In this episode of WealthTalk, Kevin Whelan engages in another Head 2 Head conversation with Nick James, CEO of Expert Empires.
They discuss Nick's journey from a young entrepreneur to a successful business leader, sharing insights into how early experiences shaped his approach to building and growing a thriving brand.
The conversation delves into the significance of designing tailored programs for different stages of business growth, highlighting the value of cultivating recurring income streams and how these strategies have contributed to Nick's success.
Additionally, they explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the events industry, the challenges of navigating government policies, and the importance of defining clear business goals.
Tune in to hear more about these topics and learn about the exciting upcoming Expert Empires event.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Next Steps On Your Wealth Building Journey:
>> Join the WealthBuilders Facebook Community
>> Schedule a 1:1 call with one of our team
>> Become a member of WealthBuilders
If you have been enjoying listening to WealthTalk - Please Leave Us A Review!
Christian Rodwell (00:02.018)
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. Today's episode is brought to you by Wealth Builders Membership, a proven step -by -step process that helps you achieve financial security within two to three years. find out more, head to wealthbuilders .co .uk forward slash membership.
Hello, my name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for Wealthbuilders and welcome to this week's episode of Wealth Talk. And this week, we're back with another exclusive head -to -head episode. Our head -to -head series pitches Wealthbuilders CEO and founder, Kevin Whelan, up against CEOs from a diverse range of businesses to share insights, which we hope you'll learn a lot from. And today, our CEO guest is Nick James, a highly successful UK entrepreneur.
and the mastermind behind Expert Empires, one of the leading business events for coaches, consultants, and expert business owners. And with over a decade of experience in the entrepreneurial world, Nick has built four separate seven -figure businesses, and he's passionate about helping experts grow their ventures, scale to six and seven figures, and create sustainable success through his masterminds and events.
And through expert empires, Nick has brought global business icons like Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone and Sir Alan Sugar to the UK stage, providing invaluable insights and inspirations to thousands of attendees. So in today's head to head, you'll hear why Nick is so passionate about helping the next generation of entrepreneurs, why you should laser focus on your business before you think about diversifying into anything else and
how running an events business through COVID caused him to hold his hands up on social media to admit that he'd made an untimely mistake. Okay, it's time for me to hand over now to Kevin for his exclusive head -to -head conversation with the CEO of Expert Empires, Mr. Nick James.
Christian Rodwell (02:11.16)
Today we've got the most amazing owner and founder of Expert Empires, Nick, nice to see you. Yeah, thanks, Kevin. Great to be on. Thanks for inviting me. Looking forward to our conversation. Well, we're to talk about all things business growth, wealth creation, personal development, and I'm sure we'll get some -hahs and maybe a few -noes as well. But let me say off the bat, I've got to say I resonate so much with you.
Not least we both support mediocre football teams, but with a passion. Tell us a bit more about that. Well, I think my football team historically has been very mediocre and is currently performing above average. Because I'm an Aston Villa fan. Who's your team, Kevin? I'm a Newcastle United fan. OK, so I think we're probably both slightly above average right now, but historically have probably been very mediocre, as you say.
But then I suppose the other thing is we're both sort of mediocre at golf would like to be better. But I think I share most with what you say is your love of helping people, giving people a world class. I picked that up from your website. Amazing kind of framework, world class experience and the love of young entrepreneurship and legacy. So lots of things that we can dive into. And I know we want to talk about an event you've got upcoming, which is very, very timely.
coming up in October, so we'll make sure we talk about that. But as always, you know, there's a story. What's your story? Why did you get into this? There's got to be a reason for it. What was the catalyst that got you moving from being a young man into the entrepreneur that shaped those businesses today? Yeah, thanks. Good question. I suppose I'll start the answer to that question by referencing something you just shared, which is, you know, we're both passionate about
championing and supporting young entrepreneurs. I guess my journey started in 1994. I was 12 years of age and my mum took me to a Tony Robbins seminar in Hawaii. I was extremely fortunate, not just a little bit, extremely fortunate to get that opportunity. Very, very few young people, teenagers, youths get that opportunity. so, yeah, I was very, very fortunate to have that opportunity to.
Christian Rodwell (04:31.49)
go and learn, being in environment of personal development, of self -improvement, of entrepreneurship, of around people that were aspiring to be more, do more, have more. And so, you know, that was really a kickstart for me. I spent most of my teenage years traveling all over the world with my mum, all over America, Europe, Australia, the Far East. First of all, you know, learning and being, attending, being participants in Tony Robbins trainings and events.
And then later on, my mum actually became a trainer for Tony's organisation and I became one of the event team, if you like. So I kind of worked in and around Tony's events for three or four years in my late teens, early twenties. It was probably like the best apprenticeship, the best training that I could possibly have got for what I do today. So like, you I run events now and, you know, I spent many, many years being in and around who I believe is the best in the business when it comes to running.
events around personal development, self -improvement, business, wealth, etc. Well, wow, what a brilliant introduction to the whole world of personal development. So what did you do after your teenage years then? What was your first experience of the employment world? I went to university and what I always say is I certainly learned more within a few months of leaving university than I did in a few years of being in university.
And that's because I actually left university and started my first business, which was an epic failure, because quite frankly, I didn't know how to run a small business. Like what I learned at university was how to operate in a role within a big company. I actually did a business studies degree and I think it's false advertising to call it business studies, because really it was studying how big businesses and corporates operate. And what I really wanted to learn was
How do small businesses, how do entrepreneurs operate? I actually think now, by the way, we're talking 20 years ago, but I think now, they do actually have entrepreneurship degrees at university. I don't know how the curriculum differs to when I was there, but it was a lot about, for example, the e -commerce section of the curriculum. We were studying the Tesco website. That doesn't help me when I'm in my early 20s and I'm starting.
Christian Rodwell (06:58.862)
a brand new business from scratch. So for me, I learned a lot more within a few months of leaving university because my first venture was an epic failure. But then my first kind of real employment was actually working in a small entrepreneurial business. It was an NLP training company, so neuro -linguistic programming. For those who aren't familiar, this is a collection of tools and strategies and techniques to program the mind for success.
So I worked for an NLP training company, shout out to my mentor Andy Harrington, we're still really good friends to this day. And I worked in his company in sales for a couple of years. And in those two years, being around that small business, I learned about marketing, and I learned about sales, and I learned about systems and processes, and customer service and finance and all of these key ingredients. So when I left that business to start my own business, I was much better prepared than I was first time around.
So do you find that the people you serve now was the coaches, the guides, those people who are experts in their own right or building their expertise, started their life as employees? I'd say in one of my trainings or my events, let's say we've got 500 people in the room, which is fairly typical for one of our larger events, one of our larger conferences. If I say, who here has at some point been an employee in a large organization?
80 % of the people will probably raise their hands. And the reason they're coming to my events and my trainings is because either they've decided they no longer want to be that and they want to start their own business, but in the majority of cases, they've already taken that step. They've already made that leap, if you like, and started their business. then they're no longer maybe a startup, but they're now in the, either in the early stages of just starting to build.
their brand and their products and their services and starting to build the business. And in some cases already well established, you know, with teams and multi million pounds worth of revenues and kind of everything in between. So tell us a bit more about the events then you've mentioned that a couple of times and the business is called Expert Empires and I suppose it was always interesting when you talk to a business owner. Why did you choose that name? What's the power in the name?
Christian Rodwell (09:21.198)
brand name actually came about later. It wasn't the origin, but it came about because back in 2017, back in the 2016, early 2017, I'd created a concept in my mind for an event that I wanted to run specifically for coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers, authors, agency owners. I would put them all in the category of experts. And the concept was,
that I'm gonna run this amazing event, we're gonna bring the best speakers in the world to London, to the UK. It's not a free event or it's not a cheap ticket. It's a significant investment to come along because I'm spending a lot of money, investing a lot of money in speakers. It'll be high quality. It won't be a pitch fest. I'm gonna put on a really great quality experience. And so I remember sitting with my team, I remember vividly we had a team meeting in my lounge and there was
four people plus me. So there was a marketing person, two salespeople and one kind of admin customer service person. And I was like, right, so here's the vision, here's what we want to create. Let's come up with a name for it. And they all gave their suggestions. And I went, well, I think this is an event for experts, helping them build their empire. I like the alliteration of expert empires. What do you think? And they went, we think it's crap, Nick. We don't like that at all. And here's all the reasons.
I went, look, I'm not wedded to it. Come up with some other ideas. And we came up with five or six others and just none of them felt quite right. And that was on a Friday afternoon. And I remember sleeping on it and agonizing over it. And I went, you know what? By the way, time was ticking. We had a date set for the event and I needed to get it out there. And so over the weekend, I literally unbeknownst to my team, built a little landing page. I got a mate to do a little logo, by the way.
Shout out James Dawkins, who did our original Expert Empires logo. We still use it to this day. He didn't charge me a penny. We've made a lot of, you know, we've made a big impact and a lot of money from that logo. And I literally just built a little page and sent an email out and posted it on social and went, hey, I've got this thing called Expert Empires. And on Monday, the team were like, we hadn't decided yet. I was like, I couldn't wait any longer. It was too late. And here we are. That was early 2017. Here we are, seven years later. And...
Christian Rodwell (11:46.016)
Expert empires now means something. It's now a thing. It's now got a reputation. It's got brand recognition. Anyway, long story, but here's the reason I tell you that is because I do think people overthink brands and brand names. Like people think Nike, what an amazing brand concept and name. When Phil Knight first came up with Nike, it didn't mean anything. Obviously it's got Greek mythology background, but it did.
Like nobody felt a certain way about Nike. Now, people have an emotional attachment to that brand, to the logo, to the word. Same with Netflix or Amazon or Tesla or all of these. They don't mean anything when they're creative. I just don't think it matters that much because whatever the brand is you come up with, it will over time, providing you have a world -class product or service, providing you do what you say you'll do, providing
You have happy clients and customers and amazing culture around your business. The brand will have meaning later and people will start to feel a certain way about it. couldn't agree with you more on that one. Orbit, it did take me a little while to come up with wealth builders because I wanted to do what it said on the tin because we're challenging the way financial plans are created in the UK. you know, that was important to me to do that.
And by the way, I think the Wealth Builders as a brand is a great brand. It does what it says on the tin, as you say. And there are many, many other words you could have used. And the point is, it wouldn't have really mattered because Wealth Builders is Kevin. And it's the training, it's the concepts, it's the content, it's the experience that you create for your clients, for your customers, and then they feel a certain way. It sounds like a little bit anti -branding, and I'm not really, but I suppose your question was around why
why the name Expert Empires? And the origin of it was our client base were all experts in their field. The irony, Kevin, is now today, you come to one of our trainings or our events and experts make up a portion of the audience, but it's certainly not the whole. So we have plenty of people who run e -commerce businesses, service -based businesses, they do stuff in, you know, they do executive training. You wouldn't class them as the traditional expert.
Christian Rodwell (14:07.086)
doesn't matter anymore because people know what expert empires means and stands for. who are your main avatars now then if it's evolved over time and it was the consultants, the trainers, the speakers, the you you mentioned the list before, who would you say it is now and how do you serve them? What's the unique positioning of your message and how you deliver? Yeah good question so I think what we've done as our audience has broadened so it's not as
niched or specialized as it once was, is what I've done is create different programs for different types of business or different size of business. essentially what I do is I divide all of that. One thing I will say, all of our clients are small business owners or entrepreneurs. So up to I think our biggest client, we've got one exception, which is a big company, but the vast majority of our clients have annual revenue of under 10 million. So they would be classed as small businesses.
And then we basically divide them into four categories. So we've got kind of businesses that are in the very early stage. In other words, they're not yet bringing in 100 ,000 year of revenue. We've got businesses that are six figure annual revenue turnover businesses. We've got businesses that are seven figure annual revenue turnover businesses. And then we've got businesses that are eight figure annual revenue or turnover businesses. And so we've got different programs, different trainings for those different phases of growth because
the problems that you experience in phase one are completely different to what you experience in phase four and vice versa. And I suppose when people are going through that naturally, they may bump into the problems that you have to learn or unlearn new skills and techniques in order to move up that level because sometimes what you've learned before will actually hold you back. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, yeah, 100%. I always say, you know, what got you here won't get you there. Sometimes what got you here will prevent you from getting
to the next stage or the next phase of your growth. And actually sometimes it's case of doing what you've done before again and again and again. So it does largely depend upon the person, the individual, the business in question. So yeah, think having, we run different trainings as well based on skill sets. So business owner A might be brilliant at marketing and terrible at sales. So they need to work on sales skills. Business owner B might be phenomenal at sales.
Christian Rodwell (16:31.118)
but awful at like hiring and developing a team. Person C might have an amazing team, but they really struggle with their own mindset. And so we'll have different trainings and different, I suppose niche masterminds and niche experiences based upon where you in particular need to grow and develop. And what's the outcome? How would they measure the success of the money they pay you to be?
engage in your programmes to measure that ROI at the end and say, yes, I've got a good result and this was worthwhile. Yeah, I mean, I'm always looking at like, where were you when you started working with us? And of course, there are many ways to measure success in business, but an easy one would be annual revenue, turnover, and where are you three months, six months, 12 months, 24 months down the line? Of course, that's not the bill on end or because you can increase revenue, but not make any profit.
And equally sometimes the game is to sustain the current level of revenue and profit in the business, but give the business owner more time and more freedom. Maybe that's success. So it does differ, but ultimately, you know, the way that we've devised our programs is like, you're aiming to get to a hundred thousand year in revenue, this program's for you. You're aiming to get to a million pounds year in revenue, this program's for you. Cause that's the simple way of explaining it. Yeah, I get the simplicity of that.
It'd be interesting to talk about some of the things that we believe in wealth builders just to just for two people with different view sets to come at it. So I mean, you often heard the language of turnover is vanity and profit is sanity and cash flow is king and all those things. One of the things that we particularly focus on in wealth builders and the entire business is predicated on it is recurring income.
So income that isn't necessarily judged by turnover, but the degree to which the revenue would be automated so they do the work once and get paid indefinitely. Do you include that anywhere in your mix? I'm not wedded to any particular business model. So I'm not going to sit there and say, you have to have a recurring model. If you don't, you're a failure. But equally, I'm a big advocate of having some kind of recurring model in there if it makes sense for your business because
Christian Rodwell (18:53.176)
For me, the holy grail for the kind of person that I work with, a small business owner or an entrepreneur, the holy grail would be that your monthly recurring revenue is greater than your costs of operating the business. If you can get to that place, you go, anything you make on top of that is a bonus. It's a cherry on the top, as it were, and it gives you really kind of good core stability in your business. And of course,
Recurring income could be as a result of some sort of membership. In our business, by the way, the recurring income is people that are part of our mastermind program or part of our academy and they pay. They might pay for that monthly or annually. But equally in other businesses, could be Netflix has a great recurring revenue model where it's a very small amount of money paid by a large amount of people. Or it could be that your recurring income comes from renting out properties that you own, for example, which I know.
Kevin, both you and I do. there's plenty of ways in which to create recurring income. And yes, I think for sure it gives you greater core stability in your business. Yeah, in the end I was talking to somebody on our podcast a few years ago who said, whose name is John Warrelo, he runs a business called Built to Sell. What a great book. That's one of my top 10 business books of all time. I love that book. Well, I interviewed him and we were chatting when
I met him in the Midlands and I said, John, you've got eight different levers that you suggest business owners can pull to get a better value for their business. It's all about selling your business in the end. said, but if there was only one lever, what's the most important one? And he said, recurring income for the predictability. Because if you want to sell it, the number one criteria for an acquirer is the predictability of the recurring profit.
And if you can get that, your business is going to be worth seven, eight times more than working seven or eight times harder on the same margin on normal trading income. Just a fascinating insight for me and made me go, yeah, definitely I've got to teach recurring, recurring, recurring. What I love about that book, Kevin, as well is even if you don't ever intend to sell your business, it's still a great read because in building your business in a way that you could sell it.
Christian Rodwell (21:16.588)
you're building a better, more healthy business that's less reliant upon you. And so I think the first thing really is to decide what game are you playing? Are you playing the game? It's one of the questions I ask our clients when they start working with us, I'm like, so what's your dream outcome? What's your goal? What game are you playing? Are you playing the game of, want to set like one of my clients I've got in mind, their game, two of them that they're business partners, their game is to sell for at least five million.
in the next three years, that's their game. And there's a reason for that because what that gives them is the freedom that they want to do what they want, when they want, with who they want. And that's their number. But if you're playing the game of, yeah, I want to run it for the next 20 years and then sell it, or I want to run it for the next 20 years and then pass it on to my kids, or whatever it might be, like, you've got to decide what game you're playing before you decide how to play it. And you think when the...
the coaches and the consultants and the trainers get into that. They've even given their game plan, the game they're playing, a thought. In most cases, no. I think, and by the way, I didn't give it any thought at the start either. I think, you know, for me, the reason I started my business was I didn't want to work for somebody else. I wanted to make more money and I wanted to have more time. And, you know, I had a skill set that I felt had some value to offer. And so that's why I started my business. was, actually at the time I was engaged to my
now wife, and I had a wedding to pay for, we had a child on the way, and I was like, I need to make more money and I want to support and provide. So there was no grand plan of selling it in this kind of distant point in the future. It was just short term over the next year, two years, like what's it gonna look like? And I think that's okay. You don't have to have the end goal or the end game in mind because it might change as you go anyway.
But I do think once you reach a certain point in your business, is healthy and helpful to have, you know, at least, you know, the long term vision for the business and for yourself having that defines really helpful. Yeah, unquestionably. And when did you make the shift in your own mind then? What happened when you started in the sofa and then you talked about expert empires and you created the, because it was an event. When did you shift or pivot from events to providing
Christian Rodwell (23:41.614)
masterminds. mean, to be fair, I've had, you know, I started my first business in 2008 and Expert Empires only became a thing in 2016 -17. So there were previous iterations before that. The transition really, I mean, it was actually originally from private one -to -one consulting or a done -for -you services. So, you know, right back at the start, I was essentially a...
a marketing agency, a one -man marketing agency. So I'd come to you, Kevin, and I'd say, hey, if you want somebody to write all of your marketing, copy and collateral and run your marketing campaign, your next launch of a product or a service, I'm your guy and I'll do that for you. So I was then trading my time and my expertise for money. And then over time, you know, that kind of hit a ceiling, the plateau. And I went, well,
I've run out of time to sell and I've probably hit the ceiling of what I can charge for this. So the next logical step became, I'll now teach people how to do this for themselves. And that's how it got into trainings and workshops. And then that evolved into masterminds and group coaching programs. I think it's brilliant you've got a training center for this. Tell us a bit more about that. Yeah, it kind of happened by accident to be perfectly honest. So for many years, you know, I'd run my workshops, my live events, my masterminds.
in like a lovely little local hotel near where I live. And the business had got to a point where we were outgrowing our office space. So I was like, well, we need somewhere bigger. And I was looking at premises to operate out of, you know, I think we had 10 people in our team. And so, you know, we had a small office space and then a few people working remotely. And it was like, we need a bigger space. And so I found the space that we're now in and.
We moved into it in 2018. But I found the space that we're now in and it had way more space than I needed. But I really liked it. Like energetically, it was great. You know, I walked in, I was like, it's light, it's open plan. It just felt really nice. I was like, this is kind of environment I want to work in and I want to bring our clients into. But it was way more space than I needed. And I was like, well, how can I justify this big space? Because I don't need it all. And I went, what if I stopped using the hotel and
Christian Rodwell (26:02.99)
paying, you we were running events probably at least three to four days a month. I was like, well, how much does that cost? And then you've got travel time and all that sort of stuff. then buying lunch and all that. was like, how much does all that cost? And how much is the rent on the building? And I worked out that if I took the cost away of using the hotel, it was a wash. There was no difference in terms of outlay. And so we took the whole space and turned half of it into a training room.
training center and then the other half was office space. And then actually during COVID, again, our team had grown to, I think we were about 20 people around that time and we were bursting seams in the office. So we then built or we had an additional building on our plot built, which we now have as a training space. And then the other building that we originally had is now office space. it's kind of grown and evolved. What's been, there's been two big benefits of that.
Because originally it was really just, it didn't save us any money, but it didn't cost us any more. It allowed us to get the bigger, more expensive office. But there's two really big benefits. One is, because we were already paid for it, it kind of incentivized me to do more, to run more workshops, to run more events, to do more. Because I was like, I'm using it three or four days a month, it's empty for all this time, or might as well run more events, because it doesn't cost us any more money.
It made me do more. The second thing is, think it created an environment that we own. As I said to you before we joined, I actually don't own the property, the premises, we rent it. But it's our home and we can create it in our own vision and we can have, we can decorate and we can have posters and we can have images and we can have our models and frameworks on the wall and our team welcome people in.
I'm not reliant upon hotel staff who may or may not be any good or having a nice day. So all of those things, I think have made a big difference. then bottom line, somebody took, like, I always say this, anyone can pay a few hundred quid to rent a small meeting room at a hotel for a day and talk a good game. But when you rock up and see, you've got three, 4 ,000 square foot.
Christian Rodwell (28:19.918)
20 plus team members and all of that. It demonstrates more credibility, authority, success. And I think that counts for a lot. And how did the events business get affected in COVID? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't the best time to be in the events business. I think that's fair to say. I'll try and do this long story short. we had, bear in mind, this is March, 2020. I think we were towards the third week of the month, something like that. We weren't too big events a year.
called Expert Empires. And ordinarily, we have anything between 400 and 500 people in attendance. And we had a big event happening last week of March. Obviously, everybody's freaking out. It's like, this is before lockdown, but it's like people are getting really nervous about going out and worried about this thing called COVID. We don't know what it really is and how dangerous it is and who it might affect. So we had the event happening. Bear in mind, like,
I've got speakers coming in from the US, I've got a big venue booked, I've got all of that happening. I've sold, I think we'd sold 500, 500, just over 500 tickets to this event. And I'm getting inquiries, emails, phone calls from people saying like, what's happening? Like, I don't wanna come, it feels too much of a risk, like I'm scared. And I'm going like, I get it, but like, I've gotta run the event because we've...
had all these people pay us money and I feel like I've got to deliver on the promise and do what I said I'd do. So it was really, really difficult time. And my mistake, by the way, and I'm aware I'm certainly not perfect, my mistake is, because I'm actually very, pretty laid back and always very optimistic. It's probably, like most entrepreneurs, most business owners, I'm eternally optimistic. I was like, look, it'll all be fine. And like then,
within like another 24, so basically I did this announcement, said, hey, like I know this is going on, we're going ahead. Let's just say that not everybody tends to be as optimistic or laid back as I am. And so within 24 hours, check this out Kevin, within 24 hours I'll have over 100 people either emailing, phoning or comment on my, I did this video publicly, or comment and people were pissed.
Christian Rodwell (30:39.918)
like really angry and they're calling me like a, they're basically calling me all the names under the sun. And hold my hands up, I'd misjudged the vibe, I'd misread the signs. And so within, you asked what was it like during COVID? So I had, was less than, was 72 hours to turn the event from live in person in London to online.
We created a makeshift studio in my office. We had no tech set up, no nothing. We literally just cobbled it together with laptops and loads of cables and cameras and whatever. And we put on this event. I basically went out to everyone and I said, look, hands up, I've misjudged this. I get that a lot of people don't feel safe. So I'm gonna run it online and here's what I'm gonna do for you. First of all, gonna put on the best damn event you could possibly imagine. Second of all.
your ticket is still valid for the next one. Third of all, I'm also gonna upgrade your ticket for the next one as a thank you for your understanding. Like I said, I made a mistake, I got this wrong. And you know what? It kind of all worked out fine. know, the shout out to Ed Milet, who was our headline speaker. You know, he was so gracious. He said, look, you know, I'm not coming to the UK because of COVID, can't fly. Like, you don't have to pay my fee. But all I'd ask is that you donate a small portion of it to charity, which we did.
So, you know, that took a lot of the financial pressure off because having to pay out a huge sum to him was a large part of our cost. The venue allowed us to carry what we paid forward. So in the end, it all kind of worked out. And then just to tie off this story, obviously, then there was probably six to 12 months of disruption, various different lockdowns, in and out of lockdown. And so actually, having our own training facility helped us through that because
you'll remember at times, you couldn't have more than a certain amount of people together, but we could run like a business meeting for 10 people socially distanced. Whereas if we'd have been using a hotel, we wouldn't have been able to do that, wouldn't have been allowed. So we actually, we combined online events, masterminds, trainings, with small socially distanced workshops, masterminds, and you know what? I think we came out of it pretty well, like pretty well.
Christian Rodwell (33:02.35)
We didn't have to let anyone go from our team. We actually in 2020, bizarrely, we were more profitable than we had been any year before that, mainly because we didn't have the huge expense of running these events. So every cloud has its own line, I guess. Well, I think I'll pick up a couple of lessons from that. One is when something goes wrong and you misjudge it or somebody makes a mistake, just go, hold your hands up, which is what you did.
I think if you tell the truth people will buy into that and now you're always going to get naysayers in any business but and the other thing is you just have to deal with it right so you did that knowing that your long -term picture is to live a great value and secure those people who would react positively to the next event because they realized you'd almost taken the risk away from them really which is a very very powerful thing to do.
What was interesting to me was there was a small number of people, I'm talking, you could count them on one hand, that no matter what I said or did, they'd already made their mind up that I was an idiot, and that's fine. But what was interesting to me was the people that had complained and were most vocal before, when I took responsibility, owned the mistake, and then acted upon it and did something different, they then became our greatest fans and advocates, more so.
than the people that were kind of a bit chilled and blasé about it all. So I do think what you've just said, Kevin, is definitely true. There's a lot of value in owning your mistakes. I mean, one of our values in our company is we practice self -awareness and humility. And I think that was a case of like, hey, a bit of self -awareness, I've got this wrong, a bit of humility, I need to do better, here's what I'm gonna do instead. And that definitely, that definitely.
resonated and changed people's opinions. It's interesting because we have a no fault no blame culture and wealth builders as well. just when we realize we've got to do something about it we call it an issue and we just get together and fix the issue so it doesn't happen again. But we don't put fingers and we don't blame anybody at any time so it sounds like a number of things about what you do resonate. Let's see if they resonate wider than beyond the business because
Christian Rodwell (35:23.18)
When we talk in wealth builders about building wealth, we're talking about building that in a richly diversified way, multiple streams of income. And you've just touched on even casually in our conversation, business, joint ventures, property you've mentioned. And of course we do encourage people to, wherever they can, buy their own premises. If that would make sense, particularly using their pension and then they become their own landlord and earn all that money tax free. So that's pretty smart. But what's your view about diversifying wealth?
not putting all your eggs in your business basket. I don't know if this aligns with your philosophy, so apologies if it doesn't. I'm fairly clear on one view, which is I actually think as you're in the very early stages of building your wealth, there's benefit in having laser focus and being, like let's say for example, you're at the very start of your journey, you go, right, I wanna build wealth and I wanna do that through a business. I'd go, put all your eggs in that business basket.
and build the business as quickly as possible. Then once you get to a certain stage, I'd actually then start to diversify because then it's about protection of that asset. And the risk is you've got all your eggs in one basket. If that business runs into trouble or fails, you've failed, you've lost everything. So my view is, and I think, you know, I've done this over the years is like, I started off with one business and I put all my time, energy and money into it. And I built it to a certain point and then went, hmm,
This is a bit risky now because I've got all my eggs in one basket. So I'll start another business with a partner. We talk about joint ventures and collaborations. And I'll then start to invest in properties and I'll start to invest in different asset classes. And then at a point now where I go, look, I've still got my core business and that hasn't changed, but I've also got these four, five, six different wealth building strategies sat around it, which means I've not got all my eggs in one basket. So it's kind of a,
precautionary measure or a safety measure I would say. Once you've got your business to a certain point or you know for example if you went look my number one strategy for building wealth is property great get to the point when you're bringing in enough money from your property portfolio to live and then I'd be like right don't just put more money into property look to diversify into different asset classes because again it just protects you from any kind of changes in the economy or any changes you know like
Christian Rodwell (37:50.048)
interest rates or how landlords are taxed, all of those things, if you're all in property you're at risk there and if you're diversified in different areas then you're more, you've hedged your bets I guess. You're not in any way deviating from our philosophy because our philosophy is focus your way to security which means having enough income to pay all of your bills and then diversify after that. So we're banging on the same message, just slightly different language but you'd expect that.
coming out of the mouths of different people. I think you hear a lot of people talk about diversification and multiple streams of income. The danger is if you try and do that from day one, you might end up, I'm not saying you will, I'm sure some make this work, but you might end up doing lots of things not very well. What I'd recommend is do one really, really well and then diversify after, which I think is exactly what you're saying, So we know there are things we can control, there are things we can't control.
we've got a new government, we've got something coming in, you're going to be dealing with entrepreneurs and we'll get to your October event, but there's going to be people at their event as entrepreneurs thinking about crumbs, what's the government going to do? And while we can't worry about that, what are your thoughts about, you know, the big picture and what governments might do that have an impact on entrepreneurs? I'll be honest, Kevin, I try and steer clear of politics because I think as soon as you open your mouth and talk about politics, you're going to piss somebody off. And by the way, the other reason
The other reason I steer clear is honestly, it's not my area of expertise. It really isn't. And so I go, look, my commentary on it is relatively informed, but not highly educated. And so my view is fairly simple. I go, you and I cannot control who gets, you we get a vote, don't we? And I use that vote and I'm sure you did too, but we don't really control who goes into government, right?
And we definitely don't control the policies and what happens next. A lot of time the policies that you voted for aren't seen through. so we have no control over it. In my view, there is like, there's so much that you or I or anybody controls and has control over. Like I have complete control over my health and wellbeing. I have complete control over the revenue that comes into my business. I have complete control over how profitable we are.
Christian Rodwell (40:12.236)
I have complete control over so many different things. My concern is that many people focus a lot on the things they can't control versus the things they can't. I think that's what you were alluding to. And look, know, will there, for us as business owners, will there be increases in VAT, possibly, corporation tax? Yes. There's going to be loads of negatives. But by the way, there's also going be opportunities. And so I think with any
In this case, we're talking about new government, but I'm like, there are definitely things that this new government are going to do that are going to be, that are going to not help or support small business owners, but there are also going to be opportunities that come up as a result of it as well. And you've got to look for what those are. I mean, I think the philosophy we take is very simple. you know, I have a slightly different way of articulating it, but that's fine. I just say, I don't do politics or religion.
I just deal in principles, not in politics. But if you give me a glass of red, and that's to be a nice one, I'll give you my view till I've finished it, right? And it's just a bit of fun, but I just don't comment on those things. However, I do comment on this, that anybody who's building wealth needs to pay attention to the taxes they pay. So just respond when you can, and then create the strategy based on what you know. So there'll be lots of opportunities to tell business owners what they will need to think about post -October.
but we're not trying to encourage anybody to do anything before the rule changes. My view Kevin is no one has all the answers. Like any government that says they've got all the answers is lying because any policy that you can consider like, right, we're going to make this saving here. Okay, great. So that's going to mean that we can, the government can invest more, but we're to make this saving on, like for example, we're going to increase corporation tax, going to bring more revenue in.
Okay, great, I mean, you're gonna use it here in the education system or in the NHS. Okay, great. But how many small business owners are gonna decide to trade overseas because they don't want the corporation tax increase? For every upside, there's a downside. For every downside, there's an upside. And look, I do not profess to have the answer to that. And I think anybody that does is full of it. Like, quite frankly, no one has the answer. And I do genuinely believe, one thing I will say,
Christian Rodwell (42:36.326)
And again, regardless of political affiliation, I do genuinely believe that anybody in politics is doing the best they can. It's an impossible job. Listen, being the CEO of a small business is an impossible job. You can't please all the people all the time. So imagine, essentially as prime minister, you're the CEO of the country with all these different public services to oversee. There's no way in the world you can get it right.
But I do believe that it's all, every time a policy is created, it's all done with the best intention. You talk about that, you mentioned, you know, five people thought you were an idiot just because they didn't like the way you reacted. If you're the CEO of a country, there's probably going to be a few more people think you're an idiot. The problem with the political system is, like, when you get into office, the vast majority of the public did not vote for you.
So you aren't hiding to nothing straight away, are you? That's a problem.
And I'm not saying by the way that I've got a better suggestion of how that system should work. But you've got some events coming up. So tell us about those because we want to share that. We want to share what the event is, who's likely to benefit from it, who are the headlines, what do want to share about that? Yeah, thanks, Kevin. So yeah, our main event is called Expert Empires. We run it twice a year. The next one is the third and fourth of October, so very soon.
in London at the Hilton Wembley. We've got Russell Brunson coming over from the US. He's the founder of ClickFunnels, which is a huge organization. I would say that Russell is probably the smartest marketer or one of the smartest marketers I've ever learned from or met. think he's an absolute genius. So he's coming over as the headline speaker. We've also got some other UK -based headliners, Susie Ashworth.
Christian Rodwell (44:34.446)
She's amazing. Jess Cunningham, creator of Belief Coding. So we've got an amazing line up. And really, Expert Empires, again, I created it in 2017, originally for coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers, authors, agency owners, fitness professionals, to learn how to build their empire. And we talk about mindset and marketing and money, but really it's about creating an event or an environment where
people who are aspirational, who are already successful, that they can come together, learn from one another, collaborate, partner, know, Kevin, you talk about collaborations, partnerships, joint ventures is a big part of your wealth building mix. And I think, you know, Expert Empires is a place where people can come together and forge those relationships and have a great time. And yeah, we've run, this is our 14th, I think, Expert Empires event or 15th, I've lost count. And yeah, it's what I love to do.
And you're expecting what 500 peeps or so? For this one about 400 that will be in attendance. And you've built in an extra, have you, for young entrepreneurs? Yeah, so one of the things as I mentioned, you know, I was very fortunate to go to Tony Robbins when I was 12 years of age and so funnily enough, our last events, first time I'd ever done it, I created a ticket especially for young entrepreneurs, 12 to 18 year olds. So, you know, if you have a...
son, daughter, niece, nephew, grandson, granddaughter, whatever that you think would benefit from coming along like I did to Tony Robbins in 1994. If you think they would benefit from coming along, being in that environment, learning about mindset, marketing, money, business, then yeah, we've got a special Young Entrepreneurs Ticket available, which is available at cost price. if you go to the website, I'm guessing the link will be in the show notes somewhere.
Then you'll see all the details about that. I want to applaud you for that because not just as a reflection of your own experience, wealth builders were passionate about financial literacy for the next generation, arguably because if you think about the principle of building wealth, you build assets that last forever, you need a plan to pass not just the money but the wisdom onto the next generation. So congrats to you for sharing some of that wisdom. And by the way, why don't they teach this at school?
Christian Rodwell (46:54.646)
I won't get you on that one. Nick, thank you very much indeed for your time today. It's a joy to spend some time with you. I look forward to being at your event and I look forward to speaking to you again on another occasion on either WellTalk or Head2Head. Thanks, Kevin. Great to see you. Thanks a lot.
Christian Rodwell (47:15.32)
We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the WealthBuilders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealthbuilders .co .uk slash membership right now for free access. That's wealthbuilders .co .uk slash membership.