The Diary of a CEOThe Money Making Expert: The Exact Formula For Turning $100 into $100k Per Month! - Daniel Priestley
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,162 words- 0:00 – 2:50
Intro
- DPDaniel Priestley
I've started seven businesses that have gone zero to a million in their first 12 months, three businesses that went north of 10 million. But here's a crazy thing. Anyone can do this, and I'm gonna take you step-by-step through the best ways to start making that life-changing amount of money.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Daniel Priestley.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Money and business expert.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's helped thousands of people start, scale, and grow their own multi-million pounds businesses from scratch.
- DPDaniel Priestley
These are the best ways to start a business. We start with an idea, but we need to sharpen our ideas in the market, not in our minds. I see so many people, they raise money, book an office, buy computers, but after all of that, no one's interested in their idea. So we have to conduct tests where we fail fast and fail cheap. For example, waiting lists is one of the fastest ways to test an idea, and this is what really smart entrepreneurs do. Like Elon Musk launched a waiting list for the Model 3. He launched a waiting list for the Cybertruck, validating the idea. In fact, Rolex had a massive breakthrough when they stopped selling Rolexes and they started selling the waiting list. But if it's crickets, okay, fair enough, let's have another idea.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But what if someone steals my idea?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Ideas aren't worth anything. The value is for the person who does it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are the fundamentals of being an exceptional salesperson pitcher?
- DPDaniel Priestley
First, you will have to...
- SBSteven Bartlett
You said business is a team sport. Is there anything you've found that is consistent across all of the best people you've partnered with?
- DPDaniel Priestley
So here's what I'm looking for, and there's a lot more to go through. But one of the other strategies for building a business is... And that should get you into the six figures of revenue just by doing that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's shocking because it's so simple. Let's talk about money.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Let's talk about them.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If someone's out there and they've got a hundred pounds or a thousand pounds worth of disposable income, what should I be thinking about to making myself financially free?
- DPDaniel Priestley
The truth is that there's incredible wealth to be created, and one of the biggest opportunities in the world at the moment is...
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's absolutely crazy to me that so many of you have decided to watch our show, um, and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show. We now have five million subscribers on YouTube, which is a number that I just can't comprehend, and it's a dream that I absolutely never could have had. We started the Diary of a CEO just over three years ago now. And in my wildest expectations, we might have had 100,000 subscribers by now. So you can imagine how shocked I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into these conversations every week, um, and spend some time with us. So thank you. And I made a deal with you. I made a deal that if you subscribed to this show that we would continue to raise the bar. And in 2024, we're gonna raise the bar like never before. I've been working for the last nine months on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed to this show, and I'm very excited to deliver that for you. The production's gonna change. We're gonna go even further with our guests, and we're gonna tell even more global stories. So as always, if you appreciate what we're doing here, the simple free favor I'll ask from you is to hit the subscribe button. Let's get on with the episode.
- 2:50 – 4:57
The Most Exciting Time Of History For Businesses
- SBSteven Bartlett
Daniel, if someone has just clicked on this podcast, can you tell me the reason why they should stay around and listen and what you think they're gonna get from this conversation?
- DPDaniel Priestley
I think we're living through the most incredible time in history. Never before have people had the opportunity to build something that is a global business full of fun, freedom, and flexibility, full of passion and purpose. And today, that is accessible to almost anyone who'd be listening to this podcast. The Baby Boomers, they got access to affordable housing. We get access to affordable global small businesses. Now, the entrepreneurial journey is scary to a lot of people, but if you conduct the right experiments, have the right mindset, follow the right process, it's really predictable and safe for people to get involved in entrepreneurship. And I think anyone who's listening to this is gonna see that it's a lot more process driven than they think, that we can go step by step to build a business that you absolutely love.
- SBSteven Bartlett
On the o- other end of this conversation, in an hour's time or two hours' time, or, you know, whenever this podcast finishes, what are they gonna have that they didn't have before this conversation?
- DPDaniel Priestley
We're gonna talk about the entrepreneurial journey as a set of steps, predictable steps. And they're gonna be able to have a map of how do you move through that entrepreneurial journey. Like, what do you do first? What do you do next? How do you go to the next level and scale up? And who do you contact? Uh, and it's based upon literally coming across thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs at each stage of the journey. So ideally, what I want people to walk away with is just that clarity around how this entrepreneur thing works.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And who are you? What's your experience?
- DPDaniel Priestley
So my background is over 20 years of entrepreneurship. I started my first company when I was 21 years old. I did two years working for a mentor from 19 to 21. Uh, we built a business from scratch to millions of revenue. I then left that mentor. I went out on my own, started my own first small business. Uh, it grew very rapidly. Went from zero to a million in the first year, and then 10 million in year three. I started, uh, seven businesses since that have gone zero to a million in their first 12 months. I've done three businesses that went north of 10 million.
- 4:57 – 6:14
Growing Small Businesses & Making Them Millions
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what about this accelerator? I, I read that you have an accelerator where you have thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs who come to your accelerator for business advice, coaching, from getting from zero to, you know, up on that, um, up to their trajectory.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah, so 12 years ago, I noticed this trend, um, around this idea of global small businesses. And I basically saw that technology was making it possible for anyone to do the things that multinational corporations were doing. And I started an entrepreneur accelerator designed for people to position themself as a key person of influence, to build their personal brand, to build a core team of people around them, to digitize the value that they offer, um, and to take the most or make the most of the times that we're living in. And since then, about four and a half thousand companies have gone through this whole process. Um, we've seen people go from zero to multi-multi-million pound exits. We've seen people build the business of their dreams where they get to live and work from anywhere. And, you know, we've also seen what people struggle with and what they've f- found difficult. We've gone through pandemics and global financial crisises and all of this sort of stuff with our clients. It's dancing classes for entrepreneurs. It's, it's a high-performance environment where you get to be around people who want the same sort of things that you want. Uh, you get to have some accountability, some best practices. Uh, you get a community or a network around you. Uh, and you go through that entrepreneurial journey with other people who, who are going through it,
- 6:14 – 6:55
Can Anyone Be An Entrepreneur?
- DPDaniel Priestley
as well.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you think anyone can be an entrepreneur?
- DPDaniel Priestley
I think entrepreneurial spirit is something that we're all born with. Um, entrepreneurship is this idea that we wanna create value for others, that we wanna take a little bit of a creative risk, that we wanna do something that represents self-expression. There are different stages to the entrepreneurial journey, and everyone can go through those stages. Um, there's also not one type of entrepreneur. There are people who are very good at finance. There are people who are good at operations. There are people who are visionaries. There are people who are doers and get stuff done, and there are businesses that suit those types of people. So it's about finding out who you are, finding out what kind of business would actually be well-suited to that person, and then making sure that you're doing the thing that you're, you're well-suited
- 6:55 – 11:44
How To Know If It's A Good Business Idea
- DPDaniel Priestley
to.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How does one know that a business would be suited to them? 'Cause if you, (sniffs) you know, gauged on the, the people that come up to me in the street, or the taxi drivers I speak to, or my friends, or the DMs that I get, everyone's got an idea. Nobody seems to be short of ideas.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But so many people seem to be stuck at that moment of making a decision to pursue a particular idea that they almost get, like, paralysis. Like, sofapreneurs, you know? All of their ideas stay on the sofa that they were, um, conceived on, but they never seem to get out of the sofa because of, like, that paralysis, "I don't know if this is the one."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I get that all the time, "Is this the idea?"
- DPDaniel Priestley
The, the thing is we need to sharpen our ideas in the market, not in our minds. So what we have to do is go make contact with other people, and see what they say, and see what they think. So we have to conduct, uh, tests where we fail fast and fail cheap, if we fail at all. So here's an example of what I like to do when someone has an idea. I say, "Set up a very simple waiting list landing page, and essentially let people know I'm thinking of starting something in this particular space," or, "We're launching something in this space later in the year. If you're interested, join the waiting list." Now that waiting list concept... Essentially, if people will join the waiting list, and if you get hundreds of people joining a waiting list, it's a pretty good indication that it is a good, good idea. Uh, if you launch a waiting list and you message 3,000 people and say, "I'm launching, I'm launching this thing. Do you wanna join the waiting list?" and no one joins, (laughs) then it's a good indication that's not the idea, right? 'Cause we have to have a good marriage between what we're passionate about, what we wanna do, and what the market wants. Um, there's six million businesses in the UK, 30 million businesses in the USA, and that basically means that there's a lot of businesses doing a lot of things that already exist, so the market might not have an unmet need. The market might say, "Hey, I already have a great cupcake supplier. There's already someone who makes great coffee in my neighborhood, it- we don't need another one." Okay, fair enough. Let's have another idea, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
You can always have plenty more ideas. So you gotta test. The faster you can get on with conducting a fast and cheap test, the better you're gonna, you know, go with your entrepreneurial idea.
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause that's one of the big sort of mental barriers that people have is they see that committing to any of these ideas is gonna cost them three years, their reputation, and potentially hundreds of thousands of their money or, or an investor's money. So that, again, creates paralysis because the discomfort associated with being wrong when you think there's so much on the line-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... will hold you in place. But your idea there, of just throwing up a landing page, immediately kills the paralysis.
- DPDaniel Priestley
A- and also just a landing page of a waiting list.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes, or, um-
- DPDaniel Priestley
So you're not even saying that this thing's a dead certain. You're just saying, "We're going to be launching something if we get enough interest."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
"Um, and here's the waiting list." And by the way, this is what really smart entrepreneurs do. Like, Elon Musk launched a waiting list for the Model 3. He launched a waiting list for the Cybertruck. Uh, I think he launched a waiting list for a flamethrower. Um- (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) Yeah. "I j- I joined all the waiting lists."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah. And he, he's, you know, he's... Essentially, what he's doing is a very smart process of validating the idea. One of the best mindsets that we have as an early stage entrepreneur is the mindset of a scientist conducting a little experiment. And what we're trying to do is not be emotionally attached to what happens one way or another. What we, what we wanna do is we wanna say, "You know what? If people don't like this, okay, I'll have another idea. If people do like this, I'll go to the next step." Um, so a scientist is just kind of like conducting an experiment, and the best experiments are cheap and fast. A waiting list is probably the most powerful early stage experiment you could, um, you could go with. Elon Musk, when he launched the waiting list for Cybertruck, I don't think there would've been an investment bank on the planet that would've backed a factory for something that looked like Cybertruck. But when he walked in and said, "I've got a million people who have put down $100 deposit, if only 5% of them go ahead," they can crunch the numbers on that and say, "Yeah, okay, we'll fund that. Fair enough, let's build it." Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
... so it's very powerful. Uh, I did this recently. I, I had my team come up to me and say, "Hey, we could do a startup around, um, an AI that helps people write a book." And, um, I said, "Well, I'm not sure if anyone would like that, but let's wr- launch a waiting list." So I launched a waiting list, put one post on LinkedIn, 750 people joined the waiting list. I was expecting 150. Uh, and in the waiting list, we actually asked questions like, "How much would you pay for it per month? And how many months do you think it would take you? And what would success look like? And what failure look like? And what else would you try instead of this? If this didn't exist, what would you use?" So we asked all these questions. We collected a ton of data. Uh, and then off the back of that, we specced out the product. I also went to angel investors and said, "Do you guys wanna co-invest in this one?" We raised $300,000 on the SEIS, um, scheme, uh, at a £3 million valuation for an idea, no lines of code, nothing built, nothing designed. Uh, and essentially, we got ourselves ready to, to launch in a couple of months, just simply off the back of that waiting list and all the data that we, uh, that we collected.
- 11:44 – 14:53
How Important Is Passion In Being A Successful Entrepreneur
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
So interesting. The, the other point you said within there was about... You said there was kinda two things, what you're passionate about and what the market wants. Now, on the point of passion, it's so cliche. People say follow your passions, do things you're passionate about, et cetera. How role... How important do you think the role of passion is in actually succeeding at any of these ideas? So if I've got four ideas, cupcake business, floristry business, soccer business, and I don't know, AI business, what role does my own intrinsic passion of any of these areas matter in the chances of success?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Passion matters a lot because business is hard, and you have to stick with it through the downs. So the reason passion is valuable is because you are gonna go through valleys, um, and they're gonna be painful, and they're gonna be... The, the gratification is gonna be very much delayed, uh, in any business journey. So passion is the thing that gets you through. It's not the thing that you ride high on. It's the thing that you get through the hard times with. Um, I have a very weird definition of passion. I kind of, like, tried to strip it back to its bones, and I look for an alignment between origin, mission, and vision. So I essentially say, "What is your origin story? What's your background?" I wanna see that you're doing something that aligns to what you've always been doing. I wanna see that this goes back to age 10. Um, for me, when I ask people about why you're doing this thing, I want them to start the story a long time ago, and I want them to tell me about little wins that they've had along the way that have led to this moment, which is why they're starting this business. To me, that's, that's great.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Because anything that we keep coming back to as a recurring theme is what we're meant to be doing. So for me, I've... Going right back to age 10, I have experiences throughout, um, my teenage years and going back to age 10 that were about business as a force for good, um, and it goes right back to a garage sale that I did when I was 10 years old. We had a house fire. It was a horrible experience, but it turned into a positive experience because I set up this garage sale and made some money, and something bad happened, and I turned it into something good through business. And for me, there's this recurring theme that all of my little wins line up to these, these themes. So the origin story is really powerful. The vision for the future is, "What do I wanna see happen in the future? If all of this goes well, and other people are doing it too, what would this look like in the future? What would 10 years from now, 20 years from now be if we were celebrating? What would we love to be celebrating?" And then the mission is, "What is the most high value thing that I could possibly do that's in alignment with that vision?" So essentially, if there is a strong alignment between origin, mission, and vision, something happens where you, you, you carry yourself in a different way. You, you, you sit differently. You speak differently. You're, you're in this alignment. Other people pick up on it. They wanna quit their job and come and work in, on your team. Um, they hear about the vision. They hear about your origin story. They hear about the mission, and they go, "Oh, I'm gonna leave what I'm doing and come and join that." And that's the magic of entrepreneurship. So for me, that's passion. It's not about, like, superficially, "I like snowboarding," or, um, "Oh, I've always enjoyed baking a cake." It's the, uh, alignment of origin, mission, and vision.
- 14:53 – 23:17
Don't Pursue Entrepreneurship For This Reason!
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interestingly there, um, I was trying to think about what the opposite of everything you've said just looks like. What's the opposite of passion in your definition? What's the misalignment look like? So can you give me a, an ex- an example of what the opposite-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... of that definition looks like?
- DPDaniel Priestley
The opposite is, "I heard about some guy who pumped a crypto coin and made millions of dollars, so I wanna go and find out how to pump crypto coins." Or-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DPDaniel Priestley
... uh, "I heard someone who made money flipping property, so I need to flip property, and I'm gonna do a, a course on flipping property." I've got no interest in f- property. Uh, I've never been interested in property. I've never shown any interest in, in any of these things. I just wanna make money, and it's got nothing to do with my background. I've got no little wins in this. Uh, I, I have no real vision for the future other than being rich. Um, so essentially, this is of no value to anyone listening. No one cares. In fact, when people hear that, they're repulsed by it. In most cases, just hearing someone talk about that makes you feel, "I definitely don't wanna see you for the next two years."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why are they destined to fail?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Because they can't attract a team. Uh, essentially, all of business and life is a team sport, and it's your ability to attract great talented people around you who wanna work with you that is ultimately the reason we succeed, and it's ultimately the reason we feel good. So if you're saying things that repulse people, then talented people leave and talented people don't wanna be involved. If you're saying something that feels resonant, that it feels aligned, and it feels like, um, something's happening, it feels like, "This guy's up to something," or, "This g-" th- you know, "This woman is up to something. She's enrolling people in this vision that she's got, and people love her story," it's destined to succeed because good people are getting involved and more and more good people are getting involved.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you, knowing what's a good opportunity and what's not a good opportunity, do you think that when you're younger, you should be saying yes to more stuff? 'Cause, like, in the position you're in now, you're bombarded with opportunity, so you have to use a kind of a different mental framework.
- DPDaniel Priestley
I have to say no, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. Do you think when people are younger, they should have a different bias towards accepting opportunities or fucking around and finding out?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah, definitely. We, we should definitely go through that phase, um, and also be willing to say, "Oh, that wasn't it. I'm gonna stop and go try something else." So you dropped out of university. I dropped out of university. I was so excited to go to university, and then as soon as I realized, "It's, this is not going where I wanna go," I had to make the decision to leave all my friends, um, and walk away from university.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That, that sort of dark valley you have to walk through of uncertainty when you make the decision to leave the, um, well-worn track of university or a corporate job or the nine-to-five, that... How, how does one prepare mentally? Like, what's the mindset of someone that goes, "Do you know what? I'm gonna go through the stinging nettles, through the bushes-"
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"... and be lost and find my own way"?
- DPDaniel Priestley
I always enjoyed all of this, by the way. So the m- my mindset was that I was always quite excited, that, um, being lost, I felt, was probably gonna be part of the process. I have a simple view around mindset, which is you're either being a reptile, on autopilot, or a visionary.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's that reptile thing you mentioned? What's the definition of that?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Oh, well, reptile mode is fight, flight, freeze, freak out, um, throw tantrums, uh, be angry at the people you should not be angry at, um, feels unfair, that the world's against you, um, all of that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the visionary? What's the definition of that?
- DPDaniel Priestley
So the visionary, I don't know if you've had these moments where you feel anything is possible, um, and you feel very expansive.Um, you think in long time frames, so you're thinking maybe 10, 20 years out. You also might see the world as one small place, so you might, um, mentally, your mental model might be that the world is just one little ball that flies around the sun, and there's markets everywhere, and that there are opportunities everywhere, and that there are people trying to get stuff done, and I could have a business that's anywhere. And you feel a sense of love and compassion and optimism, uh, and you typically, uh, become more influential in your circles. The other strange thing about the visionary mindset is that, um, they did some research with Indian farmers, and they found that, uh, these particular people, they got paid their yearly salary in one lump sum, and then they had to make that last for the whole year. And as they were getting close to the end of that cycle, they had, uh, an IQ test which showed that they were 15 points of IQ lower than when they'd just been paid the lump sum. So the lump sum allowed them to think long term, it allowed them to feel affluent and abundant, and their IQ, the scores on the IQ test went up, um, as a result of feeling good and feeling amazing and feeling affluent. And then by the time the money had run out and they were, you know, not sure whether they were even gonna make it to the next one, their emotional intelligence, their, uh, actual IQ intelligence had dropped significantly. So one of the things that is a real challenge if you're doing it tough is that you're essentially regularly putting yourself into these, uh, situations where your IQ is right down. Um, your, your emotional intelligence and your IQ suffers as a result of being in reptile mode. I remember a time where I got a parking ticket for $40, and I- I freaked out. Like I flipped out. I had a massive fight with my friend, and, um, you know, like I, I was l- in a place where $40 was- was seriously an issue. Um, and I remember thinking, "I'm just gonna eat cereal (laughs) for- for weeks, um, to try and get through this." Um, and so full reptile meltdown mode.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What would the, uh, visionary have, uh, responded to the parking ticket?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Well, the- the visionary has a different view of life, and the v- the first thing is that if a resource exists on the planet anywhere, that resource is really just a couple of conversations away. So essentially, a visionary would say, "Well, if someone's got $40, I'll just have a talk with them and- and see what they need, and I'll help them with whatever they need, and they can help me with the $40 that I need. Um, maybe I need to wash their car. Maybe I need to, you know, help them with their video editing or something." So the visionary is all about the idea that there's really not a lot of boundaries between the resources on the planet, that it's just a gray zone around who owns what and who's got what, and we can just have conversations about that. So visionaries can easily raise money and raise funds because they just think, "Well, someone's got the money, and they wanna put it to use, so I'll just give them a plan as to how we're gonna put it to use." There's a great story that I love, which is, I think it was the producers of Top Gun were creating these little models of airplanes and boats, and they were trying to figure out how they would do like a Star Wars style Top Gun movie. And someone said, "Have we actually called the Navy and asked whether we can use their planes and their boats?" And everyone's like, "No." And it's like, "Well, th- they've got planes and boats. Let's see if they wanna do it." So they ring up the Navy, as you do, and they speak to the general, and the general says, "Oh, yeah, we wanna enroll more people in the Navy, so we would love for you to make a Hollywood blockbuster film. What do you need?" And they basically say, "Well, here, have the jets, have the boats, have the aircraft carriers, whatev- (laughs) whatever you wanna do." So it's kind of weird to think that someone woke up this morning with the resource that you want, and if you have a conversation about how that resource gets used, right, essentially you are now as g- it's as good as you having the resource. Someone woke up with an aircraft carrier. If you've got a good use for that aircraft carrier, why not have a conversation about how that aircraft carrier (laughs) gets used today?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's shocking because it's so simple. And- and- but it's so resonant with me. There's two examples I'll give. The first I've talked about many times. It was when I was 16, 17, in sixth form, saw Carly Stokes sat in front of me, who was a girl in my school. Think she was head girl, but she was picking the vending machines we were gonna get in the school. And in my brain, I thought, um, "We have 2,000 paying customers here. Surely there's a vending machine company that would love to put th- these machines for free and give us a cut." Went to the computer room, sent five emails based on Google search rankings. By the same day, and Mr. Sprinkle, who was our head of ... has confirmed this on live TV. Someone showed up with a tape measure to fit the machines, because one of my emails had gone to a former student who is now the CEO of a vending machine company, and he had been looking to give back to the school. Example, uh, B comes-
- DPDaniel Priestley
In- in that one-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DPDaniel Priestley
... did you feel what it felt like to be a visionary, where it's like anything's possible? Like why are we not just, of course we've got 2,000 cli- like, like it, did you feel... 'Cause you must have felt reptile versus visionary in your life. You've had reptile moments where you're like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, 100%.
- DPDaniel Priestley
... "Ugh, I hate everyone. I wanna kill everyone."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- DPDaniel Priestley
You know, grr.
- 23:17 – 28:40
How To Be A Visionary
- DPDaniel Priestley
you know what-"
- SBSteven Bartlett
We can bend the world, you know?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah, we can, we can bend reality, exactly. We have a conversation about how reality works, and we'll just, you know, bend it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, and s- so my question has always been like, where does that come from? Because I view our beliefs, all of our beliefs, as a stack of evidence we either have or don't really have. And for me, the youngest of four siblings, I had so much space compared to my siblings when I was young that I got to, like we said earlier, like fuck around and find out. I got to conduct experiments-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and that led me to believe that the world is bendable. I used to say when I was 14 that if someone said to me that we need to go to the moon next week, I believe there's a way. 'Cause I think there's probably a rock- rocket going, and all I need to do is contact the person and make a compelling pitch. That's how I get to the moon next week.
- DPDaniel Priestley
You thought that at 14?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Wow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I used to say this all the time. Like, my- my difference between myself and my peers, they were academically better-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... but in my head, there was... The only thing that stood in the way of where I am now and where I wanna be is a bunch of people.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Bunch of conversations, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DPDaniel Priestley
And pitching. Essentially, pitching is enrolling people into new ideas. So what entrepreneurs do to advance their ideas is we pitch them into existence. We start with an idea and we pitch it and we pitch it and we pitch it. We sharpen our pitch by talking to people.But what we're doing that's different is we're not just explaining the idea to people, we're trying to enroll them into that vision. We're enrolling people into this vision that we've got for the business. And that, um, process of getting people to do something that they didn't wake up thinking they would do that day is pitching, right? That's, and that's one of the first tools that you learn as an entrepreneur. And actually, on Dragon's Den, that is the main tool that people are given in order to enroll the dragons into investing or, or getting involved or not. So, um, where does it come from, I think was your question. Uh, I believe it's built into every single individual, that it's an evolutionary function, that essentially at the very base of our brain is this reptile mode, which is fight, flight, freeze, which is rarely appropriate, but in a survival situation probably is appropriate. And then there's autopilot mode, which is essentially just do what you've always done, repeat the past, you know, just get into a loop. Uh, if it worked last week an- and I didn't die last week, well, then I might as well do the same week again. Um, and then there's visionary mode, which is, what could I do differently? What, you know, what might, wha- what would be a creative way to solve this problem? So I feel that a lot of people think they're missing something, and actually it's all built in. And if you can get yourself into that visionary mode, often it's the people you hang out with, um, it's the books that you read, the podcasts that you listen to. If you can get into that mode, then a lot more becomes possible. You get more IQ points, you get more EQ points, um, and you see the world in a, in a very different way.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The key question there is, like, how do you get into that mode? I have a very one-dimensional, biased, um, journey, so I'm not sure if my journey is the, the best one to take, uh, notes from. But from what I've seen personally, people are either in some kind of upward spiral towards being more visionary, because it's compounding in their favor.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They're, they're, they're sending the email, and then it's working, which means they have the evidence to send more, they're more likely to send emails with more conviction and more frequency because it worked last time. And then more work, they get more responses, so they send more emails. It's this upward, wonderful reinforcing spiral upwards, and they become more and more visionary. Like Elon Musk is at the very top now. He's like, "Spaceships to Mars."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
He's like, "Neu- chips in your brain that monkeys can control computers with." That's someone at the very top of that visionary cycle. And at the, the bottom of the reptile cycle is someone who, you know, at work, uh, the CEO says, "Does anyone wanna stand up and share their ideas?" And they just slouch back in the chair.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because they've had their confidence, um, negatively reinforced. Maybe last time they tried it didn't go bad. Maybe their father or their mother gave them f- bad feedback one day, and they're in this downward spiral wh- wh- where when they do show up-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... they show up with low confidence.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They put in a bad performance, it goes bad, less likely to show up-
- DPDaniel Priestley
I would call, I would actually call that autopilot mode, which is, "I've never done this before, so I won't do it next time."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Um, reptile mode is, is d- very destructive.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- 28:40 – 36:21
How To Be Great At Pitching Business Ideas
- DPDaniel Priestley
that you are worth listening to, that there's something about your background or what you've done or the data that you are possessing or the mentor that you've got that gives you some sort of authority to be talking about this. So clarity and authority. Uh, defining some sort of a problem that the customer has or some sort of problem that exists in the world that needs solving, and that you've identified an insight or a solution for that problem. Then the why, which I would say is about communicating why you care enough about this that people would buy into you as the person to drive this forward. You then wanna define the opportunity. What is the bigger opportunity for anyone who gets involved? The next steps, what should someone do next? And then the emotion or the essence that you wanna leave people with so that they remember you based on that essence or that emotion that you made them feel. So that's the great arc of a, of a, of an ex- inspiring pitch.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What was the last one there? Was it the emotion?
- DPDaniel Priestley
So clarity, authority, problem/solution, the why, opportunity, next steps, and the essence. And it spells out CAPSTONE.
- SBSteven Bartlett
CAPSTONE.
- DPDaniel Priestley
So that's how I remember a great pitch. The, I've, I had to come up with a way of remembering this, because I was pitching so often. I had to be able to come back to, "Okay, how do I pitch this?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
So the essence, that's the one I, I wanted s- some more definition on.
- DPDaniel Priestley
People remember you based on how you made them feel. So you wanna think, "How do I wanna leave people feeling? What's the emotion that I want people to remember?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
When I'm pitching?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah. So you wanna finish the pitch on an emotion. You wanna finish the pitch by expressing, um, what it is that you, uh, essentially, what is the emotion or the feeling that you want, um, you want this business to be about?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what's the opposite of that then, the emotional piece? So what's a pitch w- that is lacking? Wh-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Uh, well, a lot of pitches finish on next steps, and it's very logistical.Um, so I've seen a lot of pitches that are going great, and then they go, "And then here's what we need to do next, blah, blah, blah." And then it becomes a little to-do list, and everyone goes, "Oh, that kinda landed flat." And if you finish on the essence, then you actually just bring people back to, "This is what it's really about," so that we... even though we've talked about opportunities and next steps and the finances and all that sort of stuff, you wanna finish on, "This is what we're really about. This is what we're up to in the world."
- SBSteven Bartlett
I've been thinking a lot about, you know, some adjacent subjects to what we're talking about here, but this idea that if you just asked five times more than you're currently asking, your life would change.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, the secondary example I was gonna give after my coffee, um, machine example from when I was 16 was when I was 18 and I was completely broke, and that's when I was shoplifting the Chicago Town Pizzas to feed myself. And I nee- I start, I was starting this business called Wall Park, and I needed camera equipment. I sent 20 emails to camera companies saying, "Hey, I've got, um, this website I'm gonna launch. We're gonna record f- videos on campus. I need some cameras. If you lend us the cameras, we'll put your logo on all the videos we make on campus." Within 72 hours, Samsung had sent £10,000 worth of camera equipment to my front door in Moss Side. I'd got an email the day after the cameras arrived, and it said, "These are, um, returns. Send them back when you don't need them anymore." And I'd solved someone's problem for him-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... because he had returned cameras in a warehouse that-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... he didn't know what to do with.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
He sent me £10,000 worth of camera equipment for free within 72 hours.
- DPDaniel Priestley
You just asked.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I- I go, "Oh my God." Like, when you're at the bottom and you have nothing to lose and you have an internet connection-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and a Gmail account, why aren't you sending out 20, 30, 50 emails a day-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... asking?
- DPDaniel Priestley
You think in emails. I think in calls, um, 'cause when I was 18, you'd pick up the phone and make a call. Um, I always had this rule called "make three calls". And I remember a nightclub party that I, I saw these 15-year-olds, um, sitting in the street. I'd just turned 18, and I was, um, loving going to nightclubs. And I saw these 15-year-olds, and they're skateboarding and they're hanging out in this little area, and, um, they were asking me what it's like to go to a nightclub. And I said, "Oh, someone should put on an under-18s nightclub party so that you can experience it and see what it's like." And they were like, "Oh, that would be amazing." And, and I thought, "Oh, I'm gonna do it." So I called the nightclub I'd been going to and said, "Oh, I have a promotions company, and we run nightclub parties for under-18s during the school holidays. We've selected your venue to be one of our venues, um, for the next, uh, holidays. Would you be interested in discussing that?" They said, like, "Yeah, send us your proposal." And then I'm like, "Oh, okay, yeah, we'll send a (laughs) we'll send you a proposal."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DPDaniel Priestley
And anyway, we ran, we ran a series of nightclubs at that thing, and we, uh, it was the first time I'd ever made 10 grand in a night because we had 1,000 people pay 10 bucks a head. And that was a lot of money, and it was all cash, and, uh, it was, it was wild. And it was just literally just asking.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I have to say, a lot of people send me messages.
- 36:21 – 41:52
The Magic Of 'With Or Without You' Energy
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
What- what's the sort of psychology underpinning that? Is it, like, scarcity? W- what is it that's causing with or without you energy to make people choose to buy from you or go with you?
- DPDaniel Priestley
I think people like to get involved in something that they feel is happening. Um, and it also demonstrates that you're a key person of influence, that you're actually an influential person in your industry, that you have the confidence to say, "I'm, I'm putting this on. It's gonna happen. We're gonna make the movie. We're gonna launch the business. We're gonna do the thing. We're gonna raise the fund." You- you're free to join or not. Uh, totally fine. Uh, it's there's no neediness, and humans respond to the idea that they don't wanna miss out on something that's gonna happen. Um, very rarely, exciting things happen, right? Most of the time, for most people, everything's humdrum, and then occasionally, something exciting is happening, and you don't wanna miss out on something that's happening. So, you know, I don't like... No one likes neediness. People like things that are happening, and people like to flock around key people of influence. So by demonstrating that you're a key person of influence, just putting something together, people just naturally gravitate around that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's interesting 'cause it reminded me of an example from a company that, uh, I invested in five or six years ago. And in one of my first meetings with them, I looked at their website, and they had this button on there that said, um, "Become a member now," and I said, "We should try changing that to, 'Join the waiting list.'" And when I had my first board meeting with this company, they said, "Steven, of all the things you've done for us, the most valuable thing you did was getting us to change that button from, 'Become member now,' to, 'Join the waiting list'" And I said, "Why?" They said, "Two things happened. The first is, the amount of inquiries we got, the amount of people clicking that number, rose by 500%."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"The second thing is, conversion went up by about 300%."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Massively.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"Because previously, just by changing a couple of words on that, um, button, people would click the button. They would then get scheduled an appointment to have a tour of this, um, facility. They would then not even show up for their tour. They would... because they didn't value it."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"The minute we changed it to, 'Join the waiting list,'" and then they got an email saying, "Hey, you've been selected to, for a queue jump," or whatever-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... they would never, ever miss the tour. And if they were late for the- their scheduled tour by one hour, they would profusely text-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Apologize.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and apologize and try and reschedule. Tiny shift, tiny shift in just a couple words.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Well, it's not a tiny shift because if you look at how h- human psychology works, in order for someone to wanna buy something, they have to be about 100% certain. In order to join a waiting list, you only have to be 5, 10% certain that you wanna do something.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
And people like to warm up to things a little bit slowly. So, "Join the waiting list," means that, hey, you only have to be slightly sure that you wanna do this. Then the uncertainty of, "Do I get through or not? I've joined the waiting list. I've made a micro-commitment. Now it's, there's a, an uncertainty gap." And it's like, "Oh, I need the certainty. I need to know whether I'm off the waiting list or I'm through to the next phase."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
So now we enter a different, like, "Oh, will I, will I or won't I get through?" But it also gives the business a great opportunity to warm people up. So you talked about doing a tour of the club. Let me give you some other examples. Um, Glastonbury Music Festival, they tell people that they can't book a ticket. They can only register for a ticket.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DPDaniel Priestley
Um, that they're interested in a ticket. So a registration of interest, but not a ticket sale. So what they do is they get 700,000 people to register interest, and then they tell you slowly who are some of the bands, and they warm you up to, "Will you get it or not?" And they tell you, "500,000 people are now registered. 600,000 are registered. 700,000 are registered." And they say, "But there's only 140,000 tickets."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DPDaniel Priestley
So then they say, "We're going to make the tickets available at 5:00 AM, so only the true believers are gonna be there, only the true music fans who are willing to get up early." And then there's this whole, like, suspense and excitement of like, "Will I get a ticket or not?" People set their alarm in the morning. They know that 700,000 have registered. 140,000 will get through. So they just fight for those tickets. Rolex had a massive, uh, breakthrough in the way that they, uh... in becoming a, a big brand when they stopped selling Rolexes and they started selling the waiting list. So you can't buy a Rolex. The way it works with a Rolex is you go into a Rolex retail store, and the only thing they will sell you is getting onto the waiting list. So they won't actually sell you a watch. So first you will have to get on the waiting list and register. And then about six months later, they'll say, "Good news. Uh, we have the watch that you want available, but it's only available for three days." Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DPDaniel Priestley
"Other than that, we can hold it for you for three days, but after that, we'll have to sell it to somebody else." And essentially, everyone goes, rushes down and gets the Rolex. So that cycle of join the waiting list and then make the sale is brilliant. And this translates perfectly for people at the early stage of the entrepreneurial journey because it doesn't matter whether you wanna do a rocket to Mars or whether you wanna launch a cupcake business, or you wanna do a fashion brand, or you wanna do, uh, a service with bookkeeping and accounting. All of those you can launch a waiting list with minimal cost. Um, you set it up very simply and basically. Um, you use a template. Boom, you- you've got a waiting list. And you can also collect the data, so you can't just join the waiting list. Name, email, answer five questions to get on the waiting list. How much are you willing to pay? What are you trying to achieve? What's your biggest fear of that could go wrong? What would you try if this didn't exist? So you ask a few of these questions, and then people get on the waiting list, you've got all that data.
- 41:52 – 50:18
The Steps To Know If It'll Be A Good Business
- SBSteven Bartlett
When people hear that, they'll think that putting someone through a set of sort of rigorous questions to give them access to the product on the other side will- would deter most people. But it reminds me of a psychology study that I read about then wrote about in my last book, where they got two groups of people. Um, and it... They had a boring community forum online-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... as the sort of, the product. They let one group of people straight into the boring community forum, and then they asked them how much they appreciated and found value in the boring community forum.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That group of people said, "It was boring." Right? Then they had this other group of people in the study, and they didn't let them into the boring community forum. They made them...... go through a rigorous selection process.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the people that w- got into the boring, the same boring community forum, when asked in surveys after, "How much do you value the boring community forum?" They said it was great.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it's this psychological bias. Because you've had to fight for something-
- DPDaniel Priestley
What you, what you're describing is Harvard. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) Yeah.
- DPDaniel Priestley
It's Harvard University, exactly that, it's the same university subjects that everyone teaches-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DPDaniel Priestley
... but it's hard to get in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Um, I use one of the other s- strategies for building a business is waiting lists, but also discussion groups. So one of the things we do when we launch a business is we don't launch the product or service, we launch the discussion group. So the first thing is, uh, let's say, let's say I was going to launch a gym in Wandsworth, I might say, "We're gonna do Weight Loss Wandsworth, an online discussion group on WhatsApp."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh.
- DPDaniel Priestley
And we'd just promote the hell out of that group. And if we had 4,000 people in that group, we could then launch a gym pretty easily off the back of the discussion group. So I'm a big believer, like in wait lists, discussion groups, anything like that that is super fast, low risk, low cost. These are the best ways to start businesses that, that y- y- you know, and you're collecting data, you're re- getting people to answer questions to get in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you're learning about what the product market fit probably is gonna be, the right product for those people in Wandsworth.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Exactly. And sometimes you get very surprised. You, you find out that, "Oh, I thought this was gonna be for men who wanna build big muscles, but it's actually for women who are excited about CrossFit." It's like, "Oh, okay, didn't, didn't know that. Like, now I've asked the questions, I'm finding out that it's slightly different to what I thought. I thought everyone would love red, but everyone loves it blue. Uh, okay, w- we can, we can do that." So in those early stages of, of business, you wanna... when I said, uh, before about conducting fast, cheap experiments, waiting lists, discussion groups, online assessments are amazing. So an online scorecard or an online assessment, great way to think of them is a readiness assessment. So a readiness assessment, like are you ready to launch a podcast? Answer 10 questions to find out. Uh, are you ready to build your brand? Answer 10 questions to find out. Are you ready to be an investor in this type of investment? Answer 10 questions to find out. So it's an online assessment where you answer a series of questions to get a readiness score, and then based on the readiness score, uh, you, y- people will then find out if they're 30% ready, 40% ready, and people love these readiness scores. This is one of the fastest ways to test an idea, and getting signals of interest. Everything is downstream from lead generation in business, so you essentially have to, uh, you have to generate leads, and then you figure out if you've got a business or not. So the fastest you can get into the lead generation, the better. One of the worst things that people do when they're starting a business is that they think that having a business is about the supply side of what they're doing. Supply side means your ability to look after a customer and keep a customer happy. But actually, a business has to start with the demand side. It's go- you've gotta test the demand side before you test the supply side. If you can't manufacture demand, there's no point manufacturing supply. It doesn't matter. You know, if you say, "Oh, I've, you know, I've come up with this chili and basil flavored ice cream," great, you can make that, but does anyone want that, right? You've gotta check out whether you have the ability to, to get that, um, product into a market. So what... I see so many people, they take a- qualifications, they get certifications, they might raise money, they might set up a venue, they might book an office, they might buy laptop computers, all of this stuff, and they might spend three to six months doing that. And then finally, after all of that, they then experience, "Oh, no one's interested in this. Now what do I do with all that stuff?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
So in the Chilean ice cream example, what should they have done?
- DPDaniel Priestley
Join the waiting list. "We're launching chili and basil ice cream. If you'd like to t- try it and taste it, join the waiting list."
- SBSteven Bartlett
People don't know what they want, though.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Well-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because i- in the ice cream example, it's a taste thing, right? So it sounds good, but in reality it could be rev- like...
- DPDaniel Priestley
So, uh, I mean, this is a crazy idea. It's a terrible idea that we're-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sure. (laughs)
- DPDaniel Priestley
... but, but anyway, let's, let's go with it. Um, "So you, you create a waiting list. We're, we're doing really wild flavored ice creams, and it's crazy flavors like chili and basil ice cream, and, uh, salt and pepper ice cream, and blah, blah, blah. If you're interested in really different, exciting, new flavors of ice cream, join the waiting list, and we will invite you to a taste test, uh, um, when it's ready. You'll get to come to an exclusive event where you get to try and test our latest recipes in mi- in Central London." So now you promote the waiting list, and you see, "Can I get lots of people..." And some of the questions might be, "Which flavor are you most looking forward to? Are you looking forward to octopu- uh, octopus ice cream? Are you looking forward to..." you know, which one? Ugh. Right? So you go through and you, they a- answer all the questions, and then they join the waiting list. Then you say, "Join the Ice Cream Discovery Discussion Group." Right, so now they're in there talking about their favorite ice creams and what crazy flavors they like, and you can actually have a daily poll, and you're doing that all in WhatsApp. And then you say, "Now come to this, the event that we've got, the taste testing event." You could launch the ice cream assessment. All right, "What kind of, what, which type are you? Are you the savory ice cream person or the sweet ice cream, or are you the, you know..." (babbles) So you could have four ice cream personalities, and they take the test and find out which ice cream personality they have. So you can do all of this stuff for free, or almost for free without making a scoop of ice cream. Right, none of this stuff involves actually any commercial kitchens, none of it involves packaging or branding or any of the expensive stuff. You're just doing the things that's testing whether people are actually interested in this. And if it's crickets, if you put a lot of effort into trying to get people interested in this, and you've got 12 people in your little group, and they're all, you know, sadly looking at each other going, "Where's the basil ice cream?" You know this is never gonna fly. If it, you know...
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking there, some people might come to a discussion group, you know, your friends, whatever, your mum comes down. She goes, "Yeah, your ice cream's great, Daniel."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm. Well, you wanna do cold outreach. Cold outreach, uh... (laughs) I don't know how long we're gonna talk about ice creams.
- 50:18 – 53:09
Fear Of Failure
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
At the heart of a lot of these topics is this idea of failure, because you're talking about experimentation, we're talking about asking, we- all these things, and people's relationship with failure seems to correlate to their eventual success. Over the last couple of years in particular, especially from doing this podcast and a lot of other more recent businesses that I run, I've realized that that experimental mindset, the type of person that quickly runs the test versus sits and procrastinates for years is really the winner in most pursuits. And then I studied Amazon, and Jeff Bezos' shareholder letter says, "This has to be the best place in the world to fail." I looked at booking.com, and they have that moment where they launched their experimentation platform 'cause they were sick of arguing about what the best feature was in the boardroom. I look at Thomas Watson back in, I think, 1950 or '60 where he says, um, one of his employees had just made a huge mistake which cost the company $600,000, and he's asked in an interview, "Are you gonna fire them?" And he goes, "Fire them? I just spent $600,000 training them."
- DPDaniel Priestley
(laughs) Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
These people seem to have a different attitude towards the value of failure.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah. This goes back to the school system. The school system is designed for component labor, and you don't want components to fail. Um, what we're doing now is different. So we're, especially now we're entering the, entering the age of AI, so i- in a post-AI world, most of the things that we think of as valuable that the school system could possibly teach us are not gonna be very valuable very long, so functionality versus vitality. When something is functional, it performs a task reliably. When something is vital, it's irreplaceable life force energy. So what we have to do is recognize that the value has swung from something that is reliably able to perform a task to something that breathes life force energy into, into a project. So I know this is kind of woo-woo, but essentially this is the difference, when you are breathing life force energy into something, you're okay with failure, where we're just conducting experiments, we're finding the way that works, and we just found 900 ways that don't work and now we're gonna find the next one, and you're, you're bringing something into existence. So it's like being a parent, you know, when, when you see the child fall down, you, you get the child back up and you get them onto the next thing, and when we learn riding a bike, we have to go through falling off the bike. So there's all of these experiences that you know what it's like to bring life force energy to something, and that involves a process of failure. Um, and then functionality, if we're really, um, putting our value around the idea that something has to be functional or that I have to be functional, that my value is in my functionality, then failure is such a bad thing. So this is a big difference in how the pendulum is now swinging. We have to remove the idea that you are valuable because you're reliably functional, and we have to swing it back to this idea that you're valuable because you breathe life force energy into something.
- 53:09 – 58:34
Life Force Energy & Bringing Stories To Life
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
For someone that doesn't know the definition of life force energy, how would you define that?
- DPDaniel Priestley
So this word vitality has two definitions, irreplaceable and life force, so if something is vital, it's irreplaceable and it's life force. So you need to find something that you are the irreplaceable life force. You pitch it into existence, you create it, you innovate it, um, you take ownership of it, you enroll others into it, um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's the alignment kinda thing you were talking about.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You're aligned to that thing.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah, you fully expressed your life. You're enj- you're enjoying this because it's your life journey, um, and, uh, you know, we're so tuned out from, from the idea of this that, that essentially we have to relearn, what the hell does this even mean, this definition? Life force energy is what kids do, right? Think about, uh, you know, everyone's talking and everyone's serious, and then a five-year-old bounces into the room, "Look what I've found," right? And it's like, "Look, there's mud and there's this and there's..." You know, it's like, "Whoa," and suddenly everyone's disrupted, and they bring energy into the house, they bring energy into a room, so they just know what it's like to fully express themselves and breathe life force energy into something. Let me give you another example. There are magicians, and they have these, like, fake thumbs and these things. Those fake thumbs are functional things, right? There's a functional thing called a fake thumb, and that's how you do the magic trick, but it doesn't mean that everyone who has that fake thumb can do the magic trick. In fact, some people do the magic trick, and people go, "You're just wearing a fake thumb." Right? Then there are magicians who completely make you believe in the magic, and they're using just the fake thumb as well, they're just doing the same functional thing as the other magician, but they're so good at doing it, they're so good at enrolling you in it, they're so good at getting you, your attention and your engagement and your beliefs aligned to what they want you to believe, that suddenly bringing that magic trick to life is what the magician is doing.When you study magicians, you realize that it's not about the gadgets, it's not about the functionality, it's about the way they do the trick. It's the way they breathe the life force into the trick. So, the, the life force is the magic. It's the way you, it's the way you bring it to life. So, the idea that I noticed years ago when I wrote the book Key Person of Influence was that there are these people who make stuff happen around them. Um, and the- these people, they build reputation, their names come up in conversation, they have more fun, they build reputation, all that sort of stuff happens. And when they're involved in something, it all comes to life. And when they're not involved in it, it almost dissipates. It ge- something magically doesn't happen. Um, your involvement in 40 different country- uh, companies, people would ask the question, "But how are you involved in 40 different companies?" And the thing is, is that you're not functionally involved in 40 different companies, but you're breathing a life force energy into 40 different companies. There's something that your, your energy brings that stuff happens with you involved that wouldn't happen if you weren't involved. You're the irreplaceable life force. And if that irreplaceable life force comes, gets, gets removed, the result won't be the same. If you're involved, the result will be different. And that's what people want from you, and it's not functionality. No one's saying, "Can you come and work in the office?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's very, very interesting, very, very true. And I, the two sub-questions that spiraled off that were how does one know, and does one need to know what their vitality, their life force energy is? Do we need to know? And is there a way for us to find out what it is?
- DPDaniel Priestley
We need to get into environments w- where it becomes normal to explore this stuff. And we need to be around people who are full of life. So, when you are around vital people, you discover things about your own vitality. You've had this experience of launching a podcast that gives you access to the world's most interesting people and me. Um, (laughs) and you've got this, uh, a bit from every single person, you've raised your energy, you've raised your vitality. Something inside you was awoken in each and every interaction that lifted your vibration up. When you're in a low vibration environment where everyone's functional, everyone is suppressing their life force in order to be functional, you essentially just resonate with that and you suppress your life force in order to be functional. So, we need to get into environments where vitality is the norm, uh, where we raise our energy, where we feel good about thinking about vision, mission, and values, and we feel good about exploring origin and what, what value that might add to the world. Um, it feels normal to be conducting experiments. It feels normal to be making sales. Um, it feels normal to want to be a key person of influence in your industry. Um, it feels normal to have a conversation about what resources already exist on the planet and how they could be used differently. So, all of those things happen inside the right environment. So, I have a saying that environment dictates performance. I went in, into a number of prisons with a charity called Key4Life, and what we discovered is that a lot of these young men are entrepreneurs but in their environment, the product that you would sell is an illegal product. But they're, in that environment, the only successful entrepreneurs they come across and the only successful entrepreneurs they meet are selling drugs. So, they go, "Oh, that is my pathway. That's what I do. That's my mentoring. That's the environment." If you were to take this same entrepreneurial spirit that these young men have and showed them, "Oh, here's an IT services company," they'd go start an IT v- services company. Or, "Here's a book publishing business." "Oh, okay, now I'm gonna be a book publisher." So, these, their entrepreneurial spirit, the only place they saw in the environment of someone who's on the rise was this drug dealer friend, so they got involved in it. So, environment dictates performance. What we need to do is we need to find environments that lift us up.
- 58:34 – 1:03:34
The Importance Of Changing Environments Regularly
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
What if we're not in an environment that lifts us up? Because there's gonna be a couple of million people right now that are, that when you've described the definition of life force energy and you've also used the word stagnation as almost the antithesis of that, they're thinking, "Oh, my God, I would love some life force energy. I'm in a corporate job in the city. I've been doing it for 10 years."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"I'm, I'm institutionalized in this place because I've been here so long that I don't even know what the outside world would look like, and I've got all these ideas, but I've been..." They can feel their soul has been drained to some degree.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Change-
- SBSteven Bartlett
They've got a mortgage.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Change, well, change environments for at least an hour or two a week. And what I mean by that is, I'll give you an example. When I was 21, I was going out to pubs drinking with friends all the time, we were getting drunk, and that was the normal night. And there was this one night where these people turned up who did labop, uh, Latin jive dancing. And I looked across the room, and I saw them jive dancing, and I went, "Oh, that's incredible." And I get talking to the, the guy and I say, "How did you, how do you do this?" And there's, like, six beautiful girls and this one or two guys who, they're all waiting for a spin. And I'm like, "How do you, how are you doing this?" He goes, "Come to dance classes." I'm like, "Go to dance classes? That's, I would never go to dance classes." I rock up at dance class, and then when I was there, I was in this environment where it was completely normal to dance. That was just the normal thing. In that environment, you grab a partner and y- the music comes on, and they show you the moves, and you do the moves. When they demoed the moves, and I can vividly remember this from 20 years ago, when they demoed the moves, I thought to myself, "There is no way I'll learn that in three months." And then by the end of that first two-hour session, I'm doing the whole routine, and I'm comfortable with it, and I'm like, "Wow, I can do this." So, being in the, you can't do it outside of the environment. You can only do it in the environment. So, entrepreneurship is an environment thing. You, you do it inside an environment and you, it's very hard to do that outside of the environment. So, you basically have to find entrepreneur meetups, entrepreneur groups, um, you, you find a mentor, uh, you, you know, in every city around the world right now, there are entrepreneur meetups every night of the week. Uh, online, there are entrepreneurial events every day of the week. So, you just get in, you just get in the environment.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's this thing called social shedding, which I've never actually shared with anybody before, but it's this idea that when you take that first step into dance class and you get to see behind the curtain of another world, you slowly no longer resonate with your...... other friendship group. And what, and there's often a friction there where they say, "Oh, Dan, (laughs) you," Dan's dance, they start cracking the jokes, "Oh, Dan's a, a ballet dancer now, lads. (laughs) "
- DPDaniel Priestley
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what they're doing there is, is somewhat linked to this phrase, "Misery loves company."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They don't want you to leave. No one wants you to change. You're Dan Priestley. We know you as this.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm. Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do not change your identity. If you try to change your identity, we will mock you. We will, disguised as a friendly roast-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and we will try and hold you back because if you change, what does that say about us? What, that's, that's holding a mirror up to me. It means that I'm less than you in some way. And I hear this from entrepreneurs or startup entrepreneurs, that when it, th- that decision to start building a personal brand-
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... or starting that cupcake business typically causes resistance from their existing social circle, and then this decision whether they wanna socially shed, which means letting some of those people go.
- DPDaniel Priestley
If we were born at any other time in history, you would grow up in a town, get a job in that local town, go to school in that local town. Um, and everything would revolve around just the local issues of, of that particular place. You probably would know 1,000 people for your entire lifetime, and you'd have this very tight circle. There's something in our evolution about being part of these little local communities. And for the first time in history, you can choose to be tapped into a global community. Anyone in the world who, who shares values or you wanna share their values, it's now freely available to, to us. There's something that feels very foreign about that because it's never happened for the last 5,000 years, and then there's something very exciting about this where you go, "Actually, I'm living in a different time now. This is an incredible moment." I think that what's happening is that we're going through an empire shift, and the current empire shift is this empire shift away from geography to digital, which means that we connect on values, and we connect on purpose, and we connect on origin, mission, vision, and those sorts of things. So what, the largest shift that's actually happening is this shift of do I wanna play by the old rules of the geographical based system, or do I wanna play by the new rules of being in the cloud? And in the cloud, anything's possible because I can go anywhere, I can do anything, I can access any information, I can connect with any person on the planet. And as soon as you make this shift into the new empire, that's where everything starts to shift, and now you, so we all have to make that shift. So the big shift is not even just changing your friendship group. It's the courage to change empire. It's the courage to say, "Actually, you know what? The world is a very different place than what I was born into. It's now going through a big change." The faster I can actually get into this wave and surf this wave, the better.
- 1:03:34 – 1:07:46
Starting A Business/Personal Brand
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's so interesting, and one of those shifts from the old empire to the new empire is seen in building a personal brand because the old gatekeepers of media and reputation were just newspapers and the radio, and there was like, you know, ten of those. So you gotta be lucky to get on one of those. Now in the new empire, in the clouds, you can build your own media company around you.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Commission free. You can digitize your value. Um, you can connect with anyone in the world who resonates with what it is that you do. So when we launched the most recent business, um, Score app, we launched it in London but because it was the pandemic, um, we ended up with employees all over the world. And we've never had an office, and we still don't have an office, and it's this incredible business. And what's happening is that we now have clients signing up, every single day over 100 people sign up, and we have clients in 152 countries. I checked yesterday. And they resonate with a message, and there's no, eh, eh, the business doesn't exist anywhere. There's no actual place that you can go to visit Score app. It's just a digital business. The employees are everywhere. The customers are everywhere, but what holds it together are these intangible things such as values and vision and the value that we offer and the ideas and the, you know, all the stories. And all of that intangible stuff now exists in the cloud, and the whole business exists in the cloud. So it is an incredible time. Personal brand is one of these incredible things where you don't need permission. You can just go straight to the market. You've done that. Um, and anyone who resonates with your story, your ideas, y- you know, your, the things you wanna get done in the world, they can just follow along. Um, I, I hate the idea of personal brand being like showing up and doing dances.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
It's actually, it's about sending out a signal of, "This is what I'm up to in the world, and do you wanna come along for the ride? Do you wanna be part of that? Like, are you up for this game that I'm playing? Do you wanna, do you wanna take part in what I'm interested in?" So it's, it's a connection. It's, it's not an image. It's not like a voice or a, a message that gets repeated over and over. It's, "I'm up to something in the world, and I would love more people to be part of that. Come with me."
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think, um, I heard Adam Grant speak in one of his books about the big misconception with personal branding is it, that it's this kind of pursuit for fame, whereas great personal branding isn't self-promotion. It's idea promotion.
- DPDaniel Priestley
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's, "This is what I believe. This is my perspective. Gather round if you think the same."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yes, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Self-promotion sounds like, "We just won an award last night at the marketing awards."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you're all on the table taking a selfie. "We are amazing."
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That doesn't cultivate a, a personal brand. Personal brand is, "This is my perspective on the world. Um, if you've got the same perspective-"
- DPDaniel Priestley
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"... which we call idea promotion, come join me."
- DPDaniel Priestley
It's not, "Look at me." It's, "Look at this."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes. Yeah.
- DPDaniel Priestley
It's not chasing the spotlight. It's becoming a spotlight and spotlighting the thing that matters most, and it's, it's shining the light on something else, especially on an idea. So we see people online who are shameless self-promoters, "I went to the gym today. Look at my avocado on toast with chili flakes," and they're saying, "Look at me. Look at me. Look at me," and the people that we most wanna follow are the ones who say, "Don't look at me. Look at this. This is what's going on in the world, and this is what you should, you should be excited about this." Um, and, and that's the difference because on the surface, we might see you and say, "Oh, well, you know, Steven's all about like, 'Look at Steven.'" It's like, no, no, no. You're missing the point. If you think it's about that, you've missed the point. He's shining a light on something that's going on in the world, and he's bringing stuff into the spotlight. He's not trying to say, "Check me out." He's saying, "Check this out."
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's interesting that the podcast, eh, was the most accelerating thing for my personal brand, and it's really (laughs) bringing people here and then doing my very best to listen as much as I can. Which is interesting, right? 'Cause we've kind of cultivated... It's almost like the campfire. We've cultivated more people sat around the campfire listening to conversations like this.
- DPDaniel Priestley
It is incredible that these times that we're in, these are the conversations that would've been behind closed doors 20 years ago.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
And you would've been incredibly privileged to be able to sit and listen in on those chats. And now, they're, they're been democratized. These type of high-level conversations, the types of conversations you have that you share with the world, uh, you've democratized something that was once a very elite activity-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DPDaniel Priestley
... and you've made it freely available.
- 1:07:46 – 1:10:30
Soloentreneurship Doesn't Work
- DPDaniel Priestley
- SBSteven Bartlett
People. I've, I've come to learn, eh, especially over the last couple of years about the importance of people. You talked about people at the very beginning of this conversation: hiring people, finding the right people to join you in your mission. How central to being successful in both business, but just more broadly in life, is assembling the right group of people?
- DPDaniel Priestley
So business is a team sport. There's no, there's no getting around it. I don't believe in solopreneurship. I don't believe that you can be a one-person entrepreneur. I think entrepreneurs are team players and that they assemble teams. Um, they put together teams of amazing people. Sometimes they put together teams of ordinary people at the beginning and then they become amazing people. So I'm a believer that two-person co-founders or a founder plus an assistant is a great place to start, four-person campaign teams, eight-person core teams, 30-person performance teams. So I love the British military's approach to team building. Uh, so in the British military, they have two-person scout team, four-person fire team, eight-person section, 30-person platoon. So they go two, four, eight, 30, and, um, I've, I've used that myself in my own scale-up approach, where if there's a new idea, we put two people on it. Once it's proven, four people are on it. Once it's up and running, eight people are on it. Once it becomes a business that has its own standalone value, 30 people are on it. So it's two, four, eight, 30, um, and that's been, um, that's been a British military learning, uh, that, that I, that I kind of went, "Well, if they've done 400 years of HR experiments, why wouldn't I just learn from how they organize their teams?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there anything you've found that is consistent across all of the best people you've hired, worked with, co-founded a company with, partnered with? Is there any consistent thing?
- DPDaniel Priestley
I'm, I'm always looking for complementary energies.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- DPDaniel Priestley
So here's what I'm looking for. Uh, in the deck of cards, there's four suits. So you got clouds, so head in the clouds, spades, doing the work, hearts, connecting with people, diamonds, money, finance, data. So I always look for a balanced team of someone who's visionary with someone who's a spades person doing the work, implementer, someone who's a hearts connector with someone who's money or, or data. So I'm looking to try and perfectly balance my team with the four suits.
Episode duration: 1:56:08
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