00:03 Welcome to another episode of the Revenue Career Ladder podcast, where we dive deep into the career journeys of revenue focused professionals to give you insights, actual tips, and maybe even a little reassurance that the journey is yours to define. So in this episode, I am joined with a familiar face to a lot of you. I'd imagine those who are working in sales and marketing, especially Tom Hunt. We're going to be chatting about his journey from sweet and sour chicken balls to founder.

00:32 Which sounds like a very bizarre journey. I think in the previous episode, we started a fish and chip shop. So not all that dissimilar. It seems like a lot of people start behind a fryer and end up founding businesses. I don't know whether that's a natural trajectory in career journeys, but I'm sure we'll find out. So without further ado, how are you Tom? Yeah, I'm good. I'm excited about this. You don't often.

00:55 go back through all of the previous job histories that I did in prep for this interview. And it's actually a good exercise because it helps you as Steve Jobs says join the dots going backwards. Well, that's interesting. You're the first person to actually say that. I think for those listening context, we share a form that is basically just a basic Q and A of tell us a bit about your career history. Cause we're trying to piece together the path that successful.

01:22 revenue focused professionals have taken. But I know it's interesting to hear that it was a good exercise to go through. And I've obviously got the notes on my screen, which are very, very interesting in terms of where you started. So tell us about frying chips and sweet and sour chicken balls at The Tasty House, which is a great name, isn't it? It's so funny. So unfortunately, The Tasty House no longer is open, but it was open, I think, for 15, 20 years in a place called Chippenham.

01:51 which is in the west of England near Bath and Bristol. It's where I grew up. So I think I was doing paper rounds and I was like, it's time to up level. And so I used to walk to school with a girl who worked in the Tasty House, who was also one of the daughters of the family that run the Tasty House. And I think over like 15 walks, I managed to convince her to convince her parents to employ me as the person who did the frying. So the frying would include chips,

02:20 Sweet and Foul Chicken Balls, which were the highlight. And some other things that I'm not going to talk badly about the safety house. It's shut down, but it was a great establishment. And so I essentially convinced her to give me this job and it combines the frying and also, sorry, the packing of the meal. So you get the mom was doing the cooking and then the meals would come onto the table and you would combine that with the fried stuff and put it in the bag. I didn't speak to customers.

02:49 And the crucial thing I learned there was that maybe I'm not like super good at detail. I remember a couple of times where I packed the bags wrong and got in big trouble. So that's like the, the, the headline of the role. Um, do you have any questions specifically about why I was doing? I was just going to say there's nothing worse than getting home with your takeaway or having a takeaway to live and there's something missing in the bag. So.

03:15 I can imagine that didn't go down too well. How long were you in that role for? I think I was in there for like a year, once, two years. But then the challenge here was that I also got my brother and sister a job. I think like I started off good and so they were like this Tom guy, he's good, his family must be good as well. So I got my brother and sister a job. But then it's also at the same time, I'm like 16 to 18 and just like discovered drinking, and Tasty House is on the road from town back home.

03:43 And so sometimes I would go in there like after having some beers, and this was not looked down upon well by the family that ran the Toasty House. So I eventually moved on from that role. I think they just stopped giving me shifts. Um, probably because of the, they saw me having too many beers. But I do remember I graduated from that. I got another job. The next one was washing up in a restaurant called Revolutions. This is a real upgrade. Um, it was.

04:12 closer to the town center and was like one of the best restaurants in Chippenham. And my job was washing up, sometimes taking out the meals if the waiters slash waiters were too busy. Okay. So you had, you started frying, you ended up washing dishes. This was roughly 16 to 18 that period. Uh, did you go to university after that? Yeah, there's actually one more role in Chippenlow pre-university, it's Starbucks and now we can actually talk about with real stuff that's relevant.

04:42 Um, so I got a job part-time at Starbucks. I was still in sixth form, I think. So I left the tasty house left to the washing up one. And this was actually epic. Like I still go Starbucks today because of that working experience. And, but then, yeah, I went to uni and when I would come back in the holidays, I would go back and work in Starbucks. But the, the interesting part here that I still like learned massively from was when I would come back because they didn't need staff in Chippenham.

05:10 I would get sent, I was a supervisor by this time, so it's been like running the shift. I'd be sent to Bath or Bristol or Swindon to go and run a shift where I didn't know anyone. And these people were often like older than me and sometimes had been working at Starbucks for longer. So I remember saying to my manager, the person that promoted me in Chippendon to be like, how can I, this like 20 year old guy who has less experience and is younger than these people manage these people? And she was like something that stuck me for a while or still stuck.

05:39 that I, if the device I get my team now is they should respect the role, not the person. And that gave me, gave me confidence to be like, yeah, I am the supervisor. You should listen to me and you should go and clean the tables. So that's something that's always stuck with me. And something that I tell my team now when they're like not sure if they have authority over somebody else's in their team. No, it's a very, very good piece of advice. I think I've, I've often seen it.

06:06 in my career, not necessarily me personally being the young person coming in, but a particularly young manager working in a, I don't want to say prehistoric industry, this is talking back when I was working for Rare Metals and things like that, which is a very, you can imagine it's a very, very historical industry and all these young graduates coming in. It was entertaining to watch. But anyway, we've touched on the journey where it started. What was your first...

06:36 I dare say proper role, but what was your first like, I don't know, career, career move, let's say. Yeah. Can I do one more before this? Yeah, go on, go on. At uni, I think all, all you need to have this more in America where they get students to call up alumni to try and get money from them. It's like a big, big way universities are funded is by getting their alumni to donate more so in the U S and in the UK.

07:06 So I did this and the job is so interesting. It's like two and a half hours on a Thursday night. You go there and you would just, it's cold calling, but slightly warm because they know you and you have a script and you try and get them to donate. It was fascinating. I remember one, I speak to this guy, great chat. And then he's like, let me speak to your manager. And then I didn't hear from him again, but then he donated 30 grand. Um, and I guess what the learning is there, I just thought we do, we just had a normal chat. So I definitely learned, I learned a lot about selling.

07:35 good for essentially a sales role there. See, this is, I thought this was your first role that we were going to discuss. So we'll go in, we'll go in deeper on this if that's all right. So I, when you say alumni, you mean, do you mean people who used to work there or people who studied there? People that studied there. I have never had a phone call.

07:55 from my old university asking me to donate. So this is new to me. Like you said, is this more of an American thing or is it Russell Group universities only? Like what are we talking? I think it's definitely more of an American thing. Started coming over here and I mean, they're probably prioritizing their alumni. You're going to get a call soon, Jamie, don't worry. But I think they do leave it. I was calling people that are 50 years old. So maybe they're probably going to get... It's been 10 years for me. I got a while to go yet.

08:24 Yeah, you'll get it for sure. Presumably they think that the older the people are, the more cash they have. And to be fair, that guy that gave 30 grand was like 30, 50 years old. Um, so what I learned from that role, yeah, it was like a little bit daunting at first, but then you just go into autopilot and you just do it. And it can actually be like quite enjoyed it. You just, the script was quite good. You basically got them chatting about the good old days and then you would.

08:53 transition into trying to get them to give cash. I actually did get promoted as well to supervise after that 30K deal. And so then I wasn't calling anymore. I'm not really sure what I was doing. I was probably maybe training or just overseeing the shift. Um, so I didn't have to call anymore. That was good. But then I think it's probably only lasted like, or maybe a year prior to graduating or something.

09:19 Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna say so you were at university days. Was this your only job whilst at university or were you still at Starbucks at that time as well? I would do Starbucks in the holidays when I would come back from uni to Pacto Chippenham and then this would be like an intern job. And what did you study? Chemistry. Okay. I wasn't expecting that. What was the, what was the logical rationale behind that? And look, I'm a firm believer in an 18 year old.

09:48 doesn't very rarely do they know what they should do at university in order to reach certain aspirational goals or they don't yet know what they really really want to do in life so I am a big believer in that there's only a very few lucky people who want to be doctors so they know they've got to do something related to that but what was your rationale behind chemistry? Yeah I actually wanted to do medicine but my mum who was a nurse said no.

10:18 Um, my dad did material science and my brother did engineering. So it was just, it was kind of in the family and it was probably the thing that I was best at in sixth form or at school. So just went with it. I had no idea why, why I wanted to do. It's just something that I enjoyed a little bit and was good at. It's not often you hear parents say no to someone going into medicine. Is that because she was, she had been tainted by decades as a nurse in the NHS? Yeah, she'd, she'd, she'd seen it. She had, she'd experienced it.

10:48 Looking back now, like, I think I probably would have still like, if I could turn back time, I probably would have still made that choice to medicine, but I wouldn't have lasted probably any longer. After uni before founding something I would have thought, because it will get to us later, but it's like the employee thing that I'm, I don't think I'm very good at. And I think of the doctor, you're definitely, especially in the early stage of your career, very much an employee.

11:15 And this is a, it's very interesting because this is the whole point of us doing this like career background or deep dive is that you've gone from frying sweet and sour balls to founder, but you then did the chemistry degree. And it's just not something you would have expected. So, okay. After graduating, um, what was your role off the back of uni then? So yeah, in fourth year of uni for the masters, you have to do a six month project. And

11:43 Again, I very detail orientated your inner lab on your own. So I didn't like either of those things. So then I was like, what else can I do? I was left with banking or consulting, but like the options, that's what I have almost doing applied to loads of both of them. And I think one of the only ones that I got into is EY. Uh, and the role was like, I guess you could call it consulting, but it wasn't really, it was part of the audit function.

12:12 And it was specifically the IT audit function that's called IT risk and assurance. And so what these people would do is they would go in, I think during the financial audit to audit the IT systems because how can we rely on the numbers, the accounting if we can't rely on the IT systems? So my job was going around to various places in the UK to sit with IT managers to check things like their password settings or how many times they're

12:42 auditing the user accounts in their IT systems. Interesting. Okay. So what was, you said that most people were going for jobs in banking or consulting, but what, what was your, what was your reason for like, aside from that seeming to be where people were going into, what was your, you'd done medicine, you realized medicine wasn't for you, what was your reasoning behind going, right, I need to go into banking or consulting. So.

13:10 I think the options were like PhD, scientist role in a company like Glaxo Inlet Pharma Company or financial consulting. And I in that final year realized that I was not like that good at the chemistry stuff, didn't like working on my own and wasn't that detail orientated. So I couldn't do the science job or I couldn't do the PhD. So then it was like something that where I was working with people.

13:40 that paid well, and so consulting or finance. And looking back now, I wish I spent more time on those applications to the finance ones or just focused on finance because in my job now, the thing that I'm like super interested in and that I think I need to get better at and is very valuable is the finance stuff. Right. Okay. So, okay. So you took the job. What were, what did you, how long did you, were you in role at Ernst & Young? Two years.

14:09 years. And what did you learn in those two years? I think there was like really like massive soft scale development when you're going to these big companies speaking to much older people about their IT systems, especially I remember one specific one in Lincoln where a big chunk of this like this department etc was being let go. And so I had to go in and do this audit while the people knew they were losing their jobs.

14:36 So that was like super challenging. So you learn a lot about soft skills, like going there, meeting these people and getting them to like you. I think the most valuable stuff though, it's like really basic, but has a big impact is like how to run a meeting, how to write an email, how to organize your day. Like the training, like a real hack I think early in your career is to work for a people business, either an agency or a consulting company, because you are the product, they're very incentivized to train you. Like if they train you well, they'll feed you direct.

15:06 impact on their like revenue or profit. And so that is great to start off your career in these businesses because the training, et cetera, is really good. So I learned my stuff, probably finally is both in this stretch, two years at EY and then I did two years at Accenture. These are two of the best people businesses in the world. They're like hundreds of thousands of people. And so now I have a essentially people business and agency. And so I spent four years learning how to run a really good people business.

15:36 That's a really interesting piece of advice actually, if you're fresh out of university, maybe it's not as, I don't want to say as fashionable, maybe it's not as fashionable nowadays to move into one of the big four or whatever in terms of these consultancy companies, but that's a very very good piece of advice that like you said, they are incentivised to train you well, which is, let's be honest, it's not very

16:03 common practice in a lot of companies, they'll try and spend the minimum amount possible on training and get the maximum amount out of you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I guess technically if you work for an e-comm company, you are not the product. You can help sell the product, et cetera. Maybe you help develop the product, but you're not the product yourself. So I think there's more incentive to train. At the same time, if you have clients at a professional service company, if they lose you, they're

16:32 that can risk their revenue. And so I think they have to be much better at hiring, culture, employee engagement, et cetera. And I'm assuming they're a well-oiled machine in terms of anything HR related as well. Yeah. But I would also, maybe I shouldn't say this, like very well organized, et cetera, but the bigger the company, the easier it is to get away with doing less work, I don't think I didn't do that much work, but there were definitely times where.

17:01 If you're like efficient at doing your job, you could like do it in three hours a day. And then you have other time to do other stuff. So that was the word I was going to use. I was going to say, well, I think what you're talking about there is efficiency, not necessarily like you said, it's not that you weren't doing your work. It's just that you could do it more quickly and more efficiently than, than they believed you could. Exactly. Right. And it's so much easier to do that in a, in a large company than in a smaller one.

17:29 So maybe he's like good advice for if you are like wanting to work on something else, like a side project, I would not go and work in like a pre-seed startup because they're going to want to like work you to the bone. I would go and work for a big company, probably get paid more as well. And then you could probably do your job if you're good half the time. And then you have four other days to work on side projects. No, I'm not condoning that by the way, officially, it's not efficient advice, but it could be.

17:59 be a strategy. It's it's it's strategical, it's tactical, it's honest and I think that it's advice like that is probably a lot of people aren't honest, honest enough to give that sort of advice so I think it's good advice. Okay so you did that for a couple of years, what was the reason for leaving that role? I mean it kind of sounds like you were thinking about other things or you always had that sort of growth mindset but what was after two years the reason for looking for another job?

18:28 Yeah, I hadn't discovered entrepreneurship yet. I just thought that I didn't, I didn't like the IT audit stuff. So I tried to move out of that in EY to like the more consulting stuff, but then it didn't work. I understand that now when we get people coming into our business, would they, they do their job for like three months, or they want to move on something else? Like, no, obviously not. So in hindsight, it's fair enough. So then I was like, I'll just move to a different company then, and I'll get paid more and I'll do better work. So then I left and joined Accenture, got paid slightly more and did do slightly better work.

18:58 Accenture, it was a consulting role in the tech consulting business, managing a large outsourcing project for a global telecoms company. So basically taking work from their offices in Europe, bringing it to Accenture in India, and then handing it over to that telecom company's outsourcing arm in India that we were also helping them build. So this is both an...

19:26 Accenture and EY, I was working on these outsourcing projects, or projects related to outsourcing. And so this, I think, helped me moving forward. A lot of the things I did as a founder afterwards were I did leverage the global talent pool, which is now in the past two years very trendy, but can be super useful in a business. And how long were, I mean, it sounds like that was perhaps a shorter tenure. How long were you at Accenture?

19:56 About two years as well, because halfway through I discovered entrepreneurship. So about this time I'm like, well, cause I'm not really enjoying the work. I'm like, I probably am not that good at being employed. Like, what else can we do? I also, okay. So let me just query that then. What, when you say not very good at being employed, what do you mean? I think I did like really, really well in the roles, but I just did not like being told what to do. There was.

20:24 I won't say which company, but there was a time where we were thinking about doing some work for a client and I was like, well, we can, and the proposal was like five or 10% of the work would be done in India. And I was like, why don't we cut out this person in England and I'll lead it and we'll give 60% to India and we'll make this much more money. I said it to my manager and then I think the manager told me that their manager told my manager that just tell this boy to stop, stop doing that.

20:53 And so if things like that, that like really riled me up, I don't really like being told what to do essentially. And so that like made the decision for me or that told me that maybe I shouldn't be employed. Is it that you don't like being told what to do or is it you, it's the fact that it kind of sounds as if you felt there was an opportunity but

21:20 the company was stuck in his ways and wasn't willing to test out new things and new approaches. And is that more less about being told what to do and more that they weren't listening to good ideas? What you perceive to be a very good idea. Yeah, I mean, I definitely perceived it to be a good idea at the time. Looking back at it, maybe it wasn't. But I think it's not being like having less control over the work that I was doing, like less freedom. I think freedom is like one of my

21:50 core values. Yeah, I know anyone who's seen your LinkedIn posts content will understand you mentioning that freedom is one of your core values because in the company that we will touch on, that's a big, big, I guess, talent acquisition selling point or attractive sort of...

22:11 part of your company. So, okay. So you were there roughly two years, which I mean, is longer than I expected, like listening to you talk about the role and the fact that you didn't enjoy it. So what were the very, very similar field consultancy? What did you learn there that was different from Ernst & Young? I think I learned more about running meetings in this big telecoms project. I was like the

22:41 I had to run a meet a weekly meeting, I think with like 12 people. And I basically had to ask them like how much progress they made. And so having to do that every week, I think really honed my meeting running skills. That's one thing. The other thing is I built a good relationship with a team in Pune, which is in India and went, got together a couple of times, and I think that really developed like the ability to manage and lead people that you do not.

23:11 see at all or every day. So remote management, running meetings, and that's probably it. And at the time, I mean, I don't know how old you are, but I can base off the four years in these two roles that you were roughly 25, 26 at this point, pre-pandemic and all that, you know, everything that's happened after that in terms of remote work. So at that time, like you said, remote work wasn't

23:40 that common place in the UK especially? Yeah, it wasn't. But I was fortunate enough that my manager was like in a different projects, trusted me a lot. So I could work from anywhere, basically. I was like the only full-time UK person on this project. And my manager worked in various different places. So I could work at home, I could work in the office. And then we had this team in India that I was managing.

24:07 Okay. And you mentioned that you started to think about doing your own thing at this point. Yeah. So it's at this point in time where one of our friends comes to London and we decide to start a mail legging company. I don't know if I put this in the form. Did I tell you about this? No, no, no. Crack on. Okay. Yeah. So he comes to London on Friday and we're like, we're going to sell some mail leggings on Prickly Market, which is this trendy market in East London.

24:35 Because we saw the trend of like leggings or jeans getting skinnier. So we buy some female leggings from a shop and then we put our logo on them. And then we try and sell them on Brick Lane. We're on the market store for eight hours. How many do you think we sold? We had 23 in stock. And how many things we sold? I'm going to go with zero. Zero pairs is exactly right. But we decided that it was a, oh, we liked the brand.

25:02 So we created an e-commerce store, bought some leggings from China and then started selling them online. So this was like the first taste. I went and saw that first pair of leggings to someone we didn't know. That was like the first taste of entrepreneurship. And are you able to talk about the brand name or the logo? What like trees? Come on. Initially, the brand was called Stitch Leggings, but the domain, get ready, leggings.com.

25:30 Um, the business, like we probably sold like 2000 pairs of leggings over like seven years. None of us were a full time on it, but we did go on Dragon's Den. So if you will link to it below, if you, if you Google Megan's Dragon's Den, you'll see our pitch in 2014. Um, so obviously, I mean, we can kind of guess the, the answers to this question, but how did the pitch go? Very strong. Uh, pitch was like a bit shambolic. There was one point Peter Jones was like.

25:59 We thought he was about to say that he was in, but then he wasn't. But the worst thing that was said was Duncan Ballantyne was like, you do realize in a Scottish accent that this is going to be on YouTube in 20 years and your kids are going to see it. And it is on YouTube. None of us, oh no, one of us has kids, but it's probably too young to watch it. Um, anyway, that was like the taste of entrepreneurship. And so in the year of 2014, still working as a scientist, maybe I shouldn't publicize this too much.

26:27 But I set the goal of outside of working hours to build a, uh, income that would replace the salary. And that was like all I did in 2014 is work the extension job. And then in the evenings and mornings, early mornings would, uh, build something that would replace the salary. For fortunate to say that I managed to do it. And then I left him start 2015. And what was the, obviously don't have to go too deep into the nitty gritty. But what was the, um,

26:56 source of income. I think like what was the business? It was very similar to what Accenture do is we would, we built team of Filipino virtual assistants and then we sold them to startups in the UK to do like marketing stuff. And so we charged double the salary to the startup and then we would help manage them and then we would take the 50%. Interesting. And how long did that run for?

27:26 I think that ran for like one and a half to two years. It's a bit annoying now because you see a lot of these, uh, global staffing agencies, like building really big teams. And so. I don't have a lesson from the entrepreneurial journey is maybe I should have just done that for 10 years. Probably would have a, or could have like a really big business, you know, but instead I did like 15 different things. Yeah. High, hindsight's a wonderful thing though, isn't it? Yeah, very true.

27:53 And I was so like tainted. The reason why that one stopped was because I was reading all about like tech startups and like scalable businesses. And so transitioned to building a marketplace that would beautifully be like Upwork or freelancer.com, but just a Filipino virtual assistance, which is like, again, probably a good idea if I executed them in 10 years, maybe it would have been good, but I don't think I needed to do that, you know, because I just kept building that people business. And you, you mentioned you went on and.

28:23 built 15 other things over the years. And I have read that on your LinkedIn. Your next role that you wanted to highlight was head of demand, Jen, at Ebster. Now, where does that fit in that 15 other things you were looking at and working on? Yeah, so I've always been working on something ever since the first take to entrepreneurship. So there's 15, maybe it's more than that, from 2014 to 2024, so over 10 years.

28:52 But there was a time in 2018, so like midway through the journey, where I essentially ran out of money. So, and it was a good opportunity. So I went and worked for this B2B SaaS company, it's had a demand generation for one year. But again, realized I didn't like being told what to do and then left. So you, like you said, you started running out of money to, I guess, was it to fund these ventures or was it?

29:20 to live off as well. Well, how much cash? I had enough cash to live for sure. I'm probably enough cash to live for like a couple of years. But the asset that the wealth or the value was in was not something that I wanted to sell. And so I guess you could say I did have to work to pay to live and also to do these things on the side.

29:46 No, it's really, really interesting because I think one of the main reasons I wanted to do this series is because when I'm having conversations like this trade show or an evening event over a pint and you get talking to someone about their background, their history, it's always surprises me how random some of the journeys are. Like, you know, I've got colleagues that were in the military and I never knew they're in the military and the military side of things is wildly different to the career path that they've taken. So.

30:16 It's a like this is this one is interesting because your reasons for moving perhaps are very, very different to other people that we've spoken to. So other people it's that they didn't feel challenged. They wanted progression along a linear, normal sort of ladder. Whereas yours is a lot different, which is why I find it so interesting. So head of demand, you know, you did that for a year. You took the job because you needed cash in that year. Then what did you what did you learn?

30:45 I learned a lot about building a BTB marketing team. So the backdrop we haven't discussed is I spent like four years in chemistry, four years, like really doing management, learning how to like manage people, learn how to run meetings. And then from 2014 to now, really, or maybe I stopped doing it a bit now, but 2014 to 2020, I spent my whole life learning how to do marketing, like sell things on the internet. Because if I, if I couldn't be employed.

31:14 I liked the internet, but I couldn't code. The only thing you can do is marketing. I didn't really like talking to people that much. So I wasn't very good at sales. I think it's harder to do like self-employed. It's easier to just feel like things want to many EG marketing. So I knew how to market and I knew how to like manage people from the consulting experience, but I never built a B2E marketing team. So I learned a lot about that, which is very valuable. I also learned about, so I never worked in a smaller company. Actually I did. I did.

31:44 work in a smaller company a bit after Accenture, but we didn't talk about that. So I did learn more about how like a 40 person company operates and how BT Marketing fits into that. So that was probably the big learning. And when you say, um, like how to build a team, then what, what did the team look like when you joined and what did it look like when you left? I think there was any marketing people when I joined.

32:12 And when I left, there was myself, one UK based marketing manager, executive. And then we had a team of three or four people in the Philippines. And then also like a couple of agencies or freelancers. Okay. Interesting. And you, you mentioned, um, on your, uh, notes about podcasts at this point, which, uh, again, those who know.

32:41 uh, recognize you will know you from LinkedIn will know that that's kind of like what you spend a lot of your time doing that in terms of a founder point of view. So talk, talk to me about podcasts at this point. What sort of year, uh, where are we talking now in terms of the year? 2018. And what I was seeing, like when you really immerse yourself into any area, you start to like spot trends. And what I was seeing with all this marketing experience is that going out and having to like,

33:10 payloss of money to get people the attention was getting harder and harder. You do Facebook and Google ad costs were going up. And so the real winners were the people that had an audience, people that wanted to read their blog or listen to their podcast, and then they could like slowly build that trust over time and then pitch their product. So audience building wasn't really, it's a big thing now, but in 2018, it wasn't really, um, but we spotted that and we created a podcast around a specific.

33:39 underutilized customer persona for us. And then we just hammered that niche. We had events, we had this podcast, and then eventually we started getting famous in that world, the world of sales operations. I did a podcast, I didn't get 150 interviews with sales ops people, despite having no sales ops experience. We built one of the biggest sales ops podcast still running today. And it was like very valuable for, for Epster because we were able to sign deals with guests, but also we had this audience, people that knew, liked and trusted us.

34:09 And so I was like, here's the holy grail of B2B marketing. Could you get the long-term brand building benefits and the short-term building relationships with potential customers or partners? So, EFDA, full credit to them, agreed to be the first client of the agency, Einstein. And then that's all fame is, is we've just been tweaking and improving that one process. But we zoom out. If we connect the dots going backwards, we have four years managing.

34:38 and learning how to build a people business. Eight years learning marketing. We flam those two together. It's obvious that I would build a people marketing business which really what fame is. Yeah, I was gonna say like when you actually, now that we've gone through the last sort of 20, 30 minutes of touching on those key skills and key parts of the career, it does make complete sense that you stumbled across or discovered stumbled across.

35:05 and doubled down on a new emerging trend of podcasts, realized how big and successful they could have been. And then you were like, right, how can I put all of the experience that I've already got, couple it with this and then, okay, in comes fame. So let's talk about fame then for those watching, listening, reading, who is fame, what is fame? How did it come about in terms of like, this is very interesting that Ebster were like, yeah, we'll sign us a client. So how did you pitch that?

35:36 I actually think it's a really good way to start a company. If you're, if you, you work in a business and you just get really good at one specific process. And then if, if, if it's a tricky maneuver, but one thing I have learned about team members leaving is that the business wants a good narrative. And so, cause they don't want all this, this great person's leaving it because we're rubbish. They want to say this great person's leaving, but they're still going to work with us at the freelancer.

36:05 to do this one thing because they still want to be involved in our vision. And so I'm not saying that's why EFSA did it, but EFSA agreed to becoming the first client and I was essentially freelance running their podcast. So Fame was initiated because I saw the power of this process. We'd spent not very much on the podcast and we made a lot of money for EFSA. So I was like, well, maybe I can take some of that value and do it for other people. So again, they agreed to be the first client. And then they also allowed me to take this one person in the Philippines.

36:33 be like the first project manager for fame. Shout out to Clay, he's now my assistant. And so then we just started running the podcast for Epster. And then the first other clients were from, I think, I posted on LinkedIn probably, and then I was starting cold outbound, like, we ran this show for Epster, it was very profitable for them. We'd love to do it for you. And then we basically, it's quite a simple company.

37:02 All we've done is taken that process that we're running at Ebster and then implemented it for now, roughly 95 other B2B companies. But going back to my idea of how to run a business is you're working in a company, you start doing something really, really well. Ideally, that's like an emerging trend for me as audience building for B2B companies. And then you do it so well that when you say to your manager, I'm thinking about doing this freelance for other people and leaving.

37:31 They say, well, why don't you do a freelance for us? They become the first client. You get that testimonial, you get their revenue on day one, and then you can start using that as a case study to go out and find other people. Now, the caveat here is you should definitely treat that first customer very well. Fortunately, EFTA has still a client today, and with other clients, we have increased prices over time, but with EFTA, we haven't really, because we're grateful for them giving us a chance.

38:01 Now that's, I'm really, really, really interested in the, um, the, the, this theory of get really, really, really good at something like specializing in something, uh, something that you within that company or within your industry, you're known for excelling at and then leverage that, um, brands, personal brand that you've built in that skill set to then bring on your.

38:28 company, your employer as a first client. That I've not heard that before, but it's completely logical. You're basically getting paid to do R&D for your business. But then the second point you actually bought there is, and I didn't really do this, is that companies are really encouraging their people to grow a personal brand on social or special on LinkedIn. So as I'm getting really good at this one thing, I'm also going to be talking about it on LinkedIn, ideally if it's connected and helps my employer.

38:58 because you don't want to be spending too much time like talking about something on LinkedIn that doesn't help your employer. And so you can start building the future list of potential customers again, on the dime of your current employer. So R&D and initial distribution can be done with work time if your employer allows you to create a personal brand with work time, which we do at Fame. So yeah, I think if I have to start again, this I would get a job at a big B2B company. Remember what we said earlier, the bigger the better.

39:28 Uh, and then I get really good at something, build a personal brand and then I do to make them the first client. Interesting. That's yeah, that's a, that's a great piece of advice. That's definitely going to make for a good clip. So we kind of touched on it. Um, but what is, um, what is fame in a nutshell, as in the package? What, what is it? What, what, what is it that you provide people, you know, weekly, daily, that sort of stuff? Yeah. So we start and go podcast, B2B brands.

39:54 So we split the service into three areas. So finding a book and guests, producing the assets and then promoting the show. So in an ideal world, the clients, CEO is the host of the show. They have spend an hour a month, an hour a week, or sorry, an hour per episode on the show. We then have a contact typically in marketing to review assets and that's it. So maybe like four hours a month, four to six hours a month from the client and then we do everything else. Interesting, okay.

40:22 No, obviously me sitting here in house as a, in my role, it's interesting to understand the way in which the way in which that works. Cause we currently produce everything in house or we're in build mode at the minute, producing everything in house. And I did, you touched on a podcast there you did for what was 150 odd episodes. And I think the first podcast I did up to 75 episodes weekly releases. So I, I've been on the side of how much work.

40:51 I managed to get it down to about two, three hours a week to execute a weekly podcast, which, you know, it was, it wasn't executed to a A-star standard by any means, but it was, um, yeah, I know the, I know the pain in terms of the problem that you're, you're solving there. Okay. Were you the only, were you the only person, it was just you, there wasn't anybody else supporting you for that. That's pretty good. Yeah. I was, I was solo marketer, uh, start up under 60 heads, you know, like you

41:21 smaller company in terms of wearing many hats and things, but yeah, Solar Marketer doing that podcast plus other stuff as well. But it was, I love doing it. It's very, very enjoyable. And I think that's one of the reasons why I was so keen to start a new series at Dealfront, which brings us here. But, okay. So we've done that sort of whistle stop tour of the career, touched on some of the highlights, which when you put them together in a puzzle, it makes complete sense of like where you ended up then. So how many years has fame been going? Since.

41:51 2019 or 2020. So it's basically five years in December. So I think it's 2019. Nice. Okay, let's do a bit of a roundup then, some actionable sort of fast questions to wrap up. So top three tips for climbing the ladder.

42:13 I think that anyone, you know, it's, um, I'm just, okay. If one bell, I'll break it down into three steps. First one is spending time to understand your manager. Second one is through that process, really finding like the two or three biggest problems they have, and then step three is solving the problems for them. If you do that, they're not going to get rid of you because

42:43 they get rid of you, your job is going to be, their job is going to be much harder. And so whenever you go into any negotiation, typically the manager is the person that fights for you. And so the more valuable you are to your manager, not necessarily to the business, to your manager, the easier and the more beneficial those negotiations will be for you. And again, I've said it about some previous tips you've given, but that is a different take on things that I've not heard before in it.

43:10 Obviously, typically it's like KPIs and hit your targets and all that sort of the usual performance based stuff. But when you actually like said, boil it down, do you make your boss's life easier? Yes or no? It's very simple when you think of it like that. It comes from Accenture because when there's like X amount like hundreds of consultants, and the way they do, or the way they used to do, I don't know if they do anymore. Like the size, how much people get pay rises. It's just a managers on a call. Like

43:40 like ranking and arguing about how good their manatees are. And so they're just going to fight much more for you if you're making their lives much easier. Yeah, very, very interesting. Another very, very good clip I can see already. So, okay, this is a this is usually a good question. So do you have any career regrets to date? We covered the medicine one. I thought I thought it would have been epic to be a doctor.

44:07 I think it would have been epic to be a doctor for like four years if I lasted that long. But then again, I wouldn't have learned all these analytical skills from chemistry and all the Excel skills. So that might be one. And then we've also covered a couple of other ones, like just sticking with that Filipino outsourcing business from 2014. I reckon we could have had a massive company now. Or then even just sticking with the next iteration of that, which was the online marketing platform that I only did for like 18 months.

44:36 So it's really like not sticking with stuff. I think was the biggest regret. So maybe the regret we could sum it up as being fickle perhaps. Yeah. Not like spending, not spending enough time, like thinking about what to work on. And instead of like moving around and trying to do loads of stuff. Kind of grass is greener syndrome. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I know you're, um, you're, you're still.

45:04 very much involved with fame, but what's the next step? What's the, you know, five years, like as you've just said, five years is quite a long time for you. You haven't got distracted and tried something new, so that's quite a long time. So what is, what's next? So I think the founder CEO role is fascinating because you go from doing everything to doing nothing, which is kind of what happened with me. So in the past six months, I've been focused on numbers, the finance stuff we were talking about.

45:33 culture and people and LinkedIn basically, which none of that stuff is really like inside the company. And so I want to get better at all those things. I want to get better at communicating and culture and people. I want to get better finances and then I want to get better at creating content and building the personal brand. Something that shocked me into this was Guillaume Moubache, who you probably know from LemLift fame. I interviewed him in my pod and I was like, he's like a $25 million company. It's like how much time he's spending on your personal brand. He's like 70%. So that's absolutely insane.

46:03 And if they're doing it and I say, okay, this can actually be quite beneficial. So I think in the future, I'm just going to double down on those three things. Um, cause that ultimately is the highest leverage thing to me to work on for the company. And when you say, uh, Owen, he's talking about 70% of your time being on building personal brand, what does that 70% look like? He's like creating content, creating and distributing content. That's what I would say. I thought that's why I think he would mean. Um, and so at the time I thought it was insane.

46:33 But I'm like, well, actually, it's pretty valuable. Like more for the hiring stuff. Like when you get hired in the company, because you're not actually allowed to do anything, your only leverage point is getting the best people to do those things for you. And the cheat code for getting the best people is to have them know and trust you before they come to apply. So I think Elon Musk, right? He, people say, obviously he himself works really hard and he's really intelligent.

47:02 But actually his secret sauce is getting these like wicked, intelligent, extreme people to do all this crazy stuff for him. And I think part of that is the amount of followers he has on Twitter, the amount of free attention he gets from all the new sites that write about him. Yeah, I think Stephen Bartlett's touched on the same things again, like one of the things that I think it was in his latest book, The Laws of Business, was that one of the best skill sets that he sort of learned or one of the

47:31 most advantageous skill sets was hiring good people. Because ultimately that's how you scale and run good businesses is hiring great people. And he has the same, you know, thousands of applicants for jobs, naturally off the back of the tire of a CEO. So it definitely works. Okay. And then what's the ultimate goal? You know, by the point at which you wanna retire, what's that end goal?

47:59 Yeah, I like the rich dad poor dad analogy. It's like employee, self-employed entrepreneur, investor. I think that the ultimate progression is to potentially own companies, but then not really do anything inside them. So then you're just allocating capital and reviewing results. So I think that that's probably the ultimate, like when I get old and don't want to grind anymore, then that's probably what I'll transition to doing. But I think that would happen like in the fifties, you know?

48:28 in the late forties or fifties. Appreciate you making the time for me. I hope those listening, watching, reading, um, have found it beneficial. I think it's a very, very interesting journey, slightly, well, not slightly different, very different to anything that I've ever, um, come across in terms of, um, how it all came, uh, came to be. Um, but thank you for tuning in. Thank you for joining me and we will see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, Jamie.