave your reputation and your brand the biggest boost to your credibility? What did you do? Well if I go back to that time there are a few things I showed up I showed up in London without knowing anyone but I did have a very clear pitch. I knew what I was here to do and I knew what I was here to do. I knew the message I wanted to get out there and I had crafted a way of sharing that idea and I had with me a very powerful pitch and I went out and I pitched a lot of people and I sort of you know got the message out there by doing that. I also had a proven product so I was working with a product that I'd seen working in Australia and New Zealand and Singapore and I knew this product was a great product so I was bringing in a proven product and the product had a lot of content written about it so I was sharing a lot of content. I had a great product and then what I did is I raised my profile and did partnerships so I put on these dinners these dinner parties with about 20 people at a time. I invited the top key people of influence to these dinners I paid for everything and I shared with them you know who I was and what I was up to and then I invited them if they wanted to do a partnership with me a joint venture with me that I had a structured way of doing that and as a result I signed up a number of partnerships and was able to launch the business you know reasonably successfully here in London. So they're the key elements to it. Yeah that's fantastic so just to recap on that because I'm making my notes as well so having a clear pitch make sure you've got a clear pitch make sure you've got a good product that you can pitch and I guess you know we talk a lot on the key person of influence program about intellectual property and and product we you know that's a brilliant part that really opened our mind to in fact that's why we sold our business because we realized the and I want you to talk about this later that the mountain of value that we were stood on was just so enormous that it was crazy to continue exchanging our time for money when you know we had all these amazing things there's so many small business owners who are kind of taking for granted the knowledge that they had so turning that knowledge into a proven product so then you've got a good pitch to be able to pitch that product and then obviously sharing the content around that product as much as you can you said pitched to a lot of people so obviously the more chance you have of getting to the right people the more people you're pitching to and I guess the more people you're pitching to the more you're perfecting your pitch because you'll get that response yeah yeah sharpening your tools and partnerships so it's um that's so important isn't it because you you were then able to access a lot more people exactly I was new to London but I was partnering with people who had 10 year old businesses in London yeah it's been 10 years building up their databases and their contacts and connections so it was that leverage of people who already had been around brilliant what would you say just out of interest when you when you had the people come into the room you were paying for dinner because this is something that our readers might well want to do what would you say was the conversion when you shared your vision and your pitch how many people roughly did you have in the room and how many people came on board as a joint venture I think probably we would have had 30 in the room and about 20 would have had coffee with me afterwards which is what I which is what the next step was yeah and then probably about 12 to 15 would have actually gone ahead and done something with us on a level of partnership so roughly speaking about 50-50 yeah they were hand-selected people yeah who we were working with and also I would imagine that that personal touch of putting on the meal and this is another thing that the small business owners again around mindset I suppose money mindset is well you know my god if I outlay all this money then you know what if they don't buy into it but you just can't have that mindset you gotta go in there knowing that you just what you're saying to a degree I'd much rather know sooner than later yeah you know I meeting with 30 people for dinner you know potentially if I did it one-on-one would take a month yeah so I'm much more interested in the idea that I would know something like that within a day yeah you know I value my time a lot more than I value money yeah so I'm more interested in quickly getting a result as opposed to worrying about money I think money's completely made up my time is probably the most real thing that I've got yes you know I'm never gonna get that back I always make more money but I can never make more time no so I'm much more interested in getting results quicker than even if it costs money and that I think by the way I think that's one of the fundamental shifts between entrepreneurs who make it and entrepreneurs who don't entrepreneurs who struggle tend to think money's real and think that money is scarce and tend to think that their time is abundant and that their time is renewable and in actual fact I think the entrepreneurs who do really well think that their time is scarce and that money's renewable and money's not real and and and that tends to be one of the differences yeah I tend to find I don't know if you find this but it's almost at that 18 month to two year stage where a business tends to realise the value of their time and where they might have spent I met somebody the other week who he said well I designed my own business cards and I said really can I have a look and I looked and then and he'd basically gone on to Google and it's stolen all of these images off of Google and I said God how long do I take you to do this it had taken him nearly a week to do it but he was more impressed that he'd managed to get away with spending vista print and doing it all himself and he was on getting it right and and you think oh my goodness me there is a massive mindset shift that as you quite rightly say between kind of employee mindset still to being that entrepreneur do you have any examples that you can share with us about the the power of positive thinking when it comes to business and the mindset around business well I mean starters I'm not a huge fan of positive thinking I mean I think positive thinking or personal development is good for its own sake you know if you feel that you are happy with you know your typical day of thinking then maybe it's worth putting some time and energy into positive thinking or something along those lines but I'm not a big believer in it I'm not yeah so I mean that might be strange because a lot of people are but in the context of creating a very successful business I know some pretty negative people who are very successful you know I know some people who are very messed up and who need therapy I certainly know some people who who are jaded cynical I know people who are alcoholics who are incredibly successful and I know people who are incredibly personally developed and positive thinking who are broke yes yeah I know a lot of those too I'm not usually into the concept myself I think there's negative thinking has as much value as positive thinking I mean your guy with the with the crappy business card someone needs to say that's not gonna work yeah and that mindset's not gonna work and someone needs to be negative for the guy someone actually needs to say you're just gonna waste you next to three years before you figure this basic thing out I did but I mean you know sometimes you know sometimes you really need to realize you're flogging a dead horse perhaps and to be incredibly negative you know I've had some of my best ideas when I've been absolutely bottom of the barrel negative when I've been in one of those foul moods thinking I'm sick of this and I'm sick of that and I'm willing to throw it this way and throw that away yeah is where it is sometimes where I have a big breakthrough so I'm not I'm not a positive think I'm also not a negative think I'm happy to use both tools yeah I think negative thinking is a great way to approach an industry yeah I think I think if you're if you're looking at an industry that you want to get into it's really powerful to have a negative approach and to say what you know what's not working what's what what's frustrating the hell out of people yeah problem that's where you see the gap isn't it exactly what problems are showing up and and that's that's really powerful if you if you ask me what I would say creates a lot of success it's not so much negative or positive thinking but it's around environment there are categorically successful environments and they're categorically unsuccessful environments yeah so for example being part of the startup crowd is categorically an unsuccessful environment so if you're constantly hanging around with startups and everyone's in startup mode then you're going to be lumped in with all the other startups you're going to be viewed as commoditized yeah you're going to be constantly feeling and benchmarking yourself against other startups and you might be really positive within that context but it won't get you any further if you were to go and hang out with a business a group of business owners who are all making seven or eight figure businesses already and making millions to tens of millions worth of revenue and profits and all that sort of stuff and they're driving Ferraris and they're giving into charity and they're doing all that sort of stuff what actually might happen is that you suddenly become fresh and new and interesting because you're the new person you also might pick up a bunch of insights that you wouldn't have got anywhere else you might also tap into investment you wouldn't already had however you might feel incredibly negative because you're now that you are now the the dunce of the group so so so hence I'm more interested in I'm really fascinated by the concept of environment yeah I absolutely agree and that's one of the great things about your your KPI program is the environment that you set up the coaches that are there the the people I loved your interview process I think there are about six of us that came to the interview and only two of us got through I love love the fact that you know it's very much or it appears to be very much based on values and making sure that the right people are getting on to the course and that set up for an incredible environment and the power teams that we all got into and yeah that was brilliant the reason for that is is is also self-serving we have to spend nine months with all of our clients yeah and and we better pick people that we like yeah because if we're letting if we're working with just anyone you know can suck the energy out of it if we've got a group of people who we feel very frustrated with their business as well yeah so if we if we from the outset you know can't see that this would be a great relationship then and that's not worth getting into because it's our energy as well yeah on top of that we have this we have this phenomenal track record one thing that you know I'm really proud of is that if you Google the hell out of us you can go 10 pages deep and you won't find anyone talking about us in a negative way yeah and yet we charge a reasonable fee yeah charge we charge pretty decent money yeah and you would think well you know God someone must be saying something negative but the largely the reason that hasn't happened is because we've been selective as to who we work with so we work with people who we know we can help and we know we can get a result we work with people who we like and who like us yeah and and as a result you know we get this great track record and all these success stories in case that is but the but the selection criteria is a big part of it yeah and not enough small businesses are doing that really and when I say small business I mean you know that that could be up to 500 employees still depending on you know if you're a larger business than that you look on that and you say that's a small business but you know it's it is very much about making sure that you are working with the right customers and not being afraid to to to sack a customer if they're if they're not performing or to to say no to a customer in the first place because when you've got your head down working for that customer you're missing the other hundred most amazing people that could be your best customers ever exactly brand is a brand is largely as much about what you say no to as it is what you say yes to yeah great example is sort of like Apple you know Apple one of the first computers to get rid of optical drive so no CDs or DVD players and they just took them straight out they said well realistically they take up too much space and it's all technology so they have so it's out yeah and a lot of people went up to Apple you know geniuses at the at the retail stores and said hey well you know I want a laptop that has an optical drive in it and they went we'll get something else you know we're all about the future around you yeah you know we don't we don't do what's been done we do what's happening yeah and if you know and if you want something that's old hat then that's not us yeah but they're not afraid to say that yeah they're very much saying you know this is this is who we are this is what we do and here's what we say no to you if you you know I find one of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is that just say yes to anything yeah and and it's funny because it's a it's got an enormous amount of power when you say that's not what we do yeah we don't do we don't do that and that person might not end up buying but then but their brother-in-law might be the exact person who yeah is a is a perfect client so far better to say no no no we only do this around here this is the way we do it as opposed to trying to say yes to everyone oh it's the same with your business as well it's being courageous enough I guess to be able to say this part of my business isn't working or perhaps there is something else that I could be doing that would work better for me I touched earlier on when when we did the program that your story about standing on the mountain of value and I was thinking bloody oh my god yeah look what we stood on you know we're looking at all these other mountains and look what we stood on here please please share that story with our readers because I absolutely love it yeah well the the story is based on a climb up a mountain called Mount Tipper Gargan on the Sunshine Coast in Australia and Mount Tipper Gargan is the largest of a mountain range of five mountains and these five mountains literally pop up one two three four five and this it's flat between them so they just kind of pop up out of nowhere and when you climb Mount Tipper Gargan it takes about four hours to get up to the top and you're pretty tired and thirsty by the time you get up to the top and you stand there and you get up there and first thing is you realize that it's all just this broken volcanic rock up on top and there's lots of weeds and there's for some reason there's beetles and flies and all that sort of stuff buzzing around and and as soon as you look up you see these other four beautiful mountains and the weirdest thought is gee I wonder what it's like to climb that one or I wonder what it's like standing on that one and and you think to yourself you know gee it's just so beautiful that other mountain over there and ironically you're standing on the largest of the of the five and and you can't see the mountain that you're on so you know you you remember the struggle you you know that you're a bit thirsty you look down and it all looks broken but you're actually standing on this massive mountain so it's like that with entrepreneurs they overlook their own story they overlook their own insights they overlook their own networks and connections they overlook their own resources and they look at other people's resources networks connections and ideas and and they think wow that person is this amazing character I wish I was more like them or I wish I could have done their journey I wish I wish I had gotten into that industry you know I wish I wish I had have done you know more of what they've done unless of what I've done and it completely negates the fact that there are actually standing on a mountain of value and and and in many cases they're missing it which which is understandable they're too close so it's about having and having a group of people around you can help you to see the value that you're on yeah and there's just so much value I think it's a shame really that you know I meet quite a lot of people that for instance if you say to them every everybody's got a book inside them and they think oh no I haven't and then they you can see their brain starts to tick and they go oh yeah actually I could I could talk about this I could talk about that oh god yeah and then they're on a roll and all of a sudden it's like oh my god I can't hold you know no stopping you off you go and that's such a brilliant thing to see isn't it when you see that light switch on it is yeah the book writing process is very powerful so even for just the reason that it stops you looking outside and starts you looking inside for what you've what you're sitting on yeah yeah very powerful and of course you can then take that book and turn it into products and all kinds of other stuff that you can then use your joint venture partners so I mean it just all leads into what you were saying earlier wasn't it it's having that good picture around a good product and and having good partners that will be able to to help you take it to a larger audience big time yeah published content I think is the DNA of a business these days it's it's the underpinning insights that that are running that business yeah so let's get down to some nuts and bolts and nitty gritty stuff then great we like nitty gritty stuff so what would you say in your experience of brand positioning what are some of the best marketing activities that you've ever invested in um so keep hopping on a little bit about some of the stuff that I talk about every day you know whenever we've gotten into any business we number one we get the whole team together we teach the whole team and we we coordinate not teach the whole team we we agree as a whole team how we're going to pitch the business mm-hmm so it starts with the internal team so if you have I mean can you imagine it no I saw this last week I saw a technology company there's six people sitting around a desk and they're all part of this new technology company and they're building a product and I said so what do you guys do you know and they all sort of went oh you say no you say and then what became apparent is that they're not actually on the same page as to what they're actually actually up to they have job descriptions they have titles they have you know company name and maybe they've got a vision or mission but but even just how to explain the business to someone else that all of them didn't want to do it yeah so they end up giving it to one guy who kind of takes 10 minutes to sort of get across what they do and and then you know they're all sort of listening in as to how he explains it as well so you don't want a situation like that you want to have the entire team top to bottom from from the very you know most junior person to the very most senior person is all on the same page as how we're going to pitch the business and if and if that ever changes everyone's got to get on the new page yeah all right so so that's a that's an internal positioning activity or internal branding I suppose because in a great pitch by the way I'm probably overlooking the structure of a great pitch without explaining it but in a great pitch you're you deal with aspects of clarity and credibility in authority yeah you deal with aspects of the problem that you're going to solve and the way you're going to solve it the mission behind the business the opportunity that you're you're trying to see unfold in the world and the grand essence that you're trying to deliver so you'll you know you'll take people through a pitching architecture yeah so that within two to three minutes they can really deliver a pitch so and that's as important for one person as it is for a business it's got five people yeah so I would say no matter what size your business one look even if you're one person in business I would do this activity with your key supplies yeah if you if they're up for it I'll do this activity with you're definitely with your spouse you know so that your spouse understands what the business is you know because for many times it's the spouse who gets asked oh you know so what is that yeah so make sure your spouse has going to get a good answer in many ways there and your mom and dad in many ways they've got more credibility than you do because yeah because it's not their business you know so and it certainly costs credibility if if your spouse says oh actually I'm not quite sure yeah so you want to make sure that those sorts of things are covered and if like me you you starting with a team because I always start businesses with teams that's part of my philosophy you make sure on day one everyone can pitch that business another philosophy that's similar to that is that we all agree upon the brochure for the product so I don't create products I start by actually creating what I call the fantasy brochure right and if we like if I was starting from scratch right now today um I would start with a team we'd agree on a pitch and then we'd all agree and create a fantasy brochure and the fantasy brochure is the ultimate product that we want to create with the ultimate testimonials from the ultimate people um you know delivered in the ultimate way and we we would invest a lot of time into producing the the ultimate template brochure and say there that's what we're creating so um so we then we publish all the content that we go in there and we're normally looking to create something that's maybe eight to twelve pages long and we you know we really want to produce something that that communicates the value and the offer and the pricing and all of those things that we go into a brochure and we basically in the process of creating something like that we we get very very clear about what it is and also we create a look and feel so is this gonna be you know it's just gonna be black like a like a AMG Mercedes or is it gonna be colorful you know like a like a kids you know chocolate bar or sweet you know those snakes or yeah you know what kind of product is it gonna be and what's it gonna say you know if we were a car we ask questions like if we're a car company which one would we be would we be all the way up to Ferrari or would we be you know a Kia or would we be you know a a Vauxhall or where would we be yeah and then we go and have a look at their brochures so it's okay we're gonna be a BMW so let's have a look at the way BMW communicates their brand and the images they use and the colors they use and let's see if we can build a brochure as a fancy brochure that starts looking a bit like what BMW would have yeah great way to do it yeah so so that's that's a bit of fun um and and um and we'll write press releases so we'll we'll talk about our fantasy press release you know so we might you know if the if the goal of the business maybe is to sell the business you'd write a fantasy press release about um you know 2020 we just exited the business for 50 million pounds brilliant and and at that particular time we were operating in you know 10 countries and we had a team of 150 people and and we'll put all of that sort of stuff and and we'll do um we'll do those sorts of uh fun ideas brilliant and and uh and I guess once you have that that absolutely nailed then any marketing that you do is going to have a much higher chance of converting even if it's just to get a coffee not to sell them something yeah it's um yeah it's as soon as you have that in mind you benchmark every decision against that is it getting me closer to that press release or is it not yeah um you know so that's um you know that's the that's the powerful kind of way of doing it I'm a big fan of you know go into the future stand in the future have a look around yeah invented the way you want it and then uh and then work backwards from the reverse engineer that me too definitely it's a great way to do it you know a lot of people are kind of wondering aimlessly through their business life um not knowing what good looks like for them yeah so they never achieve it they're always frustrated or not feeling like they're getting anywhere but they don't actually know where it is they want to go where they want to go and look I can also understand that um many times it's a very very difficult mental exercise to take yourself through a process yeah so we you know we have coaches that we work with who they hold it's what's called holding a space yeah or holding a process so they hold the process together so we can freely express within the process so um you know it's very difficult to coach yourself or to consult consult yourself so so I think um one of the one of the powerful things is to perhaps get someone else to take you through the process of um of doing it or one of the other things I love doing is I love uh getting our team so we've got about 30 people on the team now so I love putting it out there hey guys what do you know what do you think this would look like or if we were going to release this document you know what would you know what would be on that document yes um and getting getting everyone else tuned in and and uh and getting and being the one to facilitate that for us it can be really power empowering as well can't it to the people that work with you to to be given that opportunity and it's amazing we did this with our team as well before we sold our business last year and we we did a team day and the responses that came back were massively creative and um and you think wow I've never thought of that yeah that's like inspired genius yeah that's awesome that's awesome so what would you say are some of the mistakes that you've made that you can share with our readers they can learn from them well I mean one of the biggest mistakes I made was um I made the you know early on I made the classic mistake that most entrepreneurs make of thinking that some piece of technology or thinking that some software or some system or some tactic is going to change the game um you know you think oh you know I just all I have to do is you know if I can just get that auto bot that just trolls through and looks for things or if I could just get that contractor in the Philippines who writes that e-book for me and I can pump that out and sell that for 39 you know all that all that stuff that that you think oh you wouldn't be great if that worked well um you know in my early days in business I was into a lot of those tactics and trying to get those things that work and um and eventually I realized nothing works um it's only the stuff that you're committed to working yeah that will work so you've got to you know be the one who's actually driving it um and uh and I suppose you know some of the other mistakes I've made is is um is probably that mistake you know the reason I talk about the amount of values because I've been there myself and probably the mistake of going out there looking at other people and saying oh I wish I could do it they're doing and I'll copy that guy you know that guy making so much money you know as a property investor or like you know a guy who's making so much money on the stock market or that guy who just bought a Ferrari and you know does that thing with furniture right it's like it's like you know that's not it's not there it's not my it's it's not my place to copy their story yeah it's my place to look at my own amount of value and make the most of that so that would be you know one of the other one of the other ones um the other mistake links to what you were just saying about harnessing the power of teams and you know it's it's easy when you've had a little bit of success to forget that it is really just a team who came together and did it founders are way overrated you know you know you see you set up a company so what anyone can set up a company you kicked off great well done you made the first sales great well done but as soon as a business becomes valuable it becomes valuable because of a team yes um so you know I've made the mistake of not putting enough value in my co-founders and not giving them enough credit I've made a mistake of buying into you know the the illusion that I'm somehow cleverer or more successful than other people the natural fact that was you know it was my team and and I was pretty fortunate to be on that team um and and yeah and just make the mistake of being you know you the biggest one of the biggest mistakes anyone can ever make is being the smartest person in the room you never ever want to be the smartest person in the room you want to have a team of people around you who absolutely make you feel that um that you got to put your socks up yeah um so I'm in a very fortunate position now that I would you know I genuinely look around the business and and think this business is full of people who are smarter and more talented than I am um and and that's a good thing oh that's something to be incredibly proud of hmm yeah exactly a lot of people a lot of people they don't want that they want to be there they want to be the the big the big dog yeah um and uh and I'm I'm really proud that it's taken on more of a life of its own and it's attracted highly talented people and it's brought out by talented people well you're now I believe are you in five countries now or is it six now we're in seven cities um we're in Australia Singapore USA and UK so four countries seven cities mm-hmm yeah and uh I mean expanding a brand internationally you use a word which um which is very apt uh I think uh is it global the local global economy um and uh you know obviously just by even being on Facebook now if you're promoting something on Facebook you could be doing with business with somebody in Chicago and sat there chatting like we are now almost like you're in the same room having a coffee you know exactly and um but what people in this case I'm I'm in London going to class yes I know I'm a team international um it's amazing that you could be doing business so easily with people across the pond um what would you say now that you've expanded your business internationally what would you say is a key lesson you've learned going from one country to another to another to another um I it's very well worth doing um because it forces you to think about your business in a very different way so the second city that we opened up was Melbourne from London so you couldn't pick two more geographically disparate places um you know you you're getting to the point where you're actually you know 26 hours travel um to go to the second city but what that forced us into doing was really thinking about the business in different terms um you know when you're setting up a second city on the other side of the planet you've got to think about well what carries this business when I'm not there yeah what's the intellectual property what's you know what what makes this business special and unique separate from me or anything that's happening here in London um and that was I mean that was you know pretty powerful activity doing that I really recommend anyone getting involved in the idea of you know in the context of the whole world which is your potential marketplace and it seems unlikely that your best customers and your best marketplace would be locally um it's probably more likely that they're somewhere else so you better have a strategy for figuring out where that somewhere else is and how to get there yeah as well as where you are so um so you know trying to think about your business in global terms is a really powerful I think for for for about two or three years I used to carry around a little marble of the world and it had had the as a blue marble with you gave me one yeah I still have it I used to spend some time when I when I had some time just thinking about the fact that it's such a small place and that that and I would picture myself sitting out in space looking back at this beautiful little blue and green dock and just thinking wow I can I can do I can go anywhere I like on there and it's it's just a flight away or it's a Skype session away so what do I want to do now I've got this whole little world in the palm of my hand what do I want to do and it is powerful you know powerful metaphor powerful way to orientate the mind yeah amazing oh international growth here we come from all of our brown brains readers well gosh I mean I don't want to take up any more of your time because there's so many great ideas that you've given there is there anything that you would like to offer the brown brains readers something special yeah so I'm a big fan of measuring I think that when you can measure something you can improve it and sometimes when you measure stuff you can be absolutely shocked that what you thought was the problem isn't actually the problem or what you thought was a strength may not have been as much of a strength as you thought so sometimes intuition can be off when there's a lot of moving parts so I'm a big fan of measuring things so one of the tools I came up with for people is called the key person of influence test and it's we call it the key person that looks quiz yeah and it's a series of 40 questions that gives you a score in six different areas and what it scores you on is how well you're pitching how well you have published content and intellectual property yeah do you have the right sort of products do you have the right profile and do you have the right partnerships and then is that translating into financial success yeah and it can and just by answering those 40 questions which are all yes no questions yeah it can actually tell you a which ones you're strong on and which ones you weak on but b it can go into um sometimes you can come out as strong on these areas but weak on the financial success which either means there's a lag time and it's catching up or you're in an industry that just doesn't reward my performance um you know you're in something that's too small but it's interesting to know that either way yeah um so i i really love what i love is for people to take that test every six months and just see where they've come and how how they've moved forward and and to actually gauge and and measure it comes with a 33 page report that gives you ideas on how to improve it takes all of about 10 minutes to complete so it's it's one of those little ideas that um that is about really tuning into where you should focus your attention yeah and how to do that awesome and how can they get hold of this quiz oh it's completely free costs nothing um it's keypersonofinfluence.com forward slash quiz easy peasy easy is that easy easy peasy thank you so much i'm sure that there's a mountain of value that our readers are going to get from this interview so thank you so so much have an amazing day and uh and i'll let you know when the issue is coming out cheers all of us thanks for taking care chad bye