The Beginnings

Welcome to Throb, The Reality of Business podcast.

Just real business chat from real people without the shiny veneer of gurus anywhere near it.

With your hosts Bertie Cordingly and Paul Chapman and maybe some guests along the route, we'll talk about our experiences of running a business, helping others run a business and sharing real stories based on real experience. And welcome everyone to our first episode. So I was thinking what with this being our first podcast, we should talk a bit about our first jobs.

That's a great idea. My first job. So I'm just trying to think my first real job where I was actually employed was in a pizza shop. But before then, like I'd been working, like cleaning cars and then set up my own business. So this is before I'd actually been paid by anybody else, exchanging Mega Drive games.

Nice.

Which then, so that was like the first thing that I did to actually earn money. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about employment actually when we were employed. Or are we? What are we talking about?

I think a bit of everything there. I think, you know, it's, you see this a lot with kind of people, you know, there is, there are things that happen early on in life that definitely kind of shape other stuff. So I think, you know, anything that is, you know, anything that has kind of contributed to that is, is it because, you know, presumably I think it would be unlikely. I don't know. But I guess a lot of people haven't got where you, where you are, where you've been without having had some kind of desire to do it. And that almost certainly will have kind of come out in kind of younger life.

Yeah, I suppose there's loads of experience and things in there. So, yeah, well, I'll share and then you can just tell me to shut up, I suppose, if I'm going on too much about it. So, yeah, my first, well, the first thing I did to earn money was I grabbed a bucket, probably at the age of about 11, and just went around my local village there. And this was a village in Doncaster, cleaning cars. So, yeah, just got some fairy liquids, literally the mop bucket and a sponge. And then we started cleaning cars like that. Got a few customers and then went out and invested in like my own sponge. And, I don't know, auto glim, whatever the one with the turtle wax and stuff is. It really felt like I was investing in the business at that point. Like going down to Wilco and spending like a tenner on all this stuff. And then used to go around the village on a Saturday and Sunday cleaning cars. Anything for, well, I was trying to get like a five-off car, but then some people would like knock me down to a couple of quid. But I loved it. I just loved the freedom of just earning money for myself. So, yeah, that was like my first entrepreneurial experience, I suppose.

Did your, I mean, I don't know, mate, did your kind of parents own their own business? Did they, did you kind of see it from that point of view? Or was it just a thing that you kind of didn't know you were doing, but you just went and did?

I mean, my dad did. But, I mean, at that time it was a very, I mean, I won't go into my childhood stuff right now. We'll save that one. That's a whole podcast in itself. He, he had done, but it didn't really feel like it. I suppose like he'd been in companies. I'm not really sure if he had at that point or, or, or maybe. But they certainly didn't feel like real businesses, I suppose. He was, I mean, my dad was a salesman. So, he was always out selling things, everything from sort of orthopedic beds to timeshare. So, I don't know if you remember like going back to like Esther Ransom days on That's Life, like my dad's company, whether he owned it or whether he worked for there would often be featured on things like that. You know, which is, you know, isn't the best example I suppose to set to a child. But credit to him and he's not, he's not with us anymore. Like he was a fucking good salesman, right? But I always felt that there was probably a line where he should have stopped. And I think he just always pushed things a little bit too far. I think it's probably a good way to say at this point. You know what?

I think you see that in a load of businesses. And, you know, there's a lot of people that actually need to know where a line is. And that's not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not talking a line of kind of decency or anything else. But I can think of a load of businesses that got carried away with the whole, well, we must expand. We must get bigger or actually, they forget that fundamental of is, you know, kind of a business or a job or whatever. It's only there to deliver a lifestyle when it stops doing that because you're having to kind of put all your time into it or whatever it is. And I think, you know, it's, it's all of this stuff in business. You know, it's, it's so, it's so unblack and white, isn't it? It's so complicated. It is, you know, I think running a business is about the most personal thing you can do. You're kind of your choice into this. But yet it's, it's, you know, it's really easy to kind of get, kind of get pulled into it from kind of pillar to post because of what other people want. Well, you know, kind of, I see a lot of businesses, kind of people that are running, you know, they're striving for someone else's dream, as it were, you know. Absolutely. Yeah.

And that's really, that's so much more common than you would think. And especially now in the social age, you only have to scroll through Instagram for like two minutes and you've already got some 12 year old sat in front of a private jet, right?

Yeah.

Saying, you know, earn a passive income, just pay me five grand for this course. And it's, you know, even looking at that stuff, it's so fucking believable. Like you can look at it and think like, oh yeah, you know, like he's done it. But actually what you don't, your logical brain, when you actually think about it, it's like actually the way that he's making money is he's just took a photo in front of that jet. And this is how he makes money. You're five grand. It's almost like it's, it's like a pyramid scheme, isn't it? Essentially what, you know, it's like this, I'm going to tell you how to do exactly what I'm doing. Whereas, you know, these sort of business models didn't exist. I suppose they did in the pyramid scheme things, but you know, which, which business out there actually is selling essentially increasing competition in their own market. It just doesn't work. So, you know, your logical brain does just piece those gaps. But anyway, we were talking about jobs and we haven't heard about yours yet. So what about your first job?

I'm kind of old now. I have kids and my memory is never quite as good. So I remember kind of dabbling with stuff that I'm sure we all did. I remember and kind of, you know, kind of buying and selling sweets. I remember the guy, the guy that, I don't know if he flexed well or not. I remember the guy, I think his name was, I don't know, probably shouldn't use his name. I think he, his parents had a shop, a sweet shop. He used to sell some sweets. I remember buying sweets from him and then selling them on a margin, which I remember being kind of both interested and appalled by because I made a margin, but I had no sweets to eat.

And I think, you know, kind of again into that balance, where's the line? But the first kind of job I properly remember was strawberry picking. So I've got, you know, I kind of used to live in a little village in Nostki Mshin. There was quite a big kind of agricultural kind of thing around that. And I remember going to do that. And again, this is kind of classic Chapman in the fact that I put no research into this because, you know, kind of my house was sort of, you know, here about 600 yards away, perhaps a mile away from the house was the strawberry fields owned by the person I was going to work for. So I just presumed I'd have a nice gentle kind of commute down in the morning. And it wasn't until I'd actually kind of the night before where I got some information from it and it worked out. I was at another site like miles away that involved having to kind of get up at four o'clock in the morning, kind of something early, perhaps not that early, jumping on a bus and getting there. And so I did that because, you know, it was a job and I wanted it. And, you know, I remember a few things. I remember the lady that ran it. She was terrifying, enormously bosomed and kind of clasping me to said appendages, which was most odd. Again, looking back, probably was.

And how old were you then? 17?

Oh, I know. I think younger, maybe 15, 16, I think.

Oh, ouch.

I mean, I don't, I can have you. For legal reasons, I'm sure nothing kind of inappropriate.

What have we dug up here?

Just the iceberg.

I mean, it was the 80s though, right? Was it the 80s, 90s?

Except for the 80s, wasn't it? Yeah. Well, I was what? I was born. Yeah, so it would have been early 80s, I imagine. But so I remember kind of that part of it. I remember working really, really hard on my knees.

Well, this degenerated quickly. Kind of on my knees for kind of all day and literally coming out with like £2.30. And honestly, you know, I reckon I did that for two or three weeks until I worked out that my bus fare was something like £4.60. So actually it was costing me like a couple of quid to go today, to go to work each day. And, you know, I marvel at the fact that it took me kind of so long to do it. But I also remember, you know, some people there that were clearly kind of professionals of it. Not like I'm a dickhead that turned up because he wanted some lemonade money at that sort of stage. And these guys were making, well, I reckon in all seriousness, I probably took kind of £5, £6 on average a day. Good days and bad days, you know, bus fare of £4, whatever it was. And I seem to remember, I remember these guys taking kind of 10 times that and they were just machines. It's just guys that just, and it was, yeah, it was nuts really. I mean, it was a real job, but also kind of not a real job. But, you know, it's just interesting, isn't it? And you think it sort of didn't mean anything back there other than almost kind of something to fill my time. But I don't remember my mates doing it. I'm sure they must have done, but I don't remember my mates kind of going out and doing this kind of stuff. Anyway, it took me a while. And then I worked out that if I got on a bike and cycled there, that actually I could keep, there'd be more profit or some profit in it. But, yeah, I mean, it's a long time ago, mate. It is a long time ago. Yeah.

You're showing your early 80s. I mean, mine, you know, I suppose mine was like late. Late 60s. Yeah, the car cleaning must have been, yeah, early 90s. So I went up to big school in 89. So, yeah, I'm talking early 90s. But, yeah, maybe you've got a few years on me. Who knows? Thanks, mate. Let's not go there.

It was sort of there. And then I did, you know, kind of the ubiquitous bar work that you did in and around.

At university, I toyed with silver service. I went to university in Cheltenham. Also, we had the race course there. And, yeah, I kind of learned valuable lessons, really. One, that I hated silver service, like with an absolute passion. My abiding memory is dropping a hot potato into, was it Richard Scudamore the jockey? Dropping a hot potato into his lap, which was good. But I do remember.

How did he take that out of interest? Like, was he?

He was fine. He was absolutely fine. Yeah, well, I mean, as far as I recall, I was an idiotic student, mate. I mean, I was kind of a dick in my life, really. But, you know, I did that. And I do, and, you know, again, I'm almost certain this is not the sort of thing you say publicly. But I didn't enjoy doing the silver service. I loved working the bar. I loved the people. I loved the banter. And I remember particularly the Irish guys, when they would win big, they would, yeah, the tips would be massive. And I remember this one guy won massively on the last race of the day. And he said to me, he kind of had 500 quid. So I can give you 500, the bars are shut, but you can have 500 quid if you can go and find me a bottle of wine before I get in my helicopter and go home. And obviously, for legal reasons, I won't kind of say what happened. But it was really interesting. And it was one of the first times that I actually kind of considered that I'd be able to choose what I do and kind of link it to enjoyment. Does that make sense? I'd always kind of seen like a job and a work as like just a natural progression that, you know, I went to school. I don't know how to travel and stuff, but I went to school, kind of went to uni, got, you know, therefore that led into a job. And I think this was the first time that I'd really thought about myself. Well, okay, there was silver service, which I hated. There was bar work, which I really enjoyed and made loads more money from. And I think, you know, perhaps I didn't even notice at the time, but, you know, I do. I seem to remember sort of thinking or having that spark that actually you can choose. You can choose what you do. And I think it's something that gets missed, mate.

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's always a bit like all I've ever known is that I've wanted to run my own business. Yes, like that's almost been any. I don't think it was like, you know, you're asking sort of about my parents and things like that. And I don't I'm not necessarily sure if it even came from there. It what I remember watching a program and I've tried to find this thing on YouTube since. But it's it's it's long gone. I remember it was called The Picture. I think it was just like a one thing documentary or maybe like three series or three episodes or something. And it was about this guy. I mean, looking back now, I couldn't think of anything worse to be like this guy. Right. But he ran market stalls. So he would like just turn up and when you see them with like the headset mic on and like hustling and stuff like that in the back of this van. But he'd done it to like he just scaled it so well in that he had this van with like an automated side that dropped down, just rocked up with everything. And then just had all this tat in there they bought from wherever. But people were just loving it and they loved him and they loved the whole personality thing of it. You know, where they like bag it up and send it out. And he was just raking it in. And that was like it was like, well, I really want to be this this guy. And it showed behind the scenes and he was living in like this sort of mansion. But everything was really I think he had a helicopter as well. But what's the like just the thought of like living like that now just makes me feel sick, like, you know, with like big gold chandeliers and just like big gold rings and chains and things. He was that kind of Del Boy. It was almost like a Del Boy type documentary, which I think, you know, growing up in that Del Boy sort of era and the fields and horses, you know, that those sort of people become your inspiration. Right. You know, in like a weird way. So I think, yeah, stuff like that and probably, you know, that that kind of old school, like sort of selling, hustling. Yeah, that was probably more of an inspiration side of things rather than sort of my parents, because like certainly from my mum's point of view, like her view was I need to get a real job. You know, that was that, you know, I make a joke of it now and I don't hear it anymore. But even with some of my more successful businesses, like, oh, you know, maybe she'll get a real job now. You know, it was is that kind of thing. Not in a like negative, you know, kind of way. But that was that's just the world that she lives in. That was her perception of things. You know, it's like as in, you know, you know, maybe you shouldn't be, you know, doing this on your own. Maybe you should, you know, get a real job. And yeah, but she doesn't say to me anymore.

But I think there's a really interesting thing in this because we are both parents and your boys are kind of older than my boys. And I look at kind of mine and think, OK, one of our key jobs as a parent here is to kind of ensure our kids are kind of safe and happy and well through their life. You know, kind of that that's kind of a core thing that we do. And you think, therefore, do I recommend them into kind of entrepreneurship? Because it is awesome, but it's also awful. It is kind of stressful. You know, and it just it's a really interesting kind of thing is, you know, and I mean, I did some talks at schools. I kind of went about halfway through a book with this kind of kind of entrepreneurialism for kids and not kind of sort of thing. And I think, you know, the way I've kind of my part in this, I need to basically I don't encourage them into it. I don't want to discourage them into it. I want them to know it's possible. I think that's the thing looking back. And, you know, my dad ran a business and I think I just sort of didn't think about it. And, you know, you know, we were always kind of encouraged that we could do kind of whatever we want. And I think, you know, I think there's I think it's not. But are you I mean, you and I said this before, you know, running a business is no better, cooler, you know, more important than being in a job. It's just it's it's just not. And I think, you know, it's for me, I want the boys to know this life is there to understand goods and bads, the same as as goods and bads, which is probably not really English. But there's goods and bads in having a job and just kind of make that choice. And I think, you know, we're a bit luckier now because there is so much more around us that helps to show that it's there, which when our parents were kind of bringing us up, wasn't there. You know, it was Mavericks that ran businesses and most of them failed, which I'm still still the way that kind of the success rate at the moment. But, you know, it is it is really interesting to kind of have that. What what would you put where would you point your kids at?

Yeah. And this is I mean, this is something that's like it's it's really sort of in the forefront for me now. I mean, my son, well, depending on the date of airing, he probably will have just turned 16.

Yeah, this this year. So we're in 2021. He'll be 16. So, yeah, like he's now at the point where back in the old days, he could have been leaving school. I didn't actually realise you can't leave school at 16 anymore. Now, can you? You can go into an apprenticeship. It's like it's almost like it's it's very. Yeah, it's because I just thought that was an option, but clearly it's not. I mean, he's very much wants to go to university, whereas I didn't want to go to university.

It's I'm not I'm not encouraging him either way. So it's not that because I've never gone. It's like, oh, don't go to university. It's a waste of time. What I believe is that and you're not going to. You don't know what you want to do right at the age of like 16 or 18 or probably like not until you're like 30 or even that. I still don't know what I want to do now. It's it's you just don't know. So what I don't what I sort of advise is don't do university, you know, just for like the sake of it, almost. You know, like if you're in, you know, do like or you're going to do it, at least do something that you're interested in. Don't go and like, OK, well, actually, there's good money in being a lawyer, for example. And, you know, go and study that when actually you've just got no interest in it. So I think now the university typical type qualification is less important in any in any job. You know, you know, when I say any job, things like marketing, business, stuff like that, I think it's less, less important now. However, you know, if you specifically want to be a doctor or you want to be a lawyer, then of course you need that qualification. So, yeah, his his idea, you know, he wants to go to university, but he doesn't know what he wants to study yet. So my advice is just study something that you're going to enjoy rather than, you know, something what you think is going to get you a guaranteed job. Because I personally think he probably will do something on his own. I mean, he has that entrepreneurial mindset. So as soon as lockdown started, he was doing video editing and started doing gigs on Fiverr and stuff like that. So, you know, there's there's that sort of stuff already within him. So I think it's just figuring out. But I'm trying not to put the pressure on him either way. As in, if you want to go and work for yourself, work for yourself. What I have said is that, you know, if you're going to go for jobs because we bought a pizza oven last year. I'm like, you know, like go and do something like in something that you really want to enjoy. Like he enjoys making coffee, enjoys cooking. So if I had my time again, I'd be going and getting jobs in like Pizza Express and learning how to make pizzas properly. Or, you know, going and training as a barista and stuff and almost like using the job as a gateway to get the skills. Which I think he's quite, you know, he's into that idea. So, yeah, that's my advice, which is probably not any advice at all. It's just I'm supportive of what everyone wants to do.

Well, I was sort of the same. I'd be sort of saying to the kids, if they want to go to uni purely for the enjoyment of it. I mean, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I made some brilliant friends. I did some cataclysmically stupid things. And I love every single kind of part of it. And, you know, I ended up doing what I do, leisure management and marketing. I mean, I can think of nothing that it gave me other than, you know, when I was going into the job market, as I did at the start, you know, the basic was a degree. Not perhaps the basics of one word. But you think in the old days, you needed kind of GCSEs. And then, you know, kind of everyone had A-levels and then you had to have a degree. And I don't think it adds anything other than it shows an employer or you can stick to it. But I think that's probably changed again now. And I think, you know, the stuff I'll say to the boys is exactly that. Go and try stuff. Go and have experiences. Go and do stuff. And just know that literally everything's possible. Because I didn't really consider that I could be anything until kind of relatively recently, where it's not too late. But now I realise that actually I can't really be asked to be anything. I'm very happy doing what I'm doing and kind of using my skills differently. And I think, you know, that would be the kind of thing, you know, for me is that, look, go and realise you can do anything. But go and try some stuff. Go and see if you like doing this. Go and see if you like doing that. Go and kind of get into it. Yeah. Yeah. So, OK, look, we've done first jobs then. What was the worst job or kind of the worst kind of business thing that you did?

Well, you just reminded me, actually, when you were talking about your strawberry picking and the poultry amount that you were paid for that job. It was actually while I was in. So after I left school, I went to college. So Doncaster College, all my friends, all my school friends stayed on for sixth form. And it was just like the thought of doing that. I just wanted to be out. But then, yeah, I was interested in, you know, these like new things that were coming about then, like old computers. You know, like we dabbled about with them in our own.

You know, we had them in school. We had like we actually had Macs, actually. So, yeah, it must must have been quite forward thinking our school. And then, yeah, went over to Donny College to learn IT applications is what I did. That was the BTEC. So equivalent to A levels, I don't know. So maybe I've got a couple of A levels because I did. I did go through all that. So, yeah, I did that IT application. So I learned things like, what was it, Microsoft Access. Does anyone use that anymore? Excel and stuff was in there. Well, I can't remember what I did, but I remember learning how to build, physically build a computer and loved that. So, yeah, building a computer from scratch was really cool. So, yeah, you know, like I enjoyed that and then went on to do what would have been classed as a degree, but hated it. So I think quit after like three months or maybe I stayed a year. I can't remember. But, yeah, really realised that that further education wasn't for me. But getting back to your question, which I've swerved, but that was just the context around it, is when I was at college, it must have been in the summer, I took a job at this place and it was a data entry place. It was quite, yeah, I just used to drive there. So I didn't have to worry about bus fares or anything. It was like about 18, 19, but this is before minimum wage, right? So you can't get away with this stuff now. And they used to pay per key depression is how it works. Now, I'm not the fastest typer anyway, but, yeah, so I would go and do data entry. And basically it would be, you know, like when you used to get like the case catalogue and stuff like that and gas meter readings and things. They were great, actually. I could bang through those because it was all numeric, anything with words. So you'd have to do it and then someone would verify it. You'd be using these horrible like systems that just look like something in like an 80s film, but the green screen entering stuff in. And if you got anything wrong, it just used to fuck it all up. It was just a horrible thing to use. But did this job and actually really enjoyed working in the place. But for the first four weeks or eight weeks, like it was a guaranteed 250 an hour or something, which I was fine with. So, you know, that was my Donnie drinking money taking care of for the weekends. Well, every night of the week, I think back in the day, back in the day that you'd go out for a tenner and still have change for a kebab. Move on. Yeah. Yeah. But then. Yeah. After my four weeks run out, I didn't realise and just carried on working there. And then, yeah, from whatever it was, I was getting like 90 quid a week. I got my wage slip and it was like 16 quid for the week's worth of work, which I don't know what that translates to, but it's pence per hour. Obviously, I was absolutely fuming and never went back to that job. So the job wasn't like that horrific as in working it as you know, it wasn't the most exciting place. But yeah, you know, being paid 16 quid at the age of 18 when you've had like 90 was just an absolute kick in the teeth. And, you know, it was just like they knew like they could have, you know, someone could have come over and said, look, you know, this isn't even worth your petrol money driving over here.

Right.

Like, so it was just almost like I can just remember the woman who handed me my pay slip. She was like she reminded me of like a bigger version of what was she called in Prisoner. Did you ever watch Prisoner Cell Block H? And they're like Joe Ferguson.

Yeah, like she was like she was like the head screw, like the real evil one. She looked like her and just the smug look on her face when she had to be that pay slip. Like I got 16 quid. I was like, you fucking bitch. It was just, yeah, just so, yeah, obviously never went. But so that was probably my worst.

Worst experience of a job. Maybe there's others if I think about it.

Yeah, nice.

I mean, I remember, I can, I remember working at a rugby club once kind of working with a supremacy team now. I remember that. This was the first time. You get a classic Chapman. The first time I'd ever worked in a bar, like ever.

But it was a, I forget what it was. I can't remember. I can't remember what it was. Anyway, but the person that kind of got me the job, it was a temp job. It was like a Saturday when they were playing whoever they were playing. I remember them saying, have you worked in a bar before? I'm like, yeah, obvs. And I just remember the, the, I don't know, the total embarrassing humiliation of literally not being able to pull a pint all day. Because every time, old school hand pulling, it just, literally, after about, I don't know, three hours of proper fuckwittery, and the guy that was running it just getting more and more, not even cross, just, just sad for me. Yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't cross, he was disappointed. I was, I was farmed out to the side, side, like furthest far corner of the bar with a, a, there was clearly a promotion on whatever it was, Budweiser, certainly not Budweiser, but warm bottles of lager. And I tried to stand in the corner and no one spoke to me for about three hours. And I was broadly okay with that. Was, yeah, that was, that was an interesting time. But then again, I kind of got into, once you learn it, you kind of get into love it, but I'm not, I'm not a great multitasker. I'm not, I'm terrible with numbers, you know? So actually that whole, you know, well, you know, where there's kind of the, you know, the silver service of at Cheltenham was great because I didn't have to take any money. Right. Yeah. It was all kind of the way it was. Yeah. Yeah. So that sort of thing, but I can't think of any kind of true horrors really. I mean, I remember working at a job that I loved and I had to do, I had to kind of do a project around a load of data and I'm just the wrong guy for that. You know, and I kind of trying to deal with kind of a hundred, hundreds of thousands of lines of data in a spreadsheet. I didn't know what else I was doing. And you know what happens here that I get one cell wrong and end up sending, you know, 500,000 emails to the wrong people. And yeah, the fallout from that was quite interesting. Although boss was actually, I have to say, he was really, really good about it. And going from there, we, we actually use the technique quite often to do, cause we sent a sorry email really quickly. Like I'm really sorry. I've messed up. You're kind of from me. I've messed up. And open rates and the engagement rates went through the roof. Yeah. Like massive. Cause I mean, again, I'm sure I'd like to call myself groundbreaking here. I'd never seen it. I think a lot of people have never seen it. And actually that everyone was very used to email marketing, kind of the bombarding. And, you know, it was back in the day where, you know, it was a much more smash and grab and kind of the, you know, the American way of doing it was hard till they die, till they buy kind of stuff. You know, so I think people are very used to that. So actually a piece of personality made a massive difference, you know, and then, you

know, I've just got through, wouldn't I? I can imagine. Yeah.

And it is, it kind of, you know, there's good lessons for all of us kind of here with, with that sort of thing. But I think, you know, that I remember, I remember the stress and the, just the true kind of hating. Cause it, you know, and again, it's, it's a great lesson, you know, stuff that I am, you know, do the stuff I'm good at. Don't do the other stuff. Cause I, you know, it's not like, I don't like doing it. I'm terrible at it. It takes me hours. I mean, this was days and days and days of my time to try and organize this thing, get it into a CRM that I didn't understand, get the buttons wrong. And it just proper kind of square peg around whole. And yeah, so that, you know, again, it's, it's interesting because, you know, even to I've not really thought about it, but even talk about it now, this is why this kind of thing is so valuable to go and revisit and spend some time thinking, you know, me, what kind of my biggest bugbear business is people don't spend any time thinking, but these were valuable lessons. And these are things that we can take on to our, you know, kind of, you know, to our teams and people that we work with and anything that we do and kind of think, look, if the right people are doing the right stuff, it just makes a massive difference.

Yeah, absolutely. And you've just, you've just reminded me of something that like, I think that point that you just made about, you know, recognizing what you're shit at essentially, right? It's not, that's, that's not necessarily a, a weakness in the fact that you're not good at those things. Probably the weakness is not understanding and recognizing that. There was a really key, I'll let you, I'll send you this report so that I won't share it online. But, you know, fast forward many years and so, but, you know, we were only going back maybe like eight years ago that this, 2012. So this is when I was at Justine. So after I'd sold my business to them and I was on the management team there and basically what the management team had done, like they had the new HR director who was working there had commissioned this, I don't know what it's called, but like a, like a, almost like a test that we're all supposed to do. And from memory, it was like 50 questions, like something that I just did on a computer, like, okay, yeah, great. And I answered them all honestly, but you know, didn't really think much of it. It was like, well, this can't really do anything. What I got back from that was this report. Like, I'm sure it was only 50 questions. I don't know how they did it. It's absolute witchcraft. This report, I don't know, like 20 pages long. And I've never read anything that was so accurate about me my entire life. It was like someone had like shadowed me for like five years and gave me this autobiography. And it was just the way that people should interact with me. And it was like, people should not say, I can't remember any examples I should find them. People should not say this to Bertie because it will upset him. And it's like, yeah, exactly, but yeah, people should talk to Bertie in this way. Bertie should never use, and it's that, it was so bang on. Interestingly, on the back of that was this colour wheel thing. And it went like, I was in like the, between the red and the yellow, like an inspirational leader that it came. And, but in all of the other things, like attention to detail and stuff like that, like didn't even factor in, like terrible. Terrible. So then I had to sit down with the HR manager and go through all the stuff. And my natural reaction, even, and this is like eight years ago, my natural reaction at that point was, okay, yeah, get it. I need to get better at these areas. Like that was what I thought. And I think a lot of people think that. And she was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the point of this. This is what you're good at. So when you're hiring and the teams that you're working, you work with people over in this side, like, you know, this is your speciality. So just recognise that they're not your strong points and find people or find systems or whatever to fill the gaps. And that conversation, even at that point, and I'd like ran a business, sold it, you know, got to that point, that had still not clicked for me. And now looking back, it's like, well, it's obvious. And saying it out loud, it sounds obvious, but I don't think it was. And it's not obvious to a lot of people. You instantly think that your weaknesses are weak and you need to get better at them. But you don't always, like, not necessarily focus on the weakness, focus on your fucking strengths. And I know what my strengths are now. And I know the bits that I'm not so good at. But there's no point in me trying to improve on something that I don't enjoy. Like, I'm never going to be good at details and, you know, spelling and stuff like that. I got some feedback of my daily emails yesterday. And it was like, love your emails. Always makes me think about stuff, prompts, whatever about my day. It was, like, amazing. And then it said, your spelling is atrocious. But I don't mind. And, like, you know, something like that would have, like, years ago, like, bothered me. Like, shit, I need to get better at spelling. But it's like, I'm quite open to the fact that I can't spell. And I do proofread these things probably a lot more than spend a lot more time on them. But it's not my strong point. And I'm not trying to get across some perfectly worth email. I'm trying to get across a message generally that, you know, people are understanding. And if people don't get that, then that's their problem, not mine, is what I've realized now. So, yeah, I think your point that you made about you're not good with numbers, fine. Hire a fucking accountant to do your books. Go pay someone to do your CRM system. Get, you know, hire a VA. And, you know, they can sort out those bits for you. Concentrate on the stuff that you're good at. And you know what you're really good at, right? So that's, and I think that's an important lesson for people to realize.

I think what's interesting with that, and again, here, I hope this is not new news to people. But, you know, my charge-out rate an hour is a lot more than, say, kind of an admin person to help me kind of do that sort of stuff. And, you know, and you think, actually, it will take me four hours to do this. And they'll charge me, I don't know, 80 quid. And my four hours, that's, you know, kind of a decent chunk of cash. And, you know, I think it's crucial kind of for ourselves to work out, look, what is the thing that we are really, really good at? Just, you know, I'm rubbish at most things, particularly in business. I'm not particularly a great business owner. Interesting, I don't have a massive passion for running a business. I love what I do, but, you know, some people are like, love to run a business. I just like to do the stuff that I do to kind of outsource that, you know, outsource the rest. But I think it's important for the stuff that we do. But I think it's massively important for people that have got staff. And actually, you know, staff are the most expensive thing in a business. They are the thing in the business that is most likely to cause real problems.

Yeah.

You know, yet they spend so little time kind of really understanding what makes them tick, what doesn't, what they're good at. What's not. And, you know, it's, you know, I quite often kind of work with a team and kind of, you know, now say, well, we need to employ someone. Well, great. Okay. Yeah. But what do you work out what skill gap you've got and then fill the person that does that thing? You know, because it may well be that actually you don't need another marketing person. You need an admin person or you need a, you know, someone who's really great at creating video or whatever it is. And I think, you know, it's, it's so important for, you know, for businesses to make sure they do this stuff and think actually, I think, is it like disc profiling? Is that the stuff that you went through? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it was called an insights profile.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's, people have mentioned similar things that they've done in different parts of their life. So yeah, it was, it was, I assume the same sort of thing, but it just, yeah, it really highlighted for me that. And it wasn't necessarily what I was good at. Like I always felt like it was, but it almost like gave me permission to be bad at the stuff I was bad at, if that makes sense. Yeah. As in.

It's so important, mate, isn't it? If everyone does the stuff that they're good at, then it just makes a massive difference. Hmm. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, like with the, oh, go on. No, no, go, mate, go. I was going to say like, you know, with the, you know, the outsourcing and stuff like that, it's like with my business now, I still am trying to do a lot of the things. On my own, just because I'm curious and I want to try all the stuff and I'm really interested in like, you know, the marketing and social media and everything now is just, it's just changing so fast. So I've got a real interest in that sort of stuff. So even though I might not particularly amazing at it, I'm still happy to be curious. There'll be a point where there'll be bottlenecks and then I will start to outsource those individual streams. But, you know, things like bookkeeping, accounting, stuff like that. Like I already know there's just no way that even if I do it, it's going to be wrong. Yeah. And it stresses me out. So, you know, those are things straight away that, you know, they're just gone. I'm not going to waste my time when actually someone that loves doing that is just going to come in and be like, I just need to send receipts or, you know, do whatever. So, yeah, I think recognizing what those things are. But that doesn't necessarily mean that if you have, the reason that I do that is I've tried it and it really doesn't work. But there's a lot of things that I think sometimes we tell ourselves we're going to be shit at and we've never actually tried them or never actually put that effort in. And I think that's a different thing altogether because, you know, you can, you can, because some stuff is just tough to learn.

Right.

And I was working with a client a while ago who was, because I think with stuff like, you know, this is where your marketing experience might come in and maybe even challenge this, this view. For something like, you know, like Facebook ads and stuff like that, I think initially, especially when you're starting small, there's no one closer to your business than you. And you really understand it and you understand what your customers are looking for and stuff. You might not realize that you do, but a lot of the time you do know that. So I think you're in a really good position a lot of the time to be actually testing and experimenting. And yes, you've got to learn the mechanics of running ads and stuff like that. However, it isn't rocket science. So once you understand the mechanics of it in the same way that once you understand how to drive a car, then pretty much you can get anywhere. So I think it's good for business owners to be able to do that stuff themselves. But there's going to very quickly become a bottleneck. Then they can outsource it. But when you start to outsource at that point, you understand so much more. Like you're outsourcing maybe specific campaigns or, and you'll be able to have those conversations about what works. It's just, you'll save yourself a lot of time and energy and money in the long run by just learning those fundamentals in the beginning. I think so.

Because I think it's, it's good to be able to have an, yeah, I, when I'm looking at stuff, I want to have enough knowledge to be able to challenge someone else's decision. You know, just to, yeah. And it's simply enough ignorance to be able to kind of ask, why is it happening that way?

Yeah.

And I think it's important to kind of have that, you know, to have a knowledge of it. Because then you can have an opinion on it and you can help and you can, you can ask, kind of ask those questions. And, and I think, you know, that, that is massively important. And it's like, there's risk and reward here. The reality is there are very, very few people that make a massive pile of money. If that's what you want to do just on their own, doing everything all the time. It's possible, but it's, it's, it's not, not often. So kind of, you know, realistically, if you want to move forward, you need to, you know, let go of the reins of something. Now that comes with, that comes with risk. You know, I can think of things that I've kind of, kind of, you know, passed out for people to do. And it's not been done how I wish, how I've felt I've asked for it to be done. Or that probably means I haven't asked for it properly. You know, not how I wish it would. But it's that, that being set back, it's a knowledge that if I'd just done it myself, it would not have happened. So actually, I'm happy this has gone out 80% good and gone out rather than kind of sat on my desk. And I think this is, you know, particularly when it kind of comes to marketing, most people, the reality is most people would prefer to run their business without marketing. They don't like marketing. It's a spend. It's a gimmick. There are too many options. You know, they don't really know what marketing is. They'll kind of kid themselves at, you know, forgive me, just going networking day in, day out with the same 20 people for two years. It's marketing. And I guess it's part of it. It's nothing against it. But, you know, it's there. And I think, you know, it's really important that actually you do look to do different things. It's really important that, you know, you look to try and treat marketing. Because marketing is the connection between you and your customers. And what's really interesting here, and again, I'm going to get some kind of slight kind of sideways rant here. Big businesses are spending their time working out how they can spend more on marketing because they know it works. Small businesses are spending their time trying to work out how they can spend less on marketing. And not every small business, but most small businesses want to get bigger. And as such, you then look to the bigger businesses and what is it that they are doing. But there's this real disconnect. This kind of, look, if I want to be bigger, I need to get more customers. To get more customers, I need to do more marketing. In whatever form that takes. But the reality is most people don't want to do it. Most people would love to run their business without having to do any marketing, which, again, it's one of those things that, until you say it out loud, it doesn't sound as ridiculous. But it is nuts. And, you know, people wish they could do it without it, really. Yeah.

And it's the same for marketing, for, like, you know, managing, like, websites or whatever. It almost becomes like, I mean, it's great when people launch businesses, but then it can almost become like you're then in a fixed mindset of that everything just is. And it can't get any bigger. Or this is how we do things because we've always done them. Like when I used to go out selling to takeaways, you know, going back to like those sort of days. And one of the biggest things that I was people, the only real thing that people were spending money on them was menus, like putting them through doors, you know, which was, it wasn't advising people stop. In fact, I wanted them to do it because I was then trying to get our logo onto their menus. But the other thing at the time was Yellow Pages, right? And we know how that story's ended. But even then, you know, and this is going back to 2006 to 2010. Even at that point, you knew that Yellow Pages was an outdated model and that people weren't going in, certainly for like things like takeaways. They just weren't doing it. They were looking at menus. Yet people were still taking out and spending like thousands on Yellow Pages ads. And I used to ask them the question, how many orders do you get from Yellow Pages? Like, we don't know. You know, we don't know. Well, why are you advertising in it? Why have you literally just renewed that and paid like three, five grand for it? Because we've always done it. Yeah. And what if we stop it? And, you know, that is that, you know, Yellow Pages. Now you look at that and you think, well, it's obvious like that model is going to die. But the amount of stuff that people are doing now because they think they should and they've not tested it, not measured it, is astounding. And getting back to that where people are doing everything, there's a way to delegate. And just handing something over to somebody else, you know, generally is going to end up with you being disappointed. Because if you've done something for that long and you give it to someone else and you show them how to do it, it's never going to be to your standards. But there are ways to delegate, right? You know, you can hand over different parts of that process and still have the final say. Let's just say you've been editing your own videos, you know, which is something that, you know, I've handed over to people in the past. And, you know, rather than just giving them the raw footage of this video or even this podcast, right? You know, let's just say we just gave this to somebody else and said, right, OK, take that, edit it, publish it. We're probably going to get a very different result if we've done it ourselves. To, you know, but after a while and after we've done it ourselves and we've edited and we've put those things out, then actually we can. We hand over different parts of it and then we'd have final sign off and then eventually when you're happy with it, then almost then it can go straight to publishing. So you put systems and processes in place for delegation. And I think that's generally what is missed. It's almost like people think, well, no one's going to be as good as that as me. Well, of course not, because you've been doing it for five years, dickhead. So hand it over in stages and help them be as good as you.

Yeah, yeah, that's the it's part of that. You realize that there's 24 hours a day and you think, well, OK, for me to keep doing this, something else has to go. What is that thing? And actually, then you, you know, you keep hold of the thing. Because if you enjoy doing it and it moves things forwards for me, yeah, kind of fine. Keep going to do it, but know that something else will have to take a back seat. So go and get some help with that. You know, go and get some some lower tasks. I don't know what they're saying. Can I go and get some lower tasks that are not necessarily to be done? Go and get some help with that because you can't, you know, you know, no one can do it all. And, you know, when people try and do it all, normally the stuff that kind of gets lost is the useful stuff, the important stuff, the stuff that actually makes a difference. They busy themselves with all the other day to day gump of kind of running a business. And, you know, and again, this is the same way kind of when you're employed as well. And kind of back to the first point here is that, you know, it takes a really kind of strong boss, I suppose, to actually sit down with each person, really get to the numbers. What value can this guy, this girl bring to my business? What do I then need to do to help them do that? And again, I just I think I think there are there are certainly some businesses that do that. But I think there's probably a lot a lot that don't.

Yeah, they don't. And it's it's always I think any process that you've got, any system in place, it's always a constant review. So if you've not looked back for a while and actually examined any of your processes, be it, you know, your internal processes or like marketing or whatever you're doing, then that's generally where it's going wrong, because things are changing all the time. Like I'm a big believer in goal setting and not just, you know, goal setting for, you know, I think you need to have like a long term goal. Otherwise, you don't know which direction that you're heading for.

Right.

So setting that long term goal, but then breaking that down into what's my goal for this year? What's my goal for the quarter? Because then when you've got those things, you can making sure you're asking yourself the question each time. Am I working towards my goal? And sometimes you'll find that you're not and you're working against it. And that's the that's where it just starts to get a little bit stagnant. So it's when you're running a business, you have a responsibility to keep on top of those goals. Make sure you are heading in the right direction and don't just be complacent with stuff, because that's just where you just don't like loads of businesses fail. You know, and it's a really sad statistic. And a lot of the time, it's just because people aren't looking out to how can I grow? What can I do? How can I get better? And that constant reviewing, not asking for feedback. If they're giving feedback, not take it. And I'm not talking about criticism here. You know, there's a big difference between criticism and feedback, which we'll tackle in another day. But, you know, genuine feedback, asking your customers, why actually do you work with me? What is it about me that you like? And then finding out what that is and doubling down on it. So there's lots of yeah, there's lots of stuff here. But it comes from the stuff that you're saying, like if you're just doing stuff that for the sake of it and stuff that isn't adding value in your business, then you're not going to grow.

It comes back to that right at the start thing. We sort of kind of talk about like kind of you get to choose. And I think this is the thing, you know, in this kind of look, you know, what are you going to do? What are you going to spend your time doing? And it's definitely, you know, what are your goal? But your goal, I don't know, perhaps not. My experience is that your goal has to be about something other than the business. You know, it's got to be my goal is to spend more time with the kids, be less stressed, sleep more, holiday, whatever. Therefore, the business needs to be set like this. Therefore, you know, I mean, you know, I've had kind of various different businesses and I can think of one business that I loved, but I had to shut down because it wasn't going to get me where I wanted to get to. And that's hard. And, you know, again, it's one for kind of, you know, another addition. But I think, you know, as part of this, as people listen to this, you know, people need to really be truthfully deep down, middle of the night, keeping yourself awake, honest with what do I really want to happen? You know, and it's taken me a long time to work out that I'm kind of happy with less. You know, I don't want, you know, it all does pretty well. But, you know, when I first started, well, I'm going to be a millionaire. Well, I'm going to be this, I'm going to be that. And it took me a long time to work out, that's not what I want. You know, and it's, I think particularly doing what we do, you end up in this cycle of kind of more, bigger, more, bigger, more, bigger. And, you know, I'm very happy with the business. I've got some very, very exciting things. And I'm, I think, going to put some fairly kind of catastrophic growth in over the next kind of year or two, which I'm really excited about. But it's all in line with how I want my life to be. And the business facilitates that. And I think that bit, it just gets lost.

Yeah.

And you've got to be really open and honest with yourself about those things. And it's like, I think it's, it's coming down to almost having more than one goal as well. So, you know, like, you know, you've probably, you cycle a lot, right? So you've probably got cycling goals. Maybe they're not written down, but maybe you want to cycle to, you know, so, you know, that would almost sort of fit under like, say, the health category, right? And then, you know, there's like your, you know, financial goals. And then actually, you know, happiness is ultimately what we're after. So I think your business goal ultimately does tie into that because you're doing something just for the money and then you're not happy. It's like, it is all about balance. And, you know, like we were chatting about, like, you know, I want to be working a lot less. You know, as in just not necessarily that I don't enjoy my work because I do. But actually, there's other things that I enjoy doing as well. So, you know, like, you know, like spending time with my kids, like going out, which obviously we're not doing anything at the moment.

I remember going out. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you remember those times? You know, I also love DJing, which, you know, I've not spoke about that, but that was one of my, you know, sort of career choices for a good, you know, part of my early life. There's plenty of stories in there, we'll save for the podcasts. But, you know, I still enjoy doing it now. Like, I'll sit in a day and I'll start thinking about music and what we'll mix in with this. And I'll start looking on Instagram and seeing, like, DJs, like, right, I really want to do that. So if I just finish, and it's because I'm not scheduling that time in. So then I'll get to the end of the week and I'm disappointed that I've not done those things. But, you know, I'm not making that a priority for me. So I should be. So it's not that I want to be working less because I hate my job. It's actually there are other things that I want to be putting into the mix as well. So that's something that I'm personally focusing on right now.

Do you think that's an age thing? Do you think, because I've definitely got to an age where I've just thought I want something different. And I think kind of in my early kind of business life, it was just kind of more and growth and that horrible hustle word that every guru tells you to do. But I think it has come with age. Maybe that's wisdom. I don't know. That comes with age to actually kind of have that honesty. This is what I want to spend my time doing. And to do that, I need to have a business that facilitates this.

Yeah, I think it does. And I think going back to, you know, with Feel My Belly, for example, like, and that was, so I'm just trying to think how old. So when I launched that 15 years ago, so what was that? Early 30s, mid 30s? No, late 20s. I'm 43. So take that back. 15 years. What's that? So neither of us are going to be numbers.

So we can't, none of us are going to waste an hour of us trying to do math. Yeah. Hold my fingers up. 28? 28? 15 years ago?

16 years ago? Anyway, like, not 30. And, yeah, I suppose my attitude to it then was, you know, like, absolutely no sense of my own mortality whatsoever. Like, you know, still thinking that I was going to live forever. You know, at that point, despite every single scientific thing out there, I just thought that I was special. And I would just live forever, whereas now I'm much more aware of, you know, mortality things and, you know, almost sort of take every day as it comes. But, yeah, it was work, like, I would get, I mean, I get up really early now, but I didn't then. But, you know, like, seven, eight o'clock, sit down at my desk in my dressing gown and could be there till, like, midnight. And then just repeat the cycle again. But that was day in, day out, sacrificing everything. There's no way in the world that I would work like that again now because I want that balance. But at the time, I enjoyed it. And actually, that stuff was more important to me than everything else. Looking back, you know, like, I mean, I sort of mentioned my son's 16. A lot of that, like, as soon as he was old enough, he was going into nursery. So there's a lot of time then that actually, you know, looking back, I would probably have done differently. But I wouldn't change in any way the way that he is. It's not affected him or anything like that. Like, you know, he's a really, and I've got two kids. I'm just talking about the oldest one now. I'm not forgetting my younger one who's 11, 12.

Yeah.

But, yeah, it's, you know, looking back now, like, I don't think I would do that. I don't think I would make those choices again. But you can't. If I had a, yeah.

You can't do that now. It's only because, it's only because at the time, you can't make any other different choice because. Yeah. That's how it is. And again, you know, and again, maybe this is, I think this is probably one for another, for another episode. Kind of that things we wish we'd known or, you know, kind of things that we do differently. And I suppose, actually, that might be a nice way to kind of, kind of wrap up this one. So looking back to that young, fresh-faced, tight-shorted man from Donny.

What, we know it's the truth. What advice would you give that guy now?

That's a really good question. I don't know, because I don't know if I'd want to change anything. That's the thing. So it's almost like, I suppose, maybe I'm thinking it like, with Back to the Future Rules. If I was to give myself advice, would that change the outcome of stuff? I think. Thank you.

The only thing I can look back, perhaps I go to the start of my kind of running a business myself, is that it'd be back to that thing. You get to choose. You know, I had a really interesting kind of two sort of stories for me, really. One that I was too early to notice. My old man was a financial advisor. And I remember going to see this guy who was, at the time, the highest charging kind of IFA in the country. And he charged, I'm making the figures up, but it was something like 870 quid an hour. Now, in my naive, I've just started in business world. I'm thinking, well, okay, we do the same thing. You know, he shares advice and experience. I'm going to share advice and experience. So I basically kind of went to meet this guy. And I pretended to be an IFA to get into an IFA convention. So I went to go meet him. I asked him. I got him at lunch. I said, look, how did he come up with that figure? And he just kind of said that someone that he didn't want to work with wanted to work with him. So he's like, well, look, fine. But it's 870 quid an hour. And this guy said yes. And at that point, his entire business and his life kind of changes forever. And I think probably when I heard that, I was like, wow, that's cool. But it didn't kind of go in. And it wasn't until kind of later in life that I was running a kind of a membership group. And I kind of came across another guy running a membership group. I was charging 69 quid a month. He was charging 700 pounds a month. And I did so much more than he was doing. And the only thing different is that he'd chosen a different market. And I think if I could go back and tell myself anything when I started my business is that, you know, you get to choose. You know, some people will see value in 10 pounds an hour. Some people will be value in 10,000 pounds an hour. You know, and there's not, I'm not saying it's better to go for that market. And it's not, you know, it's a complete choice thing. And it's who you want to work with and how you want to do it and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, the reality of, you know, I could have done anything. I didn't have to go cheap, I suppose. I didn't have to go going to 69 quid. I could have done. And I think it took me a long while to kind of get that understanding. And I suppose, you know, having that understanding was also, was almost kind of the death knell for that business as well. So I don't think I'd want to change anything, but I'd love, I'd loved me to know. I mean, maybe I couldn't, maybe my brain just wasn't in a place where I could absorb that. But I would have loved me to know that actually you get to choose who you work for, how often you work, what you charge. And you get to choose that because there is always, always someone that will pay it. Put it in the right way. Show it to them in the right way. Again, as we've said before, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. That's the big difference. And I think, you know, that's the thing I'd love. I'd have loved a younger Paul to know.

Yeah, that's a really good example, isn't it? Because it's like you don't find that out till much later. And then it's almost, you've made those decisions. And I suppose you can always change at any point. But yeah, I suppose those sort of things. Interesting, actually. I say this a lot and it didn't really spring to mind. Like now I try and be the sort of coach and mentor that I feel I needed back then. But I didn't realize that I needed one. And actually like certainly wouldn't have paid for it. Didn't even know that this sort of stuff existed. But now and again, like I'd been given coaches and mentors from like free local organizations or whatever, which were lovely, but really didn't understand my business at all and probably took some advice. Not necessarily bad advice, but they were advising on a different time in a different world. I think looking back at how I was and this, I'm trying to put this across without sounding arrogant and big headed. But there was a lot of...

Go for the reality of this. Yeah, really.

So there was a lot of things that I was good at and I didn't realize how good I was at them. And I didn't realize that actually I was doing things right, even though other people were doing things differently. So I suppose I did challenge a lot of things. I almost, I think just having that someone say, no, this is the right thing to do. So actually like going out and testing things, you know, are people, do they want this stuff before you go in ahead and build it? All of that sort of stuff. It's like I was doing it, but didn't have a process or a framework for it. You know, even going back to like before I'd even built their website, like went out and sold it based on drawings that I'd done in Microsoft Paint. Like the thing didn't even exist. But this is actually like a legitimate way of testing ideas now. So all of that stuff, actually just having someone to just say, actually, you know, this is the right way. This is good. You're doing well here. But these bits, like I can remember spending five days, literally spent staying up all night designing this brochure to try and sell the service that flopped. Like it was a huge waste of my time. Actually, someone just to tell me, you know, that stuff outsource or do you need that? Like, do you really need it? So, yeah, there's lots of, you know, those sort of things. So I think I would love to go back and sort of coach and mentor and get my hands on that business again at that point, especially understanding all the things around, you know, investment and how that will. I just had no idea. No idea at all. I was just making it up as I went along. So, yeah, there's loads of stuff I would do differently. But equally, I wouldn't want to change anything, which sort of is a little bit of a paradox, isn't it there?

Therein lies the beauty of business, mate. That's brilliant. I think that's probably episode one. I don't know, in the can, in the bag. I don't know what happens with a podcast. Done, dusted. Very much enjoyed our first throb together, mate.

We'll see you next week. So if you enjoyed today's podcast, please make sure you like, subscribe, do all those things. We'll be back next week for another edition of the Throb podcast.

If you want to find out more, you can find me at paulchapmanuk.com.

And you can find me, Bertie, at bertiecord.co.uk. Thanks again. See you next week.