Former civil servant, John Lamerton, quit his job to start an internet marketing business, despite not knowing anything about running a company, or marketing and didn’t even own a computer! Armed with a copy of "Internet Marketing for Dummies" and his girlfriend's parent's computer, John worked hard, made a lot of mistakes, and a little money (just £13.51 in his first nine months!). He kept learning, and kept working harder and harder for years, and made more money. Until he read ONE line, in ONE book that changed EVERYTHING. He calls this his lightbulb moment, when he discovered the ambitious, lifestyle business and realised that you can design your business to deliver the lifestyle YOU want. In this episode, John shares how a "lifestyle business" doesn't mean scraping a living, and how it is possible to merge ambition to grow, with being there for your family and enjoying freedom within your life.
Former civil servant, John Lamerton, quit his job to start an internet marketing business, despite not knowing anything about running a company, marketing and didn’t even own a computer!
Armed with a copy of "Internet Marketing for Dummies" and his girlfriend's parent's computer, John worked hard, made a lot of mistakes, and a little money (just £13.51 in his first nine months!). He kept learning, and kept working harder and harder for years, and made more money. Until he read ONE line, in ONE book that changed EVERYTHING.
He calls this his lightbulb moment, when he discovered the ambitious, lifestyle business and realised that you can design your business to deliver the lifestyle YOU want.
In this episode, John shares how a "lifestyle business" doesn't mean scraping a living, and how it is possible to merge ambition to grow, with being there for your family and enjoying freedom within your life.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
>> Grab a FREE Chapter of John's books
>> "What is a Lifestyle Business?" [John's Blog]
>> Register for the FREE Live Academy Webinar
>> Join the WealthBuilders Academy
>> REGISTER HERE FOR FREE RESOURCES ACCESS
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Unknown Speaker 0:01
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.
Christian Rodwell 0:19
Welcome to Episode 175 of wealth talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director of wealth builders joined today by our founder Mr. Kevin Whelan. I Kevin.
Unknown Speaker 0:29
Hi, Chris. You know, I feel like the Argentinian football team at the moment.
Christian Rodwell 0:33
Why is that?
Unknown Speaker 0:37
A very sad.
Christian Rodwell 0:39
It looks empty behind you there.
Unknown Speaker 0:41
Yeah, I'm in boxes, right. So you know, just just just because life is full of changes. And this big change for me is? Well, for the first time in, just give or take 30 years I've lived in my home raised a family for 30 years in the same place. My kids have all grown up here, and we're on the move. So yeah, my wife and I are kind of side sizing, putting ourselves in the middle of our family, you know, with grandkids now, so so they can pop in my wife says as long as they can pop. So I've got a pop of a place, you know, so they can pop in with grandkids running around the place. So looking forward to that and to be able to stroll into a nice quiet town that we very much like in Surrey. So looking forward to that. But yeah, I'm all in boxes, as I say very young at the moment. But we
Christian Rodwell 1:37
always say that change is spurred by catalysts. And I suppose that catalyst is the birth of grandchildren, which is a nice one, right?
Unknown Speaker 1:46
It's very much and you know, catalyst is an important ingredient in wealth building, too. We believe that everybody who gets more, and if it's fundamentally important, and it's deep, and it has solid roots, then your wealth building is likely to sustain challenges. And, you know, we lay down roots here for 30 years and kids grown and gone. And it's been a joy. And I think it'll be there'll be a touch of, of kind of sadness and pathos as we, as we move the next week or so. And but looking forward to something new and two more celebrations with an even bigger fan.
Christian Rodwell 2:28
Yeah, yeah, well, next podcast will be in a new location, but same format from us. And today, we're focusing on pillar number five of our Seven Pillars of Wealth, and that's the business pillar. And we've got a guest, who is the founder of company called Big idea.co.uk. And that's John lamingtons. So John's got lots to say, and specifically around designing a business that's all about freedoms, really, you know, designing a lifestyle, that is what you want. And often the business drags you into what it wants, right? And demands your time, and you just become a busy person.
Unknown Speaker 3:02
Well, exactly right. I mean, I think for many business owners, they have a catalyst, they want to do something, and then the web starts spinning. And then before long, they get trapped in the very web of their own making. And as a result, as John will, no doubt explain the challenges and the frustrations of people who get caught in that trap, and end up in many cases not being either particularly well paid or getting a brilliant work life balance. And that's a big challenge. I think his message is fundamentally about, don't get the life your business gives you you get the life you choose to have. And he makes some very good observations that are really truly in keeping with wealth builder values, wealth builder principles, wealth builder applications. So look out for those you listeners out there, see if you can spot the wealth builder parallels, and we'll try and draw those out, as we usually do, Chris, at the end, but this has been week, not just for me, terms of moving, but we've got a brand new intake, haven't we into the wealth builders Academy? So that should be fun.
Christian Rodwell 4:07
Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to be part of that intake, or certainly just come and find out a bit more about what we do inside the wealth builders Academy. We're holding a live webinar tonight, actually. So if you're tuned in on the day of release of this podcast, which is Wednesday, the 23rd of November 2022, then join us there's still time to register. And Kevin and I will be walking through our nine step recurring revenue roadmap, and showing you exactly how we help our members move from financial insecurity to financial independence within five years. So head to wealth builders.co.uk forward slash Academy webinar, and we'll see you there. All right, so time now for our conversation with John Lamington. John, very warm welcome to wealth talk today. How are you
Unknown Speaker 4:51
have a fantastic Christian, thank you very much for having me. Pleasure to be here. Yeah,
Christian Rodwell 4:55
I'm excited to really dig into all the principles of business today and I'm just sand your story and how you work with business owners. And I love the simplicity that you bring to business, John, and you're an author, we've got three books out there, you've got a big idea, routine machine, Evergreen assets, your podcast host, the ambitious lifestyle business. And you've also got your own coaching group, the 1%. Club. So you're, obviously you're a busy man because you value your lifestyle, right. And really, I think today's topic is, you know, how is it possible to have a lifestyle business and also create wealth? So let's begin there then John?
Unknown Speaker 5:33
Definitely my the opening line, by the way of my very first book, big ideas for small businesses was a Tim Kreider quote, and it was I hate being busy. I'm the laziest ambitious person I know. And that I think just sums me up in a nutshell. I do I hate being busy. I hate spinning plates. I hate demands on my time. But I'm also really ambitious. And I've got a lot of growth, and I want to drive my business forward, and I want to generate wealth. But I don't want to be busy. While I do it. If that makes sense. It's a bit of a dichotomy, isn't
Christian Rodwell 6:09
it? Yeah. And you've got over 20 years of experience in business, John, so it's something that's close to your heart. And, you know, common belief, I guess, out there is that if you've got a lifestyle business, that you're not really making any money that you're quite small, but is that the case?
Unknown Speaker 6:28
It's in hindsight, I would say no, I used to believe that. So I used to really, really look down my nose at the lifestyle business owners. It was this idea that if you've got a lifestyle business, it's not a real business. And I used to be the hustler, the 100 hour a week work, I used to be busy. I used to actually just work harder because I was a former civil servant, I quit my job to run an internet marketing business. And I started having some success, the more success I had the most success I wanted. And when I was in my 20s, I decided very, very quickly that I wanted a big business. I wanted to be a multi millionaire, I would look at the likes of Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, and I would emulate these guys or say that these guys are billionaires. That's where I'm heading. And it was only I think it was a moment where just after I had kids, and I was sat in an MOT Garret reading Alan sugar's autobiography, what you see is what you get. And at the time of it right, I need to study what at the time Sir Alan did back in the kind of 70s because this is the stage I'm at in my business. I'm emulating Amstrad. What do I need to do? And this line leapt out at me. I never really saw my kids much when they were growing up. And just honestly, Christian, in that moment, I felt, John, you've got it all wrong, this isn't what you want, you don't really want the helicopter and the yacht and the country manor. You want to be there for this little child who's just come into your world and is now the centre of your entire life. And so I thought, Well, what I do want and it's a lifestyle business. But that was still rattling around my brain lifestyle. Businesses are not real businesses. And at the time, it was Peter Jones on Dragon's Den was my go to, because I'm going to be like Peter Jones, I'm going to once I've made it and I've got a big pile of money. I'm just gonna sit there kind of deciding who gets my money and who doesn't. And there was this line that patrons would often use, and he'd say to an entrepreneurs pitch on Dragon's Den. This isn't a real business, this, you're just playing at this. This is just a lifestyle business. I have that. In my brain, lifestyle. Businesses are not real businesses. So what do I do I do I grow the bigger business and not see my children, or do I give up on running a real business and have a lifestyle business? Well, it was actually a completely chance meeting with another of the dragons. And it was Doug Richard, who was probably none of the listeners remember Doug Richard. He was on like Season Two. One year he was he was an American tech investor. And I met Doug and Doug said, lifestyle businesses are more profitable than the so called real businesses that Peter Jones talks about. He says, The businesses that Pete is interested in, they're focused on top line, they're focused on turnover. He said they want or is Peter once 100 million turnover. He said I don't care what your turnover is, he said because If, if you're a real business, and you're focused on the top line, you need to turn over 100 million to make 1 million. He said, If I'm running a small lifestyle business, and I can get 50% margin, I could get 60% margins, I only need to turn over 2 million to earn the same amount of money. He said, I'm focused on the bottom line, lifestyle businesses are more profitable. And that was, I think, for me the permission to actually do this and to choose a lifestyle business. And this is why and I said, the the podcast is called ambitious lifestyle business, I had to add that word ambitious, because I wanted to make it very clear. And this was initially just to me, and just to my team, I went back and ripped up everyone's contracts. And I said, we are now an ambitious lifestyle, business, we work from home. We work hours that suit ourselves. We do work that we want to do. But we have ambition. We want to grow this business, we want to we're not quite Steve Jobs making a dent in the universe. But we want to make a huge dent in our world in our universe, if that makes sense.
Christian Rodwell 11:21
Yeah, no, it does completely. And just to help our listeners, you know, understand kind of what qualifies you to be sharing all of this. You talked about your business there. But you know, just give us a potted history of some of the businesses you've been involved in and kind of, you know, what your what you've spent your weeks on at the moment as well.
Unknown Speaker 11:38
Yep, definitely. So I've been involved in 60 small businesses over the last couple of decades. Very, very varied business. So travel sector, service office accommodation. floristry. What else have we done? We've told football fans where they can get the best pies, a lot of information marketing, that's really our go to info marketing businesses. I've got a sports betting business, a coaching business, and obviously now writing books as well. So it's, it's been a wide, wide range of businesses. Over the years, we've had some physical retail businesses, we've had premises, I've done some angel investments. So actually, I I was a dragon on a certainly very, very small scale, local scales. We've actually invested in a mortgage brokerage as well. Ultimately, though, I decided and this was the big kind of lightbulb moment for me. Not long after the Alan Sugar movement was I was also emulating Richard Branson there was Richard Branson do. Richard Branson owns originally owned a record company, and an airline, and a mobile phone network, and a radio station, and a bridal wear shop, and a wine business. So that was the person I was emulating. So I thought, right, I need to own a floristry shop, and I need to own a sex toy website, whilst telling people where they can get the best hotels in south of Portugal. It's it was scattergun. It was random. And it worked for a while. But what did that lead to? That led to me being very, very busy. And I think I didn't mind being busy three kids. But the minute the children came along, the priorities change of what I wanted out of life changed, I think.
Christian Rodwell 13:38
Yeah, and how does the term lifestyle business compared to what some people may have heard as portfolio lifestyles. For me,
Unknown Speaker 13:49
I've got what I call my ideal job description. And there was a little exercise I went through many, many years ago. And this this chapter, I want you to write down what your perfect job description would be. No, at this point, I've been running a business for about 10 years. I don't certainly don't want a job. If I did, what would it look like? It's another just play along be good. So okay. Right, what can I write this down? So I wrote down, I want to do what I want, when I want, where I want, how I want, if I want, and that at the time. When I first did that, that's really flippant. It's just me going. I just want complete freedom over everything. Every aspect of my job will be under my control. And that stuck with me when it's 10 years now and I still use that ideal job description. What I want when I want where I want, when I want, how I want, if I want, and I always repeat more than more than I'd have yesterday was probably six things in there. But that job description And actually, you can sum it up in one word freedom. And to me, that is what and lifestyle businesses, if you are in my mind, if you're the like the majority shareholder in your business, you have a lifestyle business because you have the power to choose what your lifestyle is, like, if you want to choose Ferraris, and country estates, and helicopters and yachts, absolutely great, but your lifestyle is probably going to involve quite a lot of leverage quite a lot of risk, quite a lot of hard work. If you if the lifestyle you truly want is a quiet life where no one ever bothers you. If you're the majority shareholder, that's under your control to shape that. But I see so many business owners who they get the lifestyle that their business lets them have, they don't take any control over the business to deliver the lifestyle. They just think they automatically go well, the business has to be bigger, we have to grow the business. If we've done half a million this year, we've got to do 600,000 Next year, they think that has to happen if we've got 10 members of staff 12 is better than 10. That's not necessarily the case.
Christian Rodwell 16:20
Yeah, yeah. I published a book in 2018. It's called sack your boss, The Ultimate Guide to escaping the nine to five and, and I shared in there everything that I've learned from transitioning from employee to building a brand and my own business. And as I mentioned in there, the trap that many people find themselves in when they make that transition is working twice the amount of hours for half the amount of pay. And how does someone avoid that then John, from the beginning?
Unknown Speaker 16:49
I think it's being deliberate about what is the lifestyle you want. And it is very, very difficult. Because as business owners we get caught up in and it's this in other dilemma when you first start a business, someone will come along to you and say, Can you do this? And you just immediately go? Yes, yes, we can do that. We'll figure out how to do it a little bit later. But we just say yes to everything. And this is the problem is in the early days of running a business, you find yourself saying yes to everything. And if you don't stop saying yes to everything, eventually you end up at a busy fool who is completely stretched. So for me, it's about knowing what your ideal job description is. First, what does the lifestyle you want, look like? I'll give you a quick example. My wife, I managed to get her to quit her job. It took me about 15 years of nagging. And eventually we got it about three years ago, she quit her job. And she started her own tutoring business or tutoring kids. And she started off with a very, very clear vision of what she wanted. And within about nine months, she gone past that point, and was suddenly looking to just make more money. And just I'll take on more clients, and I'll launch another business or I could take on the premises here. And and eventually she said, Well, why am I doing this, this isn't what I wanted. This isn't why I quit my job. I quit my job so that I had the freedom I could make a difference in kids lives, I could actually craft the business around. So we homeschool our two children, school runs, elderly parents, everything like that. This is why the business exists. And when was the last time as business owners, you actually said to yourself, Why does my business exist? It my business exists purely to fund my lifestyle, both in monetary terms but also in fulfillments. And time it needs to give me the time freedom to say I don't work half terms I can do the school runs three times a week. I've got Friday afternoon, where if the sun is shining, I can go and play golf. That is the freedom I need my business to have. And it's been deliberate from the very, very start. Why does your business exist? And how is how is your business going to fund your lifestyle?
Christian Rodwell 19:31
That flows quite nicely into the concept of the actual hourly rate, which we've talked about before. Do you mind just explaining that job?
Unknown Speaker 19:40
Yeah, it's an interesting concept. So as employees we're used to being paid an hourly rate and obviously if you're if you're freelancing, or you're running a business, you may well charge yourself out at a particular rate. But I'm, I'm always interested and this is where optimising for lifestyle makes a big difference. To me, because I'm interested in what you actually earn per hour, I speak to business owners and they say, I burnt myself out at 100 pounds an hour. So that's great. Do you earn 100 pounds for every hour that you spend in your business? I think so. Okay, so an hour spent surfing Instagram or just browsing LinkedIn. Now that's probably not 100 pounds. Okay, what about when you're diving into your email inbox? Oh, no, it's probably not 100 pound either. What about the bookkeeping that you do off? I don't own anything for that. Okay, so what do you actually for an average hour? And what I did there was I take three numbers. So how much money did you actually take out of your business last year? Because business owners are very, very keen to tell me that they bill 100 pounds an hour? Well, that's how much the company earns. Lovely, great. The company made 100 pound pre costs, pre overheads, pre corporation tax, what do you actually take out of the business? A lot of business owners I speak to are the worst paid person in the company. So number one, how much money do you actually take at the business last year? So I want to know, the whole year. This gives us the macro view, the big helicopter view? What did you take out last year? Secondly, how many hours a week? Do you what did you work last year? On average? Again, I don't want to know that. On a good week, I only do 35 hours. Yeah, but what about the three weeks where you did 120 hours? What? What's the actual average? And then secondly, how many weeks do you actually work? How many complete weeks off? Away from your business do you spend, and I'm not talking about a holiday where the laptop goes with you. And yeah, just do a couple of hours every morning. And you're always on the other end of the phone just in case there's any problems. And you're just checking in a few times throughout the day, that is not a complete break from your work. What we then do is we take the amount of money you've earned in the year, we divide it by the number of hours, you've actually worked in a year. And we work out the actual hourly rate, how much you actually earn, divided by how much actually how much attention you actually gave to your business and the number you get from that. And I've put a calculator on my website to make it kind of easy to work out. But that number can be very, very enlightening. My take on this is that you should be embarrassed to tell anybody what your actual hourly rate is, in a good way. Because that number should be excessively high. For most people, it's not though it's actually embarrassingly low. And that is actually the reason that my wife quit her job is we put her teaching earnings in how much he actually took out a teaching, divided by how many hours she actually worked in a week. By the way, she was a part time teacher. So she was scheduled to work three days a week, which is what about 2526 hours a week, she was doing 60 hours a week, part time, she was working 60 hours a week. So she was on a headline, decent salary. But she was working 60 hours a week we ended up and her actual hourly rate was something like eight pounds 52 an hour. And at that moment, I opened up a new tab. And I went to a Jobs website. I pointed out to oh look, I said, there's a job here that doesn't need a teaching degree. So it's true by cockapoo barking in the background that it doesn't need a teaching degree. It doesn't need to year two decades of experience. It's an entry level job at McDonald's. And you can earn nine pound 50 an hour doing that one. And that was the catalyst for her to say, Oh my God, I need to get out of here and do my own thing. Yeah,
Christian Rodwell 24:09
reality check, which I'm sure if you know, a lot of business owners went through that process, they would have an equal shock. And so I guess the question is, John, and I know it's a big question. But if you're working with a business owner who realises that they're, you know, spending far too much time and not enough return? What are some of the core things that you would begin with? Where would you start and say, these are some high impact changes you can make right now to start changing that? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 24:37
So the first thing I would look at is, where are you investing your time? We're all investors, whether we are investing money, whether we're investing time, whether we're investing energy, headspace, focus, attention, whatever, we have a finite amount of resources to invest. So where are you spending your time if you've won Don't take your actual hourly rate is a pittance, then there's two factors to that equation, how much you earn and how much time you're taking to earn that money. So where is your time going? First and foremost, and a lot of business owners are wasting a lot of time on activities that do not generate the revenue. And there's a reason I obviously are very patient. This is an audio podcast, but those that are watching the video will see there's a bookcase behind me one of the forward facing books on that shelf is Richard coach's book, The 8020 principle, I must reference at 20 thinking on a daily basis. Anytime I speak to business owners, literally I've come up a call this morning with a business owner. And I've said like you need to at 20 Your client list because you've got clients who pay you 500 pounds a year, and you've got clients who pay you 5000 pounds a year, and you're giving them the same attention. You need to actually channel what you do towards the minority of work that brings in the majority of the income. When I first created my lifestyle business, my ambitious lifestyle business. And I said right, I'm going to change everything. I've gone from 120 hours a week, to about 25 hours a week. And that started with my he's 14 nearly now. So he was a baby. And he was going into nursery I was going to be sharing, daddy daycare, school runs everything like that. And I said to myself, right, John, you've only got roughly 20% of the time available to you. So I was familiar with the 8020 principle. And I said, right, I'm just going to do the 20% the tasks that bring in 80% of my revenue, if I just do that. I know I can live on 80% of my revenue, I know that what actually happened was my revenue went up. Because suddenly I cut stuff out. And this this is the this is the thing that business owners don't get I mentioned earlier, when you first start in business, you say yes to everything. Once you get past a certain stage, you need to say no to everything. No needs to be your default answer. There's another book on the shelf, which you can't see because it's just timing. But it's Derek Severs book and it's called Hell yes or no. And this for me now is my default mindset if this opportunity. If this piece of work if this business is not a hell yet I absolutely have to do this. This presses all my buttons, it fires me up, and it is insanely profitable, then the answer's no. And the answer has to be No, because I have a finite amount of time to invest in any project.
Christian Rodwell 27:57
That is such an important lesson. And thanks for the reminder, because it's so easy to get dragged into, you know, the tasks the busyness of everyday, right. And, you know, wealth builders we've been following for a couple of years now the EOS system, which is explained in the book, traction, and we encourage our members as well to break down their annual goals into 90 Day rocks. And I've seen a blog post from you, John, that's titled Why 90 days is the goal. Do lots of goal setting. So can you expand on that for us, please?
Unknown Speaker 28:29
Absolutely. So I discovered the beauty of 90 day planning, probably about eight years ago now. And literally as worth mentioning here, I have all my old 90 Day goals in a folder here. And it's amazing to see what is possible because for me 90 days is to go with us is just right. What most people do is they set themselves an annual goal. New Year's Eve comes around next year, I'm going to finally lose all that way. I'm going to double my business. I'm going to start property investment journey I'm going to I'm gonna absolutely smash it next year. And then, Adela, the mid middle of January comes around. And they say Why don't you just start yet, because I've got the whole year to worry about this, this this skill. And then April comes around and they've done a few bits towards it. But I've still got plenty of time. It's fine, not of what not to worry. Then they come back from the summer holidays. And it's September and they still haven't really moved things forward. And now they start thinking to themselves. Well, I'm never going to achieve all that in just three months Am I so the goal is too big. The timeline is too big 90 days, however, that's three months from now. So I always like to imagine I told a story the other day but has anyone ever heard a story about a magic genie? So imagine you're up in the attic or you're you're in your seat? Don't worry, when you find this little lamp, pick a bit of rubber Genie pops out says, Hey, Christian, I'm gonna give you three wishes. And you can have any three wishes you like, but I know what your business owners are like. So I'm gonna give you a few caveats. Number one, whatever you wish for must be realistic. Okay, I cannot make you three inches taller. Okay, I cannot double your net worth. But as long as you make me a reasonable request, I will grant it to you. Number two, you won't get the actual wishes, until 90 days from now. And number three, I need you to do a little bit of work, just so that all these other people don't think it's magic. Okay? Do you agree to those rules? Brilliant, what we will do, then his give us a little magic lamp or Rob, give me a three wishes. Three months later, as long as you just do this little bit of work, they will come true. And ultimately, that's all 90 Day plans aren't it's making, in my mind three choices. Three goals that you're going to focus on for the next three months. It's, it's a little sprint, you know, we can all focus for a short period of time. But 90 days is also long enough that you can do something meaningful. I've written a small book, in 90 days, I've launched a brand new business. In 90 days, I've overhauled one of our processes. In 90 days, I've sorted my investment strategy in 90 days. And this is this very clear focus. For a three month period, a three month gap, we're going to focus on this, I'm going to make these wishes. The genie is going to give me those three wishes. And then guess what? I get another three wishes in 90 days time. Yeah,
Christian Rodwell 32:01
yeah, completely on board with that 90 day rule that as well, those 90 day sprints. And also something I think we both agree on very much is the importance of community and surrounding yourself with like minded people. And I know you've been part of masterminds and focus groups, and of course, you now run those for your own members. But you know, just what, how much of a difference does it make? Because we see so many business owners and people when they're building wealth, you know, really feeling isolated and on their own?
Unknown Speaker 32:30
Yeah, it is. I think it's one of the one of the biggest reasons we have built the community that we have is we from the very, very beginning, we were very clear on the type of person we wanted in our community, we wanted genuine people who would look out for their fellow community members. And time and time again, we would go out with our marketing, and we say right, join our community, and we'll give you some education, we'll give you some knowledge, we'll give you some resources will help you grow your business will help you improve your business. And then time and time again. We speak to them six months later. And we say to them, what's the greatest thing you've had as a result of joining our club? And they say, oh, it's community. It's the people. It is that when I'm having a really, really crap day. It's a safe space where I can go to you know what things are? Crap, things are awful. Right now. This there's a story I tell a few of our members. I was I was part of a networking group. Put about 10 years ago, actually, no, it's a bit longer than x. It was the global financial crisis 2008 And I was at a conference and I met a friend of mine. And you had that usual thing. Hi, John. How's business? And I immediately went, Oh, absolutely. Yeah, brilliant, mate. Great. How about you? I didn't even get to ask him how he was before he went liar. He said you're an absolute liar. You I said What do you mean things are right now you're right, that they're absolutely shocking. You know, I'm, like crying myself to sleep at night. I really am. He's like, Yeah, no, it's terrible, isn't it? And that's the, the atmosphere, the environment I wanted to create. Within our club was everything's not sunshine and roses. If you are a business owner, and particularly if you're a lifestyle business owner, no one no one else understands. No one knows knows what it's like. And yeah, we've all been there where you've, you've had, you know, a client, something's gone wrong. You've made a mistake, and you're, you've lost a client. And you just you really feel like, who's gonna understand you go home and you're telling your partner and they're like, Oh, well, that's fine, but they don't understand because they're not a business owner. Who do you celebrate your wins with? Who do you commiserate with who will actually understand when you offload a And it's weird because I see myself as a very kind of analytical spreadsheets, you know, logical guy, who, when I created the one sec lab, it was never, it was never about community and you know, given people an arm around the shoulder, but that is the greatest thing that people get from it. It's great thing that I get from it.
Christian Rodwell 35:24
Yeah, and, you know, it's clear to see today from speaking with you, John, lifestyle is that decision, right? And we decide what's right for us. What's right for us isn't necessarily right for the next person. And then you know, that, you know, our Seven Pillars of Wealth model that, you know, seven assets that you can use to generate recurring income, and everyone's plan will be slightly different. And you obviously love business, John, why is business your favourite asset class? And what are some of your thoughts on some of the other pillars that we have, such as property and stock market?
Unknown Speaker 35:58
So I would actually say that the stock market is my main pillar. So although I'm better known for business, I would say I take the earned income from business and I put it into the stock market to turn it into passive income, so that I can do what I want, when I want, where I want, how I want, if I want the stock market is my vehicle. To doing that. I always I've always classed myself as an investor. And I said earlier, we're all investors. So I think of myself not as a business owner primarily. But as an investor. I invest in businesses I've invested in my podcast, I've invested in my personal brand I've invested in creating books. And yes, I've invested in property. Property is absolutely not for me. And as I said, it's not saying it's not a valid asset class, I have made money as a property. But it is not the truly passive asset that I would need it to be. I'm very actively involved in running businesses. And remember, I hate being busy. So when I have invested in property, and I suddenly get a notification that one of my tenants has flooded the bathroom in the bathroom upstairs is now in the kitchen downstairs. I've I suddenly have to drop things and resolve that problem. I'm very much so just now a spreadsheet guy. So the idea of like analysing a stock market investment. When I was a teenager, all my friends had posters of Ferraris, and Lamborghinis, and go with tennis ball on their walls I had like footsie 250 price to earnings ratios. And Warren Buffett quotes, you know, I, I've always been, like naturally drawn to the stock market is where I've certainly stored most of my wealth, I wouldn't necessarily say I've generated most of my wealth there, but I have cemented my wealth in the stock market. I kind of fell in love with property, I think I fell in love with the idea of property. And when I tried it, the reality for me was, this is going to lead to me being very, very busy. And actually, my actual hourly rate from property is very, very poor. Because the amount of money I generated, particularly in the early days, and my property investment wasn't very much and my time investment because I didn't know what I was doing was very high. So actually, I looked at my actual hourly rate and thought, You know what, John, you're, you're better off building ambitious lifestyle businesses, creating assets, such as the books such as the podcast, and sleeping that money channelling that money into the stock market. Yeah, I was at the gym the other day, and I caught an episode of homes under the hammer. And if I'd seen that episode 10 years ago, I would have got jealous and I would have got why need to be doing this. Oh, look at that these these guys, are they they're making all the mistakes under the sun. It's really easy to make money in property. And now, I watched that exact same episode and I go you fools. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know what lies in store?
Christian Rodwell 39:28
Yeah, no, that's that's really interesting to hear that. John. Just one thing I want to pick up on you mentioned like passive income from the stock market. Can you expand on that as to how you're generating an income from the market?
Unknown Speaker 39:40
So my I'm with Warren Buffett on this, he says my preferred holding period is forever and I invest for the long term. So I am not drawing an income from my assets, but obviously I do receive a yield I do receive dividends. At the moment I am choosing to reinvest those dividends at When, wherever I decide I want to take an income from the stock market, I simply rebalance the portfolio. So I will look at and again, I don't invest. I know you've had Andrew Craig, on the show how to own the world of headline following his strategy. So I own funds, primarily, I don't necessarily invest in individual stocks. So if I own a particular fund, I may within that fund own 200 companies. And it doesn't necessarily matter how Hewlett Packard does, or Microsoft does, or Facebook or visa, there will be fluctuations within that. But I can just sell three units of the fund and take the income from that. The idea is I'm pound cost averaging in over for me, it's been three decades and counting now. But I can actually I've got the growth long term, and then I can just rebalance the portfolio. Take some out, there's obviously capital gains, tax allowances, anything with a nice that is tax free, as well. So it's very it's can be it can be structured, in a very tax efficient way. But the beauty of labelling certainly within pensions and within ISIS is that you can rollover your gains tax free, you actually won't pay tax on any of your games. You can snowball those games for decades, and then just pay tax on what you take out. And again, so you can structure that in a tax efficient way, making sure you use your capital gains tax allowance, your partner's capital gains tax allowance, your personal allowance, dividend allowance, everything like it can be structured in a very, very passive, tax efficient way. But it does require long term thinking this isn't because no single property, ultimately you could buy a property, you could structure up your portfolio and you can take an income from that six months from now, that isn't something you could necessarily do with the stock market, obviously, yes, you could buy dividend yielding stocks, you could buy other stocks. Stocks are on sale at the moment, shall we say. So there's some very attractive yields appearing. I mean, for example, if you if you if you want to 9% per year, completely passive with a 30 year guarantee, not guarantee, but I'm not guaranteeing stock market returns here. But a 30 year back back history of 9% returns simply by Shell, or BP because both of those, if you just bought it 30 years ago and just did nothing with it just held it, you would have made 9% per year, not every year, religiously, predictably. But on average over the last three decades. You'd average 9% return. Obviously you can't leverage the stock market in the way you can property. I know there's there's pros and cons but for me the what I like to call set on the asset investing. Come comes from the stock market. I don't want to be busy.
Christian Rodwell 43:05
Yep. Diversification across multiple pillars is absolutely the way forward for building long term wealth. And coming back to the business pillar. Then John, one of the key elements we talk about is how to create recurring income in your business, that predictable cash flow. There's different ways to do this different models, of course, and your most recent book, Evergreen assets perhaps is is tied in with that how to create something once that's going to pay you over and over again.
Unknown Speaker 43:34
Absolutely. Absolutely. The example I use an introduction this book is Noddy holder. So we're all familiar with the Christmas song. Merry Christmas, everybody. Slade Noddy holder wrote that song. Actually in the 60s, it was a like FlowerPower the melody for it, it became a Christmas song. In 1973, the sleds manager came to the band and said, Hey, we want to put together a Christmas song. Nadi went our calf got this old, like FlowerPower track line around we'll chuck some Christmas words on it. We'll head to New York in the hot hot summer of 1973. And we'll pretend it's Christmas and we'll just scream. It's crazy. And we'll record the song. Great. We're now 49 years later, Nadia Hoda still earns half a million pounds per year in royalties from that one song. It was estimated something like 47% of the population of the planet have heard that song and probably will hear that song and if this podcast comes out anywhere near Christmas, you will have heard it probably today. And if you haven't heard it today, you probably will hear it today and the next time you hear it just remember that Noddy holder has a half a million quid per year for 50 years. as nearly as a result of one night's work writing a song. And that's the kind of assets that we're looking to create, you do the work once, and you reap that reward again. And again, again, you buy BP once you get a dividend twice a year, every year. Yeah.
Christian Rodwell 45:17
What might be some other examples within business or even your own examples, John have some of those evergreen assets?
Unknown Speaker 45:24
Yeah, again, this podcast is an evergreen asset. We're having this conversation once. And 10 years from now, people can still find this podcast, they can still learn about us and what we do, you create a website. Great, that's evergreen people can find that website, six months from now, six years from now, the books that we create, I'm a big fan of evergreen products as well. So actually, what knowledge do you have in your head? And I know you guys are keen on this as kind of like the IP pillar, aren't you? It's kind of what knowledge have you got there, that you can package up as a framework and actually say, this is a course, this is a membership. This is a mastermind. That's taking that kind of one idea. And I you know, we've had some people, for example, in the kind of health and wellbeing space, they've created an eating plan for keto, great that made the plan once they've packaged it up, they've sent it to a designer, they've turned it into a PDF. And they've created a $9 eBook out of it that has created an evergreen asset from one idea, one piece of knowledge that up until now, was just in their head, and they would get a client, pay them. Give them the information. Great. Wait for the next client? No, no, no, this turns it now into an evergreen residual model. And it's that word residual, again, you know, property investors, wealth, well aware of the term residual income, but I like to think of residual as thinking of like a frying pan. If you put a frying pan on the heat, and you leave it there for 10 minutes, and you turn the heat off, that frying pan has residual heat, that frying pan will stay hot, for a good couple of minutes, it will still be warm to the touch 2025 minutes later. That's residual heat. And if we can get residual assets within our business number for evergreen assets to residual assets, then we actually again, this is about easing off. So for me, the Evergreen assets is like the flywheel from Jim Collins book Good to Great, it's, it's, it's permanent assets that give you momentum. In your business. My entire coaching business is built around these evergreen assets. So someone may discover me today as a result of this podcast, or now No, not today, someone made us government five years from now, they may subscribe to my podcast, which was done years ago, they may get an email from me, which was written 234 years ago, they then visit a website, that website I created, again, 18 months ago, two years ago, all of these assets, I've done the work already. And I don't need to be busy in the future. Doing that work again. That gives me momentum so that I can so for now, for example, people are in different stages within that ecosystem. Some people are just discovering my books, some people have listened to 12 episodes of my podcast. Others have been on my mailing list for three years. But I'm free now to spend my days creating another evergreen assets on writing my next book, that's going to be another element into the ecosystem to bring more people in. Meanwhile, everyone else is already in the ecosystem. Meaning I'm free to focus on the long term. And it's that idea again that I'm not I am busy, but I'm choosing to be busy. I'm working hard, so that I don't have to work hard.
Christian Rodwell 49:15
Yeah. And working when you want how you want where you want.
Unknown Speaker 49:20
If I want yeah.
Christian Rodwell 49:24
So it's been so good. Speaking with you, John, and lots of ideas, firing off in my head as I'm listening to you. But I guess just to kind of round things up is is the why? Why is it important to have a lifestyle business and again, looking at your website and some of your clients have some real impact or some life changing impactful reasons. You know, maybe you could just end by just sort of summarising you know, it's not just about getting the time but what does that time allow you to do? How does it actually improve your life?
Unknown Speaker 49:57
Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's one of those things, I think most people until they have some kind of like epiphany or some kind of life changing element happen in their life. They don't question it. We and it's one of the podcast episodes that I think you might have, you might have seen we, we had a guy who was running a 5 million pound a year business. And he came to one of our meetings, and he looks really, really down. Mike, what's going on? And he said, I feel like just throwing it all in and go into walk dogs on the beach. And kind of most business coaches would have gone. Come on, mate. Come on, get your running a business. Your morning. You're doing great. But I sort of, so why don't you then? Anyway, oh, could I do that? Could I actually just walk away from this this business? How would that work? And, well, if I did that, what would my days look like? And it was that sudden realisation again, I mentioned Doug Richard given me permission to have a lifestyle business. So he needed that permission to say, you don't need to run the big business, you can actually run a more profitable, more enjoyable business that really lights you up. So he walked away from a 5 million pound business to become a dog walker. And I catch up with him again regularly. Now. He is he's in his element, because he's more profitable. Run small lifestyle business walking dogs on the beach every day than he was selling 5 million pounds worth of products every year is actually rate is about 10 times what it was because he's working about a quarter of the hours as well. And he's just so much happier. And we've got so many stories like this, from our members who we've got the guy who was adamant he wants to be a millionaire. And then we encouraged him to just go away and like live like the millionaire for a weekend. He said, I, I know what I want. I want to own some woodlands. And I want to have a nice little cottage in the woods, cool, go and spend a weekend in the cottage in the woods. He did that he hated it. absolutely hated it. So he could have worked for the next decade, to earn the money to become a millionaire to buy the woods only to discover that he hated it. And eventually we figured out what do you need? He said actually are I need five grand a month, profit 60 grand a year. He said, Oh my god, he said I thought I needed a million pounds in the bank. And actually, I just need 60 grand a year. And I said the best thing is I'm 80% of the way there. So I know what I need to do to get there. And I know what that lifestyle is going to bring me. So many of our members we bring in and we had a guy who joined just as COVID hit. And the first thing he said to me as I just go through running a multimillion pound business. He's got 25 employees, again, award winning, running a very big business wasn't making any money for himself at that business. But the business was doing great. And he said to me, the first thing he said was, I'm going to travel the business in the next three months, and you're going to help me do it. Fast forward, like three years now. And he's like, Oh, my God, what was I thinking we actually shrunk his business. And this is what we do with a lot of our members is we shrink their business. Because it's not about a bigger business. It's about the better business. We are all about improving the business. And primarily, we're about doing that so that the business owners lifestyle improves, why why do you want a better business? And it may be that you need a bigger business, it may be that you want to scale up, maybe you want a 2 million pound exit. But as long as you know, why? What is it all for? What are you going to do with that money? What you can do with your life, what you're going to do with your days?
Christian Rodwell 54:09
Yeah, that all ties back to that 8020 Rule again, I think, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Yep. John has been fantastic speaking with you today. Thanks so much for sharing all of your experience and your your ideas. And there's so many more online through your podcast, your books, your videos, where's the where's the quickest best place for people to head to if they want to follow you
Unknown Speaker 54:31
get the best place is the website. It's big idea dot code at UK you can find links to all my books. There's a free chapter of each of my books. As you can see all the free chapters, the podcasts link links to even my LinkedIn. You can get in touch and have a chat with me on
Christian Rodwell 54:49
there as well. Sounds great. John, thanks so much looking forward to catching up with you again really soon. Good stuff there from John enjoyed that conversation as always. I'm sure there'll be some lessons we can pull out Kevin, before we do that, let's pull out a review. So I'm going to head to Trustpilot. And of course, we've hit that 200 mark now. So we're over 205 star reviews absolutely chuffed to bits. And thanks so much for everyone that's taken time over the last couple of years to leave a review. And this week's review is from elixir has been a member with us for a while and Alyssa says, I've been a member of the wealth builders Academy for just over a year. Now, I highly recommend the programme because of all the support, you get the clear roadmap to follow, and the built in accountability. Sometimes we all need a little kick to get going. Having a coach has made a huge difference. I have the accountability, I need to take action and the confidence that I'm taking the right actions. Big thank you to my coach John Dale, who keeps me on track. And a big thank you to the team for their personal approach, and all the help and support they provide and for building an amazing community where people genuinely want to help each other.
Unknown Speaker 55:57
Well, Chris, I'm I'm always humbled by those reviews. And of course, John, John Dale was went through the programme, and he's been a guest himself when he said, you know, at the beginning, he didn't think anybody could coach him to do better. So now he's coaching others to do that. And I think we all need some guidance along the way, because I think you ably explained with John that sometimes business owners, and and often employed people as well can feel somewhat isolated in their wealth building plan, because they're the only person doing it. And often there's conflicts and, and confusion within a family as well. And definitely, you definitely don't talk to friends if they don't share the same ambition as you because you're thinking about doing what, so that you need that environment of like minded people on the same journey. So we're pleased and proud of how we build that community up, Chris. And I think John makes some observations that he's trying to do the same thing, certainly different messages a different way. But I particularly like the incremental thing that John stands for, which is, you hear his other businesses, the poorest communities 1% Club, which is making tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny changes, but weekly, which I think is in keeping with the wealth builder message, which is never let 30 days go by, without making a decision that can impact positively on your wealth. And I think we're saying the same thing, but just saying in a slightly different way. And I love that when somebody says the same thing, as we're saying, but just with a different twist on it, it shows that we're coming from the same angle with the same principles and the same integrity. So yeah, absolutely like that, from John, but you pulled out a whole sack load of different benefits, I felt like it was Christmas, Chris is coming out of that one,
Christian Rodwell 57:48
it soon will be. Now I think just carrying on from your point, then John was saying, you know, it's not always about growing and being bigger, but just improving. And often a smaller business, a lifestyle business can be more profitable, you know, companies that are making multi millions, you know, when you look at the turnover, and then you look at the profit, that can often be a big gap. But in a smaller business, the margins can be much higher. So you know, bigger is not necessarily always better.
Unknown Speaker 58:16
Yeah. And I think it's more about the lifestyle. I think he made that point, didn't he? That if you know that you can grow, generate a profit doing the work you love to do, again, very similar to our freedoms, you know, what do you want to do when with who? How do you want to do it? Where do you want to do? And if you want to do so you can say no. And he talked about saying no, instead of saying yes, as a default, think these are all valuable things. But wealth building is an incremental process, we often refer to it as turning the wheel, which is like turning the cogs on a crank shaft, you have to go from one to two from two to three, you can't go from a standing start to sevens in a vehicle because you'll you'll crash and burn, you know, the engine will fall out. You can't do that in the engine being you. So you have to take things very gradually, very slowly. So I think he makes that point very well.
Christian Rodwell 59:08
Yeah. And of course, we always talk about diversification, focus your way to security. So that might be one pillar or two pillars. And then that gives you the breathing space gives you more time to focus on other pillars and and John talks about the investing best the stock market and of course, we had Andrew Craig on last week's episode, the author of How to own the world talking all about the stock market. But again, you know, John's saying he builds up his preference, right, because we all have different, different plans. We're following the same roadmap, but everyone's plan is different. And then John says to build profitable businesses, and then take some of that profit, put that into the stock market for that long term compounding and the tax free wrappers obviously he mentioned as well. Yeah, and
Unknown Speaker 59:50
that's a perfectly good plan. And you know, he's been doing it for a very long time. So it's a good plan for a long time, or difficult plan for a short time. So if you come at the wealth building process and you've got five to seven years, you're not going to make in the stock market, it's just not possible to do that, unless you learn different strategies to create an income from that, whether it's through trading options, whether it's through high focus on dividends, whether it's property related in terms of REITs, and other things. So there's, there's lots of different tactics you can apply to, to focus on the income. But that's a long term plan, it wouldn't be my favourite plan for someone starting off, you know, with a, with a limited timeframe. But talk someone who's 30 is a good long term plan, short term plan, not necessarily mine. But then as you said, we're all driving a different vehicle on the same road to the same approximate destination because everybody's outcome is different. And the vehicles we choose can be different. And that's why I like wealth building so much, because everybody chooses a slightly different way of achieving their version of what wealth
Christian Rodwell 1:00:57
looks like for them. Yeah, so we really liked John's message. And thanks again to John, for sharing with us today. And, again, if you're listening, and it's the day of release of this podcast, then there's still time to jump on tonight with Kevin and myself. And we will be showing you exactly how you can put in place your own plan to reach financial independence within the next five years. And that could be a plan that you could start with us at the start of 2023. And make next year, your best year yet. So we'd love to see their hits of wealth builders.co.uk forward slash Academy webinar, and register and jump on. And yeah, we will look forward to seeing you later hopefully.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:38
Yeah, I'm looking forward to myself a whole different location for me, and a whole different background. So many people have seen my camera normal background that's going to be different, but it's going to be the same old geezer with the same old message with the same old youngster you keeping me on track. So until then, my friend so yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:00
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/membership right now for free access. That's wealth builders.co.uk/membership
Transcribed by https://otter.ai