From Council Estate To Selling A Global Business For Millions At 27 - Tim Armoo Founder of Fanbytes

Tim Armoo 0:00 I felt invincible, but I also felt like I discovered a cheat sheet. This was no funding, nothing at all. I used my, like, skills and my brains to, like, figure out how things work.

Ali Abdaal 0:12 What you're about to hear is an interview between me and Timothy Armoo, who goes by Timo. Timo started his first company at the age of 14. He sold his second company at the age of 17, and he started a company called Fanbytes, which recently sold for somewhere between 20 and 50 million pounds.

Tim Armoo 0:29 I wanted it to be a game where, like, I could be number one, and that game to me was business.

Ali Abdaal 0:34 In this conversation, we talk a lot about the journey of entrepreneurship, and we use Timo's background in starting these businesses from when he was, like, 14 to starting Fanbytes at the age of 21, and how that ultimately sold for loads and loads and loads of money.

Tim Armoo 0:45 A lot of people kind of underestimate the power of both naivety and youth. And I think for a lot of young people, they almost do not realize how many superpowers they have.

Ali Abdaal 0:58 And we kind of use that journey to tease out lessons in entrepreneurship, lessons in kind of hustling a little bit to get what you want through the third door. We talk about his journey of kind of me- meeting people like Richard Branson at the age of 17, despite not having any credentials to his name, and I think it's incredibly inspiring hearing how Timo had this drive for entrepreneurship, this drive to start his own business, and how he just executed on it at a ridiculously young age.

Tim Armoo 1:22 And then I think probably at 21, my dad passed away. Where I grew up, if you were coming home after 7:00 PM, you shouldn't do that. I would try and make friends with the gangsters because I knew that at the very least, if they saw me in the evening, they would be like, "Oh, that's cool, you know, he's part of us."

Ali Abdaal 1:42 And hopefully you'll find in the conversation some really practical, actionable advice if you're interested in entrepreneurship, but also hopefully you'll appreciate how humble and down to earth Timo is in, in his advice. I found it super, super inspiring, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Just a very quick thing before we get started. If you have not yet subscribed to the podcast, either on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app of choice, then please do. It really helps us out a lot. Thank you so much for coming on. This is gonna be-

Tim Armoo 2:04 No problem

Ali Abdaal 2:04 ... incredibly interesting.

Tim Armoo 2:05 It's gonna be fun.

Ali Abdaal 2:06 You are sort of by any definition of the word,

Ali Abdaal 2:09 phenomenally successful at a very-

Tim Armoo 2:10 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:10 ... very, very young age. Um, but what I found, uh, interesting is that, um, I guess I saw a few parallels between you and me, in that-

Tim Armoo 2:19 Mm

Ali Abdaal 2:19 ... we both started to build businesses when we were around, like, 13, 14 years old.

Tim Armoo 2:23 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 2:23 And we're also both into close-up magic. Um-

Tim Armoo 2:25 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:25 ... apparently. I, I r- I read on the internet. What was your, uh, what was your interest in magic? And then we can talk about the business stuff.

Tim Armoo 2:31 My interest in magic, that's interesting, 'cause I've actually only spoken about that, like, twice.

Ali Abdaal 2:36 Mm.

Tim Armoo 2:36 So you did some good research.

Ali Abdaal 2:36 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 2:37 Um, I think it was... So I think there were two things. First of all, I really craved being the center of attention. I think that came with being an only child. Um, so the idea that, you know, I'd have people, even if it's like, whatever, five people, uh, they'd come and they'd, like, see me do this trick, and they'd say, "Oh my God," right? Um, that for me was quite an important thing.

Ali Abdaal 3:03 Mm.

Tim Armoo 3:03 Um, so that's one. And I think the second one was also, like, figuring out, like, the hacks behind things. I've always been very interested in figuring out how things work and how, right, so you see the output here, but what were the different inputs that went in? And, you know, my, my, um, my career as a magician was not particularly long. Uh, uh, it was basically for a few shows, and by shows I mean a few shows to friends and family, max 15, 30 people. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 3:38 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 3:39 But I think that I really loved just that feeling, and I think to some degree I kind of peddled that, I guess, into, like, at school, being good at public speaking. It was-- I think it came back to this idea of, like, wanting attention.

Ali Abdaal 3:53 Mm.

Tim Armoo 3:54 Um, um, uh, and yeah, that's it.

Ali Abdaal 3:57 How old were you when you were doing the shows?

Tim Armoo 4:00 My first ever one in that short-lived career, um, this was in Ghana, so this was when I was, like, nine.

Ali Abdaal 4:08 Mm.

Tim Armoo 4:09 Yeah. This was in Ghana, 'cause I remember my grandma in the front, in the front row-

Ali Abdaal 4:15 Yeah

Tim Armoo 4:15 ... in her garden. [laughs] Uh, so yeah, this was in Ghana.

Ali Abdaal 4:18 What sort of tricks were you doing? What, or how did, how did you put a show together at the age of nine?

Tim Armoo 4:21 Oh, just, like, just, like, dumb things like-

Ali Abdaal 4:24 Yeah

Tim Armoo 4:24 ... "Oh, here's a glass." Da da da da. "Oh, there's no..." Like, it, it was just like-

Ali Abdaal 4:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 4:29 ... like, really, really, like, trivial things. Um, but it was all that I wanted people to go, "Oh," you know? "Wow," like-

Ali Abdaal 4:38 Mm-hmm

Tim Armoo 4:38 ... "That's really cool."

Ali Abdaal 4:39 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 4:40 And I'm pretty sure, like, they all saw this, this was not magic. Uh, but, like, to them, or at least to me, them going "wow" was-

Ali Abdaal 4:47 Yeah

Tim Armoo 4:47 ... was, was kind of quite significant.

Ali Abdaal 4:49 I mean, so I got into magic around age 17, [laughs] so I-

Tim Armoo 4:52 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 4:52 ... I was sort of peak attention seeker back then as well. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 4:54 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:54 I was just like, "How do I be cool at school?" [laughs]

Tim Armoo 4:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:57 It was like, c- I'm not on any of the sports teams. Uh, getting good grades is not cool, so let me try to do this close-up magic thing-

Tim Armoo 5:03 Mm. Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 5:03 ... and try, try and be a little bit more attention-seeking that way.

Tim Armoo 5:05 Yeah. I mean, like, if you really think about it, right, like, most of the things we do, whether it's business, whether it's public speaking, whether it's sports, whether it's even, like, being good at academia, like, fundamentally it comes down to, like, we wanna feel important, right?

Ali Abdaal 5:20 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 5:20 And so magic in some way made us feel important. Business in some way. Like, everything, right?

Ali Abdaal 5:27 When did you move to the UK?

Tim Armoo 5:28 Uh, when I was 10.

Ali Abdaal 5:29 Mm.

Tim Armoo 5:29 So I came here in year six. Um, fun story about that. So I, so I was born here. I was born in Hackney, but then I went to live in Ghana for 10 years, and when I came back here, um, in year six, so one of the really interesting things is, like, um, in Ghana, when you're asked a question in school, you have to, like, raise your hand and stand up, right? And, like, in, in here you don't have to do that. So my first, I think, like, my first week in school, they asked a question about, like, ratios and probabilities, and I knew the answer. They asked me, and I, like, raised my hand and I stood up.

Ali Abdaal 6:12 Oh.

Tim Armoo 6:13 And everyone was just like-

Ali Abdaal 6:14 Uh-huh

Tim Armoo 6:14 ... this flipping nerd, right? So I had to spend about six weeks kind of just doing that, and then I remember the day that they asked a question and I didn't stand up, and everyone was like, "Oh my God-

Ali Abdaal 6:24 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 6:24 ... this guy's a gangster now." Uh, uh, but yeah, that was one of my kind of, uh, yeah, weird memories.

Ali Abdaal 6:32 One of my... So I moved, uh, here in year four.

Tim Armoo 6:35 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 6:35 And I was in, uh, Lesotho for six years. Um, and so I, I had this distinct memory. It was, it was, it was bizarre, like walking to primary school on the first day, we were the only, like brown people in the school.

Tim Armoo 6:47 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 6:47 It was like full of white people. And I remember thinking just like, "Whoa, these people are all like my skin color."

Tim Armoo 6:53 That's funny.

Ali Abdaal 6:53 Because in Lesotho it's like I was the whitest person there, and then in, in the UK I was like, I didn't-

Tim Armoo 6:57 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 6:57 ... I, I didn't, I didn't clock. I was like j- just completely baffled by-

Tim Armoo 7:00 That's funny

Ali Abdaal 7:01 ... what was going on there.

Tim Armoo 7:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:02 Um, I, I, I also made a few faux pas, like, um, I w- so I was in school in, in Lesotho for a few years and then in Pakistan for a year.

Tim Armoo 7:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:10 And in both places, if someone was fat, you would call them fat, and it was just like-

Tim Armoo 7:14 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 7:14 ... totally normal.

Tim Armoo 7:14 Just straight. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:15 And then in my, in my year in, in, in, in, in year four, there was this guy and I called him fat, and he-

Tim Armoo 7:20 Basically like, yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 7:21 ... it was, you know, it was-

Tim Armoo 7:21 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:22 And the teacher called me and he was like-

Tim Armoo 7:23 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 7:23 ... "This is really not nice." And I w- I felt so bad. I was just like, "But it's just, it's so normal." And I just... It was only later that I realized just how normalized some of the experiences we have as children are.

Tim Armoo 7:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Don't you also find it funny how, I guess, in the, the, the developing world, how being blunt and being open is just so respected or so it's like, "Well, yeah, you're fat, you're fat."

Ali Abdaal 7:43 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 7:44 "Go to gym. Don't eat that much. Done." Right? Whereas here it's like, "You know, yeah, you know, maybe there's this reason." It's like, "All right, mate, but, you know."

Ali Abdaal 7:50 Yeah. Yeah, definitely I had to learn a lot of the empathy, compassiony type stuff over time.

Tim Armoo 7:54 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 7:54 But [laughs] ...

Tim Armoo 7:55 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 7:56 Um, okay, so you moved to the UK aged 10.

Tim Armoo 7:58 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 7:59 Um, moved back to Hackney or what happened?

Tim Armoo 8:01 No, I lived on the Oakland Road with my dad, so, uh, I just became a South London boy

Tim Armoo 8:08 pretty much my whole life.

Ali Abdaal 8:09 So where did the interest in business come from?

Tim Armoo 8:12 Uh, the interest in business came from at 14 when I started my tutoring company.

Ali Abdaal 8:19 Mm.

Tim Armoo 8:19 And I actually did it not because... So I did, I mean, this is a story that I've mentioned a few times, but basically, like I was walking back home with my friend, we saw this black Mercedes-Benz and, you know, like just this crazy Benz, right? And basically he asked me, "How much do you think that is?" And I was like, "Oh, I think it's, I don't know, like £500," right? Just 14, no real concept of money, and I was like, "Cool." Um, and he, he made this bet to me. He said like, "You wouldn't make £500 before you turn 18." Because at that time we thought, you know, £500 is like, I don't know, 5 million, right? It's like, what the heck, right? 'Cause the context behind this is like, uh, like I lived in a like fourth floor Council Estate on Oakland Road. It was like money wasn't a thing to me, right? [laughs] I just like, "Oh, cool, you know, maybe one day, you know, I will be able to afford X," right? And so he made that bet with me. I then went online and I was trying to find ways to make money, and I've said it before, but like, so I'm 27 now. Uh, 13 years ago, 13 years ago, if you search like how to make money online, it's just like fraudsters, right?

Ali Abdaal 9:33 Mm.

Tim Armoo 9:33 Just like-

Ali Abdaal 9:33 Affiliate marketing.

Tim Armoo 9:34 Affiliate marketing, dropshipping.

Ali Abdaal 9:36 Yeah, paid surveys. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 9:37 There you go.

Ali Abdaal 9:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 9:37 There you go. I mean, even like, even, you know, dropshipping is fine, but it's like those weird things like, you know, "Pay me 497 and I will teach you the secrets of wealth." And it's like, "Well, I don't have 497, that's why I'm coming to you."

Ali Abdaal 9:49 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 9:49 Um, uh, so I started, but what I did see was a, was a quote which said like, "Work with what you know." And basically on that day, like... And I think if it hadn't happened on that day, I would not have started, um, the company. But basically on that day, I had done pretty well in a math test and I was like, "Ooh, that's interesting," like work with what you know. I'm pretty good at maths. So then what I then said was, "Right, I'm gonna tutor people maths." Um, because the way that I like thought about math wasn't the way we were taught. I'd figured out, you know, like just, just different like mental models, um, to use. And so I started and the next day I just said, "Right, you know, in the last test I scored 100% in that. Um, I'm gonna show you guys how I did that."

Ali Abdaal 10:38 Okay.

Tim Armoo 10:38 And so that was really the way that I started getting my first, um, taste of business. And then the crucial point, and you're probably gonna notice a theme from not only this business, but Entrepreneur Express and then Fanbytes, is I, I basically like built a bunch of businesses off like connecting people. So the way that it worked was, you know, it was going well with maths and then people would come to me for like physics and chemistry and all that stuff, and I'd be like, "Well, I don't... I'm not the best at that." So what I'd do is I'd go to the teachers-

Ali Abdaal 11:09 Yeah

Tim Armoo 11:09 ... and I'd ask them, "Hey, um, in the last exam, who did the best at that exam?" Then they'll tell me.

Ali Abdaal 11:16 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 11:16 And then I would then go to that person and say, "Hey, do you wanna make some money," right? 'Cause the whole model was you as a tutor, I would basically match you with someone who needed some tutoring. It would be like 15 or £18 an hour. I'll take five, you keep the rest. And if you're like a 14, 15, 16-year-old-

Ali Abdaal 11:34 Yeah

Tim Armoo 11:34 ... that's pretty good.

Ali Abdaal 11:35 That's sick.

Tim Armoo 11:36 And so that was pretty much like-

Ali Abdaal 11:37 Yeah

Tim Armoo 11:37 ... my first thing, and I was like, "Oh, like this is a business. Like people are paying me for value, like this is an actual thing." Um-

Ali Abdaal 11:45 How did you, how did you find your first customer? W- was it people in your year?

Tim Armoo 11:48 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 11:48 Weren't they like kind of r- ripping the shit out of you for having the audacity to charge them for maths tutoring? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 11:54 So I had, so I had basically built a brand in secondary school as like being the smart one.

Ali Abdaal 12:00 Oh, okay.

Tim Armoo 12:00 And so as a consequence of that, like it's almost like if the smart person comes to you and tells you like, "You can be as smart as me, just pay me X," you know, it's kind of like, "Well, yeah, okay, cool."

Ali Abdaal 12:13 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 12:13 Um, and so it was relatively easy to get people at that early stage because- Like, people just saw me as the smart person.

Ali Abdaal 12:21 Okay

Tim Armoo 12:22 Um, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:22 And where were these kids getting money from-

Tim Armoo 12:24 From parents

Ali Abdaal 12:24 ... for tutoring?

Tim Armoo 12:24 Parents.

Ali Abdaal 12:25 Oh, okay.

Tim Armoo 12:25 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:25 So they would g- they would go to their parents-

Tim Armoo 12:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 12:26 ... and be like, "I wanna pay Timmer-

Tim Armoo 12:28 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 12:28 ... 18 quid an hour."

Tim Armoo 12:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:29 Be like, "All right."

Tim Armoo 12:30 The key was, uh, the Asian parents.

Ali Abdaal 12:33 Oh. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 12:33 Oh, mate, they were money machine. Uh-

Ali Abdaal 12:36 Absolutely. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 12:37 Um, like, the, the, the Chinese kids in my school just, oh, God bless them.

Ali Abdaal 12:42 Nice. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 12:43 [laughs] But yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:45 Yeah, I think I built my first business off the back of Asian parents as well, so-

Tim Armoo 12:47 Mate, I'm, I'm telling you-

Ali Abdaal 12:48 ... anyways

Tim Armoo 12:48 ... they are the key.

Ali Abdaal 12:49 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 12:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:49 [laughs] Okay. Uh, how, how did it feel coming into 18 pounds an hour when you're that age, and 500 pounds feels like the amount that would get you a-

Tim Armoo 12:57 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 12:57 ... Mercedes Benz?

Tim Armoo 12:58 So I don't think it was quite the 18 pound an hour. I think it was when I had got the other tutors in. So I grew it to, like, 65 tutors in, like-

Ali Abdaal 13:07 [laughs] Okay

Tim Armoo 13:07 ... six weeks. Like-

Ali Abdaal 13:09 Okay

Tim Armoo 13:09 ... rapid.

Ali Abdaal 13:09 All from, all from your school?

Tim Armoo 13:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 13:11 Bloody hell.

Tim Armoo 13:11 Rapid.

Ali Abdaal 13:12 Okay.

Tim Armoo 13:12 And I think it was when I started to get those, like, five pound commission checks whilst they kept the rest, that was when I think that my mind just went, "Oh."

Ali Abdaal 13:24 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 13:24 Because, like, you know, at 18 pound an hour, it's like, "I'm helping you. You're paying me." Even when I was getting, like, five pounds, it was more like, "Oh, like, I've created something which is working, and, like, people are paying me without me, like, having to do the direct effort," right?

Ali Abdaal 13:42 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 13:42 And that was when I think it kind of, um, tipped. And, you know, soon enough I realized that a Benz doesn't cost [laughs] 500 pound an hour. Uh, sorry, um, 500 pounds. Um, but I think that pivotal point of, like, I created this thing, it kind of worked, and now, like, stuff is happening without me getting directly involved. That was the bit where I was like, "Oh, like-

Ali Abdaal 14:05 Yeah

Tim Armoo 14:05 ... this is a thing."

Ali Abdaal 14:06 Just a quick announcement from one of our sponsors, and we'll get right back to the episode, and this episode is brought to you by Heights. Heights is a brain care smart supplement that I've been taking every morning for the last 12 months. I love it so much that I actually became friends with the founder, Dan, who we actually had on Season 1 of the Deep Dive podcast. We also have an interview this season with neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Tara Swart, who's the chief science officer of Heights. And I like the product so much that I actually became an angel investor in the company. It's great. Everything they do is completely evidence-based. So on their website they've got a list of all 20-something micronutrients that they've got in these two capsules, along with links to all of the various scientific papers and consensuses on why these sorts of nutrients are good for you and why they've got them at the appropriate dosing, which they have in the capsules, in the capsules. It's super easy to sign up. You just go on the website, which is linked in the show notes and in the video description, and you put in your address, and they send you one of these little boxes of pills every month or every quarter. Now, I sign up to the quarterly subscription, so I get three of these every three months. And the quarterly subscription is great because, A, it's discounted from the monthly subscription, and B, if you use the coupon code ALI15, A-L-I 15, at checkout, then you'll get an extra 15% off the already discounted price of the quarterly subscription. Now obviously it's ideal if you can actually get all these micronutrients from your diet. That would be the gold standard. But as studies show, 99% of us in the Western world don't in fact have the absolutely perfect gold standard Mediterranean diet. I certainly don't. I eat a lot of takeaways. And so these two capsules, just two capsules every morning, has my bases covered, and it's a lot easier to take just two little capsules with water than it is to try and drown green sludge or whatever else other, other companies have on the market that kinda does the same thing. So anyway, thank you so much, Heights, for sponsoring this episode, and let's get right back to the podcast. Th- there's one powerful moment of, like, when you first earn money off your own back.

Tim Armoo 15:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:53 Um, but then the other one is where you do something and it's just like, "Oh, shit, I just earned money while I was sleeping."

Tim Armoo 15:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:58 Or, or something like that.

Tim Armoo 15:59 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:59 Yeah, I r- I remember, uh, so w- when I was younger, I used to do sort of fr- freelance web design.

Tim Armoo 16:04 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 16:04 And that's how I would get kind of £5 here and there.

Tim Armoo 16:06 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 16:06 Like, "Oh my God, I'm making money off my own back." But then when I ... I think when I was, like, 15 I built this affiliate marketing thing.

Tim Armoo 16:12 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 16:13 And one of my, one, one of my friends, Godwin, uh, he got f- his four sisters to sign up to LoveFilm, which was like-

Tim Armoo 16:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 16:19 ... old school Netflix back in the day, for a credit card and cancel it.

Tim Armoo 16:21 That's funny. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:22 And it was £12.50 each.

Tim Armoo 16:23 That's funny.

Ali Abdaal 16:24 And while I, while I was on a school trip my mom rang me up and she was like-

Tim Armoo 16:26 It's checks

Ali Abdaal 16:26 ... "Why do you have this check for £50?"

Tim Armoo 16:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:28 And it was one of those checks that had, like, you know, like, electronically printed, so, like, how many millions, how many hundreds of thousands. It was like, how many tens? Five.

Tim Armoo 16:34 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 16:34 I was just like, "Fuck, I just made 50 quid."

Tim Armoo 16:36 That's cool.

Ali Abdaal 16:37 And I just built a website, and my mate-

Tim Armoo 16:38 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 16:38 ... signed up for these fake [laughs] fake accounts. So that was the moment for me that was like-

Tim Armoo 16:41 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 16:41 ... "Shit, you can build something on the internet, and it will pay you while you're on a school trip."

Tim Armoo 16:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:46 Um-

Tim Armoo 16:46 Yeah, I think that moment is just ... You know, there's a LinkedIn post I made which, um, did well, which I said, um, "Your first £100 is more significant than your first million."

Ali Abdaal 17:02 Mm.

Tim Armoo 17:02 And people were like, "Wait, what?" And I was like, the type of person that you have to become in order to, like, make your first, you know, bit of cash, like, through business-

Ali Abdaal 17:12 Mm

Tim Armoo 17:12 ... through blah blah, you know, from then on it really is a case of, like, scaling and repeating and, like, putting systems in place. But I had a huge amount of growth from, let's say, the first, say, £1,000-

Ali Abdaal 17:28 Yeah

Tim Armoo 17:28 ... that I made to, like, the first million that I made. It w- it was like, it, it was like I had become the type of person who creates value, and I realized how to create value, so then it was a case of me, like, figuring out what system am I gonna use, what skill am I actually gonna be able, um, to use to, like, scale my value. Um, so that's why I often say that. And people go, "Well, it's so easy for you to say."

Ali Abdaal 17:53 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 17:53 But, like, it is actually a true statement. Like, you have to become a different person in order to, like, be able to give value to the world and get paid for it, you know?

Ali Abdaal 18:02 Yeah, I think it's, it's exactly the same thing in, in YouTube. Like, the first thousand subscribers, it, like, makes you a completely different person.

Tim Armoo 18:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 18:08 But to go from a thousand to a million-

Tim Armoo 18:09 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:09 ... it's just, like, more of the same-

Tim Armoo 18:10 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:10 ... really. Like, it becomes-

Tim Armoo 18:11 Just, like, do more of what works.

Ali Abdaal 18:12 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 18:13 Yeah, I'm with you.

Ali Abdaal 18:13 Um,

Ali Abdaal 18:14 the other thought I had on this is, um, there's a really good blog post I read that talks about the idea of shifting the goalposts-

Tim Armoo 18:20 Mm

Ali Abdaal 18:20 ... and how some people are like, "Oh, y- you know, you shouldn't shift the goalposts. Like, one, what- Back in the day, earning 100K a year would've been like freaking-

Tim Armoo 18:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:29 ... mind-blowing. And then you get to that point, you're like, "Uh, you know-

Tim Armoo 18:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:32 ... maybe, like, 10 million would be kinda nice."

Tim Armoo 18:33 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 18:33 Um, but, but, but the point of the blog post was that this is not actually a sign of, like, greed and capitalism.

Tim Armoo 18:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 18:39 This is just a sign that as you become the sort of person who gets closer-

Tim Armoo 18:42 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:42 ... and closer to making 100K a year, your identity changes.

Tim Armoo 18:45 Yeah, 100%.

Ali Abdaal 18:45 And now you realize that, oh, I actually have the skills to be able to make 100K.

Tim Armoo 18:48 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 18:49 Cool. Let's go for 10 million. Like, it's, it's-

Tim Armoo 18:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:51 ... it's just in a way more of a challenge, more fun.

Tim Armoo 18:53 100% yeah.

Ali Abdaal 18:53 It's not like it ... Part of it is like, "Oh yeah, you know, that thing is fancier. I'm hanging out with the sorts of people that have money now."

Tim Armoo 18:58 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.

Ali Abdaal 18:59 But also, yeah, fundamentally the floor for how much you can earn just completely changes.

Tim Armoo 19:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. My, um, my co-founder, on his, um, on his phone he has something quite cool and, and it says, like, how much is enough? Uh, and the reason why he asked himself that question was because he started to almost ... I think he started to forget the value of just, like, like, what he's done in life.

Ali Abdaal 19:27 Mm.

Tim Armoo 19:27 Right? And at some point he was like, "Okay, I'm just perpetually going on this treadmill." Um, but it was also, like, a self-enforced treadmill. Like, no one created the treadmill. He just created it and said, "Well, you know, I've done this at 27, 28," 'cause he's 28. "Well, that should therefore mean that at 35 I do blah," right?

Ali Abdaal 19:49 Ooh, okay.

Tim Armoo 19:49 It's like, what are you doing, man?

Ali Abdaal 19:51 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 19:51 So he just kind of did this as a, as a, um, reminder to himself, like, how much is enough?

Ali Abdaal 19:57 I asked our mutual friend Dan Priestley this question-

Tim Armoo 19:59 Oh, my Dan

Ali Abdaal 20:00 ... two days ago.

Tim Armoo 20:00 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 20:00 I asked, I asked, "Dan, how, how do you know ... I, I think, I think I phrased it like, 'When is enough, enough?'"

Tim Armoo 20:05 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 20:06 And what he said, he s- what he said was really good. He was like, "When your aim is to make money for yourself-

Tim Armoo 20:11 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 20:11 ... that's when you ask that question. When your aim is to provide impact and service to the world, you don't ask that question."

Tim Armoo 20:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 20:17 And I was like, "Shit, you're right."

Tim Armoo 20:18 Very true.

Ali Abdaal 20:19 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 20:19 Very true. 100% very true.

Ali Abdaal 20:21 What's ... How's, uh ... You know, I was gonna g- I was gonna come onto this afterwards when we talk about the exit, but, like, how, how has your relationship with enough changed over time?

Tim Armoo 20:29 [laughs] Um, one of the things I did when I knew the exit was gonna happen was, um, I actually asked other friends who had been through an exit, and I asked them, like, how they felt afterwards. And it was funny, there were, like, two camps. One of them was like, "Man, this was a great stepping stone to go and do other stuff." And then some were like, "I've hit my number." And there's a phrase a lot of them used, was that, like, they've exited the matrix. And I found that such a profound phrase to just say, like, right, like, they came into the game, they played the game, and now everything that they do is just, like, um, optional upside. And I think that's kind of the camp that I'm in. I think, you know, at 27 I've been able to with, you know, skill, hard work, but also a ton of luck, um, I have been able to achieve an exit. I've been able to achieve an outcome where I was like, "Wow, um, I can now ... Everything I do from now is, like, optional upside," rather than feeling like I have to do anything.

Ali Abdaal 21:42 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 21:42 Whereas beforehand, I think I always, I always operated from a position of, like, I had to do this. And now I'm just like, I choose to do this now, um, which is very, very different.

Ali Abdaal 21:54 Do you think for someone, someone listening to this who hasn't had a, a life-changing exit, do you think you need to have that before you can shift that mindset? Or is it a thing that you could have theoretically come to without having-

Tim Armoo 22:05 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 22:05 ... X, whatever that number is in the bank?

Tim Armoo 22:07 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 22:07 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 22:07 So I think, um, so I think that you can at any point, like ... So I think that you can at any point decide to do it from a position of, I guess, like, choice and optionality. But I do think that you do need, like, some kind of forcing function. As in I think everyone comes to that point at some point in their lives. It's just that, like, some things that happen-

Ali Abdaal 22:35 Yeah

Tim Armoo 22:35 ... accelerate that.

Ali Abdaal 22:36 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 22:36 Right? Um, like, at 27 selling the company for, like, tens of millions, it's like, okay, I could probably have gotten to that, um, end goal if I was ... you know, by the time I was 50.

Ali Abdaal 22:50 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 22:50 But I've just been able to do it, like, way earlier, right? Um, so I think people can get to that end goal. It's just more a case of, um, like, is there a forcing function that get you there faster?

Ali Abdaal 23:03 Just a quick message from one of our sponsors, and we'll get right back to the episode. And this episode is very kindly brought to you by Shortform. Shortform is the world's best service that summarizes books. But it's way more than just book summaries. They almost have a whole study guide for every book that they've got on the platform, where they've got a one-page summary, and then they also have chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. And it's not just chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. Also in between the chapter breakdowns they have interactive exercises where you can engage more readily with the ideas in the book. Shortform covers nonfiction books from a bunch of different genres that you might be interested in. For example, they've got a load of stuff in the business world. So if, for example, you're an entrepreneur or you want to become an entrepreneur, that'll be great for you. They've got books in motivation. They've got books in education. They've got books in lifestyle and communication. Basically any genre of, like, nonfiction, personal development-y, self-help-y stuff that will help you level up your life, it's all there on Shortform. Shortform publishes new book guides and articles every week. And if you're a subscriber, then you get to vote on what book they cover next. And in fact, through that system I have voted for various books that they've then turned into summaries. For example, one of the books I recently revisited on Shortform is Traction by Gino Wickman. Now, Traction is all about the entrepreneurial operating system, and I have listened to the audiobook of Traction, like, twice. I've read the physical book of Traction, like, twice. But it's just so dense and so filled with practical, actionable insights that actually revisiting the book using Shortform was super helpful in helping me realize, oh, hang on, that's how you should run a level 10 meeting, or, oh, hang on, that's what we need to do with our accountability chart. Anyway, if any of that sounds up your street and you would like to sign up to the world's best service that summarizes books, then head over to shortform.com/deepdive, and that will give you a completely free five-day trial, and you can try out the service to your heart's content. That link will also be in the video description and in the show notes. And thank you so much, Shortform, for sponsoring this episode. I know a few people for whom that forcing function was ... a major health scare-

Tim Armoo 24:52 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 24:52 ... or like a near-death experience-

Tim Armoo 24:54 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 24:54 ... where you're like, "Oh, my God-"

Tim Armoo 24:55 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 24:55 ... "I'm so grateful to be alive."

Tim Armoo 24:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 24:57 Everything is, is optional upside down.

Tim Armoo 24:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 24:59 And that to me is just like, okay, cool. That it w- like that, that's an alternative way to get off that. Yeah, the, I was, I was, I was talking to, um, d- Dan Priestley about this as well. Um, there's a book called The Second Mountain.

Tim Armoo 25:12 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:12 Have you come across this?

Tim Armoo 25:13 I've heard that, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:14 Um, it's by this, yeah, this guy, um, David Brooks, I think. Uh, where, where the first mountain is that mountain of success and happiness and-

Tim Armoo 25:19 Mm

Ali Abdaal 25:20 ... freedom and status and stuff.

Tim Armoo 25:22 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 25:22 And then either you get to the top-

Tim Armoo 25:24 Mm

Ali Abdaal 25:24 ... and you realize, huh, okay. Or you get knocked off the mountain by a health scare or by a near-death experience or something like that, and you realize there's another mountain, and that's the mountain of like joy and service and purpose and mission and devoting yourself to a cause you care about. And-

Tim Armoo 25:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 25:38 ... the more like I choose to do this rather than I have to do this.

Tim Armoo 25:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:41 Um-

Tim Armoo 25:41 Yeah. There you go.

Ali Abdaal 25:43 All right.

Tim Armoo 25:43 Forcing functions.

Ali Abdaal 25:43 Forcing functions, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:45 Um, okay, so what happened with Alpha, Alpha Tutoring? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 25:48 Oh, uh, that, that flopped. Um, so-

Ali Abdaal 25:51 Yeah. It flopped. You had 65 tutors.

Tim Armoo 25:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:53 Okay, like what was going on? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 25:53 The reason that, that it flopped is actually a lesson in disguise. So with tutoring, when you're effectively the matchmaker, especially in tutoring, is that like if you match a tutor to a tutee, what happens is they f- they create a really good relationship, a really good connection, which therefore means that there's no impetus for them to come back to you.

Ali Abdaal 26:18 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 26:18 So what happened was, you know, all those like commissions I was getting, they were just like dwindling.

Ali Abdaal 26:24 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 26:24 And I was like, "What the heck is going on?" And it's fundamentally because the parents are like, "Well, I like Tom. Tom's a good tutor, therefore I'm just gonna keep Tom." Right? And Tom also has no incentive to let Tim know, [laughs] right? That he's, that, um, that, you know, Tim, here's a £5.

Ali Abdaal 26:41 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 26:41 So, um, so, uh, so that business basically kind of like didn't go anywhere, but it taught me two things. First of all was that I could just create value, all right? I could just almost from nothing create something and people would pay me for it. But it also taught me about, um, wanting to like own the entire infrastructure.

Ali Abdaal 27:04 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 27:04 And like that got me into the whole like, you know, programming stuff and everything else.

Ali Abdaal 27:07 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 27:08 Um, and then, yeah, that's, that's, that, that was it. And I think the first point about like having that point of realization that you can just create value was just like, oh, and-

Ali Abdaal 27:21 Mm

Tim Armoo 27:21 ... and was like, "That's what I wanna do for the rest of my life," basically.

Ali Abdaal 27:25 What happened with business number two?

Tim Armoo 27:27 Business number two was my first ever exit. Um, it was a company called Entrepreneur Express. I was really interested in, you know, business and all that stuff. Uh, so I created a... And actually at that time, I was also the editor-in-chief of my school magazine.

Ali Abdaal 27:44 Mm.

Tim Armoo 27:45 And so, um, I basically started like a publication which was all around like business, entrepreneurship, 'cause my whole thing was I really enjoy business, I really enjoy reading about business, understanding it, et cetera. Maybe there's other people who care about it and I can turn into some kind of business. And so the, it was both an online and offline magazine. Um-

Ali Abdaal 28:08 Mm

Tim Armoo 28:09 ... and the reason I wanted to be offline was because at that point, as I mentioned, I was like the editor-in-chief of my school magazine, so there was something cool about having like a physical print, right? Uh, so I actually called up a bunch of like the university, so like Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, LSE. I called up their like, um, like entrepreneur societies.

Ali Abdaal 28:32 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 28:32 And I was like, "Hey, you know, next year do you wanna take this publication?" Et cetera. They're like, "Yeah." 'Cause of course it was free for them, so duh. Um, they just do it. Um, and then what ended up happening was probably around August, so the term started like September. Around August, I was like, "Oh, crap, I need advertising."

Ali Abdaal 28:56 Okay.

Tim Armoo 28:56 Right? Because I hadn't like thought through the economics of how I will sustain the actual business.

Ali Abdaal 29:02 Okay.

Tim Armoo 29:02 It was just like, "Here's a cool magazine. We've got these interviews with like great entrepreneurs." I managed to get an interview with like Richard Branson, James Caan, Alan Sugar.

Ali Abdaal 29:12 Osh.

Tim Armoo 29:13 Um-

Ali Abdaal 29:13 How? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 29:13 Actually, here's a fun story. This is a great story, actually. I don't think I've actually mentioned this story before.

Ali Abdaal 29:18 Oh, inside scoop.

Tim Armoo 29:19 Yeah. So th- this actually, yeah, how have I not mentioned this story before? Anyway, so, um, so I'd done all these interviews, blah, blah, blah, and I wanted to get like a big hitter, right? And there was this, um, event called like, like Business Live something. It was like Business Live something something, and it was in the Excel Arena. So this was about 10 years ago. And they got like James Caan, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson to come and do like keynote speaks, right? I was like, "I really wanna be part of it. I really wanna be in like the press room and just like speak to them," 'cause I know if I can have like an interview with these guys, that would just be crazy. Um, but obviously I didn't know like how I'd get their press passes, et cetera. So what I did was I emailed, um, the, like the owner of the event, Vishal, great guy, and I said, "Hey, so I'm this 17-year-old. I don't, you know, I don't have the contacts, I don't have the kind of credibility to be backstage. But how about if I come the day before and I basically lay out all the chairs? I lay out all the chairs, I lay out all the tables, I lay out all that stuff, and all you do is you give me a backstage pass. That's it," right? 'Cause to him, it's actually a perfect win. It's like he doesn't have to pay someone else, um, and he doesn't have to spend that much time on it. It's like, okay, this random kid is just gonna do it. And he was like, "Yeah, okay, cool." So the day before Business Live- I, I remember that I showed up like 1:00 PM or something and I just lay out like all the chairs, just, just taking them, putting them there, putting... I checked them in order. Okay, they're in order. I did all of that. I did all of that. Um, and Vishal true to his word, um, the next day I found myself backstage with, um, with, uh, Branson. In fact, on the front cover of our first ever Entrepreneur Express thing is a picture of Branson, um, speaking. Um, so I was backstage there and then there was like a backroom of the backstage and again, Vishal was like, "Yeah, you can come in." So we were then able to have like 15 minutes each with, um, uh, Branson, Sugar, Khan, et cetera. Um, Khan was quite short, it was like five minutes, but, um, the others. So I was just like, "Cool, cool, cool. Got that." And then I turned it into an interview. Um, and there's something very cool now that I think about it. I've often thought that like, and I know that your audience has, uh, quite a lot of, um, young people and aspiring people, I think a lot of people kind of underestimate the power of both naivety and youth, right? Like I don't think anyone, you know, people would've seen that, all right, he can't get a backstage pass, so just go, "Oh, well I guess I can't." Right? But like my hack was I'm actually going to figure out what I can bring to the table, which is just like energy and time and I'm just going to, you know, bring that to the table. And Vishal saw that and was like, "Yeah, cool." And I think for a lot of young people, they almost do not realize how many superpowers they have in terms of just like energy, time, and naivety. And that really helped me when doing Entrepreneur Express, um, because I just didn't know what I shouldn't do and so therefore I just did stuff that seemed logical to me. Um, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:52 Nice. That's sick. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 32:54 There you go.

Ali Abdaal 32:54 That, that, that's such a great story. I, I can't believe it's the first time you've told that. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 32:58 Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:59 Two thoughts on that. First is, you know, as, as, as I'm sure you do, like I get tons and tons of emails from generally young people-

Tim Armoo 33:08 Mm

Ali Abdaal 33:08 ... asking for stuff.

Tim Armoo 33:09 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 33:09 And like 0% of them offer something in return.

Tim Armoo 33:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:13 They never say like, "What I can do for you." They're always just like, "Hey, will you give me an iPhone? Will you give..." Like, "Oh, I need an iPad for school." It's like-

Tim Armoo 33:18 Would you give me an iPhone? People just ask you for iPhones.

Ali Abdaal 33:20 Oh, yeah. Apparently anyone who does tech videos on YouTube-

Tim Armoo 33:22 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 33:22 ... just gets inundated with emails being like, "Oh, you know, I'm, I'm really struggling. I need an iPhone."

Tim Armoo 33:26 That's hilarious. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:27 And it's like literally no one emails saying that, "Hey, here's what I can offer you in return." And it's almost so easy to say yes to something if it's actually, yeah, you know, time to sort of lay out these chairs.

Tim Armoo 33:36 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:37 Of course I'm gonna say yes to that.

Tim Armoo 33:38 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:38 Like why wouldn't I say?

Tim Armoo 33:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:39 So what do you think it was about you that t- that instead of saying, "Oh, I can't get a backstage pass, whatevs, it's not for me-"

Tim Armoo 33:45 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 33:45 ... you took that extra step of being like, "You know what? Why don't I just email the owner of this event-"

Tim Armoo 33:50 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 33:50 ... "and offer to fricking stack some chairs?" [laughs]

Tim Armoo 33:52 So this is actually something I've been thinking about recently about something that shaped my youth and I think it's, I always behaved like I was special. Like I always, always, always behaved like I just had something like special and different about me. And so when I saw that conference, Business Life, it was almost like there was not a conceivable world in which I was not able to interview those guys. It was like I could almost see myself in the room already interviewing them, so it was just a case of I just had to make it happen.

Ali Abdaal 34:35 Mm.

Tim Armoo 34:35 And I think if it wasn't the chairs, maybe I would've, you know, like dressed up as a security person and like got in, like I would've figured out a way in. Um, and I think I had always, I think that general mentality of like, well, it's gonna happen, we just have to figure out how it happens, um, is one of those things that has served me quite well. But I also then started to assume that like everybody needs something, right? And so you just have to be the person to give it to them, right? If you are like, you know, Vishal and you're doing this big conference, like you probably don't, you know, yeah, you need money, that's why you're charging people for it. I can't give you that, but the other thing that you need is time, right? And so I can give you time and to some degree I can save you money by just doing the chairs. So one of the things that I've always kind of used, one of the frameworks that I've always just used, um, generally is like how do I give this other person what they want, right? And I need to uncover what they want, um, because, you know, because by giving them what they want, they could also, when time comes, like they could give me what I want. And it's not in some kind of transactional way, it's more like everyone needs something, right? Um, especially just like over time, you know, whether it is my investors, whether it's like people that I've worked with and all that stuff, like I've come to realize that, you know, everyone has some sort of problem that it kind of one fix. It could be a very small one. Like one of my very close friends who's just like uber successful, I, you know, the guy who we're talking about before, um, we, we, we, um, started this pod. When I was talking to him, I was like, "Oh, um, my best friend's knee is hurting." And I was like, "Oh, okay. I actually know a very good osteopath." So then like I couldn't help him with more money and stuff. Like the guy's worth like 2 billion, right? It's like w- what can I help him? But I can help him by helping his friend and then in that way, like further down the line if I need some help with something, he'd help me, right? So I think those two beliefs like really helped me.

Ali Abdaal 36:48 Have you come ac- across a book called, uh, the, the The Go-Giver?

Tim Armoo 36:52 No.

Ali Abdaal 36:53 So this is a book I started reading yesterday. Um, it was another podcast guest who recommended it.

Tim Armoo 36:57 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 36:57 And actually one of our team members, uh, bought the book ages ago for me because he was like, "I think this is how you do business." Um-

Tim Armoo 37:02 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 37:03 ... and it's like a little tiny, tiny little book, which is a parable-

Tim Armoo 37:06 Okay

Ali Abdaal 37:06 ... about this guy who's like really struggling in business and then he meets this mentor. And the mentor basically gives him the five-

Tim Armoo 37:11 Go-getter

Ali Abdaal 37:11 ... the five laws of success

Tim Armoo 37:12 Okay

Ali Abdaal 37:12 And this guy's described, "Oh, he's a g- he's a real go-getter. He's..." But then he's really struggling with his business.

Tim Armoo 37:16 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 37:16 He meets this mentor, this old guy, and the five laws of success, and all of it is based around giving

Tim Armoo 37:20 Just giving, yeah

Ali Abdaal 37:21 Just giving, yeah

Tim Armoo 37:22 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 37:22 And it's like the more you give, the more you can find ways to add value to others-

Tim Armoo 37:25 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 37:25 ... in a non-transactional way-

Tim Armoo 37:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 37:27 ... not keeping score, the more inevitably-

Tim Armoo 37:29 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 37:30 ... just everything goes your way

Tim Armoo 37:31 Just like good karma and stuff, right?

Ali Abdaal 37:33 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 37:33 Um, but yeah. So that's basically how I got to interview Richard Branson. [laughs] I just realized that we're talking about the second company and it's like-

Ali Abdaal 37:40 Mm

Tim Armoo 37:40 ... Richard Branson, giving.

Ali Abdaal 37:42 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 37:42 All right, cool. Back to it. [laughs] Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 37:44 Yeah, there's another, there's another thing this sparked in my mind. Um, ha- have you, have you come across a, a book called "The Third Door"?

Tim Armoo 37:51 No.

Ali Abdaal 37:51 I was just gonna say, like it's a... This is, I think, your... I, I'd, I'd be curious to get your take on it. Um, it's a book by, uh, Alex Banayan. In fact, I'm gonna grab it so I can read this out.

Tim Armoo 38:02 This is live, folks.

Speaker 38:03 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 38:05 You know it's not pre-recorded. Ah, "The Third Door."

Tim Armoo 38:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 38:09 Th- this is sick. Um, "The wild quest to uncover how the, how the world's most successful people launched their careers."

Tim Armoo 38:14 All right. Okay.

Ali Abdaal 38:15 Uh, incredible book. Um, basically it's this guy who was like 20, 21, and he was like, "I don't know what to do with my life." So he made it his life's mission to interview people like Richard Branson and stuff-

Tim Armoo 38:22 Oh, okay. I'm with you. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 38:22 ... and find, find out what they did at age 21 to get ahead.

Tim Armoo 38:25 I'm with you, yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 38:26 Um, and here is why it's called "The Third Door." "Life, business, it's just like a nightclub. There are always three ways in. There's the first door, the main entrance, where 99% of people wait in line hoping to get in. The second door is the VIP entrance through which the billionaires and celebrities sl- slip through. But what no one tells you is that there is always the third door. It's the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door 100 times, crack open the window, and sneak through the kitchen. There's always a way in. Whether it's Bill Gates selling his first piece of software or Steven S- Spielberg becoming the youngest studio director in Hollywood history, they all took the third door."

Tim Armoo 39:02 I like that.

Ali Abdaal 39:02 Yeah. I feel like this very much vibes with your approach too.

Tim Armoo 39:05 I like that. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 39:05 Like, you know.

Tim Armoo 39:05 Yeah, I like that. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 39:06 The way you got into interview Richard Branson is-

Tim Armoo 39:08 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 39:08 ... through the third door. You weren't standing in line.

Tim Armoo 39:10 Yeah, yeah. It's interesting.

Ali Abdaal 39:10 You weren't in a queue waiting for his autograph. You were just like, "How do I get in, in an somewhat unconventional way?" [laughs]

Tim Armoo 39:15 I like that. Okay. Well, there you go, the third door.

Ali Abdaal 39:17 The third door.

Tim Armoo 39:17 So I took the third door.

Ali Abdaal 39:18 You took the third door.

Tim Armoo 39:19 Um-

Ali Abdaal 39:19 Okay. So you interview, so you interview Branson, Khan-

Tim Armoo 39:22 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 39:22 ... Alan Sugar. What happens next?

Tim Armoo 39:23 Yeah. So did that, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, uh, so the, so I got all these interviews... Sorry, I got all these universities lined up to take the magazine and all that stuff. Um, and then I just realized I could not sell that much advertising, 'cause I had the money for the first publication, but for the subsequent stuff, I just knew that I would, uh, struggle to actually like turn it into a business. So then I turned my attention to the online version, and it was the online version that I just put all my time into. And, and this is why I say, you know, part of it was luck, but I think most of it was, like, you know, skill, was I figured out, you know, this was 10 years ago when I was-

Ali Abdaal 40:05 Mm.

Tim Armoo 40:05 Yeah. This was like the heyday of, uh, Facebook pages-

Ali Abdaal 40:09 Mm

Tim Armoo 40:09 ... and Facebook accounts and all that stuff. So I used these Facebook pages to drive traffic to the online site, and that was the way that I basically made all the money, was that I'd, I'd upload like banner ads. I'd tie into all of these like programmatic ad exchanges. Um, and then I'd just make money from the eyeballs. Um, and then within 11 months, I got an email, and the email was basically someone from an agency called Horizon Media, which is based in the US. And they were like, "Hey, we'd like to partner up with you." And, you know, again, I'm 17, someone's like, yeah, partner up. I'm like, "Yeah, okay. Yeah, all right. See." And they said, um, "Can we do a Skype?" Right? This was, this shows you, you know, 10 years ago, Skype. Uh, they were like, "Yeah, can we do a Skype?" And I, and then they said, "Before that, can you share some of your, like, stats, et cetera?" 'Cause I thought they were more just like an agency who wanted to sell ads on my site, right? You know, standard stuff. So I sent over my stats, et cetera, and then they said, "Hey, um, rather than partner up, we'd just like to buy you." And, and I tell this story a lot, and even, you know, now I tell it, I kind of get goosebumps 'cause I'm like, I remember that was like a Friday, 2:00 AM. I was wearing my Man United shorts, and, like, someone had just said, "Right, this thing you've been working on for 11 months, we would like to buy it." And I was in school then, right? [laughs] And 'cause I went to boarding school for, um, sixth form, and I was there, and it was like, "Oh my God." Like, A, what does this mean when you say buy? 'Cause you're American. Does that mean that I then have to go to you? I was like-

Ali Abdaal 41:55 Yeah

Tim Armoo 41:56 ... thinking about all that stuff. Um, and I was like, "Yeah, sure. Yeah. Sounds good." [laughs] Um, and then within a week, huh, no, within about two weeks, deal done. I had transferred, uh, the site to them, admin login, uh, Facebook pages, all that stuff transferred to them, and, like, that was the first time that I'd made, like, serious money. The fee was 70 grand, and then over a year, which ended up being like 15 months, over 15 months consistent payouts over traffic. So in all, the total sum was like 110 grand. And I was just like, "I've worked on this for 11 months-

Ali Abdaal 42:36 Yeah

Tim Armoo 42:36 ... and I'm 17." I was like, "How did that happen?" So that was the first one where I was like, "Oh, this shit is magic." Like, this business shit is magic. Um, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 42:47 So you're 17, you've just made like 100 grand-

Tim Armoo 42:49 Yeah. Crazy

Ali Abdaal 42:50 ... by selling a website and some Facebook pages-

Tim Armoo 42:52 [laughs] Yeah

Ali Abdaal 42:52 ... to some American company.

Tim Armoo 42:53 Yeah. It's so interesting, right? 'Cause, you know, they, they, so their whole plan with Horizon Media was to build a bunch of these, like, niche blogs, right?

Ali Abdaal 43:02 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 43:02 So they own blogs in food, sport, business, et cetera. Turns out that kind of flopped, and now they're just like an agency.

Ali Abdaal 43:08 Mm.

Tim Armoo 43:08 Right? But like, yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy. And I think at that point I was just like, again, it just reinforced this idea of just, like- ... inventing things from scratch. It's like, wow, like this happens. And I remember going to my dad and, like, telling him about it, and he was like, "Oh," sort of like, "that's what you've been doing online."

Ali Abdaal 43:29 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 43:30 Um, uh, yeah, it's crazy.

Ali Abdaal 43:34 How did, how did that feel when the money hit your account?

Tim Armoo 43:36 [laughs] I felt invincible. I felt... But I also felt like I discovered a cheat sheet. Like, this was no funding, nothing at all. I used my, like, skills and my brains to, like, figure out how things work. So I think I just felt like I had discovered a cheat sheet to life, and I then thought, like, I'm just gonna dedicate myself to figuring out, um, this cheat sheet even more and more and more. Um, as I mentioned, like, that, that 100K was more significant than the exit in, like, tens of millions. And I tell people that and they go like, "What?" I'm like, yeah, because it was like, I did that. You know? Like, I did that, and in such a short period of time I did that.

Ali Abdaal 44:29 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 44:29 So yeah, it was pretty profound.

Ali Abdaal 44:32 How did you

Ali Abdaal 44:34 have time to do all this stuff while also being in school?

Tim Armoo 44:37 [laughs] I did not really do school properly.

Ali Abdaal 44:41 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 44:41 So I went to, so I went to a secondary school, uh, but then in... Sorry, I went to a state secondary school, but then in, uh, sixth form, I went to a boarding school. So I went to a boarding school called Christ's Hospital. Hated it. Passionately hated it because I, I... Boarding school is n- not for me.

Ali Abdaal 44:59 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 44:59 Um, and it's so funny, there was actually a joke in the school. I had a name called, like, Tim The Rules Don't Apply Armoo.

Ali Abdaal 45:06 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 45:06 Because they come up with, like, all these kind of, like, rules about, you know, you have to be in bed by this time, you have to do this at this time, and I just wouldn't do it. Or I'd just constantly ask, "Why? Why? Why?" Um, so I think mentally... Actually, I'll tell you the big mindset shift. So do you remember earlier that I said that in school I had basically, like, built a brand of being the smart one?

Ali Abdaal 45:30 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 45:32 Um, when I went to Christ's Hospital, everyone there was insanely clever. I remember there was a guy, L- um, Luke Stevens. Luke Stevens was 15 and had finished his, like f- like, further maths, and he sc- and he got, like, 100%. Like, this guy was genius level, right? And there were quite a few people like that. So I kind of realized that I couldn't win the game of intelligence-

Ali Abdaal 45:56 Hmm

Tim Armoo 45:56 ... at Christ's Hospital, so therefore, the one game that I could win was that, like, I was more entrepreneurial than those guys. Like, I was more business savvy than, um, those guys. So to answer your question about, like, how I managed the time, it was actually, like, in my mind, I was then, like, an entrepreneur first and then a student second because I knew I couldn't win the, like, student game of, like, you know, like, get great, you know, just good grades. And, like, yes, I got good grades. I went to Warwick, I did a computer science degree, blah, blah, blah, but, like, I didn't care about winning that game enough. I wanted to be a game where, like, I could be number one, and that game to me was business. So that's why I then, like, spent all my time primarily on that, and then I kind of became a student second.

Ali Abdaal 46:43 Was that a conscious thing? Or is that-

Tim Armoo 46:44 Oh, yeah, 100%

Ali Abdaal 46:45 ... like a connecting the dots mo- looking back?

Tim Armoo 46:46 Oh, 100%.

Ali Abdaal 46:47 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 46:47 I actually remember I had a notebook in Christ's Hospital, and I remember writing that, like, okay, [laughs] this might funny. Again, this is not something that I've shared publicly, but it's like, I wrote people's names down who were, like, academically smarter than me, and then I wrote, like, where can I win, right? And you know, I was like, Luke, Francis, Sam Shaw, like, really, really, you know, intelligent people. I was like, hmm, but none of them are entrepreneurial.

Ali Abdaal 47:19 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 47:19 None of them are, like, business savvy. None of them are like that. Um, I wanna win in a game, and I wanna be number one in a game. Um, so that was a very conscious decision where I thought, yeah, like, this is something that I need to win this game.

Ali Abdaal 47:36 Just a quick note from one of our sponsors, and we'll get right back to the episode, and this episode is very kindly brought to you by Skillshare. If you haven't heard by now, Skillshare is one of the world's leading platforms for online classes, for online education. They've got thousands and thousands of classes on all sorts of topics, from business, entrepreneurship, lifestyle design, cooking, interior design, loads of stuff. And very excitingly, I have actually been teaching on Skillshare since 2019, and I've got 13 classes on Skillshare. Yes, 13 classes, and you can access all of them completely free of charge by going to skillshare.com/deepdive, and that link will give you a free one-month trial to Skillshare, during which you can watch any and all of my classes. Now if, for example, you happen to be a student or you're just interested in lifelong learning, then I've got two classes on Skillshare that I've taught that you might be interested in. The first one is my How to Study for Exams: Evidence-Based Tips study class, and that basically compiles every single thing that I've ever learned and that the research shows on what are the most evidence-based and effective ways of studying for your exams. And I also have a class on Skillshare around how to use Anki, which is the world's most popular flashcard app, which you can use for studying for exams, but also for learning languages, for learning music theory, things like that. And loads of people have taken that class and said that that class was so good that they would've literally paid hundreds of dollars for it, but you get it completely for free on Skillshare by going to skillshare.com/deepdive. After your trial's over, you can choose to continue the subscription if you like, and you can access the thousands of classes Skillshare has from other teachers, including people that I know, people I'm friends with, like Thomas Frank and Nathaniel Drew. But yeah, the main reason to check out Skillshare, of course, is that you wanna check out my classes if you wanna learn about productivity and video editing and YouTubing and even cooking. So head over to skillshare.com/deepdive, and thank you so much, Skillshare, for sponsoring this episode. What sort of

Ali Abdaal 49:11 setbacks did you have kind of, I, I, I guess, sort of through, up, up until sort of age 17, 18 at this point? Like, what was going on in life?

Tim Armoo 49:20 Where I grew up As I mentioned, I grew up on, like, the Oak and Road. Um, this was when in, like, the peak of the beef between, like, Oak and Road and Peckham and Brixton. So basically, like, if you were coming home after 7:00 PM, you shouldn't do that.

Ali Abdaal 49:38 [laughs] Okay.

Tim Armoo 49:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ends were crazy, mate. Uh, f- and it was so funny, like, I would try and make friends with the gangsters because-- not because I wanted to become a gangster, fuck that. Um, because I knew that at the very least, if they saw me in the evening, they would be like, "Oh, that's cool," you know. "He's part of us," right? So I think that was a major setback, was like the area that I grew up in and knowing I didn't belong there.

Ali Abdaal 50:10 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 50:10 That was it. Like, you know, every day I'd walk down to school in these council blocks and everything else, and I'd be like, "I don't belong here. I don't belong here. I don't belong here." Um, that was definitely a, a big setback. Um, yeah, like the general environment was a setback. Living with my dad, just us, I didn't really have like a proper kind of nuclear family. That was a setback. Um, and then I think probably at 21, my dad passed away, and that was a major setback. That even drove my sense of like, I need to do something significant even more.

Ali Abdaal 50:51 How did, how did your dad die?

Tim Armoo 50:53 He died of a stroke.

Ali Abdaal 50:54 Really?

Tim Armoo 50:55 Yeah. And here's the crazy thing. I found him dead. Yeah. In his room.

Ali Abdaal 51:02 Oh, no.

Tim Armoo 51:02 And the crazy thing is literally two, three weeks before that when we were kind of starting Fanbytes, he was like, "I don't know what you're doing, but I'm so proud of you. Well done," et cetera. Um, and it's funny, when I stood up in front of the company, you know, Fanbytes, we grew it to, like, 70 people and all that stuff. When I, when I stood up in front of the company, you know, I'd kind of rehearsed a talk, et cetera, and then at the end I was like, "And another reason why we did this was because before we started Fanbytes," before we properly started Fanbytes, my dad passed away. And when he passed away, he said he was very proud of me, and I basically told myself that there was no conceivable world in which this business was not a success. And so because of that is the reason why, like, this had to happen, right? This business had to have a successful outcome. And I think that subtly drove me a lot, just like it needed to be significant. It needed to not have like a, you know, like an okay exit. It needed to be like, "Ugh!"

Ali Abdaal 52:15 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 52:15 Like sick exit, you know? Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:18 Wow. What do you think your d- dad would say if, if he were here now?

Tim Armoo 52:23 Well, he still wouldn't understand what I did. Um, uh-

Ali Abdaal 52:27 [laughs] Like, "What? You're selling ads, though."

Tim Armoo 52:29 [laughs] He's selling ads like TikTok, Instagram.

Ali Abdaal 52:31 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 52:33 Uh, I think he'd just say exactly what he said, like, the two week before he passed away, which is, "I don't understand, but I'm incredibly proud of you." Um, and I think he'd also say, "I knew this was gonna happen." I think he would.

Ali Abdaal 52:46 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 52:46 Um, I think he always knew something would happen. He just didn't know what.

Ali Abdaal 52:52 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 52:53 Right? Um, yeah, so I think that was quite a big driver.

Ali Abdaal 52:57 Yeah, it sounds like he was, like, really supportive while you were in this-

Tim Armoo 52:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 53:00 Okay.

Tim Armoo 53:01 Yeah, 100%, um, which is very different to most African parents.

Ali Abdaal 53:05 Oh, yeah?

Tim Armoo 53:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 53:06 Oh, so-

Tim Armoo 53:06 Most African parents are like, you know, education, et cetera, et cetera.

Ali Abdaal 53:10 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 53:10 And probably-

Ali Abdaal 53:11 Yep, yep

Tim Armoo 53:11 ... Asian parents as well, right? But, um, but I think he was like that at the beginning, and then he was just like, "I just don't get this guy, but at 17, he sold a business, and he's helping out with, like, stuff in the house."

Ali Abdaal 53:25 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 53:25 "So continue."

Ali Abdaal 53:26 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 53:27 [laughs] Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 53:28 Absolutely. W- wh-

Ali Abdaal 53:30 when you say you felt like you didn't belong when you were-

Tim Armoo 53:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 53:32 ... when you were on the streets in the ends-

Tim Armoo 53:34 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 53:34 ... what, what do you mean by you didn't belong?

Tim Armoo 53:36 I thought I was smarter than them, and I just felt like the stuff I was interested in, they were just not interested in. I'd spent a lot of time reading this blog called retireat21.com.

Ali Abdaal 53:49 Oh, okay.

Tim Armoo 53:49 An incredible blog. Um, and I'd read it, and I'd just be like, "Man, look at all these cool people," right? At that point, Mashable was quite big, so I'd read about, you know, Pete Cashmore. I'd read about all these people, and I'd go, "Man, dude, this is so cool." And they were just interested in, like, riding out to the ends and, like, going to Peckham to fucking stab people. And I was just like, "I'm just not interested in that, am I?" Um, there's actually, again, a side note. There's actually a LinkedIn post I also did, which was-- which the headline was, "This Was The Day That A Gangster Saved My Life." And it was because I wanted to be, you know, part of the kids there, you know, part of, part of cool kids, um, so that I could be, you know, like, safe and all that stuff. And one of the gangsters there, guy called Mikes, he actually, like, took me aside and said, "This ain't for you, bro." And I was like, "What?" He's like, "No, it is." He's like, "Nah, this ain't for you." Because I think, like, he even realized that my heart was not in it. I cared more about, like, business and intellectual stuff. Um, and I remember when he said that, I was like, mate, if the lead gangster knows [laughs] right, that this is not for me, then it's not for me, mate. But yeah, that's, that's what I felt, but, like, I didn't belong. Um, I just felt my interests were different. The pathway in was different. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 55:20 What would you say to someone who might be listening to this and feeling like they're in that position, wherever, wherever they are, that they're in an environment where they feel like they don't belong and-

Tim Armoo 55:28 Yeah. So I think the first thing I'd say is, like, embrace your difference. I think too many people try and, like, shun their difference, but, like, embracing your difference is probably the first thing. And then almost realize that, like, being different creates different outcomes, right? Like, by definition, if you wanna do, like, extraordinary things, you can't be ordinary, right? 'Cause, 'cause the word is literally extraordinary. Um, uh, so I think that'll probably be the main thing, which is, like, embrace your difference, and also realize that, like, even if you feel, even if you feel different, there are other people who also feel different. So find those people who also feel different and just be, like, different together, [chuckles] right? The way I did that was when I was younger, I was part of, you know, like, Reddit forums where people would just be, you know, conducive of my business and marketing and internet marketing and funnels and all that stuff, and, like, that's where I just found my joy. And I was like, "Oh my God, yeah, like Russell Brunson has just dropped this thing."

Ali Abdaal 56:32 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 56:32 "Oh my God, it's so sick," you know? Uh, whatever. Um, who, who else? All those people, right? It was like, "Oh my God, this is so sick. All right, if you create this funnel and then you put it in like a tripwire, and then you do this. Oh my God, this is amazing," right? And then I'd go out and it's like gang music, right? [chuckles] And but I found my tribe of people who cared about being different as well.

Ali Abdaal 56:54 Yeah. Yeah, I re- um, I remember signing up to Russell Brunson's, uh, mailing list back when I was, like, 14 and just sort of [chuckles] I was looking through my G- my Gmail, uh, 'cause I just auto archived it.

Tim Armoo 57:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:04 Just like sort of like 10, 13 years worth of emails from Russell Brunson-

Tim Armoo 57:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 57:07 ... and stuff. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 57:09 He was the OG-

Ali Abdaal 57:10 Yeah

Tim Armoo 57:10 ... though, man.

Ali Abdaal 57:10 He was.

Tim Armoo 57:11 He was the OG.

Ali Abdaal 57:12 Mm.

Tim Armoo 57:12 A lot of us owe a lot of our success to discovering funnels and going, "Wow, this whole world is just insane."

Ali Abdaal 57:21 All right, so

Ali Abdaal 57:22 that was the Entrepreneur Express-

Tim Armoo 57:24 Yes

Ali Abdaal 57:24 ... um, arc.

Tim Armoo 57:26 The arc, yes.

Ali Abdaal 57:26 And then you get to university.

Tim Armoo 57:28 I get to university.

Ali Abdaal 57:29 What happens next? [chuckles]

Tim Armoo 57:30 I get to university. In my second year I start Fanbytes. And, uh, Fanbytes, the whole thing is really... When I sold Entrepreneur Express, I came to realize that the thing that the buyer was buying, yeah, you know, was the, was the blog and everything, but was also like the, the network of Facebook pages and all that stuff. I was like, "Ooh, that's where the value is." So then what we decided to do was I thought, "Right, I'm gonna build a company in this space, in the whole, like, influencer space and helping brands to reach that audience." And I specifically focused it on that Gen Z audience because... Well, the reason why I did was twofold. Firstly, it's an audience that I understood, and it's also an audience where I knew that we could have a competitive edge.

Ali Abdaal 58:17 Mm.

Tim Armoo 58:18 Um, so I remember that discussion, um, saying, you know, "Why not just be broadly influenced?" I was like, "Trust me. By saying that we are for these people, it means that we can actually increase more the value of the thing that we are providing the service." And so that was the beginning of Fanbytes. And within, yeah, five and a half years, grew it from then from zero to 70 people. Um, and then we sold it. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 58:47 So let's, let's go, let's rewind the clock a bit. So you're in your second year.

Tim Armoo 58:51 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 58:52 What are the dots that connect in your mind to think, "Let me start an influencer marketing thingy for Gen Zs in this space and call it Fanbytes"?

Tim Armoo 58:59 Well, I mean, the first one was, yeah, like having sold the previous business and seeing that the value lay in the Facebook communities and the Facebook pages-

Ali Abdaal 59:10 Okay

Tim Armoo 59:10 ... which the acquirer bought.

Ali Abdaal 59:12 Right.

Tim Armoo 59:12 Um, I was like, "It is all about social."

Ali Abdaal 59:16 Okay.

Tim Armoo 59:16 Um, the second one was anytime there is a new frontier of people or, like, a new paradigm, like, brands and companies would always want help in being able to navigate that, whether it's radio, TV, uh, Google Ads, billboards, right? Like, brands would always want a way to actually tap into that. And then the Gen Z thing was just where is my competitive edge in doing that? And so-

Ali Abdaal 59:44 And the fact that you k- were familiar with the Gen Z audience.

Tim Armoo 59:47 Boom. There you go.

Ali Abdaal 59:47 This second point, the, uh, b- sort of recognizing the, the sort of B2B-

Tim Armoo 59:52 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 59:52 ... and, and appreciating that.

Tim Armoo 59:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 59:54 I think that is a leap that certainly I didn't have-

Tim Armoo 59:59 Mm

Ali Abdaal 59:59 ... because I was always B2C education business, trying to get Asian parents to pay for courses and stuff. And it was only many years later as we started the YouTube channel and started to get brand deals and stuff.

Tim Armoo 1:00:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:08 Even now to this day, I still... You know, I, I'll, I'd speak to another entrepreneur friend who's like, "Yeah-

Tim Armoo 1:00:13 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:00:14 ... a company like Notion should be paying you 100K a month."

Tim Armoo 1:00:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:15 And I'm just like, "Wait, what?"

Tim Armoo 1:00:17 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:17 And he was like, "You have no idea how valuable this audience is."

Tim Armoo 1:00:19 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:19 Like, "These guys have shit tons of money."

Tim Armoo 1:00:20 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:20 Like, and I'm still in B2C mindset.

Tim Armoo 1:00:23 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:24 How, how did you get that sort of kind of firmware update in your mind that helped you realize there are companies with large amounts of money willing to pay for this thing? [chuckles]

Tim Armoo 1:00:33 So I think I had seen it before, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:00:35 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:00:35 Like, I was very aware of, like, the agency game, you know. I was just very aware of people like WPP and MediaCom and all these big holding companies. So I was just like, "Well, brands are paying them to market their stuff to people."

Ali Abdaal 1:00:51 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:00:51 "So why can't brands just pay us to do it to this, like, specific set of people?"

Ali Abdaal 1:00:57 And was that through the being part of subreddits and, uh, p- like marketing world and stuff? Like ba- because the, again, that, that was an area of the world that I'd never come across before.

Tim Armoo 1:01:06 Now I think of it. Maybe it could be the fact that when I, when I sold Entrepreneur Express to Horizon, I realized at that point how, like, big Horizon was, and I was like, "Who the heck is paying all these guys?" And then I think that was... That got me into like, "Oh, okay, so, like, brands are paying them to do blah, blah, blah." So therefore, if I could do that for a subset of people-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:30 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:01:30 ... then you'd win.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:32 Interesting. So, you know, you've, um, become super wealthy off the back of- ... social media marketing agency. Steven got super wealthy off the back of social-

Tim Armoo 1:01:40 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:01:40 ... media marketing agency. Let's say someone's listening to this, they're familiar with yours and, and Steven Bartlett's stories, and they're thinking, "Ooh, social media marketing sounds good," SMMA or whatever the-

Tim Armoo 1:01:49 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:01:49 ... acronym for that is. How should... Like, A, would you recommend that as a business model for someone today? And B, if so or if not, like, how would someone get started in that area?

Tim Armoo 1:02:00 I don't think that... So I think a big part of our success when we came to... So take a few steps back. So when we decided that actually Fanbytes needs to become part of a, you know, a big company to sell the company, we had, like, four different companies want to buy Fanbytes, right? And so because we had, like, those four different companies, you know, we were in a position of s- uh, like, strength, et cetera. But one of the things that I did realize was that, um, they were all buying because they wanted to integrate social media and influencers into their wider marketing, uh, pool, right? So it's like, okay, we can do TV, we can do billboards, we can do all that stuff. Um, and so that was always the reason for, uh, for any acquisition. So I say that as a precursor to say that I don't think it makes sense at the moment to start a social media agency. Um, I think that the kind of tidal wave has gone. Um, and the reason why I say the tidal wave is gone is because, like, for most of us who did well, we basically kind of like rode the wave of people not understanding something and then applying tech services and all that stuff to help them understand it.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:27 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:03:28 Um, right now I think most people understand it.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:31 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:03:31 And so you have to figure out a new wave which people don't, like, fundamentally understand if you wanna be in, like, the services business. Um, I get a lot of people coming to me and saying, "Right, you know, I wanna start a social media agency." And I'm like, "A, like, don't do that, and B, if you were to do that, what part of social media do brands don't, like, fully understand?" Start, like, an influencer business now, meh.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:58 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:03:59 Like, you can't turn it into something significant. Like, you could turn into, you know, a nice kind of like cool thing that pays you and hires a few people, but, like, to build a business to the level that we did, to the lev- you know, think about people like LADbible, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:04:16 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:04:16 LADbible were like the OGs of the space, like the dons of this space, right? And they've taken that business incredibly, done very well. But they rode a wave, and you're not gonna be able to achieve that degree of success if you start now because most of the problems have been solved.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:33 Yeah, I think that's the thing with, like, all of these businesses, you know, you know, even Gymshark being OG influencer marketing-

Tim Armoo 1:04:40 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:04:40 ... these sort of people, like, back in the day, where it was still a bit rogue.

Tim Armoo 1:04:44 But a bit-

Ali Abdaal 1:04:44 It was still a bit, a bit, a bit weird to do that. And so there's so much alpha, there's so much edge you have when you have an insight into the market that other people don't.

Tim Armoo 1:04:53 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:53 And if those people have money and are old, then [chuckles] you can win-

Tim Armoo 1:04:56 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:04:57 ... as a young person with that level-

Tim Armoo 1:04:58 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:04:58 ... of market insight. But now it's so, so if someone says to a brand, "You should be marketing on Instagram," they're like-

Tim Armoo 1:05:02 They'll be like, "Yeah, okay, cool"

Ali Abdaal 1:05:03 ... "Bro, we've been doing that for, like, more than 10 years now."

Tim Armoo 1:05:04 Yeah. He's like-

Ali Abdaal 1:05:05 "Come on. [chuckles] Get with the times." [chuckles]

Tim Armoo 1:05:06 He's like, "Sarah, Tom, Tanya, and all these people are dedicated to this," right?

Ali Abdaal 1:05:11 [chuckles]

Tim Armoo 1:05:11 "In-house," right? So it's like, "Why would we need you?" Um, 'cause one thing I've noticed, like, generally in business is especially in kind of like B2B kind of services businesses is, like, people are paying you for the expertise, right? And the, and the depth of that expertise is directly correlated to the gap and the gap between where they are and where they're trying to be.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:39 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:05:40 So if, for example, you come in and say, like, "Right, I can do," I don't know, let's take the example of Instagram. It's like, well, cool, I could pay you for it, but the gap between me as a brand not being good at Instagram and then being good is quite small.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:56 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:05:56 If you said in 2017, like, "I can figure out, you know, um, I can help you, like, build and own a YouTube channel," like, people don't know how to do that, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:06:09 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:06:09 So they're starting from here, they wanna get here. The gap is just bigger, which therefore means, like, you can charge generally more. Um, so I think it's always important if you're thinking about, you know, like business and where should I play, that you wanna think about, like, how big is that gap in the problem, 'cause that's the way that you're truly gonna win.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:28 Do you think that that gap is still a thing on YouTube?

Tim Armoo 1:06:31 I think build and owned and operated channels on YouTube, yes, it is. I think marketing on there-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:37 Mm

Tim Armoo 1:06:37 ... not really.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:38 Yeah, like everyone does YouTube ads, but, like-

Tim Armoo 1:06:39 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:06:39 ... the, it's, we, we've had so much interest from people who are like, "Shit, I know I should be on YouTube."

Tim Armoo 1:06:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:44 "I, like we should have a brand presence on YouTube itself."

Tim Armoo 1:06:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:46 But they don't know where to start.

Tim Armoo 1:06:47 Yeah. I think there's the opportunity for brands to do that. The big thing with YouTube though is like... So one of the other things that I think about is, like, how soon can someone get a payoff? So I'll tell you, like, a big inflection point with Fanbytes was when we really focused on, like, the ROI that we provide to brands.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:10 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:07:10 And the thing is, you know, fundamentally, if a brand is spending 100 grand, it's not for vibes.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:14 No. [chuckles]

Tim Armoo 1:07:15 Right? Um, so they spend that money to make sure that, like, they can earn, um, XYZ. The, the thing with YouTube is, like, it can take a lot of time, relatively-

Ali Abdaal 1:07:26 Mm

Tim Armoo 1:07:27 ... a lot more time to build an owned and operated audience. And so as a consequence of that, like, it can also take a lot of time to see the payoff.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:35 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:07:35 So you, so you almost need to, like, figure out a way in which, like, you can reduce the time to payoff.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:41 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:07:41 Right? Uh, because if you can do that, then you win. If it takes long, then you just need patience from the brand side or from the creative side, which can-

Ali Abdaal 1:07:51 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:07:51 ... which can be a hassle.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:52 Yeah. This is some stuff like, uh, Alex Hormozi talks about this a lot, like reducing this time to value.

Tim Armoo 1:07:58 Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:58 Like reducing the amount of like ... People will pay astronomically more for a service that is quick-

Tim Armoo 1:08:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:08:02 ... compared to a service that takes ages.

Tim Armoo 1:08:04 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:04 Which is why like supplements is like-

Tim Armoo 1:08:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:08:06 ... 100 times bigger than fitness-

Tim Armoo 1:08:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:08:07 ... because fitness takes time and supplements doesn't.

Tim Armoo 1:08:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:09 It pro- anything that promises a quick fix.

Tim Armoo 1:08:11 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:11 And if you can actually deliver on that quick fix-

Tim Armoo 1:08:12 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:08:13 ... you're just, yeah, laughing all the way to the bank, as they say.

Tim Armoo 1:08:16 And you're winning. Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:17 Um, what did the growth in terms of ... Yeah, how ... So, so, so you started in your second year. What was the growth trajectory of Fanbytes in terms of, I guess, maybe you can't share revenue, but like sort of team size and, and stuff?

Tim Armoo 1:08:31 I can share the first three years of-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:33 Sure, yeah

Tim Armoo 1:08:33 ... re- revenue.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:34 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:08:35 Uh, 'cause I think that's interesting. Uh, first year, 400 grand. Second year, one million. Sec- uh, third year, 1.7.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:47 Okay. What are ... What were the margins on this back in the day? Like, you're, you're making 400 top line. Like, how much are you ... How much goes into your bank account? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:08:55 Oh, first year we made a loss.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:58 How?

Tim Armoo 1:08:59 Because we were just stupid at spending money. Like as in the first year, all we did was we were just trying to get on as many case studies as possible.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:11 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:09:12 And so with brands, we'd like overspend. We wouldn't take any like real margin on it because-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:17 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:09:17 ... we knew the value of the case studies.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:20 So hang on. So a brand would pay you, let's say 50K, and would you put that into-

Tim Armoo 1:09:24 Oh, by the way-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:24 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:09:24 ... first year we were not charging 50K, mate.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:27 Oh, okay. Fine. A brand would pay you like 5K.

Tim Armoo 1:09:28 There you go. [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:30 And what are you doing with that 5K? Are you, are you putting into ads or hiring an influencer? Like what, what was your thing?

Tim Armoo 1:09:36 Yeah. So, so we're defining what like the influencer campaign should be, and then afterwards, yeah, we're like paying out to influencers, we're paying for ads and all that stuff. But our whole thing was like, we just wanted to get really good case studies. And also bear in mind, like in our first year we had raised a bit of money.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:53 Oh, okay.

Tim Armoo 1:09:54 And we're also in university.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:56 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:09:56 And so we didn't need to like necessarily, you know, like make profit, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:10:01 Yeah, yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:10:01 Um, through the grand scheme of business, we raised two million for the business. Yeah, so we'd raise a bit of money, then we raised a bit of money in our second year as well, which meant that we still didn't really need to make profit, and then third year we made a bit of profit.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:17 So the loss that you made was, it was basically eating into the investor money?

Tim Armoo 1:10:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:22 Because you wanted to ... Uh, well, was this intentional? Were you like, "The brand's paying us 5K, we're gonna spend 10K because we want a really good case study"? Or was it just accidental, how you're like, "Oh, shit, [laughs] we, we paid too much"?

Tim Armoo 1:10:33 It was intentional.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:34 Oh, okay.

Tim Armoo 1:10:35 It was intentional, um, because we're like, you know, we have cash, so let's just like focus on just revenue and case studies.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:43 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:10:43 That was it. That was very intentional as well. Like the first two years was very much like we want to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow-

Ali Abdaal 1:10:50 Okay

Tim Armoo 1:10:50 ... and not care about profit yet. And then, you know, fourth year we cared about profit. Fifth year we definitely cared about profit. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:10:58 So who, so who was we at the time?

Tim Armoo 1:11:00 Myself and my co-founder, Ambrose.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:01 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:11:02 And then we hired a CTO.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:03 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:11:04 Um, and then, yeah, first year we were like five people. Second year, probably eight. Third year, probably 20.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:12 Were you like paying your own salaries? Like how were you, how were you?

Tim Armoo 1:11:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:15 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:11:15 We were paying ourselves like £500 a month-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:18 Okay

Tim Armoo 1:11:18 ... but then paying actual people like two grand a month.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:21 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:11:21 Um, it's probably now fourth year that we actually like started like paying people sensible money.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:26 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:11:26 Like 50 grand, 40 grand-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:27 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:11:28 ... 60 grand and all that stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:29 Yeah. I guess like when you switch from thinking per month to per year, that's [laughs] ...

Tim Armoo 1:11:33 Yeah, exactly. E- exactly, right? So I'm like two grand a month. Oh, shit. Right now I'm like 60 grand. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:39 Okay. So what did the case studies look like? Like what, what's an example of a case study from, from the early days?

Tim Armoo 1:11:44 A case study. So a good case study is of like, uh, I don't know, um, New Look, right? New Look came to us to reach young people. What we did was we got like YouTube influencers to do a fashion haul and then link directly. The case study got, you know, 10,000 clicks and 5,000 purchases. Like very straightforward.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:05 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:12:06 Now it's got more sophisticated. At the beginning, I think we were very juvenile.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:10 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:12:11 You know what? At the beginning we were driven by fear a lot.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:13 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:12:14 Yeah. I, I actually say this to Ambrose a lot, which is like ... So at the beginning, I was driven by two things. Number one was a bit of fear, 'cause I was like, and it's the fear which meant we didn't charge people a lot of money. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:12:30 Okay. Fear as in, "Oh, I'm not sure if this is legit-

Tim Armoo 1:12:32 I'm not sure, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:33 ... I'm selling snake oil" kind of stuff? Or...

Tim Armoo 1:12:34 Our first ever campaign was with Go Ape, and I charged them £300, and they said yeah. And I called up Ambrose, I was like, "Yo, we did it. 300 pounds," da da da da. And it's so crazy because like four years before I had just sold my company for way more than that.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:50 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:12:50 But it was a new idea, a new concept, a new service, and like someone had paid us £300. Oh my God, I can't believe this. And then, um, yeah, it was a bit of fear. Um, and then probably like in our, you know, third year when we were more comfortable with the fact that we can actually, you know, charge higher prices, that's when we did that.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:10 Were you worried at all about how you would actually drive results? Because the-

Tim Armoo 1:13:14 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:13:14 ... the thing with marketing is that it's, it's a bit of a rolling of the dice, right? Or am I-

Tim Armoo 1:13:19 I was concerned

Ali Abdaal 1:13:19 ... am I just naive about this? Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:13:21 But I was concerned, but I think that's where Ambrose, uh, became really, like really came into his own.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:28 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:13:28 He was, um ... He was my COO. Loves a spreadsheet. Loves all that stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:34 Excellent. Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:13:34 Right? And so he was really, you know, being like, "Right, you know, if we get these amount of views, it should lead to this," blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, so he was, he was pretty good in that. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:45 And you were confident enough that, hey, if we hire the right influencers, we can get X amount of views, and theoretically that should lead to an-

Tim Armoo 1:13:50 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:13:50 ... X percent conversion, et cetera.

Tim Armoo 1:13:51 Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think when we started it- You know, even in our second, third year, we're just like, "It's okay if this campaign flops because, like, there'll be another campaign."

Ali Abdaal 1:14:04 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:14:05 You know? I think I had a lot of belief in ourselves that we'd do that. And also, I think we were also optimizing for speed. Like, we had a venture capitalist come to us and say, "Right. Why not just raise, like, five, six million? Let's take this, you know ... How does this become, like, $100 million business?" And all that stuff. And I remember saying to him, "It's just not gonna be that." And he was like, "Wait, what?" And I was like, "Yeah. This business is not gonna be $100 million business. Like, it's gonna make tens of millions guaranteed." And he was like, "Okay." And then he put in money by himself, not through his fund. And when we then sold the company, I then, uh, texted him and I said, "Do you remember the first time that we met? You were like, 'How is this gonna be a billion-dollar outcome?'" And I said, "It's not gonna be a, a billion-dollar outcome, but, like, this is exactly how much it's gonna sell for." Um, and it was exactly that amount.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:07 How, how did you, how did you know? Like, at, at that level, when we're talking tens of millions versus hundreds of millions versus billion, like-

Tim Armoo 1:15:13 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:15:14 ... all three sets of those numbers are equally unfathomable.

Tim Armoo 1:15:17 So-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:17 So what's going through your mind to be able to actually-

Tim Armoo 1:15:19 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:15:19 ... run that calculation?

Tim Armoo 1:15:20 So what's going through my mind is two things. The first thing is I had a very good idea of how businesses like us are valued, um, through a combination of revenue and profit and growth rates and all that stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:33 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:15:33 So even now, I invest and I advise in a bunch of, like, you know, B2B businesses, and I'm like, "If you reach this number and if you do this, you can sell for within this range."

Ali Abdaal 1:15:45 Hmm. What sort of multiples are there on these sorts of businesses?

Tim Armoo 1:15:48 Uh, if you have tech and revenue-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:50 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:15:50 ... um, generally you can look at, like, two to four times-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:54 Okay

Tim Armoo 1:15:55 ... revenue.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:56 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:15:56 Typically, most of the businesses, though, are a multiple of profit.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:00 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:16:01 But that's if you don't have tech, and we had a good amount of tech.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:04 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:16:05 Um, which again, was intentional, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:16:08 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:16:08 Because we wanted to build a business that was, like, that had a lot of value beyond the people.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:14 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:16:14 Um, and that was very intentional.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:16 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:16:16 So many people ... This is, like, a complete side note. Um, so many people see, like, TechCrunch, right? They read TechCrunch and, and I'd ask them, "Oh, so where do you think their business will go?" "Billion dollars." It's like, "Based on what?" It's like, "Well, you know, billion dollars." It's like, "Based on what?" Because fundamentally, when a company buys you, they're buying you because they think that, like, by you joining them, they can make more money, right? Because if I can buy you for £5 [laughs] and I can make £10, I'm just gonna make that trade every single day.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:51 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:16:51 Right? And so, um, and so for me, um, I kind of understood that, right? Like, someone will buy us at this level because based on our growth rate, revenue, clients, et cetera, like, they could make X amount-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:06 Oh, okay

Tim Armoo 1:17:06 ... so therefore just make that trade.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:08 Interesting. So in pure tech, often the multiples are sort of 10 to, but 10 ti- uh, 10 times revenue or something absurd like that. But that's pure tech where you've got recurring revenue and they have a, like, they're like, "All right. Cool. I know that this will work for the next X number of years."

Tim Armoo 1:17:25 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:25 And run that calculation. But I guess in this context, if, let's say, we pluck a number out of thin air, like, I don't know, 30 million, just to make the numbers-

Tim Armoo 1:17:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:17:32 ... and, and assume a 3X multiple of revenue, that means for someone to buy you for 30 million, you would need to be getting 10 million top-line revenue. And in order to get that multiple of revenue, you need some kinda tech platform, which means you need a way to measure engagement or mea- measure something or something like that.

Tim Armoo 1:17:46 Yeah, or like-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:47 Some kinda IP that-

Tim Armoo 1:17:48 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:17:48 ... they wanna buy from you.

Tim Armoo 1:17:49 Or, like, repeat clients.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:51 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:17:51 Client retention needs to be high. All that stuff there.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:55 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:17:55 Um, so you need all that type of stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:57 And then you're thinking, "Okay, s- c- is it, is it doable to get to, let's say, 10 million top-line revenue?" And you're thinking, "Well, actually, yes, because all we need is 10 campaigns of a million-

Tim Armoo 1:18:05 E- exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:18:05 ... or 20 campaigns of half a million."

Tim Armoo 1:18:07 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:08 That kind of vibe.

Tim Armoo 1:18:08 And then, like, these are the people that you need to have and da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:12 Hmm. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:18:14 It's quite surgical.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:15 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:18:15 It's quite surgical, the approach. Um, one of the questions I ask, one of the questions I get asked a lot is, like, "How do you feel, you know, now that you've sold your company," et cetera. And my thing is always, like, "It was exactly how I designed it."

Ali Abdaal 1:18:30 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:18:31 It was, like, exactly how I designed it, 'cause I was like, "Okay, this is gonna happen. This is gonna happen." And it's, and it's also very important that when people talk about acquisitions, they don't think about it as kind of like, as if you're, like, getting one over the company, right? Some people go, like, "Oh, I've sold my company." And it's like, well, you created something of value. You realized it could be of value to s- like, someone else, and so therefore you then sold it, and you sold something of value. It's not like you sold a dud or-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:04 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:19:04 ... or, or, um, or, uh, something or something like that. And the other thing that really helps with, like, business valuations is if you can be seen as kind of a competitive threat to someone.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:17 Oh, what do you mean?

Tim Armoo 1:19:18 So for example, we had four offers, right? Four people want to buy Fanbytes. And at least one of them, we had taken a couple of clients from them, and so-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:35 Hmm

Tim Armoo 1:19:35 ... we were a competitive threat to them.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:37 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:19:37 Right? It was like-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:38 So it's even more worthwhile for them to buy you out.

Tim Armoo 1:19:39 Yeah, exactly, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:19:40 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:19:41 Exactly. And you look at, you know, Figma selling to Adobe.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:44 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:19:44 It's a perfect example of, like, competitive threat.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:46 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:19:46 It's like they are taking our customers. If we spend 20 billion, we can make, whatever, 60 billion by not only their customers coming into the, uh, Adobe fold, but then using our other products.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:59 Yeah, and, like, linking them all up. So a Photoshop design can go into Figma rather than-

Tim Armoo 1:20:02 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:20:02 ... Adobe XD, which no one uses.

Tim Armoo 1:20:03 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:04 And all that crap.

Tim Armoo 1:20:05 Exactly. Competitive tension drives a lot more deals than people think it does.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:09 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:20:10 Huge.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:11 Is there anything like it's, if someone's listening to this and they're like, "I wanna be an A player," skills you would encourage them to cultivate in order to be one of those A players?

Tim Armoo 1:20:19 One of the things that I really enjoyed working with, you know, high performing people is that they just generally have a bias towards action.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:29 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:20:30 Like, they know that they can try several things and maybe quite a few of them would flop, but they're not concerned with that. They're just concerned with taking as many shots on goal. And I think especially when you are young and beginning in your journey, you over-glamorize strategy.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:50 Oh.

Tim Armoo 1:20:50 Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:20:51 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:20:51 You like over-glamorize like, you know, "Da, da, let's do all this stuff here," and you, and you underestimate the value of just taking shots on goal.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:03 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:21:03 Um, 'cause you have to take as many shots in order for like one of them to go in, so you might as well have like a bias toward action, and I find that is missing from a lot of people, um, especially people in their 20s.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:20 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:21:20 100%.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:21 Why, why do you think that is?

Tim Armoo 1:21:23 I think it's because the things that they're comparing themselves to are like people who do the thinking. So they think... So a very good example is someone might see me and go, "Oh, like he's a CEO and he does thinking around the who and the people, et cetera." But at the beginning, I was building the funnels, I was building the proposals, I was just like doing, doing stuff. I was like sending in the emails. I was, I was like sending all that stuff. And so you can't compare me to like me five, six years down the line because I've had to do all the other stuff. So you have to start from here in order to get up there.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:01 Yeah. And I think that in a way, that's one of the issues with books about business and books about success, in that they tend to be high level.

Tim Armoo 1:22:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:09 They tend to be aimed at executives.

Tim Armoo 1:22:11 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:11 And they tend to be, "Oh, people are the most important thing."

Tim Armoo 1:22:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:13 And like, "Your strategy is really important because of 1% deviation." And it's like, who cares? Like [chuckles] that's completely, completely irrelevant for someone sitting on the ground trying to take shots on goal.

Tim Armoo 1:22:21 I've never, I've never read this book by Simon Sinek-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:25 Start With Why

Tim Armoo 1:22:26 ... Start With Why.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:26 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:22:26 I've never read it.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:27 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:22:28 I know everyone talks about it, but I've never read it because I've... You know, I think at no point in my life had I got to the point where I thought, "Right, let me think about the, like the why and the purpose of like galvanizing the team and the vision-"

Ali Abdaal 1:22:43 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:22:43 "... and all that stuff."

Ali Abdaal 1:22:44 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:22:44 I've just been like, "Act. Just do, do, do, do, do."

Ali Abdaal 1:22:46 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:22:46 "Learn, do, learn, do," right?

Ali Abdaal 1:22:48 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:22:48 Um, I may do that for the next company, right? But like I think that I'd always had a bias towards action.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:57 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:22:57 And the best people have a bias towards action.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:02 Yeah. There's a good, uh, a good quote from the book Traction, which is that, um, "Vision without execution is halluc- uh, is hallucination." [chuckles]

Tim Armoo 1:23:08 [laughs] There you go.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:09 And so it's like start off executing, make the money, and then-

Tim Armoo 1:23:12 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:23:12 ... you can worry about the vision and the strategy-

Tim Armoo 1:23:13 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:23:13 ... and the mission statement and the values and all that shit like-

Tim Armoo 1:23:15 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:23:15 ... further down the line, but w-why... If that's like trying to spend ages on a business card when you haven't made any money. Like-

Tim Armoo 1:23:21 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:23:21 ... don't worry about it.

Tim Armoo 1:23:22 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:22 It's whatever. Um, what's your... How do you feel about personal brands?

Tim Armoo 1:23:28 How do I feel about personal brands? So I think a personal brand is a very... So in business, you wanna make sure that you have as many competitive advantages as possible, right? Some of them is you raise a bunch of money that your competitors can't. Some of them is that you enter into a niche that your competitors can't, right? One of the, uh, competitive advantages is a personal brand, right? Because fundamentally it is almost like another tool you can use to attract customers and employees that your competitors can't, right? Um, you know, when we began the sale of the business, we appointed a M&A bank to like run the whole process and all that stuff because basically there's a whole thing which I can explain. Basically, when you do acquisitions less than roughly 10 million, people often say like, "You can kind of... You can use like a broker or you can DIY," right? Um, anything above 10, 15 million, you generally advise to use a bank.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:38 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:24:38 Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:24:38 What, what does, what does the bank do in this case?

Tim Armoo 1:24:40 So what does an M&A bank do? So when we thought, "Right, this is the right time." So we'd been approached a lot by like private equity companies. So to explain what private equity companies are, they're just people with a lot of money who wanna buy your company because they think they can like sell it later on-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:59 Hmm

Tim Armoo 1:24:59 ... for a bigger number. So we'd been approached by, uh, PE companies, private equity, and we basically decided that, "Ooh, okay, this is the time for a deal." We didn't go down a private equity route. We actually thought it makes sense for us to go down the strategic route and buy-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:15 As in a strategic acquisition-

Tim Armoo 1:25:17 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:25:17 ... from a competitor or something?

Tim Armoo 1:25:18 Not even a competitor.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:19 Or, or a company that wants to-

Tim Armoo 1:25:20 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:25:20 ... absorb the influencer-

Tim Armoo 1:25:21 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:25:21 ... marketing thing-

Tim Armoo 1:25:22 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:25:22 ... into their-

Tim Armoo 1:25:23 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:25:23 ... conglomerate of stuff.

Tim Armoo 1:25:23 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:24 Okay, fine.

Tim Armoo 1:25:25 Exactly. We decided that rather than a private equity buyer. Um, and so when we decided that, we then went to connect with an M&A bank, and what an M&A bank does is basically, they're basically like the deal maker. So their whole thing is they help companies to buy companies and also to sell companies. What they do is they'll come up with like a really kind of, they'll come up with a nice presentation for you, 10 slides just like talking about the company, then they send it out to some small group of people. Um, if they say, "Ooh, this is interesting. I'd like to chat," then they introduce you to them, and they help you to then kind of have that intro call and everything else.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:09 Oh.

Tim Armoo 1:26:09 Ask them-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:10 Wait, wait, hang on.

Tim Armoo 1:26:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:10 So, so you're saying if I build a company and I wanna sell it-

Tim Armoo 1:26:12 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:26:13 I can get someone else to sell it for me. I don't have to go, I don't have to wait for emails to come in.

Tim Armoo 1:26:17 Y- yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:18 Shit.

Tim Armoo 1:26:19 For a percentage of their revenue.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:20 Sure. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:26:21 You know? Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:22 Yeah. Okay, cool. Sorry.

Tim Armoo 1:26:22 Yeah, exactly. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:26:23 So they make a presentation, they send it out to some people, and they're like, "We've got this company on sale for 15 million," let's say.

Tim Armoo 1:26:29 So that's the thing, they don't tell the price.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:30 Ah, okay.

Tim Armoo 1:26:31 Because-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:31 They're like, "We have this company on sale, and here are their stats."

Tim Armoo 1:26:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:34 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:26:34 And like, generally, and generally it is, um, not discreet. It is ... What's the word I'm looking for? They don't say the name of the company.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:45 Oh, okay.

Tim Armoo 1:26:46 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:46 They're like-

Tim Armoo 1:26:46 So it's more like-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:47 ... a company in the influencer marketing space

Tim Armoo 1:26:48 ... a company in the influencer marketing space which does blah, blah, blah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:51 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:26:51 This is cool, et cetera.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:52 Cool.

Tim Armoo 1:26:52 Right? And then when they say, "Right, this is interesting," then you have some people who say, "Right, this is interesting. This fits inside of our thesis of, you know, the future," or something like that. And then you meet those companies, and you then go on, you know, some meetings with them, a bit of a journey with them, et cetera, you know, meeting them. And not only for them to see if you're a good fit, but for you to also see if they're a good fit. Fun fact, like we actually were approached by this other company, and I went into the office, and the office was just so hot. It was just like, just hot, and it was 'cause they were using like old computers, and the fans were whirring and everything, and I just left. And I remember sending a, uh, voice note to Ambrose. I was like, "Even if they paid 100 million, nobody's ever going there," right?

Ali Abdaal 1:27:40 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:27:40 And this is actually quite interesting, 'cause it shows the transformation from caring about, um, like money to actually like caring about like a good significant exit. Anyway, so these bankers then they'll like chat with you, and then you chat with the companies, and then once that's done, uh, a set of companies put together something called a letter of intent, an LOI, and that basically says, "We intend to buy you for this amount." And then what then happens is y- um, you then decide which company you wanna go forward with.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:17 Okay.

Tim Armoo 1:28:17 And that then opens roughly like 10 weeks or so in which of, um, of exclusivity. So that basically means that in those 10 weeks you're gonna open up basically every part of your business, your finances, your legal, your da, da, da, da. And then at the end of that they say, "Right, we are satisfied with this," 'cause remember, in that deal process, in that 10 weeks, they can say, "Actually, you said your company was doing X, but it's actually not. So either the deal's off or that price that we said, we're actually gonna reduce it."

Ali Abdaal 1:28:52 Right. And presumably they're doing whatever they can in that 10 weeks to really reduce that number.

Tim Armoo 1:28:56 No. No. They actually want the price to go ahead.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:59 Oh, I see.

Tim Armoo 1:29:00 That's good buyers.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:01 They're not trying to shop for ... Yeah, okay.

Tim Armoo 1:29:01 That's good buyers.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:02 Right. Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:29:03 Some bad buyers, um, they do this, and it's called reneging. So basically they'll like renege on the deal, and basically they'll be like, "Oh, we said 50. Actually you said this, da, da, da, da, and now we'll do it at 40." In our deal it went fine. The price that they said was the price that they said. Done. Um, and then at the end of the-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:25 Question.

Tim Armoo 1:29:25 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:25 During those 10 weeks-

Tim Armoo 1:29:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:29:26 ... what's going through your mind?

Tim Armoo 1:29:27 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:29:28 How are you feeling? What's going on?

Tim Armoo 1:29:30 So here's a, here's the interesting thing. Um, my co-founder, Ambrose, was the one who really did a lot of the stuff there, right? Like the, the, like, like us and the bank basically did all the stuff around like the data room and Excel sheets, et cetera. So I didn't feel that much stress.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:51 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:29:52 Um, I think I also knew that a deal would go ahead, and so like because I knew and I'd like told myself, like, "There is no conceivable world in which a deal does not go ahead," I was just like, "Oh, cool," right? And I had faith as well in the company that like they would actually do what they say. This is actually a very good, um, this is where an M&A bank really comes in, because they are like your intermediary. Because mate, you can get emotional in these deals, right? 'Cause like basically someone in two, three, four months is about to give you life-changing money. At any point if they're like, "Mm, this doesn't work," be like, "Okay, that's fine. Just take it. Okay, just take," right? The biggest thing people do when they're trying to sell their companies if they don't use a bank or like an intermediary is they concede too much, because they just want the deal done so, like, they can get the money. So an M&A bank is exceptional there to basically be like, "You know, actually no, I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the thing," right? To be almost your grown-up whilst you're acting like a petulant little child.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:01 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:31:01 Um, they're the people there for you. Um, yeah, and so at the end of the 10 weeks they then do a, uh, share purchase agreement, and then you sign the share purchase agreement, and that's it.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:15 How did, how did you feel when you saw the numbers on the letters of intent that you got?

Tim Armoo 1:31:19 Fine.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:20 Yeah?

Tim Armoo 1:31:21 I think-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:21 You're just like, "Yeah, fair enough." Sure. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:31:22 I think it didn't feel real.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:24 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:31:25 The bit that felt real, there were two moments that felt real.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:28 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:31:28 The first moment was when we signed the share purchase agreement, 'cause, you know, they tell you the letter of intent, and you know the price. The share purchase agreement, I remember this, and I actually have a, uh, video of this, um, uh, on my phone.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:44 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:31:45 Like everyone else is signing. We have investors signing. We have da, da, da. Like everyone is, you know, signing their stuff. And then the final thing is we then have to sign. So me, COO, CTO, we have to, you know, sign. So Mitchell signs. Cool. And I'm recording all of this on Zoom, right? So, and bear in mind, it's like, again, like Friday 1:00 AM.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:12 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:32:12 'Cause all our lawyers and their lawyers have just been working on it, working on it, which I've often found so ridiculous in the fact that, like, you have all this time to work on a deal and you still push it to the end. [laughs] It's like, what's going on? Anyway, uh- And then Ambrose signs, and I remember recording this and I say, "Guys, like, you know, like six years ago we met and we said this was gonna be a thing. I know there's been a lot of challenges and everything else. I'm so proud of everything that we've ever done, and I'm so happy." And then I signed. And then on our Gmail, we just get this Docusign thing which says like, "Everyone has signed."

Ali Abdaal 1:32:53 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:32:54 And I find it crazy to think that you just get a Gmail email which symbolizes like-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:03 The world

Tim Armoo 1:33:03 ... a life-changing thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:05 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:33:05 And you just go like, "All done." It's like, wow. And that to me was like very... I was like, wow. And the crazy thing about that is I then went to bed, and the next day I just went to gym.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:17 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:33:17 And it was just like, I've just transformed my life and everything else is normal.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:22 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:33:22 And then the final one, the second one was when the money actually dropped. That was, that was when I was like, wow, like we actually did this. 'Cause beforehand it's all like on the screen and you're like, okay, this happened, then you go, wow, like this actually happened. Um, there's a crazy story about that actually, and I'll just tell it quickly, was Mitch and Ambrose are on, um, Lloyds accounts, and I was on a Santander account. And our lawyers had sent over the money, and they'd got theirs first. So we were like walking around saying, "What's going on? The money hasn't dropped." And then Ambrose is, uh, Ambrose refreshes the screen and it's like, and he's like, "Oh my God. Oh my God." And then I refresh my screen and it's like nothing. [laughs] It's like, what's going on? And I'm freaking out 'cause I'm like, wait, did I give them the right sort code, account number?

Ali Abdaal 1:34:14 Has it gone to someone else? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:34:15 I'm thinking there's someone else here who's got millions in their account. What, what's going on? Um, [laughs] and I'm like, "Oh my God." Um, and then, and then I'm like, okay, blah, blah. And then I refresh again, and it comes through, and I remember just like screaming, um, 'cause our office was in Frandon. I was just screaming, just like screaming. I was, "Oh my God. Oh my God." And the craziest thing I did was later that day I went to my dad's grave, and I was just like, I was just crying. I was just crying, I was crying, I was crying, and I was like, I was like, like, "We fucking did it. Like, we did it. Like, we did it," all right? And I was just tears were like falling down my eyes 'cause I just felt like from when he said he was proud of me to now was like, boom, you did it, man. Um, so those were the two moments where I was like, oh, like this is real. Like, this is very real. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:07 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:35:08 But yeah. Crazy.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:09 So what, what's next? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:35:11 Uh-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:12 You've sum- you've reached the summit of the first mountain. How does it feel?

Tim Armoo 1:35:17 Yeah, I think, I think one of the things that I wish I had when I was younger was I wish there was someone like me who could share a lot of the ways and the frameworks that they used to get to where they were. I think I'm kind of thinking about how I can do that. You know, there's the other stuff there like, you know, property and, you know, property and investing and money management and all that stuff. But I think right now I'm just, um, trying to focus on, um, interesting things with interesting people. Um, that's it really.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:54 So you presumably have more time on your hands now that you're, um, kind of a vagabond and roaming around the streets. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:36:00 I know. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:36:00 Just, just chilling and going to the gym. What... How,

Ali Abdaal 1:36:03 how are you spending your time these days?

Tim Armoo 1:36:04 Yeah. So I think, I mean, you know, when we sold the company, a big part of it was like, we did believe that like for this influencer division or this influencer thing to grow, like Brain Labs, the company who bought us, were the best, you know, partner to take forward. So I'm supporting them with that-

Ali Abdaal 1:36:24 Mm

Tim Armoo 1:36:24 ... um, which is all around, you know, like just hiring great people, going global, all that stuff. I mean, fun fact, like when we sold the company, 40% of our revenue was from the US-

Ali Abdaal 1:36:40 Mm

Tim Armoo 1:36:40 ... but we didn't have a single person there, which is just like outrageous. Um, you know, helping with that. Um, but now we ha- you know, now I have a bit more time, right? Which therefore means that I'm doing interesting things. Like, so with my experience in, you know, h- having like built and scaled and sold a company, I'm doing quite a lot of stuff around investing. I'm actually doing quite a lot of like PE stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:07 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:37:07 So actually like, um, helping to buy companies, um, and then kind of shaping them up to exit. So yeah, I've done that in like the e-commerce space, done that in quite a few things. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:37:21 Why? Like-

Tim Armoo 1:37:23 Why?

Ali Abdaal 1:37:23 Are you trying to make more money or what's, what, what's the, what's the aim at this point?

Tim Armoo 1:37:26 So I think it's a fun game-

Ali Abdaal 1:37:28 Okay

Tim Armoo 1:37:28 ... of like, if you think about it, right, if you look at a business and you go, "I think here are five ways we can optimize you, like relatively easily," um, and you can do that and increase the value of the business, that's a fun game.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:47 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:37:47 Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:37:47 That's like buying a house and fixing it up 'cause you like fixing things up and just-

Tim Armoo 1:37:51 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:37:51 ... flipping it.

Tim Armoo 1:37:51 Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:52 It's just, it's just kind of fun.

Tim Armoo 1:37:53 Yeah, exactly, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:37:54 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:37:54 There's people who love that game and, uh, for me that's an interesting game. So like buying and selling companies, investing, um, although increasingly I'm starting to look at investing like just gambling. I'm just like, "Bro," I'm just like, "Cool, here is 50K. I don't know what's gonna happen, but, you know, vibes."

Ali Abdaal 1:38:15 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:38:15 Um, so-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:15 We're talking like angel investing and-

Tim Armoo 1:38:16 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:38:17 ... okay. Nice

Tim Armoo 1:38:17 ... um, but I'm trying to do, I'm trying to do less of that and more where I can influence the outcome.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:23 Okay. Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:38:23 So like rather than, you know, 25K checks actually being like, "All right, here's 100 grand," but I'll be like- Like, on the board of the company, and we will help it to steer that way rather than just like, "Oh, you know, here's some cash,"

Tim Armoo 1:38:41 you know? Uh, 'cause I still want to ensure that Fanbytes keeps growing to the part that it is. Um, yeah, so-

Ali Abdaal 1:38:48 Hmm

Tim Armoo 1:38:49 ... that's it.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:51 How have your attitudes towards money changed from kind of age 14-

Tim Armoo 1:38:55 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:38:55 ... thinking a Mercedes-Benz costs 500 quid and making, you know, a few quid an hour to-

Tim Armoo 1:38:59 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:38:59 ... now having a life-changing exit? Like, what was the, that journey?

Tim Armoo 1:39:04 So I think at the beginning, I think this also the case with quite a lot of people. I think at, at the beginning I had quite a scarcity mindset towards money. Um, I very much was like, "Oh, I've got this. I have to make sure that, you know, it doesn't go." And I think over time, because I've proved to myself that I've become the type of person who can create value and make money, I now approach it with a lot more abundance.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:32 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:39:33 A lot more like, "Oh yeah, cool, that's fine. Okay, this happens, this happens." And I'm very aware that it's very, I guess, like, fortunate, uh, position to be in, but, like, I think that was a big change, was just going from scarcity to abundance. And, you know, every time you'd hear people say, like, you know, "Money doesn't make you happy," et cetera, it's like, like, yes, that's true, but I'm also significantly happier, right? [laughs] Like, um, um, I'm also significantly happier than I was w- like, when I didn't have it. So, um, those would probably be the two main ones. But I think definitely going from scarcity to abundance. And I actually think a mental trick I should have done when I was younger was I think I should have tried to, like, program my mind to think more in abundance rather than waiting for the money to come to then think in abundance. That was a mistake. If I had treated money as more like, uh, oh, you know, like, you know, it ebbs and it flows, it goes from here, it goes from here. I just need to become the type of person who can do it, blah, blah, blah. Like, I would not have held onto things for too long, and I also would not have made certain decisions which were based out of, like, I don't want to lose. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:58 Mm

Tim Armoo 1:40:59 ... rather than now I'm just like, "Oh, cool. Whatever."

Ali Abdaal 1:41:02 So let's say someone's listening to this and they currently have a scarcity mindset towards money-

Tim Armoo 1:41:05 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:41:05 ... and they're thinking, "Well, Tim, easy for you to say. You've got-"

Tim Armoo 1:41:08 I know.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:08 [laughs] Um-

Tim Armoo 1:41:10 That was me.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:10 Yeah. [laughs] Uh, what would be the instructions that, the, the code for the firmware update to get that mental model of money, the one that's more abundant rather than scarce? Assuming you don't add several zeros after your bank account balance. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:41:24 Money comes as a result of the person that you are, and the person that you are is by and large a consequence of, like, the skills and the habits that you have.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:39 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:41:39 So rather than optimizing for the money, like, focus on, like, skill acquisition, right? For example, with me, I really, in our first two years, really in our first, yeah, three, four years, all the brands that came to us were due to inbound. Like, they'd come to us rather than us going directly to them, and it's because we became very good at, like, building marketing funnels and all that stuff that brought in brands. And I learned those funnels from, like, again, Russell Brunson and all these guys. So I'd build all these funnels, that would become the, like, foundation of the business and that would bring people in. So I thought more about, like, the skills I was cultivating, and as a consequence of those skills, I was then able to create something of value, and then those things of value then made me money. So to that, you know, young person thinking that, I'd say, yes, A, I know it's incredibly, um, challenging to think like that when you don't have money, but it's very important to focus on, like, the skills and actually cultivating skills which can then lead to money.

Ali Abdaal 1:42:53 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:42:53 Which is things like, you know, marketing and sales and, uh, copywriting, things like that. Like, you wanna focus on just, like, being of use to the economy because if you're of, like, general use in some way, people will pay you for that.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:10 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:43:10 And, like, that's the way that you create value.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:12 It's almost like leveling up in a video game.

Tim Armoo 1:43:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:14 Like, if you want, if you wanna get the gear to take down that endgame boss, you need to level up.

Tim Armoo 1:43:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:19 And you need to do all this stuff to level up.

Tim Armoo 1:43:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:21 Train up to these different trade skills.

Tim Armoo 1:43:23 That's why-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:23 Sales, marketing

Tim Armoo 1:43:23 ... I was talking about cheat codes.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:25 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:43:26 Actually, with the book, um, with the book, one of the titles, one of the suggested titles was basically around cheat codes. It, it was like, it was something like... [sighs] I forgot. It, it was basically like how to discover the cheat codes to winning in business and life or something. Dan actually told me not to go with that title because he said that you don't wanna be linked with the word cheating. So I was like, "Okay, cool."

Ali Abdaal 1:43:53 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:43:53 Uh, but, but, um, but I do see it as a game-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:57 Yeah

Tim Armoo 1:43:57 ... um, of just, you know, figuring out the inputs. Okay, that worked, that didn't work, done.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:03 Yeah. Yeah, this is something I was talking about with, um, Alex Hormozi as well in, in the podcast.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:08 Um, this idea that, like, I know so many people who, who like come to me and they're like, "Hey, Ali, you know, you know about this investing stuff. You know, I'm, I'm currently making, I don't know, 50K in my job and I'm saving 10% and I wanna put it in the, you know, index funds or like individual stocks." And I'm like, I mean, the right answer is index funds, but actually the, that's the wrong answer because what, you're gonna earn 3, 4, 6% and-

Tim Armoo 1:44:29 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:44:29 ... when you're 55 then, then you'll be good? Like, instead, if you can find a way to invest those things in your own education-

Tim Armoo 1:44:36 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:44:36 ... so that you become the sort of person who then can command a premium-

Tim Armoo 1:44:39 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:44:39 ... and can just make money-

Tim Armoo 1:44:41 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:44:41 ... as an individual, that's way more ROI positive.

Tim Armoo 1:44:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:44 And the way Homozy describes it is that it's investing in the S&P versus the S&Me [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:44:49 [laughs] Yeah, word.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:49 And I was like, "Oh, that's good." [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:44:50 There you go. Yeah, I mean, you know, like people talk about compounding interest, but you almost wanna, you know, compound yourself.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:58 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:44:58 Like, that's way better. If you, if you... The returns on compounding yourself are way more than any stock, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:45:06 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:45:07 Than you could ever... More than any crypto.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:10 Yeah. And I guess almost the, the... There's like a tier, a tier list of this almost, where it's like most, like the, the top returns are in compounding yourself. The second top returns are in, are in investing in your own business.

Tim Armoo 1:45:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:22 And then worst case scenario, S&P 500, okay?

Tim Armoo 1:45:25 True. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:45:25 Once you, once you have literally no other options-

Tim Armoo 1:45:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:45:26 ... and the money's just sitting there burning a hole in your account-

Tim Armoo 1:45:28 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:45:28 ... okay, fine.

Tim Armoo 1:45:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:29 Let's try and go for 7% to beat inflation.

Tim Armoo 1:45:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:31 But like there are so many options-

Tim Armoo 1:45:33 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:45:33 ... beyond, beyond that point.

Tim Armoo 1:45:34 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:35 But I think people default to, "Oh, I should invest."

Tim Armoo 1:45:38 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:38 Because especially I think in traditional fields, like I know so many doctors who feel like they don't have any skills outside of medicine.

Tim Armoo 1:45:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:43 Like, like how do you make money? Investing is, is just the only option.

Tim Armoo 1:45:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:46 Um, rather than I actually could start a business.

Tim Armoo 1:45:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:49 I could learn how to do that.

Tim Armoo 1:45:51 Yeah, you wanna almost like see yourself... One of the things that I say to friends is that you wanna see yourself as like a Sims character.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:59 Oh, okay. Tell me more.

Tim Armoo 1:46:00 That you're almost just like there, and you're playing Sims and like you're the character, and then it's like, okay, go left. All right, cool. It's like go to gym. Do, do, do, do. I go to the gym. I do this. All right. Like do not eat now. Okay, I shall not eat now, right? Like, like type on laptop. Right, cool. So when you have a Sims character, and you just like tell it to do stuff, it just, it just like goes and does stuff. And I've often tried to see my life as a bit of a Sims character. Like I am now in good shape, and beforehand I was not in good shape. And I was like, okay, what are the two things that I need to do to be in good shape? Well, eat less, move more. Done, right? So I eat less. So sometimes I'll be hungry, and I'm like, "Well, I'm not gonna eat now." Okay, I don't eat, right? Um, I'm now gonna, you know, move more, gym. Cool, I now go to the gym. So I think I treat myself almost like a Sims character because I'm just like, well, if a Sims character can do it, then why can't you, you know? [laughs] Um, that's kind of the mentality that I have towards just life in general.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:08 Love it. Do you/did you ever struggle with procrastination?

Tim Armoo 1:47:13 Oh, yeah. But I told myself that everyone else did, so it's fine. So I basically have to like procrastinate less. So rather than trying to stop procrastinating, I just said I will procrastinate less, and that helped me. My form of procrastination, which is probably similar to you, is like it's not that you waste time doing meaningless stuff, it's that you waste time doing the less important thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:44 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:47:44 Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:47:45 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:47:45 So you're like, "I know I need to do this, but I'm gonna read this book instead."

Ali Abdaal 1:47:48 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:47:48 Right? [laughs] Right? Um, so I just became aware of that, and I just said like, "Don't fight procrastination, just try and procrastinate less."

Ali Abdaal 1:47:58 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:47:58 Which is very different from like I am not gonna procrastinate because I don't think... Anyway, in my case, I don't think it was possible for me not to procrastinate.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:07 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:48:07 I think it was just procrastinate less.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:10 Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think for me as well it was like so many of the skills I've learned over time have been because I was procrastinating from doing something else-

Tim Armoo 1:48:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:48:17 ... something else I should've done. Like, you know, like I can't be asked to do my homework right now, let me just tinker with some like web design inspiration sites-

Tim Armoo 1:48:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:48:23 ... and be like, ooh, well, that's a nice gradient, that's a nice font.

Tim Armoo 1:48:25 Yeah, exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:25 And just over time you just develop these skills through procrastination.

Tim Armoo 1:48:28 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:29 Um, the only procrastination that doesn't develop skills I think is when I find myself just like randomly scrolling Instagram or Twitter. I'm just like-

Tim Armoo 1:48:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:48:35 ... why, why am I doing this? Like-

Tim Armoo 1:48:36 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:37 Um, and in a way... Huh, I've just thought of this. The fact that we have a phone, and our phone is our go-to device of procrastination-

Tim Armoo 1:48:45 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:48:45 ... it's a lot harder to do interesting things on a phone than it is on a desktop computer.

Tim Armoo 1:48:51 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:51 Back in the day when you and I are sitting at home on our, on our laptops or our computers or something and you wanna procrastinate, oh, let's go on a subreddit for marketing.

Tim Armoo 1:48:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:56 Let's go on web design subreddit.

Tim Armoo 1:48:57 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:58 I'm not gonna go on a sub- subreddit on my phone.

Tim Armoo 1:48:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:59 I'm gonna go on Twitter on my phone because it's so easy.

Tim Armoo 1:49:01 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:01 So in a way, [laughs] like procrastinating on a computer is just inherently worth more overall to compounding yourself-

Tim Armoo 1:49:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:49:07 ... than procrastinating on a phone.

Tim Armoo 1:49:08 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:08 A hot take there. Um, what do you do when you

Ali Abdaal 1:49:13 know you should do something or you have to do something, and you can't be arsed to do it? Like what, what's, what's the process? Do you, do you think I'm a Sims character, I will just do the thing? Like how, how does it work?

Tim Armoo 1:49:24 So I think I just do the thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:26 Mm.

Tim Armoo 1:49:26 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:49:28 Regardless of how you feel about it.

Tim Armoo 1:49:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:29 Yeah. I, I don't feel like going to the gym right now. You know, last night I was like, oh, it's midnight. There's a McDonald's drive-through there. You know what? Let's, let's go in. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:49:37 I don't know. I mean, uh, so there's a very good book I read called Be Your Future Self Now.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:43 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:49:44 And it's written by, it's, it's written by a guy called, uh, Ben Hardy.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:49 Oh, I know him.

Tim Armoo 1:49:50 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:50 He's cool. He's great.

Tim Armoo 1:49:51 And I really like it because I always ask myself like what would my future self do.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:57 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:49:58 And so, you know, going to the gym, my house, like there's a gym box pretty close by. I also have like a gym set up at home. So I'm just like, cool, I'm just gonna go to the gym. Um, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:14 How do you balance what would my future self do with I wanna have fun in the here and now?

Tim Armoo 1:50:19 It depends on your definition of fun. Like what w-

Ali Abdaal 1:50:24 So I'm thinking like I know my future self means I sh- would, would probably not want me to eat the McDonald's m- meal deal at midnight, but I really wanna eat the McDonald's meal deal. And there's al- there's, there's always... I feel like there's always a tension between the thing that drives long-term results-

Tim Armoo 1:50:40 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:50:40 ... and the thing that feels good right now, often. Like I feel... You know, like last night I canceled my session with my personal trainer because my girlfriend was unwell, and I felt like, "Yes, I don't have to do my personal trainer session." And it's like, "Mm, uh." [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:50:53 That's funny.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:54 It feels good to not do a thing that you know you should do because you know it's gonna be painful because everything that's worth doing tends to-

Tim Armoo 1:50:59 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:50:59 ... feel a little bit dis- uncomfortable in the short term.

Tim Armoo 1:51:03 I think that for me, I just changed my definition of fun.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:07 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:51:09 Um, that I do find it fun to do the, like, unpleasant things.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:15 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:51:16 So yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:17 Nice.

Tim Armoo 1:51:18 I think that I had to almost rewire my mind to, uh, to do that. I'm trying to think because one of the questions I get asked a lot by friends is like, "Oh, you know, why don't you chill out, and why don't you that?" And I'm like, "'Cause I'd find that boring."

Ali Abdaal 1:51:31 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:51:32 So the thing that I find fun is, like, tinkering with projects and tinkering with ideas and, like, you know, talking to people and them saying, you know, "You've changed this, you've changed that. All right, that could work." Like, that's fun to me.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:44 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:51:44 So I think that I just rewired my definition of fun. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:50 It's, it's interesting you say that. So I've, I've been reading some studies that basically talk about exactly this-

Tim Armoo 1:51:54 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:51:54 ... um, in research for the book and stuff, um, around how you can actually train your mind to feel a dopamine hit from discomfort-

Tim Armoo 1:52:04 Oh, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:04 ... or from lifting the bench press thing-

Tim Armoo 1:52:06 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:06 ... that's, like, harder th-

Tim Armoo 1:52:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:07 ... r- rather than the reward at the end.

Tim Armoo 1:52:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:09 'Cause if you train yourself to feel that dopamine from the donut you have at the end-

Tim Armoo 1:52:12 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:12 ... or the McDonald's drive-through like I do, that's the sort of, uh, uh, compounding in the wrong direction.

Tim Armoo 1:52:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:18 Whereas if you can genuinely train your brain to genuinely feel enjoyment and fun-

Tim Armoo 1:52:22 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:22 ... and energy-

Tim Armoo 1:52:23 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:23 ... from doing the thing that looks like work-

Tim Armoo 1:52:25 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:25 ... you're just, like, winning because it feels, it feels like play.

Tim Armoo 1:52:29 Yeah. There's a, there's a book I'm reading actually, uh, I'm tr- Let me get the name. It is called Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:39 Sick. I'm just buying that one.

Tim Armoo 1:52:41 And it is one of... You know, my favorite book is a book called Psycho-Cybernetics.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:45 Oh, it's sick. I read that when I was, like, in year nine or something. It was fucking game-changing. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:52:49 Yeah. Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:52:50 Like, the whole idea of, like, neuroplasticity and all that stuff, just like, oh my God.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:55 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:52:55 And this book about Design the Mind, it, it's almost the modern version of that, which is, like, you can rewire your mind to assign different meanings to different things. You can literally, like, invent yourself. And so I think that approach is what I took to just, uh... Like, so, you know, in your example, I take a lot of, uh, pleasure from, like, being at the gym and doing, like, a PR on bench press 'cause I'm like, like, that's just more pleasurable, right? I take more pleasure from being like, "Oh, I've actually gone on, like, an 18-hour fast," 'cause I'm just like, yeah, that's just more pleasurable. Um, yeah. That book, you know, Psycho-Cybernetics, there's another one which I just forgot, but, like, psych, Psycho-Cybernetics and Design the Mind, I just found them to be like, why is this not taught in GCSE? Like, people should understand the idea of neuroplasticity and being able to, like, change your mind, change your brain. Like, people should just know this.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:07 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:54:08 But, um, yeah, but they

Tim Armoo 1:54:10 don't.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:10 Yeah. Have there been any, any other books that have had a big impact on you?

Tim Armoo 1:54:13 So Good They Can't Ignore You-

Ali Abdaal 1:54:15 Oh, yeah

Tim Armoo 1:54:15 ... by Cal Newport. That was a great one. Um, I think all the books by Russell Brunson.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:22 I've never read any of his stuff. I think that, like, my-

Tim Armoo 1:54:25 Interesting

Ali Abdaal 1:54:25 ... I, I started working with a CEO coach, like, three days ago.

Tim Armoo 1:54:27 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:28 And he was telling me, "You need to read Russell Brunson's trilogy of books-"

Tim Armoo 1:54:30 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:54:30 ... just 'cause I, I know so little about marketing, and he was like-

Tim Armoo 1:54:33 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:54:33 ... "This will just level you up as a, as a, as a CEO."

Tim Armoo 1:54:35 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:35 So [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:54:36 Yeah. That.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:37 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:54:37 So you should do that.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:38 I will do that. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:54:39 Um, So Good They Can't Ignore You, Psycho-Cybernetics, uh-

Ali Abdaal 1:54:45 What did, what did you take away from So Good They Can't Ignore You?

Tim Armoo 1:54:47 Well, just the value of skills.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:49 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:54:50 That was what I said earlier that, like, don't focus on the money, just, like, focus on building rare and valuable skills, and if you do that, you will always be in demand. So, like, right now you could put me anywhere in the world, and I will be fine because-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:06 Hmm

Tim Armoo 1:55:06 ... I get sales, I get marketing, I get public speaking, I get people, I get communication. Done.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:11 Let's say you were designing, you were controlling a Sims character.

Tim Armoo 1:55:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:14 Um, like right now it's late 2022. Someone, let's say they've got a normal job-

Tim Armoo 1:55:19 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:55:19 ... and they're like, "I wanna build a business on the side," but they don't have any skills outside of, I don't know, being a doctor or something. Could be just-

Tim Armoo 1:55:24 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:55:24 ... a very specific skill set, but, like, doesn't necessarily apply to business.

Tim Armoo 1:55:27 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:28 What would be your kind of, uh, syllabus for your s- your little Sim character to go around to-

Tim Armoo 1:55:33 Syllabus. Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:55:33 ... build up the business skills to-

Tim Armoo 1:55:35 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:55:35 ... yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:55:36 So the first thing I would do is I would try and focus... I would ask myself, what areas can I help other people make more money? So for example, like, if you really think about what Fanbytes was, it was an engine for a brand to be able to spend, say, 50 grand and make, like, 70 grand.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:04 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:56:04 Right? We spend 50 grand on a campaign. It made us 70 grand in profit or whatever. So therefore, I'll just keep making that trade over and over. So, um, what I say to that person is like, like, focus on a space, focus on an area, focus on an industry where you can help people make more money.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:28 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:56:29 And the people could be consumers, but it could also be businesses. I generally prefer businesses, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:56:34 Businesses have money. Businesses wanna spend money.

Tim Armoo 1:56:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:35 Consumers don't. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:56:37 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:37 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:56:37 And there's also a clear sign of ROI.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:40 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 1:56:40 It's like, if I do this, I can help them.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:42 Hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:56:42 Because fundamentally, if you can help someone, I guess, like, if by someone spending £1 with you, they can make £3, and in return you say, "I want £1.50," you've built a perpetual machine, right? 'Cause then I'm just gonna keep, um, spending, spending. So I say firstly is look for where, um, you can help people make more money Relatively, um, quickly, so by quickly I mean just, you know, like, like they can spend and they can get the outcome quite quickly. I would focus on, like, a type of skill. So I personally think if you are young or anything, one of the best skills you can have is copywriting. Like, being able to write to persuade people. To me, it's like magic. I can just type on keys, put some words together, configure them in a certain way, and that can persuade someone to then, like, take out their card and pay me. Um, those would be the skills that I'd focus on. And then once you've got that understanding of right, I've figured out the market, I figured out a model in which I can help them make more money, then really all you have to do is just, like, persuade people to, um, to get you to, um, to work with them. And the way they do that is that you work for free at the beginning, have two, three, four case studies, and then you just keep doing it.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:13 Yeah. Nice and easy.

Tim Armoo 1:58:15 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:58:15 Love it. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:58:16 Most of business I've come to realize is, like, relatively straightforward. It's just the mind which just, like, makes you think it's, uh, confusing. But, like, what we did at Fanbytes is not like... It's not like deep tech, right? It's not science. It's not, it's not, it's not anything that's, like, intellectually s- like challenging.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:37 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 1:58:37 It's just, like, emotionally difficult because when we'd email brands and they wouldn't respond, or we'd put a proposal together and the brand would go with a competitor, or they'll do this and they'll do that. Like, that's the hard bit. But the actual doing of business is, like, relatively straightforward.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:52 Yeah. Yeah. I f- I find that one of the things that also holds people back is just not appreciating the meaning of money.

Tim Armoo 1:58:59 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:01 And, like, in, in-

Tim Armoo 1:59:02 That's interesting

Ali Abdaal 1:59:02 ... in, in the sense of, you know, I got, I got an email the other day, some company offering me 20K to give a talk for freaking half an hour.

Tim Armoo 1:59:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:08 That's like half of a year-

Tim Armoo 1:59:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:11 ... working full-time as a junior doctor.

Tim Armoo 1:59:12 [laughs] It's insane.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:13 Like, it's just fricking insane.

Tim Armoo 1:59:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:16 And to this company, it's just a bit of pocket change.

Tim Armoo 1:59:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:19 And just the fact that that-

Tim Armoo 1:59:20 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:20 ... that massive disparity in how companies and individuals value money-

Tim Armoo 1:59:25 It's crazy. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:25 ... just fricking game-changing.

Tim Armoo 1:59:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:27 And we found that, you know, there have been people who've worked for me as employees who've then done, gone on to do freelancing type stuff-

Tim Armoo 1:59:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:32 ... and they're just sort of almo- almost like, "Hey, I just doubled my price and they didn't bat an eyelid."

Tim Armoo 1:59:37 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:38 "I'm gonna, I'm gonna quadruple it next time."

Tim Armoo 1:59:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:39 And you get that thing where they almost can't believe it.

Tim Armoo 1:59:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:42 It, it feels like it's a, it's a cheat code-

Tim Armoo 1:59:45 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:45 ... when, especially when you're selling a service to a business [laughs] who-

Tim Armoo 1:59:47 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:47 ... wants to make money with specific outcome. You're just like, "Bloody hell. I used to think making £12 an hour was good. Now I've just sent an email and I've gone from-

Tim Armoo 1:59:56 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:56 ... 2K a month to 5K a month-

Tim Armoo 1:59:57 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:57 ... and they didn't bat an eyelid. What the fuck?" [laughs]

Tim Armoo 1:59:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's when you move towards, like, you know, pricing based off value, right?

Ali Abdaal 2:00:05 Mm-hmm.

Tim Armoo 2:00:06 Um, there's a very good talk I remember reading... Sorry, reading, watching, and it changed my life. I think it was by Jim Rohn or Brian Tracy. Basically, they said you get value for what you provide to the marketplace, and I remember that just, like, like changing my whole... I was just like, "Oh," like, "that's how people get paid for stuff," because they create something of value and then, like, people pay for that value. It's like, oh, that makes a lot of sense.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:36 Yeah. It, it sounds so simple, but actually there's... It's such a... I think it's, it's how basically, like, all of philosophy, you can, like, you can condense Plato's Republic to just a single phrase of, like, "Be nice to people" or so- or something like that.

Tim Armoo 2:00:49 [laughs] That's so true.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:50 But actually there's so much experience-

Tim Armoo 2:00:52 [laughs] True, true, true

Ali Abdaal 2:00:52 ... that it gets summarized into that one idea, and the idea of provide something of value, [laughs] people will pay for it.

Tim Armoo 2:00:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:57 [laughs] Like it's just... There's, there's actually a, there's a lot of experience behind something that's-

Tim Armoo 2:01:01 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:01:01 ... tweetable like that.

Tim Armoo 2:01:02 Exactly. Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:03 Um, and I guess the mistake f- that some, some people make is they read all that and they, like, nod along-

Tim Armoo 2:01:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:01:08 ... and they never create anything that's of value to the marketplace.

Tim Armoo 2:01:11 Yeah. I think, I think I may create a T-shirt with just says, "Act on it."

Ali Abdaal 2:01:16 [laughs]

Tim Armoo 2:01:17 Like, just do shit, right? Um, 'cause you have to do something to get some outcome.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:22 Yeah.

Tim Armoo 2:01:22 If you don't do anything, then you're not gonna get an outcome, you know?

Ali Abdaal 2:01:24 Yeah. And I think in the world of business, like, um, this the thing I've been think- thinking recently, like, I think a lot of people conflate value, value to the marketplace with my value as an individual.

Tim Armoo 2:01:35 Yes. Yes. Oh my God, yes. Yes, 100%.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:40 It, it... What do you mean? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 2:01:41 Drop mic.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:42 Tell me more. [laughs]

Tim Armoo 2:01:43 Um-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:43 What did that spark for you? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 2:01:45 Y- like, I talk to people, and they have to do a specific thing, right? It's like, all right, you have a, I don't know, a nail salon or something, right? You therefore need to learn how to advertise on Instagram because that's gonna attract people to you. "Oh, I don't know how to. I'm not a social media person." F- what, do you think that we just get out of our mom's bellies and just know how to use TikTok? Like, w- come on, you know? Like, it's an action that you have to learn. It's an action that you have to do to provide value, and that's one thing which really gets to me, like, "I'm not this type of person." And the truth is, like, you're not any type of person, right? Like, who you currently are is just a bunch of, like, actions and beliefs that have happened in the past that make you now. So therefore, you can be any type of person. And so people go around, like, you know, value to the marketplace, and they're like, "Oh, I know I should be good at sales and marketing, but the value to myself is, like, I'm not a sales and marketing person. I've never learnt it, therefore I can't learn it." It's like, what the f- what's happening to you, right? Like, you're not a stick man who just, like, stays there and just... Come on, you know? Um, that really, really infuriates me when people just don't go, like, "Come on." Like- You can be more, and also you should choose to be more because you're not a static thing, right? Um, so yeah, I completely agree, and it just infuriates me so much when people just have that kind of like, "Well, here I am." And a phrase that massively infuriates me is, um, um, uh, "Well, that's just the way I am." What? Like, the way you are is due to a bunch of past experiences you've had. So the future you, if you think about the future you being a culmination of the past experiences that you have, then it's every experience that you've had from now to the future you will be the past, so you might as well do it, you know? Anyway, rant over. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:03:53 Do, do you get any other questions that make your... that grind your gears? [laughs]

Tim Armoo 2:03:57 I mean, that's the first one. Um, uh-

Ali Abdaal 2:04:00 I love the passion. That's okay

Tim Armoo 2:04:01 ... yeah, no. And the reason why it annoys me is 'cause I see people who are way more intelligent than me, like, mess up because they are not able to confront this question of like, you can be more. Like, I'm thinking about two or three people now where I'm like, "You could be whatever you want to be, but you think you're just a fixed type of person, and so because of that, you're not going to be that person." And every time I see that person, a part of me just goes, "Man, like, I don't know how to get this into you, but man, you could be brilliant." Um, that's the main question. Yeah, that's the main one.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:44 Brilliant. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Tim Armoo 2:04:47 No problem.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:47 That was a good place to end this. Um-

Tim Armoo 2:04:48 Yeah, it was fun.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:49 All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.