Digital Transformation in Businesses: Piers Linney's Secrets to Building a Tech Empire

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<v Speaker 1>When you saw the chat, gpt and OpenAI and this Genitive AI come out, I thought right, this is it.

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<v Speaker 1>And the question for me then was what do I do?

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<v Speaker 1>Do I invest in it?

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<v Speaker 1>Do I start something now, or do I kind of hedge my bets?

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<v Speaker 1>I went back to the American gold rush adage, which was don't always try and plan for gold, sell shovel.

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<v Speaker 2>Here's Linny Dragon's Den secret millionaire.

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<v Speaker 2>That's where he's known, but now this guy's gonna blow you away with some of the stuff on AI.

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<v Speaker 1>I know very few people where they did it in one go.

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<v Speaker 1>Serial entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs because they're successful, because they've got the scars, they know where the potholes are and they can avoid most of it.

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<v Speaker 1>But I do think AI, you're gonna see it come full circle.

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<v Speaker 1>Humans are gonna become more interested in human experiences.

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<v Speaker 2>Piers Linney his five-step framework on how you build success in business.

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<v Speaker 2>That's going to blow you away for real.

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<v Speaker 2>So, piers success, how does it happen?

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<v Speaker 2>What's your theory or formula for it?

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<v Speaker 1>I think you've probably heard this many times.

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<v Speaker 1>I think if I had a formula, I'd bottle it and I'd be a lot more successful.

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<v Speaker 1>If I had a formula, I'd bottle it and I'd be a lot more successful.

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<v Speaker 1>I think it's.

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<v Speaker 1>I have to get asked this question about, especially entrepreneurs.

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<v Speaker 1>Is this something you're born with?

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<v Speaker 1>And I believe it's a mixture of the two.

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<v Speaker 1>And I think, especially if you look in the before the dot-com boom, really in the UK especially, most venture capital went into management buyouts.

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<v Speaker 1>Management buyouts are people that probably never expected to own a business.

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<v Speaker 1>This became good at what they did.

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<v Speaker 1>Their owner, their boss, wanted to cash out or got too old or whatever, or had no family to take over, so they bought them out and they became owners and entrepreneurs and they became very wealthy and that's how the venture capital industry kind of came around in the UK especially.

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<v Speaker 1>So I think it's part of that, but a lot of it is about risk appetite, the ability to take on risk and take on risk over a long period of time and all of the associated effects of taking on risk.

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<v Speaker 1>So sacrifice, you know you sacrifice time.

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<v Speaker 1>I mean I go through my career, but I was a lawyer and a banker in the city.

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<v Speaker 1>I thought I worked hard in the city, you know, when I was a banker at Credit Suisse, first Boston, where I didn't go home for days on end, quite literally.

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<v Speaker 1>I didn't sleep for days and sometimes.

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<v Speaker 1>But then I thought, well, how hard can building a business be?

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<v Speaker 1>You know what I mean.

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<v Speaker 1>And then, and then you, then you, then you start building a business and it's different because it's um, it's quite personal.

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<v Speaker 1>A lot of entrepreneurs really success.

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<v Speaker 1>Initially you want to make money, you've got this vision, but it's about being proven right, I think.

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<v Speaker 1>Often you have a thesis, like a hypothesis, and you want to go and prove it and test it and, ideally, prove that it's right.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and once it's proven it's right, you might call it product market fair, whatever.

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<v Speaker 1>You want to go and prove it and test it and ideally, prove that it's right.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and once it's proven it's right, you might call it product market fair, whatever you want to call it.

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<v Speaker 1>And then you prove it's right and then you go okay, so I showed you.

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<v Speaker 1>Now I'm going to scale it and create wealth and value for myself and my investors.

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<v Speaker 1>Um, but I I found success is something which has sort of it of taken five steps forwards and probably three back on most days.

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<v Speaker 2>It does.

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<v Speaker 1>That's a good day.

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<v Speaker 2>It's funny, though, when you see you know working so hard in the lawyer and that when you're working with someone else, you've worked a long hours, but the emotion just isn't the same.

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<v Speaker 2>It's not personal and that sort of thing.

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<v Speaker 2>So how did you define success as a young man and how do you define it today?

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<v Speaker 1>So my first business this is not some reverse engineered founder story.

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<v Speaker 1>I lived in the north of England when the Industrial Revolution started.

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<v Speaker 1>In those days, when it snowed, it covered your car right.

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<v Speaker 1>So it's hard.

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<v Speaker 1>I had a paper round.

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<v Speaker 1>I did a bit of papers for five, six days a week.

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<v Speaker 1>I got paid about five pounds $7 in US money and I thought there's got to be a better way than this.

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<v Speaker 1>One morning I saw that.

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<v Speaker 1>I can't remember how it happened, but my dad said to me can you go and get the paper on Sunday morning, because they don't deliver on Sundays.

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<v Speaker 1>I asked him why I didn't, and so I went and got the paper, bought it back and he paid for the paper and gave me let's call it a service fee A tip.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly.

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<v Speaker 1>And I thought, oh, hang on a minute, there's something in this.

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<v Speaker 1>I kind of cut a long story short.

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<v Speaker 1>I ended up like flowering with my neighbours and nobody wants to get out of bed on a Sunday morning and get the papers.

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<v Speaker 1>Then I realised well, I can't buy the paper from the newsagent because there's no margin.

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<v Speaker 1>It'll be the same price.

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<v Speaker 1>They're going to give me the money.

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<v Speaker 1>I've got to hope on tips.

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<v Speaker 1>Then I worked out that I could buy the paper wholesale from the wholesaler.

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<v Speaker 1>So I'm now 13 years old, I've disintermediated the local newsagent in today's terminology and then I made about £20 on a Sunday morning.

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<v Speaker 1>So to answer your question, really, initially it was about making money to buy stuff.

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<v Speaker 1>So I made enough money to buy the shiny BMX bike I can't, this is like 1984 or something and I got this shiny BMX bike.

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<v Speaker 1>I actually still know the brand today.

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<v Speaker 2>I remember my first Haro, so you know.

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<v Speaker 1>My friend had a Haro freestyler.

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<v Speaker 1>I had this guy called Curtis, which is a UK guy, and it's still going.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, still tiny company, but it's still going.

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<v Speaker 2>I still have one of my mates from high school.

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<v Speaker 2>They still ride their BMX every weekend.

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<v Speaker 1>My oldest friend from school.

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<v Speaker 1>He was in bmx.

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<v Speaker 1>He's a teacher in thailand, the same age as me, he's in his early 50s and he's racing bmxs.

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<v Speaker 2>So how did that then evolve?

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<v Speaker 2>What's the definition now and what was sort of the process of that?

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<v Speaker 1>so so.

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<v Speaker 1>So, going on from there, it was always about having a bit of fun.

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<v Speaker 1>It's more about the money, yeah.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

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<v Speaker 1>So I had, um, god grief, university.

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<v Speaker 1>You're kind of doing parties and things.

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<v Speaker 1>Not much university really, just working in bars, working for the people, mm-hmm.

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<v Speaker 1>Then law school.

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<v Speaker 1>I went to law school.

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<v Speaker 1>I had a business kind of you know doing company formation, the various other things, and then, with a friend of mine, so there was never a point where you weren't working or doing something to make money.

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<v Speaker 1>I always had what's now called a side hustle.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah Right, I hate side hustle.

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<v Speaker 1>It was always thought as a business, yeah, and then a friend of mine, we did a film financing.

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<v Speaker 1>He led it and I got involved.

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<v Speaker 1>He went on to run Lionsgate Fantastic.

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<v Speaker 1>He's a big, we did the film industry Great guy.

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<v Speaker 1>And so it was like this kind of side hustles was about making money to buy stuff.

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<v Speaker 1>And then what happened was I was always investing my excess earnings in buying things, investing in things, helping friends do deals.

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<v Speaker 1>I love doing deals and over time, as you do in a portfolio, essentially some died some kind of living dead, as we call them and some grew and some of those became quite large.

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<v Speaker 1>You know, 40 million pounds of revenue, 5 million EBITDA quite big businesses.

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<v Speaker 1>When the day came where I thought you know 40 million pounds of revenue, 5 million ebda quite big businesses.

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<v Speaker 1>When the day came where I thought you're sitting in board meetings talking to management, thinking I can't do a better job than these characters.

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<v Speaker 1>I mean, what are they talking about?

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<v Speaker 1>I mean, how many slides of numbers can they show me without actually telling me anything?

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<v Speaker 1>So one day, my business partner and I who bought all these businesses, which was in telecoms.

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<v Speaker 1>We kind of stepped in, basically tentatively at first.

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<v Speaker 1>Eventually we became management, built it and sold it and that was it.

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<v Speaker 1>We got money and then, I think, over time you make a bit of money.

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<v Speaker 1>I've lost money and made money as you do, but then you're, as your sort of glass begins to sort of fill, maybe overflow.

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<v Speaker 2>sometimes you go and get a bigger glass yeah, the bigger jet doesn't make you any happier, but yes, I've had the boat did the whole thing.

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<v Speaker 1>You know the usual story.

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<v Speaker 1>And then you know and then, um, that's what everyone says, that the best day is having a boat the day you get it and the day you sell it.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then over time, then you have children, then you get married, and then over time, then you have children, then you get married and then it begins to change.

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<v Speaker 1>Actually, and what happened to me was a lot of the time was that people said to me you're very successful.

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<v Speaker 1>Not many people.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm sort of.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm also Barbados, my dad's English.

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<v Speaker 1>I grew up in a mill town in Lancashire.

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<v Speaker 1>I was the only mixed race kid of any Afro-Caribbean Heritage in my school of 2,000 kids.

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<v Speaker 1>So I ticked lots of boxes.

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<v Speaker 1>So I ended up on the secret millionaire, a bit like undercover boss, and then dragging us down like a shark tank.

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<v Speaker 1>So I kind of ticked these boxes.

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<v Speaker 1>Whenever I kind of looked in the mirror people said you're successful and I kind of thought, am I?

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<v Speaker 1>And when I looked around I realized that success to me wasn't just about the money.

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<v Speaker 1>Then it was about actually being successful to me started being how do I help other people be successful?

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<v Speaker 1>Why do I help them, avoid all the pitfalls and problems I faced.

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<v Speaker 1>But I was blinkered, right, I was bloody, bloody minded, blinkered.

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<v Speaker 1>You could stand in front of me, I'd dig a hole under you, I'd go around you, I'd step over you, it didn't matter.

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<v Speaker 1>But not everybody has that DNA, yeah, and not everybody should have that DNA.

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<v Speaker 1>Some people are, you know, they don't like that.

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<v Speaker 1>So I sort of started looking at you know, sort of sharing how I could help people be successful.

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<v Speaker 1>And I always say that ambition is evenly distributed Access to capital, opportunity, support, coaching, mentoring isn't and I have to change.

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<v Speaker 1>And and then had some periods of time where I lost a little money and then you're like, oh, hang on a minute, this stuff's not permanent.

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<v Speaker 1>No, you've got to look after it.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you can't be careless with it.

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<v Speaker 1>And then I then I'd go back into slightly other mode of well, hang on a minute, I need to need to make some more money.

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<v Speaker 1>So it kind of changed over time.

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<v Speaker 1>But I guess the the general trajectory has been from making money, let's say making money into now doing things that I enjoy with people.

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<v Speaker 1>I enjoy doing it with.

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<v Speaker 2>And the money comes as a byproduct of doing all of that stuff.

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<v Speaker 1>Ralph's every day panicking about it.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, when do you think your standard in life became success, like, was there a point as a kid, was it as a young man, or is it just always there from your family?

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<v Speaker 1>no, so my, my.

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<v Speaker 1>So I didn't grow up in a difficult family environment.

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<v Speaker 1>My, my dad was a working class lad from manchester.

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<v Speaker 1>He was very bright.

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<v Speaker 1>He went to cambridge in those days.

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<v Speaker 1>He kind of went and he came back.

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<v Speaker 1>He's not with us anymore, sadly, but um, he was very bright, he went to Cambridge in those days.

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<v Speaker 1>He kind of went and he came back.

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<v Speaker 1>He's not with us anymore, sadly, but um, he was my sort of role model, mentor of mine.

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<v Speaker 1>He was my chat GPT, right, he's like.

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<v Speaker 1>He's like an encyclopedia.

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<v Speaker 1>And my mum was a West Indian, came to England in the 60s, was a nurse.

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<v Speaker 1>We got the Windrush generation here and both that called the Windrush generation, so they were kind of my role models.

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<v Speaker 1>Never had any of the role models were.

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<v Speaker 1>Anyone I've ever looked to was Richard Branson.

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<v Speaker 1>I was lucky enough to go to fire with him because I donated to his charity and there's a story there, but I ended up on drawings.

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<v Speaker 1>Then he sort of maybe bring the producer and tell them I'm doing it while I was with it and to no real mentors as such.

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<v Speaker 1>I had role models and then what happened was was that when I was on the secret, I was on the secret millionaire program and a lot of people said to me you're on the secret millionaire program.

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<v Speaker 1>You did keep that secret Because you had like a in a Porsche and a townhouse when I never thought of you as successful or wealthy.

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<v Speaker 1>I wasn't super wealthy right Enough to sort of tick the boxes.

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<v Speaker 1>But then you start thinking, oh right, okay, and people start looking at you in a slightly different light and people think that because you've been on Dragon's Day and Shark Tank, you're a billionaire.

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<v Speaker 1>I know billionaires right and they've got a very different lifestyle.

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<v Speaker 1>To me You're sort of comfortable and now millionaires right, and it's quite a lifestyle.

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<v Speaker 1>To me you're sort of comfortable and now I think you know you'll make more money.

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<v Speaker 1>You can see, often with me I find that I've sort of planted seeds yeah and then over the years you sort of sow them.

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<v Speaker 1>Some don't flower and some do, and, um, there's a period of time where I had business that selling a fire sale.

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<v Speaker 1>I got divorced and I was just a bit like, oh, I didn't do much really, so I wasn't kind of sowing these seeds right.

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<v Speaker 1>So there's a period of time, like a fallow period almost, where I had my kind of asset base and they kind of income that generated.

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<v Speaker 1>Um, but certainly more recently where you started to see these things trigger again and I really enjoyed that.

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<v Speaker 2>I kind of missed it, yeah wise man once said to me always invest in young people, because as you get older they get into their prime and they're making a lot more money for you at that point.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm going to come back to the den stuff in just a little bit.

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<v Speaker 2>Your idea on the relationship between failure and success, like how do they relate?

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<v Speaker 2>Do they relate?

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<v Speaker 2>What's your thoughts?

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<v Speaker 1>I know very few successful people, some very billionaires, and when you hear their story it is one of both success and failure.

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<v Speaker 1>I know very few people, in fact, I think, but one actually, where they did it in one go.

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<v Speaker 1>They did so, they started something and they made a fortune and they exited and even if they are the Zuckerbergs, he still failed at so many things along the way and made so many mistakes and I would say to entrepreneurs, I would say, because people look at you, like you know with Bizzex, and you talk to people and they're kind of like, well, I've got a business and I'm kind of like, great, do your best with it, but don't expect this always to be, especially your first one, the one that makes you.

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<v Speaker 1>You learn as you go.

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<v Speaker 1>Serial entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs because they're successful, because they've got the scars, they know where the potholes are and they can avoid most of it.

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<v Speaker 2>Once you've learned leadership, you've learned leadership.

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<v Speaker 2>Once you've learned sales, you've learned sales.

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<v Speaker 2>It doesn't matter the business, you can apply the skills across the board.

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<v Speaker 2>Here's bicycle business.

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<v Speaker 2>We talked about us having BMXs as kids, but how did you get into the business of bikes?

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<v Speaker 1>So I've always loved bikes.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, there's a period where I didn't have a bike.

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<v Speaker 1>I'd live in London, do my thing, make money, and then one day I realised I can't bother with this traffic anymore the subway, the tube so I bought a bike.

00:13:48.059 --> 00:13:56.994
<v Speaker 1>And then my old friend from school said said, you've got a bike, you should get a mountain bike and come with us at the weekend, because they were riding off road on mountain bikes.

00:13:56.994 --> 00:13:58.197
<v Speaker 1>Well, okay, fair enough.

00:13:58.197 --> 00:14:01.669
<v Speaker 1>And of course I go obsessed with things so I got into mountain bikes.

00:14:01.669 --> 00:14:04.519
<v Speaker 2>You bought the 6,000 quid bike, yeah, so I got the.

00:14:04.912 --> 00:14:07.929
<v Speaker 1>I had three of them, a hardtail a downhill.

00:14:07.950 --> 00:14:08.510
<v Speaker 2>What do you mean?

00:14:08.510 --> 00:14:09.150
<v Speaker 2>Cheaper to buy the?

00:14:09.171 --> 00:14:09.350
<v Speaker 1>company.

00:14:09.350 --> 00:14:10.192
<v Speaker 1>I had a hardtail.

00:14:10.192 --> 00:14:20.856
<v Speaker 1>There were different brands and then there was a phase where when I was on like Dragon's Den Shark Tank, whenever the press did a shoot with I, always tried to involve a bike.

00:14:20.856 --> 00:14:22.677
<v Speaker 1>It was like a bit of a joke actually.

00:14:22.677 --> 00:14:25.440
<v Speaker 1>I was having a bike in the city of London, all over the place.

00:14:25.440 --> 00:14:30.423
<v Speaker 1>So there's a well-known mountain bike family called the Athertons.

00:14:30.423 --> 00:14:37.647
<v Speaker 1>So Rachel's won the World Cup six times, g's won it twice and the other brother, athert.

00:14:37.647 --> 00:14:45.597
<v Speaker 1>He's well, they were known for his World Cup races, but they were building all these like the tracks and they on Instagram.

00:14:45.597 --> 00:14:51.138
<v Speaker 1>I got a message one day saying hi, do you want to talk to us about building a bike brand?

00:14:51.138 --> 00:14:56.077
<v Speaker 1>And he said if you like cars, it's like lewis hamilton texting you yes I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start a company.

00:14:56.097 --> 00:14:58.211
<v Speaker 1>I was like what, anyway?

00:14:58.211 --> 00:14:58.832
<v Speaker 1>So I met them.

00:14:58.832 --> 00:15:00.618
<v Speaker 1>A very long story short.

00:15:00.618 --> 00:15:08.197
<v Speaker 1>You've got elite athletes, a load of material scientists, and you know that that's a recipe for disaster.

00:15:08.197 --> 00:15:09.660
<v Speaker 1>Right, it's part of business.

00:15:09.660 --> 00:15:17.258
<v Speaker 1>Then he had me, so I, and then he had a chap who used to run a race team called Dan, who I thought should be the sort of CEO.

00:15:17.258 --> 00:15:26.599
<v Speaker 1>So I wrote an MOU about 10 pages thick saying right, just to be clear, this is all we're planning on doing, this is the idea.

00:15:26.599 --> 00:15:32.533
<v Speaker 1>But I could see that this additive manufactured 3D printing technology.

00:15:32.533 --> 00:15:43.477
<v Speaker 1>These guys had, kind of, they are geniuses the Athertons, the brand, the story the obsession with excellence, and then myself and Dan who actually run the business.

00:15:44.130 --> 00:15:47.115
<v Speaker 1>So we started the business, we crowdfunded it.

00:15:47.115 --> 00:15:52.076
<v Speaker 1>This is where business, you always think, well, we've got the athertons, let's just crowd fund it.

00:15:52.076 --> 00:15:56.683
<v Speaker 1>So you, we crowd funded about 1.5 million pounds, six million pounds, I think.

00:15:56.683 --> 00:16:00.316
<v Speaker 1>It was, half in jewels, half crowd raise the money.

00:16:00.316 --> 00:16:01.479
<v Speaker 1>We've got all these people now.

00:16:01.479 --> 00:16:02.782
<v Speaker 1>So you launch the product.

00:16:02.782 --> 00:16:05.597
<v Speaker 1>They're all going to buy a bike and not one of them.

00:16:05.597 --> 00:16:09.086
<v Speaker 1>They were fans, not customers.

00:16:09.248 --> 00:16:10.510
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so it's funny, isn't it?

00:16:10.510 --> 00:16:15.738
<v Speaker 1>You always, you always make these assumptions it's the unknown unknowns, isn't it?

00:16:15.738 --> 00:16:18.315
<v Speaker 1>It's not a business, they're not the known unknowns.

00:16:18.315 --> 00:16:21.375
<v Speaker 1>So, okay, so then then COVID hit.

00:16:21.375 --> 00:16:36.436
<v Speaker 1>Suddenly, the supply chain of the products was when you build bikes, what you make is a frame Pedals, the cranks, the bars, the forks, the stem anything is OEM pedals, the cranks, the bars, the forks, the stem anything is OEM, somebody else makes it.

00:16:36.436 --> 00:16:37.337
<v Speaker 1>So we had a problem there, slowed it down.

00:16:37.378 --> 00:16:43.033
<v Speaker 1>But going back to success, you know the athertons, they ground away the design, they're testing it.

00:16:43.033 --> 00:16:51.038
<v Speaker 1>You know the material scientists kept going, design, perfecting it, and we kept going the business, amazing, the finance and the marketing.

00:16:51.038 --> 00:16:53.533
<v Speaker 1>And you just keep grinding away, don't you?

00:16:53.533 --> 00:16:58.716
<v Speaker 1>And then and this is what people struggle with a bit when you start your company, it's that compounding.

00:16:58.716 --> 00:17:00.500
<v Speaker 1>It's very slow.

00:17:00.500 --> 00:17:01.803
<v Speaker 1>It's the old um.

00:17:01.803 --> 00:17:05.192
<v Speaker 1>You pass a lake and there's a tiny bit of algae.

00:17:05.192 --> 00:17:15.718
<v Speaker 1>He wore your dog on day one and you pass it every day and it doubles in size every day and after 30 days that bit of algae is covering half a lake and you think how long will it take to cover the whole lake?

00:17:15.718 --> 00:17:17.134
<v Speaker 1>At least a ditch one more day.

00:17:17.134 --> 00:17:19.917
<v Speaker 1>So it's that compounding that we saw.

00:17:19.917 --> 00:17:24.900
<v Speaker 1>And then, eventually, then the product began to show its ability and we won the.

00:17:24.900 --> 00:17:37.840
<v Speaker 1>Rachel won a World Cup race, the team won two World Cup races, the bikes won the world championship first and second, and then suddenly it takes off.

00:17:37.861 --> 00:17:43.863
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, suddenly magic is five years of like draft and staring each other thinking that where's the next investment coming from?

00:17:44.284 --> 00:17:45.932
<v Speaker 2>you know that that is business.

00:17:45.932 --> 00:17:47.455
<v Speaker 2>You have to put in the time.

00:17:47.455 --> 00:17:51.133
<v Speaker 2>It's the same as investing, it's the same as anything it looks like nothing's happening.

00:17:51.133 --> 00:18:02.876
<v Speaker 2>My, my personal trainer, said to me yeah, when I got back on training again, he said yeah, for the first 30 days it'll feel like nothing, For the next 30 days you'll feel something, and then for the next 30 days someone else will notice.

00:18:02.876 --> 00:18:04.250
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, absolutely right, you know.

00:18:04.250 --> 00:18:10.179
<v Speaker 2>But business that's for the first year or two, and then a year or two of unartising, and then a year or two until the others.

00:18:10.179 --> 00:18:13.663
<v Speaker 2>But what Beach has been as well is the innovation.

00:18:13.722 --> 00:18:26.178
<v Speaker 1>It's using the aircraft technology, that Formula One race technology in bikes and doing it in different ways, because normally when you buy these carbon fibre mountain bikes they have to make them months in advance and ship them from, usually, taiwan.

00:18:26.178 --> 00:18:29.439
<v Speaker 1>Our record is it was a race in the Alps.

00:18:29.439 --> 00:18:42.576
<v Speaker 1>One of the afters didn't like the way it was set up, so we actually changed the design, changed the geometry, reprinted the lugs, the joints, put the frame back together, got it back out to them for a race three days later.

00:18:42.576 --> 00:18:44.340
<v Speaker 1>Damn, you can't do that.

00:18:44.730 --> 00:18:52.397
<v Speaker 2>See, this is where, like your standards and you even said this when you bought the bikes for yourself your standard is best of the best of the best.

00:18:52.397 --> 00:18:56.124
<v Speaker 2>Do you think that's a reason why you're successful in business?

00:18:56.124 --> 00:18:57.332
<v Speaker 2>Do you think that's a part of it?

00:18:58.695 --> 00:19:11.779
<v Speaker 1>um, no, I think I've been successful because it's the people you choose to work with, but they're the best of the best, you got the athens and these scientists, oh yeah in that that's not absolutely, but I could see that.

00:19:11.779 --> 00:19:20.321
<v Speaker 1>But even then, even then, when you think you've got all the ingredients for the perfect cake, it doesn't quite rise the way you think it's going to.

00:19:20.321 --> 00:19:32.641
<v Speaker 1>And that's the beauty of being an entrepreneur, yeah, but it's also what gives you greater so Dan Dragon's Den Dan shark tank in the States.

00:19:32.740 --> 00:19:37.592
<v Speaker 2>Dan over here, how do you pick someone to invest in, or do you pick the ideas?

00:19:37.592 --> 00:19:38.513
<v Speaker 2>What's your theory?

00:19:38.513 --> 00:19:40.457
<v Speaker 2>Person or idea, or is it both?

00:19:41.318 --> 00:19:41.900
<v Speaker 1>So we'll say that.

00:19:41.900 --> 00:19:48.478
<v Speaker 1>So my background is um, you know, venture capital, lawyer, banking, you know, and the debt being an angel investor as well.

00:19:48.478 --> 00:19:55.220
<v Speaker 1>Being an angel investor as well, I was on the board of the government bank in the UK during COVID right, so in the US you had the Like $90 billion.

00:19:55.269 --> 00:19:56.414
<v Speaker 2>$90 billion, we rolled out.

00:19:56.454 --> 00:19:57.875
<v Speaker 1>yeah, so it'd be like the what was it?

00:19:57.875 --> 00:20:00.375
<v Speaker 1>The PPE, ppe in the States, yeah.

00:20:00.756 --> 00:20:09.413
<v Speaker 1>I was on the board of the bank so I know sort of financing market and people raising money and I think in the den essentially it's an angel investment.

00:20:09.413 --> 00:20:11.941
<v Speaker 1>Yes, it's televised, you've got cameras pointing at you.

00:20:11.941 --> 00:20:32.314
<v Speaker 1>But the issue with trying to do business on TV is that we both know that most of it is 10 years of graft of admin, right, but that moment where you put your dream's aspiration on the table and someone sat in a chair with a hunk of cash next to them saying me yes or no, right that that's televisual?

00:20:32.314 --> 00:20:33.577
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but most of it isn't.

00:20:33.577 --> 00:20:38.556
<v Speaker 1>So I think, whether you're in the den or whether it's a very young company.

00:20:38.556 --> 00:20:39.858
<v Speaker 1>So you've got a spectrum.

00:20:39.858 --> 00:20:45.458
<v Speaker 1>You go from personal with an idea to, I don't know, buying out a very large utility company.

00:20:45.458 --> 00:20:55.218
<v Speaker 1>That company, it's regulatory risk, the whole man could disappear in a horrible accident, wouldn't matter.

00:20:55.218 --> 00:20:55.720
<v Speaker 1>Place them next day.

00:20:55.759 --> 00:21:02.538
<v Speaker 1>Whereas with that person, with the idea, you're investing really in the person, because the idea, by the time it makes money, won't be the same idea.

00:21:02.538 --> 00:21:04.001
<v Speaker 1>Can you work with them?

00:21:04.001 --> 00:21:05.111
<v Speaker 1>Can they pivot?

00:21:05.111 --> 00:21:14.519
<v Speaker 1>Can they put up with the sacrifice of the hours of stress of building a business and kind of do it for probably everybody always says you know, three to five years, it's 10.

00:21:14.519 --> 00:21:20.157
<v Speaker 1>It's a decade to get from that that compounding curve to get anywhere valuable.

00:21:20.157 --> 00:21:20.940
<v Speaker 1>It's 10 years.

00:21:20.940 --> 00:21:23.346
<v Speaker 1>Okay, anybody says so, can they?

00:21:23.346 --> 00:21:23.690
<v Speaker 1>Are they?

00:21:23.690 --> 00:21:26.215
<v Speaker 1>Have they got 10 years of energy to put into this?

00:21:26.215 --> 00:21:28.339
<v Speaker 1>Like it's always the person?

00:21:28.339 --> 00:21:36.775
<v Speaker 1>But as you move out, you know, if you look at series, angel investment seed, series A, b seed each one really is like an onion ring.

00:21:36.775 --> 00:21:46.942
<v Speaker 1>You're ticking off different risks but when you start to get the idea it's all risks, yeah, oh yeah, any favorite ones that you've picked to invest in.

00:21:47.344 --> 00:21:48.464
<v Speaker 1>So I did the best.

00:21:48.464 --> 00:21:53.917
<v Speaker 1>One actually was I invested in a personalized children's content and it was one of the first deals in dragons.

00:21:53.917 --> 00:21:55.002
<v Speaker 1>Then was a proper tech deal.

00:21:55.002 --> 00:22:03.394
<v Speaker 1>So I only got four percent for a hundred thousand pounds, um, and all the other dragons kind of we doing the program with the users, like 50 grand for 30 percent.

00:22:03.394 --> 00:22:14.538
<v Speaker 1>I was like, well, these guys had a term sheet for vc and they're some three phds I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and they sold that for some of the numbers are not popular.

00:22:14.538 --> 00:22:16.321
<v Speaker 1>But I got a 45 extra turn.

00:22:16.882 --> 00:22:17.864
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so that's a favourite.

00:22:17.864 --> 00:22:18.845
<v Speaker 2>Obviously that was quite good.

00:22:18.845 --> 00:22:20.695
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, any fun ones that you did.

00:22:20.695 --> 00:22:21.759
<v Speaker 2>That didn't work out.

00:22:22.451 --> 00:22:24.137
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's one at the curry company.

00:22:24.137 --> 00:22:25.413
<v Speaker 1>Great, great again.

00:22:25.413 --> 00:22:28.695
<v Speaker 1>Great team, great story, great product.

00:22:28.695 --> 00:22:41.681
<v Speaker 1>But this was kind of like most curries are like curry paste, it's like long-lived, and this was like fresh curry, a bit like pasta sauce, and the supermarkets loved it but had nowhere to put it because there was no like fresh curry.

00:22:41.681 --> 00:22:49.453
<v Speaker 1>So part of the problem was not the fact the product wasn't great, it was the fact they didn't have a chilled fresh air place to put this product.

00:22:49.493 --> 00:22:52.521
<v Speaker 2>No one knew what it was or where to place it, so it just didn't work out.

00:22:52.521 --> 00:22:55.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, a lot of the time people come up with an idea that's just too new.

00:22:55.720 --> 00:22:59.721
<v Speaker 2>They're like well, I got the newest, latest, greatest idea and no one knows about it.

00:22:59.741 --> 00:23:04.692
<v Speaker 1>And it's like yeah, Well, look at com 1.0, right, A lot of the ideas.

00:23:04.692 --> 00:23:08.377
<v Speaker 1>Then they resurfaced 10 years later and worked out.

00:23:08.577 --> 00:23:12.825
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I like being second in your market once they've proven that it works, and that sort of thing.

00:23:12.825 --> 00:23:20.830
<v Speaker 2>When you think about growing any business today, what are some of the ingredients you say?

00:23:20.830 --> 00:23:23.980
<v Speaker 2>They must have these things for us to know it's going to succeed.

00:23:24.589 --> 00:23:31.401
<v Speaker 1>So I did a talk today at BizX in the UK and the one on AI and one of my five factors.

00:23:31.401 --> 00:23:33.777
<v Speaker 1>So they're quite generic, but it was planning.

00:23:33.777 --> 00:23:34.859
<v Speaker 1>You need to have a plan.

00:23:34.859 --> 00:23:37.698
<v Speaker 1>You need to know where your point B is from your point A.

00:23:37.698 --> 00:23:44.075
<v Speaker 1>They make decisions that get you closer to it, not some shiny object syndrome People was a big one about.

00:23:44.075 --> 00:23:45.619
<v Speaker 1>You've got to look at yourself as well.

00:23:45.619 --> 00:23:52.000
<v Speaker 1>Maybe you need a coach, whatever it might be, support, guidance, non-execs, mentors, who knows?

00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:53.817
<v Speaker 1>But look at yourself, look at your team.

00:23:53.817 --> 00:23:59.291
<v Speaker 1>How did the right teams go on a journey, even from generalists to specialists, operations?

00:23:59.311 --> 00:24:02.575
<v Speaker 1>There's no point in trying to scale a business unless you've got your ducks in a row.

00:24:02.575 --> 00:24:05.398
<v Speaker 1>I call it in the UK a pantomime horse on stage.

00:24:05.398 --> 00:24:13.030
<v Speaker 1>So if the front end moves way too quickly, it attaches.

00:24:13.030 --> 00:24:13.873
<v Speaker 1>It's very hard to put it together again.

00:24:13.873 --> 00:24:15.496
<v Speaker 1>It's done um, and then finance the big one understanding, finance the options.

00:24:15.496 --> 00:24:18.770
<v Speaker 1>What raising money means, not trying to raise the wrong money.

00:24:18.770 --> 00:24:20.719
<v Speaker 1>Push a square peg through a round hole.

00:24:20.719 --> 00:24:22.426
<v Speaker 1>And the last one was kind of technology.

00:24:22.426 --> 00:24:33.945
<v Speaker 1>I went through those five and to me they're the five pillars and then within there, don forget you or somebody you employ needs to be able to sell stuff.

00:24:36.634 --> 00:24:39.823
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, marketing and sales is kind of important in business at this day and age.

00:24:39.970 --> 00:24:41.296
<v Speaker 2>Well, hey there and thanks for listening.

00:24:41.296 --> 00:24:46.442
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00:24:46.442 --> 00:24:53.743
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00:25:04.563 --> 00:25:06.296
<v Speaker 2>Here's AI.

00:25:06.296 --> 00:25:11.439
<v Speaker 2>Everyone's sort of like enamored by it or scared by it.

00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:22.476
<v Speaker 1>give us your thoughts on where it's at and where it's going first so my so I was a trustee of nest, of the uk's largest innovation foundation, about six years and we don't do what we they.

00:25:22.476 --> 00:25:23.378
<v Speaker 1>I didn't do it.

00:25:23.378 --> 00:25:36.515
<v Speaker 1>A lot of research on the impact of this is pre-generative ai, robotics on kind of workforces, and one of the interesting things was the outcome was the creatives are safe, which hasn't quite proven to be the case.

00:25:36.515 --> 00:25:44.138
<v Speaker 1>But you know, I I grew up in the northwest of england okay, literally where the first revolution started.

00:25:44.138 --> 00:25:45.243
<v Speaker 1>Everyone was at school.

00:25:45.243 --> 00:25:49.577
<v Speaker 1>We talked about mills and weavers, cottages and we looked out the window and we could point out I'm the teacher.

00:25:49.577 --> 00:25:52.615
<v Speaker 1>And then I was fascinated by the revolutions.

00:25:52.615 --> 00:25:55.713
<v Speaker 1>And then web sort of 1.0 is.

00:25:55.713 --> 00:26:03.471
<v Speaker 1>When I left the city and Wall Street and became an entrepreneur, I kind of played around in web 2 a little bit, made a bit of money in web 3.

00:26:03.471 --> 00:26:04.696
<v Speaker 1>Did okay recently.

00:26:06.474 --> 00:26:19.493
<v Speaker 1>But then when you saw the chat, gpt and open AI and this generative AI come out two years ago now, I thought, right, this is it, this is productized, commoditized intelligence.

00:26:19.493 --> 00:26:21.412
<v Speaker 1>Right, it's only got to certain things.

00:26:21.412 --> 00:26:25.594
<v Speaker 1>I think that the AI we're using today might not be the one we actually end up using down the line.

00:26:25.594 --> 00:26:35.759
<v Speaker 1>It'd be different technologies, different models, different approaches, but I thought this is the wave that I was born to swim into, to paddle into, yeah.

00:26:35.759 --> 00:26:40.921
<v Speaker 1>And the question for me then was which I thought about quite long and hard, was what do I do?

00:26:40.921 --> 00:26:42.083
<v Speaker 1>Do I invest in it?

00:26:42.083 --> 00:26:44.015
<v Speaker 1>Do I start something now?

00:26:44.015 --> 00:26:44.959
<v Speaker 1>What's that going to be?

00:26:44.959 --> 00:26:46.936
<v Speaker 1>Or do I kind of hedge my bets?

00:26:46.936 --> 00:26:54.497
<v Speaker 1>So I went back to the American gold rush adage, which was don't always try and pan for gold.

00:26:54.497 --> 00:26:55.901
<v Speaker 1>Sell shovels, yeah.

00:26:55.901 --> 00:27:00.217
<v Speaker 1>So we started out with Implement AI, kind of selling shovels.

00:27:00.217 --> 00:27:08.375
<v Speaker 1>So we kind of productized how we help you understand where your business is, how you could use it, where it would add value.

00:27:09.419 --> 00:27:11.233
<v Speaker 1>Training, because obviously quite important training.

00:27:11.233 --> 00:27:12.076
<v Speaker 1>You can't use the tools.

00:27:12.076 --> 00:27:16.278
<v Speaker 1>You get kind of garbage in, garbage out and then we can answer to companies okay, there you go.

00:27:16.278 --> 00:27:18.323
<v Speaker 1>It's great, we want to see it work.

00:27:18.323 --> 00:27:20.155
<v Speaker 1>Now we're kind of like oh, hang on a minute.

00:27:20.155 --> 00:27:24.681
<v Speaker 1>Now we're into MVPs proof of concept, no code, low code, code.

00:27:24.681 --> 00:27:36.590
<v Speaker 1>Then we're into proof of concept from the company saying it works quite well, the ROI is amazing, can we pilot it?

00:27:36.590 --> 00:27:39.659
<v Speaker 1>Now we're into pilots over longer periods of time, proving the roi, and then the client starts saying great, implement it.

00:27:39.659 --> 00:27:45.215
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then you get into the conversation of what is our product?

00:27:45.215 --> 00:27:48.340
<v Speaker 1>Where's the value going to accrue?

00:27:48.340 --> 00:27:49.903
<v Speaker 1>Almost like a pipeline.

00:27:50.324 --> 00:27:53.978
<v Speaker 1>Do you want to get into developing applications?

00:27:53.978 --> 00:27:54.218
<v Speaker 1>Why?

00:27:54.218 --> 00:27:57.133
<v Speaker 1>I believe that software as a service will not go away.

00:27:57.133 --> 00:28:02.334
<v Speaker 1>We've all because when you can talk to machines and code yourself, in plain english, you don't have to.

00:28:02.334 --> 00:28:07.832
<v Speaker 1>You don't have to use applications that have been designed by third parties.

00:28:07.832 --> 00:28:15.960
<v Speaker 1>The biggest tam you can design an application automation that runs the business the way that you want to run your business, not not how company X is telling you to.

00:28:15.960 --> 00:28:17.816
<v Speaker 1>So that's quite exciting, I think.

00:28:18.589 --> 00:28:22.959
<v Speaker 1>So we kind of thought and then I was thinking well, we build these AI agents.

00:28:22.959 --> 00:28:24.582
<v Speaker 1>What is this?

00:28:24.582 --> 00:28:25.083
<v Speaker 1>What's our product?

00:28:25.083 --> 00:28:25.903
<v Speaker 1>How do I describe it?

00:28:25.903 --> 00:28:32.582
<v Speaker 1>So I was on one of our motorways, as you do, I talk to chat GPT plus because it's a fantastic sounding board.

00:28:32.582 --> 00:28:39.503
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, gpt plus, because it's a fantastic sounding board, yeah, and I said how do I explain all these different agents to people that we want to have that can communicate, collaborate and learn?

00:28:40.267 --> 00:28:44.939
<v Speaker 1>Chat GPT said to me think of them as musicians with instruments.

00:28:44.939 --> 00:28:45.902
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I get it.

00:28:45.902 --> 00:28:52.480
<v Speaker 1>Your product is not individual musicians of instruments, you're selling the orchestra.

00:28:52.480 --> 00:28:56.412
<v Speaker 1>As I thank you, I said but nobody wants an orchestra.

00:28:56.412 --> 00:29:04.096
<v Speaker 1>Yes, but someone might want like a jazz band where you pick certain musicians and instruments to create, as I thank you very much.

00:29:04.096 --> 00:29:09.805
<v Speaker 1>And then he started thinking, like I'm talking to a machine, that is, you know, you don't need to do certain things.

00:29:09.805 --> 00:29:14.920
<v Speaker 1>I'm talking to a toaster, really, but it's giving me these fantastic ideas and help me think in ways that I come up with things.

00:29:14.920 --> 00:29:19.028
<v Speaker 1>I've talked to a toaster, really, but it's given me these fantastic ideas and helped me think in ways that I come up with things I would have done myself.

00:29:19.048 --> 00:29:20.252
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so the jewelry stood out on.

00:29:20.252 --> 00:29:25.232
<v Speaker 1>I think where the value is going to accrue, the real value is in the, that tech stack.

00:29:25.232 --> 00:29:36.342
<v Speaker 1>You know the, the, the fabs, the gpu, the cloud infrastructure, the hyperscale infrastructure, the lms, and then innovating across the top is exciting but also nerve wracking.

00:29:36.342 --> 00:29:43.250
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, you never quite know where the next iteration of LLM is going to just disrupt you and pull you out of business.

00:29:43.309 --> 00:29:48.823
<v Speaker 2>You know, when you look at the basic tasks in a business, ai is eating them up.

00:29:48.823 --> 00:29:52.038
<v Speaker 2>I mean the customer service capabilities, all of that stuff.

00:29:52.038 --> 00:29:53.882
<v Speaker 2>It's just eating up all of that stuff.

00:29:53.882 --> 00:30:01.355
<v Speaker 2>When we get to that top end of town like for us as business coaches you know we're live and local, we do the coaching with you.

00:30:01.355 --> 00:30:09.284
<v Speaker 2>We're live, we're local, but still building the Brad bot right now, teaching my bot everything from my brain.

00:30:09.284 --> 00:30:14.699
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of fun, but it's also kind of challenging to think of.

00:30:14.699 --> 00:30:16.703
<v Speaker 2>Where will we go with this?

00:30:16.703 --> 00:30:27.484
<v Speaker 2>The average business owner, my gut feel, is that AI is not going to be something they need to really dive into straight away.

00:30:27.484 --> 00:30:29.696
<v Speaker 2>Big companies are getting in there.

00:30:29.696 --> 00:30:34.038
<v Speaker 2>Where do you see it impacting that SME right now?

00:30:34.038 --> 00:30:36.403
<v Speaker 2>How does AI impact the SME?

00:30:37.029 --> 00:30:37.531
<v Speaker 1>A couple of things.

00:30:37.531 --> 00:30:41.844
<v Speaker 1>One is I did a presentation today.

00:30:41.844 --> 00:30:43.127
<v Speaker 1>I have this ship I built.

00:30:43.127 --> 00:30:47.005
<v Speaker 1>It's a picture of a ship in a harbor with millions of people around it, a couple on it.

00:30:47.005 --> 00:30:48.451
<v Speaker 1>It's about to leave the harbor.

00:30:48.451 --> 00:30:49.814
<v Speaker 1>I built it and did it mid-journey.

00:30:50.957 --> 00:30:54.228
<v Speaker 1>The point is that this technological ship is leaving the harbor, the people left in the harbor are not.

00:30:54.228 --> 00:30:56.873
<v Speaker 1>And the point is is that this technological ship is leaving the harbour right and the people left on the harbour are not.

00:30:56.873 --> 00:31:08.561
<v Speaker 1>Going to be admin, assistants, uber drivers you know, truck drivers it's going to be very expensive knowledge workers because they've got an always bullseye on their back Lawyers, accountants eventually that's knowledge workers.

00:31:08.561 --> 00:31:10.673
<v Speaker 1>Eventually you've got embodied AI and robotics.

00:31:10.673 --> 00:31:13.358
<v Speaker 1>So you're going to have people that surgeons, you know.

00:31:13.358 --> 00:31:20.363
<v Speaker 1>Probably maybe in my lifetime, with my children, it'd be illegal for a human to work on a construction site because you can't get insurance, you know.

00:31:20.363 --> 00:31:23.878
<v Speaker 1>Or drive a car to an urban conurbation, who knows?

00:31:23.878 --> 00:31:25.522
<v Speaker 1>So that's one issue.

00:31:25.522 --> 00:31:39.953
<v Speaker 1>You've got to start get onto the boat, start using it, embracing it, understanding it, because as it moves away, if that's a gap between the quayside and the boat becomes too big, it's gonna be very hard to make a leap and to catch up.

00:31:39.953 --> 00:31:43.551
<v Speaker 1>So my view is most companies is just get involved and understand it.

00:31:44.114 --> 00:31:46.872
<v Speaker 1>The next point really I would say is I think there'll be a battle for the middle ground.

00:31:46.872 --> 00:31:51.692
<v Speaker 1>So I mean, this is very generic, but the big in the large enterprises.

00:31:51.692 --> 00:32:00.618
<v Speaker 1>Okay, if you make jet engines, nuclear power states are quite different, so they were always the big enterprise, the big customers.

00:32:00.618 --> 00:32:04.095
<v Speaker 1>Let's look at FMCG and then you've got this SME.

00:32:04.095 --> 00:32:07.696
<v Speaker 1>The small company was that personal touch customization.

00:32:07.696 --> 00:32:13.473
<v Speaker 1>So if you make, you know, custom out of their wooden furniture, the G's never going to do that.

00:32:13.473 --> 00:32:15.220
<v Speaker 1>They're never going to make jet engines.

00:32:15.220 --> 00:32:31.535
<v Speaker 1>However, in the middle, lots of services where the big players now can hyper-personalize, they can come after that long tail and the long tail has now got the technology to go after some of the big enterprise customers because they can.

00:32:31.535 --> 00:32:38.115
<v Speaker 1>Now it's credible, they don't have to write expensive writing, code and applications, llms, a lot of the hard work for them.

00:32:38.115 --> 00:32:43.557
<v Speaker 1>So I think you've got this overlap in the middle and it's what I call the battle for the middle ground and that's going to play out.

00:32:43.557 --> 00:32:44.278
<v Speaker 1>That's going to be interesting.

00:32:45.080 --> 00:32:45.942
<v Speaker 2>That's a yeah.

00:32:45.942 --> 00:32:57.096
<v Speaker 2>I love the fact that we as a small business, now have an ability to compete where we, you know, previously had to spend millions of dollars building a piece of software.

00:32:57.135 --> 00:32:59.273
<v Speaker 1>Now, Well, cloud was the first.

00:32:59.273 --> 00:33:02.122
<v Speaker 1>Yes, cloud was first All the infrastructure.

00:33:02.122 --> 00:33:06.272
<v Speaker 1>You could buy a subscription model, whatever the hell you wanted Anything in a big company could.

00:33:06.272 --> 00:33:25.391
<v Speaker 1>And now the LLM means that you know, maybe you have I've lost millions of pounds or spent it trying to build software and investments or projects that never worked and you're like, oh my God, whereas now, if you can talk to machines and ask them for an outcome and it writes the code and you get an outcome and you go.

00:33:25.391 --> 00:33:26.053
<v Speaker 1>That's not quite right.

00:33:26.053 --> 00:33:27.900
<v Speaker 1>I need to do that and it rewrites the code.

00:33:27.900 --> 00:33:42.182
<v Speaker 1>That means that your ability to innovate using code is kind of exponential increases, but it also means big players can do as well so let's talk the old scale philosophy of business.

00:33:42.321 --> 00:33:46.075
<v Speaker 2>Obviously ai is going to assist in scale pre-ai.

00:33:46.075 --> 00:33:50.483
<v Speaker 2>Though what were your things about a business scaling must do a, b and c.

00:33:50.483 --> 00:33:54.550
<v Speaker 2>Is there certain things you see in the ones that really scale versus those that don't?

00:33:55.593 --> 00:34:05.844
<v Speaker 1>I mean the ones that obviously have really scaled in more recent years, the ones where you know your the marginal cost of producing another product or adding another customer is minimal.

00:34:05.844 --> 00:34:08.701
<v Speaker 1>Hence why venture capitalists love software as a service.

00:34:08.701 --> 00:34:11.010
<v Speaker 1>Right, it's just built for them essentially.

00:34:11.010 --> 00:34:16.557
<v Speaker 1>But I think you're going to see that I think software as a service is going to be disrupted.

00:34:16.557 --> 00:34:27.697
<v Speaker 1>I think there's been billions of dollars invested in SaaS, specifically B2B SaaS, over the last 10-year funds, seven-year investments last five years.

00:34:27.697 --> 00:34:32.115
<v Speaker 1>It's probably not going to be worth what I thought it was because of generative error.

00:34:32.115 --> 00:34:42.135
<v Speaker 1>So that's the beauty of software is the ability to scale and that marginal cost of adding your customer revenue doesn't scale with it.

00:34:42.135 --> 00:34:47.800
<v Speaker 1>But the beauty of AI, I think, is that you can now limit your cost.

00:34:47.800 --> 00:34:56.778
<v Speaker 1>Maybe it's people especially we're a big fan of voice, the voice interface essentially and you can maybe increase your revenue growth.

00:34:56.778 --> 00:35:04.855
<v Speaker 1>So the gap in between is more margin, more profit, more valuable business, more wealth, essentially, to scale.

00:35:04.855 --> 00:35:06.259
<v Speaker 1>It's my five factors.

00:35:06.259 --> 00:35:06.498
<v Speaker 1>Really.

00:35:06.498 --> 00:35:13.755
<v Speaker 1>It's the I'm in the plan, obviously, but it's the people, the operational excellence, and it's ready to scale.

00:35:13.755 --> 00:35:19.597
<v Speaker 1>So the front end is detached from the back end your finance but increasingly it's technology.

00:35:19.849 --> 00:35:29.077
<v Speaker 1>But I do think, interestingly, that I think with AI you're going to see it come full circle the humans are going to become more interested in human experiences.

00:35:29.077 --> 00:35:39.077
<v Speaker 1>So you might find and the interesting thing is this, quite hard to get your head around is that we value knowledge of work Hedge fund managers, lawyers, accountants, consultants.

00:35:39.077 --> 00:35:41.277
<v Speaker 1>Right, that's been productized, it's been commoditized.

00:35:41.277 --> 00:35:44.539
<v Speaker 1>So in the future, who are we going to value?

00:35:44.539 --> 00:35:51.637
<v Speaker 1>Is it going to be a hairdresser, a stonemason, a masseuse, a coach, because machines can't do that stuff.

00:35:51.637 --> 00:35:58.855
<v Speaker 1>Well, all this stuff we value for you know probably two industrial revolutions at least is going to be commoditized.

00:35:58.855 --> 00:35:59.918
<v Speaker 1>They're going to go to zero.

00:35:59.918 --> 00:36:07.438
<v Speaker 1>So if that goes to zero, you can scale it, but the value may start to accrue elsewhere.

00:36:07.900 --> 00:36:10.289
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean it's really interesting.

00:36:10.289 --> 00:36:18.340
<v Speaker 2>I was just in Monterrey, mexico, and I got to go to one of the car plants there and just see the level of robotics in that car plant.

00:36:18.340 --> 00:36:30.340
<v Speaker 2>And you know, I look at it and I look back to when they first started making cars, to this, and the speed with which that change has happened, the speed with which AI is going to shift the market.

00:36:30.340 --> 00:36:35.637
<v Speaker 2>Are you seeing it going at a faster and faster pace, or where do you see that?

00:36:36.230 --> 00:36:37.414
<v Speaker 1>yeah, so it's that it's again.

00:36:37.414 --> 00:36:39.900
<v Speaker 1>It's like that exponential curve is it's compounding.

00:36:39.900 --> 00:36:47.411
<v Speaker 1>We don't quite know how steep it's going to be or where, when the foothills or the trajectory is going to be of that curve.

00:36:47.411 --> 00:36:48.795
<v Speaker 1>What is happening?

00:36:48.795 --> 00:37:01.394
<v Speaker 1>And also I've kind of said before, the ai we have now may not be the ai we have now may not be the AI we actually end up using, the way the models, the way it actually works, a lot of AGI, which is a whole different thing where it's recursive and it can learn.

00:37:01.394 --> 00:37:02.358
<v Speaker 1>That changes the game.

00:37:02.358 --> 00:37:04.898
<v Speaker 1>But it is there and it's compounding.

00:37:04.898 --> 00:37:20.161
<v Speaker 1>So I often say in my presentations that you know you're going to start to see in the next 24 months one more news articles about we're not hiring these people, months, one more news articles about we're not hiring this people, these people don't need them anymore, and you'll start to see that trickle become a flood of news buddy.

00:37:20.242 --> 00:37:21.010
<v Speaker 2>I've played with it.

00:37:21.010 --> 00:37:21.210
<v Speaker 2>I've.

00:37:21.210 --> 00:37:24.519
<v Speaker 2>One of the keys to my success is I'm really good at marketing.

00:37:24.519 --> 00:37:29.896
<v Speaker 2>I'm really good at testing ads and refining the message and doing all that stuff well.

00:37:29.896 --> 00:37:33.019
<v Speaker 2>I I feel like I'm out of a job with that.

00:37:33.019 --> 00:37:45.751
<v Speaker 2>Like ai can now analyze hundreds of versions of an ad for pennies on the dollar to what it used to, I'd be able to, and forget this and it'll do it instantly.

00:37:45.771 --> 00:37:51.853
<v Speaker 1>You can launch an ad and in real time it'll test it and amend the copy and the imagery.

00:37:51.873 --> 00:37:52.657
<v Speaker 2>Yes, created in real time.

00:37:52.677 --> 00:37:54.786
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, that's where it's copy and the imagery created in real time.

00:37:54.786 --> 00:37:55.550
<v Speaker 1>Oh my God, that's where it's going.

00:37:55.550 --> 00:38:00.121
<v Speaker 1>And the other thing people don't understand is, mike, the internet's going away.

00:38:00.121 --> 00:38:11.277
<v Speaker 1>In the current version, this cyberspace of all these little shops and HTML locations where you turn up there and you've got these search engines searching for them, give you a list of stuff.

00:38:11.318 --> 00:38:18.242
<v Speaker 1>Right, you're going to have an agent that's going to know what you like, who you are, what your heartbeat is, what mood you're in, what's in your diary.

00:38:18.242 --> 00:38:22.813
<v Speaker 1>So you're going to say I want a barbecue for the weekend for the family coming.

00:38:22.813 --> 00:38:23.496
<v Speaker 1>I want a new one.

00:38:23.496 --> 00:38:29.094
<v Speaker 1>Really, I'll pay I don't know $300, but I'll pay $150 for a secondhand.

00:38:29.094 --> 00:38:35.485
<v Speaker 1>Your AI goes away, talks to all the other AIs that have Barbies, new ones and old ones, and they say here's my.

00:38:35.485 --> 00:38:40.019
<v Speaker 1>All the internet becomes is an AI, an agent with an inventory.

00:38:40.019 --> 00:38:45.175
<v Speaker 1>Your AI talks to it, negotiates, comes back to you and says I can get you a new one here.

00:38:45.175 --> 00:38:46.956
<v Speaker 1>I'm negotiating this second-hand one.

00:38:46.956 --> 00:38:50.514
<v Speaker 1>It can be delivered by Friday, or this one by Saturday morning in the morning could be risky.

00:38:50.514 --> 00:38:52.501
<v Speaker 1>I'll take the second one on Friday morning, but it's gone.

00:38:52.501 --> 00:39:00.429
<v Speaker 1>That's the internet, so this place we find ourselves lost in and searching around is going away.

00:39:00.769 --> 00:39:03.072
<v Speaker 2>I do love the fact that you know Apple.

00:39:03.072 --> 00:39:04.637
<v Speaker 2>Are they behind it in their head?

00:39:04.637 --> 00:39:10.277
<v Speaker 2>Well, talking to Siri or talking to Alexa is going to be a big thing in the future.

00:39:10.318 --> 00:39:22.782
<v Speaker 1>That's going to be a game changer, I'm waiting to see the day when you can have a conversation with siri or alexa, as you can with, say, chat, tippity, plus, yeah, that, that I mean they're they're not far off their distribution and google home.

00:39:22.782 --> 00:39:30.501
<v Speaker 1>Their distribution is enormous, but I think they've got to work out a way of paying for it yes, yeah, monetizing will be a thing.

00:39:31.083 --> 00:39:32.855
<v Speaker 2>Um final question, then.

00:39:32.855 --> 00:39:39.800
<v Speaker 2>Uh, I ask everyone this what's the best quote you ever heard on or the best advice you ever got about being successful?

00:39:40.550 --> 00:39:45.096
<v Speaker 1>One of my favorite quotes though I think it does apply to entrepreneurs is from Winston Churchill.

00:39:45.096 --> 00:39:52.536
<v Speaker 1>It's not quite exact, but it's roughly says this is that there is nothing more exhilarating for a young man than to be shot at and missed.

00:39:56.610 --> 00:39:57.637
<v Speaker 2>All right, why that one?

00:39:58.429 --> 00:40:01.639
<v Speaker 1>Because as an entrepreneur, that's what it feels like quite often.

00:40:01.639 --> 00:40:14.237
<v Speaker 1>In many ways it's that excitement of being out there on the field, essentially, and trying to win battles or win a war, and you're sort of winning small battles, and to me I've done quite.

00:40:14.237 --> 00:40:15.320
<v Speaker 1>That's what it feels like.

00:40:15.340 --> 00:40:18.664
<v Speaker 2>I always remember that one trying to win battles or win a war, and you're kind of winning small battles.

00:40:18.664 --> 00:40:19.284
<v Speaker 2>It's a mouth-to-mouth.

00:40:19.284 --> 00:40:19.925
<v Speaker 2>That's what it feels like.

00:40:19.925 --> 00:40:20.586
<v Speaker 2>I always remember that.

00:40:20.586 --> 00:40:22.510
<v Speaker 2>One Big success Piers, lenny, follow, read, study, learn all you can.

00:40:22.710 --> 00:40:24.193
<v Speaker 3>We'll be back next week with more of your success.

00:40:24.193 --> 00:40:40.452
<v Speaker 3>You've been listening to the big success podcast with the number one business coach in the world, brad sugars.

00:40:40.452 --> 00:40:43.320
<v Speaker 3>To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up, or listen to past episodes, visit wwwbradsugarscom.