Episode 013 - The unspoken reality of pursuing wealth and multiple sources of income?

Hello Seekardo listeners it’s Harms here, and today we’ve got a fantastic episode. Ro and I have been speaking in the background and really just brainstorming this before we started to get to you.

The question we are going to be answering is the unspoken reality of pursuing wealth and multiple sources of income. It’s always a hot topic this but before we dive into the podcast and the three parts we will break this podcast into, Dr Ro has got a special message for you to.

Hey Ro so the question we are talking about is the unspoken reality of pursuing wealth and multiple sources of income, I’ve explained that we are going to break this into three parts. What are those three parts for the listeners at home?

This is a great topic.

I think as we’re recording this, it is incredibly important. You heard me talk often about the cycles, the economy goes through every seven to 10 years we’re hitting a recession. You can’t fight that, it’s part of the global cycle of economy and as we’re recording it and going into that next what I certainly believe to be the next big recessionary period.

So anyone listening to this pursuing wealth, multiple sources of income without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, it has to be something you’ve got to consider.

The question is, are you ready for it?
Do you want to do it?
Is it something you’re interested in?
Is it something you’re passionate in?

I think the best way to break this down because we’ve got a lot to cover in a short space of time, and both you and I are entrepreneurial, both independent through our own financial strategies. Let me sort of throw this out and see what you think.

Part one needs to be are you ready for it? Are you ready to pursue wealth? Are you ready for multiple sources of income?That’s part one, part two is the reality of it.What’s it really about? You hear all this stuff on the Internet and you see these flashy adverts and I go onto YouTube and suddenly there’s a paid and a slick young guy, a third of my age not even a millennial and he is like, “yeah, come and do this and you’ll be completely financially free.Hey, look at me I’m on a beach in the Caribbean and I did this all in the last week.” Or something like that.

So part two is the reality of it. Part three is tough questions to ask before you even start it.

I am a passionate, passionate follower of coaching, I love to coach, I love to do interventions as you know, and I think the most important tool any coach or self-coaching person should have are questions. That is an amazing tools, so I’m going to be throwing out some tough questions and you’re going to be doing the same thing.

I think if we do it that way we can leave the listener, those of you listening right now with at least a feeling of, “Right okay, these guys have stripped this back, but at least I know what to ask myself.”

You’ve talked about this already Harms if we can then go off and maybe look at this separately in different podcasts business, property, etcetera we can go into a lot more depth, but today is really ripping off the lid and looking at the truth of it. How does that sound?

That sounds fantastic and what I love about this is because we have almost at some point, both you and I at different times in our lives, asked ourselves this question,which is okay it’s time for me now, or should I be pursuing wealth?
Should I be pursuing multiple sources of income?

Because at some point in our lives we wanted to make a financial change.

Yes.

And we probably asked ourselves an important question like am I ready to step out of the job? Am I ready to step out of the career and make this financial change and at some point in both of our lives the answer was yes. So if you’re listening to this at home you’re in safe hands because both of us have done it. I’m almost still going through the transition, Ro you did it many years ago now.

I did it 22 years ago when you would have been about eight. You hadn’t got hair; I mean now you’ve got a face full of hair. your face. So yeah, it was 1997 going to 1998 I made that step.

Wow, that’s when it was not cool, that’s when there were no ads every three seconds jumping in your face saying, “hey, you can become financially independent. You can come rich within seven days. You can make $100,000”, whatever the adverts are saying at the moment in the first year and things like that. That wasn’t really around in your generation, is that fair?

Actually, we haven’t planned to cover this but if I paint you a picture. I was 25, 26 years of age when I got my PhD maybe a little bit earlier than that and when I came out of my PhD I went into my career and I just in the first week in my job honestly, I was like, what am I doing here? I do not want to be here. I’ve pursued this whole academic plan to the corporate ladder. Bear in mind that during my PhD I had started a network marketing business; I had set up a separate retail business selling jewellery to women. I tried playing around with buying, selling bits and bobs, I was just exploring different ways to generate cash. This is through my early 20s in my PhD. I then go into my career at which point I start another network marketing business and I start to trade the stock market.

Back in those days you bought a certificate, you bought a share certificate of how many you wanted and then you’d have to send it back out through a broker on the phone. There was none of this stuff you can do on the Internet right now.

So I’m sat there in my late 20s and I am pissed off. I’m thinking I have got to get out, I’m reading personal development, I’m attending events. I’m listening to different speakers; I’m listening to people like Les Brown on a tape player in my little mini that I had at the time. And man, I just wanted to get out.

I was already in that state where I was ready but we did not have advertising, we didn’t have the Internet, everything was snail mail and you just had to go and drive around or find out where there was an event going on and try and learn from that.

There was nothing like we have today. Nothing at all, but I was determined to leave and the natural step for me if you look at the Rob Kiyosaki model, which is the cash flow quadrant and if anyone does not know what it is, it’s basically four quadrants. Top left is e for employee bottom left is self-employed, top right is business owner, bottom right is investor.

I wanted to go from e to s, that’s all I knew. I didn’t even think beyond that, I just wanted to get out of my job and the natural thing for me was to go become a consultant and start to be self employed as a business from that point. That was my starting point. I think that was 1997, 1998, I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a mentor at the time who was a consultant. He was the number one in the world and I knew what he was charging per day, which I think was like £1,000 a day, £1,500 per day. I thought, hey great maybe I could charge a third of that three, four, £500 a day and get going on and I wouldn’t have to work as much as I’m currently working right now.

I think when I left my career I was making £20,000 per year, which is ridiculous if you think about it I had a PhD I was 27, 28, 29 years of age thereabouts.

The feeling is after that amount of time specialising and studying to have that £20,000 a year is almost like wow was that worth it?

I started at 15. It was just gut wrenching because I thought crikey, but you didn’t question it. Back in those days, “yes, but you are a young engineer, you know you must work very, very hard.” It’s like work hard, don’t focus on the income focus on the fact you’re going to start to get your points, you’ll continue professional development and you’ve got a chartered civil engineer status. Get your hours in just go out, get the experience. Eventually, after 10 to 15 years climbing the corporate ladder, you’ll get to senior management, possibly director and I just looked around and said I do not want this.

As much as I loved what I did in terms of my PhD element. The rest of it didn’t interest me. I couldn’t see myself there for life, I used to look ahead and think is this really all the stuff of personal development, on business even at that stage, then so I unconsciously, emotionally, I’d left the job when I started the job.

From day one. For me Ro I unconsciously left the job, I almost was done with it for me it was about year seven, eight into job.

Oh wow.

Because I wasn’t aware of all of the things you described, personal development. The idea that you know individuals can go ahead and start a business, they can go build a property company. I just wasn’t really aware of those things, I just thought that’s for a select few people on this planet who just are gifted or they were born with money or whatever.

So I was like I’m really talented in my job, I’m getting promotions engineering position. It was only until I saw it was like somebody opened my eyes and said there’s other stuff out there and that was with a few books that landed on my desk and then coming to meet yourself as well. You said there’s other ways to do this.

So when I hit year 10 I was like I am done, so the question I asked was am I happy in my job?

Do I want to continue in this job for the rest of my life for the rest of my career and the answer for me was no. I had to do something else, which is the multiple sources of income.

Give us an age, so as a young millennial I met you at about 25 but you’d already got the anxa year or two before that?

About two years before that, so about 23 years old because I’d gone down the apprenticeship route I’d been working since age of 16, 17, in my uncle’s garage and then I did some office work for another uncle they took me on for summer jobs. Some of it I enjoyed but I started to get into the working habit and making some sort of money early on, then I went into an apprenticeship route and then I was like this is exciting because, as part of the apprenticeship part of the work environment it’s so social. You’re learning on the job you’re learning all these incredible skills and you’re hanging around with all the awesome people all the same age as you, so you’ve got a social side to the apprenticeship.

But then once you’re put into the workplace suddenly it’s like oh, where are my friends gone that I knew from the apprenticeship? Well actually we’ve all been scattered across the country now we are in the workplace and that didn’t take me long. About five years and I was like I can’t keep doing this. This doesn’t matter to me anymore. It’s not very meaningful to me. I need to be doing something different.

If you’re listening to this right now there are two different voices here I grew up when you stuck your head down and didn’t really question stuff. So when I was even questioning it I got looked at, I was questioned myself by people older than me and I didn’t have any real source of inspiration, apart from going to seminars. If I go back seven years for you which is when you were 22, 23, by then YouTube was up. Facebook was operational. There was definitely more opportunity to see people online, try new things.

Yeah I think the spread of stories and success stories became very common in the era I was growing up here and now it’s hit a peak, I feel it’s hit a peak right now, but that comes with a risk, that comes with the challenge, but we’ll talk a little bit later on that in the podcast.

So almost at my age you know, people were like “just give it a go, go for it. Look at this person they did this.” And it’s like, okay yeah because they are success stories but naturally the challenge is their one success story compared to however many who didn’t quite make it, but we are going to talk about that because there’s ways you can mitigate against that and actually become your own version of that success story.

Yes it’s quite good to paint a picture for both of us where we were at. Interestingly enough, we actually got to the same space around the same time, albeit me slightly later in age because I did my PhD first.

My five to seven year lead up would have been through my PhD, yours was actually in the career but I observed now and it’s interesting to see for people listening to this, I observe that people are now younger and getting that sense of, “I just don’t want to do this anymore, I’m pissed off and I’m ready to get out.”

I was just seen as a maverick. In fact, my ex interviewers two directors not just one, two of them sat me down and said, “Why are you doing this? You should be climbing the corporate ladder, we’ve got you streamlined for directorship, you’re too young. If you going to go out on your own it should be 10, 15, 20 years from now and had more experience in the industry.”

Most consultants at the time had grey hair or no hair. They were like 45, 50 years of age. We were the youngest, in fact two of us broke out me and a dear friend of mine who was about three years older than me, still close friends now. He was a mentor to me.

We were complete Mavericks. He’s West Indian, I’m half Asian and they used to call us the two docs. We’d do all of our consultancy together we would fly all over the world and when we used to walk through the door to the meet the clients, they just double took. Number one we were 20 to 25 years younger than some of the people engaging as consultants, secondly, one black, one Asian. It’s unheard of. We absolutely broke the mould. It was crazy.

I love that because it was somebody trying to put you in a box in and say, “No, no you’ve got to do it by these rules. This is exactly what happens.”

And this is a common big corporate business thing that entrepreneurs, people of my age are saying actually we don’t have to build a business like that. When we talk about the difference between what’s a business owner or the classic term businessman or whatever that was,but a business owner versus an entrepreneur and almost a social entrepreneur, or a philanthropist who is focused on building an enterprise for social cause. They are almost tearing up those rules that your seniors at the time were saying no Dr Ro this is not how you do it, you have to do it this way.

What I love about my generation right now is we have that spirit that you had and there was only a few of you back then Ro, I feel there is more of us now who have embodied the spirit and just saying actually, we are going to tear up the rule book because you don’t have to do it this way.

Yeah. I love what millennials are doing, they’re just jumping on it. It is the question of what are you jumping on and are you picking the right vehicle?Is it the right vehicle for you? Or are you just going for the shiny coin syndrome?

Exactly and I think the main question that we should now dive into is, are you ready for it?

What’s the best way to approach that?

I think a lot of today will be about me asking questions and by all means jump in, add to it or ask me what I mean by that. If you’re listening to it right now and you’re actually at a point where you’re thinking, “I am frustrated and pissed off, I actually do want to do something different.” I’ll just ask a few questions and I’ll just throw it out there and I think some of this might be going into the notes, but questions I would ask are stop me or jump in at any stage Harms would be:

Are you happy in your job?
Does your job make you feel complete?
Is that who you are?
Does it define who you are?
Does it make you feel fulfilled?

The job is important but separate to that and you might argue they’re the same thing but I don’t think they’re. Are you happy in your career? You might be in a job that is in a particular career is that going in the right direction for you?

The job is one thing, enjoying the functionality. You had your job as a railway engineer correct?

Yes.

But the career for that would have been railway engineer, climbing the corporate ladder to ultimately become what would it have been if you kept going? What would have been the career for you?

My career projection was almost a senior director of a region. So it will be moving beyond the engineering phase to managing my own business, but within that organisation.

As a salaried role though?

As a salaried role and probably top end, we are talking about the £100,000 mark. That was also the big challenge so one of things is okay I was happy in my job but was I happy with the income ceiling in this job? The answer to that was no because I was quite close to it. I was quite close to it and I was thinking I am quite close to it and I’ve still got 40 years or whatever left of work to do, am I happy with that ceiling?And the answer was no.

Isn’t it crazy to think that in the digital marketing business you operate one client could generate £100,000 a year?

Absolutely one client can generate that and I wasn’t even aware of that when I was in the job. I didn’t realise that it was one client would be paying a business or a group and that is not just me as an individual, we’ve got cofounders etcetera but a group. And they’d be paying them that to provide a service because that service is so valuable, so that was the wake-up call for me. And the same as real estate property you stack up four, five HMOs, house of multiple occupancy and you have the same results.

Exactly or as a professional speaker, you go out for two, three days and you generate £100,000 that way, so there are so many different opportunities. It’s not about money for those of you listening, but it’s just about let me work down the list. Income does come in, so the career and the job are different. Growth is another question.

Are you getting enough growth?
Are you emotionally developing within the job that you’re in?
Are you growing intellectually?
Are you growing emotionally?
Are you growing as a person?

Because I think that all of us, myself included over the years can get stuck in something because you’re comfortable and it pays well, or it doesn’t stretch or challenge you and you can stay there for longer than you need to. You can also find yourself in that situation as an entrepreneur, you’re working for certain clients I’ve experienced that myself.

So the patterns can recur but in a job, it’s more challenging because you never going to outgrow the job unless you physically develop yourself. You’ll always stay confined by that.

I think that’s a big one Ro for my generation that feeling of am I going to work and am I fulfilled with the company’s mission, the company’s values? Am I developing on a daily basis? Am I being stimulated? Is there a social aspect associated with this career? Are the correct perks?

And it’s not always financial in my generation are seeking that level of fulfilment and I think that’s a big thing that I’m seeing in people’s career. They get bored so quick and that’s not necessarily their fault. It means the roles that are still in existence within businesses are not helping people expand, that’s on the company as well as the individual.

I do think actually whilst we are on this point is don’t underestimate that over the long term.Short-term dangled an extra 10k year in a job you go, “Yeah screw the growth, you what the 10k is going to pay for a trip to the Maldives this year, let’s just below the money”, or whatever that is an easy place to focus. But if you’re thinking about as a human being and I think millennials are definitely moving into their emotional development, personal growth phase where they want more than just the salary. They want more than just a career they’re pursuing.

You’ve picked up a good point there, time with family and remember of the question is, are you ready to make a change?

So my question is, first of all, are you happy in your job? Are you happy with career growth?Emotional development? Do you feel you have enough time with your family? Are you planning to have kids? If you are does the career the job allow you to do that? If it does great, if it doesn’t then there are question marks.

The other question is income, are you getting enough income? Can you increase your income? Does this job, this career have the opportunity? You talked about that ceiling there, hundred grand whatever,it might be fine. It could be you and your partner get into two separate careers hitting 85, 90, 100k a year whatever it is, that’s £200,000 a year coming in,“you know what Dr Ro, Harms we are happy with that.”

That’s fantastic but ask these questions now such that you don’t find yourself in five, 10 years thinking, “oh my god I thought I was going to get more than this.”

I think every career that I’m aware of has a ceiling unless it’s linked to share options or a commission type structure typically and share options also depend on the business growing and I’ve known people get offered on share options and submit back a year, back a year, back a year. Bonuses based on commissions is all about performance for that year, if you don’t perform it might be the next year that your income comes down and what if you’ve built your lifestyle on that, and of course the next couple years you don’t earn the same income, so your lifestyle suddenly reduces.

Long-term wealth, this I think is the biggest one.

Just to jump in, if somebody listening to this saying, actually Ro, “I’m exactly that person you’ve talked about, my partner and I are happy. We’re happy in the job. We’re happy to see out our career because it gives us the income. It also gives us emotional development; I get time with family and things like that.”

But this is the part where Ro is now talking about hang on and continue to listen to this because we are talking about multiple sources of income. We’re talking about income which can be generated to boost your finances that could potentially be used in other ways in the future, is that where we are going to be going with this?

Yeah it has to be because that’s the one question mark over any job is it creating long-term wealth and it might be. It might be that you’re stacking away everything you earn apart from your basic living costs and you are putting it in the bank. But of course, what do you do with that money?

That’s another conversation for possibly another podcast itself. Have you got the ability to build equity into your life or have you built equity into your life?If you spend 10, 15, 20 years or you’re about to spend 10, 15, 20 years working for this company pursuing this career, is there equity there?

In other words, what if you stopped? What is the value of all those hours, all those minutes, all the pain, the blood, the sweat are you able to walk away and say, “I’m walking away with equity, I’m taking something with me, I’m giving up the job and with that comes half a million or two million or a passive income of this.”
Very rare anyone going into a job is actually building equity, whereas if you build a business you build equity into that business at such that when you leave it, there is an ongoing passive income. It could be sold,ongoing concern. It can be capitalised up and sold into the marketplace whatever, most people in a job aren’t really building equity.

I think that’s really big one just to pause there for a minute because I don’t think you and your career and all the years that you put into that job walked away with having built any personal equity for yourself, would I be right?

None whatsoever and I think Ro with personal equity are we talking financial equity or can somebody walk away from their career, from their job with a different form of equity in terms of fulfilment. Is that a possibility?

There are three really, one is financial equity, which I think very few people do. Two is personal growth. When I became a consultant the equity I’d built in was my PhD and x amount of numbers in the industry now I’m going to sell myself.

That was the one thing I did have equity in terms of me as a person I don’t think I particularly grew in my job. I actually just every minute in my lunch breaks in the evenings, I would read personal development books, I would go to events, go to seminars not related to my work. So I built my personal development equity outside my job. I built my experience that was the one thing I took.

I think that’s fair to say for anyone that’s been in a career same with you, but the problem you’ve got is that equity has to be applicable to the new career you’re going into. My first if you like stop after leaving the job was to go self-employed all those years of knowledge and equity went into being a consultant, but that would not have helped me as a property investor. It would not have helped me as a trader, would not have helped me writing books, would not have helped me develop a personal development brand.

It was only equity related to that career in the same way you would have had equity as a railway engineer and managing lots of people and developing projects, but that didn’t necessarily play out in what you’re doing right now.

Yeah makes sense and that’s a fair point.

Remember we are trying to establishare you ready to go off and pursue multiple sources of income and become wealthy or pursue wealth?

If you love your job and your career fantastic, brilliant, stay there, but apply yourself, master it, make sure that you consider some of the things I’ve talked about and Harminder’s talked about. Maybe if you really loving it I would pursue an increase in salary, grow yourself, develop yourself and at the same time create some security. Do something parallel, doesn’t have to be a big thing, doesn’t have to be starting another business but it could be putting some assets in place, or putting your money into commodities like for example, gold might be an example.

This is not financial advice but that’s what certain people do. You might say, “hey, guess what Ro over the next five years I reckon I can save up enough money to buy maybe one or two investment properties.” Great we’ll talk about that in a minute that could be something to do, but do what you do, do it well, do it with passion and stay focused on that. If you love what you do and you’re happy at the moment that would be my first point.

I love that.

I think that’s almost the human mission it’s just if you’ve got something you’re passionate about, you wake up and you love it every single day, then just do it. But make sure I totally agree with what Ro is saying, make sure because when we go into the reality part of business those assets and that form of security is going to be essential to almost keep you afloat sometimes. I’m almost teasing for parts of the reality with some of the statistics I’ll show you later.

Now let’s say Ro they are not happy with their job, what are the steps for them?

I’m going to use you as bit of a guinea pig, the question I’ve got then is if you’re not happy with the job my first question is, what’s the outcome that you want in your life if you’re not wanting a job and you’re wanting to pursue something else, whatever that something else is. We’re talking about wealth and multiple sources of income.

I’m going to throw some thoughts out there and then as I’m doing that I’m going to swing back to you harms as a millennial, who was in that space which elements of what I’m about to mention for you kind of resonated and maybe paint us a picture.

Here’s somethings to consider for the listeners, number one are you wanting more freedom of time? I.e. does the idea of leaving your job give you the option and the choice to do that? Are you wanting to be more self-directed, you just want more control over your life. Do you want, you’ve heard Harminder talk about this, do you just want an unlimited earning capacity? Is it like, “fucking hell I can only get 50, 80, 100, 150 but I want unlimited earning capacity. Do you want to simply be your own boss and take control of your own time and choices?

You may have a skill or an idea or a business which gives you global reach, so do you like the idea of having global reach? Just start thinking about the big picture now. “I’m out of my job. What is it I want?” Do you want to take advantage of tax benefits? It might be that in your country you’re listening to this there are actually more tax efficient benefits to you by being in a business.

Do you just want a completely different lifestyle to the one you’ve got because the one you’ve got is not how you saw yourself five, 10 years ago and for me a big one has always been a legacy for your family.

Is it that you want to build equity, you want to leave something so that when you leave your job there is nothing for them. Whereas if you leave your wealth, your business, your multiple sources of income, your children have the ability to have a lifestyle that maybe you didn’t have when you were a child.

There are just so many different pictures you can paint yourself at which point tell us what yours was Harms when you got to that point.

I love that Ro and I think for the listeners at home the reason Ro can download that list and share that is because you have so many people come to you for wealth education, financial education and just breaking the mould, changing the rule set, climbing out of the box and exploring new things.

These are the common things people come at you with when you are ask them the question if you want out the job why are you doing this?What’s the outcome?

What’s really interesting is it’s not just in a wealth event, we run the Communicating with Impact programme, which is phenomenal, there is nothing else like it in the world and people come from all over. They come from careers, they come from charities, they run businesses, they’re parents, there are youngsters coming through in their late teens right through to elderly people.

One of the things we ask people to do is articulate their vision of the future because if you communicate with impact, you’ve got to be able to communicate on a personal level, an emotional level, on a business level.

And one of the common themes that comes out is the aspirational communication people have, and a lot of it is about the future. Then I say okay, if you are leaving a job or when you are leaving your job, or now you’ve left your job, talk to us about the outcome you wanted. So you are right a lot of this comes from other people, it’s not me, although some of these were me, but actually I could probably list another 30 things there.

Let’s go back to you when you sat there, you’re in the career and then you made a decision to step out. Yes, you came and watched me on the property side, but I think prior to that you’d already started to put yourself into that state. Paint a picture for us, what was the outcome that was contrastingly different to your career at that time.

My goodness if you just imagine yourself in my career, the peak of it was being on a conference call at 7 AM but because I was one of the lead people in the conference call, I would have had to be prepared for the conference call. The conference call would start preparation would really need to be me flicking through my emails in bed at about 5:36 AM and if I hadn’t, I would be on the conference call unprepared and you know if you’re on a conference call unprepared with seven, eight other senior people it’s embarrassing.

So that was not an option. So 7 AM, now I had a choice did I want to get to the office for 7 AM, which would mean I’d have to prepare and manage the commute. Now the role that we are in a railway engineering, the firefighting of the railway, making sure it’s safe running infrastructure at the time when I was there. It was a case of great I’ve done all my work today, I feel great it’s 2 o’clock, but then the emergency strikes at 2:30PM just before you’re about to leave.

Now that emergency because of the position I was in at the time and depending on what role you’re playing many of people around me were going through the same thing, which was now it gets dragged to 5:30PM, then it’s 6:30PM. Okay the emergency is still not over 7:30PM.

Now I’m living with my beautiful wife, we’ve just moved into our new home together, starting to enjoy our life together as a married couple and then I was on-call. Now my on-call hours were 24 hours every four weeks. Now that really started to affect us when it was 24 hours every four weeks and I was on a night shift, which meant I was sleeping in the living room downstairs so this is where I was.

The contrast which I wanted was just freedom of time, just so I can say today I’m going to wake up at 9 o’clock or today I’m going to wake up at 8 o’clock, have a coffee, take an hour to get ready to do whatever I’m passionate about in the morning.

The passion came later, but for me it was just the freedom of time to dictate my time and not have somebody else say, because there’s a conference call at 7 o’clock every single day, you have to be on that conference call every day at 7 o’clock, no excuses. It’s like okay thanks for dictating literally, hour by hour my day.

Can I just jump in there?

I think there’s an insight into this and if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, “yeah but I’ve got a role like that and it’s exciting I get to solve problems. I get to help people out. I get significance. I get recognised for it in the job,” and I’m sure you would have got that. That’s all great.

I would challenge somebody who said that to me and say yes at that moment in time, but when you add that up. That is an ongoing firefighting lifestyle. There is no actual purpose to it apart from fulfilling that role helping people in that role and doing the job. It is not necessarily helping you pursue your own purpose in life.

Now I don’t want to sound like I’m ripping anybody’s job apart and I guess I’m talking to you Harminder had I been speaking to you at the time, which I kind of did when I first met you. But it comes back to the first set of questions which were all about you as an individual, because it builds so much significance you feel so important when you’re doing that, a freaking year or two. Because I had the same thing as a civil engineer. Not quite as intense as you, it was more when we were on site.

Especially as a bloke you drop everything and for two, three, four hours, that is all consuming isn’t it?

It’s all consuming, you feel great as well.

Yeah exactly, you feel great and then afterwards what happens is that greatness over time that’s when you start to get adrenal burnout, I won’t go into that as it’s a whole conversation separately. But this is where people start to get flat lined, tired, jaded and then you start to question what the hell have I been doing for the last five years.

I was going to say Ro that was awesome, it was so much fun in year one when I could be innovative but once you hit an innovative ceiling here, try doing that for four years and then it’s like don’t ever tell me about the time 7 AM ever again. I don’t want to hear it. If somebody says the word conference call to me I start to panic, unless it’s with my team we approach it very differently now, that is an intentional thing.

Going back to the original question, I was at that point in time, if you’re listening rewinding now the five, six years at that point in time, it was freedom of time.

Now what I wanted to add here for Ro for those listening and I think it’s a nice way to transition into what does that look like as you go forward because these are the outcomes.

Ro you may not be aware of all this I went from wanting freedom of time to then wanting travel. So once we got freedom of time it was let’s travel, so we travelled we did holidays which were 30 days long, a month and a half long and that feeling has now gone.

So okay we know we can travel we have experienced new places. Then it was okay, now we’re getting really into business we are understanding how things work and how property works. There is an unlimited income ceiling amazing. That was one of the pursuits right now, but where I am now as a person and if you’re listening to this at home it’s actually a beautiful place to be if you’re a creative like me is, I just get to explore.

Everyday just feels like new ideas, new concepts, new things we are trying and one cool thing is, the aim was to be full-time parents so that’s something we are building into our life as well.These are all the things that you will be working to and I think it evolves over time is that fair Ro? I know you listed a few things, but at the start it was freedom of time once you get that you’re not going to stand there wake up and look at your clock all day. You’re going to do something; you’re going to fill your time with something.

It’s a push-pull question.

We are driven by pain or we are pulled by a desire to achieve something and I think for you I was a combination of both those things, and over time, the more you move away from the pain of where you were, your motivation has to change, shift, vary in the sense that you’re now moving towards aspirational type drive as opposed to pain type drive.

That’s not to say in business you’re not going to get pain and we all do experience it; I’ve experienced it this year and that pain then is a reminder. Any sort of pain reminds you you’re alive, when people get into a painful place they say at least you’re still breathing.

To be able to feel pain means that you are still breathing, you’re not six foot under, you are not in a cemetery right now you’re alive. Having said that once you’re out the pain it’s about keeping the drive and that’s where the pull comes in, which is whats happened to you. You’re now pulled by aspiration, as opposed to getting away from conference calls in the morning at 6 o’clock or seven o’clock in the morning.

I like that okay, what we’ve got here is that first part is, are you ready for it? So as you’re listening to this it’s a good point, I know you are listening and you’re going to carry on listening to the rest of the podcast but go away and reflect on this and ask yourself that question, are you ready for this?

If you are you need to get to part two and part two is what is the reality of it.

Do want me to go over to you to tackle it first and come back to me, what would you like to do?

I think let me just talk about where we are in the current situation in society with this element, which is what is the reality of it. I think this comes really Ro from the information that is being advertised to people out there online, where you know it’s everybody can become an entrepreneur overnight. I think this is the challenge that the millennial face because one of things that millennials are fed up with is the classic conventional workspace.

Let me give you a quick example of somebody who broke out of there. When I went on my ten-day silent meditation retreat last year I met somebody pretty cool and I really enjoyed and resonated with their story because he said he had been working for corporate, but he wasn’t a natural entrepreneur himself, but he wanted to work with natural entrepreneurs. So he went and moved his well-paying career with career perks and all that stuff that you get with it to work with an entrepreneur start-up company. There were two founders and he was basically working in the company from the ground up and that was a vegan food company and now it’s absolutely exploded. I must WhatsApp him and say well done.

The point I’m making is this person didn’t necessarily buy into the concept of you’re going to get rich immediately, they bought into the concept of you I want to be around this entrepreneurial spirit that same spirit Ro you described when you broke away to try something different from your conventional career.

What I’m saying is the upfront the sales and marketing, and it is worthwhile being aware of this because the sales and marketing of get rich quick or you’re going to become a millionaire overnight and it’s so easy to do there is a two-step process and you become a millionaire. Those are advertised and they’re going to be even more heavily advertised as millennial’s get even more frustrated with their careers and workplaces.

I guess even your generation Ro who want to change and I think the reason we grab onto these, probably number one is the human condition is just blasé to the fact that things are actually hard work and it’s just to take the path of least resistance.

So if I say I got a chance to work with Ro he is saying it’s realistic if you follow this path, you follow this guidance, this coaching, this mentoring in real estate or mastering the art of communication. It will help you develop your career over a two to five-year period. Now you’ve got a choice, you can work with Ro and you’re immediately thinking blimey it’s going to could take two to five years. Okay, but then if somebody else next to you Ro says, “I can streamline that I can sort that out for you in a month.” Naturally the person is going to go for the month, but there’s no reality or substance behind that. I think that’s something listeners need to be aware of and there’s a whole bunch of things we’ve got to question when it comes to, and we are going to talk about the vehicles later in the podcast that you can explore and possibly add to your multiple streams and sources of income.

One of things I want us to be aware of as millennials is that basically can be summed up in one phrase which is a shiny penny syndrome. You know going for the shiny coin and that’s something we really need to be cautious of because the right way to do it is follow the path where someone is looking at Ro and Ro says this takes two to five years, it’s going to be an intensive learning period but you need to plan, you need a structure, you need support, some guidance, mentoring, coaching along the way and make sure you’ve got that support as you build this.

Why that’s important is the statistics around failure in multiple source of income or even business is astounding. So before I throw some crazy statistics at the listeners do you have anything you want to add to that?

I think everything you’ve said is spot on, there’s a maturity needed to go into any business. That’s not to say that people like Mark Zuckerberg, some people that created a business at a young age. Apple, Steve jobs these guys were young man, and I think someone like Steve jobs, 100% was an instinctive entrepreneur. He was someone that could come up with an idea wasn’t afraid to take the risks and drive it forward.

A lot of the people around him that were part of that early stages of Apple weren’t necessarily entrepreneurs. They loved the idea of it. I think they loved the fact that he had the drive and some of them had natural businessmen instincts but what he did superbly well was he realised very quickly they needed guidance from outside. They certainly needed funding but they also needed external guidance, they needed the maturity of a businessman or businesswoman that had that level of experience to know how to mature the business.

Entrepreneurs can go all the way up from the start-up right through to the end of the curve where it flattens off and it becomes a systemised business with operations and all those things. But 100% if you’re listening to this and you’re a young millennial and thinking can I do it or not? If you’ve got an idea if it’s buzzing inside you and you already start to creatively think about how the business can work, that’s probably more of the entrepreneur inside you.

The key thing is not to be distracted by the shiny penny syndrome, which I know you
Ro are going to go into a bit more detail as you’re expanding on this, but just because it looks shiny that tends to appeal to the entrepreneur side of you.

From my experience, because I’m a creator by nature I love the entrepreneurial side. The businessman side of me I can do it but I am not as and I think you’re the same as well Harms, it is not as enjoyable as the entrepreneurial side. Whereas I know people that are really good at systematising, but they’re crap at the start-up. This is why the truth about business is actually you’re going to need to have both hats, start-up and the businessmenor businesswoman running it on. But also you might need to have the right people around you as well.

I think shiny penny syndrome very much appeals to entrepreneurial type people who are creators, who don’t necessarily understand how to make it happen but they like the idea of the shiny penny on the floor, let’s pick it up and give it a go. Let’s flip the coin.

Does that make sense?

That makes absolute sense and I found a quote online; I was trying to find reference to who said it but I couldn’t find it. The quote is this and it says all entrepreneurs are businesspersons. So all entrepreneurs are businesspeople, but all businesspeople are not entrepreneurs and that almost summarises what you said there because it goes onto a loose definition which is, a businessperson is a person who works in commerce, especially at an executive level.

So they bring a whole bunch of other tools, the manufacturing processes, the production processes, the logistics all of those things that they bring to the game, whereas the entrepreneur is a person who sets up the business or businesses, often businesses. Taking on the financial risk in the hope for profit.

So there is the creator, the visionary and then there’s also the people around that visionary who are the executives who can actually put this into practice. Otherwise they’ll fall into the trap of we can discuss that later and actually one of the traps is the failure rates and I can also go into why businesses fail.

Here is an entry level statistic and it’s almost on a scale which is quite scary, which is number one 20% of all small businesses fail in their first year. That’s quite a common one people know that. But did you know number two 30% of all small businesses fail in their second year. So you thin oh my god amazing 80% made it, well actually no there is now a 30% drop-off and then 50% of all small businesses fail after five years in business. Then finally, 70% of all small business owners fail in their 10th year of business.

So, imagine that scenario Ro and if somebody is at home saying, “yeah I’m going to build a business, I am so excited to do that.” Imagine spending 10 years of your life and statistically there is a 30% chance that you’ll survive and continue beyond the 10-year mark.

That’s pretty deflating.

Can I just jump in because I think this is quite important here, the term small business is broad, but essentially what I think we are referring to are businesses that are run by one individual or a small group of individuals. The client base is probably relatively small, it’s local, the product or service is dependent on the economy of that group, or that city, that town and so as time goes by,they’re the kind of businesses that and again this is me, having observed it, worked with people but also been through part of this myself is, they’re the kind of businesses that are really on the left-hand side of the quadrant still.

Essentially the self-employed model. They moved from employee to self-employed, might have a few people working for them. But it’s time for money type businesses.

That’s why I think such a high percentage are still failing because they have expanded on, they haven’t got a product, they haven’t built equity into the business such that they don’t have to be there. And the minute they’re not there, or they have lost the passion for it, or they’re now experiencing the same frustration they had in the job because the business hasn’t grown, they haven’t grown. I think that’s definitely one of the main reasons from my observation, I don’t know if you’ve studied it yourself but that’s just the experiential older generation observation over the last 30 years.

I love that Ro and what I love here is what you’ve said from working with business owners and having gone through some of this yourself is you’re almost describing some of the statistics I have on why, as part of this I wanted to research what was the reason here and actually we did this research many years ago.

If you’re an entrepreneur listening to this we have to think counter intuitively, soone of the things we thought about four, five years ago when we set up the digital marketing side of the company was okay, why are businesses failing and then what can we do to either support these businesses in order for them not to fail. That was the counter intuitive approach we took, so we looked at these statistics quite a while ago.

I pulled them back up for 2019 which is 42% of small businesses fail because there is no market need for the service or product, that ties exactly to what you said Ro, the local economy changes.

There you go.

29% fail because they ran out of cash and that’s a common one, that a fundamental one essentially. 23% fail because they didn’t have the right team running the business.

In other words they couldn’t step away from it, so they are the business. They’re the left-hand side of the quadrant as well.

Correct and it’s also when we talk about the team it’s potentially there’s ego here where I can do it, or I don’t need this person, and often we get as part of the team as a mentor and coach we often we get asked, “I don’t need a coach, I don’t need a mentor. I started this business.” It is only when you’re in year 10 and you lose your business, you think damn I should have had a coach and mentor who has gone through some of these things.

If you listen to one of our previous podcasts we touched on that point do you need a coach, a mentor? 19% were out competed and that’s just the reality of business.

New businesses coming in, an old model they’ve been doing it for seven, eight, nine, 10 years.

Yeah, and it’s even my generation coming in thinking let’s tear up the rule book, how can we streamline this? How can we apply technology to this and how can we out compete another business?That can happen in multiple ways. It can be by introducing a piece of technology they reduce their costs, reduce their price that the customer pays suddenly another business is completely wiped out. I think we are going to see a lot of that.

I’m was down in Brighton about a week ago during my birthday and we were walking along one of the streets and I said to Stina look closed, closed, closed, closed, two let, two let. We are talking like six, seven shops, one of them was a jewellery shop I’ve seen there for the last seven, eight, nine, 10 years closed. Another shop was a clothes shop, another was a food shop. I just though blimey this is serious.

Most of them appear to be businesses that probably similar to what you just described but maybe out competed through online business. I suspect that a lot of them their business had just gone under because that plus the overhead costs, but it wasn’t just occasionally you see one or two, but to see that many shops in the same stretch really surprised me. And I think a lot of these reasons are what you’re talking about here.

Interesting and somewhere like Brighton as well it is still such an affluent area, it gets tourism so that is interesting. The next one is 18% fail because of price and cost issues something that you just alluded to there. 17% fail because of poor product offering and I think this is a cool one for listeners at home when Ro and I speak and if you take communicating with impact your three-day training event, that’s a product. So we can w call that a product and one of the things I know you’re obsessive about is the quality and the standard of that product.

The quality of the team around you, how that’s delivered, the room, the AV teams. So that’s pretty much why that’s going to continue to grow because I know when students attend that they leave thinking damn that was good, that was an amazing experience wow. Because the product is great and I think once you’ve got a great product the word of mouth spreads the and the business has greater legs then.

Very true.

17% failed because they lacked a business model that’s a common one. 14% failed because of poor marketing that’s somewhere you know, we set our business up to help support companies who are in that situation. 14% failed because they ignored their customers, that’s an interesting stat to finish on. That’s definitely an ego play somewhere there.

Ro these are the reasons businesses fail so the reason that I want to chuck this in here for this section is this is the reality; we are still in part two. What is the reality of it and the reality of it is 10 years down the line there is a possibility that you’ve invested 10 years’ worth of finances, effort, time, and there’s no business after 10 years, that’s the reality that you have to bear with.

Now those are the technical stuff Ro, that’s the logical stuff, but something you taught me quite a while ago when I came to a coaching session with you and we said, “We are thinking about starting this business, this business, this business,” because of that entrepreneurial spirit I have, one of the things you said to me was go work out who you are and what role you can play in the business.

I was hoping you could expand on that so the listeners are aware of this because I had no idea this existed before you mentioned it to me over a coaching session.

You are referring to the role as an individual just to elaborate on that.

The role as an individual I don’t want to give the name away but we are talking the about the dynamic tole you play. It’s called wealth dynamics, but what is your personal skill set?

So you want to pin me back to that?

Okay so for the listeners one of things I studied back about 10 years ago there was something by a gentleman called Roger Hamilton and its Wealth dynamics and each person’s character, each person’s individual character can show up in different ways. In relationships you have a certain style of personality that plays out as a human being you’ll show up a different way. In business it’s completely different. You might actually run a business very differently to how you operate on a personal level and without going into the detail of it, when I was listening to Harminder describe where he was at and all the different ideas, it became really clear to me that this is your classic entrepreneurial start-up individual and I’m the same.

So I saw that straightaway. Someone that likes to get out, come up with ideas, create new concepts, blast it out there and if you’re not that person and you happen to be someone supporting that person that can piss you off, it can frustrate you.

The Wealth dynamics concept without going into details on it essentially comprises eight different profiles, eight different dynamic profiles. The creator is the person that comes up with ideas and brilliant at the start-up stage. You need to get that idea out to the marketplace so you have a star. A stat is somebody who is and I’m a creative star.so that’s my two primary profiles.

Very good in front of people, able to communicate, get the message out, takes the creator’s ideas spread in out to the public. Then you have the supporter if you can imagine it like a quadrant, a square with top, top right, and then middle right supporter very good networking, very good at getting to people on a one-to-one basis. Whereas the star is more national, global audience. Supporters one-to-one, brings people into the business, brings people that may have good contacts, the network or money into the business and then channels them back to the star and the creator to make the business work.

Then you got the deal maker who structures the deal.Supporter can’t necessarily get the numbers right but they can gather the people and the dealmakers go, I can make a deal out of this, I can put two and two together get an opportunity here, let’s get the creator’s idea, let’s sell the creators idea out. The star can sell it at this get a commission or whatever, that’s your dealmaker.

Now we move down to the trader who is all about timing, so the trade says to the dealmaker yeah, that’s good but why don’t we do this at this time? Why don’t we get in and make this opportunity work now not in a month but let’s do it now. Or let’s hold off.

Making money through trading is your classic city in front of the stock market or possibly picking up a property deal or finding someone that is interested in your business, getting the business ready and then selling it onto them at that stage. The dealmaker sets it up, the trader executes it.

Then you’ve got the accumulator who is the person that likes to sit on stuff, they’re slower, they are not really front facing. The tend not to be out in the public, they are certainly not a creator, certainly not a star. They just like to own things. This is the person that buys commodities, buys properties, buys land sits on it. It’s your aunt Nelly, it’s your uncle George the ones that say, “I’ve been working all my life but I saved up money and I’ve bought these things.” They’re not creative, they’re not necessarily good at getting out to people, but they just sit make money and let it build.

The last two personalities and if you’re listening to this it would be interesting to see which one you fall into is the Lord, which is the systemiser.

The detail, the person that never speaks to anyone person, the doesn’t respond to emails or phone calls, but they just sit and create spreadsheets and work out how to make the business work from a financial perspective. They’re the ones that can shave 3% here increase your margins over there, reduce the product costs over here and get the salespeople’s expenses down by 3% that has a knock-on effect on the total business. They hate talking to people they love looking at numbers.

Then you’ve got the mechanic this is the operational part of it. So he will or she will take the creator’s ideas systemise them down, break them into components and make it logical. Whilst the Lord is the person that makes profit from the internal to the business. The mechanic puts those systems into place.

You want to be a speaker, let’s work out your timings, let’s work out your product line, let’s narrow that down, look at the profit margin on the product line. It goes out to the dealmaker and says right, these are the four products that I’ve got into a spreadsheet. These are your profit margins you can’t sell for more than this and you can’t buy from more than this.

The Lord will say okay, let systemise that and go online with that we can triple those sales by simply putting a little app in here that allows it to go to the marketplace. Wealth dynamics has all these incredible different personalities. But if you start a business and everyone is the same imagine me you and a whole bunch of other speakers, creators and entrepreneurs trying to run a business, it would freaking fall apart.

I know that because I had that happen to me 10 years ago we had five partners and basically all of us were creator styles with I think one dealmaker. There were no systemisers, there were no dealmakers, there were no accumulators. It was basically a bunch of people with loads of great ideas and it didn’t work, the business failed.

I love that. What a snapshot, I tell you what that book is massive so you just saved yourself reading that book. That’s a great snapshot and if you can guess you maybe thinking I wonder what Ro is, I wonder what Harms is? I am a creator start.

When I went through this process to understand what I am and just to give you an emphasis once you identify what you are what this model explains is, is that if you focus your energies on this area that is how you will get the greatest financial reward. So if I’m a creator star that means I shouldn’t be tinkering with spreadsheets. If I spent six months tinkering with spreadsheets I instead should have spent six months coming up with creative podcast ideas when Ro and I as a creator star can jump on the podcast and get this message out there.

Ro what are you naturally?

My primary is a creator star. However, I have got an element of it me which is mechanic, I think that comes from my old background as a civil engineer but I can sit down with spreadsheets as you know and play with them. But my greatest power is the taking an idea and articulating it out to a group of people or like we are doing here with podcasts. That’s where I am in my greatest flow.

I learned this the hard way.

I went off and I started to develop my property portfolio and after a while I got agitated, I was like it’s just another property deal. But I loved being out and loved speaking about real estate, about what we do. I love generating money by being a speaker and creating products. And when I actually studied this I realised okay make the money and then pass the money to people who can help me find the deals and to my team that can help me operate the deals. Let me be the person that creates the money to fund those and let the accumulation of that wealth be part of the long-term plan.

Concept of Wealth dynamics being stay in your flow in what you do well and then bring other people around you to maximise that and I think that’s really important. I think for anyone looking to move forward beyond this podcast is start to think about where you think your greatest flow is and that’s where your business model should be steered around.

I tell you what I love about this podcast episode so far Ro, we haven’t spoken about business is about generating profit, business is about making money, revenue it’s about all the things that need to be discussed and discovered and explored before you actually go on that journey.

Because once you go down that rabbit hole of I’ve got an idea I’m going to pursue it this can consume you. This idea or this passion or this exciting project that’s going to go and consume. So you to have to really spend some time beforehand and say and am I the right person for this part of the business?Is this the business I want to get into? Am I aware of the risks?

I just listed there risks there so you now know why most businesses fail, what can you do to counteract that so you don’t fall into the same trap.

Yeah, whilst we are on that issue before we make that next step, I want to paint an even darker picture.

Be prepared to literally not go on holiday for a year or two. Be prepared to spend a lot of time studying the marketplace for the business that you want to go into. Be prepared to potentially change the type of friendships you have, because you’re going to have negative people around you that won’t support you through what you’re doing. Be prepared to become a master of managing your finances and if you like, manage risks and to put things on the line like your time, your health, meaning you might have to sleep less on occasions.

You’re going to have to get up earlier and you may have to do conference calls at five, six of in the morning. You may have to go out when you don’t feel like doing, you might have to sell yourself, sell your business, sell your concept, your ideas. Go out and restructure things. Put your property that you own on the line for releasing equity to build the business.

Be prepared to just stretch emotionally, physically, it can put a challenge and a stress on your personal life, your family life in the sense that when you are building something passionately you may have to put even more work and timing at the start of business, then you would be in your job. Which is where so many people fail in the first two years because they go, “fucking hell I feel like I’m doing more work than I was in my job.”

The truth is you actually might be because you’re building a business to break through it. It’s a little bit like breaking out of an egg you’re sat there, there’s this eagle in an egg and you’re tapping away, tapping away and you want to fly, but all you are you’re confined by this eggshell and you don’t know how many times you’re going to have to tap at that egg before there’s a tiny little crack. Even mummy eagle out there isn’t going to open up that egg, you’ve got to good break it, tap on it. There’s a tiny little bit of light that’s year one, one and a half.

Most people stop tapping at that point and you’ve got to keep going until you break the egg and you’ve got to get out and when you’ve got out there you’ve got to stretch those wings and there is a point when even eagles need a push. Even eagles need a push to just get off the cliff and saw and that’s when the mentors, the coaches and as you start to fall you flap those wings and you go.

I’m telling you it is not an easy journey. I’m sorry Harms but I had to get onto that because otherwise everyone is going to go, “okay I can handle the failure.” But actually even to get to that point of failure you would have had to go through all of that. Most businesses fail in the first few years. Last year in the UK I think it was something like 525, 530 businesses failed.

So make no mistake if you’re going to go down this rabbit hole be prepared to buckle up. I’m going to pause for a minute.

Okay we managed just before an hour before we had a Ro rant.

I love that but if you’re listening to this at home when I was talking about the business journey and the sacrifices you’re going to make. I almost had a smile on my face because I went through all of this. As I was saying this to the listeners at home I’ve been through that, so I had a smile on my face. You’ve listened to Ro where that’s 30 years plus into the business world. So I don’t think there was a smile on your face when you said that because it was like this is serious guys. If you’re going to do this, you’ve got to be ready for this.

I have had people screw me over, people owe me a lot of money, haven’t paid me for work I’ve done, business partners that weren’t honest about their situation that had a knock-on effect on the business.

Clients that said yes we are going to engage but didn’t engage. Events, products you create that don’t work or you talked about market failure of marketing, I think I told you one of the products I created 10 years ago, spent 50 60, 70K to get it to market and what we didn’t do was market it well. I was shit at marketing. I was a classic star creator but hadn’t put enough value on having a marketing team and it all fell apart and because technology at the time wasn’t right for that product as well, I let it go.Now had we had the product coming out now you know the product I’m talking about; we would have smashed it. So timing was another issue for me as well.

There are so many factors and as much as it sounds wonderful described the failures don’t, the percentages there, but it is the day-to-day physical effort required to keep it going until it gets to a point where you step back from it and it becomes self-fulfilling self-automating and passive, semi-passive or fully passive.

You’ve taken the audience through that dark place Ro I think it’s important in reality because I can even recall a conversation my wife and I had many years ago now, where the discussion was around a finance meeting and we’re looking at each other saying, okay if this person doesn’t pay how many months can we financially survive? That’s the kind of conversation as a business owner sometimes you have to have.

Now at that stage we didn’t have employees so we built levels of safety nets because of that learning experience. But that’s the kind of place sometimes you’re going to have to go and be comfortable with.

Yes and the difference between that is that you’re having that conversation because you’re not relying on the salary. A salary is just every month but then it makes you lazy and you don’t have to look at your finances, whereas entrepreneurs you do at the start, well you always do, but especially at the start where, as you say you’re asking those questions. You have the portfolio today but back then it was like okay next step, next step and each time your building in that security.

So the type of questions changes, the level of that question changes to as opposed to how much do we have to survive, how much money is in the business now to allow us to take it to that next level? Can we afford to take that marketing risk? Can we afford to take on a new employee? Can we afford to go into that new joint venture and still allow the business to keep going? That’s the kind of question that happens as you elevate to a different level.

Yeah, absolutely.

But remember, we are taking you to a dark place, but outcome of this, the reality of this is the freedom of time. The self-direction, the unlimited earning capacity, you’re your own boss, you get a message out there.Tax benefits,a different kind of lifestyle, different friends, you’ve upped your social circle as such. You’re starting to build a legacy for your family, your kids may have a certain environment that you never grew up in.

These are the outcomes and I don’t know if this is weird Ro but I love what we do now.

I couldn’t think of doing anything different with my time, with the way I wake up and I seem to find business owners that we hang around with all have the same feeling. Yes there is nervousness at the start but now it is like I don’t why I didn’t think about starting my own thing at the start.

There are positives, but it is important to have a real look at the situation because the thing that’s happening now Ro just linking it back to the start of this part two is everybody is saying you can get rich. Everybody is saying you can become a business owner; you can be an entrepreneur overnight and I think the message here before we move into part three is that it doesn’t happen overnight.

But before it happens Ro what do people need to speak to themselves about, as we now progress into part three, that says before we actually go and start to expand these multiple sources of income whether you stay in the job, whether you leave the job that’s up to you. But you’re going to continue to build multiple source of income. What should we be thinking about?

Because you coached me on this many years ago before I stepped out of my career so I think it will be valuable to listeners at home.

I think this is a nice part to just go back on what you just said, which is if you have watched stuff on YouTube, on the Internet, been to a seminar, you’re watching Instagram whatever and you’re getting all this stuff about go into gold, go trade the stock market, write a book.Be a digital online marketer, go do Amazon white label products sell them there, get a kickback whatever it is. It all sounds great and each one of those as you said a shiny coin. There are so many bloody shiny coins out there now, where do you start?

I think if it’s all right I want to finish the podcast off in this part three with questions and I’ll split it into business, real estate trading. I think if you could pick up the online business because they’re probably the four main types of opportunities for people listening at the moment. Business, real estate trading and online.

Just to jump in before you start the section the reason I wanted to bring in the business failure and statistics around business is because everything we are going to speak about in this section is almost encompassed by business. So business will be one of the niche parts we talk about, but actually you have to treat all of these things like the business for it to be successful. So that’s why I wanted to introduce that early.

Yeah.

Trading might be the one exception to that depending on how you run it, but essentially we’ve still go to ask the same questions. I’m not going to go too deep into this because I think each one of these requires its own podcast and maybe we make a commitment to do that so people can come back and listen to it.

I’ll ask questions and then pause if you want to jump in and add to that, then it just helps build a bit of depth. For those of you listening, let’s start with business first, let’s address this and here are some considerations.

Number one, have you got an idea?
Have you got a passionate idea?

Something you’ve always thought about maybe you’ve watched a movie once and you go, “what if I created a business out of that?” Or maybe you are trying a product you’re going out and there was a gap kids, what if I created that? Maybe it’s a business to do with kids, maybe it’s to do with a business with your current career.Could be an idea, you could be an inventor type character. I don’t know, but something you’ve got a passionate idea about that’s really important.

If you’re going to start to develop a business don’t just pursue money, I think that’s the single fundamental mistake that I made over the years where I’ve actually had situations that haven’t worked, it’s because I chased money first. I was asked a question in front of about 700 people in Singapore, there was a panel four of us on the stage.“Dr Ro wants one of the biggest mistakes you ever made.?”

I said it’s chasing money.

It’s starting a business for money rather than passionately wanting to build that business. Does that make sense Harms?

Yeah Ro and I’ve done it as well, I think we almost continue to do it because when you’re a creator as well you’re coming up with these fantastic ideas and it’s like, oh my god it’s going to make this much money. And you know six months gone down the line and it hasn’t come off the ground yet, so I think the passion is important.

I’m just going to add a tagline to that which is a passionate idea that matters as well, I think that can make a difference in the world. Has meaning to you or to other people. So when I think about you, I think, okay, things that you’ve been passionate about that have been successful is Communicating with Impact. Your personal development events, the Seekardo community, your investment portfolio and the other private businesses you have.

That’s stuff that you’ve been passionate about, which is always led to a form of success and if you’ve not been passionate about it I just maybe haven’t seen it or haven’t heard that part of your story.

Yeah we will come to real estate because that’s an interesting one. Okay so passionate idea, do you see yourself applying it?Think about the business you’ve got an idea but can you then see yourself applying that as a business, developing that as a business? Can you imagine yourself growing it, putting in the time? What will it involve?Picture it in your mind what will it involve? What would the processes be?

My 11-year-old Savannah had the idea of creating a magic eye I think she called it and it’s like a camera that looks like an eye and you can have it in the house and it’s like a surveillance camera but it’s also a camera to take photographs. I said how would you do it? How would you develop it? So it’s as simple as that, it’s an idea could you develop it Could you evolve it? Could you imagine yourself building and growing and of course, can it be monetised?

It’s one thing to have a great passionate idea but is there really money in it? So, I said to her how are you going to make it?Or you going to make it here? Are you going to hand make it?Are you going to pay something to make it?Are you going to do it yourself? Are you going to find somebody maybe living in a different country? That’s lower cost to make that.

So it’s the same thing. How can I monetise it? What’s it going to cost, and of course the big question Harminder can you stick at it for two to five years? As we know from the statistics you’ve got to push through those first few years, and even then 70% of small businesses failing year 10 and I think you said 50% of small businesses in year five to get to year five, we’ve got to move it beyond a small business. How can we make this something big enough so it doesn’t fall into those categories?

So it’s passion, it’s picturing yourself growing it, monetising it, sticking to it, applying it and developing, expanding it and ideally systematising it as well. I’m just going to stop there; those will be major considerations at this stage.

I think they are essential because from a personal experience let me take one of the projects we worked on last year, which was we as a team saw an opportunity in the CBD market and we partnered with somebody who would create it.

But they weren’t necessarily entrepreneurial business orientated. Now we did that because we understood there was an arbitrageur margin if we were to sell these products online. The margins were massive but if I had visualised it and saw myself operating that part of the project in business I would have just not done it, because when the products started to unfold and certain tasks came out and you know the operations manager delivered these tasks to us to and said you’ve got to handle this.

I was like I don’t really want to do that. I’m not prepared to start a CBD brand and stick with it for two to five years, so we closed that business down.

But if I had visualised that and we did a team visualisation to start with, we would not have approached it and wouldn’t have wasted all that time invested in the brand production, the websites and e-commerce shops and all that stuff you have to set up in the background. I wish we did that podcast then, before we started it. Let’s stop there put a pause on this one, I don’t feel like I want to stick to this.

Spot on.

Even if say someone was listening to this last say five minutes if that was enough to prompt you to go yes, or actually no because we can have loads of ideas were we are in a career if you stopped your career and went down that path and realised it’s not for you, now you get pissed off. You go back to work, I tried it and it failed.Well actually if you prepared put the thought process first it would have worked.

We can tackle this more on a separate podcast, but that’s business.

We are talking about four remember, business, real estate, trading and online business.

Real estate okay, so with real estate you don’t have to love it, you don’t have to be passionate about it. So I do have a real estate business butI’m not passionate about. It provides a functional income for me but I know people who are actually passionate about it, I know people who are making a huge amount of money just by focusing on that and it’s brilliant. So are you prepared to learn it and I mean really learn it, study it.

You and I have worked together on countless events now where we’ve run property events and people have signed up to do education going up to 20, 25, £30,000 £40,000, they’re getting amentor, they’re going through trainings because it’s like any form of high-level knowledge, you have to go and pay for it.You have to grow to that level. But coupled with that is building a property business means raising money, driving the miles, doing the research, sitting at the computer finding the deals, developing different types of systems, choosing a strategy, finding business partners, going into the deals, renovating the property, then going through the banking process. The legal process. All that’s involved does that appeal to you?If you like the idea of it, go attend at least a free training or a three-day training.

I run one which typically people invest £500,000 to attend and having come through it if they love the idea property great theycan go and build it, but better they do that if they don’t want to do property and invest one grand say, rather than go and do a property deal and lose a lot of money and don’t have the heart, the passion for it.It’s something you’re going to have to do parallel initially to whatever you’re doing until it creates a passive income.

You’ve done it yourself is there anything you want to I add to that Harms?

I think this is all about risk management here.

When I get into the online business it’s actually very, very low risk. But what I’m saying is take experiments and even take experiments with the learnings. Just like Ro said, if you want to get into real estate or property and want to learn that in detail go attend a workshop. If you want to learn how to set up a business or the business functionality, or you’ve got a great idea how do I put this into practice?Go attend a workshop, go commit £500,000 to start that process.

What you don’t do is say, yeah, great, I’m ready for this and don’t attend any workshops buy a house, put a deposit say £25,000 deposit and just take that punt, that’s not what you do. You don’t do that with a business idea, you don’t do that with a property investment because there is now so much information, support networks, education companies out there who can provide that fundamental knowledge for you to go on and build and make a success of it.That’s to add to what you said Ro.

On this note what I would say is anybody that’s listening to this that is interested in business or real estate come and join us on the Seekardo community because within that community there’s definitely a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners.

There are definitely real estate investors. We’ve got real estate trainers and mentors in there so come and just do a month trial to find out more. There’s lots of good content in the vault, ask questions on there because you’ll get some practical insight into whether property is for you and the sorts of things you can do at this stage to get into the property market and get some ideas before you then pursue it any further. Certainly going to a training and if you ask people in the community they’ll give you an idea of the sort of companies that have trained them.

I think that’s worth noting at this point whilst we’re recording this.

Yeah I think that’s a good next stage and also with the online business whilst we are talking about guiding and what the next steps are, we produced a 10-hour free training for that community as well Ro.

That’s complete start to end it’s 10 hours long and rather than go ahead and commit thousands of pounds to launch an e-commerce site, just have a watch of that 10-hour free video. It’s completely free because we wanted to put it out there, we have had so many people you know spend money on advertising, spend money setting up the website. We’ve had people say, “I’ve spent £10,000 on my website. What do I do now?” Maybe you should not have built that website to start with, that’s not your first point of call.

So yes, there’s a 10-hour free video series there and we go into quite a lot of detail.

There is also a two-hour video series on career transition with one of the U.K.’s leading transition coach. So what to go through the process to leave your job, it goes back to the first thing we did at the start of this podcast. There are huge amounts of content linked to this particular podcast over in the Seekardo community.

I will link all of that up in the show notes, so growthtribes.com/podcast and they will be in the specific episodes show notes.So don’t worry if you’re not taking notes of this the links will be there, then you can select what you want.

Great stuff.

Nota passive income it’s generating profit online, funnily enough I’m talking to somebody about this tomorrow.It’s generating profit online. It’s generating a profit by getting and learning a skill, it’s not a passive income. The stock market training, trading the charts questions like, are you disciplined? Are you prepared to learn this? Are you prepared to go again to seminars and to learn a systematic approach?

I used to trade, I used to teach trading and I love it because it’s that part of me that is creative but I’m not a natural trader as a wealth profile. Funnily enough I was good at it so it’s finding a way to do it and does it fit your wealth profile?

Does real estate fit your wealth profile?You’ve got to ask yourself these questions and how do you handle risk? Because when you’re trading you could be trading with 20, 30 40, 50, £60,000 or more dollars or euros, whatever your currency is. Are you prepared to put the risk out there where you trade that money and prepare to lose part, all of it, percentage of it?

Again how do you handle stress?
How do you handle the management of money?
Are you the right personality for it?
Are you able to sit down for one to two hours a day and give commitment in front of the charts, listen to the news, keep an eye on the behaviour of the charts?

All these things play out in trading, 85% of new traders lose their money in the first six to 12 months, something like that. It’s something you have to learn to do properly and you must learn, you must pay and educate yourself to do it. So big considerations. I would certainly go attend a free training possible a two or three-day training or go and follow an online program at this stage to get your head around how trading works and is it for you.

I love that and I’ve got nothing to add in that Ro because I’ve always been fascinated with it so I’ve read a lot of books on that subject. I’m reading one now about a trade renaissance hedge funds.

I love the subject fascinated by it, but it doesn’t feel natural to my personality. It’s something I might have to pick your brain about in the future when my personality adapts slightly and says I want to explore that.

There more conservative forms of trading, there is something called scalping which you do in minutes day trading.Which is where you would trade in and out a day, you’re in and out in a matter of say two weeks, three weeks. Then you position trading which could be in and out in three or four months. So depending on your personality there are ways to trade shorter, longer time frames.

I love it because it’s a way to have a pot of money grow it and then take the money out of that and then put it into your business, put it into your real estate business.

Just understand that it does involve commitment and discipline and money management and money risk management. That’s the key thing there.

I love that so the next one is online business.

This is something that just didn’t exist until the online these amazing superstars appeared out of nowhere in terms of entrepreneurs, but it does date back quite a while.

But what can we do as the everyday person when it comes to online business? It is quite expansive, so we are not really going to the niche here but I think it is worth diving into this is a specific subject. Because there’s going to be loads of people of my generation and also your generation Ro saying I want to learn these skills.

The number one question is, are you ready to learn new technical skills, but then also have the ability to learn the skills rapidly and quickly and often?
So, are you willing to go in and out of learning quite quickly because things online can change quite quickly with the control.If you take what I do for example, online marketing changes the moment the Facebook algorithm changes. The moment they change their ruling on advertising we need to be adapting to that very, very quickly, because you’ll be looking after client’s funds, you’re looking after advertising funds, you’re looking after advertising strategy, then you have to be able to adapt.

Because that’s not your money that’s your client’s money so you have to be ready to learn new technical skills quickly.

I think again personality wise if you’re somebody who gets quite frustrated when you’re just looking at your smart phone and you don’t know how to find the app; online business is not for you. Just don’t approach it.

Can you manage the process of overwhelm because there’s so much information out there online at the moment in all sorts of regions. Are you willing to put aside a budget for the success of this? There are some very free/low cost ways to start a business and test if business is going to be successful but I think Ro is it fair to say with any of this one of the things you’re going to have to do with any of these, real estate, trading, business, you’re going to have to be comfortable with allocating the part of a budget or business loan or something like that to put and commit to one of these once you start to discover.

Money, time, emotional commitment, conversations with family and loved ones because if it’s about staying in the job and then doing an online business staying in the job and running another business, staying in a job and running real estate, staying in the job and trading where does that time come from?

So as much as yes your right it’s about money and it’s about making a commitment there in reality the biggest investment is going to be emotional and physical time into this. And if you’re already busy and that’s a question we probably should have asked at the beginning in that whole process of are you prepared to give up some time to do this, you’re going to have to make a decision of how much time and let everybody around you who loves you know that actually,“honey family, kids, daddy mummy is going to spend the next two years putting this much per week in time in, but we are doing it for the reasons because different lifestyle etcetera.”

It’s a major one we can’t overlook that because that is going to be the finances are one thing and yes, it can put stress but you can manage that. You can logically frame that up and say, I’m going to invest this much time, this much money for this period and every time I do this it’s going to create this much return. But the one thing that is hard to manage is the time.

The time you give up for the people you care about but you’re doing it for the long-term gratification or for short-term gratification. I think that’s the one other thing I just want to make a point to everybody listening is decide how much time per week you’re prepared to put into this new venture and commit to it, but also be prepared to let other people around you know that you’re committed to it.

It might be switching off the TV, spending less time socially not going out at weekends, dropping some of the friendships you’ve got to build the business for your family and that’s the one other point I would make at this stage.

I love that and I think you’ve actually answered part one to the next question I wanted to ask because I’ve covered online business, I think we should dive into that in detail, and for those interested in that there’s the ten-hour free course available there within that community Seekardo.

The question I wanted to ask you next is because what we’ve discussed so far is the tough questions to ask.

So we are in part three right now the tough questions to ask before you start and what we thought we would do is we will give you the different wealth vehicles and the questions to ask within those wealth vehicles.

Whichever one appeals to you the mostor you may have a gut feeling and say actually I’m quite interested in real estate, trading. I was thinking about starting an online business, what are the things I need to consider?

Because online business right now Ro, is the biggest shiny penny syndrome…

I know.

Out there, it’s massive. Even Facebook’s advertising algorithm is almost put in a closed door to promoting that kind of advertising because it’s so heavy at the moment they don’t want the Facebook feed full of just get rich quick online business programs.

And this is not about them not working you have to link back to the fact that these are businesses and they’re going to take two to five years and they’re going to take all of the sacrifices that Ro has already described to make them work. We are not saying they won’t work they’ll work, but it won’t work instantly. That’s such a rare occurrence.

Yeah.

So the question I wanted to ask in the final bit of part three which is what do you need to do? What does somebody need to do as a person to get ready for wealth creation?

You almost answered part one of this of that question which is first thing just communicate with your family and say there’s going to be a change and this is why that change is occurring.

At this stage it’s a reflective process now because what we’ve done we’ve hopefully pressed some buttons; we’ve got people thinking.If you’re listening to this and anything we said that’s resonated that actually tells your inner soul, your inner core, your inner voice fuck it I just want to get out of my job and my career, I want to make a change.

Now start to look but don’t look for shiny pennies. Look for what resonates, look for what makes you feel alive.

Go back through the questions that I’ve asked and Harminder has asked and say okay. Go into four categories property business, trading, online business and see which one resonates the most. If one of them does stand out look into it further. And if you feel it’s something you want to commit to then have a conversation with family and so I made a decision and can you financially afford to do it right now? Do you need to put some money aside as Harminder talked about earlier.

In my case it was right can I stack some money aside and survive for a short period and see if I can do that and if I can brilliant. I was married at the time and my wife was working so we were in a position where there’s a little of additional income coming in so when I went self-employed we could get by. But as soon as I got the first contract as a self-employed person I earn literally in a month, the equivalent of what I earned in the year in my job.

In just over a month, two months I’d doubled what I was earning in the year it’s crazy, so these are all things you’ve got to build in for. Because if you make a decision don’t tell your partner and then it brings stress into the family. This can leave a lot of emotional scars and then you’ll be coming for a coaching session with me on the Seekardo, “how the fuck do I get out of that?”

I think I’m going to leave it on that note because I think it’s important to go away and for them to self-explore now.

Yes and I love that self-explore and I guess the other cliché phrase is just know yourself first. I would say one of the things that impacted me the most outside the logical part of real estate, property and online marketing, online business was that whole element of understanding who I am as a business owner and what’s my personality, and what strength can I bring to this project.

Also the project I just can’t do all of it by myself so I had to bring some people in who fitted the other pieces of the criteria, that’s the thing that I think had the biggest impact and the biggest wake-up call, and it took me three, four years into the business to understand who exactly I was and what my role in the business was .

I think what I’m saying is know yourself first by answering all of these questions within these categories, and that should start to open the mind and the curiosity and the exploration. I’m saying exactly what you just said Ro which is start exploring. I think I’ve got a parallel message to you.

Yeah and keep an eye out we will do a whole podcast on real estate and both of us run that as a business so that’s going to be fun.

We’ll do a separate one on business as that’s a passion of ours and I think the online cyber we can tackle that as well. Trading we could talk about that I might see if I can bring a guest on, there’s so much more we can do but at this stage there’s enough there here. We’ve been talking for probably an hour and a half now this is a really comprehensive deep delve this one.

Yeah I love this one it’s a foundation, treat this episode as the foundation of you pursuing now wealth creation and multiple sources of income because there’s nothing to say in 10 years’ time you can’t be doing business, trading, real estate because, Ro you’re an example of somebody who does. I do two of those categories.

That’ right.

So there’s no reason you can’t do that and it’s essential almost in today’s world. In today’s market, the changing economy to have multiple sources coming in, almost critical now because things are changing so rapidly. But that allows you to explore, adventure into new places and learn new things and it’s quite an exciting journey as well as all the dark things we’ve spoken about.

And actually because it’s such a big subject and I’ve just been speaking over the last couple weeks to a friend of mine who is a trader, he runs a trading support club online and teaches people. So he hopefully is going to put material together for us to bring into the Seekardo community to have in the vault there where people go and look at different material to start giving some tool.So more of this will be going into our overall community.

Fantastic I love that and as always, everything we spoke about will be in the show notes at growthtribes.com/shownotes.

Once again hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and this is myself and Ro signing out, we will see you on the next one.