Employed to Startup Business Owner: Scaling a Mortgage Brokerage for Sustainable Growth

Hello campers, welcome back to the Business Broadcast. This is the podcast designed to help grow your business. Today, we're speaking to Tom. He's a mortgage broker. He's been a mortgage broker for some time, and he's just ripped away from his present firm and started his own mortgage-brokering firm. He wants to grow the business, so strap yourselves in as we give him the tools to grow this organization and turn it into a commercially-profit enterprise. Let's go.

I'm James C. Clare and this is the Business Broadcast. This is the podcast designed to help grow your business. We're brought to you by the Entrepreneurs University. Now, if you're serious about growing your business and want to hear from the challenges of other business owners and entrepreneurs that have been there, done it and got the metaphorical t-shirt, then you're in the right place. Every episode, I'll coach business owners, learning from their challenges so that you can grow your business by listening into that helpful conversation. Let's go.

Hello gang. Hello campus. Welcome back to the business broadcast. I'm James Sinclair and you are James Bird and we're rubbish James of the pair of gyms. We are the dynamic duo that helps people grow their businesses. I get more people reach out to me on DMs now. You just call me JB like that's just sticking was only the person that started JB then.

Yeah. Haley doesn't agree, JB. No, she calls me many things, but JB is not one of them. That's his wife. In case you're wondering. And so if you're new to this podcast and you just found us because we high in the charts. Congratulations. Well done to you. You just won the life lottery.

Let me just go over the way this works. We bring on a guest most of the time. Sometimes we change the format and we have some experts on the show. Yeah, once in a while. Once in a while. And we bring people on that have got a business, they've got challenges and I try and work through the challenges with the help of my comrade over here, James Burr.

And I will occasionally play a jingle. That's what I'm mainly here for the jingles. Do you know what? It still staggers me that week after week after, or every fortnight we do, we sort of batch record these together and we do between four and six episodes in a day. Yeah. Businesses that are willing to come open booked, transparent, say exactly what's working, exactly what's not. It's staggering, isn't it? How many people are willing to meet? It seems like they do it because they know that they get a lot of eyeballs and earballs.

Airbuds and eyeballs on their business. That's not the reason we have people on, although lots of people would like to come on and we bat them off very quickly. Bat them off, I said.

very, very quickly. But I know lots of people that have come on this podcast. They've been open, shared their challenges. People love them for doing that, and then they go, would you like this £50,000 contract? Would you like me to lend you some money? Would you like to do business with my business? There was a fella who was at your last event buying businesses, and he had been, I guess, on the podcast. He went on to sell his firm for 1.2 million quid, and he had a marketing agency that he exited, which was

Yes, he did. Extremely difficult to it. We should get him back, aren't we? 28 years old, I think. Yeah, it was, yeah. A young whoop of snow, huh? Yeah. 1.2 million quid. Yeah. And he said that he'd done a lot of the stuff that you said in practice and got it ready for south. So it was a proff to be profitable enterprise. What do you say? Commercially profitable enterprise. You're in it. There you go. So he'd done it. He basically turned his business into an investment.

rather than a business or a profitable job. We say that most entrepreneurs and business owners are building profitable jobs, few build a profitable business in a beanie-weeny amount building investments. What are you building right now? I definitely have the philosophy that you're building an investment

So that you're building a business to sell, even if you have no intention of selling it, which I might have said once or twice before on this. I think, yeah. If everyone's got that on their James Sinclair Bingo card, you can tick it off. But that's definitely the philosophy that you should have.

Do you have certain companies in the organization that are at that stage, but then you bring other ones in, you have to trade them and get them to that point. You sort of have an ecosystem of growing, scaling, investing. Yeah, and buying other companies to help existing companies that might need a little bit of acquisition just to make things easier. Yes. Because I do believe, unfortunately, volume can really help

business become easier in certain sectors. So give me an example. We set up Rossie Food Services. We got it to 1.2 million. It's just not enough revenue to put a transport manager in a warehouse manager. Unless you're going to subsidise it for a number of years. So I just bought Cafe Deli House out and put my 1.2 with their 10 million, bought them all together, being bad a boom, Bish Besh Bosh. We've now making lots of dust.

Would you then, what a great tagline that is. Would you ever... Maybe we should rename the podcast, Bish Bash Bosh. You've got lots of dots. I think it definitely, it would split the audience. Would you...

Ever start something from scratch now that you've seen the accelerating benefit of buying started from scratch 10 years ago, isn't it? So I'm saying now, would you? Now, because you've done so many like you've always got like ticked over. I do believe you were like I do believe buying businesses.

I think you should start at least one just so you know how. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And build the reps and sets, understand the process. But then basically, I think you should build something, start, build, buy, build, sell.

Start going to say that again because Steve is going to love that as a clip. She's going to be doing shoes to start something just because you want to learn the disciplines and find out just how tough it is. And that's, I think, really important. You know, really, really important. So we're starting. We're building it.

We're buying more vertical integration, arbitrage, all of that, then building it again, then getting it ready to sell, even if you have no intention of selling it. Start, build, buy, build, sell.

That should be one of your new things. Why have you never used that before? Well, we are because one of my more advanced seminar days is called investorpreneur. He's flocking everything. I'm trying to give him a little upset by businesses and now he's going to turn the next one. Me and Chad had a little chat about it. We would think if you didn't know who I was.

too much in listening to maybe 100 videos. People would probably think that's about stocks and shares, but it's not. Yes. It's about building your business so that it looks like an investment. You're a top level entrepreneur, so you're stealing all the traits of an investor, all the best bits of an entrepreneur, putting them together into a beautiful cake with a cherry on the top. But what we want to do is really that is about building, buying and selling. And so we're going to call it

I like it. Same thing, better headline. Like all these things, you know, we've learned about marketing, about YouTube, about our most watched or listened to podcast clips, getting headlines good.

Honestly, it's the biggest part of marketing. Yeah, absolutely. So we probably by the time this comes out maybe a month ago, five weeks ago, we released something about the budget and we changed the format. We had my accountant on good business friend of the show James Martin and me and you. But that's why not the reason people clicked. The reason people clicked is we broken down the budget and what this horrific tax situation means for your business.

Well, that's a pill people want to take to understand how they're going to navigate the storm that's coming. And, you know, good title, good headline makes people click, doesn't it?

You said a couple of things there. You said, you should start, build, buy, build, sell. Would you, then, if you were going into a new sector, which I know you don't sort of do, because you fold stuff into existing empires, you call it, which is a great philosophy. But if you were going to go into something that was still semi-vertically integrated, but kind of new, would you ever start something new to learn it from the ground up before you... Is that what you've kind of done with, like, the blue boar, for example, because it vertically integrates, but your

Sounds ridiculous, but that's like a small step into hotelier, isn't it? Yeah, I want to open more hotels on a bike. But now, because you've done the start part, would you say? Yeah. Would we build a hotel from scratch? Probably not.

When you look at it, you can buy something for less than it costs you to build it, and it's already got guaranteed profitability. When I do the buying businesses seminar, what are the businesses we should be buying? Establishment is one of my key metrics. Build a big moat around your business. If you buy a business that's 30 years old, we know that only 5% of businesses get past their 10-year anniversary.

That's a pretty big moat around protection around your business. Now, if you've got an existing business and you're organically growing 5, 10% a year, you buy something that's double the size of you are, but you've got loads of energy enthusiasm and you could put that into this big dinosaur that's really profitable just because it's been established.

then that can be really powerful. So establishment, at least 10 years trading, brilliant management team, preferable, a million of revenue, and it's a good business. I used to buy turnarounds and I just don't, I just think it's easier to buy something that's really working. That's really working. And you can fund them very easily. Why did you do the term out thing? Did you think you had to to get the value? I think that I was thinking, well, no one's going to

Why would anyone sell me something that's already working? Yeah, when I go and see established business owners now to do a business with deal with them, they sort of let me structure it any way I would like. But I think they know because they've conceived what I've done before, that they will.

So I've done lots of private mortgages. I've done lots of delayed repayments. I've just done a deal now where I'm paying a couple of million upfront, one and a half million over five years with the balloon payment at the end. I've never asked for that. It's a very venture capitalist private equity thing to do, but that eases your cash flow.

So it's your methodology of how you buy changing over time. So that whole blood balloon with having brilliant cash flow from the off, whereas back in the day, I'll be like, oh, I'm stretching myself here and I'll make it all work because.

So you'll make them leave cash flow in as part of the deal. Yeah. So they'll do it. So in many cases, they won't usually walk away from it because you don't want to stretch the cash flow of what you've got. What we've got now is the three deals that I'm working on at the last, just thinking about this, the seven deals done recently that I'm working on every single one of them is baby boomer. Is it really every single one?

Wow, okay, so of the seven, how many came to you and how many did you go to? I wanna say came to you, maybe the broker was like, I would like to give you this before it goes on market or have a look at this. 50%, no, so four I went for and three came to me. Okay, and of the three that came to you is any of them, the actual owner themselves, like I want to sell you this thing. Yep, two of them. Really? And one of them is a broker.

Who knows you? Who knows what? Have you bought stuff with him before? Yes. So does he then go? And ask me two new more questions in case I get myself in strong with NDAs here. OK, fine. I have to scare around it, but ask me, but don't ask me what it is. I'll shut up.

No, I'll leave it. I'll leave it there then just in case just in case I don't get you. I don't get you really disappointed. Sorry. That's the FCA. Tell him what I'm. Tell him what I'm. Tell him what I'm. It's fine. It's absolutely fine. No, but you will reveal it on your main channel over time when you can, won't you? What's that like actually? I saw a video that was hard. This is really interesting. So you buy a business.

offer baby boomer. Maybe, like I say, it's a bit of a dinosaur. It's already got profitability for establishment. And then all of a sudden, this former clown dude turns up, who's just lumped a load of quids at it. Yeah. And then you, and then you've got hashtag team handsome videographer with you and you're like, we're going to do a video over each other. And you walk around like the food services business. I don't know now, but do that in advance. Because when someone's met me and actually,

One of them would be very well out of these seven. One of the businesses. Yeah. But what about the staff? So when you were doing a video in Cafe Delego, how about this deal? There's a couple of things I want to say on content here. So, yeah, I'd ever disrespectfully.

Did that? No, but you do just go and do your videos. Like, Cavadelli, you owned it for a week, and I saw you walking through there. And there was a guy with like a push choice about to come through, and then plastic, food services, doors, and went, oh, what's going on here? I was like, if you've not been in that environment before. Because the first thing, oh, we're selling this to this guy called James Sinclair. The first thing people are going to do is Google, yeah. And let me tell you now. Oh, he's not owning it. He's priced on a bike. Here we go.

I am very obvious on the internet to find out about. Do you do anything with the team? You've bought it, you sign it, because I think a lot of people think there's a trumpeter outside of a factory in Croydon, they roll out like a little red carpet, and you go, let's keep it through, go sit at the bootchuds, we'll have that for the next one we buy as well, and then you walk in on day one, do you do like a

How many town hall at high everybody i'm james i just bought this thing we have done that have you yeah we have done that so why do you not do it in to get a good no i think it's just we're doing so many things right now that there's just not enough time. It's a really why i'm my diary is it is.

Beyond the two times. What is the, what's it like then that first time when you walk in so you've bought it, like half a delay. So you go there. We get massive anxiety the day before a buy something still. Do you? If I'm okay signing up to load a debt.

I'm thinking... And what's anxiety from? I'm thinking, is this all going to work out? But then after 10 days, you think, oh, someone's doing me over here, even though we've done all of our due diligence. But once I've seen cash come in and it all work, then it goes very quickly. Right.

But that first day when you walk into like a cafe, just because that's the most recent one at the time I recorded it, probably won't be by the time this goes out. But walking around and meeting people that you don't know their names, they now work for you. You're responsible for them paying their mortgage. You don't know their name and you've got a video guy in your shoulder talking about how you structured the deal. What does that feel like? Do you ever feel like a bit of a dick doing this? No. Because I do it every day. Yeah. And is there ever a way you're like, oh, I should go and

meet the core team. Yeah, we did all that. Yeah, we did all that. Okay. Yeah, I did all that. But the content, like, I've getting some, because we are a YouTube channel, the main one, and even this YouTube channel we're making for the podcast has taken a step up again. So lots of new viewers. And what happens is a lot of people think, well, this can't be true. This cannot be true. This guy hasn't taken out company's house. Well, no, a lot of people were accusing us from making up that we bought Cafe Deli. They just went, it's not true.

Really, he's just walking around the warehouse. Chads, it's not just me making up, bring Chads in. Isn't that true, Chads? People said, yeah, that's true. Yeah. And that weird thing that like, they've just me and Chads have just gone in a cash on carry and said, got into any old bookers. Can we just pretend we own this and make a video about it? If you're going to pretend about anything, it's not a food wholesale business.

Maybe a Lamborghini or a Porsche 911. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always been over the phone's age in scenery or a jet for the day, but not me. I've got a stack of coke behind me with Fentiman's Victorian lemonade. And that's what we do.

But I want to just quickly say, and I've had another lot of stick recently about people saying, oh, why are you making all these YouTube videos? You've got all these businesses. Why do you bother doing this? You know, blah, blah, blah. But I'm telling you now, when I buy a business, I get so many deals come to me through my content. And I'm telling you now, on Cafe Daily, I got a customer, a couple of customers that are going to bring in a million pounds worth of revenue that come straight to us on the back of my YouTube content. Really?

And they're predetermined to buy from us. They want to deal with us because I've made content. It's a great recruitment tool, content marketing. It's great for getting customers. It's great for getting deals. And when people meet you and they can research you, they can decide that they really want to work with you or not. And that saves everyone a lot of time. I am more sure now than ever that this content marketing thing and making YouTube videos, if you've got trading business, employ people like it is uber powerful.

And even since you've been doing this with me, you've got clients off of this. Yeah, definitely, yeah. And they're not coming, you know, what's really weird is back when I was a kid's entertainer, which I was doing like early content marketing, if you like, back then, but actually live in an event. So people would ring me up and I like to book a birthday party with you. Yeah, that's fine. We'd find a slot for them because I was always fully booked. And then they would often ring back, tell me the same thing. I didn't ask what the price was.

We just never discuss it like that. When people trust you, know you, like you, they don't ask about the price. They just want your products and services and your expertise. And you will have a little bit of that as you build the James Burke personal brand, the JB personal brand on the back of me.

I have already had pre-determined they only want cold air me on linkedin hey JBL watch podcast.

Yeah, and it's never about the price. Yeah, so never about it doesn't even work with you. Yeah. And then what's the price? Yeah. Whereas most people is how much is it? Then I will decide if I want to work with you. Very true. And when you can flip that around, we call this Paul Lock push. When you pull opportunities for you, rather than what most of the marketplace, which is pushing for opportunities, everything in business changes.

Do you also find because of the way you're making so many more videos about the fact that you creatively structured deals, now people will only bring you on and they know instinctively, I'm not going to get two mil for this upfront. If that's what it's going on the market for, I'm probably going to get 500k and then step payments. I would say on big deals, there is always an element of creativity, private equity, venture capitalists. Right.

When you're buying a micro business, that's much harder for people to swallow. But when you go and buy a, like I am, I would negotiate on a six million pound revenue business. They are serious business people and they know how many beans make five and they know that they've got to structure it if they want to get maximum value. And so it's much easier dealing with someone that's a serious business person.

So in that regard, does that make it easier than doing the turnaround thing as well? Because if someone's in the soft smelly stuff, then they just need some cash now to get them out and get them out of that immediate pain, whereas if it's someone that's already doing well, or just they would just completely get out with any money. And that's the sort deals I used to do. But now I just think it's easier to buy good businesses that are profitable, pay a decent amount of money, but create it in a structured way so that it doesn't cause your cash flow problem.

But this goes back to the first thing we talked about is that you should start to build your first things. You understand how to operate a business rather than just taking business. And you want some pain. You want to know that it's difficult because that's your university fee for being an entrepreneur and a business owner knows some stuff that doesn't work.

There's the worst business owners that have challenges is they start in a particular sector that's a really good model, but they haven't worked out to a really good model. They've become a dentist, and that's obviously a very good model, and then they've built a very successful dentistry business that's making cash flow. And they're thinking, I'm going to go and start a restaurant, because I'm a brilliant dentist. I'm making loads of money.

Yeah, I'm making money. Therefore, I'm good at what I do. Yeah. I'm a good business person. I'm going to be the superhero of any business sector. And they go and open their restaurant and they lose a load of money in the dentistry business funds and saves them. Yeah. Restaurant. I actually did probably be better. It was the other way around as if you can make a restaurant success more, a camp face successful. Like you're going to be a very good business person because you'll know just how tough things can be.

Because that's just fundamentally retail be another one. That's just a tough model in general. Yeah, I mean, anyone that does well in retail, like you want to be there once to win everything else. Yeah, because yeah, that's a very tough gig.

So as you get bigger, we will actually bring our guest on shortly, but hopefully this is useful for everyone. So as you're getting bigger, are you looking, even though, because you are leisure, hospitality, soft play centers, daycare, nurseries, that kind of stuff, are you looking for out-of-sector expertise? Would you look at like, oh, if you're a good retail manager of 15 stores, like I want you in my food services business. Yeah, I mean, always. Always looking for talent. We're always recruiting. If you're a talented person,

You're a really good hard worker. Please send in your CV. We will. What's getting brought to get flooded? No, no, we are looking for talented people all the time. Yeah. I remember you said to me, like, I'm never not recruiting. I was like, and then you said that to me about six years ago. I was like, what? What role are you recruiting for? You're like any?

I was like, but how does that make sense? You know, but so I'll find a space for a talented person. I had a technology, Dom. Yeah. Watch my YouTube videos, message me. And he's one of my top people now who I trust implicitly. If I was to go and do something around tech or buying software or marketing with outs, I would trust his opinion more than my own.

And he reached out. Yeah. Yeah. And he watched the videos and yeah. So he's a there's this content. Another benefit of content. We're going to let me tell you he's. Outstandingly fantastic. He's smart. And he's nice. Nice. And you've got really good. Just so lovely. Me and Chuds. Yeah. All of what I would say, all of our marketing team, the people that that work in it, they're all a brilliant bunch of individuals. Yeah. They're like elites.

I wonder if that's a content marketing thing, because you are, I think, uniquely placed as an organization, like your top people, definitely the ones that I've met.

are amazing at the thing that they do, and they're all fantastic people. I've never been to something that you're involved in. I don't like that person. They're going to be somewhere in a 2,000 person organisation. But the ones that I meet, and I wonder if that's because, again, push rather than pull, I wonder if good people are attracted to good people.

Like Aaron who was here earlier, he's just like a breath of fresh air. He will walk 40,000 steps and put pumpkins out all over the place and pumpkin picking. But then he can do a broke room, a million quid deal for the next thing that a business is doing. Well, we, because we, lots of us work together for so long, we all know, you know, I know Aaron's weaknesses and I know his many more pluses and he would know lots of my weaknesses and the things I'm good at. And the same with Jankie and the same with Dom and Mads and

you know, all of the charts and Tracy and you know, you get to when you work with people a long time. You don't have to say what you need to do to you can pick their bits up. Yeah. And the ecosystem works.

Well, talk to the ecosystems. Let's actually talk to Tom now, shall we? Yeah, let's do it. Who it is. Thanks for listening tonight. Cheers, guys. Then, see you next time for more. Well, we know people like the pre chat chats, don't they? They do. And it's actually all does fold into this conversation because Tom has gone from self-employed broker for the last seven years. He's now going out on his own, and I'll tell you a quick pre chat chat to him, and he said the biggest challenge he's got is going from

It mortgage broker to mortgage company owner. So that like one person, sole trader, one man band to the next level. So we'll talk to him all about that. We've done interesting facts all the way. Are you ready? Are you ready for one? All right. It's the interesting fact of the quote.

What you got for me? I'm doing another fact. I've been a bit lower on the quotes. Oh, I've got quotes. That's all good. We're all good. Yeah, go on then. So my quotes are that, oh, hang on, where's me? Oh, no, I forgot really me quite. Oh, here we go. You are best off being a first rate version of you than a second rate version of anybody else. Oh, yeah, that's beautiful. I thought that was great. You are best off being a first rate version of you rather than a second rate version of somebody else.

There you go. OK, we're going to play a little game because this is related. It is. That's related. Is it? Who would you? Let's go for the top most famous people in the world right now. Chud. We're going to get him on as well. Can you go with one famous people? Yeah. Yeah. Who's one of the most famous people in Donald Trump? Yep. It's not about him. OK. Elon Musk. It is about him. Fine.

Great, guys. Here we go. Great game. So Elon Musk sold PayPal. Didn't you know that? Sure you did, yeah. Okay, I'm going to break down this for you because I think this is a fascinating fact and a fact of entrepreneurship, true entrepreneurship. This is what Elon said. My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition, so when he sold it, while $180 million, I put $100 million into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla,

and $10 million into Solar City. I then had to borrow money to pay my rent. That's right. You know, I mean, I read that in his book. I was like, I staggered lots of room. It's about that sort of, but that's what he actually said. And I thought that was interesting. Fact took away at the week.

I suppose it's a fact and a quote because he said it. It is a fact and a quote, but isn't that like the mentality of someone like that? Yeah. And whether you like him or not, I don't know. There's a lot of hate. Yeah, a lot of hate is for him. And sometimes with justifiable reason, depending on which are the sort of... There's no two ways about it. The blokes are genius. 100%. If you listen to the latest Joe Rogan podcast with him, you really get an insight. In fact, the last two that he's done with him. Yeah.

The one way he's talking, like what he's doing with, because they talk about like SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, he's gonna get a part-time job with Trump. Starling, that was the thing. Everyone's like, oh, we've just completely forgot about Starling, where he's actually able to give what Starling has become. It's mad.

I mean, that is a really genuinely useful. Yeah. When there's been like in Ukraine, he gave everyone free internet. That's why, yeah. And all the things were knocked out. I think in the floods in Florida, sorted them out. That's right. It just... So you found a little mini one, and you could just point it up now, and you can get one terabyte internet anywhere in the world. He's like, well, just helping the problem. It just doesn't need to be that complicated. I'm like,

And that's like an add-on to SpaceX. He landed a plane and had an arm thing catch it. Yeah. And then he's got a Tesla. So you're Elon fan? I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of what he does. I'm not always a big fan of how he does it, but... What don't you like about how? I just think sometimes he's very abrasive in the things that he does, but equally... Don't you need to move to get stuff? Probably. Probably. Judsy, are you fan or non-fan?

I'm not, I'm neither. A fan is a strong, are you a fan of someone that you don't? I'm a fan of James Sinclair, I'm a fan of. Is he good for the planet? I'm not good for the planet. Oh, definitely excellent for the planet. Yeah, I agree with that. Well, excellent for the human race. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure about the planet. He's got some kids, isn't he? I mean, that should have been interesting. I think he's got 11 kids. I've got something like that. Yeah, I don't think he knows how many he's got. He's like Boris Johnson.

I think he's trying to make up for the low population count. Yeah, he's personally trying to resolve the boom ratio. I mean, I know we've got to get our guest on, but I think it's just worth talking about this here.

I am, so when I was growing up in my early 20s, I was worried about population growth. I am now worried about depopulation growth. I've got so many friends not having children and having children really late. Yeah, yeah. You're in children at full tail, aren't you? You're going to have a 10-year-old when you're 50. Are you sure about this decision you're making it? And once you've got kids, you realize you do not want to be bombing around with an eight-year-old when you're 50, do you? Yeah, I think that would be quite tricky.

Unless you're Michael Douglas, didn't you have one who's like 70s eight years after his children are, he's not having, I'm sure to say that. Because we don't know if that's true. He's a big fan of this podcast as well. Hey man, Capra Zeta Jones, love this pod. They're mad for entrepreneurship in the UK.

So we're bringing the guest off. I think we probably better. He's given everything about him, have you? Have we done that? No, we've not even done that. Give us a brief synopsis. Right. So how long has he been trading? So he's been in a divisor for the early seven years, self-employed, owner of TGB mortgage insurance broker since July this year, so literally like four or five months. Estimating monthly revenue is, as a self-employed advisor, working within a firm, he was on a 50-50 split and he was making circa five grand within the first month. He was summarised, he was weren't someone else who was in his own. Yes, he's gone on his own now.

So he was doing five grand with a 50-50 split. Within the first month of TGP, he was, he's written 15 grand to offer business with a plan to retain and grow past 15 grand each month. Can I tell you something? Since we've been on this podcast, he's actually floated it and sold it to...

The intro was so long. He's had children of the school. He's probably giving you a few more because you don't even know about that by the time we get to the end of this. Team members, he's only just got the one who's just himself. Bigger challenge than I've ever recently gone from self-employed advisor to a 50, on a 50-50 split, to setting up my own brokerage up where the split after network cost would be more like 90% in his favor.

So my biggest challenge is going from a profitable job to a business owner and understanding the steps to follow and the must-dos to make the transition successful. The second biggest challenge is growth, which we'll get to. The third biggest challenge is staffing and lead consistency. I'm bootstrapping the business until December 2024, and I'm looking to take someone that I've previously trained to work with me as an operations manager and another advisor in the new year. But after these two additions, I feel like the foundations are there to grow what strategies and growth plans would you implement

In one year's time, he would like to have a full-time operation manager, at least one other advisor to be working on the business rather than in it, so he could be working on it rather than in it. He must be bringing in new introduces and leads to feed the team. He wants to build up funds within the business to invest in more staff to grow again, but importantly, more commercial opportunities such as business acquisitions and property. For the end of the tax year 2025, he will have set up his group structure with a holding company, trading businesses and property business to ensure all profits are tax efficient, distributed,

and invested into assets.

Well, when it's finished, we would like to ask people this. And he said, a boutique medium-sized business with good profitability. Strong foundations of values and systems to scale. I wouldn't rule out possibility of a future employee doing an MBO management buyout or having the reputation for a larger mortgage business to buy the business from me. But my main aim in the next five years is to grow the trading business to fund the property business. That's interesting. I hope he's buying commercial property or is he going to get stolen off, isn't he?

Again, we're going back to the pod in just a moment, but I wanted to tell you about Entrepreneurs University. This is a platform that I've created for entrepreneurs and business owners that are serious about growth. There's a hundred video lessons from me on everything in business, raising finance, buying companies, property investment, and everything in between. A touch to each video is a downloadable PDF that goes into more detail about what we've learned in the video.

It goes one step further than that because I've also put stuff that you won't get anywhere else onto entrepreneurs' university. The lesson's going to weigh more detail, but not just that. You're going to get my business plans, my spreadsheet, and all the files that I use to drive the KPIs in my business. Just think about how powerful that could be for your business.

And here's the good news. You can try Entrepreneurs University for free, 14 day free trial. After that, it will cost you just $49.99 a month. That's less than a pair of Nike's to grow the profitability in your business. There's a link in the video description and I cannot wait to see you in Entrepreneurs University. So let's just get in mind. Right. Tom, thank you for your patience. 33 minutes later of your episode of this podcast. We're finally going to hear from the man yourself. How the devil use her?

And we're all good. How are you? I'm glad you are still awake first and foremost. Thank you for being here, mate. So we've obviously got the facts and figures about you and the business, et cetera. But just give us a little synopsis for the listener and the watcher at home just to make sure we've dotted all the eyes and crossed all the teas about you and the company, mate. Yeah. So the business is basically an independent mortgage brokerage that I set up in July. And we do focus more on residential mortgages rather than anything else.

And the difference between us, we don't actually charge broker fees, which again, is something that people are saying, you need to be doing, you need to be doing, but I've got my own kind of opinion on that. But yeah, we're basically residential mortgage brokers based in rexam. And yet, whilst that's up in July, having previously done that for seven years with another firm. Gotcha. If you don't charge brokerage fees, why not?

It's something I've never done. So the old company that I was with, we never used to charge broker fees. I do feel like we do get a lot more word of mouth referrals and recommendations and the volume of cases and much higher, I believe, but the argument to that.

is you can probably earn the same amount and do maybe half of the amount of taxes because you're charging that fee to compensate. But I do feel like I would lose a lot more referrals because a lot more people would do it themselves. They maybe would find another broker that doesn't charge lenders nowadays are basically making it a lot easier for people to do it themselves through their own bank, through their own

kind of mortgage app that they've got. So I do feel like, yeah, that the numbers would be smaller. The case sizes obviously could be improved, but there's various different ways to do that. Not necessarily just broker fees themselves. But I do average about 15 to 16 cases a month, where I think if I was charging a fee, whether that's a couple of pounds or 500 pounds, I think that would probably have quite easily. And I think it's just been a case of

working out whether actually that fee would compensate for the kind of the latter cases or whether actually it would even out somehow dancing a long run. But I don't think it would personally. But again, yeah, it's open to discussion. Just hi Tom James here. Hello. What's I going to say? I don't know. It's a very strong intro.

Yeah, it was very strong. Hello. I think the fees annoy me, actually, as well, when I've taken on broke fees. What I would do that, Tom, is I did a delight fee. Oh, yeah, this is your new favourite thing, isn't it? Yeah, so if you say to people, say, look, there is no broke fees. But if we do a really good job for you and we save you some money, we do send you a 250-pound delight fee. And that's optional for you to pay if you think we've done a really good job or not. And I think not everyone will pay it, but a good chunk well.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. If you're doing 15 a month and 10 of them go, yeah, I'll pay the 250 pounds because he saved me a load of money. He's really looked after me. That's just money for all right then. Yeah. And I think it does then get, it doesn't remove that referral issue. So people will still, if they want to not pay, I think that referral

issue will still not be really something that I need to consider, whereas, yes, some cases might actually, like you say, decide to actually pay for that. But again, it's not a case if you need to pay that at the beginning of the mic, obviously, restrict. Just educate us a little bit. So if I want to come with you for a mortgage before you've got me the loan, the most brokers, not you, but most brokers take a sort of fee just to start working on it.

Yeah, so it's kind of justified because of the research and the process that would need to be done to look for a deal. Now, a lot of my cases, luckily, are quite straightforward. They're all residential cases, first-time buyers. It's pretty much they go through with lander. That would annoy a lot of people, wouldn't it? I mean, it's just being frank about it. Because if you do it direct with Nat West,

The fee gets added to the loan, doesn't it? But or something like that. And so you don't notice it. But if you're a first-time buyer, you've got to have a conversation with this bloke. It's $250. I do get that. There's going to be loads of brokers that completely disagree with this. A lot of the fees are on application. Or at the end. And they obviously justify that by the work that they do is justified. But my argument is,

every other trade or the job and not getting paid any other way than their fee that they're charging or the service that they're charging because we ultimately get paid commission by the landers and insurance. Just educate us as well on that. If I take a £250,000 loan out with you and you place it with one of the high street banks at the Barclays, HSBCs,

What would you earn out of a 250,000-barre mortgage? Yeah, so it's basically called a proxy, so it'll be a certain percentage of the loan amount that you get. So it varies between 0.3 and 0.4% of the total loan amount. So a 250,000-barre mortgage could be in around £1,000. I'm for many.

at plus the insurances and add-ons on top of that. If we're getting a case value of £1,000, which at the minute, my average customer value is about £900, if we're getting that each time, and we can just grow that and get more in, we're still then seeing that clients are not obviously paying a broker fee, we're still getting the number of referrals that we'll probably expect as well. And people will still say, lucky use time because one, it doesn't cost you anything, but you help me with this, you help me with that. I personally don't think

It's justified because a plumber, for example, has to charge out because they're not getting paid by the bills, merchants or anything like that, or any sort of commission in any way. Their fee is what they will learn. Whereas for us, we still get paid the commission, but people who charge a fee will obviously say otherwise.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with you. I mean, fees are annoying people. I mean, when I borrow money and I've borrowed a few quid in my time, I hate arrangement fees that you pay the banks. And that's when you're having commercials, usually one or 2% of the loan value. It's a lot of money. You borrow a million quid, you have a 10 grand fee or even a 50 grand fee. I think it will change as well, I think, because lenders are a lot more

Accessible now and they will reach out to their clients a lot more than they previously would have in the technology behind it i think because you're charging a fee will either reduce those fees or end up not charging just to actually keep up with things and i think if i start charging fee now which is against what i personally think anyway.

eventually I think five, 10 years down the line, it'll actually go back to reverting to not charging fee because there's so many lenders a lot more ahead of the game. The clients ahead of the game as well, because they'll probably do a lot more research and be a bit more astute with everything as well. And I think that broker fee will just dwindle down and down and down. And I don't think there's any point charging a couple hundred pound because actually you're probably losing a lot more than what you're gaining. If that makes sense. I mean, clients agree.

Tom, just quickly, how easy is it to get people mortgages at the moment? Are banks being fussy or compared to five years ago, three years ago, two years ago, or is it? Yeah, it is easy enough that there's a lot more open banking now. There's a lot more that lenders will do automatically and verify income automatically as well, which does help processing.

But also when documents are requested such as bank statements, they are a lot more, yeah, they do look at transactions in a bit more detail rather than just the money laundering side of things. They will look at references, so certain things that people look at on references, for example, but also the, yeah, the incomeings and outgoings are assessed a little bit more definitely than I would say than

Probably three or four years. One more question. One more question for me. Who's your favourite bank to work with to get mortgages through? It's probably nationwide, I would say, because they do use open banking. So they verify a lot of their things internally. So they don't ask for as many documents. They're quicker processing. You speak to people. Whereas other lenders, they try, but they ultimately are still behind.

Again, it's what's best for the client. Well done, nationwide, then. Well done. Right. Let's go through the challenges. Thank you, sponsor, the podcast, isn't it? Really? Shout out to the nationwide PR people, in case it ever comes up as a search term. You'll be your challenge. Recently gone from a seven-point advisor on a 50-50 split, setting up my own brokerage, where the network cost would be more 90%. And my biggest challenge is going from a profitable job to business owner and understanding the steps to follow are musters to make the transaction successful. Please explain.

Yeah, so I've got to be honest, I've loved it. Well, I've listened to much of your content over the last few years and a lot of the stuff is probably more aimed towards when

You're a little bit further afield than I am. So I wanted to really know that the next steps of the main thing I've done at the minute is get someone for the admin side. So that person is starting in jam. So that's going to free my time to be able to do more and kind of get more in. The leads are OK at the minute. It's not OK, so I'm struggling for leads. But ultimately my fear is when I take someone on an added cost, I want to make sure that those leads are increasing rather than kind of staying put. So it's more and then obviously building the staff.

on top of that as well. So it's the consistency and increase of leads, I would say, that's the biggest transition that I need to make because ultimately I'm okay. There's a one man band at the minute, but I don't want to stay like that. We've got an office that needs paying for. I want obviously the staff in Jan. So is it a case of another advisor and build it up that way? Is it a case of

do more online content or videos and things like that that obviously you guys do more so as well. But it's just that the D's and don'ts I think as well in terms of transitioning from where I'm at the minute to where I actually want to be. I think you've answered all your own questions that you got to do.

Good question. Well, what should I do? Should I do the thing I've already done? Yes. Thanks for coming. I mean, as a rule of thumb, I believe that the more time you spend on lead generation, guess what? The more leads you get. Yeah. And most people rely on word of mouth. And that takes a few years to kick in. But even when that does kick in, you want to be focusing yourself on generating your own leads.

I would say if your average order value is £900 and people are going to repeat, repeat, repeat with you. I think Facebook ads, people look into Move House and Google ads, but tight to your area, do not do it nationwide because it'd be very expensive and get someone that's good at it that understands it.

But if your financial services leads are so expensive. I'm sure they are. You've got to really have a good conversion strategy to make sure you get bang for your buck, because they're the most pricey lead you can get. And that's why I'm saying maybe try Facebook and Instagram ads, because we've just done this on parts pieces, by the way. We've really rocked it down on our PPC on Google. Have you? But put it into Facebook instead, I'm getting a much better return on ad spend. What are you doing? You're doing lead pages. I don't know what they're doing.

No, no, no, just direct to like, you know, personalised birthday balloons. Sorry though, but what I meant is are you keeping the money like doing a lead form, like on Facebook, you're keeping them on Facebook. No, so we're putting the products on Facebook. So have this personalised gifting thing in the GQ. But then when they click, they're bounced out to the website and they've been pixeled.

much better ROAs than Google. Yeah, I can see that. Because Google Ads is very expensive, but I think, yes, financial services, but across the board, Google Ads is very, very... Oh, 100% because there's intent-based markets in those, isn't it? When they go and search for bespoke balloon, you're much more likely to turn a quid from that person than go, oh, they're looking at cat videos. Hello, would you like a balloon?

But I do think if you was on Facebook and said, if your mortgage is coming up, challenge us to see how much we could save you. At zero cost. At zero cost, yeah. I think stuff like that is very, very powerful. Again, if you team me and JB, what we're doing is we start with the headline.

that we're back into the media. I think, you know, I think direct mail, you know, I would, you know, if someone was putting a four-sale sign up outside their house, I would be hand-delivering a letter. So if you're moving house and you need a mortgage, challenge me to see how much I can save you.

you know, like that sort of stuff. That's a great way doing it. I'm really proud of that. You should be. Yeah. But I ended getting to know every estate agent, do whatever you got to do with them, make love to them, offer the massages. I don't know. All those things. Definitely do that. Definitely do that. And it can't turn the look. So Chudzu who makes all my head of content and looks after all my stuff, he's doing this gig now. And I think

Well, the mortgage gig, the mortgage gig, he's buying a house, let's bring him in. Was it the broker from me or from John my accountant? From you? Yeah. But I think you both would have recommended the same person. Yeah, absolutely. So I think accountants, especially self-employed people, especially a lot of people will be liaising with their accountants quite regularly, financial advisors. Especially for a mortgage and stuff like that, yeah.

Oh, Chad's got some more cards. I haven't looked for anyone to help me with this except for you and John, my content. So I've only spoken to people that already know people. Yeah. I've done no research myself just because I trust obviously James and Claire and my content. That.

shows the power again of word of mouth recommendation. So what you may be also need to look at whilst word of mouth is difficult, more difficult to scale. How can you gain a fire? That's network marketing a little bit, isn't it? Do you think? I mean, word of mouth is if someone says to you at home, okay, I'm getting a mortgage, you know, that's what happened, isn't it?

I think a lot of my clients, a lot of my businesses, Word of mouth, and I've got hundreds of clients. I want you to have the word of mouth, but I don't want you to discount the direct network marketing of meeting lots of accountants. Oh, no, no, sorry, yes. I want you to have both. That's what I'm trying to get at. Yeah. It's like Gayle and Defining and Scaling Word of mouth, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you do? What's your main legion at the moment? Did you call that Gayle and Scaling? Gayle and Defining and Scaling Word of mouth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm over that.

Because I think there's word of mouth where people have in general conversation, they say. Like a chitchat. Oh, we're buying a house. You should speak to Tom. It's another thing for them to be wanting to recommend you because you've set them up to do that.

It's kind of what being eyes, like the B&I model, whilst we don't like being like... No, no, it's not, no, we do like being like... Do we love being like... Do you want to sponsor the podcast? Come on, you can sponsor it, it's a very good price. B&I, shout out to B&I, go to B&I. Wherever. No, that's how you being like, it's not for me. No, you don't hate it. Yeah, because you hate it. It's everything you don't like, it's early mornings. It's chatties, I do chit chatties. I struggle with small talk more than I think anyone else I know.

Which is very strange for a person who's as like, gregarious and charismatic as you. I just can't stand it. Isn't this a small tour? Are you a bit shy in one-to-one environments? Like on a stage, you're fine, because it's like a performance, but as naked, raw and naked things in class. I think they're interesting people. I can chat to Chud for hours and hours. So two for hours and hours and James Martin for hours and hours. This is a good intellectual conversation. I can't talk about.

Mundane stuff. I think I knew what you're going to say. No, so don't say that. Don't say that. So sorry, Tom. Get me a circle back to you with the. I don't know. John's chances laugh. I don't know what you mean. What did you mean? I can't say it. I can't say it now. You know, I can't.

Did you think that? No, no, no. OK, fine. I don't know. I haven't it to you as well because the camera will pick up. So, what do you want? I can't carry on until I know. You're bad listening, it's me. Tom, where do you get most of your leads from? I would say social media, but that's probably

It's recommendations, but they've chosen social media as the route to come through. And if you've got a serum system and if you've got a standard sort of lead funnel process, that second biggest challenge growth strategy is to be able to eventually work more on the business. A CRM will be like two members of Starfoner. Yes, cheap, isn't it? What do you think is the best CRM for SMEs now? I think it's hard to beat Go High level. I think Go High level is incredible.

Was it a offense made out? No, I haven't. Go high level. Go high level. No, it's really... I've never heard of that. Have you not? Is infusion soft, no one's talking about that anymore? No, because it's too complicated. Go high level is literally to everybody's lunch.

Look at the market have a go-high level. You don't know go-high level. What do you use? Are you safe software and an old Excel spreadsheet and older? We use different ones, depending on what it is. What do you use, Tom? Literally nothing and I think that is an issue of obviously... You use go-high level now. But I do think the smaller you are, the easier it is to implement CRMs. 100%. What people do is that, I'll do that year five. The thing's a million plus turnover and everyone's got bad habits and it's really hard to get.

Any software implementation at size. So we just implemented a warehouse software system. One of our warehouses, just in case any staff listened to it. But there's a small level revolt. Oh, is there? This don't work. Warehouse management system don't work.

Well, they do because go and check with Jeff Bezos, or literally anyone that runs a warehouse now. They use warehouse management stuff. Amazon staff are not going, I reckon the DVD players are over there. When you think DPD are just using a bloody piece of paper, and you are met with resistance when you try and implement it after the fact. Yeah, yeah, very true.

And actually, if you can start it now and you employ something like this, it's the system that we use that will help us with follow up.

A lot of them as well, the CRM systems, even if they are white labeled versions of what they are like, go high level has lots of different like affiliates. There will be someone who has white labeled that for financial services for mortgage brokers, for residential mortgage brokers. So I'd say look for that. Now that you've even said it out loud, you'll probably get targeted with some really good Facebook ads and your Instagram ads and PPC anyway. But yeah, look for

for something because as, you know, they're always saying sales in any form of sales, which this is ultimately the magic's in the follow up. So many people, you know, if you have an initial conversation, you send them the information, do you actually come back to them? Do you then reach back? You know, do they pick the phone up again? What is your process? Do you phone them back the day after? Do you send them an email? Is there a WhatsApp message? And the CRM system could do all the heavy lifting for you, put them into the funnel and it would just do the five next steps. You just have to build it out one time. And again, a lot of these CRMs will

do the thinking for you, do the building for you, just pop your lead in the top of the funnel and it pops out the bottom. Yeah, there's a lot of different versions of CRMs and that would probably another question that I had in terms of

which is the best because there's an awful lot of different ones that, yeah, and it's hard to choose which one would be the best one. So yeah, I'll look into that. Speaking to someone else in your sector as well, you know, there'll be people who you, this is where something that you talk about all the time, like network with other people in your sector. So there will be, you know, you are doing resi mortgages for people in rex and there will be someone in Essex who's doing resi mortgages for people in Essex. There will be loads of ways that you can network with people

who are in a competitive sector, but they're not direct competitors, competitors because of your geography. So you can get best practice of those. Absolutely. I mean, that's what you must do. And there'll be, I think Gary Das. Yeah, I wasn't going to check him out. I've got a call with him next week, actually. Gary's been to loads of, he was at buying businesses once a seminar the other day. He's been to lots of my stuff. He's a good guy, a nice guy, and I'm sure he can help you.

Let's just look at this third biggest challenge. And I think this is going to really help a lot of listeners. You said staffing and leading consistency on bootstrapping the business until December 2024. Brilliant. And looking to take someone I've previously trained and worked with as an operations manager and another advisor into New Year. But after these two additions, I feel like the foundations are there to grow. What strategies and growth plans would you implement? It's a you nervous about employing these people.

I was. However, when I've done the interviews the last couple of weeks, I'm getting a lot more confident and obviously understand why I would need that particular person. One of these people you've worked with and know they're good. Is that right? Well, yeah. So that was the initial plan that hasn't gone the way that I wanted it to go. And to be honest, mutually, it probably wasn't the best idea. So I've now done the interviews for the part-time admin.

Which, again, second-inch user this week, and then the job will be offered by the end of this week, ready for John.

but there is then another advisor or maybe an advisor in New Year that I'd like to be bringing on as well and again it's just working out what is the best because I don't want a team of 10 different advisors. I want structure, I want a team that would work better together so I don't think a team of a lot of advisors work well together. I think it would only be me and someone else and maybe

three or four admin underneath that. That's what I've always said to people in your sector. One of the things that don't worry about employing the people, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but it's better to do it than know that you've never tried. You don't want to get to 85 years old, 9 to 5 years old, you need your deathbed and go, I wish I tried to employ two people.

Because at the end of the day, if it goes wrong, they go back into the job market and you go back into the job market, but at least you tried, at least you had it go. And I look to be in the mindset that in your first few months of running a business that you want to employ a couple of people, I think is fantastic. Just saying that I want to do that.

I mean, JP, you employed some people. It didn't work out. Are you still here? And they're still there and they're carrying on. Yeah, yeah. Life still carries on. The world carries on. It's not the disaster you think it's going to be. Yeah, and everyone's like, oh my God, what if I can't pay? Well, if you can't pay them, you can't pay them. You've got 30 days for them to give you the value anyway. Yeah.

They work with respect to me. You can build up front. You don't want it to be like that, but the reality is if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. You're not killing these people. You will find the money for them. You might have some pain for a few months, but if it all works out,

The returns, the prize, is so great. And after the first time that you do it, you will never go back. No. For years and years and years. No, I could do it as well as me. I had loads of little companies. It was always me. I was the key man. I could do this. I could do that. I'll never employ people. And then I remember you sent to me. You need to employ them. You need to employ them. You don't want to do it. We do all business. You've stripped yours back at the moment, haven't you? You've still got one employee here, haven't you?

Yeah, I've got one full-time and two, like, quite heavily free. That's so good that you didn't strip about to nothing, because it stops you being a solo printer, and it still puts you in the top 10%. Yeah. And that habit of making sure you meet payroll, because I think it forces you to keep the business of a bigger size rather than just something that supports your lifestyle. Yeah, probably. Yeah, definitely. Well, not probably, definitely. Okay, fine, definitely.

The other thing I'd say is, well, we're in your instance there, Tom, because you mentioned that someone was going to come on board because you knew they could do the job. And then it wasn't the look. Actually, that's usually the right thing for both parties. Don't mistake convenience of the next step to be the right thing for the next step. Because sometimes because you don't really know that role, it's easier for you to sort of take your eye off that ball a little bit and let them do it because they can sort of do it all right.

That's, that's, that's the best thing that we can do. It might not be, but it might be that that then requires you two weeks to put down a playbook of how you want your company run. And then that ops manager comes in and runs it, how you've dictated not how they think it works best. Cause I think sometimes you can go, Oh, I'll get a, I'll get a four out of 10 PA. Cause they know how to be a PA. Actually, do you know what? I get a 10 out of 10 blank slate and make them into a 10 out of 10 PA by giving them the playbook.

Yeah. Coolio's. Well, have you got any questions? Have you got any questions you'd like? We've covered the challenges there. Is there anything directly you'd like to ask? No, it's more of a thank you really, actually, because I've been watching your videos in particular since about 2017-18. Wow. I've been watching, obviously, every single one of these as well on previous audio ones. So it's just really a case of, yeah, thank you to both of you.

Oh, that's very kind of good. That's very kind of good. I say this to you all the time, don't I?

And I think it bounces off you, which is probably a good thing for your ego to bounce off you. But I don't think you've got any concept how many people that you help from your content. That guy who was here in business buying your event. I don't think he would have done that. So he would have done it eventually, but I reckon he's done it quicker and better. And he's walked away with 1.2 million quid because he watched a YouTube video. That's pretty good.

Cat, the cat and the cat, the cap is doth to you, James Sinclair. Tom, you've been a fantastic guest. What lovely guy you are as well. If people are based in Rexham, Rexham. Is he nationwide? Is he nationwide? I was nationwide, but he's based in Rexham. What difference has Rexham, the TV show, made to Rexham, the town? Oh, yeah, that's a good question. Is it really? Can you feel the difference?

Because you talk about when you watch your Amazon Primal over my, oh my God, that must be insane. So I have been a season ticket holder way before it all happened and I was crying out for something like this. And when it did happen, I don't think we really knew the effect of it and we can really see it in our four years on. And luckily my office is literally a stone throw away and I can see the floodlight. So for me, it's a good idea. Have you seen him and Blake?

So I've seen them from a distance in the stand. But the first time they came over I actually had Covid. So I was in the house and I was absolutely gutted. I couldn't go and see where they were because they were just literally walking around the town centre.

But they do come to a lot more games than I thought. He's bought a house in North Wales, isn't he? He's bought like a farm. Yeah, rumored. But the weirdest thing was we were waiting to go into the pub once and we couldn't get in and we were wondering why and Will Ferrell walked out because it was all shut off because he was on a pint in the turf. So there's a lot of different things that have happened that you kind of

Yeah, you've got to sit back and think, is this real? He's buying a stake in Legionite, apparently. Will Ferrell? Yeah, I think they're all trying to do similar things in documentaries and trauma here, I think, as an actual one. Has it done a service for the rest of the town? As well as the football club, because that's part of the narrative that you see on the shows that has had a big socio-economic impact on the whole areas. Is that as big as it's made out on the show?

Yeah, I think so. In the council, I've got a bit more aware of that. So there's a lot more funding now. There's a lot more regeneration going on. There's a lot more businesses popping up because everyone wants to be part of it. Everyone wants to be in the centre. Everyone wants to be involved. And I think obviously match day, a lot more people come into the town after a game or before the game.

That is helping a lot and because the attendance is a contra three to 4,000 to 13,000 times more than the stadium is complete. I'd come to Rexham if I knew Blight Lively was walking around. And that's why she doesn't go there anymore. You should buy a football club. That'd be the next thing for you. I've been asked.

The Sinclair Saints. Come on, the Saints. Have you been asked? What a big club. South End United, the shrimpers. The shrimpers did you? I was getting involved in that when it was all gone. Did you really? Nothing bad. There's one thing, James Sinclair, will not be getting involved in.

Rock me up a nice hotel though. I'm looking. Oh, food services. I'm all over it. Football. Food service is over the football. What do people always need? Sleeping and eating and I'm involved. There you go. So where can they, where can they get in contact with you, Tom? Yeah, so the website is tgpmi.co.uk. I'm on LinkedIn, social media, yeah, everything. So feel free to get in touch.

Give us that URL again, makes it sort of broke off a little bit, and it's only like an MRI, and I think you're going to get a load of people who go to like health scanners otherwise. Tell us that URL again one more time. Yeah, it's tgpmi.co.uk. Tgpmi.co.uk. Fantastic stuff.

Well, thank you very much for being on the pod mate. We very much appreciate it. Good luck with your growing of a miniature empire there. And thanks for being on the pod. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. You're amazing. Keep going sunshine. Keep. Thank you, mate. Awesome stuff. Thank you. There you go. Tom all the way from Rick some.

How do you like that for a wrap? Yeah. You mentioned Kulia and I'm dropping rhymes. We're going to do eight traits and greats, but I haven't got my James Sinclair. Oh, what a shame. Have you got it? No, I haven't got one. So you can't do it, can you? Well, no, I think we do hire a lower, but have you got a notebook over there? I hire a lower. You can't even do his own features. He brings up these features. Well, I like to do them in order. You like to do them in order? I don't think he's got it. As he's got it, he hasn't got it. Okay, so that means... We'll do this instead.

Yeah, it's versus JB. On the quizzes. Businesses. Business knowledge. Jan is fun. Which one's clever? And which one's down? Thanks, Charts. Get quizzing. So last week on the podcast, James Burt got James Sinclair. Yes. And was reigning champion. We are the champions, my friend. I thought we'd end spoon at the moment. Here we go. Keep it fading.

What a band they were, weren't they, Queen? Oh, you've never have another one like Freddie Mercury again, will you? Come on in Jimbo, what you got? OK, how many billionaires are there in Russia as of August 2024? Not as many as before, that is why we all have to go spend our money as we're.

I was chatting to a mate of mine who's about to do a business. I won't say who it is or what he's about to do. But one of the investors is a Russian guy. And this Russian guy, this Russian guy used to be worth a lot, a lot of pound of nuts. Now, he's not worth a lot of pound nuts.

Instantly, after the embargoes, this guy went from being worth 900 million pounds to having under 30 million quid. Wow. Because he's just all the most embargoes. Can't go anywhere, can't travel anywhere. And he's a UK citizen. And they still, you know, embargo on money. Are you starting a football club?

He did not, they're not on the football club. No, he did not. Do you know what? That was in, at the time of recording, we are the number three podcast in entrepreneurship. Yeah. Tim Ferriss is above us at number two. Above that is Roman Abramovich. Yeah, that's it. Well, he's got his own podcast now. No, he is. It's about him. It's about a billionaire. It's not about a billionaire. Is he still a billionaire? Oh, yeah, it must be. Couldn't they just take Chelsea from him, though?

There's something, yeah, because it was foreign funds, couldn't pay for the club. So it had to become self-sufficient, like it had to be money made in the UK to pay the price. So how many billionaires are there in Russia as of 2024? I don't know who this guy is. Do you know who that is? The camera, the team of obviously. Just so you know, by the way, we don't put this together. It goes in this envelope, and my team put it together, and I'm not told anything. Wax sealed, and you're not told anything. For security.

So what's your number? Do you know how many people live in Russia? No, it's got been 500 million. Oh, it's got an advantage. How many people live in Mother Russia? I get red dot in my head in a minute.

500 million. It's massive, isn't it? It's a massive country. It's Russia, Europe or Asia. How many people do you think live in America? 350 million. So you think that's more people in Russia? You goddamn right I do. I would say there's about 140 million people living in Russia.

Well, that's very specific. What do you know? Who are you working for? I just think that's what it is. I'm coming. What about your billionaires? I am going to go 2,738 billionaires. What are you going? I'm going for 1,000. Oh!

leading light of British entrepreneurship. Jamesy Kles is a thousand idiot of the podcasting world, says 2,738. Oh, nightmare on Elm Street. It's 120. What? Up by around 10 from 2023, despite the ongoing war with Ukraine and associated in economic sanctions, the billionaires have a combined wealth of how much?

in Russia. I've got no idea. I don't know. But here I am. I'm out by 1000. So who? Five hundred and thirty seven billion. So five hundred and thirty seven billion. Shared over a hundred and twenty people. Vadget Alacombolik is the richest Russian with a net worth of twenty eight point six billion according to the Indian Express. He's the richest Russian. Oh, is that a hit? Is it? Yes. There's I know there's I think is around 148 million people live in Russia. Is it?

How many was it? 100? 120. Up from 10. Yeah. So like in that space there, like where does all that money just go? Like they've got loads of assets as a country you embargo it. So where does that, the net worth go?

How'd you mean? So where does that network, see if there's like, you know, they didn't create a hundred billionaires in a year, did they? 10 billionaires. They just, they had 10 billion in 20, they had 10 billionaires in 2023. They're not 120. They didn't make 110. Oh 110. I think it's 120. Right. But if they like, you know, like the net worth of that guy that I'm talking about, like we went from 900 million to like 60 million or whatever it was, where does that, where does that money go? Where does that value go?

But what? The vibrate into the ether we were going to do. A lot of these things with billionaires is what the value of their business is. Yes. And that's always subjective, isn't it? Yeah. It's like Elon Musk's net worth will change by tens of billions every day. Well, every day over a 28 day period, depending on the value of Tesla, the value of X, the value of space X, you know, it's not cash, is it? Are you going for a billion? Do you reckon you'll be James? You're clear with the B?

Oh, are we thinking about it? No, I'm not bothered about that. I just want to be enjoying what I'm doing. I thought I was supposed to look... Well, what have you done like total sales across your career? Because if you're doing like 30, 40 million quid now,

You must have done, what, like half a billion in sales? The beginning was of as big as it is now. I've realised that. You might have done a billion pounds of kids' parties. I mean, you think you were a good clown, but you weren't a billion quid good. I don't really think I'll do over a billion in revenue by the time I die. Wow. Way more than that.

That's big, isn't it? I'd like to definitely get us to 100 million in revenue and making 10, 15 million a year. You can do some really good stuff with that. How big does a team have to get? Do you reckon? Double for you? Depends on the business, isn't it? Is there a point where you go, right? We've got 15 hotels. They're really hard to turn equipment. They're not hard, but they are harder than like a software business. Do you put in something big techy?

No, it doesn't interest me. I want to use technology in my businesses, but I like hotels and I built and don't want to stop us making ice cream. I like do you ever look at something like that? Some of the so like a techie thing or like a Bitcoin thing go. I don't know. I'm trying to climb a ladder against the hard wall here. It's easier businesses to what you've chosen, isn't it? Is that?

It's very volatile with those Bitcoin-y stuff, isn't it? My third service business is not volatile. The Rossi ice cream parlour, the hotel, Mars fire, they're not volatile. They're actually very predictable. And I like that.

Fine. OK, let's do eight traits of the great entrepreneur. There we go. No book. Every guest that we bring on the show. Normally, normally. Unless we think they'll start up and we shouldn't do it. We do the... We have a hard and fast role, apart from where it doesn't suit us.

No, no, I mean, 99%. I think you're right. One in 100, we would let off. And we do the Equates Great Entrepreneurs. We have studied entrepreneurs and we've come up with these eight traits that makes them a great entrepreneur. This is where he means him. I just come along for the right. So number one is starting with the end in mind.

Oh, yeah, it is, yeah. Passionate about their calls. 100% I reckon it is. Untold amounts of resilience. Not sure on that. We can't say, because we didn't do that. We can't say. Oh, no, this is this stupid bloody new format. Instead of it being yes or no, it's like, well, let's rate each one out of 10, which gives us a percentile score, which is some sort of like fractional basis of pie.

You have to have a mensa degree to get this bloody game. We changed it with that. We changed it back again. Out of 10, starting with the end in mine. What are we going to do? Oh, I'm going to give him seven.

It's just stupid. Seven, yes. Passionate about the equals. Yes, six. 13. Untold amounts of resilience. We don't know, so we have to give them five, 18. I'm telling it happens, we go. That's the master relation. Oh, hang on. Hang on a second. The voice from above. If it would have been a zero anyway, then it's a zero. If you're unsure, if you give it an in-between number. This is the problem.

How is it a problem, JB? But otherwise he's going to be, he's going to be unfairly disregarded. Does he have untold demands of resilience? We don't know. You give it a zero. But you don't know though, do you? Don't give him a number for something you don't know. But he can't score a zero. The master relationship's a big book. Why is it fine? The master relationship's a big book. This poor guy's going to get a three and it's because of old him. Master relations. I don't know. Let's ask the Oracle. Would you record, Juds?

Did you like it? I didn't like it. Yeah, no, I thought I'd give him a six. I'm going to give him an eight to make up for the bullshit over it. Number five, commercial awareness. He's a bit commercial away. How's he having a sit? You don't wait in on this one? No, James, you can't give everyone a six. He's going to go sick. He's going to have a four, 23. Carry on. They innovate, so don't evaporate.

I think he's doing that. He's doing some of the, like, not charging fees. That's a little bit of it. No, I like that. Yeah. What should we give him? I think. They're master mark tears. No, you can't have that. Well, it falls zero. Yeah, I think so. OK, fine. They stay teacher-worn curious. Isn't that, wasn't he? Yeah. I reckon he was 10 for that because it makes my maths easy.

Yeah. So I think we should give him two for Master Martina. OK, fine. He's having two for that. Twenty nine. Thirty one. Thirty one. So Tom, eighty, thirty one out of eighty. I don't agree. I think he's a better entrepreneur than that. Yeah, I agree. So we'll give him a bonus 10. Yeah, bonus 10 points is 31 plus his bonus 10 gives him 41, making this entire feature completely irrelevant.

Do you think it was better when you just did it out of eight? Yes, I do. We should have 10 traits and just do it out of 10. Like everybody else who doesn't sound as good as eight traits is great. That's why it does it, isn't it? Alliteration. Yeah, I know it's wrong, doesn't it? We have to make up the eight traits because we like the headline.

There we go. There we go. Oh, fine. Right. Well, if you've enjoyed this episode of the podcast, you can play the eight traits of the greats at home. We get into this Christmas gift for free. You can do it on my website, Jameson. I'll catch you. Yeah, yeah. It's on my website as a chance. Yeah. Oh, wow. And then it will give you a more detailed score because you get to answer each point and take your time doing it rather than us just, you know,

People should go and do that, actually, because it will show you the play. Have you done it? It gives you a nice little score in areas of strengths and weaknesses, like a little swagger personality test. It gives you a little review of where your strengths and weaknesses are. Right, tell them again where to do that, because we're taking the mission. I was all there, is it? Yeah. Fine. What do you, what do you click on? The button says the quiz. The quiz. Follow that.

The quiz. He's got the quiz, the letter, the podcast. Yeah, don't not to be confused with Izzy Wizzy. Let's get crazy. I don't get anyone to confuse you with that. Oh my God, I keep up with all this nonsense. Right. If you have enjoyed this episode of podcast, please feel free to give me a five star review wherever you download your podcast.

and we ask it every week and about three people do it a month. Do it now. If you've ever taken any value from what James Sinclair says, he turns up here, blood, sweat and tears, dragging this business to a billion in sales and he takes the time for you and you can't even give him a review. Shame on you.

There we go. How did you watch our YouTube? Give it a like and subscribe. Anything else you'd like to add? No, no. Just stay successful. See you soon, gang. Ta-da. Thanks, gang, for listening to this podcast. This is the show that exists to help people grow their business. If you love what we do, we'd love to get our message out to more people. So please rate the review and subscribe to the podcast or wherever you watch our podcast so that we in turn can help people grow their businesses to continue success. See you soon.