In today's episode we are joined by Penny Power OBE. Make sure to tune in if you want to hear what Penny has to share about business and how to build a business that's right for you, and the financial rewards that often elude many business owners.
Building wealth isn’t easy. This week Kevin and Christian discuss the challenges that can often arise throughout this journey, and invite Penny Power OBE to share very openly about how business can feel demanding and lonely at times. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and then building a business that’s right for you, can help you to achieve the financial rewards that often elude many business owners. Penny was awarded her OBE by the Queen for contribution to entrepreneurs in social and digital development, and in 2011 wrote and published the Digital Business Britain Manifesto which highlighted the needs for greater Digital Skills within UK business.
Featured Guest: Penny Power OBE
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
> Penny Power - Business Is Personal [Book]
> Take the Wealth Dynamics Assessment [Entrepreneur Profile]
Find Out More About The WealthBuilders Academy
A step by step process to help you create, build and protect your wealth.
> https://www.wealthbuilders.co.uk/academy
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The purpose of wealth talk is to educate, inform and hopefully entertain you on the subject of building your wealth. Wealth builders recommends you should always take independent financial tax or legal advice before making any decisions around your finances.
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Welcome to Episode 39 of wealth talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for wealth builders. And I'm joined by Mr. Kevin Whelan, founder. Good morning, Christian. Nice to talk to you today. How I doing today, Kevin? I'm doing well. Thanks. Looking forward to today's episode. No sugarcoating allowed on this one. No, well, we're continuing the theme of business. But before we can just take a pause this week and actually just look at some of the personal side of business because there's many business owners will appreciate and entrepreneurs it can be a rocky ride at times. And there are times when it may feel like stress and overwhelm are kind of taking over in business. So we thought we'd just do
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Take a second this week to focus on some of those areas. Yeah, I think it's true of wealth building in general Chris, you know, so although we've got a fantastic guest today, the wonderful, the enigmatic, the very driven, but very vulnerable Penny power.
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Who's such a pioneer in the business, networking, and the connection of entrepreneurs that I think she's the only person I know, Chris, who is humble, and has in a proposition, an Order of the British Empire, sir, no higher order than that having an OBE? I mean, that's, that's some recognition. And that's not just from entrepreneurs that's from the whole nation. Yeah. Well, Penny truly was an early pioneer of social networking and truly believes in the power of building online communities and offline as well. And yes, Penny did a TED talk, which I know you watched recently, didn't you Kevin as well. So she shared a lot in that. Talk about
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out how hard life in business has been. Yeah. And I think what's interesting about this, and I would encourage anybody to go look at that, and I'm sure you could put that in the show notes, Chris is, you know, life and business and wealth building is always going to be punctuated by difficulties. You know, we know this is true, don't we with with time, and with overwhelm, particularly people trying to make a transition. But the point is, you have to push through all of those things. And when you push through and you work that bit harder and you bring more the the necessary leverage of the connection, which I think, you know, remember Episode Two, Chris, we talked about the drifters who kind of keep thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it, but don't do it. And then the DIY errs, who kind of do things on their own almost like the baby boomers who never asked for help, you know, you're that kind of a generation. And then we've got those who are dynamic who recommend
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eyes that sometimes it's just great to both reach out for help and to be a helper. And I think that's what Penny is, you know. So while she's laying no dramatic claims to selling a business for multi multi millions or anything like that, I think she's testament to the fact that you've got to live the life that you want, and not get caught up and doing things that you really don't like, and you don't want to do and just push through, do a bit of hard work for, you know, for a period of time, and then you free for the rest of your life. And I think that's the key message. So I think it's probably good to hand over to Penny and have listened to our conversation.
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A penny Welcome to wealth talk. Hello. wonderful to be here. Yeah, it's great to see penny. Now, Penny. Let's kick off by just finding out a little bit more about you for our listeners. So how long have you personally been in business?
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So I started in business at 19 and I'm 55 now but I started
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it off in my own business being an entrepreneur when I was 33. And so up until I was 33. I suppose I,
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I got a salary. Can you imagine you're in the rat race?
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race?
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Yeah. Okay. And, you know, we're talking about business as an asset. Penny, you're familiar with the Seven Pillars of wealth. And we heard last week from john warrillow. And he was talking about creating a business that has recurring income and how that gives you predictability, peace of mind. And of course, when it comes to selling a business, if that's your end goal, then that recurring income is a really important piece that the buyer will want to say. So what's your experience in many different types of business? I know you've been involved in Penney, what are some of the challenges may be with you know, selecting the model from the beginning so that it can grow to be a business that actually runs without you?
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Yes, so when
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Thomas I started Academy in 98, which for anybody that wonders who Academy is, it was, it was the first social network for business. It was four years before LinkedIn. We had a belief around people paying monthly.
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And people paying for the service. And people paid on a software as a service SaaS way. And that was, you know, a fantastic way of the predictability in our business. It was only a small amount. So it was 10 pounds, $10 10 euros. And we went across the whole world with that model, but we're talking about very early 2000. So we started the business in 98. We were ready to launch the SAS model, and the subscription model in 2000. LinkedIn didn't start till 2002, Facebook 2004, Twitter 2006. So we were really trailblazing the concept of it. But it definitely helps us on cash flow. And it helps us to see what we can invest and it helps us to get better
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Having that model, because it was, you know, it was a healthy model of money that you could see going forward, which was fantastic.
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And I know you mentor a lot of business owners now, Penny, what are some of the challenges you see with business owners? When they're, you know, starting out or even established? What are some of the pitfalls, I recognize a huge amount of them because I called myself an accidental entrepreneur for years. I think moving from being a business person in a business where your skill, you know, when you're employed, you have a particular skill that you're employed to do in a department, you know, so you probably work in marketing or sales or finance. And then within that you have a particular skill. And usually people then take that skill into their business, and I would call that your primary skill. I think the pitfalls I see over and over and over again, is that no buddy starts with all of the business disciplines and the skills around it. And so I'd call those the secondary skills that you have
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In your business.
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And that can be a blast, isn't it? I mean, I actually look at, I added up the other day, how many Software as a Service tools I use to run our little business, which is just Thomas and I, right 48
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Can you believe it? I spent 1200 pounds a month on software as a service in our business. And but that is the job of probably two or three people,
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you know, that I'm doing through automation and through just being able to nudge the odd thing. So, you know, that's just looking at the digital skills part. And I think and then there's mindset, you know, there's understanding your mindset to business, understand your vulnerabilities, your ability to take risk, your resilience, dah, dah, dah, dah. And that varies by almost look at your psychometric tests that are you know, there's a wealth of those to discover where those character vulnerabilities will show up. Yeah, we're both fans of wealth dynamics, aren't we? Yeah, we are and then I suppose
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If the first was, you know, your your strong mind, which I think is really critical understanding yourself, then there's your digital skills to have those disciplines or leadership skills and then and then the other one is the skills of being connected. And and really understanding how to build your brand and be connected online in an authentic way and, and knowing how to reach out to people which still, you know, 20 years on from Academy launching and 16 years on from LinkedIn launching still people are very poor at that.
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And I know this is close to your heart as well as it is connectivity and your book that you released last year. Penny, congratulations on that business's personal. I know you're very busy still even, you know, you know nearly a year later speaking and sharing this. But tell us a little bit about why you wrote that book penny.
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So
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when I start
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As an entrepreneur when I was 33, I just had this passion, this belief system around us being connected as friends online as business people. So we had MySpace and friends reunited in the UK were big, but that was all for the consumer. And I thought, surely we could have one for business people. And when I started, I was still breastfeeding. My third child, I, a toddler and a little girl just started school. It wasn't my intention to build a global business.
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And, and all that that would take, and I think the definition of ambition for people is really important. I hadn't really defined what level of sacrifice I was willing to make and what my level of ambition was. We had a very simple middle class life living fairly predictably. And safe and Thomas, you know, it was great breadwinner for us. I was doing a bit of stuff was all
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safe. And then I went into this mind
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of being an entrepreneur without any awareness of my ability to take risk, my resilience, parts of my character that really starts to show up. And so the reason I wrote businesses personal because that all came crashing down around me two years ago, when I was diagnosed with PTSD, which was triggered by trolls, Thomas and I had 17 trolls that gave us a lot of pain when we had Academy and how just to explain the troll for anyone who might not know what that as Penny, well, that's just somebody who is full of hate and irrational hate. And so that term didn't exist when we started having it. Nobody was trolling, please didn't understand it, but there's people that have a vendetta against you. And they had it against us because we banned them from our community because they were revolting people and
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We wanted to protect our community. But you know that time none of what you hear now was going on. I mean, talking 12 years ago that started But what was interesting two years ago troll came back into my life and I'd been troll free for six years, wasn't expecting it. It was at a time when I was going through a lot of pressure, personal and business. Resilience was a bit lower, obviously. Anyway, this triggered something which then got diagnosed as PTSD, which then took me into saying, I need to see a psychologist, which was the best thing I've ever done.
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And seriously, the best thing I've ever done, because I think one of the things about an entrepreneur is they are very independent, which is a strength. But the overdone strength of an entrepreneur is they are very independent. They don't go and ask for help, and they don't allow their vulnerabilities to show up. And, and, you know, we're told you got to be resilient and I thought I was very proud of how resilient I was against
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A lot of financial challenges a lot of emotional challenges last traumas in our family.
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But again, in the end, it happened and it did affect me quite deeply. Didn't mean I was a shaking wreck in the corner of a room I just had to reassess my life and make sure that I was going to lead a business life that was right for me. And and that is the type. That's the subtitle of my book, businesses personal be the leader of your life and business. I never considered that. So through really deeply looking at myself, I realized the lack of self care I had and also character vulnerabilities. Like, for example, I'm incredibly conscientious as a person, like I can never let anyone down. And, in fact, I got 95 out of 100 on a conscientious test,
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which is alpha scale madness, but equally, I got 88
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Out of 100 on how agreeable I am.
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Well, if you're very agreeable and want to say yes to everyone, you're very conscientious and you don't let anyone down. It doesn't take a genius to realize how overwhelming that is. So now those are two character traits that I am happy with. I like being agreeable. I like helping people. And I like being very conscientious. And from very young age, I used to do my homework at the beginning of summer holiday or my project was done by day two, you know, I, I have to get things done. And so I don't want to change that, but I have to learn to work around it. And the other thing is that I need certainty. As a person, I need certainty. Some people like to know that life is uncertain. Some people like risk, some people like variety. Some people get bored very easily. I have a deep need for certainty. You know, when I met Thomas when I was 24, I had two endowment policies on my mortgage. I had a school fees policy set up for two children. I can't even conceive
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I had a health care policy. Well, what 24 year old things like that, especially all those years ago, so I need certainty, but I have put myself into the world of high risk. So again, you need to learn how to work with that. So that's what prompted me to write businesses personal because when I was sitting in the room with this psychologist, learning stuff, I thought if I'd known all this before I was an entrepreneur, or at least when I was starting embarking on risk and building assets and all the stuff that we advocate, I would have had a better, more enjoyable, less stressful journey and probably would have been able to be more successful at the end of the day. And now that you've obviously published the book, Penny and you're speaking and and people and people are really seeing you as a champion for this message. Are you realizing just how many people in business are struggling? Christian, it's unbelievable. It's it's deeply disturbing.
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Unbelievable. What is beautiful is that we, you know, if you look at change, you know, when you look at behavioral change in a person or an organization or in society, if if this was let me get something, I can hold up the UPC, so say can you see my ruler? I can't, right? Because this was a balance. Yeah. And we feel that we need to change because we're all the way over here. We tend to go is all the way over there. And then eventually we come back to balanced and we don't go back that way. But we stay in the middle. And I think the world has gone a little bit over that way. So because we went so online, it's all become fake. Because we're also online, people who don't even suit the online world are feeling overwhelmed by it and don't know how to get the skills. So everything needs to be rebalanced. And what I found in sharing my story is that there is a particular group of people
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Cannot retire. They don't have their pensions worked out, that probably haven't sorted out their property 50 Plus, and haven't been able to create the assets in their lives, I've had a lot of adversity, I've had to cope with economic and technical disruption.
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But they're gonna have to work for the next potentially for the next 20 years. And, and when I talk to that sector, just by telling them that this is normal, that you're not on your own, but I've been through a lot of this that I know I've got to work for another 20 years, and that I'm a good person, I'm a skilled person, but I've had to find my way through it just saying that seems to relieve them of a lot of the stress they have because they feel so alone in their pain.
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And when and hard to admit it to people, and I think as a torchbearer on this subjects
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I don't mind laying myself out there and I have enough inner self value really to feel that if I'm judged by this, then those are sort of people I don't want to know anyway. And so, hopefully by be my honesty and my journey and also my recovery, I allow people to feel better about themselves. And that's a big driver for me, because I think if you feel better about yourself, then you can get up and change and adapt and reinvent and find new ways and learn. So, yeah. And it is true that on social media, you know, the brochures, paints a very, you know, pretty picture of success. And, you know, the fame and entrepreneurship in general is often you know, glamorized and we know, the reality of business is, is hard, and there is stress, there's rejection, there's overwhelm despite all of those things,
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Challenges though. Penny, why do you like the business asset class so much? And why do you feel it's an important piece for for not everybody, but for some people when it comes to building their their long term wealth. So I personally love it because I get to being my own business owner, I get to express my own values, tell my own story, build a business that's right for me. And I have that autonomy. But a lot of people come to me and say, you know, I want freedom. I mean, I think that's a big value for most people. Freedom, financial freedom, freedom of choice. To me, the ultimate form of freedom is when you're free to be yourself to you know, and I think there is a big gap between the identity that people put forward and their truth. And when you compress that and you get rid of that gap, you reduce a lot of the stress that people hold. And I suppose that's what I want to trailblaze that that, you know, find your own truth. Find the life that you is
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Write for you and build the people around you that are right for you. And, and I love being a business owner for that reason. And, and it also allows me to have the impact I want to have. And I do want to work till I die. And hopefully I don't die until I'm in my 90s my father's 92 and he's amazing. And so I i hope i live a long life and I don't really want to retire but I'm doing what I love doing and for as long as I believe I can have impact. So I completely advocate having your own business, but I do advocate understanding yourself before you do it. And and If like me, you have to take a step back to do that and go and get help or join a mastermind class or get a coach or see a psychologist or whatever. Get rid of peg baggage because we all do create limiting beliefs about ourselves because of the knocks. Um, and I know I used to be much more ambitious than I am now.
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I'm quite happy to keep myself slightly protected now. But I hope my next journey will be that I will allow risk into my life again, you know, but I've got a got to get to that point. And, and I will have to become that ambitious person again at the moment. I'm really enjoying what I'm on the journey I'm on now, which is safer, and I love it. It's great. I really appreciate you taking time to share with us today, Penny, and wishing you all the best for the future. I've loved it. Thank you for asking me those questions.
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Okay, so refreshing there to hear panning for honesty, Kevin? Well, I think so. And you know, the reason why I think we thought this would be a useful addition is to be honest, you know, we live in a time right now, you know, we're just bumping up to election time in the UK. So we got a timestamp here, haven't we just about round the corner and we've got a huge
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Time of uncertainty. And one of the things about, you know, uncertainty is it's great to be surrounded by people in a community. So I wanted to remind the listeners, really, there's a brilliant community that helps people in all sorts of situations. And that's the wealth of the community. And we want to grow that community so that we can imagine people both reaching out for help, and being humble and vulnerable to reach out for help. But when they get to that place of financial certainty, that level of financial independence, then you know, they're able to reach behind and help others across that divide from financial uncertainty to certainty. And, you know, the only way really, to become financially certain, and if, you know, personal tolls and travels and all sorts of things, you know, that would happen, and I would encourage anybody to get a little bit more of an insight into Penny's story by watching her TED talk and see what she's really been through. But what's great to know
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his principles will override that and support you. So if you can understand there are seven ways to build wealth. And then if you subscribe to the process of practicing the principles, doing something every single month, getting to that place of turning the wheel, getting financially independent, in more than one pillar, not just one because one is always risky, you might remember we had a conversation with Richard last week and we talked about the
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the metrics the drivers of the business, and one of the fundamental questions that are always as business owners is that is the number one prevalent in your life. So if it's one supplier, one, you know, one source of customer and so forth. So similarly, if your wealth is built on one pillar in one pillar alone, fundamentally it's weaker. So by building upon more pillars, you can become financially bulletproof. So it doesn't matter who's in
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Government it doesn't matter the state of the economy, the value of the pound, it doesn't matter what's going on around you. If you're financially safe. It's much easier to cope with these things because I've seen people who get the same trials and tribulations you know, personally that can happen in a life like Penny's life. But if you imagine if you didn't have any money coming in, you know, you had to face personal tribulation at the time of financial stress. I mean, that's just the worst combination. So I would just implore everybody to think about building their wealth in pillars and connecting into the community. That's, I think the reason why this is such a good podcast, and I think a strong message that came from Penny is knowing yourself. And we talked about wealth dynamics, which, if you haven't had a listen to episode six would definitely point you back to that episode where we talked about understanding your wealth dynamic profile, for, you know, really finding your flow as a business owner as an entre.
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And it's really important to understand where your strengths lie. Because when you start a business and you have many hats to wear at the beginning, it can easily lead to overwhelm and stress. And so focusing on the things you're good at, and building that team around you, connecting with others who can help you, in those early days of business can really, really help as well. That's a great point, Chris, because you know, especially those people who are transitioning from jobs, where they've got kind of one job to do within a structure, which has already been created for them. And then they find themselves in business where all of a sudden, as Michael Gerber would say, you know, instead of having one job, you've got 21. And there's 19 of them, you don't have to do and this is a this is a challenge. So it's quite important and we keep coming back to the same point. Stick to the principles, you know, get your education, make sure you've got some good, solid, trusted, proactive support. Make sure connections are an important part of your life. And that's the first
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Three steps in the wheel of wealth and we're proud, we've created those. And we're proud they work. And we're delighted that, you know, people are powering through, some people still struggling a little. But that struggle isn't unnoticed. And we're here to help you and help you push through that. So I think we'll get back on track next week, Chris, with some of the more technical aspects of how to build a business, how to make a business strong, what are the principles behind the business, so going beyond just the eight drivers we spoke about last week, but we'll hear from another action coach, very solid, trusted friend of wealth builders, who's worked with me personally, for best part of six or seven years now, a guy called Chris Henry, and he tells it like it is. That's it. So I think the message for today is just to really make sure that if you're interested in the business pillar, then it's about building a business that's right for you and knowing your knowing yourself. Yeah. So looking forward to getting back on
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More of the technical stuff next week with Chris. Okay, until next week, we'll see you.
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We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the wealth builders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealth builders.co.uk slash membership right now for free access. That's wealth builders.co.uk slash membership