Unlocking Entrepreneurial Success in the Digital Age with Daniel Priestley

in order to be successful you need to know that people have a small number of slots in their brain for who they

remember so you've got to get into people's head and in order to do that you need to know two things the first

one is 7114 which we'll talk about and the second thing is that your brain is extremely good at deleting messages but

there's five things that will not be deleted by the brain and the last two are the ones that are most useful so the

first one is I wish I knew this stuff at the start of my career Daniel Priestley is the money-making expert and serial

entrepreneur who's built several multi-million dollar businesses from nothing and has meor over 3,500

businesses with the same Frameworks for Career Success that you're about to learn the problem that we have now is

that we live in a digital world but all of society is built for the Industrial Revolution system which means that we're

playing by an old set of rules and going through a schooling system that is preparing them for a world that no

longer exists so people feel like that there are no opportunities there are no safe jobs anymore feeling like you're in

competition with AI and that leaves a whole generation of people feeling absolutely wiped out before they've even

started so what are the new set of skills people need to know to set them up in this Digital World well there's

actually a step-by-step approach for doing that including building a personal brand okay let's pause there why does

that matter cuz that's the key to Capital Talent customers and it's not about becoming an influencer with

millions of followers but if you're seen as a key person of influence that's enough to make seven figures and is that

where your 5ps come in yeah and I'll take you through all of those and then there's the entrepreneurial pyramid

which opens you up to this whole other world of opportunities as well as side hustles and the two types of

opportunities that everyone needs to know about I want to go through all of that let's do it

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Daniel Priestley how do you define and describe what it is that you do with your content with your work um and

through all of these books that you've published what is the summary of what you do and who you do it for so I have a

massive passion for entrepreneurship about 20 years ago I started seeing a massive Trend uh about entrepreneurs who

could stand out scale up and make a positive impact in the world through business um I have built multiple

businesses over the last 20 years and I'm just uh fascinated by the predictable stages that people go

through in order to build successful businesses um as I've been growing my businesses I've been writing about it in

my books um mostly to document what I'm learning myself um and I also built a community of entrepreneurs who wanted to

uh essentially make the most of the times that we in so what's happening at the moment is we're going through

massive amounts of change it's very similar to the agricultural age when it was replaced by the IND Industrial Age

and there were New Economic rules that didn't apply to the agricultural age but did apply to the Industrial Age so the

agricultural age was the feudal system and the Industrial Age was the capitalist system what's happening is

the Industrial Age is fast being replaced by the digital age and as we go through this massive change we're seeing

new rules and New Economic rules that apply so give you an example in the Industrial Age people had to to become

successful people had to gain skills and then get a job and find an employer who would uh employ them for those skills as

we go into the digital age what works is to build a personal brand based on your unique intellectual property and then to

position that brand next to a scalable digital uh elegant business model and those who are doing that and those who

have figured that out are doing incredibly well and succeeding at speed and there's actually a step-by-step

approach for doing that I want to go through all of that I am I was running in Cape Town look at me plugging my

running brand that's lasted for 5 days um I was run in Cape Town and a young couple came up to me at the end of my

run when I'd stopped uh running underneath this tree and they came up to me it was about the second or third of

January they said um Steve we love your content we've been listening to dersy a while and they looked at each other and

you could see that they were really stressed and they said we're just trying to figure out how to start a business

and what we should be doing and I could see in their face that they had been mulling it for a long long time there

was this like they're very very young I'd say they were like 21 years old and they were saying like what do we do and

actually at that time I said you need to need to listen to an episode I did with Daniel Priestley but I also knew you

were coming on so I said and I'm recording with him shortly so make sure you listen to that so through the lens

of that 21y old you've detailed that their world has now changed they're living in this digital world where would

you advise those two to start if they want to capitalize on the opportunity that's presented itself okay so I'll

slow down for a minute what's happening at the moment is people in that situation they're feeling incredibly

invisible um that they don't matter they feel stuck that there are no opportunities you can't buy a house you

can't get a career uh there are no safe jobs anymore um AI is disrupting everything um and they feel detached

from meaning and purpose and that leaves a whole generation of young people feeling absolutely wiped out before

they've even started it doesn't actually exclusively apply just to people in their 20s I know people in their 40s 50s

60s I know entrepreneurs who have traditional businesses who feel that way so it's worth acknowledging that it's a

widespread phenomenon everywhere in the world people feeling invisible feeling the pain of like not being able to

connect with the right people um and feeling stuck and feeling detached from meaning so what we need to do is address

that be because what's happening is you're playing by an old set of rules and that's normal because the school

system told you an old set of rules because it was based in the Industrial Age and we have to start by learning the

new set of rules so if I was advising 21 year olds in particular the first thing that you want to do is called an

entrepreneur apprenticeship uh an entrepreneur apprenticeship is where where you go and work in a small team of

less than 12 people where you have direct contact with an entrepreneur and in particular you're looking for an

entrepreneur who has somewhat of a personal brand so they have let's say 5,000 to 50,000 uh followers on social

media and they've got an elegant business model that inspires you it doesn't necessarily have to be exactly

what you want to do in the future but you need to learn the new rules so you need to learn how is that person

building their personal brand and how are they building their business so that it can scale how how do they communicate

with people anywhere in the world how do they sell to people anywhere in the world so those are some of the key

things that you have to do you do not want to become an entrepreneur straight away it's too big a shift you need to be

a number two I was a number two I had a mentor I worked for an amazing guy for two years uh we went from 0 to 6 million

in a year and from zero people to 60 people in one year so I got the entrepreneur apprenticeship first and

that's where you want to start and then once you do that you can do side hustles and then begin the entrepreneurial

Journey on your own but how do you know if it's for you how do you know if you cut out for it so at the moment what's

happening is that the rules are changing so fast that you it's not like anyone's cut out for it right so there is no sure

feeling where you go oh I'm really cut out for this because it's giving me clear signals during times of disruption

the signals get uh jammed so what's happening is people are going through a schooling system that is preparing them

for a world that no longer exists so we go through 12 years of school and it's saying oh you know here's how you get

ready for an employer well there are no employers and here's how you get ready for a career there's no such thing as

careers anymore um and here's how you get ready for a job oh by the way that job can easily be done by AI already so

all of this is happening and that means that people are feeling this void and they're saying well I don't feel ready

for anything that's because you had 12 years of training for a world that doesn't exist anymore so what we have to

do is say all right let's look at the world that is uh emerging and let's position ourselves for that world and

res skill ourselves and reposition our El for that world when you were talking about that entrepreneurial

apprenticeship it sounded like a new form of Education a new form of University are there any other ways if

we're talking about that preparation phase where you're getting ready are there any other ways you would advise

someone to rapidly Excel their Knowledge and Skills in preparation to become an entrepreneur um is it books is it do I

sit on chat GPT what worked for you books are great YouTube channels are great I didn't have any of that um you

know believe it or not even books were hard to come by when I was a teenager um you know you had to kind of order

business books in or you had to go to a big book store that had a business book section um we didn't have Amazon and we

certainly you know anything like a podcast you actually paid for cassette tapes and CDs and they were $1,000 they

were really expensive just to listen to some business content believe it or not that was a thing um and all of it's for

free now online however there's you can't learn to ride a bike uh through books and videos you have to get on the

bike so the best thing to do is to work for someone who's building a business and if you can't do that become a

co-founder with someone who's got more experience than you um and if you can't do that then you need to do some small

side hustles a side hustle is an open and shut business case so within 90 days you're going to start something and

finish something all with within 90 days you're not going to get yourself into a long-term thing you're just going to

start something see how it goes and it ends in 90 days when I was a teenager I did nightclub parties so the nightclub

part had a time where we would agree with the club that we were going to uh have the venue then we had a promotion

phase then we ran the party and then that was it at the end of the night we split the money and that was uh the

finish and it all happened very quickly and you get the learning experience but you don't have the ongoing um connection

to the business I also sold roses uh door too um so on Valentine's Day I bought a few hundred roses we dressed up

in tuxedos and we went door Todo selling uh Valentine's Day roses and that probably lasted 3 weeks um from the time

we came up with the idea to the time we found a supplier bought the Roses went door too uh and made our sales and then

it was all finished at the end of Valentine's Day so these are called side hustles and the important point is that

they're not ongoing Ventures they're just open and shut and then you can reflect you can then sort of see what

worked what didn't work and then see if you want to continue after that something else that i' I don't think

I've ever heard many entrepreneurs or Founders talk about when they're giving advice on that preparation learning

phase is the importance of writing yeah has that had a profound impact on me um my the rate in which I

Learned was having a practice what stage in your journey did you write so I made a commitment to myself when I was 24 to

write a tweet every day okay and I would screenshot it then post it on Instagram now this was maybe the single biggest

hack in my life that I've never really talked about because of the all of the downstream consequences that occurred

Downstream consequence number one got to a million followers on Instagram by posting these quotes of ideas that I had

every day so every day at 7 p.m. my girlfriend knew at the time she goes he's going to go off for an hour and

think of something to say um Downstream consequence number two is it taught me how to communicate ideas in a concise

high impact way and kind of what people respond to uh and I'd say number three is it generally meant that if I went

through my day and something had happened it gave me a moment to condense that down into wisdom a little pie truth

a piece of Truth so that day I learned something and um without that practice those learnings kind of would have

passed you by so what you're describing is actually Beyond just writing it's publishing um and Publishing means to

make public to put something into the public domain so yeah there's journaling which you keep private but then there's

making something public um and when you when you do this you have to think about how would this be of value to others um

so you'll thinking you know entrepreneurs have to be thinking about how would this be of value to others

you're putting it into the public domain so you're getting feedback as to whether this is a good idea or a bad idea or

okay idea um so yeah publishing doesn't have to be tweeting it doesn't have to be um writing a book publishing is video

audio um it can be long form content it can be short content uh you could do shorts you could do tweets right all of

that is publishing the the essence of publishing is that you're taking your ideas and sharing it publicly putting it

in the public domain that is a very rapid way to get started um interesting fact on this that out of the billion

people who use LinkedIn only 3% are publishing regularly and less than 1% publish weekly so you think that you're

in competition with a billion people on LinkedIn 99% of people are just there to kind of lurk and watch what other people

are doing only 1% of people are competing 1% of people are creating the content on that platform um when it

comes to YouTube there's 2.7 billion users of YouTube but only 4% of people have an account and only a fraction of

those accounts are active so it's a tiny percentage of the world's population that are creating something most people

are consuming so one thing that you're describing is the move from being a consumer to a Creator and entrepreneurs

have to make that move how have you accelerated your learning because you're someone that is able to give out lots of

different ideas from lots of different references points and there must be some kind of underlying framework you're

using to like learn process and publish which now presents you which is part of the reason you get invited on to all

these podcasts now and people are paying you to speak at their events Etc what was that framework for you so my

background was I used to have an agency and we used to run all these different events and we used to uh have to put

stuff onto people's seats when we were running events and I had to kind of write stuff all the time like quick

reports and all of that so I got in the habit of writing I saw the power of writing um in 2009 the entire world

tipped on its head um after the global financial crisis and I was completely disrupted uh I went from millions of

Revenue down to a few hundred thousand of Revenue I lost 90% of my Revenue in one year um it was mass it was I

remember one Christmas party 17 18 people at a Christmas party the following year was three um it was

morbid so during that time where the global financial crisis had such a deep impact I began writing about what is it

that I know to be true what is it that like I don't know much because I've just had the rug pulled out from under me

what is it I do know to be true what are the most uh strong truths that I could share and I ended up writing the book

called key person of influence in 2009 and it came out in 2010 and what I felt very confident

about was this idea that the future was going to see a shift from business and institutional Brands to personal brands

that we would see the decline of big faceless companies and the rise of uh individuals whose personal Brands were

bigger than the institutions um and it was pretty radical idea at the time but I felt pretty confident about it and the

more I wrote about it the more I felt this was where the world was heading um if we look today we can see Brian Cox

Professor Brian Cox has more followers than CERN um we can see Richard Branson has orders of magnitude more followers

than Virgin uh we can see elon's got more followers than NASA uh we can see you know Trump is way more powerful than

the rep Republican party so the the essentially the personal brand has just gone whoosh ahead um but I was I I

started that process very murky that I didn't quite know what it was it was a feeling or a sense and by the time I'd

gone through the publishing process of writing uh I was clear and the macro factors that brought that about what are

those underlying shifts that happened that meant we went from the logo to the person let's zoom out 300 years so the

the agricultural age uh was essentially the economic system was called feudalism and there was Lords and kings and queens

and then there were surfs and people who surfed the land and then technology changed things you can imagine what it

must have been like when 300 people were on a farm and then they saw three people on a tractor and then that tractor went

and went and did the job of hundreds of people with three people on it and it's like oh my goodness what are we all

going to do um how are we all going to live our lives anymore right and then they would have said well what are going

to be the jobs like everyone works in farming and it's like well there's going to be this whole new system there will

be a completely new economic system called the industrial system and it's going to replace everything so back in

the agricultural age uh if you were a lord right and if you were Rich if you were successful you had vast tracks of

agricultural land but as soon as the Industrial Age kicked in you didn't even need land you only needed a tiny amount

of land to put a factory on What mattered is that you had the ability to organize lab LA and machinery and if you

could organize a factory that was way more economically productive thanu hundreds of Acres so the whole economic

system got tipped on its head and suddenly it didn't matter if you a dukee it mattered if you an industrialist if

you're a capitalist so this whole new system took over we had 200 years of innovation and it went through multiple

waves but the important thing to know is that it's technology that changed things right it's always a technology shift

right the the the fundamentals of the economy are dictated by the technology that we have available to us so what

happened around the 2000s to 2020 is we had these general purpose technologies that just got introduced as

though they were nothing you know suddenly everyone can publish a video online suddenly everyone can write a

blog suddenly everyone can tweet everyone can form a community on Facebook uh there's this device that you

put in your pocket that is better than a uh traditional camera studio that the BBC would have had so the the power was

is just rapidly swinging from institutions to individuals I'm sitting there going wait a second an individual

has got all the things that a multinational corporation has access to but they don't have the bureaucracy

right they don't have the the weight on their shoulders they don't make slow decisions they can make fast decisions

so as I witnessed this technology being introduced I said the way this is going is it's going to take all the power of

big businesses and institutions and just give that to individuals that's exactly what happened and I mean if there was

ever a year where that's been more in focus with this election cycle and what we've seen with Trump and going on Rogan

and Cela going on Alex Cooper in the media lands that's what cost the election so that's a big Trend um US

presidential elections have always predicted major Trends so Franklin Roosevelt in the 30s he did the national

radio campaign JFK in the 60s did the televised campaign Obama in 2008 did the social media campaign of those campaigns

changed the game Trump in 2016 did a hyper personalized digital datadriven campaign famously with Cambridge

analytica and that actually gave birth to data analytics and hyper-personalization and then something

big happened in 2024 and what happened is that Trump broke the mold on campaigning and he

started going on all these major podcasts and if we actually crunch the numbers Trump uh did something like 40

hours worth of Watch time uh and it got 124 million views and uh Kamala did I think it was 7 hours just in the long

form yeah just on the long form she did seven hours total and it only got a few million views and one of her podcasts

only last 7 minutes now what she did is she approached it like a McKenzie consultant which is she turned up and

she said here's the script here's the questions um ask me these questions and then I'm out of here and it was very

much the kind of um professional corporate approach Trump rocks up onto comedians podcast and says yeah ask me

anything and then he just goes on a big rant and it goes for 3 hours now what's actually happening is is quite

predictable in a world of short videos and in a world of AI and in a world of confusion and disruption and and where

everyone's throwing um punches at each other saying your misinformation your misinformation you've seen some of this

right going on right misinformation misinformation what actually going on is that people say hey enough's enough I

want to see a long form piece of content and make my own mind up I don't want anyone to tell me what's in

misinformation I'm smart enough I want to see if this Trump guy is a crazy guy I want to be able to see him you know

for two or three hours and I'll make my own mind up on that because everyone's saying so many different things and I

know that there's all this confusion I want the long form piece of content so 2024 began the long form unscripted era

right so now where we are with marketing is you've got to drop the script and you got to do long form content and here's

my prediction the prediction is is we're going to see the biggest CEOs in the world clamoring to get onto this podcast

and other podcasts like it they're all going to be wanting desperately to build their personal brand because they know

that the long form unscripted podcast is the only way to hire talented people the only way to get loyal customers the only

way to keep investors happy it's going to be the key to the entire shooting match is that the CEO of a big company

has to become human and they have to be unscripted and what advice would you give them because you consult for a lot

of people they come to you for advice whether it's the biggest influencers of the world or CEOs if if you were giving

them advice on how to achieve that goal what would you say well I I mostly talk to entrepreneurs and I mostly care about

entrepreneurs and the advice I give to entrepreneurs is work your way up the podcast pyramid um so there's literally

thousands and thousands of podcasts that get a few thousand views just go on those go on lots of them um if you do a

good job you'll eventually be invited onto a slightly bigger one and you'll eventually be invited onto a slightly

bigger one again and there's this pyramid of you know there's there's a few podcasts as big as yours but there's

thousands of podcasts in every single Nation Vertical where anyone can go on and you know talk about who they are and

what they do so for any entrepreneur my challenge to them the ones that I'm working with is an absolute minimum I

want them to create 10 to 20 uh hours of watch time in the year ahead so I want people to go on 10 podcasts that last

for 2 hours or 1 to two hours and I want them talking through their business story their origin their mission their

Vision uh you know how they got started the types of people they employ the types of customer problems they solve

the outcomes they deliver all of that put it all into a podcast get good at that format you publish in lots of ways

right you publish written form you publish in video is there anything at all that's if there was one single thing

that's helped become better at speaking or communicating ideas and you can't say no I'll take away the restraints what

would you say it is Frameworks Frameworks what does that mean so you need communication Frameworks so if I'm

introducing myself uh to someone I use something called name same Fame aim in a game so we can break that down pleas um

what is my name and my business name uh what is uh what is it that I'm the same as that you already understand

okay let's pause there why is why does that matter uh when people are storing information they need to open a folder

and they want to open a folder that's very easy to label so um they don't want to open a folder that says like I'm an

energetic healer that works with transmutational objects that that transcend time space and blah blah blah

they want to go oh you know you're a life coach okay great I understand that or you're a vet okay cool you're a

consultant you're you know you're a software company got it so it's like just the most basic thing that I can

then hang everything on that um cuz I already understand it so name same Fame so Fame is like what makes you

interesting what makes you fascinating what big brands have you worked with what interesting projects have you

landed uh so anything that would make you stand out any big numbers any awards any big names um any of that would be

your fame um so name same Fame aim what are you working on in the next 90 days and then game what is your bigger Vision

what do you want to achieve the next 3 to 6 years I think a lot of people aren't even clear on that a lot of

people aren't and that's why the framework's powerful because it forces you to get clear on it if you then get

clear on it you can introduce yourself with power and authority uh you can do the beginning of a podcast you can be on

a stage just introducing yourself at a networking function believe it or not you can cram all of that into 30 seconds

MH and so going back to this point of preparation right so one of the big things that is going to give me a

significant competitive advantage if I'm building a business is personal branding what else do you think someone like me

at the start of my career needs to understand about the game of personal branding is there are there any

particular platforms I should be aiming at a particular upload Cadence a particular type of content here's what

you need to know you need to know that humans have a limited ability to remember names and

faces they only have a small number of slots in their brain for who they remember and the number is about 1,500

in in total um and it's about 150 that you can kind of remember well and these are

called Dunbar numbers and Dunbar numbers basically said you've got a few slots for your family and then some more slots

for friends then you've got your acquaintances right out to 1500 people that you can easily put a name in a face

to in order to you for you to be successful you've got to get into people's head they have to kind of know

who you are um in order to do that they have to spend time with you they have to have rep uh repetition with you and they

have to see in multiple contexts so the research says 7114 7 hours 11 interactions on four

platforms per in order for you to remember me okay total so for example you and I we've now connected a few

times um so we have probably clocked up maybe 7 hours together now what that means is that uh if I bumped into you at

a conference even if I was on one side of the room and you're on the other side of the room you'd say oh there's Daniel

your brain would immediately go Oh there's Daniel I'll walk over I'll say hello

because we've spent enough time together um now there's this phenomenon called parasocial relationships parasocial

relationships are basically one-sided relationships it it's how we feel towards famous people so we think that

we know George Clooney we think that we know Angelina Jolly we don't it's a parasocial relationship that person

we've spent time with them through their movies through their media appearances and therefore because they've clocked up

7-Eleven 4 with us we then feel that we know them is this making sense makes perfect sense yeah so what we have to do

is build parasocial relationships at scale so what we have to do is put out enough stuff where anyone can spend 7

hours 11 interactions for on four platforms so when I work with entrepreneurs here's one of the

questions I always ask I say if I was to block out tomorrow and I'm going to take all day to watch read or listen to

everything that you've got available online and uh I'm looking for things that are on message that tell me about

who you are who you serve what it is that you do can I spend all day going through your online environment and just

fill the entire day and most people say no and then occasionally some people say yes and they say yeah actually you can

I've been on a few podcasts I've got an audio book that I released I've got some videos on YouTube I've got some posts on

LinkedIn you could go through all of that those are the ones that are scaling really fast because they've put in the

work to be scalable they can build a parasocial relationship like that and if we drill down into the art of building a

parasocial relationship because it's funny at the start of the conversation you said that these are the new rules in

business and the world because of these macro changes but at some point the new rules become the old rules again when

everyone listens to this podcast and you kind of see it at the moment on LinkedIn LinkedIn is a um a long stream of

professional personal brand builders whereas 5 years ago it wasn't the the case but the but the numbers are still

only 1% of people are doing it 99% of people aren't posting weekly so we're still early we're still way early but is

there is there a framework for creating some kind of differentiation amongst a noisy crowd yeah so the the

differentiation so a lot of people ask me about differentiation so let's talk about what makes you different and to

you to talk about this let's go through a scenario and the scenario is that you're walking down the street and

you're walking down Oxford Street and it's thousand thousand of people really busy street and as you're walking down

your brain has this lyic system that just deletes people so you just kind of see people as blobs not to hit and you

just kind of walk and if I stop you at the end of the street and I say how many people do you remember seeing you'll go

none I don't remember seeing anyone in particular if I said describe some of the people what they were wearing I

can't remember anything so your brain is extremely good at deleting messages and this is what's happening in our

marketplaces people just delete everything here's what doesn't get deleted so

there's there's five things that will not be deleted by the brain the first one is scary so if something is scary we

pay attention to it this is why the news has been so successful for many many years because they say if it bleeds it

leads if it's scary if it's horrible people will watch it let's find the the worst possible things that happen today

let's blow them up and put them in everyone's house so that they spend time watching uh watching the news so so be a

scary person so be scary right uh the next one is be strange so if you saw someone walking down the street

dressed as a giant hot dog you'd say oh I remember the guy who was dressed as a giant hot dog cuz it's so strange

peacocking yep well peacocking yeah uh you could try yeah exactly you could wear that big kind of hat that you've

got in the cupboard that uh that you don't talk about M uh and then the next one's sexy so so we've got strange we've

got scary we've got sexy now these are three things that most businesses don't want to be so most business can't stand

out and sexy even if they wanted to be that most people can't pull that one off anyway um so only a few lucky people get

to do that one um but actually the last two are the ones that are most useful and that is providing free value so free

things anyone who gives free value away is immediately stand out okay we've got to make sure that it

is value it's got to be value because everyone thinks what they're doing is value totally it's got to be something

that people would have otherwise paid for um and it has to be beautifully packaged so if I hand you a piece of

jewelry in a plastic bag you're going to think oh it's fake or it's you know stolen or it's you know not real or

something like that it's cheap right if I hand it to you in a beautiful box and it's beautifully wrapped you're going to

say oh that's a very thoughtful gift so it's the way that it's packaged and it's also you know that it's actually

something that people would otherwise pay for so providing free value um and also being familiar which

is clocking up the 7-Eleven 4 so free and familiar are the two things that anyone can apply so look at let's look

at you for example you spend tens of thousands of pounds producing episodes of this show and you just make it freely

available on um YouTube I Wish that's how much I spent well each each show right um so you're putting all this

energy and effort in and you're putting high production value you're going to the expense of getting all these great

guests all of this stuff's going on and then you're making it free for so many people you're including people in

conversations that they normally wouldn't have access to so you have clocked up enormous amounts of standout

value for people because you've been consistent so 7-Eleven four people have spent 7 hours 11 interactions four

locations with you um and also you've done free value so you've given a lot for free so um essentially those are the

two um and you're also strange so so with those three things you've been able to uh succeed massive we do have scary

conversations as well I have to be honest we do the nuclear bomb conversation sexy millionaire so you've

got that as well yeah sexy as well thank you so much for that you've got all five going on but when you were saying this I

was actually thinking of this as a a marketing framework for Brands as well I was thinking of that kid that I met on

the in the prominade in Cape Town with a couple and I was thinking if they were starting out with an idea today in a

very saturated environment like Oxford Street in London pulling in on some of these actually gives you such an unfair

advantage to get to get going and I I know this myself because when I was 18 one of the things that I realized in

hindsight was working for me was I looked a bit strange I had this big which some people will find photos of

this big hat that I used to wear and I would wear it everywhere I wore it because my hair was but it became

this like this distinctive thing that at conferences at events on my LinkedIn it became part of my brand that's why I

interjected with the word peacocking because looking slightly different in some way does actually it does work yeah

it cuts cuts through the noise the other thing too let's go to your friends the 20 Oney olds in Cape Town one of the

first things we can do for free is we can um productize what's called the demo and the customer needs analysis so let's

get really tactical here um when it comes to what most people do to launch a business they make a real focus on the

supply of what they do so if they let's say they want to do a drinks business they're going to like talk to bottling

companies and they're going to talk to you know how much do I have to spend buying the fruit to put in the tea and

do all that sort of stuff they're thinking about the supply of what they do um if they're going to launch a

consulting company they're thinking about oh do I have the right MBA qualifications and all of this stuff is

the supply side of what they do what we want to do when we launch anything is we want to test the demand of what we do so

testing demand the best way to do this is or one of the best ways to do this is to productize the demo and a customer

needs analysis so that is where we go around and we sell a presentation that might be 15 minutes to an hour where we

present what it is that we can do and how it works and the principles of how it works and then we collect enough data

to identify whether you've got the need for that product so it's called a customer needs analysis so the demo and

the customer needs analysis you can package that up so it feels like a product it feels like something free of

value um so give me an example then using I'm going to launch a a new coffee yeah and it's the the point of

difference with my coffee is it is going to be if Fido fantastic so uh let's imagine that

we're going to sell that through retailers yeah and the real customer is not the end User it's the retailer who's

going to stock it so what I would do is I would say we've got a new coffee brand coming and it's all about coffee for

libido boosting um and what we want to do is we want to present to you the data the research as to how this coffee works

and why it works and all of that sort of stuff we want to show you the branding we want to show you like what this is

going to look like and then also we want to do is set up a customer needs analysis where we collect the data from

several of your locations to find out in advance whether people would sample this product whether they'd buy this product

how much they'd spend um so we will at our expense do the clipboard or we'll do the um weight list campaign um or we

will uh collect the data uh through um you know a coming soon promotion so essentially what we're going to do is

we're going to present the data and we're going to do the customer needs analysis or present the demo the

customer needs analysis and that's all going to be packaged up as our first thing now mind you we may have no coffee

at this point we may actually have no physical product but big retailers they move slow anyway even if you had product

they wouldn't buy it today so they're going to say oh that's fantastic that's what we'd like to do we want to collect

the data and we want to see the demo and see the research so by packaging that up as a first step uh you're actually

providing initial value do you know one of the things that I don't think I've ever talked about that I think um

entrepreneurs and people that are founding companies should really consider

is if you're thinking about let's say writing a book instead of writing the book and

then hoping it does well what you should do is you should take the book ID you have and then run it as a Facebook ad

run a hundred different titles um and when people click on that Facebook ad they hit waiting list yes now in that

whole process what you've just done there is you figured out the exact percentage of people that will click on

um a 100 different ideas so for my upcoming book one of the things that I did and some people listening to this

now would have seen the ads is I ran 70 book titles beautiful so 70 books like this would have popped up in your feed

and people have clicked on them and they've said I want I would like that book they put their email address in or

something like that and now I have this data and I can tell off the top of my head which is the most successful 15% of

people clicked a certain one and the worst performing one was clicked by 0.3% of people and I could have written a

book um about that 0.3 and my maths isn't exceptional but the very between a 0.3% conversion and a 15% conversion is

like what is that 1,500% or something crazy um and and it was and it was cost me 200 quid to run the test yeah um

that's the beauty of Facebook ads you know you can do a I mean at any given time we've got hundreds of different

variations of ads running and they it's like you know it's basically The Hunger Games for which ad performs better um

and people don't do this sort of stuff and this is how professionals like yourself launch businesses so um with

anything that I'm launching whether it's a book or a product or a new business we're going to run a set of Facebook ads

probably 10 20 30 different variations when you click on the link it says this product's no longer available in your

area or this product is not yet available in your area M um but you can join the waiting list click here to join

the waiting list now once people click to join the waiting list uh that's where we ask about five

or six key questions so there's this thing inside people's head called the situational model and the situational

model is where am I now where do I want to be what's in my way and what do I perceive as the path of least resistance

so all the questions that we ask are tell me about who you are today which best describes your current situation

tell me about where you want to be which best describes the outcome that you're looking for from this product or

service uh what's in the way which best describes the reason you've not been able to get that outcome in the past mhm

and what are you currently considering as an option for getting that out outcome right so those are the key four

key questions then we might ask some price questions uh what price do you feel would be a fair price to pay what

price do you think would be so cheap that it would make you question the quality what price would be so expensive

um that you would no longer be able to afford this so we'll ask a few pricing questions so we don't just get people to

join a waiting list we're saying we want to understand this situational model because here's the interesting thing

especially with other products not necessarily books but with other products sometimes you get a lower

clickthrough rate sometimes you get um what appears to be cheaper marketing but it attracts the wrong person yeah and

then sometimes you get a poorer performing marketing campaign so this one might produce leads at10 a lead this

one might produce leads at 20 pound a lead but this one might be attracting students who are broke and this one

might be attracting chief executive officers who are on 500 Grand a year I'd rather pay 2020 for that client than £10

for that client M so by getting the situational model uh we can actually then understand which is the best

campaign is there anything else that's really sort of pertinent to testing if my idea has legs and I want to just add

an element to this which is we're not just talking here about the first idea we're talking about every product you

then release in the future every product every business even your marketing campaigns and everything you do yeah the

the world is moving so fast that if you're an existing business listening to this let's say you're a big business you

do tens of millions of profit you're going to be pivoting into new products new markets new territories you're going

to be um trying to attract different age demographics you're going to be you know all of that sort of stuff this is one of

the rules of the current economy is about data and testing you've got to be really fast with how fast you can

prototype and test and get the data um so we love intro events where you just simply do an introduction event on Zoom

uh to talk to customers um so we're introducing you to this new coffee um what do you think uh come and join the

introduction event we're going to share with you some research we're going to have a guest speaker who you've already

heard of right so that would be an introduction event um I'm a big fan of discussion groups discussion groups are

awesome for testing an idea so let's say um it's a discussion group you know let's say you're doing a a new brand of

coffee and it's for sex coffee sex coffee right sexy sexy coffee um so yeah we're going to do the sexy coffee

discussion group right and it's basically we're launching a new product um and it's all about uh bringing sexy

back to Coffee um and if you love having coffee and you want uh want to be part of this new brand that we're launching

join the discussion group discussion groups are pretty wild so I'll give you two examples of discussion groups one of

our clients um Gabriella Rosa she uh ran a clinic um and it was a fertility clinic and it was about natural

fertility breakthroughs um and what she did is she had a physical Clinic that was running a traditional way she wanted

to go and be more digital so she launched an online Discussion Group where she said this is a discussion

group for people who want uh fertility breakthroughs 23,000 people joined the discussion group right and it was super

active and she never had to worry about customers ever again and she built her business then globally uh from there she

wrote a book and she changed her business she went from a physical location to a digital business um but it

it started with a discussion group um another guy one of our clients Max he sold a business not for crazy amounts of

money but a decent sale and he decided he wanted to um spend time with people who had uh family officers and family

officers have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest and they're like basically the family office of

multi-billionaires and things he reached out on LinkedIn and he said I'm launching a WhatsApp group for people

who run a multif family office or a family office if you'd like to join uh it's limited to 400 people if you'd like

to join fill in the application form to be part of our WhatsApp group for family office so he ended up with 400 people

who have collectively over 10 billion to invest and he built himself a a group of people

who are some of the most successful investors in the world and some of the biggest checkbooks in the world um so it

just started with a WhatsApp group so um a discussion group is just a super easy way to launch anything um and it costs

nothing to set up a discussion group on WhatsApp on Facebook on LinkedIn um so those are some of the some of the best

ways and the final one that I love is called an assessment so a quiz or an assessment and this is basically where

essentially you turn the customer needs analysis into an assessment and people fill in questions to find out uh if they

would like the thing so for example I noticed on one of your which one hu sorry I noticed on hu that you have a

quiz um and the quiz is which hu is right for you um and if you click that button you answer a series of questions

and it tells you which product would be the best product for you to uh for you to take I noticed that whoop didn't have

it right so I actually created one for you anyway I'll give it to you later um but basically if you wanted to launch a

product like whoop you might do an assessment which is how well do you know your health and fitness you know um do

you are you tracking your sleep are you doing this are you doing that so by launching the assessment first while

you've got the product in development you could get 10,000 people who filled in the assessment now if they've come up

with a score that is like oh I only know my health and fitness 22% I need to get that up to over 80% I need a product

that helps me to do that so that assessment is essentially diagnosing a need you're helping the customer

diagnose a need maybe they won't clear on yeah so this is customer needs analysis smart businesses often sell the

needs analysis before they sell the product especially with anything that's C uh especially anything that is complex

but it goes beyond that because most customers now feel a sense of clutter in their lives we've gone from feeling 100

years ago we felt that we had lots and lots of things that we wanted or needed and we had unmet needs most people feel

the opposite today we feel that we have too many books and we haven't read them we have too much entertainment we

haven't watched it we have too many clothes and they're cluttering up our wardrobes our houses are full of stuff

so people feel such clutter that they only want things that are hyper personalized to the thing they actually

need um because otherwise they feel you know that it's going to be another thing that they're not using so by selling a

customer needs analysis when people see that it's a perfect fit then they want to buy in my last book The Diversy of 33

laws I talk about um the idea that friction can create value and I give examples of where someone has added

friction to the customer process and it's resulted in more people buying and one of the studies I talk about is where

they took two groups of people they exposed one of them to a survey in order to enter a discussion group MH right so

they had to go through the survey process to get in and they let the second group straight into the

discussion group Y and then they asked both groups to rate how valuable and enjoyable they found their Discussion

Group to be now the group that had had to go through a survey to get in yeah reported that the discussion group was

like really interesting etc etc and the group that had been let straight in reported that it was boring and it was

an intentionally boring group The so they made an intentionally boring group but just because you made someone go

through a process to get in people reported that it was more valuable than otherwise which says something about our

psychology well friction does create value um demand and supply high tension is the ultimate test of value um you

know it's horrible to say and I I hate this being true but there is no such thing as objective value nothing is

objectively valuable everything is subjective why is a Bitcoin worth what a Bitcoin is because there's more buers

than sellers there's demand and Supply tension why is water free because it's freely available there's no friction why

do we never stop and think about how incredible it is that we have Google Maps and like we go like oh my goodness

someone's spent a billion dollar sending satellites up so that I can have maps on my phone for free like no one's weeping

tears of joy for Google Maps and we should be because he you know someone spent a billion dollars on our behalf so

we've got free maps on our phone but there's no friction around it now if they suddenly said we're taking it away

we'd hit the roof yeah and if they said it's 10 bucks a month we'd pay 10 bucks a month MH um so friction creates value

um demand and Supply tension creates value now the very difficult thing that we have in the world right now is that

in a digital environment there's no natural tension right so 100 million people can watch a video in a week and

you know it transcends time space wear and tear there's no barriers there's nothing that stops IT the money

accumulates around those tension points so the successful businesses they know how to use the digital environment to

drive up demand and manufactured desire and manufacture demand and then they have choke points in their business or

tension points in their business where demand and Supply tension is rif and those are the places where they monetize

mhm um something that's really interesting about monetization that's happening at the moment is that all the

money is moving up to the top 10% right so as as we go through this big transition the affluence is all up in

the top 10% so we did some research into this the top 1% of people in your audience in everyone's audience whether

you're a you know LinkedIn account or whether you've got millions of followers top 1% have got a total of 15% of the

budget available to spend the next 9% have got 45% of the budget available to spend so in the top 10% there is 60% of

the available budget and then the bottom 90% collectively have 40% so what happens is that the new

business model that's emerging is that you give free value to the bottom 90% and you don't ask anything in return but

you monetize the top 10% and you find things that are very special very rare special experiences special products

limited editions um communities uh special access the top 10% have got all the money so you just give free value to

90% of people and you only create products and services for the top 10% that's very much a new business model at

the moment and the 90% are driving your content your business your product to the top 10% through their engagement

they're sharing Etc well it's a fractal it doesn't matter what you do the top 1% will even if even if you only did

something for billionaires the top 1% of billionaires have got 15% of the total budget and the and the bottom 90% of

billionaires have actually only got 40% of the budget if you take the Forbes list it's still those numbers still

apply um the key is is that you well actually what you want to do is the opposite you don't want to get dragged

down into the 90% because the 90% are the noisiest they're the loudest so if you ask everyone how much should I

charge the Aver Aver answer is going to be $500 but if you ask the top 1% how much should I charge the average answer

is going to be $5 to $20,000 so you have to be very very careful not to create a product that

gets dragged down towards the 90% because the 90% don't have the budget to pay the top money you're far better off

having a way of um a way of segmenting that top 10% so that you can actually pick up the signal

from them and not the noise from everybody else are there any other Frameworks that you would use in that

early stage where you're trying to figure out if your idea has traction or even from a sort of motivation

psychology perspective if it's worth pursuing this thing for the next 10 years of your life

because we talk a lot about a cave someone's clicked on it someone there's demand and interest but the Journey of

an entrepreneur is an emotional one and as you often say there's you go through hell in high water ups and downs as an

entrepreneur so there's an element of this which is like you figuring out what you want to commit your life to well we

call this the entrepreneur Sweet Spot and The Entrepreneur sweet spot is a vend diagram and you're trying to

balance between your passion yeah the problem and the value of the problem that you solve and how much people are

willing to pay for that so passion problem payment uh so ultimately things that we're highly passionate about

that's great but that only ticks one box and if you're passionate about something but you're not solving a problem for

others and they're not willing to pay you for it you're going to feel very unrewarded you're feel um disconnected

maybe you feel even unethical uh about that uh a lot of people in corporate jobs they solve a problem and they get

paid well but they're not passionate about it and what they tend to do is throw the baby out with the bath water

and they go and pursue being a yoga instructor from being a corporate lawyer and then they wonder why they got no

money because they just kind of threw away the thing that they're very good at and the thing that they get paid for and

just exchange it so what we have to do is actually try and capture all three by making some com risers and the

compromises are I'm not going to go to the thing that is the extreme of passion and I'm not going to go to the thing

that the extreme of financial rewards not going to go to the extreme of my intellectual property and my problem

solving abilities I'm going to find something that is in the middle that ticks all of those boxes so I'm getting

a good blend while understanding that I'm there's going to be a trade-off there's going to be there's got to be

some trade-offs yeah you can't have you can't have it all at the extremes you can have it all but not uh all at the

extremes you you talked about some at the start of this conversation you mentioned the word

geography um as we were talking about the macro factors that are at play in the transitions we've seen my question

to you is does geography matter for success as an entrepreneur so those kids in Cape Town do they need to be thinking

listen we need to move to one of the major cities if we're going to have stand a chance in most of these new

digital um opportunities it used to matter a lot when we used to think about entrepreneurs we thought about two men

typically in their 20s who came from a prestigious us University they got into a garage they

you know they Dro they dropped out of Harvard they dropped out of Stamford uh and then they started something that was

VC backed that was the old model of what we think of as an entrepreneur and it was very much dependent upon those

parameters entrepreneurships transcended that it's transcended geography gender race um and and also the size and scale

of what we consider to be successful so what we're now seeing is people all over the world who are able to connect with

markets anywhere in the world launch a product that can be sold anywhere in the world um we're seeing people who

bootstrap rather than get VC Capital uh we're seeing people who um rather than trying to create something Mass Market

they create something niche market rather than trying to scale to be a unicorn they actually ask the question

at what size would I be fulfilled so there are plenty of people who you well one of the most fulfilling businesses

that you'll ever have has between 6 and 12 people and does 3 or 4 million of Revenue and if you've got that probably

you're going to be the most fulfilled person in the world it's profitable yeah well because a lot of these businesses

have 60% margins if they're digital businesses if they're intellectual property um you know if they're running

on the new economy assets then they'll be wildly profitable so you might have 6 to 12 people do 2 or three million a

year you might make a million of clear profit um and then you're totally building business on fund freedom and

fulfillment are you the next Google absolutely not do you have VCS breathing down your neck no um are you able to

pick and choose the types of people and opportunities you want to work with yes so incredibly fulfilling so that's a new

type of business I would call that a lifestyle Boutique um there's another type of business called a performance

business um and this is a business that typically has 30 people normally working with some sort of technology and they

build a business that they build a business that can be solded for between 10 and 100 million and that's my that's

my game I like businesses that achieve 10 to 100 million of valuation with about 30 people on a team and we can

sell to either a public listed company a private Equity backed company um we can exit to any of those kind of companies

but you know we don't have to be the next Google and we also don't have to split the exit with a VC why do you say

that when you also just said that the most fun and fulfilling businesses are actually those small ones with a small

group of people in order to go to that next level you have to be a business geek so anyone can build a to 12 person

business and at that point all you have to geek out on is the topic of interest to the customer so if your customer

loves yoga you're just talking about yoga all the time or if your customer loves photography you're talking about

photography and you don't have to be a business geek at that point when you've got a team of about 30 to 100 uh you

have to be a you have to be totally into the product the intellectual property of what you do but you also have to geek

out on technology and you also have to geek out on business so not everyone is built for that you have to really love

your acronyms you need to like oh go to market strategy or you know lifetime value of a client okay what's the LTV

what's the GT you know GTM so you kind of got to be into all of those things uh quite naturally you naturally want to

read business books um so you're not going to enjoy that if you hate business or if you hate technology because those

businesses tend to be about um business strategy and Tech these ones are about intellectual property media and data got

you do you think you would be happier if you were less ambitious um I my happiness

levels are really high um I walk around feeling like I'm super lucky to do what I do and it's total privilege and I love

living in these times I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be born at the perfect time to see this change and and

to have access to all these resources and what how do you think about work life balance these days and how should

especially sort of young Founders when I say young Founders I don't mean age I mean stage um should be thinking about

work life balance in your view so I had no balance for many years probably a decade or more um all I did was uh

essentially just get out of bed work uh everything related to work and the reason I did that is that it ticked all

of my human needs right I was getting significance and variety um and I was um you know getting uh certainty and I was

getting all of those things that we want from life and I was feeling a sense of growth and development and learning so

everything plugged into those human needs and my business was giving me all of that when I had uh kids and I got

married there was this whole other side to me that needed to be balanced and I think that there's more to do with there

some Seasons like that we go through Sprints and I tell friends family uh Hey I'm going through a bit of a Sprint

right now we're launching something new um and then there are times where I switch off a lot do do you goal set at

all do you set goals and if you know I used to I used to set goals and I used to love setting goals I don't anymore

because my key person of influence brand brings in opportunities that I can't predict so this di of a CEO thing was an

example of that I had all these goals for 2024 and then you message me while I'm skiing and say would you like to

come on the show and I go of course that would be amazing so I come on the show and then that totally transformed my

year so as you build a brand it's harder to goal set because you've got too many things so goal setting is about direct

power direct influence and um having a brand is about indirect power or indirect influence it's what you attract