Business Principles 101

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Today, we are starting…

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Today, we are starting a new series, Business Principles 101.

   2. JOJonny0:04

      If you just want to replace your income by doing something you enjoy doing, you could absolutely sell some kind of expertise, or even sell what you're currently doing, but package it in a business.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:13

      If you want to become good at business, a formal education is in no way mandatory. People love the idea of being an entrepreneur or a business owner more than they like the idea of doing business.

   4. YUYusef0:25

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:25

      Because they want the title without the graft. If the title could be attained (snaps fingers) overnight, in that case it's not worth anything, so you shouldn't want it.

   6. YUYusef0:33

      I've seen people set up a- a blog or a- a YouTube channel, and really plow money into it and try to get the production quality working, and just get nothing out of it, because you can't rely on organic traffic being a- a thing.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:46

      Not anymore, man.

   8. JOJonny0:46

      If you just do for a living what you find intensely interesting, then immediately you have a massive advantage over everybody else.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:54

      We're not actually that good at business, but we've made 13 years of mistakes that we only made once. I'm joined by none other than Jonny and Yousaf from propanefitness.com.

   10. YUYusef1:07

       Oh.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:09

       (laughs)

   12. YUYusef1:10

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson1:10

       Welcome back, man.

   14. YUYusef1:11

       Welcome back.

   15. JOJonny1:11

       Welcome back.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:12

       Welcome back indeed. Um, today we are starting a new series, Business Principles 101. Uh, we have all had a lot of experience. I've done 13 years of business operating. You've had maybe a decade now?

   17. YUYusef1:27

       11, yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:27

       11. Jonny, something similar?

   19. JOJonny1:29

       Same here.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:30

       It's like 30 years of combined running and failing at business between us.

   21. YUYusef1:35

       Lots of failing.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:35

       Mostly failing.

   23. YUYusef1:36

       (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson1:37

       Um, we are getting quite a lot of requests for advice for entrepreneurship and stuff like that, and I figured the, uh, wealth of experience that we have, both good and bad, could be pretty valuable to people, and there should be some golden stories that come out of this. Also, all of us did business degrees of one sort or another.

   25. JOJonny1:55

       Sort of, yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:56

       Accounting. What was your actual degree?

   27. JOJonny1:58

       Economics.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:59

       Was it?

   29. YUYusef2:00

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson2:00

       Okay. And then you did ...
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. JOJonny15:00

      like BBC level, Dragons' Den again.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JOJonny15:02

      If you watch that lineup, like none of them are such and such founded a business when he was 18 and it was the first business he did and he went on to be a multimillionaire. Like, all of them had like eight businesses that at- like spectacularly failed, and then the ninth one just went all right.

   4. GUGuest15:17

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson15:18

      So as a, uh, to try and give some of my genesis story, I guess, with this, which is a little bit contrary to what we've said so far, the first ever business that I started was when I sat down at my first seminar for uni in Freshers' Week, sat next to my business partner, my f- my would-be business partner, said, "I'm skint. I've spent all of my money in Freshers' Week drinking." This is when like maintenance loan was like three, two and a half grand or something in pennies, but then also accommodation was also pennies. Uh, sat next to him and he said, "Oh, well, there's this company that I used to work for in Leeds called Voodoo. Now, you can come and get a flyering job with me later on. Like, do you want to come to the meeting this week?" And then from then, we started working together and that, that was my first ever business, first day of university, sat next to my business partner. 13 years later, still together.

   6. JOJonny16:07

      Still doing it.

   7. GUGuest16:07

      There's a key difference there, though, isn't there, as to why that was successful, and the people who quit their job and remortgaged their house before they've f- fathomed an idea, why, why that was successful and what you-

   8. CWChris Williamson16:21

      We very delicately treaded in and moved up through the business.

   9. JOJonny16:24

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson16:25

       So definitely one of the principles I think that people need to keep a hold of is that if you've never run a business before or if you're wanting to start a business, you have to, as far as I'm concerned, especially small businesses, if you are a specialist in logistics or something like that, there's no reason that you couldn't, after a lot of time doing logistics, then jump from perhaps management to ownership. That's a, a fairly easy one. But for a lot of SMEs, my best bit of advice in terms of starting is to learn every phase of your business from the ground floor up.

   11. GUGuest16:59

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson17:00

       So the lineage of a typical club promoter would be start as a flyer boy, be good at flyering, then maybe become like a senior flyer boy where you manage the other PR staff. Then junior event manager, event manager, senior event manager, city manager, maybe business development manager or something like that, then director. And once you've done through all of those different stages, you understand, you've got a bird's eye view of recruitment, of marketing, of HR, of accounting, of B2B, of B2C, all that sort of shit, and then when one of your employees comes to you with an issue, you can deal with it-

   13. JOJonny17:37

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson17:38

       ... because you have seen-

   15. GUGuest17:39

       'Cause he brings every cog in each wheel.

   16. CWChris Williamson17:40

       ... every single thing and you've got a process. So there we go, another principle is, as you move through the business, as you encounter particular issues, write down your solution that you gave to those issues. Because now, for me and Darren, again, one of the things that we talk about with our business is that we're not actually that good at business, but we've made 13 years of mistakes that we only made once.

   17. JOJonny18:06

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson18:06

       And now, we have a process for ... there's very rarely, very, very rarely that I come up against, and this will be the sa- I know it's the same for you guys because I've seen your auto-responder email.

   19. JOJonny18:16

       (laughs)

   20. YUYusef18:17

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson18:18

       Um-

   22. JOJonny18:18

       (laughs)

   23. YUYusef18:18

       (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson18:18

       ... that very rarely do you encounter a situation after running a business for maybe more than five years which you haven't encountered before. There's something quite symbolic about that as well, that the vast majority of problems that people believe is this unique curse bestowed upon them alone-

   25. JOJonny18:35

       (clears throat)

   26. CWChris Williamson18:35

       ... are actually just really representative of what everyone's suffers with.

   27. YUYusef18:38

       We, we get that with, 'cause we, we offer business coaching as well. And sometimes you'll get an inquiry from someone that's like, "Hey, guys, I was gonna sign up for your program, but my situation is like really unique and different and special. So, I need customized, I need something that's more bespoke." And then they describe their situation and you're like-

   28. CWChris Williamson18:58

       Mm-hmm.

   29. YUYusef18:58

       ... "That is the most standard of standard businesses."

   30. JOJonny19:00

       (laughs)
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   We shouldn't be harsh…

   1. CWChris Williamson30:00

      this is one of the things-

   2. JOJonny30:00

      We shouldn't be harsh on teachers.

   3. CWChris Williamson30:01

      No.

   4. YUYusef30:02

      (laughs) But teachers too-

   5. JOJonny30:02

      'Cause there are some fantastic teachers.

   6. YUYusef30:04

      This, this is just quoting Anton. I, I-

   7. JOJonny30:05

      Yeah.

   8. YUYusef30:05

      ... I think teachers do a very noble-

   9. CWChris Williamson30:06

      This is not, these views do not represent mine, Jo- Yousuf's or Johnny's, or that of Modern Wisdom's. They're just repurposing Anton's.

   10. JOJonny30:13

       You can try and complain to Anton, but he won't get your email and he doesn't care.

   11. YUYusef30:15

       'Cause he's got a phone with 50 numbers in it.

   12. JOJonny30:16

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson30:16

       His little S- his little Singaporean right- wife might pass it on to him.

   14. JOJonny30:20

       (laughs)

   15. CWChris Williamson30:21

       I'm sure he's on Twitter though. Anyway-

   16. JOJonny30:22

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson30:22

       So yeah, you are right though.One of the things that's a little bit weirder is when I look at America, and I see you could go learn psychology from Dr. Jordan Peterson.

   18. YUYusef30:32

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson30:32

       Or you could go and learn, like, evolutionary biology from Nicholas Christakis, or astronomy from Professor Alan Frank.

   20. YUYusef30:38

       (coughs) So we're in an incredible age, isn't it? Like, you can now just have full access to the best teaching anywhere, all the time.

   21. JOJonny30:43

       You mean in the American university system?

   22. CWChris Williamson30:46

       Education. Education.

   23. JOJonny30:46

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson30:46

       'Cause they, all those guys ... Up until not long ago, University of Waterloo still had Dr. Stuart McGill.

   25. YUYusef30:53

       Hmm, okay.

   26. CWChris Williamson30:53

       You know what I mean? Up until five years ago, you could go learn biomechanics from Dr. Stuart McGill.

   27. YUYusef30:57

       But you can do it all online now. That's, that's what I mean, like-

   28. CWChris Williamson30:59

       Well, again, so if you want to find out about that, stay tuned for the week of the 3rd of August, Scott H. Young on-

   29. JOJonny31:07

       Whoa.

   30. CWChris Williamson31:07

       ... his new book, Ultralearning, uh, will be coming out.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yeah. The problem is,…

   1. YUYusef45:00

      I give it to someone else, they would."

   2. CWChris Williamson45:01

      Yeah. The problem is, uh, if you want a job doing properly, do it yourself- Absolutely. ... is true. Yeah. And the conversation that I had, pardon me, with Steven Wolfram the other week was he ... a lot of the time, because he understands coding, right, from the ground floor, he goes into Wolfram Language or Wolfram Mathematica and just checks out the code. So he'll go onto, like, wolframalpha.com and just look at the code and just code check shit and debug shit. And you're like, "Hang on, you're the CEO, 800 people work on this. Do you know who wrote that bit of code?" (laughs) Like, some spotty teenager in San Francisco who works off his, like, out of his mom's basement or something like that. 'Cause everyone's remote pretty much in Wolfram. And you got the CEO going in and just being like, "Oh," drop him an email and be like, "Oh, just checked out the code. There's a little bit of debugging to be done in here. 10 minutes," and he'll do it.

   3. YUYusef45:52

      But the, the problem there is that he has set up his life so that he can do that because that's what he loves.

   4. CWChris Williamson45:56

      Yeah.

   5. YUYusef45:57

      But that's not the way that most people would want to run a business. They, you know, like, he's a, he's an odd character because he-

   6. CWChris Williamson46:04

      Very much so.

   7. YUYusef46:04

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson46:05

      Very unique.

   9. YUYusef46:05

      He set his life so that he can code more, whereas-

   10. CWChris Williamson46:08

       (laughs) Most people want to do it so they can do less. Mm-hmm.

   11. YUYusef46:10

       Well, yeah, like what we're saying about the, the e-myth concept is that you graduate from technician to franchise owner where actually you're not breaking the bread at all. You don't even see the flour anymore.

   12. CWChris Williamson46:20

       Mm-hmm.

   13. YUYusef46:20

       You wrote the process and then someone else is carrying it out, and you've got people telling people-

   14. CWChris Williamson46:25

       I remember what ... so the day I quit, or maybe like the week before I quit, sat there- Sat, sat down there. Um ... December time. KPMG. Sat in w- where nobody can see, but behind the camera in this mystical land of- This is a set. ... CrossFit.

   15. YUYusef46:42

       We're in.

   16. CWChris Williamson46:42

       Let's not forget that this isn't actually my living room. This is a podcast studio built to look exactly like my living room. Ah, of course. But that's actually just all open walls there and this is- It's just black space. Infinite black space.

   17. YUYusef46:53

       We're, we're made of cardboard, so, like, it's just ...

   18. CWChris Williamson46:55

       Yeah. This is gonna become, like, as famous as, like, the casting couch, isn't it? So, like, when someone, you know, in ... I want to come, I want to come up and see the- Pornography. (laughs) See ... I want to come up and see the, the couch. You know when- I want to sit where Johnny sits. There was ... (laughs)

   19. YUYusef47:08

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson47:08

       You don't want to sit where Johnny sits. (laughs) Yeah, that would just be a big dick. Huge dick. There was a thing on Facebook for ages where people uploaded, like, the famous casting couch set- Casting couch thing. ... on Facebook and, and the caption was like, "Every guy in the UK knows exactly what this." Yeah. You're blanking. (laughs) Yeah. You don't know, Yusuf doesn't know what it is. (laughs) I've seen another one, I've seen another one with the real Fake Taxi that's for sale.

   21. YUYusef47:28

       I, I can guess, but-

   22. CWChris Williamson47:28

       Oh, right. (laughs)

   23. YUYusef47:30

       (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson47:30

       Lauren was in Fake Taxi.

   25. YUYusef47:32

       Oh.

   26. CWChris Williamson47:32

       Female Fake Taxi.

   27. YUYusef47:34

       What, what's her stage name?

   28. CWChris Williamson47:36

       Sienna Day.

   29. YUYusef47:37

       Sienna Day.

   30. CWChris Williamson47:37

       Sienna Day. Anybody wants to have a watch of some adult entertainment- (laughs) Just, uh, Porn- With Chris's, with Chris's mate in it. (laughs) Yep. Pornhub-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:03:39

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. JOJonny1:00:00

      the Steve Jobs thing of, like, find your passion and how that's actually not correct and that that doesn't correlate with happiness. And actually if people have autonomy and feel good at something, feel valued, they get just as much satisfaction from a career and a job as they would from a business.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:00:13

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JOJonny1:00:13

      So you can ... There's loads of examples in that book where you can get the same thing from that. But most people, I think it's fair to say the vast majority, don't consider work as something that they genuinely love doing.

   4. YUYusef1:00:25

      Choose to do. 15% of people do, apparently.

   5. JOJonny1:00:28

      Love it.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

      15% of people say that they are actively engaged in their job.

   7. JOJonny1:00:31

      Right.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:00:32

      85% of people are either actively disengaged or agnostic about work.

   9. YUYusef1:00:37

      That's so grim, isn't it?

   10. CWChris Williamson1:00:38

       Yeah, man. Especially when you think that's 40 hours of your life-

   11. JOJonny1:00:42

       Oh, God.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:00:42

       ... minimum, every week, plus travel to and from work, plus all of the mincy stuff that you've got to do around it, the, the, the-

   13. JOJonny1:00:50

       Like all the office politics, isn't it?

   14. CWChris Williamson1:00:51

       Social connections, the taking your work home with you.

   15. YUYusef1:00:53

       Nescafe coffee.

   16. JOJonny1:00:55

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

       Nescafe coffee? Fucking bullshit.

   18. JOJonny1:00:56

       If you take out slee-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:00:57

       Fuck po- po- Coco Pops, man.

   20. YUYusef1:00:59

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson1:00:59

       I- if you take out sleep time, which y- you're unconscious so you can't really count that towards-

   22. JOJonny1:01:04

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:01:04

       ... time spent in your life-

   24. YUYusef1:01:06

       It's such an overwhelming thought.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:01:07

       50% of your life.

   26. JOJonny1:01:08

       But then this is why, like, people-

   27. YUYusef1:01:10

       True.

   28. JOJonny1:01:10

       ... like on a Friday night just get, like, battered because the reality of the situation is just too overwhelming-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:01:14

       Grit.

   30. JOJonny1:01:14

       ... to think about.

Episode duration: 1:03:39