Making Mistakes

Welcome to Throb, The Reality of Business podcast. 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. Hello, Paul Chapman. Mr. Cordingly, how the devil are you, sir?

I'm very well, thank you. I'm very well, thank you, Paul. Although I've been better because I've got a bit of deja vu. I don't know about you. I feel like we've done this before. There is a little bit of irony here, isn't there?

There is, listener.

What are we talking about today, Paul?

Well, for the second time in as many days, we are talking about our biggest mistakes. And the delicious irony here is the fact that this is the second time we recorded this podcast because the first time, mistakes were aplenty and the whole thing, well, it didn't quite, which we didn't know until we got through the entire podcast and we went to edit it. So I think it's good. I think it shows that we are real and human and not at all half-witted. So yes, we're going to talk business mistakes and in particular our mistakes, which could make this the longest podcast that we've ever done. But that's fine because this is number 12. This is the last of season one. The longest running April Fool's joke is finally coming to a close. Well, until season two. And I'm quite excited about season two. Obviously, we can't really talk about it. But dare I say it, some epic feedback from this, which is nice. We like doing it. It's very nice to hear that other people are doing it. But I'm really, dare I say it, I'm very chuffed that this has been received so well. But I am genuinely very excited about season two.

Exactly. I just want this one out the way, to be honest, so we can get cracking on season two.

But it's still quality, of course. Especially because we've looked...

Well, yeah. I mean, the first one would have been quality. It was quality content. It's just the recording was just a big mess, wasn't it, Paul?

It was on the messy side. I mean, we're not pointing fingers. We're not pointing fingers. No, no, we're not pointing any fingers.

We're not pointing fingers. But my biggest mistake, agreeing to work with the technically inept Paul Chapman. That's the biggest mistake I've ever made. There you go. Podcast finished. See you on season two. With a new host. With animals.

Never work with animals or Chapmans. Good. Well, with that in mind, mistakes. Because all joking aside, I always find this genuinely weird because the reality is that you cannot run a business without making mistakes. To run and move a business forward, you need to do stuff more likely than not that you haven't done before. And that, by definition, scientifically speaking, means you're going to get stuff wrong. Yet there is this weird stigma about it. And I'm not saying people need to shout about the mistakes. But people, I don't know, it's almost like they're embarrassed about it. They are, I don't know. Whereas I, I mean, I suppose it's a bit of age here. But I just, I see this really differently. I think that, you know, mistakes are just part of what you do. We will do 10 things. Two of them will work. Eight of them don't work. Well, it's fine. We get stuff. There's a load of mistakes. And I just find it really weird that there is this stigma. Particularly, I think, in kind of smaller businesses. There's a stigma about kind of getting it wrong. And everyone's too scared to admit it. And I don't know, Matt. I mean, again, I know you've got kind of a lot of experience of making mistakes. But, yeah, I just find it fascinating, really. What, you know, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I completely agree. I think, like, you can't grow a business without making mistakes, for one. Like, it's the whole test, fail, learn. I am such a big believer in that. And anyone that just gets it right first time. Like, it's just, it's occasionally it can happen, right? Occasionally you can land lucky with something. But the majority of the time, unless you're failing, you're not learning. And I think you're right. There is a stigma. Like, people don't like talking about failure, especially when you're a smaller business and you just want the perception that everything's perfect. But talking about failure makes you human, makes you much more relatable. People can connect with you. And, like, everybody knows that you are making mistakes. There are two types of people in this world. There are people that masturbate. And there are people that lie about not masturbating. And essentially, you've got your heads in your hands again.

My mum was so proud of me.

But it's, look, it's the same thing, right? It is, like, there's no point in lying, Paul. Like, we all know you're a wanker. And we all know that everybody else does it. I'm not saying that everyone does it to the same extent that I do, for example. But, you know, everybody's done it. Everybody's tried it. But people, there are people that don't like to talk about it. And that's fine because this isn't, you know, the Throb Masturbation podcast. This is the Throb Business podcast. But talking about your mistakes in business is important. And I'm not saying you have to go out there and shout on social media every time you fuck up. That's not what I'm saying. But at least admitting that you are trying stuff, that it isn't working, and then you learn from it. And that is the crucial part because you take that learning. And next time you make a decision or next time you do something, you're a little bit closer to doing it the right. You know, if we didn't try and fail, we wouldn't have spaceships. We wouldn't have anything, really. Like, how many things have been created in error? Like the microwave, right? Wasn't that a mistake?

Yeah, I think you're right.

But penicillin was a mistake, wasn't it? Probably.

Well, I think you're right because going back but not actually touching upon your analogy, it's like everybody knows you're doing it. Everybody knows it's a thing. And it's like when you go to the networking rooms and, you know, how's your business? Oh, great. Well, it's not. You don't need to say it.

It's not great, is it? Yeah.

It's almost like, and you said sort of there, people should admit their mistakes. I'd almost disagree and say, look, you don't need to admit your mistakes because that's like admitting you're having a cup of tea or admitting you're writing something down. Because it just needs to be normalized. You know what I mean? It shouldn't be like, oh, yeah, I'm making a mistake. I've done this. And you're dead right. You look at the space stuff, particularly the newer space stuff. Or perhaps it's always been that way because this is our generation. At the amount of time kind of SpaceX or someone else kind of sent a rocket up, it blew up. And everyone else, the media want to jump on it and go, oh, look at this. It's exploded. They just go, well, yeah, we kind of knew that was going to happen. This is what we've done it for. And it is. And I think that's the sort of thing here. I don't think people necessarily need to go and admit mistakes. I think, like you said, they just learn from it. It's as a normal part of business as making your morning cup of tea. Where I think it goes wrong is the fact that people just kind of shy away from it, thus don't do it, thus don't actually do the stuff. Because they think people are watching. And they think they're kind of judging it. And I think, again, there's another reality here is that no one's watching. No one cares. And actually, like the people that, it's an old adage that, you know, kind of, you know, those that care don't matter. And those that matter don't care. And anyone that is out there watching and judging and that sort of thing, which just they're not really. In the grand scheme of things, they're just not. No serious business owner has got anywhere. And no, I don't know how you say it, no normal business owner. I know I'm talking about the brand. No one has ever built a business without getting some stuff wrong. And actually, I think it is a good thing because it means you're trying more stuff. I suppose where it becomes an issue is that if you get too scared to make a mistake or indeed you don't look at it and think, well, what happened? Why did it go wrong? Why is it not done this? What can I do about it? And I think that's where mistake making then, you know, kind of starts to cause an issue. Yeah.

And that's the point that you need to be doing. You need to be analysing those mistakes.

Right.

And I think maybe the word mistake is, I suppose, it's contextual. I suppose in this context, it's more about the stuff that you've tried and then hasn't necessarily worked as plans. But you'll still be able to extract some data from whatever it is you're trying and then using it again and applying that to a different experiment, so to speak. I'm not talking about Bunsen burners and things. I mean, I'm talking about you should be experimenting all the time within your business, as in a lot of the time we don't know what we're doing. So you'll just do something. But just because you've got this amazing idea of, oh, I'm going to start posting whatever on social, that shouldn't become business as usual from day one. Run that as a test. See how it works. How has it resonated, et cetera. And then double down on the bits that do work and scrap the bits that don't. But I think the reason I was saying about admitting your mistakes, and again, I'm just going to come back to this. If you are a person that almost goes with the unnatural belief that you don't make mistakes, almost you sweep them under the carpet and blame somebody else, then that's what I was talking about. You need to get comfortable and actually say, no, I fucked up here. Or this is something that I've done and it didn't work because of X, Y, and Z. However, next time I do it, I'm going to do it a little bit differently. That's where I feel that you need to be admitting your mistakes. You can't go through life thinking that you're perfect and that the mistakes are somebody else's until you take ownership of those things. Then you might as well just switch the podcast off now because you're not going to be able to develop that process. So that's what I mean by admitting it. And if you've not done that before, and there are people out there that haven't, and it's not necessarily their fault. It's just the environments, either their home environments or their work environments. School is an absolute swine for this, like not embracing failure and not testing things. It's very prescribed, isn't it? You will do this.

You won't question it.

This is how you learn. This is how you revise for an exam. And if you don't fit into that box, well, you're fucked, basically. So I think school's got a lot to answer for on the testing and experimentation side, apart from like a science class. It's almost, it's not part of the framework. School hasn't evolved. I'm not going to get, we'll do that in another podcast.

But I think you're right. And I think there is, there's a really important point to make here about, you know, a mistake making culture, for want of a better phrase. Because, you know, I can think back to kind of two of my kind of early jobs, where one, mistakes were met with an absolute iron fist. And, you know, as such, it became the most vanillary, bland organization. Nothing was thought about. I can think, and I won't say who it is, because that's really unfair. But I even, I mean, I, I was young, so much younger than today. I was young, and I kind of didn't know a lot. But I remember, I can look back and see certain things. This is a kind of big, kind of big business here. And there were these amazing opportunities that me, albeit as a naive and daft 20-something year, I could see these incredible things. But no one wanted to do it, because everyone was too scared of it not being right, not being kind of accepted right. And I think, you know, I can look at that culture, I think another culture in there, I mean, it had its challenges. But, you know, the boss, I mean, again, this stupid guy, he, you only got the bollocking if you'd been stupid, if you'd not thought about it. That's when the bollocking came. And if you made the same kind of mistake again and again and again. But if you tried something that you generally thought it'd work, and you got it wrong, or you got something wrong, kind of literally by accident, then there might be a bit of a, but the bollocking's only came. And actually, this was one of the most fast-moving, dynamic, successful businesses I've been in, where people were doing the stuff, were doing the thing. And I can remember reading a book about the SES ages ago, and they were doing some training on kind of storming a plane. And one of the guys had basically said, well, what happens if we slid down the tail? Could we get onto a plane that way? And in a normal army, that would be ridiculous, go and do yourself some press-ups. Well, I don't know, let's try it. And it was that, it was really that kind of environment where, you know, mistakes were not encouraged, but the activity that might lead to mistakes were encouraged. And I think as a, I might have spoken about this before, but, you know, just thinking of one of my kind of biggest business blunders, I once sent, I don't know, several hundred thousand emails to the wrong person.

And I basically got one cell wrong on this sheet. I mean, I should never have been doing this work. I'm not, that's not my thing. So anyway, it was this kind of enormous, like horrible, earth-stopping, heart-stopping moment when you press send, and you just think, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And hundreds of thousands of emails. And this was, this was a long time ago, really. And this was well before email marketing was the thing. So your email was quite a personal space then. And it was, I mean, my boss was brilliant about it. I went to him straight away and said, look, I've got this wrong. I think it's badly wrong. And we got it, we sorted it, we rectified it. But from there came a really legitimate marketing thing where actually we went out and said, sorry, to all these people. This is me. I'm poor. I did that, done it wrong. I'm really sorry. And the sales response was absolutely through the roof. To the point that it became a thing that we used kind of again and again and again. And I think, you know, that was, that wouldn't have happened in my, in the kind of previous company I'm speaking about. It would have been full on bollocking and possibly worse. But there'd have been no thought. There'd be no kind of mop up. There'd be no kind of, well, what, you know, what should we do about it thing. And I think, you know, just you're talking about it there in kind of schools and that sort of thing. I think it's so important for businesses to have a culture that not kind of wants mistakes, but makes a culture where actually, if it's done in the right way, with the right thinking, it's kind of okay.

Yeah, it is. And I think that example of the email there is perfect because, I mean, that was a genuine mistake. It wasn't planned. It wasn't like an expected, like it was a genuine mistake, but actually like it was embraced. And I'm sure as a result of that, and hopefully as a result of that, that there were things and processes that were put in place to stop that mistake happening again.

Yeah.

You're nodding for the, for the sake of the, the DIR. Yes. It's not helpful.

Yes, there were. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes, there were. So, so that's good.

So that's what I mean by learning from, from mistakes. What this process isn't, as in when you're testing, measuring, learning from stuff, is it, is not an excuse for, I won't say laziness, because I was writing about laziness yesterday.

Cavalier-esque action.

Well, I suppose to a degree it's, it still is, but it's not sloppiness is it, or for making it. So as in, if you've learned from something, then you should learn from that. And it like, if, let's just take that email example. If you're like, oh, we're in a culture that embraces mistakes. I'm just going to knock this email out in like 10 minutes, not spell check it and stuff like that. That's not the sort of mistakes that I'm talking about. Like if you're capable of doing something, then do your job really fucking well. But what learning from your mistakes is, it allows you to bust boundaries and just go a little bit further than you maybe would have done before. Because you're in a safe environment that when it does go wrong, the work environment you're in, the people that you work for or work with, are there to support and help and also learn from that process. Not just a learning for you, but a learning that you're comfortable sharing with others, which again is very, very difficult to do. So to stand up in front of a really powerful way of embracing this culture within a business is to actually, you know, if you're the CEO, if you're the business leader, or even if you're just working with someone else, actually to start the conversation by saying, let me tell you about a mistake that I've made. And then be really open and truthful about the mistake. So actually that you're straight away, you're saying, look, I fucked up here. And your email example then would have been perfect to actually stand up and say, this is what I once did. And this is what happened as a result. And actually we turned that into an opportunity. So that's not giving people an excuse to be sloppy, but it's saying that, look, and I think you started that by saying that probably wasn't something that you should have been doing, perhaps. Oh, yeah. But you went out of your way to do that task.

Yeah, proper square peg, round hole.

Yeah, but you went out of your way and did it. And you pushed those boundaries a little bit. And yeah, you fucked it up. But actually you learned from it. Other people learned from it. And that process was stopped. Sorry, there were things that stopped that happening again. And also you turned it into opportunities. So that's exactly what I'm talking about.

I think there's a little footnote to that. I was properly burnt by that. I was just like that because, yeah, I was still quite young. And what I think was brilliant is that kind of the next time a mass email send needed to be done, my boss came to me and said, right, Paul, let's do it. You do it. And I was like, really? Because I properly fucked up last time. I was like, well, yeah, but here's what we're going to do. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. We're going to put these lines in here. So you've got all these test lines. There's stuff I never thought or any simple, never thought about. But, you know, just an impressive kind of the right way of doing it. You know what I mean? And that is a culture that actually enables us to grow just so spectacularly as a business and then kind of having it there. And I think it is so important. I think that's a culture you have to have if you have a team. But I think it's as important to have it with yourself, to kind of go through those processes on your own and actually say, well, look, what could I have done? What's not? What's not? But so, yeah, I think it's, yeah, fascinates me. I mean, I always, because of what I do now, I spend a lot of time, all bits, nothing to do with my job, as it were, kind of looking at kind of cultures in business and just kind of thinking, well, look, what if, what if you did it like this? Moving on from there then. Go on, give us a mistake. Give us one of yours. We'll start with you in case it's a really bad one. What have you done, mate, that's really not gone well?

I mean, there's loads of mistakes. I suppose where do we start? I suppose, yeah, probably, and this feeds into a few things, like the whole, like, imposter syndrome, question my own experience is always a big one that I don't think ever goes away. And it's still there, but I can look back and recognize where that's actually caused me serious issues. So, in one example, so, like, being in a position where I was able to become an angel investor and invest in businesses and things like that, I think what sort of happens is you get, you never get to a level and you think, like, you always feel the same no matter where you are, like, how much money you've got in the bank or whatever. You're still the same person, right, essentially. So, like, I just sold a business and I was investing in other businesses because people around me, suddenly I was in new circles. I was in people around people that were investing in businesses. But because I was just starting in that game, I just assumed that everybody knew what they were doing. So, I just followed on and just, obviously, I did a little bit of research and spoke to people. I wasn't just going in blinds. But I certainly wasn't asking the right questions of the founders of what I would ask today. And it's not that my experience has changed. Like, I knew the right things to ask. I almost just thought, oh, well, that's probably a silly question because these guys know what they're doing. So, I'll just leave it to them. So, it was almost like questioning my own experience and questioning my own validity in those scenarios. So, that's something I do a lot less now, as in I didn't want to appear stupid as the new naive investor. Whereas, I have learned from that situation. So, now, no matter what situation I'm in, if I don't understand something, I will just ask. And no matter how then I'm perceived as a result of that question, I will just ask. So, yeah, not asking the right questions because I didn't feel that I had the right to, yeah, is a big mistake that I've made. And I think, as well, with investing, it feeds into that same question. Sorry, the same answer. There was a lot of FOMO in that as well. So, because looking at the potential uptick of scenarios, yes, I'm investing a lot of money, but I could get a huge sum of return. It's essentially, without doing the proper research, it's more akin to gambling than anything else, right?

Yeah.

And it's not gambling as such, but it's the same sort of thing. It's like you're looking at something and you're investing for fear of missing out rather than, actually, I think this business could do well. And of course, I believed in things that I'd invested in, but I could have asked a lot better questions and actually provided much better input at that early stage. So, that is a big mistake. I think questioning my own experience is definitely something that I wouldn't say regret, but I have now learned from.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I can definitely understand that. Because I think it's that judging yourself against others. Because you're sat there, your experience, but you're looking at these people in, I don't know, bigger cars, shinier suits or whatever, and thinking, maybe it's different. But it's not. It is. Yeah. It is. And again, I can do, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's similar, man. I mean, I've had so many mistakes. So, I mean, it's only really since we've done this podcast, you look at it back and you think, God, it was so, I mean, so many. But, yeah, I mean, things like, again, I still do this and I kind of judge my own success and I work towards something based on what other people have done, doing, which I find really weird. Because we've said before, business, I think. It's not weird.

It's really common, Paul.

Well, it's the most personal thing in the world, business, isn't it? It doesn't matter if you want something that's going to earn 10 quid or 100 quid. But I'm looking at it. And again, because, yeah, not a lot of people kind of are in the world where I am, where I'm main kind of care for the kids and run a business. And a lot of the people I was comparing to could work all hours and could do all this and just very different kind of styles of life. And I think it is that sort of ties into things like kind of that lack of clarity, I think, which is hard. I don't know if that's a mistake. I think probably the mistake in it is, even though I knew to, because of kind of my training, as it were, in kind of the businesses I've been, even though I knew to, I didn't sit to think long enough about what I really wanted and what I was trying to achieve and then kind of get the absolute kind of bullet clarity on it. So you end up just wasting kind of time, money, energy and effort on kind of other Australia. And I do think that is, I do think that's, that's a lot of that is, is, yeah, there's some big mistakes from not knowing stuff. Could I have done it differently? Oh, I don't know. Because you can only do what you do with what you've got at the time. But I like to think that, you know, because I mean, I came from, I came from, you know, I said a very entrepreneurial business where we effectively could make products up, make services up and charge whatever we want to it. And I, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, so apologies, but I came out of that and I set up my own business and I charged kind of 60 quid a month, 70 quid a month. And I met people that were doing much less work and charging 10 times that. And I think that, that kind of, I look back and that irritates me, but I think it's, that was probably a confidence thing. I think that was probably a, as you were saying, like, even though I knew I could do it, I was judging myself on everything around me and looking at the other people thinking, well, I can't say the same things.

Yeah.

I can't do the same things as them, even though I was giving kind of much more of a service to it. So I think there's that, that, that not backing yourself, but yeah, I did it.

I mean, it's easy to do though, Paul, isn't it? Like it's, it's one of the, like, it's probably one of my most repeated phrases when I'm talking to someone is you're undercharging. It's very rare that people are charging too much. It's generally like people have either calculated it wrong and don't see the value and stuff that they're, that they were offering or just looking at the whole scenario wrong. It's difficult when you're doing something that you really love doing. And especially when it's like your time.

Yeah.

This is probably the second conversation I've had on this already today. As in like, I love what I do. So sometimes I'll get to the end of the day and like, when I look at like what people have paid me and it's like, wow, like all I've done all day is just sat and spoke to people and done something that I won't move from this chair. I'll just have conversations. So you can look at the linear point of view, like you've just been paid for just talking. Whereas that's not what they're buying. It's the value of that. So those conversations provide value and it's the same for you.

Right.

So I can, I can see why you and I've done it and other people charge a lot less for the things that they do because it just, it's just something that they do and they enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. I think. But that doesn't mean that you have to sell it cheap.

That leads me to a perennial mistake and an ongoing one is that I'm really good at giving it all away. Like really good at this because if, I mean, I'm sure people probably know by now I'm a marketing strategist. So kind of businesses call me in when they want some direction, they want something to change. And normally they want more business, you know, kind of want a different kind of customer, whatever it is. So I kind of get kind of called in there. And like process wise, how this would normally work is there is some kind of initial conversation in the old days, many, many years ago, that was over a cup of coffee. Every now and again, now we go on to zoom and do it. Hopefully we'll go back to the old days pretty soon. But there is that kind of cup of coffee kind of chat because, you know, it's quite a personal thing that you do with the business, particularly if it's with a business owner. You need to, you need to like each other. You need to be able to kind of open up and kind of have that conversation. So there's that initial point. And what it's also quite an interesting thing because you need to say enough good, useful, interesting stuff to kind of give them that. Oh shit moment. But not so much that actually they can galvanize their thoughts and go, oh, right, got it.

Yeah.

Because quite often with what I do, I'll just look at something. I don't want to sound like an idiot here, but I'll just look at something. Oh, no, no, no. It's that. And I can just see it. And I can see the stick. I can see the solution. And I can tell them what to do about it. And what I have to be really careful of, and I'm really, really bad at this, is actually what I tend to do. And I did it, let's just say kind of six months ago, whenever it was. No, it must be long. There was a coffee involved. And I was going through it. And I forget, I won't send some business again. But it was brilliant. And I loved it. And I was really excited. And this guy was like proper, proper stuck, really in trouble, not sleeping, in real pain. And he kind of said, look, it's this. And I kind of listened for a bit. And I went, right, this is what I think we need to do. It's that, this, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And then I kind of, yeah, at the next stage, all right, should we get a session booked in? Because what I normally do, there's a coffee, there's a discovery session where I kind of then do the main work. And then there's like a plan creation. So we're at the coffee. I've given it all of this. I've gone, well, that's, yeah. So, yeah, I think that's probably the right way forward here. Should we get a discovery session booked in? And he just looked at me, put his coffee down. I went, I don't think we need it. I think I've pretty much got everything I need here. I'm like, yeah, you have literally everything you need. I've written the first email for you. I've given, and it just, and again, that's good karma and all that kind of stuff. But the amount of times I've just waved goodbye to a load of money by getting too excited and giving the farm away, kind of, you know, kind of, as my old boss used to put it, shagging on the first date. So, yeah, that's a perennial for me.

And, Paul, I do exactly the same thing. And I still do it now. Like, it's, and I think it comes from that. I'd like to think that we're both nice guys and we generally want to help. And I think that can sometimes, it's like, you can just give too much. So, I suppose, for one, they've got actionable stuff straight away. And two, if anything, it's a little bit overwhelming. I think less is more in those scenarios. I actually, I don't plan my discovery calls or anything like that. I'm probably assured a little bit more. Maybe that's a learning because, you know, I made that mistake. But, like, and this wasn't a discovery call. It was a different conversation. But, like, I said something today and I just thought that's exactly how it should be done. It wasn't deliberate. And I'll share this with you. So, someone was talking about their marketing strategy and saying about the amount of cold emails that they were sending and not getting any or very, very little results. It's a huge, huge amount of numbers from that. And rather than then go into the whole thing, I just literally asked a question and just said, so, when was the last time you replied to a cold email? And suddenly then you saw the penny drop. And that was enough. So, that was enough to almost plant the seed to actually spot the problem. But it didn't offer any solution. Not deliberately, just the conversation didn't go that way. But you could see that was the aha moment at that point. Like, shit, yeah. Like, why would that work for us when I never buy in that way? So, when you start to think, like, how you buy personally, then you start to think about how you can apply that to your business. So, yeah, I think, you know, that was an example of where that sort of stuff can work. But as problem solvers, as you and I are, we naturally want to go in there and then elaborate on that. But that's the point we should stop. Like, that was powerful. Stop there. Stop. And we'll talk about that more when we start working together.

Yeah, but that leads to a really – because I think there's another mistake in here now that is kind of known but unknown. Because this one took me a while to see it. I probably did when I first started, five, ten meetings where I was like, I gave it all away. Because I had an on-sell. And actually, it took me a long time to work out, no, no, what people really want is exactly what you've just done. Kind of listen, understand, show them the light. And I think that that is a mistake I've definitely made is not understanding what the value is in my real business. Or what the real value is in my business. And I think back to kind of a previous business and the fact that myself and my business partner spent thousands and thousands and hours and hours creating this enormous library of courses. And we got around the table. We did roundtable meetings. And it was backed by this. And it wasn't until kind of a couple of years after we started doing this that we went to look in and thought, no one's logged in here for like 12 months. And we were busting our gut to do this kind of thing. And you just think, oh, God, people don't want this. It's a lovely add-on. And we thought, oh, it's just such a brilliant thing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. People, hell, no one wants it. All they want was to sit round the table and talk to people. The right people. And it's really interesting because every single business has this. Take a state agency. I can go, can I have a brilliant guy? And I think, and I don't know his business very well, but I will suggest one of the reasons that people work with him, it's him. It is the trust they have in him. And I think that's it. And it's interesting because it'd be dead easy to think what I do is sell people's houses for them. Actually, what they're really buying, it's that peace of mind. It's the same with you, mate. I'm sure what you do is incredibly niched and nuanced and your knowledge is kind of second to none. But actually, it's the experience. It's your how you say stuff. It is the fact that you will use a masturbatory analogy when one about, I don't know, opera singing will do. But that's the thing. And I think it's really easy. Again, you've got loads of good stuff like the Get Shit Club and all that kind of other stuff. There's loads of great stuff that you do. But those things on their own have no value, almost unless you're doing them because it's you that they want. And that's the value of it. And I think that was kind of a big mistake for me that I just didn't know what was actually valuable in my business. So I was kind of giving the value away to get to a thing that no one actually wanted.

Yeah, it's interesting. And it's one of those things that almost sounds a little bit. It's easy to say about somebody else, it's difficult to recognize that for yourself and your own business, especially if it's like someone like you and I that just essentially we're selling ourselves. But I had that bit of feedback very recently. It was a little bit of an eye opener because I never really looked at it in that context. Like I was putting together like a this. This is outside of my club. I was putting together another event and just getting some feedback on it. And someone came back and said, event sounds amazing. However, I'm not interested in the other people's opinions that are in that room. I, like everybody else, just want yours. So it's almost like it's diluting it. It's diluting that. And it was, yeah, that made me think about how I then structure another event. It's like if that's what people want, if they genuinely want my opinion, then yeah, that is going to get diluted. So yeah, it's a difficult thing, isn't it? Without coming over like Billy Big Balls and narcissistic. And like, I'm going to give you like, it's, it's a hard thing to do sometimes. But yeah, that, that, that is a learning that just literally, and the way I got that feedback was just by smoke testing event, just put it out. Who wants to buy this? Some people bought it. Other people then said, actually, no, but this is the reason why.

So yeah, I think that's, it's an easy mistake to make that you assume what people, assume what people want rather than actually asking them.

So whose turn is it now? Let's go over some big, have we got any howlers? I love your email one, by the way. Yeah.

I just, the best thing is, right. I had sweated over this email for about two or three weeks because I'm not the right guy to deal with data. I'm just not. And the guy that sat opposite me had doctored the file so that when it came through, because obviously I put myself in as a test. When the live one came through, he doctored the file. So my, my name came through as wanker. So I opened this, so I pressed send on this hundred thousand thing that I have hated and I've kept awake. The first thing I see is an email that goes ping, dear wanker. And I'm like, I'm like full on bricking, full on bricking. And then, then he kind of admits it because I think like all color drained. And I have this, these two or three minutes of, oh, thank God that's over. And suddenly ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And I was like, fuck.

Oh, so yeah, nothing that bad. I heard it. A kind of a lack of experience ball up. So when I, when I first started my business, I kind of had like a.

Sorry, you just, you just, I'm just going to interrupt just, just on your email story. I'm just going to interrupt because that just reminded me of a very similar thing. Like somewhere I used to work, there used to be somebody who in his mannerisms reminded me from, of hair flick from hello, hello. Yes. You're a hair flick.

Yes, I do.

Hello, hello, hello. That's brilliant. Yeah. Hello, hello. I could see the, like, hello. I've heard that before. Yeah. Hair flick. Hair flick. So I had him in my phone contacts as hair flick. Now this was quite a big, a big organization. And there was some, he had a very serious role. And he knew I called him hair flick. Like I used to take the piss out of him and put signs up around the office, et cetera. But what I didn't realize was that if you ever email somebody and they're in your contacts as hair flick, like it's either if they're in there, anyway, it comes, it shows in the email. So I'd be sending out these really important emails and they would be like, I've got all the, the seaboard in there. Plus hair flick.

I got pulled up on it. And I think I was in, I was in America. I was in New York at the time. I got this email. It was like four in the morning there. I was drunk in this club trying to respond really seriously. Like, oh my God, I didn't realize. But I was just absolutely hammered trying to write this email back to the CEO. But yes, it's, so yes, don't.

Check your emails, kids.

And I'd like to say I learned from it, but I've still got, like, you come up as Tosso all the time. But you're not, I don't email you anything important. Well, that's true. Just pictures of the fallen we've gone over the big boogies. Hello, hello. That was brilliant. Anyway, that reminded me. So are you making continue with your story now? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, when I first started, there was, I kind of had like a three-year, not planned, but I knew what was happening for the next three years. I think year one was going to go quite well because I had various units of income that would last for that year. Year two was going to be a bit kind of probably quite slow because I was using that time to build something up. So I was building a pot of cash. And year three was kind of a big payoff kind of thing.

And so by the end of year one, I'm like, I'm literally king of the money-making people. Our money left right center. It was brilliant. I was earning well. It was just, it was all going very well. I remember kind of, I knew I had to do like taxes and stuff. So I remember my accountant ringing me. I can remember I was down at a course in Cheltenham and I kind of came out at lunch and said, oh, we've done your tax bill, Chappas, and it's this much. I'm like, oh, well, it can't be because that's all the money I have. And just kind of in a big mistake to not understand how tax works. I never knew. I knew you had to pay tax, but effectively I didn't know about kind of the tax on accounting where you pay for, you know, tax on what you've earned that year and the profit. And then you pay half again in advance for next year because they think you're going to earn the same sort of thing. And obviously I knew I wasn't. I was like, shit. Like all this money that I've built up or I think I'm building up for next year. And my calculations weren't very good. I was like, probably going to earn it that much. It just wiped out this money, like everything, like everything. I was like, shit. And that was a massive mistake. Not, I don't know. But then, you know, I'm the sort of guy that will build something and then read the instructions. And I think that when you go into business, folks, if you go into business and read the instructions first, get some experience, go and ask someone. Yeah, I wish I'd gone to my accountant instead of us just going on the lash all the time. I wish I'd gone to my account and said, look, what do I need to know? Tell me things that I don't know in my youthful enthusiasm that I'm now going to be an entrepreneur. Tell me what it is that I don't know. And I really wish he had done because I could have saved myself more than just a few quid.

Yeah, it's the tax money thing. Like, not that, yeah, I think I probably did have that scenario. Like the whole tax, yeah, tax on account. The first time that hit me as well. I mean, when I used to DJ, going back a long time ago, I mean, even just, I didn't even realize that because they were paying me cash. She's like, oh.

But I've spent it. Like, what do you mean? Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not on the payroll. They've been paying me cash. Like, that's cash in hand. You don't have to pay tax on cash in hand. Well, clearly you did and I didn't know. Your Honor. So, yeah, that caught me out as a child. In fact, I should have known this because, like, my first business when I was 14, like, exchanging Mega Drive games, the tax man rang me up and said that I wasn't paying tax. But that wasn't cash in hand. That was different. So, yeah, I should have learned that lesson. But, yeah, I've met lots of tax blunders. I mean, my big ones are through investing. So, investing and then, I mean, the government, there are some really, really good tax schemes for people who invest in seed businesses and small startups and things. You can get some really good tax breaks. So, you've got to make sure that if you're investing a sum, you've got to have earned that sum and paid that sum in tax, which I took bad advice. And bad tax advice, I think, is another one. Like, if you're starting something, get good advice, which is what you're saying.

Which is not often cheap advice, everybody. So, I'll interrupt you. It's not often cheap advice, but it is cheaper than paying, than getting it wrong. So, yeah, with things like that, it's worth getting some proper experience.

Exactly.

Yeah, I'm not talking, like, small sums of money, like, huge amounts of money that I thought was just going to come back. And then it's like, well, you haven't paid that tax, so how do you expect to get that back? It's like, because you fucking told me that's what was going to happen. Yeah, so bad advice. So, yeah, just talk things through. And I think this comes back to the original point. Like, if you're not 100% sure, ask lots of questions about it. Don't just assume that everything's going to be okay, because, actually, it's probably not. So, yeah, so where do we go?

What more? There's one that's just kind of come to mind, really. There are too many blunders to go into individually on this, so many. But, actually, looking at it, I think some of my biggest mistakes have actually been in my reaction to mistakes, rather than the initial mistake itself, if that makes sense. So, kind of as an example, I can think of times where I have invested in something, looked at it after, and, again, I've not done proper thought. I've not done proper research. I've gone, yeah, well, that looks good. I'll buy that thing. I've bought that thing. And, actually, afterwards, it's become really quite clear. It is not the thing I need. It is not going to add value. But because I've paid for it, I then continue to use it, even though it's not right. And, actually, it's a lesson I learned a long time ago that, kind of, sometimes it is better to write the check and walk away. And I think too many times that I have, you know, I've done this both ways as well. Sometimes I have, kind of, done a thing, realized it's wrong, and fought too hard to try and make it right when I shouldn't have done. But, also, I've done stuff the other way where I've done it, thought, oh, that's a mistake, bin it off, da-da-da, and, kind of, gone a different path. Then look back in a few weeks, months, years, and gone, yeah, that was wrong. I should have done that. And I think, actually, I look at some of my, kind of, bigger ones. It is, it has been that reaction to it. I think it's easy to make a mistake. I think this perhaps goes back to what we talked about, kind of, ahead of this, is that there is that stigma about it. You don't want to necessarily have made a mistake or admit you've made a mistake. And, actually, therefore, you then almost try and cover your tracks, rather than just going, that was a bit of a fuck-up. Ah, well, on we go. Write the check, walk away.

Yeah, I think that's actually the first time you've sworn on these, on these podcasts, just saying. Is it? You normally do that thing, you know, like when you were with a child. And, like, anyway, yeah, so, just like, cover your mouth up. Yeah, he fucked up.

I'll try harder.

Which is odd. Yeah. So, yeah, this is our final episode. So, Paul, it's the final episode of season one, and you have finally said a naughty word.

Ha ha, very amusing. Neither big nor clever. Just shows a lack of suitable dictionary.

Good. Right, so, go on. Let's end this. Have you got one more howler for us?

I got another howler. I think, nothing exciting, it's a very boring one. But I think, like, thinking back, something that sort of caught me out time and time again is not being far too, like, I'm a very trustworthy person. So, I think trusting in things without really delving into, like, terms and conditions and things like that. Because, actually, like, some people have really, like, pulled the wool or attempted to pull the wool over my eyes. And some people have. In the early stages, it comes out. But not really looking into terms and conditions enough. So, things like contract terms, early terminations, things like that. And then stupid ones that, like, it's the first thing I check now with anything that I do is, like, if you're having something built, like, some sort of website, for example. Like, who owns the intellectual property of that? Who actually owns the IP of the website? Making sure that you own your own code to your website, which you would naturally think you do. But, actually, like, I've been caught out. There are many scenarios where you don't. So, just, again, asking those questions and not taking things for granted. And just because someone is nice at that time, like, generally the people, like, they're not nice when things, the shit hits the fan. You have to have difficult conversations. So, yeah, I always take people at face value. But, yeah, I've been caught out with cancellation clauses, all of those sorts of things. Just not checking things properly and just going on face value. So, I know I'm saying you have to get a lawyer to look through everything. But at least if you're thinking there's something that can go wrong, at least just asking that question, just recording it. And then even just confirming in an email, like, what happens if I want to cancel? What happens this? What happens that? In those things. And just asking those difficult questions. I suppose where this is a mistake is because these are things that I've thought about asking in the beginning and then didn't ask. Because I thought, well, actually, it's okay. Well, it's just Paul. So, I don't need to cover those things off. Yeah, yeah. Whereas, actually, there's even more reason to cover those things off. So, again, it doesn't have to be anything too formal. But just confirming and just, yeah, just not taking things for granted, I think. Because when things do go wrong, as that's what we talk about, things can go wrong. So, just making sure that what happens in that bad scenario. It's like the prenup agreement, isn't it? Like, I know we don't have them here in the UK specifically. But, you know, I can see why they're there in that scenario. Like, things do go wrong. I think if you're going through life thinking that, oh, well, it'll all be okay. I'm going to be married to this person forever. Or this business is going to be successful. Or me and my business partner are never going to fall out. Like, that's just setting yourself up for a massive fail. Because things do go and will go wrong. So, at least just having those bases covered and understanding what happens in those eventualities, I think.

It's like, you know, get the details sorted while everyone's still happy. And then it kind of doesn't, you know, you kind of get on with it. Well, that's good, mate. That is good. I think that is a good way to end Season 1. I think it's been, dare I say it, one of the most fun things I've done recording this. I've loved having the feedback. I'm super, super excited about Season 2. So, I guess all is left just to say is thanks for listening, everybody. Please keep comments. If you can bang some reviews on wherever you watch this as well, we always appreciate reading those.

Does it mean I don't have to talk to you for a while?

Yes, you get a week or two off. You're an idiot. Right. On that bombshell. Thank you, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed it. Keep your feedback coming. And we'll see you very soon for Season 2 of Throb, the Reality of Business podcast. Yes.

Thank you, everybody, for listening. We really appreciate every single listener. So, if you've enjoyed this podcast, you know what to do. And also, I just want to give a big special thank you to you, Paul, for showing up, doing all the hard work, talking, sharing your experience, and just putting up with the occasional bit of ridicule and my terrible jokes from time to time. So, thank you very much. It has been an absolute honour to be your company for these last 12 months.

Oh, get out of here, mate. It's been a good one. We look forward to the seasons to come. Have a good one, everybody. We will catch you in Season 2.

See you in Season 2. Bye-bye.

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.