00:03 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Revenue Career Ladder podcast. So for those of you who aren't aware, the goal of this podcast or goal of this series is to chat with seasoned professionals from marketing or sales revenue focused roles and they're going to feature in depth conversations with the idea of sharing personal career stories, insights and valuable lessons. And we hope that those

00:31 or this inspirational, actionable insights will help you piece together what might seem like a very confusing and very difficult journey in terms of progressing to that ultimate role that you may or may not have. In this episode, I'm joined by the LinkedIn Lothario himself, Zach Thompson, which I'm sure the most people watching this working in revenue functions will recognize Zach from LinkedIn. And we're gonna be chatting about his journey from

01:00 Bouncy castles on council estates to founding director at we have a meeting. So how are you, how are you, Zach? I'm good. Don't worry. You nearly said Jack. It happens the other way around as well. It happens. The other way. The people listening, this is quite awkward because I've posted a picture on LinkedIn this week where I'm sat on a sofa with my arm around Jack and I didn't go down too well with Zach on WhatsApp. So.

01:26 That's really just going to have been another stab in the back. I think that that little slip there. I felt like we bonded last time I saw you. And I thought like, I'm making some grounder. I'm catching up, but I know where your loyalties lie. Yeah. I've just fallen directly back into the hole, haven't I? We can get out of it. See you in a few months. We can get out of it there. Well, we've got, we've got 60, 60 to 70 minutes to get out of it now. Jack hasn't done this yet. So this is just me and you time. Oh, well, come on. First impressions.

01:55 How are you anyway? I'm doing very well. Are you also doing well? I'm good. It's, you know, it's that, again, you listening to this in probably January or February, but this is the lead up to Christmas. So, you know, we're all trying to get stuff done before Christmas. And this will be an interesting little nugget is the platform you're actually listening to this on. Hasn't even launched yet. So we're still building it. So that's a little, yeah, little insider nugget, inception kind of style.

02:25 thing to think about that, but anyway, yeah, we're, we'll, let's get back to the, uh, the conversation at hand. So I think it, I'm intrigued. Bouncy cars was on a council estate. Talk to me. Yeah. So I'm from a very working class seaside town called black pool in the Northwest of England, and I was always one of these people doing sort of funny, odd jobs to make some money. Um,

02:54 And one of the ones that I took on that's, he was probably one of the worst jobs I've ever had. It was bouncy castles, right? Which like bouncy castles, that sounds fine. But what I was doing was bouncy castles on army barracks for army kids while all the dads were away and the mums were at these unruly, horrible children can jump around on bouncy castles and massive slides. And they used to do days that were funded by the local council on.

03:23 like the roughest park in Blackpool and all the kids had come over and had threatened you and say, my dad's going to come and beat you up. Or I've got a knife. Let me have another jump up and down the castle. And so it was just like the most mad thing to be doing when you were that age. Um, so yeah, so that's where my memory took me back to when you asked me about my

03:48 What was the question that prompted the, was it the worst job I've had? No, your first ever job. I think we've had people talk about frying fish and chips. We've had people in McDonald's. That seems to be a very common one. Fast food. So this was a pleasant surprise to see bouncy castles on a council estate. Yeah. So what you'd have to do, you'd get there, you'd get to the warehouse, right, in this van and two blokes picking up this absolutely fucking massive bouncy castle.

04:16 and you'd hoist it into the van, then you'd have to get there before all the kids were on the park or at the army barracks or whatever, and sort of put it up before anyone noticed. But then you could see, almost like watching training day or something, the bikes pulling up on the corner, and the people letting the mates know, letting the bat signal out of something's happening over here. But yeah, there was many a time where I had to pull it down because people were hanging out the back of it, and it was just one of those jobs that I used to have anxiety about.

04:46 the night before I did it, but I did it. Yeah, and if we're honest with ourselves, we all love kids as long as we're related to them or we have some degree of control over them, but anyone else's kids, they're just quite, they're awful most of the time. So I can imagine that was a horrendous experience. I like to think my children wouldn't behave like that, but they would, it's just a bias. That'd be an interesting experiment actually. Yeah.

05:15 But then, you know, when we go back to Blackpool with my, I live in a really lovely area now in Dorset, when we go back to Blackpool with my kids now, they think the roughness of it is like amazing. They can't believe how rough and cheap and you know, the arcade smell and so on, they're like, Oh, it feels so cool. Isn't it? Everything's so great. So what's one person's roughness is another person's. Well, do you know what that is? That's quite a nice, like, you know, you've done well in life when your kids.

05:43 think going back to your hometown is like a tourist attraction because it's rough around the edges. You've done well, okay? That's a good sign. Yeah. So what sort of age were you at that point? I was probably 16 around there. I mean, I'd done paper rounds and stuff before, but paper rounds aren't very exciting. Yeah, nothing legal about a paper round, let's be honest, is there? Yeah.

06:11 Exactly. Like, what can I tell you about a pay prom? But yeah, probably about 16. So it was the first in terms of, you know, it's funny when you, this is an interesting exercise because you ended up having to look back over career and you think what were the transferable skills and lessons and stuff from each kind of job that I had, and that one was definitely keeping you cool in the face of difficult customers, which I've gone on to be able to do, and then also just kind of managing your own.

06:39 anxiety and stay around just things that have been really weirdly unexpected in a day. I think to your point there, the exercise of going back, like in retrospect and looking back, that's why I'm hoping people find value in the series, because I think when you're in the midst of those decisions, you don't even realize that sometimes the decisions you're making in terms of, no, I'm going to go for that job or I will take that or I won't do that.

07:07 You don't really realize until you do this exercise and you look back and you go, actually, that makes quite a lot of sense. Like when I, now, when I look at what I'm doing now and actually what I did there and what I learned there, oh my God, it actually does connect. And it all sort of laid the foundations where I am today. So hopefully, uh, the, the hindsight from people like Zach is useful for those listening, um, and for the remainder of the series. Um, so that was your first sort of proper job. What was your.

07:37 I guess like what was your first career decision? And I say career like loosely because you could have a career in anything nowadays. But the first the first job you went into with the mindset of this is a proper job. This is this is an adult job. Yes, I did a music degree. And I'm sure I'm not going to shock anyone listening or yourself, Jamie, but it's not a linear career move to do a music degree. You don't leave the degree going like, look at all these people ready to hire me.

08:07 And it was in London and I wanted to stay in London for a bit longer. And it's one of those things who's hiring, what job can I kind of fall into? Wouldn't you know it's sales, which is where I've made my career since. Um, I probably didn't, you know, hand in heart, probably didn't think it was a career move at the time, but it was a very serious, important place to be suddenly finding yourself dealing with people who want to spend a lot of money. And.

08:35 you know, a boss putting pressure on you and the boss before it put pressure. So in terms of the first feeling of this is serious, it was there. It only probably feels like a career move in hindsight, given what I've done at the time, I probably thought I'll stick at this for a few years before I become a rock star. Yeah. And it's interesting you sort of, I mean, I've got the wording up on my screen and you've

08:59 use grammar and capital letters to emphasize the sarcasm behind. I wonder what industry is hiring. Funny enough, it's sales because I did a, the sound syndicate podcast previously, and that was about 60 odd episodes of talking to people in sales. And it's a very, very common theme where people were almost like, I never thought about sales, I kind of just fell into it or I came out of university and I needed the job and you know, sales was hiring and I quite enjoyed it. And it's really, really interesting when people

09:27 very few people actually go into sales coming or come out of university going, right, I've got my degree now it's into that sales career that I've always dreamt of is that just doesn't happen. Does it? Although it's weirdly feels like that's changing a little bit, especially some of the interviews that we do, I think maybe because of Tik Tok and things that one of the trending things you, I mean, I don't have Tik Tok, but that you see on social media is ways to get rich in your twenties.

09:53 people watch a 30 second video and think that they figured something out. So I've had a lot of interviews with people who dropped out of uni to go into sales and there's things like high ticket closing and all sorts of bizarreness. But I wonder if that will change. Certainly for our generation, it feels like a thing that everyone fell into. Yeah. It's, it's less sleazy nowadays. And I'm seeing a lot of these day in the life of a SDR videos. And maybe that's just because I'm

10:20 connected with people who work in the industry or I'm on LinkedIn more than others, but I definitely see a lot more content around the actual being a sales person. Um, yeah, which is, which is really, really interesting. And like you said, maybe there will be education or courses, um, more tailored to actually going into sales as a, as a lifelong career choice. But, okay. So you went in, um, into sales. So that was a sales executive. I take it sort of junior.

10:50 Yeah, sales. So I did a recruitment day that I showed up to with a really cool haircut and a suit that purposefully mismatched. And the guy that was doing the recruitment day told me off and said, I need to take it a bit more seriously. Cause he's like, there's something about you. Um, and then I got selected from that day for a company in London, who I won't name just in case we talk about. It was quite a strange place to work, which we can get into all the

11:19 There's a lot of tails around around it. Um, but it was selling software to the construction space. Before we jump onto the actual useful stuff, what, what, what was the hair? Um, so you've seen, I mean, I've, we've got similar hair when it's long, Jamie. I've got the, the long curly hair, but I used to get Ben who's now our ops director. We used to live together in London.

11:46 to shave the back and sides completely as close as he possibly could and leave the top as long and curly as possible. I'm getting iced gem. That's the picture I'm getting in my head. Yeah, a bit iced gem but maybe slightly more luscious or maybe I'm being... maybe I'm romanticising it a little bit. Yeah, I'm thinking... I remember the feedback was cool haircut on the notes. And how was it?

12:15 What was the juxtaposition between the hair and the suit? I just wanted to, I've always had like a funny peacocking thing that I've liked to do in different jobs. So I actually had a job before where they said, people probably think I'm a real twat for this, but I had a job where it was like, oh, we don't wear suits. So I used to think, well, no one wears suits in this industry or in this business. So I used to turn up in like a three piece suit with a pocket square and a tie.

12:41 and spend a lot of money on like really nice suits. Cause I think, well, if everyone's going to sound the same and look the same, then I'll at least try and stand out in the meeting. Because I think you probably meet a lot of salespeople, but you, well, which, what, who was it? What was the guy? It was the one in the three piece suit or the one with the weird haircut. Or there was something in my mind of that's how you stand out. Probably from being a musician was just very aware that your character has to be visible in silhouette sometimes because they don't necessarily know your name. You just go like, who was that?

13:10 and what's the thing that made him stand out? Do you know what? That's interesting because, I mean, we'll eventually arrive at the, we have a meeting, the WAM sort of founding of that. But a lot of the stuff that you preach is about, I guess, going against the grain. It's doing things that are not necessarily normal to get past the gatekeeper or whatever. So it's interesting to hear that.

13:34 sort of the mentality of, that's what everyone else is doing. I'm going to do the opposite because I think that's going to make me stand out more. That's an interesting potential link there that we, maybe there'll be a, what's it called? Like a, uh, a vein that runs through your career of trying to, to stand out. Interesting. Okay. Right. You, you sort of touched on it. It was a bit of a strange, uh, role working environment. Tell us, tell us about it. Yeah. So I'll, I'll set the scene. I mean, I'm someone who

14:02 I don't have very many interests in my life, but anything I am interested in, I'm always like to be the absolute best at it. Jack, my co-director will often take the mick out of me and say I'm so predictable because of the things that I'm interested in. So when I started a job in sales, it was an immediate, like, I'm going to get very good at this as quick as I can. So I did all the research, watched all the videos, was like buying books ahead of my first day at this business. And it was around the time.

14:30 Wolf of Wall Street was coming out that I had this job. So the culture in London at the time in sales and finance, it was very that. It was very excess and a bit blokey and very testosterone led. And I walked up to this building in Shoreditch on my first day, feeling pretty fired up for my first day having prepared. And I walked in and it was full of very hungover looking faces.

14:59 And people kind of sweating in the morning, sweating, maybe what had happened the night before. And it was silent. Like the whole floor was silent. I'm looking around thinking, I thought these were like sales guys. I was expecting stood up and beating the buzzer and booking meetings and closing deals and it just wasn't happening. And I got given, here's your laptop, here's your phone, go and make us some money.

15:25 So they're like the SDR, a mix of culture. It just wasn't that it was do the entire thing. Find the people to talk to, have a meeting with them yourself, convince them to buy what we do and make us money. And I'll see you at your performance review. The bit that was strange about it was the culture was the CEO was a guy who was quite a prolific character for.

15:53 I think his expenses budget on alcohol was about 5,000 pound a month. The finance director was telling me one day, so he was just any opportunity to take you out, take the, take a client out. He'd be getting you hammered and they had a box at Fulham. It was unlimited drinks. And one of the tactics was, can you get clients or potential clients to this box? And we get them as absolutely hammered as possible. Um, the other weird dynamic around it was.

16:20 The, my two directors were husband and wife, and they were, I will, we'll, we'll do it like a, you can cut this bit out if you want to, like a clang here. So they were into, I never partook, but they were into, um, sharing partners and people who might work in the business or be traveling through the business at the time. So between like the drinking heavily.

16:50 sort of weird sexual component to it and me, another graduate and a French guy that they brought in to open up the French market. It was a very bizarre environment of make things happen whilst trying not to be too hammered or be involved in any sort of tantric sex cult. So it was really bizarre first stab at selling like really extreme, very strange. And we can take that wherever you want in terms of following that up.

17:19 Well, you know what, it's going to make for a bloody great clip on LinkedIn. That's what I was thinking right there. No, you know what? It's really, really interesting your attitude towards the obsessive tunnel vision when you want to get good at something. So I have exactly the same trait. Like if I'm buying something, learning something, I want to do something, I have to know everything about it. I need to know how a pair of boots is made if I'm going to buy a pair of boots. Like I love all of that.

17:48 Um, so that's really, really interesting, but it kind of sounds as if without that personality trait, you'd have not been in a good place, right? So there was no structured training. There was no development program. How, how did you, how did you learn to, to operate in sales without that? Yeah. So it's really interesting when I was learning guitar. Um, in fact, I'll take it back even a further step than that. So I was like a, a bit of a slow learner at school for the first few years.

18:17 And one day my mum noticed that I couldn't read. So she called me up on it and my mum's a very strict lady and it was a lot of telling off and throwing a book across the room, but my mum taught me how to read and I caught up. But what I found when I learned to read was the more I read, the better I got at reading. So almost I could just teach myself to read at that point and I caught up and it's not an issue. I mean, we did some reading a few weeks ago and you'd say that my counterpart struggled more than me, right?

18:44 But I found then through learning instruments, which is what I spent a lot of my teenage years doing, the same rules applied. I had guitar lessons, but actually I could fast track it by sitting in front of YouTube or pulling a lesson up online. And then, oh, wow, amazing. The more effort I put in, the quicker I learn it. And then sales was the same. So I was aware that if I could take the skillset apart in all of its components and just watch a video on it and then practice it, then it would become part of me. And I'd probably gain my own style by failing.

19:13 to sound like whoever I was trying to imitate. So there was that and then books as well. And basically anything that I struggled on, which was a, well, that question seems to land a bit blunt, or I don't know how to deal with that objection. I could just find a book on it, watch a video on it and apply it there. And I've always found that even now when we train our guys in, I've got a business, which I'm sure we'll, we'll talk about with salespeople in it. I've trained a lot of salespeople.

19:38 Often if you can set training up in a way where the other person teaches themselves and you're just there to facilitate it rather than telling them how to do something, you find that the idea feels like it's intrinsically yours. So it becomes part of you and you tend to like it a bit more. Yeah. We're all ego led, even if times we don't like to admit it. Yeah. So that's a very, very good tip there. Um, now in terms of like success in that role, what did you find success in the role?

20:08 I guess with the, here's a laptop, here's a phone and go and sell. Like were there big targets? You know, how did it go? Yeah, there were lofty targets in that role. It was very much a here's our dream customers. So here's the customers we've never been able to get in front of and always wanted to. Um, and I got a few opportunities in that space, but the bit that was probably the scariest thing around it was I thought I was just into.

20:37 do the first bit of the job at the start. And then one of my hungover directors one day said, that meeting you've booked, basically in as many words, I can't be asked going, can you go? So I traipsed across London, went in and realized there's a bit of a weird trick to this because I'm so nervous and I don't really know what to do. I'm just asking the person lots and lots of questions and they're opening up and they're telling me all their problems. And it just started to plant a seed of

21:06 Maybe there's something in this, but I did realize success, but I had no idea how I was doing it until afterwards. And it's weird. The beginner mindset in selling is often quite a good one because you don't, you, you, you pay a lot of attention and you try not to fuck it up. And because you tend to make things work. We sort of said this about the meeting, challenging people in the bouncy castle thing, but it's really, really interesting because again,

21:36 in your current line of work, you know, the founder of the outbound agency, you do a lot of, what you preach heavily on the importance of asking questions. And we've done a couple of episodes on a separate podcast where questions again featured heavily. So again, it's really, really interesting to hear that you've picked out that as a, that's when you learn the questions really worked and actually not.

22:04 kind of not knowing what you were doing was an advantage. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So there was a lot of that. Um, and yeah, getting in front of it was, it was, it was a cool job because at times it felt very, it felt like a luxury thing because I was, I was selling to big businesses in London. So I was spending a lot of time in boardrooms on like Broadgate and places like that, looking over the whole of London, but I'd be in a Primark suit.

22:33 barely being able to afford to pay for the tube every month and stuff. So it was a good taste at sort of struggling through a first sales job, which I think is important to struggle a little bit and set yourself kind of lost lofty aspirations that you miss and work in a bit of a chaotic environment where every day was a bit unpredictable from a culture standpoint, learning to work with extreme personalities, I think is a very useful thing.

23:00 Yeah, I won't go into my side of things, but the working with extreme personalities is probably one of the most intense periods of learning I've had in my career. Like you, you, you're forced to adapt and change. I think, like we said at the start, you might not realize it. If you're in that role now, like if you're listening to this, watching this and you're in that role in a role that sounds exactly like this in terms of the lack of structure and the lack of training and just the

23:28 diving at the deep end or thrown at the deep end and it's sink or swim. You fast forward five, 10 years in retrospect, you will look back and go, do you know why I am glad I went into that role. I could have taken an easy role. I could have taken the one of the big four with all of these, all of this structure and training and stuff. But would I be as resilient, which is an important trait in sales? Exactly. Yeah. The amount of people I speak to now who

23:52 might be in a similar situation. I always say it all does work out in the end. I know it's going to try and a bit cliche to say it, but it does tend to just all line up. So yeah, couldn't agree more. No, I think this is potentially an obvious question, but how long were you there? And sort of like, why did you decide to leave? We can, yeah, we can talk about what happened with the leaving. So it was a...

24:21 really bizarre place to work, but you'd get these kind of luxury, strange opportunities. Like there was a yacht that we'd go out on from Southampton and stuff like that. But it was, you were thinking, are the profit margins there to be able to, I don't know what's going on, but who am I? I'm in my early twenties. I don't need to be thinking about things like this. And one of the events that we went on to, the CEO who was this like massive personality, you'd either, it was a bit of a roll of the dice what you were going to get from him.

24:50 So sometimes you'd get an amazing night out and sometimes you'd get really unpredictable and there might be like a violent incident or something like that. Anyway, I didn't know we'd gone to this event, this award ceremony, and I didn't know that he'd had a funny night. Like he was kicking off with people. The last I saw of him before I'd gone off and had a party was that he was having a nice time. So I went over to him at the end of the night and I said, thank you so much for, uh, for inviting me. I've had a really nice time. I'm going to shoot off now. And I gave him a hug.

25:20 And he said, get your fucking hands off me. And I thought he was joking. So I squeezed him tighter and then he screamed, get your fucking hands off me. And he was so hammered that when he was screaming in my face and I just, not a push just went like that to me, step away from me, he fell over and it made, it made like a big scene. Anyway, the next day he rang me up and said, um, I don't want you working here anymore after.

25:49 you did to me last night, but I'd only hugged him. But anyway, very strange. And I thought, it's probably run its course anyway. It was such a chaotic place to work that it felt like a, it almost felt like a relief when that had happened. And then fast forward, I mean, he's no longer with us. That lifestyle that he had, he died a few years ago from it. And the sales director I had was probably the first person who very openly in my life believed in me.

26:19 She ended up taking her own life from the pressure of that job, which I know like keep it light, so I give them morbid turn of events, but that was the sort of culture it was. So leaving, especially now in retrospect, knowing both of those two things is a, I'm glad I work there and I'm learned a lot and I was forced to learn a lot, but I'm also glad that I didn't stay for too long. So I was probably there for a year and a half.

26:46 You know, and I appreciate you because you were sort of amening, gnawing of like, oh yeah, how much do I share? Do I go into it? But I appreciate you telling the story because I think that the whole point of chatting with people and looking back at their careers is so that, like you said, you, you do show the shit, uh, and not just the, cause you, you, you, you get, um, these influences, these people who seem to hit it big on LinkedIn and they paint this perfect picture of the ideal.

27:15 trajectory they took in their career and how they made 100 million overnight and blah, blah, blah. It's just not the reality of things for 99.9% of us, i.e. everyone else. Yeah, it's obviously, it's a shame to hear about the two of them passing. That's awful. But like you said, in terms of how it shaped you over time, not necessarily...

27:41 that you realized it at the time, but how it's, how it shaped you. And as a founder now, how you treat your team, I can imagine that's been heavily impacted by that. Massively. Yeah. And I also think the, there is a classic culture where that sort of thing happens that actually does repeat. So you see a lot of cocaine, heavy alcohol, heavy sales flaws with a lot of testosterone, I don't drink and I'm in very.

28:09 anti like that sort of culture here. We went on a work night out. This was a very boring. We went on a work night in my business on Friday and we were all home by like nine o'clock, we went out and played a few games in town, had a nice meal. They all had a few drinks. I made sure they got home. Okay. And that was it. I've had a nice time. No one had to embarrass themselves or do anything wrong. And I think a few of them went on a night out afterwards, but yeah, it's just made me a bit more conscious of how I treat the business.

28:35 And a side note, so it was a husband and wife, the wife was the lady who took her own life. The husband now owns a yoga retreat in Thailand. So he doesn't, he does, he does horrible things can happen to people and it can make them reevaluate their whole life. And you can, you can have this like crossroads moment where he lives out there. Now he used to be like suit, slick back hair. He's now got really long hair. He sounds like he talks in a different accent and everything. And he looks, he looks very happy. So.

29:05 things can you can you can there's a silver lining to things sometimes. Yeah, I was gonna say that's a perfect example of the whole point of this kind of podcast in that he had that background with all the stories you've just said. And, and now he's a founder of a yoga retreat and has completely changed happier individual like you, you just, you can't write the path that you'll end up taking you in your career. Like I didn't think I'd be sitting here at age 32 in the position I'm in when I went into a graduate.

29:34 placement at the Royal Mint with coinage. Like, you know, it's a mad old journey. Okay. So that was your first, um, foray into the world of sales. Uh, I mean, I know the answer to this, but it looks like you've decided to stay in sales after that. What was the next move? Uh, are we doing linear path? No, no, no. So, um, I think, um, Patrick can cut this bit out, but this, this is the next highlight role, which was Glennegan.

30:05 Got you. Right. So next up, so I'd lived in London. Um, me and my co-director at this point lived together. Jack, uh, we had a nice house, but there was lots of us that lived in it in this house in Southgate, Jack, who I'm sure you've got an episode booked in with. Um, he was pursuing his career in a boy band. Um, he won't name them, but I will. The tailor made. Look them up.

30:30 Yeah, that's going to, well, what we'll do is we'll make sure that that episode comes out after this episode. So you've got that to look forward to. You've got that. So anyway, they were going down a path of wanting to, I think, reduce spend and they all wanted to move in with Jack's auntie. I was just weighing up based on what happened with that job, based on just my career prospects in general, do I have to be in London to do this job? I was someone who I am from a seaside town.

30:59 I lived in London and was thinking, is this for me? I don't think big cities are for everyone. And the girlfriend that I had at the time was from Poole, sort of Bournemouth South, South coast area, and I was thinking maybe we should move somewhere else. Initially, my idea was to move to Manchester. Her idea was to move down here for a bit. So we moved down here and then there was a place called Glennegan that was hiring.

31:29 I'd been a customer of theirs at my previous job in London. When I saw that they were in Bournemouth and they were hiring for a salesperson, it was one of those weird like, surely that's the job that I get next. And I got that job and it was the, it was the total opposite of the place I'd worked for. It was extreme personality still, but it was the opposite in terms of the first place I worked was startup. This was like part of a PLC, big group in a big tall building, very structured in

31:58 London. And I worked there for probably in my whole career. That was my best boss that I ever had. I learned loads from him. He's a guy called Luke Dash. He's the CEO now of a company called ISMS. But he's someone who's probably a bit of an unsung hero. I think a lot of people who work for him tend to learn not only a lot about sales, but just a lot about managing a sales team. So he do cool things that...

32:28 I still try and do here with my team where if someone was struggling to get a deal over the line, he'd be like, let me give them a call for you. Or he'd be like, you're trying to hit target that day. It's the last day of the month. He jumped on the phones with you or he'd help out with a thing. He managed everyone that was suited to their own emotional intelligence style. So I learned a lot from him. Um, and I spent about two and a half years in that job and really ended up with like this quite refined skillset after working there.

32:56 And what was it, what was the product? What was it you were selling? It was a database of construction projects and leads that you would sell into the construction industry. So my job when I was there was I would cold call, book the demos, sit the demos and close them. So it was a full 360 roll. And then like you do when you're, I think I was maybe 24 when I worked there, maybe 23, like you do, there was a while where I was top of the leaderboard.

33:26 And I thought I'm going to make things really hard for them. And I went in and fabricated a job offer, made out it was more money and said, I want to be paid more here. They paid me more. They gave me more responsibility, but they doubled the target as well. So be careful what you, what you wish for. So the job role was at that point, a mixture of me driving around the country, a couple of days a week, closing people's deals and then generating my own deals, sit in my own demos and closing my own.

33:55 deals there. So I learned loads about the full 360 of selling. Now I'm, it's beyond rare to find the manager, uh, that all these years later, you would speak as highly as you did of, uh, was it Luke? Luke? Yeah. Yeah. So I think, so I, I, I quite like, I'd like to spend a little bit more time on, on, on Luke, or at least the environment and the processes that he instilled at that time. Cause I think, um, we've already sort of touched on it.

34:25 sort of off screen, but I think you described it as like finding the holy Trinity of a manager who is like that. And then like almost when people say double down on something, when you find a good thing, like double down on it, like invest time into it. It was almost like, if you find a boss, like Luke, take everything you can from them, like learn everything you can be in, be in that environment as long as like, as long as you can. So could that, that's

34:53 delve a little bit deeper. Why was he so good? He was just like, I remember when I first met him, he came out in a, I mentioned the three piece suit thing before he came out in, I was in my cheap Primark suit still. I didn't really take much pride in what the, the, the job. I wasn't interested in being a professional yet at what I did going pro, but he came to greet me. He had like the three piece suit on the pockets where it was very polished right away.

35:22 The interview style was very polished. And when he walked onto the Salesforce, there was that nice mix of like people having a laugh with him, but also respected him enough to get on with the job, which is a hard thing to find. What you tend to see is people who are a bit too on the micro side or a bit too relaxed, you tend to, but he got this like really nice mix down the middle. And

35:45 He just treated me in the way that I was at that time. It was, I was probably a bit of a rough diamond. There was a bit of natural flair and confidence there. And he just really refined it down. He challenged me when I needed challenging. He'd give me a leg up when I needed a leg up. He'd jump on the phones with me. He'd grab a beer with me rather than give me like strict feedback in front of everyone, he'd say, Oh, can I grab you for a beer at lunchtime at the end of the day and just dealt with everything.

36:14 really well and he's still someone now that if we're hiring a new role in my business or I'm going to do something new, I always think, I'll just ask him what his thoughts are on it and he gives you that really nice mix of here's the culture piece, but here's the business piece and here's how they link up and should link up. Now I think I don't want this to be like an obvious question, but what did you take from it? What did you learn? Like that period of your career?

36:44 Looking back now, what, what did it give you? I learn how to consistently predictably hit target in terms of two, two things. Really? There's the, there was the, the skills of knowing what to say and how to say it as part of your sales process, but then there was the science of if I speak to X amount of people, I'll book X amount of meetings. If I bought X amount of meetings, I'll

37:12 do X amount of quotes, X amount of quotes equals X amount of money. And you could just work every month back as a science. And I couldn't believe it. I was like, there's no way that this works consistently. And it did. And that was the first taste of, in a way it was, it was kind of vacuous cause it actually didn't, it didn't make me that happy, but it was the first time where I got what I thought would make me happy in a sales job, which was getting a big commission check going on a holiday that was a bit

37:42 spur of the moment wasn't particularly planned or buying something expensive or doing something. And then I learned a lesson through doing that and having the lifestyle that I thought I wanted at that time as well. So it taught me loads in retrospect. And I know other people have said this to you, doing this as an exercise is almost like a therapy session, Jamie. So yeah, you think of the whole, the man that I am now, what did he learn from that? Probably quite a lot in and outside of work.

38:09 Yeah, there's a couple of things that jumped out at me there. You said that you, he was a professional and you didn't see yourself as a professional. So what did you see yourself as at that point? Just like a chancer, just like a guy just, just, just covered in, just thinking I'm still in that mindset of this is something I'm just going to stick out till something better comes along. And I don't think that's uncommon. I think if you spoke to, and you know, you spoke to a lot of people on your previous podcast, it takes a few years before you go.

38:39 this is actually something that I'm in for the long run. Um, and it was almost like something better is going to come along at some point or what I'm really going to do with my life is going to come along at some point. Um, and because of that, I didn't treat it like I was, like I was going pro. You know, it's interesting. So there's, um, I can't remember the exact quote or phrase or sort of story, but it's that confidence is earned by repeatedly doing something and getting success from it.

39:07 So confidence is a data backed feeling of I've done this before and it worked out well. I did it again and it worked out well. I did it again and it got better. Right. I'm confident that that's confidence. So you've got people who have blind confidence without any data and that's arrogance. That's the difference between confidence and arrogance. Confidence is proven. Arrogance is thinking you're good at something, but you don't have any data to back it. So I get the whole, like you kind of felt like a

39:34 Chancellor slash let's roll in the imposter syndrome phase and there is a phrase in there as well of you hadn't been doing it long enough or in that you weren't in that industry you didn't have that repeated pipe repeatable pipeline that you spoke about so I get yeah I understand it now when you when you sort of explain it like that so it sounds sounds good it sounds like that was a great role a great period of your life um why on earth did you decide to leave them

40:04 Um, so when I, I know it's crass to talk about money, but I think it's important for maybe people who are listening to this because it does, it did teach me a good lesson. So I was there for two and a half years. I loved working there. I'm still friends with people that I worked with that. It was like really just a really good environment, like really fun, very funny place to work, but you still be hitting targets and like be happy to spend time with the people that you've worked with. It was very good or rosy, but feeling like that.

40:34 There was like a, is there more, is there more that I should be doing? Should I be doing something else? And I was making probably about 67, 68 grand a year when I was, I was about 23, 24, so it was like fucking too much money for just someone at that age. Um, but a guy messaged me on, on LinkedIn that I'd sold to, and I had this quite a lot when I was there, which is a nice compliment, um, who said,

41:01 He'd used to just mess with me and say, when are you going to come and work for us? And I was like, you know what? I'll, I'll meet this guy. So I met him in London and I didn't want to leave. So I said to him, I'll leave if you pay me a basic of 50 grand. And he went done. I was like, were you like, shit, I should have gone 65. Yeah, exactly. Um, and then he was like, and the commission you can make on top. And it was all listed. He was like, I'll get you a.

41:31 I had a company car at the time. He was like, we'll get you a better company car. It didn't really like sold me a dream. Um, so I left to go and work in this other business, but it was kind of back to not, not in, I mean, it was, they were, they were actually quite an unusual bunch. It wasn't extreme. It was more, it was bizarre. The place that I went to next, but, but not all the rug was pulled out straight away. I went into this building.

41:58 Everyone looked very unhappy. It was run by very pale, white middle-aged men and all the service, customer service staff were all quite attractive young girls. And I thought something strange got on here straight away. Um, and there was no car that came. The commission just got further and further away. It was all about building relationships and going and learning about networking and just stuff that my skillset isn't suited to.

42:29 But the lesson I would want people to take from that is I left a good thing that I probably could have gradually got better at to go and do a thing that almost felt like a bit of a shortcut to get there a bit faster. And it just life taught me a very valuable lesson of the grass isn't always greener and sometimes something that feels like it's too good to be true is too good to be true. Yeah. Look, it's

42:54 Kind of easy for us to say this now because we've been there, we've done it, we've made the mistakes, we've been the stupid mid-20s who think they should be on the top dollar because they're shit hot at their job at 25 or whatever. We've all been there, but shock, money isn't everything. And shock. Who knew? Yeah. Shock. Things aren't always as good as they seem from the outside, whether that be careers, relationships, new countries to go and live in.

43:23 movies with a great trailer. Like, you know, it's all, it's all part of that psychological things of like when you're looking from the outside, things always look better than they are. So sometimes, I mean, you touch on it there, like if something's going really, really well, like this is a, the single, this is the first piece of advice I always, I always give someone in terms of like, when should you decide to move or not is ask yourself the simple question of like, are you still learning? Yes or no? Are you still challenged, professionally challenged? Yes or no?

43:53 Do you enjoy it? Yes or no. Other people could, yes or no. And if you can answer yes to a lot of those questions, why leave? Because if you're growing and learning, you are able to then say I deserve more because I've progressed in my career and you can stay in the same role and you can earn more. It's the same. If you watch, those listening in the UK, Grand Designs, Kevin MacLeod, he always said, yeah, my mom fancies him. I don't know. I, you know, I don't know if it's just, just because of his architectural,

44:23 intellect or if you know what I've noticed about Kevin MacLeod, sorry this is a total tangent but next time you see Kevin MacLeod watch this right when someone else is talking to him he can't make eye contact with them but instead of making it look normal he starts looking at their whole body really fast instead so he starts going like really fast up and down eye movements like that when they're talking it's very bizarre. Right I'm gonna I'm gonna catch up on some grand designs tonight. Message me and you'll know exactly what I mean.

44:51 But he there was something that he said and it was like the decision to move or not, right? So if you're in a house, do you love the area you live in? Yes. Do you know, is it safe? Yes. Do you want to move? No, not really. OK, do you do you need the extra room? Yeah. OK, right. So can you extend? Yes. OK, extend. If the answer to the can you extend the house is no move. So it's like if everything's right.

45:18 And you can work with what you've got and stay in that sort of environment and make it better. Just stay. Like, don't think about the grass is greener because you don't know what's going to happen. And I think that's a really, really great piece of advice of, I think you, you jotted it down here of like your base was something like 15 K higher. But then when you take into account the commission and the work in an environment fundamentally, it wasn't worth it. No, no. And that business went bust in the end. I didn't work there at the time when it did, but it went bust in the end. And you just think.

45:49 What was the point? And the other business is still thriving and doing good things. But, um, camera is it's finest, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, you learn, you learn a lot from some of those choices along the way, but sometimes I think you've just got to be, you've got to be aware of the lesson. Otherwise it repeats. So self-awareness is an incredibly rare trait nowadays, unfortunately, or introspect. Um,

46:18 looking inwards. If you make mistakes but you don't learn from them, you're just an idiot. So it's what is it, they're doing things over and over and over again or expecting a different result. It's just the definition of madness. You've got to learn from these things and we know that you've learned from it because of where you are today. But okay, right. Next highlight role after Gleneghan, what was that? What have I put down?

46:48 Hey, it's your story. Sales manager at Lyrical Communications. Yes. Okay. Right. So this was a really interesting one, right? So I met my now wife when I was 26. It was a very different, like a total change of pace, like in terms of the life that I had. And before that, I'd had a bit of a...

47:15 I don't know, mentally I didn't feel amazing. I think a lot of blokes go through this when they're kind of that age of like, what, and the story that was always playing around in my head was, I can't believe you've let your life turn out like this. Like, this was the thing. Like I really thought I was going to be famous and me and Jack were up with a load of friends who all wanted to be musicians. And around that time, one of our friends who's gone on to do really amazing things got famous around that time. And he's in a very successful band. And it just was like, Oh, I could have been.

47:45 I thought I was going to be that. It was a bit of like a depressing time. I didn't really know what I was doing in my life. And then I met my wife and we, um, quite quickly found out she was having a baby. I already, she had two boys already. So I became a stepdad quite quickly. Was like having a baby. And then this was my GoPro moment. So lyrical communications we're hiring. This is just before.

48:14 pandemic and they ran two big events in the Midlands. Two big events, one time a year, the job was selling stands, speaking slots, marketing opportunities to people. But I was learning a lot more around the bits that I didn't know how to do. I think that was around the first time that I came across people like Chris Voss and all the different sales methodologies that I refined down to what we do in my business now.

48:43 And that was like my GoPro moment. And I used to pull things off there, like closing multiple deals off, like referrals and just trying things out that I had not tried out before. And it was all going pretty smoothly. And then the pandemic hit, and I don't know if you know anything about the events industry and the pandemic, but they tend not to go together very well. So that business got rid of a lot of people.

49:09 But he said, I know you've not been here long, Zach, but I think just the work you've done, we'd really like to keep you on board. Um, but we're going to furlough you. My son was born around the time, but I was still learning during that time. Like I still had that real like obsessive hunger to, I really want, I really want this to be it's full, like a full professional skillset that then I can just make money from and provide for my family. And probably like wanting.

49:38 my little boy to be able to look back and not think I was like a loser, like chancing things, like wanting to actually be someone that he was proud of. Um, yeah. And then I was furloughed for a bit and then I came back, but the company had completely changed because the events industry wasn't back open. So they became the bits that they would use to market the event. They would basically sell to other businesses in the space, but it was really hard, like businesses that were.

50:04 closed off because of the pandemic. There was still like social distancing and all this sort of thing. Very hard to get hold of people because they weren't based in the office anymore. I think there was one client I had that I called him back and he died of COVID. There was like real mad time to work there, but I made it work and made them quite a lot of money during that time in a, in a, basically in a product and service that didn't exist. Um, but during that time, the boss that I had, we just didn't get on.

50:34 I basically have a sales methodology that I now teach the whole business runs on it, but he had almost the opposite and we just used to butt heads a lot on things. And then they were basically saying that they wanted to move to London. So this was after about maybe nearly two years or something like that. They were going to move to London.

51:02 And it was a case of, do you want to be part of that journey or not? They put a lot of pressure on. It was very clear that they perhaps didn't want me to stay and they didn't want, they sort of want it to go in a bit of a different direction as a business. And then I was driving home and my wife sent me a picture of my boy in the garden. She was pregnant again, but I know we need to get a TV Jamie before you say, um, she was pregnant again. There's a picture of my little boy.

51:32 And I just felt a bit choked up, like, I just need to do something. I can't just keep relying on someone to come and save me on me to like find the perfect job. If I'm backing myself so much and telling people who are much more senior than me in business, how their sales team should run and how we should go out and target people. I should be comfortable putting my money where my mouth is. And Jack, my business partner still got it screenshotted. I was like, I think I'm going to leave the job that I've got.

52:01 And my idea is I'll just do what I do now for lots of other businesses. And to get past gatekeepers, I'll call the business. We have a meeting. And he was like, whoa. And I was like, I can get this. We could call it one for short. And that was the inception of that journey. No, but before we, um,

52:21 I think that there's a really nice segue from lyrical communications into WAM because of the opposite sales methodologies that you had with your manager. That's a really nice segue, but I just wanted to touch on the feeling that you had at age 26-ish of not being enough, like things not panning out the way in which you thought they were, because I think we're in an era of...

52:48 unfortunate circumstances which have meant that the suicide rates amongst young men are the highest they've ever been, much higher suicide rates amongst men than women. And I think there is a toxic masculinity that seems to be prevalent. I've certainly felt it, still feel it today if I'm brutally honest with myself in the sense of whatever I do or whatever you're able to achieve,

53:18 good enough, it's like, okay, but what if I had started putting in effort a year earlier, I could have achieved this a year sooner. And how has that developed for you in terms of because you're in a place now where you've been incredibly successful with with Wham, how is that almost toxic sense or toxic feeling of not being where you wanted to be or not not having done enough? How has that developed?

53:44 It's probably the same as you. It's been a work in progress. My wife actually spotted something the other day. So my wife, she's a hypnotherapist. She works with lots of salespeople and business people. And it's a lot of taking you back to your childhood. And when you're in the unconscious mind, basically taking a story that you've got, which might be, I'm not enough and changing it to I am enough. Now that's a very simplistic term for what she would do. But she was basically asking me the other day to

54:12 come up with an I am statement for myself sat on the sofa and I can't do it. Can't, I can't talk about myself in that way. I still can't do it. There's probably work to do there. Do you feel, um, do you feel itchy or sticky when, when, yeah, that's the, I get the, I feel almost like the hairs on my arm stand up and I kind of do that. I'm like, ah, I just feel so, it feels so wrong. Yeah, I can't, I can't do it. And I used to, weirdly I've got, I've always had like this duality to my personality where.

54:42 I, but me and Jack, I'm sure you're not shocked to this, we'd be like the class clowns, we'd be like absolutely fucking winding everyone up and making jokes and stuff all the time. But then if I had a haircut, I'd get nervous about it at school because I'd hate the moment where people go, Zach's had a haircut and everyone would turn around and look at me. It almost makes no sense. Do you like having happy birthday sung to you? No. Yeah, it's all, yeah, the reason I bring that up is because it's exactly the same as me and opening Christmas presents, right?

55:12 when it comes around to you and you're like, no, no, no, that's fine. Yeah. Move on. Yeah. I despise it. Yeah, I'm the same. So there was, so in terms of like the, there's no it's done. Um, the, the, probably the interesting thing and the important thing is I'd hit a point, my wife was really good at just spotting things in me that was like, you should pursue this. There was like a music project that I started that did really well in the pandemic. Um,

55:42 there was other things, but then I was still finding, well, I used to drink too much and I found that I couldn't, once I started, I couldn't stop. And through, it's weird how it all links up, but you don't realize at the time, I decided like this isn't conducive to the things that I'm trying to do. So it doesn't make me a better business person and it doesn't make me a better dad to be every time we go out somewhere and you're having one beer, I've had 10.

56:09 doesn't make me a good person doing that. So I decided to start drinking and then I had some therapy to find out what the cause of it might be. And it's all this sort of stuff that we're talking about. It's all stuff around, my upbringing was, my parents went together very long. I've got a lot of brothers and sisters, but there's not much love. There's no one's, I've never, no one's ever told me they love me or they're proud of me. There's still none of that now. And I would feel

56:39 very, just like people weren't interested in me. And it's still, I still have a bit of that now, which is funny. Like when you're, it's interesting. Like if you, if you're listening to this and you wonder what is my default mode, go back and see your parents and see what natural role you fit back into. I fit back into some times and I had to like call myself out on it. I'm trying to like sneak little things about the business in, in hopes that someone in my family goes, fucking hell, well done, mate, that's really good. But it never, it never comes. It never happens.

57:10 But weirdly the alcohol was linked to that. So because people didn't, I was aware as a child, people don't find me interested or didn't find me interested. It's like, well, if I have 10 beers and I talk louder and make the most jokes and be the biggest dickhead, you're going to find me interested. This is, this is really quite, I'm shaking my head, nod my head. Cause it's quite scary. So, um, I, this is taking a, a slightly deep in meaning, hashtag DMC deep and meaningful chat. Yeah. That's okay. Man. I wasn't expecting this. This is, this is good. It's, it's.

57:39 therapy I don't have to pay for for once. It's brilliant. No, so I also get therapy. I'm very open about it. It's, I think anyone should, who's considering it should should definitely explore it, at least for a period of time, because it can help professionally and not just personally. But I think you mentioned there that you when you look back at your childhood and your upbringing, your parents didn't necessarily

58:08 didn't necessarily say, uh, I love you, things like that. So my mom definitely does. That's something that she's very, very good at. My dad has said, I love you once in my life. And he only said that when me and my sister questioned him after 12 pints, uh, six nations matching Cardiff and said, dad, quick question. Uh, 12 points deep. Um, you've never said I love you and you've never said I'm proud of you. And, um,

58:35 My dad got very, very emotional. Um, and he basically opened up and shared that his dad never said it to him. So he feels, um, very, very strange or awkward in saying it. Like he feels like he'll be judged for showing emotion. Like again, this toxic masculinity thing of generationally, he feels like. It's, I don't know, showing weakness, embarrassment. He just can't do it. And he's not said it since.

59:04 So even though we call him out, and this was probably eight years ago now, and he's not said it since. So I have exactly the same struggles, uh, as you've just described there. And it sounds like it's for the exact same reasons, which is really, really interesting as well. Yeah. I bet you have a, I know you're, you don't have children yet. I'm thinking you'll be a wonderful father when you do, but you find that like me and my older brother have got the same. You've.

59:33 never seen two dads say, I love you to their children more. And my little, my two year old will say, daddy, stop messing with me. Cause I'm always like giving him a kiss and making sure it comes full circle. Yeah. And that links back to the, as long as you learn from it, that's the important thing, as long as you have the self-awareness to say, do you know what? I don't want that. I don't want my child in, you know, we've got, got away from sales, but it's all the same, right? It's, um,

01:00:03 I don't want my child in 20 years time to, to wonder why his dad's never said I love you or to wonder why his parents don't show affection. Um, interesting. Okay. So back to that, um, back to that segue, then the segue of you butting heads with your manager at lyrical communications, because there was a very, very different style of, um, sales. So for those who don't know the methodology of Wham, tell us about the, the difference between the two. Yeah. So

01:00:32 Basically what I'd found was what is true in life is also true in sales. And I know that sometimes when I say this, it's like, how did you not realize this earlier on? Um, but I found basically giving people lots of room to say no. Being very ethical and putting no hope into your pipeline was the best way of doing things. There's more to it. That's the kind of long and short, but the bits that we would butt heads on was let's say I had.

01:00:59 an opportunity that was going on for a long time. And I was like, you know what, in my heart of hearts, this is not going to happen. I would do something called the close the file email where I would send over an email subject line, close the file. Hi Jamie. It looks like you've probably gone in a different direction. Are you happy for me to close the file? Now he was from a customer is always right. Perspective relationship builder perspective. And so that was an opportunity to, he thought I was damaging to relationships, but I was like, well, that's not my job. My job is to make us money.

01:01:28 And then I'd have the evidence. People respond to that and they say, yeah, close the file. Or actually, no, no, these are the next steps, Zach. So there were things like that. There was the style of calling. Didn't think I was kind of selling the business enough. And, and there was a lot of stuff that felt long winded that they would do as a business and I'd say, well, why don't we just do this? And success is a wonderful thing. When you learn later on that things work, there was a lot of things that I would said were good ideas that they would say, no, no, that'd never work.

01:01:58 And at one point he said to me, you're being a teenager about it. That wouldn't work. And I just love an idea that I've had when it works with a client and they go, that's a great idea. And it works just to think, who knew a teenager, eh? Yeah. Cause I, I probably know a lot more about Wham and your

01:02:23 Uh, methodologies having spent a good amount of time with the pair of you, but for, for those, uh, that have absolutely zero idea about, wow, give us, give us the spiel, give us the website hero spiel. Um, and then it would be good to talk about, um, the whole, like, you know, okay, you, you were butting heads with your manager and you were like, why don't you send, well, Jack's got that screenshot of

01:02:50 Why don't I just go and do this, but for other companies, but that's, yeah, let's do a little bit of a whistle stop tour about the last few years as well. Yeah. So, um, one is, I mean, it's become a bigger beast. It was basically designed that the, we have a meeting was, I will get businesses meetings. And what was happening in the pandemic was I was talking to businesses, trying to sell them these marketing services and they would say,

01:03:18 I don't need this, I need someone like you who's doing what you do. Because my sales guys aren't doing what you're doing right now. They're not ringing me up, sat in front of me on a team school, trying to close me. And one person said it to me, then another person said it to me, then another person said it to me and I thought, wow, well, these are going to be like my first clients. This would be, I'd be silly to not do this. And the long and short of it is we're effectively a sales agency that normally get used by businesses who are trying to get more meetings in the diary, either

01:03:47 They can't, don't want to, don't have the skills set, or they're meeting people, but they're not closing because they're scared to ring the CEO. They'd rather ring the manager. And then I actually would rather speak to the CEO, but our team are too scared to do it. So they're not in front of the right types of people. Or there's this idea of there's a new sector that they might want to break into. So they're great in, I don't know, industrial, but they always want to work in construction. They know nothing about it, don't know where to start.

01:04:14 And those probably the three things that people knock on the door and want to help us with. And the, the, the, probably the scary bit of it was my wife was expecting our fourth child. I had a month's wages in the bank, a little bit of commission, but I've got a mortgage and three and almost four children to feed. And all I had, it was back to day one. It was the computer and the phone. There's no cognizant. There's no.

01:04:44 deal from, there's no dialers, there's nothing. It was just like, you just have to make this work. Just find a way to make this work. So basically what I did was I thought, where is the marriage between if you needed what we do, where are you spending your money right now? And events were just starting to open again. And obviously I had events on the brain from what I'd done before. And event websites have an interesting thing called an exhibitors list, which is all the people who are exhibiting. And they're probably spending between

01:05:13 20 and 70 grand on a stand in hopes that leads come to them in hopes that they close them. So I see that list and think these people have money to spend and also a problem to solve. So I pulled the list up and I got to number nine on the list. I rang this guy up at using Wales and I told him what I did.

01:05:38 And he said, if you can do that for me, I'll pay you right now. It was like a wall for ball street. So he was like, you show me a chip for $70,000. He was like, if you can do that for me, I'll pay you right now. And that was on the ninth call. And I thought, right, this is, there's the evidence it's going to work. Um, so it started working. I got Panasonic who was almost going to be a client of mine at my previous place. I messaged him. I've been trying to close him for the whole time I was there.

01:06:06 told him what I was doing now and he messaged me back and said, that's more like it. Here's, here's the time to get in my diary. I spoke to him on the phone and he said, I'm interested in this. Like, but I've only got about 15 grand to spend. And I was like, what? Obviously trying to keep my cool. I was like, yeah, yeah, well, obviously we'll be able to figure something out. So I've got him involved, got this other guy involved and then got to about four clients and just thought this can't grow anymore.

01:06:36 And I won't steal his story from you, but Jack, my now business partner, was also a bit of a crossroads in his life. He was always asking about the business. I basically said to him, is this something you'd ever want to get involved in? And he said, why not I come and just help you out for a month if you're busy and just see, see what we get. And the rest from there is history. We can take that wherever you want from there. We've heard the, like I said, the spiel, the hero spiel, the success story that it's

01:07:04 Surprise shock. You're still in business and it's going well. Um, but in the same way that we've done with previous roles, can you tell us some of the good, the bad, the ugly, um, definitely the good. So that's the, you know, let's not go down a, uh, just focusing on the negative side of things. Um, but that's, that's go a little bit deeper in terms of like the last, how many years are we talking like four or five years? Would we're in our fourth year. Yeah. Cause we've

01:07:34 spoken about the grass is greener thing. So again, like you were like, right, I could, I could go and just do this for other businesses and I'm really good at it. So I could make loads of money. So he's the, has the, has the grass been as green as you thought it would be? There's definitely, I wouldn't ever be able to work for someone else again. That's probably the first thing. But there's been interesting moments that have been kind of humbling along the way that have taught me a lesson about

01:08:02 I'm reading a book at the minute called Predictably Irrational, right? And it's all about how our brains work. And one of the things that somebody's how, what's normal socially and what's normal in terms of the market doesn't always match. So what's accepted socially and accepted in business are two different things. I'll give you an example of that. So I'm talking about my fourth son. We were expecting him when I started the business and he came in January. I started the business in August, right? So he came in January.

01:08:31 And I was working on a client that day. I was still on the phones in the bedroom booking meetings. And I caught up with the client in the morning. I said, listen, by the way, my wife thinks she's going to go into labor today. She thinks she might be in early labor. If that happens, I'll owe you this day. He was like, yeah, yeah, no problem. No problem at all. She did go into labor, sent him a little email, let him know she's gone to labor. So my wife's in labor. We had a home birth in the front room and I got a call from him and he's like, you want me to send me an email with you about the last one.

01:09:00 what happened with the clients up until when you stopped. I was like, yeah, but my wife's just got into labor. Like, would I be able to do it later? And he went, I really could do with that email. So I ran back upstairs and sent this email, but that is a lesson in what is accepted socially and what is accepted in business are two very, very different things and my wife's very cool. I mean, fourth child, she's a pro. She knows what she's doing. Um, but I was, I was open and back down as quick as I could.

01:09:29 And then probably the bit that is like a, it's a thing that I hope, I hope there's been no cost to it, but with my first son, there was this long furlough of months and months. With my second son, my wife had him and I was back on the phone the next day. There was no leave. There was no, so we had this new brand new baby and brand new babies, lovely things that never sleep. And, but I didn't get the same bonding with him.

01:09:58 that I got at that point. And that is the, that's probably like the untold thing around doing this. Sometimes there's, there was always a cost and the cost of having to put so much time into getting it off the ground was probably that I didn't get the same bond with him early on. Um, I mean, I've since made up for it, but there was definitely like some sacrifice and some guilt along the way and coming down after like.

01:10:24 getting the meetings done, exhausted, and I'm like, let him just like lie on my chest, but it just wasn't the same experience. And that was like a really humbling part of the journey. And you do see that a lot with people, like, you know, you listen to a diary of a CEO episode, there is always a cost to this. And I think I kidded myself at the start that I'd be able to get out of it without one. Yeah. And I think to your point on the cost of things, like some of the most successful people in the world are often.

01:10:53 the most unlucky in love. And what I mean by that is you look at how many wives or divorces or kids they've had by seven different women. It's not, that's not just coincidence. That's because, you know, they've chosen to dedicate themselves to something else and not just, or not necessarily a relationship or the personal side of things. But you've come, you've spent years sort of in that world. Now you've come sort of through that.

01:11:22 And you're out the other side of having a much better work life balance based on the last conversation we had. And you have these like little routines or rules where you don't work past a certain thing. So tell us about the current state of play now, like what, what fast forward the four years, what does it look like today in terms of your team and everything? Yeah. So we've got two offices. Um, I've got one in Bournemouth. I work in my business partner, Jack works in one in Manchester. We've got a team of just over 20. Um,

01:11:49 Does it feel weird saying that two offices and team of 20? It feels weird at times, but then sometimes I think it doesn't feel, it feels like the start. It always feels like the start. It's very weird. There's that toxic masculinity thing coming back in of like, nothing's enough, come on. Nothing's enough. When we had our first two hires, it wasn't long before my brain was like, what's next? Jack's bad for that as well. Jack's story has always been what's next, what are we doing next?

01:12:20 So yes, we've got the two offices. Um, we've got about 25 clients. Um, we, we sell all over the world on behalf of different businesses. We've got a sister business that we started about six months ago called a sales consultancy, and that is basically teaching the man to fish. So we come into the business. We look at the whole sales set up. It's not just sales training. It's like systems, how the business runs.

01:12:46 the messaging is and we just build it for you from the ground up and teach you how to do it. And that is one that I think, why didn't I always think of doing that from the start? Because there's much less stress with that business. That's just a, you pay for mine and Jack and Ben, my operations director, you just pay for our brain and we just consult with you. Was that a, as a result of that never, the never being enough thing, what the what's next thing?

01:13:14 Like, did you think about that business? Cause you were like, right. So things seem to be going pretty well with Wham and like it can not run itself, but it's, it's now BAU. It's a business that is running. Were you like, I feel like we could be doing more, you know, I feel like we could give, yeah, exactly. You've called me out on it, Jeremy. You've seen me for what I am. Um, yeah, there's a weird feeling that I always have in, in business. I've had it along the way where our most chaotic moments are where I feel like you really bring me off the bench in those moments. There's been.

01:13:44 I'll give you an example of one. There was a moment where our biggest client in year one of business did about 70% of our revenue from this one client. We hired a team of five people full-time just on this one client. They took a bridging loan of about a million pound because an investor hadn't paid them yet. And he was like, no, no, I will pay you. They will pay you. And then the investor dropped out. So they ended up with just a million pound of debt. And obviously in that scenario, we're the first thing to go.

01:14:13 which I understood in that moment, a lot of people I think would go, Oh my God. So you wait, you had five full-time people and no client and 70% of your revenue was gone. Yeah. But that is where I feel the most comfortable. It's very weird. So in that moment, yeah, what did you do then? Just went doing what I've, how I've built the business just sort of back to day one style, just.

01:14:41 How can I get in front of as many people as I can who may or may not say yes? And the formula I had at the start of the business was simple, it was just, if I speak, if I have two meetings a day, that's 40 a month, out of 40 people, someone will say yes. And it just through doing that, just built back up. We had about two months of funds in the bank to make it work and it worked. But it was a weird, when I look back for how dire that probably looks on paper of, is that gonna turn itself around?

01:15:10 It turned itself around and without a kind of a hitch, nothing really was no, you didn't notice everything was fine. Those are the moments where I do best. And then to your point, when it's all going really well, that's when I stopped twiddling my thumbs thinking, feel a bit guilty. It feels like something else should be going on. It feels like there's maybe a new project or a new thing or something to push. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's a good piece of advice in itself. Like things.

01:15:36 It's completely normal to feel uncomfortable when things are going well. And it's, uh, it's very, very good. Sometimes very healthy to be in environments of high pressure and chaos because you often, like you said, you know, I hate to use it, but the, you know, pressure makes diamonds thing, whatever you call it. Um, that, okay, that, that, that leads us nicely into the, the sort of the wrap up sections and quick fire questions. Um, hopefully where people can get some takeaways after the.

01:16:06 the really good sort of last hour and 15 minutes. So what would be your top three tips for someone who's early on in their career with, who's got big aspirations? What are your top three tips for someone progressing up that ladder? I think the main one is don't, the thing that really helped me was just not expecting that people would come and teach me. So being a bit of a student of the game.

01:16:33 going out and learning for yourself. And there's a, it's cause it's a double edged thing where you always value ideas that feel like they're your own. So if you've gone out, learned something in your own time, brought it into the workplace and seen it work, you'll have a lot more pride in it and being told something you don't really believe in by your boss. Um, and I'd also say it's very normal. And this more like a mental health thing. It's very normal in that early part of your career, because most of us didn't want to get into sales, maybe even business in general.

01:17:03 I think it's very normal to have that weird feeling at the start of, is this the right choice? Is this the right path? And, and there's two things here. If it feels wrong five years in, do something else. You don't have to do it. Go and do something else. Life's too short, but definitely don't just give up because of that early feeling. There's a bit of a grieving process to probably what you thought you would be meeting what you actually now are. And sales particularly has a funny thing of forget about the corporate side of it.

01:17:32 What can you actually get out of it that makes you a better human being? And that tends to be people who've worked in sales tend to end up being good storytellers, great communicators, good listeners. And there's a lot of things that end up being quite transferable into meeting your partner or being a better friend or whatever it may be, there's things that will, what can I learn now that will carry me forward for the rest of my life.

01:17:56 Yeah, do you know the one you sort of started on there? I think we will label that as curiosity, which is one of the most valuable traits I think anyone can possess. And it's one of the most important things that I look for when I'm hiring is someone who is just unbelievably intensely curious about how things work and why things work and like, trying to find a solution to something or like, you know, someone who asks

01:18:24 all the questions they could possibly ask to find out more. That's an incredible skill to sort of don't be afraid to be curious. And then I like the, um, the, if the, if it doesn't feel right, like don't waste time on it, but it's that when we say, if it doesn't feel right, I think the best way to describe that is that little weird little knot in your stomach that you get. Sometimes I, um, I have one recently where I was, uh, I think I was, I was applying for something, um, this was in my personal life, it was applying for.

01:18:54 something to do with a car that I bought and something, something on that particular car, just, I don't know what it was on the face of it. It was perfect. My stomach, I have something in my stomach that was like, not getting good vibes about this. So I walked away and it, that's only something that I've learned to listen to over the years because the time, the times that I ignored it were the times that I ended up spending money on a motorbike that broke down six months later. That's a true story. Um,

01:19:23 Yeah, you know, it's, it's when I was, when you look back is that you listen to your gut. It's actually a physical biological fact that that, that feeling, that sensation is, it's got some weight behind it. So, so this, that's a, that's a very, very good piece. Um, I think I know the answer to this, but do you have any career regrets so far? No, no, they probably felt like regrets at the time. Um,

01:19:52 But everything is growing, isn't it? And there's, what one day probably felt like a bit of pain, I can now look back on and feel like there was quite some beauty in it to look back on. That was a pivotal moment and I learned something. And that's the same with most struggle and most pain that you have in your life.

01:20:13 the moment where you thought this thing wasn't going to work or there was that horrible rejection or you felt your lowest or you were down to your last £20 note. I've had all those things in my 20s and now looking back at, at 32, you think it was all quite a lovely journey that all linked up and led me where I am now. And there's a lot more peace and a lot less ego in the way that I go through life as a result of all that.

01:20:40 You know what, that's a, I was kind of, when I was listening to you talking about that at the time, it can feel like the end of the world. It's the word that came to mind is like the framing. So when you're that age, the frame of the situation is I've just fucked up my life or fucking out. Like I should have figured it out. Looking back, the framing is without that happening, I wouldn't have made the decisions that I'm making today. I wouldn't be as good a founder, boss, coach as I am today. So.

01:21:07 Framing is very, very important. Try and take yourself out of the situation you're in and like birds eye view, look down and actually go, is it really that bad? I don't know. And that is something that you get better at doing. I think if you, like, if you could take Jamie now and go back and engineer the best possible Jamie, you wouldn't give him the easiest possible life. You wouldn't give him no hardship. You wouldn't, you'd end up giving, there has to be that resistance there for things to grow as we know. You're a very muscular man.

01:21:36 Well, that's the, what was that? One of those situations where we don't like people singing happy birthday. I don't like, uh, taking compliments either. That's why I just awkwardly laughed and looked at the floor. Bench pressing then. Well, why'd you think I've got sweatshirt on? I'm sweating here, but I've got a sweatshirt on. Um, okay. What's we've spoken about the sales consultancy side of things is a fairly recent, uh, last six months. But what's.

01:22:06 What's next bit taken into account all of the things that we've discussed of like nothing is ever enough. What's next? I would really want to continue to grow this. I've enjoyed nurturing and having young people in the bit, which I didn't think I would this being most people's first job working here, showing them what the job probably should be and how the environment should be. So continuing to do that. My, my, my end goal is probably not a particularly like salesy, wall for wall street kind of goal where I want to end up.

01:22:35 My absolute dream is to have a little homestead somewhere, delete LinkedIn, delete it all and just have enough money, live off the land, spend loads of time with my kids and grandkids and have animals and back to, like I live in the countryside now and it feels like it's, it's right at my fingertips to be able to do that. But my absolute dream is to completely disconnect from all of it.

01:23:04 and just have just enough. You know, we're talking about, is it ever enough? Like I have no aspirations to be a billionaire or keep going and keep building things. There'll be a point where it's, that's enough. That gets me on that homestead. That gets me just spending loads of time with my family and that'll be enough. So there's a, if you haven't watched it, there's a series on BBC that follows a chef called Marcus Waring. And he spent decades working in London, Michelin star restaurants at the peak of his...

01:23:33 peak of his profession, peak of his career. And he always had this aspiration of buying the homestead, 20, 30 acres, whatever, however many acres it ends up being, and getting out of London. So he did that a couple of years ago and the BBC filmed a series of him buying and learning how to run this homestead and farm and all these animals. And obviously he does loads of cooking along the way, naturally he's a chef. So definitely check that out.

01:24:03 It's definitely got that, uh, escape the rat race, uh, slow down, starts wearing a lot of check shirts and growing his hair out, you know, like, um, okay. I think that there's that's been, um, a hell of an episode, a hell of a, uh, 90 minutes of chat, and I think the, the last third of it got quite, um, quite deep in the sense that we're like looking back at the reasons for the way in which we.

01:24:31 behave in a way in which we perceive things, which was, which was not somewhere I thought it would go, but I'm very, very glad it did. So I appreciate you jumping on and spending the last 90 minutes sharing your, your career history. And hopefully those watching and listening have taken something from that. I'm hoping that people related to that, that last third. And my hope in this being both of us actually being open.

01:25:00 makes it feel more normal that you have those, the never enough feelings, the imposter syndrome stuff. So hopefully people will have got something out of this episode, I'll be shocked if you didn't. And we look forward to welcoming you back to the next episode, which will be with Jack, Zach's co-part, the co-founding director, which will be interesting to hear it from another viewpoint, but appreciate you jumping on.

01:25:29 Um, you're doing the right way around. He's better than me. So this is the warmup, the prelude. Yeah, this is the, yeah, you're good. The views will go, and we'll be sure to get that photo on the sofa together. Just so you don't feel left out. How, here's the question. Have I got myself back out of the hole that I dug, uh, slipping Jack's name into yours.

01:25:55 Yeah, don't worry, mate. It's all forgiven. And that's a perfect way to end the episode. Thanks for tuning in.