Simon (1:36)

Oh, definitely. Well, I owned a really nice car and the first week I was like, this is amazing. And then slowly it got a scratch. I take to the garage. I'm like, this thing now owns me. I'm having to, like, show it to people to prove somehow I'm successful. It's really weird.

Helen (1:48)

Yeah.

Brad (1:48)

Yeah, I. I do love my Cars, but I don't drive them to show on social and stuff. I drive them because I love that car. I feel good about and, you know, I think I felt proud about the fact that I could do that for myself.

Simon (2:03)

I, I. Exactly the same. Exactly the same. So, I mean, people say money doesn't buy you happiness. I think the truth is it does if you're already happy. Yeah, that's my only.

Brad (2:12)

I found money to be a great multiplier. Like fame and money are multipliers. If you're a jerk and you get a lot of money, you're a compl. By that point, it just multiplies who you are. So you got to that point of filling your own bucket. How did it go from there? Because what was that shift in your brain when you went from fight or flight?

Simon (2:32)

Yeah, just to say, I think I filled my own bucket. And one of the reasons that bucket really filled up big was because I think if you want to get rich, you've got to help other people get rich.

Helen (2:40)

Yeah.

Simon (2:41)

So in, in throughout my kind of career, people that work with me have also got rich. So if I just try to make myself rich, you don't get as rich. It's 1 plus 1 equals 11. So I think I filled my own bucket. But what was great is I feel like I also filled up a lot of other people's buckets. So my business partner, Helen Griffiths, when we sold the company, we both got mega rich. But the good news is that she then became my wife. So we became partners and we were super rich. I think, I think, I think that's kind of like, you know, that's the holy grail of it all is like, you don't really want to be at the top of the hill on your own. You know, the view is amazing, but then you gotta go back and tell everyone what it was like. And they were like, shut the up. I don't want to hear about your view.

Brad (3:19)

Someone once said to me, you got to have as many kids as you can afford.

Simon (3:22)

Right?

Brad (3:23)

It was like, holy, I got five kids.

Simon (3:25)

I bet it. Well, I've got one, so. And I'm tired. I don't know how you doing? 5. But I, I think, I think success now for me now, personally, now if I look back, I'd probably advise the younger me to have this strategy I've got now a bit earlier, which is like, what problem can I solve in the world as opposed to fill a market gap or do something that, you know, I can make money out of it'. Like I want to work with people I really like working with. I don't want to work with. I want to. I want to work on something that matters. In my case, fix the education system. And I want to make money, but not just for myself, but for everybody around me, including the people I'm trying to help. So, you know, I have this crazy philosophy that people hate me sayings. I believe everyone could get rich, and I actually want everyone to get rich. And people like, well, if everyone's rich, who's going to take out the rubbish? Robots, throw crappy robots. You know why now it's cheaper for humans to do it.

Brad (4:13)

The interesting thing is, like, use that taking out the rubbish example. There's a company in the United States that hired a bunch of people to take out the trash that wanted to be fit.

Simon (4:23)

Right.

Brad (4:24)

And they treated it as a fitness thing I like.

Simon (4:26)

So it's about reframing. Yeah, yeah.

Brad (4:28)

The framing of it. Because if everyone is wealthy and because, you know, rich is great money, wealthy time, money, all of those things, there's always going to be a desire to work. Humans have an innate need to be.

Simon (4:43)

Doing something we need. That's Covid proved. If we're sitting at home doing nothing, we go mad like we need something to do. And hopefully Covid's shown everyone that. Yeah, right. We need it. We need a thing to go and do. Which is what's scaring me about AI because a lot of people aren't retraining or preparing for that change because no one's quite sure what it looks like.

Helen (5:01)

Yeah.

Simon (5:01)

And no one's being honest. Like my delivery driver. I know my delivery driver who delivered my food to my house this morning.

Helen (5:06)

They.

Simon (5:06)

That vehicle, in six years time, will be driving itself to my house. But no one's telling him that because they need him for the next six years to keep delivering that stuff to their house. So the truth can't be told because there's mass panic.

Brad (5:19)

I think with AI and it's my way of approaching a lot of things is just play with it. Just get in and start playing with it. Like pick an app. And even if it's just an app to make music, that's AI at least start learning something. Play with it, get comfortable.

Simon (5:32)

Most people that slag off social media have never leveraged it properly. So most people that are saying how bad it is, how awful it is, most of them don't understand how it actually works. It's the same with AI and all that. If you actually understand how these things work, you can Understand how to leverage them for good. So social media for social good, AI for social good. Like, if you understand how they work, you can make your world more efficient. It's like having a mobile phone today. People can't imagine not having a mobile phone today. You can remote work. But people have got fearful of technology for some reason. Typically technology has actually freed humans up. Now, of course, there's always going to be the naysayers saying, well, I'm always on my phone now. Well, yeah, it's still probably better than two hours getting into work and two hours getting home and sitting in an office all day because you've got to go over desktop. You know, people don't realize how much freedom this stuff can bring you. But to your point, you have to play with it.

Helen (6:21)

Yeah, yeah.

Brad (6:22)

I like, I love seeing the photos of everyone going, look, everyone's on their phone. And you go back 50 years, everyone's reading the newspaper.

Simon (6:28)

Right? Yeah, exactly.

Brad (6:29)

Yeah. It's not really changed in, in a lot of ways. It's just the tech people have never.

Simon (6:33)

Worried, talk to each other. It's always been that way.

Brad (6:35)

It's great because it removes scarcity. So, you know, when I was a kid, I went to college and you learned that in economics. That's, you know, it's the study of the allocation of scarce resources. Well, scarcity is a fallacy when you introduce technology because, like, we have a scarcity of food. No, we don't. We can grow food in a high.

Simon (6:53)

Throw so much food away every day. Supermarkets and cafes are throwing tons of people.

Brad (6:58)

You and I were young. Do you remember that Time magazine came out and said, we're going to run out of oil in 90 years.

Simon (7:02)

I remember that.

Brad (7:03)

And then we went to mini. We're never going to run out of oil.

Simon (7:06)

We're going to.

Brad (7:07)

We're going to be not needing oil before we run out of it.

Helen (7:09)

Yeah.

Brad (7:10)

Thing, of course.

Simon (7:10)

And you know. Exactly. But that's why these things need to be discussed, though, openly and honestly. That, you know, we do need to transition. So AI is going to take people's jobs. It is. But.

Brad (7:20)

And that's great.

Simon (7:21)

But. Exactly. But if we.

Brad (7:22)

But dishwashing machine, three people's jobs.

Simon (7:26)

I know.

Brad (7:27)

And now you put it in a machine and it comes out the other end. Well, those three people can go on and be trained to be great waiters. That they can go on to be trained to be masseuses. They can go on to be trained to be.

Simon (7:37)

Well, go. Go and do what they love.

Brad (7:40)

To your point, not Retraining is the challenge.

Simon (7:43)

That's the problem.

Brad (7:44)

You're going to have six careers in your lifetime, minimum.

Helen (7:48)

Right.

Brad (7:48)

And I remember when Buckminster Fuller said that way back when he's, you know, passed many years ago, but he said, you're going to have six careers in your lifetime because on average, if you're born after this, you're going to live to 100, 140 sort of thing. And people seem to think you're going to do one thing. My kids always, you know, people ask them, what do you want to do with your life? I said, no, no, kid. What do you want to try first?

Simon (8:10)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. What's your. What's stage one, stage two? Like, stage one for me, at 15, I was a gardener.

Helen (8:15)

Yeah.

Simon (8:15)

Now stage. I think I'm stage five. I'm going to guess I've done one more. I'm a tech founder.

Helen (8:20)

Yeah.

Simon (8:20)

You know, I've got. I'm a media owner, media platform owner. Like, I think people do need to frame it that way. It's so true. I think that's why I really hated school. When they ask you, what will you do when you grow up? Because it tries to make you pick a thing. And I think the better question is, what problem will you solve? Because you can widen your net and do many different things to get around that problem later in life. You know, like, you don't have to do one thing. You don't have to be labeled as a lawyer or a doctor. You can be many things.

Helen (8:44)

Yeah.

Brad (8:45)

I got friends of mine that were doctors and now they're entrepreneurs now.

Simon (8:48)

Exactly.

Brad (8:49)

The companies. And a friend of mine who was a lawyer and now he's a massive property investor.

Simon (8:53)

This is what I mean. That's the.

Brad (8:55)

You're going to have multiple careers and maybe it's 6, maybe it's 10. It doesn't really matter. You just got to understand that every five to 10 years, you're probably going to change the thing you're doing today.

Simon (9:06)

And if your listeners are business owners, they've also got to watch out because they can also get trapped by their own business.

Helen (9:12)

Oh, yeah.

Simon (9:13)

They get in their own way.

Brad (9:14)

Business as the product.

Simon (9:15)

Yeah. And you, you make yourself invaluable in the business, for example, then you can't grow to find out what your next stage is. And I had this experience myself. My first company that was really successful, Fluid. It took me 10 years to realize I was no longer the right leader for that company. You know, I think. I think people sometimes are their own worst Enemy. So I then realized I started investing in businesses. I was running a service agency before and I started investing business. I realized my next stage was to become an angel investor. But I had to start that next stage to let go of the old stage because a lot of people get trapped by their old ways.

Brad (9:47)

Yeah, I, I almost running action coach 10 years in, I almost burnt out. Luckily, my, my daughter was born and I just decided, you know what, handed over to my CEO who was my COO at the time, just handed over, let him run it, and went and be a full time dad for a few years. And thank God I'd rebuilt my business so that it could work with this.

Simon (10:07)

But not enough people are doing that.

Brad (10:08)

By the way, I've been on a mission to teach everyone, you got to build. My definition of a business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you.

Simon (10:15)

Yes, if.

Brad (10:16)

You're. If. And to be really blunt, and I had to learn this as a young man, if I have to go in there, it's not a business, it's a job. And I work for an idiot, you know, and that I just had to learn that my job as the owner was to build people so that the people built the business.

Simon (10:32)

It's very liberating as well if you frame it this way, because otherwise you will build something that traps you like.

Brad (10:37)

A job traps other people 100%.

Simon (10:39)

And so you got to make sure that you're building. Now, that doesn't mean to say you, you basically want to wake up every day with the option to work in your business. So I like working in my business. I like adding value to my business. But if I walked away today, the strength of whether or not it's a successful business is will it survive without me? Now, by the way, this is in direct conflict with personal brand.

Helen (10:59)

Right.

Brad (11:00)

Because it isn't. It's not. And I want to. We'll get into that in just a second, but I want to finish this conversation around building a business that works without you. You do a lot of building your people, you do a lot of making sure your people grow. Was that a conscious choice? How did that happen?

Simon (11:18)

I was just tired in the early years of my career of people leaving. So I trained people up. I mean, my first agency business that was, you know, making a lot of money. I, I had clients coming out my ears, but the talent to execute on the work was hard to hold on to. And so first stage was I used to hire fresh grads and then I can make them my culture. This is my first idea this failed because people come in, they're like, oh, I've had two years experience here, but now I want to go work a big company in a conglomerate or, you know, JP Morgan or whatever. And so I lost them. I trained them, and then I'd lose them. So this strategy of getting. So then I switched it to people that were working at JP Morgan were tired of working in those corporate selfish organizations, and then they come away with me. And that worked for a while because then they were having a refreshing new experience, not in a big conglomerate. And then I realized I was still losing people. And it turned out that the basic crux of it was the business wasn't built to help them. The business was to help me make money. And so I just changed it and I said, like, this business is built to help you get rich, too. And these are the ways I can help you get rich. Of course, obviously, things like profit share as one element, but equity ownership, because I would rather have 51% of Facebook than 100% of MySpace.

Brad (12:34)

Oh, yeah.

Simon (12:35)

And so this equity thing, people get really confused and they're like, oh, I'm holding on to 100% equity. We've got 100% of the responsibility. Then just. Just keep in mind, because no one's ever going to care about the business as much as you do if they don't own it.

Helen (12:46)

Yeah.

Simon (12:46)

And no matter what you say, we're part of a team. Let's do it together, you know, while.

Brad (12:51)

You'Re still the one getting the yard.

Simon (12:53)

Yeah. So. So, you know, you got to pick your lane as an owner of a business. And if you want to own 100, you're 100 responsible. And if you've got staff turnover problems, well, you deserve it.

Helen (13:03)

Yeah.

Simon (13:03)

So I just changed. I started giving equity to people and being like, not just saying they're going to make it along with me. I made sure that they did.

Brad (13:10)

Yeah, I know. Like with Action Coach, we're a partnership business. We use a franchise model, have franchise partnerships all over the world, and it's bought me some of the best people, and I've had many of them with me 20 and almost 30 years.

Simon (13:24)

What would they leave you? You. You? I mean, I. I don't. I don't think. Like, I meet thousands of people that want to start a business, and the reality is that it's much better to join with someone else's business because you can save years of your life, but the truth is, not enough people give you equity in that business. So it's. It's Better you start it yourself because then you get equity. And equity is where the value comes over time. Right. I've made all my money from equity.

Brad (13:47)

Yeah, well, capitalization is the key fundamental for wealth.

Simon (13:51)

Right.

Brad (13:51)

Cash flow is not going to produce.

Simon (13:53)

The bills and allows you to fund a growth of equity.

Brad (13:56)

And once you capitalize, then you can recapitalize again 100%. It's, I mean, you can joke about Elon Musk all you want, but that first capitalization allowed him to capitalize three major events that then is allowed to capitalize.

Simon (14:10)

And, and I think he's now an 8% shareholder in Tesla. So. People are stupid. They think that they. Jeff Bezos talked about this. He's a 7% shareholder on Amazon. You know, you don't have 100%. No, no. But nobody who's a billionaire from their business has 100%. It's just dumb.

Helen (14:25)

Yeah.

Simon (14:25)

You know, you cannot build a business if you think that way. And you want to build a community. You want a community to own your business.

Brad (14:31)

You're also going to need capital if you want to be that big.

Simon (14:33)

Yes.

Brad (14:33)

You're going to need venture capital or hedge fund cap. You're going to need an investment partner if you want to grow that bear 100%. And the bank is not going to lend you money at that. The only people crazy enough to risk with you are the ones who get the payoff from the equity increase. That.

Simon (14:48)

And to, to loop what you're saying back round. I think the other thing that I kind of blew my mind, I wish someone had told me this when I was younger, is that it's actually easier to manage a big business than a small business. Oh, yeah. But people think that running a small business is better because they don't know the difference. When you're running a small business, it's very hard to go on holiday. It's very hard to hire, you know, people that really know what they're doing. And you are, you know, you're hard to. If you stop working, you probably stop earning money.

Helen (15:13)

Yeah.

Simon (15:14)

A big business allows you to bring in brilliant people. So fight to build a big business. It's not easy to build a big business, but I, I think it's so much easier to run a big business. It's worth the pain in the early days to do it.

Brad (15:25)

The. If I take two kids and I take a kid that grew up in, say, Silicon Valley and parents were in Google and, and, you know, they saw all of that around. And then I take a kid who grew up where I did Brisbane, Australia and ask them to write a business plan. Which one's going to write me a billion dollar business plan? You know, the kid from Silicon Valley thinks a billion size business is just normal. And that's where I think a lot of us have never been around.

Simon (15:51)

That.

Brad (15:51)

Size to be able to dream that big sort of thing.

Simon (15:54)

And so true.

Brad (15:55)

I love living in Las Vegas now and I1 once a year I invite 10 companies in and I help them all create a billion dollar business plan or at least a billion. And I love doing in Vegas because I can walk out the door and point out and go, hey, see that? Yeah, that was a billion. See that? That was 2 billion. See that? That's another billion.

Simon (16:15)

And like I think this is environment is so underrated for, for people to understand whether they're going to be successful. I think there's a couple of important. One is the people you end up with. Like my wife. I'm, I'm, I'm successful today in large part because I got the right partner, she supports me, she, she just backed my crazy ideas. And people don't understand how important that is. They don't on Tinder. It should be a profile, you know, category, like can you help me be successful?

Helen (16:39)

Yeah.

Brad (16:40)

Are you willing, are you willing to work together to be successful?

Simon (16:43)

Exactly. You're willing for the pain along with me? You know, like I think the second element I think is where you are based on. So I got lucky. I moved to Hong Kong at 23 years old and like you said, I look out the window and there's a building that someone in their head came up with the idea and it's worth a billion dollars. Well, probably more than that. Trillions in front of me every day. And I just look at that, that city in particular Hong Kong has no natural resources. So it's all built on brain power. It's all built. And someone had an idea, whether it trading or export or whatever it was and they made it and then that generated that wealth. Because that's what we understand about entrepreneurship. The people that hate on entrepreneurship. We're not taking wealth out the economy, we're creating wealth.

Brad (17:21)

Well who creates jobs?

Simon (17:24)

Exactly.

Brad (17:24)

Entrepreneurs take their entire life savings and they risk it all to provide jobs and build an economy for the community. And people go, that's bad. No, that's the best thing ever. That's why I started this event only to celebrate business owners because I think they get beat up way, way, way too much. Talk about beating up social media. Yes, it gets beat up all the time you can get beat up on it.

Simon (17:50)

I get paid on every day.

Brad (17:51)

Really great parts about social media.

Simon (17:55)

I think that it's one of those things that I, I get if I. Sometimes I like playing around with conspiracy theories just because it's, because it's fun. You know, most, most things you can prove if it's true or not by following where the money goes.

Helen (18:06)

Yeah.

Simon (18:06)

Okay. Because most of it is just about who's making money out of that particular story or that particular lie or that particular take on things.

Brad (18:12)

And let's be honest, today it's Black State, Blackstone, State street and Vanguard. They're three that are making money out every day.

Simon (18:18)

They Damn. Oh, I'm not going to make money out of this podcast. I don't think. I don't know, I might be wrong, but, but they probably.

Brad (18:24)

I'm sure we're putting this on us.

Simon (18:25)

But I'm sure these phone mics are made by them.

Brad (18:27)

I mean they own all of the social media platforms between them. They own what, 7, 10, 20% of the social media platform.

Simon (18:34)

That's true. Well, the reason, the reason they own.

Brad (18:37)

Making the money right now.

Simon (18:38)

Yeah. Just listening to this, you're making them money. But I think, you know, this is the thing. I don't think there's anything wrong with people making money. I think it's, I think, I think it's important actually. I think wealth. I have this. I honestly believe if we can make. I watched, I went to Hong Kong in 1997 and when Hong Kong's being handed back to the Chinese by the British and I watched 400 million people come out of poverty into middle class in China. And that's why we don't have a war today. That fact that we, we China, not me, China, managed to help 400 million people come out of poverty is the reason China is not a war with America today. It is the reason, but because people.

Brad (19:18)

Don'T want to war because that's why China is winning. Because they don't go to war.

Simon (19:22)

Yeah.

Brad (19:22)

They don't waste, spend all of that money on war. They go and spend it all on investing in things they have.

Simon (19:28)

That's a whole political side that is weaker. Getting. The fact that I've studied a lot about soft power is incredibly powerful.

Helen (19:34)

They have.

Simon (19:35)

You're right. But I think this is the thing, isn't it? If you want to make a difference in this world, you've got to invest in people and things. And then if you do that, you'll make money. And I think there should be nothing wrong with that. And again, my, my, my conspiracy theory point around social media is it's actually a big leveling up tool. So, so actually social media, as much as it might have people in it that are bad players, it's a chance, if you're listening to this, to break through and beat Walmart. You, I get more views on my social media channel than the BBC. Right. With all their staff and all their broadcasts and their TV license income, we get more views than them. Right? Tell me a time in history. Okay, you can't buy a house. Forget that you're young, you can't buy a house.

Brad (20:16)

Joe Rogan won the election.

Simon (20:19)

Of course neutral media, it's not, not.

Brad (20:21)

On TV by going on a podcast.

Simon (20:24)

That's what I mean. This is what I mean. But if people are slowly waking up to it, but they're not taking action quick enough because what's going to happen is this is, this is like the wild, wild west. It's like the gold rush and you're going to be in the future personal brand and, and I have a personal brand is going to eat any other marketing strategy completely up. It's, it's, and it's a big opportunity. If you are someone listening to this podcast right now and you want to make something happen, you can beat the biggest companies in the world if you can go and leverage social media. And then, and so you know, I put one up video up yesterday, 60 million views in, in less than 12 hours, 60 million people have heard about my product and what I'm doing for free. In fact, no, no, worse than that. I made money. I made a video.

Brad (21:10)

It wasn't free. You made money.

Simon (21:11)

Yeah, it wasn't free. So people be like, oh, it's not free, is it? It's not free. You're right, you're right, it's not free. I already own the phone that I recorded it on and then I actually did pay.

Brad (21:21)

You have to pay the staff.

Simon (21:22)

But hold on a minute.

Helen (21:23)

Yeah.

Simon (21:23)

The video itself is making, well at the moment around £20,000 and my cost of execution is a thousand. So my marketing has made me profit. Plus it's free marketing.

Brad (21:34)

I don't think people understand though, the TikTok ification change of social media. It used to be you had to have the followers and if you didn't have followers, it didn't matter what you did, you couldn't blow up. Now with the interest based algorithms I can make a video and if it's a great content and a great subject that's timely that people want anyone now that is has been no good at. It can still blow up and viral right now.

Simon (22:01)

100% right. And I think that's the thing. But people don't realize that you don't even know. You don't even need to over engineer the video either. The best videos are ones literally cat on skateboard. You know, like if you can catch a cat on a skateboard and put it up on TikTok, you'll probably make money, you know, if your whole life.

Brad (22:20)

So I'm skateboard drinking juice.

Simon (22:22)

Yeah.

Brad (22:23)

Playing the right song.

Simon (22:24)

But that's what I mean. It's like it's sometimes more about creativity than it is about execution of the actual like editing and cameras and you know, and, and that's true. I. I've got 14.8 million followers. It's a useful metric from a point of view of like, are we attracting people to our community? I see them as community though. That number is a community. But the actual videos themselves, some get hundreds of millions of views and some get less than 10,000 views.

Brad (22:49)

You're not getting hundreds of millions unless it gets fed to non followers.

Simon (22:53)

Right.

Brad (22:54)

It's got to be fed to non followers, which means your followers watch enough of it to show the algorithm. This is a good video and I want to hop on video for a second. Your genius video people are still doing photographs and memes and stuff like that. How do we get people to just understand it's video today it's a bit.

Simon (23:15)

Like, you know, radio didn't die and radio will reach a certain amount. I listen to the radio in the morning when I'm going to take my son off to his forest stuff or whatever. So there's a moment when I listen to radio. So radio didn't die because there will always be a moment when people are listening to it. I think social media and in generally content frameworks will. What I've noticed LinkedIn last week is really now pushing video.

Helen (23:36)

Yeah.

Simon (23:36)

If you open up LinkedIn now, it's video.

Brad (23:39)

Will they go to 30 minutes though? That's my problem with no go to 30 minutes LinkedIn. If you're watching 30 minutes.

Simon (23:45)

Yeah, they'll. They'll be listening, I think. Will they be listening and LinkedIn do listen to me because they keep featuring me in their newsletter so I know they're listening. I think you should never restrict a user that makes total. If you've got a minute video, you got a 30 minute video. Again, I have put up a video two hours and 26 minutes. On YouTube, everybody told me no one will watch it. And 10 million people have watched that video in the last six months. And so if you can put value into two hours and 26 minutes, you can, you can put it up and people watch it. But if your value is only 1 minute, then put up 1 minute. If you put up a 1 minute 1 video on tick Tock, you can make money. You put a one minute video up, you won't make money. People don't, they make mistake of making one minute, one second to get the money and that's when the video doesn't do as well.

Brad (24:30)

Yeah, because that last 15 seconds no one watched.

Simon (24:33)

Exactly. So you, whatever, you know, when it comes to content, you do want to put as much fun. Again, people doing posts about like I see this all the time, very successful people. Oh, I've just won this award. I've just won that award. And they feel good putting up about themselves. No one cares.

Helen (24:47)

Right.

Brad (24:47)

Well you can put that in your stories, but don't make it a real post.

Simon (24:50)

Exactly. I think people, you know, don't be selfish. Can't put content up. The people value the people.

Brad (24:56)

Speaking Australian.

Simon (24:57)

Yeah, you're welcome. I'm hanging out. I'm feeling it, I'm feeling Australian right now. But like, you know, people don't, people don't realize when they're doing social media, you're actually trying to entertain.

Helen (25:05)

Yeah.

Simon (25:06)

So you want to put something up that's going to teach someone something, make them laugh or help them grow.

Brad (25:11)

Yeah, the three E's. Entertainment, education or emotion.

Simon (25:14)

Exactly, exactly. And so, but again, I know do.

Brad (25:16)

All three actually, if you can do.

Simon (25:18)

All three and people can't help themselves. I know someone's gonna listen to this right now and they're still going to post. Oh, I just, you know, I just won this award. Look, look, maybe you can say how you won the award. Yeah, that'll be more interesting.

Brad (25:29)

The story of what made this happen. Stories, people stories.

Simon (25:32)

Totally. And then how that, how this award has affected your business. Because that might make people go for an award. Like teach people some of the story.

Brad (25:39)

Of the customer you served that made the award happen. Exactly. You know, tell a story or the.

Simon (25:43)

Economics around the world. Anything other than you're brilliant.

Helen (25:46)

Yeah.

Simon (25:46)

You know, like people don't want to hear it. But that's 90% of content on social media. And then people tell me, I don't get any views, don't get likes. People send me links all the time. Now please, like my post. I look at them, I Don't like the post or what if I like the post? Oh, but yeah, please, if you like it, more people will watch it. If I like it, I'm endorsing it and I don't like it, you know.

Brad (26:04)

So, yeah, so social media can be used for good.

Simon (26:08)

I think it's the future of social media. I think it's, it's. There's a lot of people using social media for bad, so people need to get in there and, and make it. The Internet is good and bad. Right. This is. The history repeats itself. There are a lot of dark things happening on the Internet. There's also a lot of really amazing positive things. Someone's raising money right now on GoFundMe to fix problems in an earthquake zone. You know, the Internet can do incredible good, but you need to be in the arena making these tools do good. I tell this people there's a lot of people lobbying at the moment to ban social media for kids. And I totally understand why, but I'd say if you put that much energy instead of taking.

Brad (26:40)

Understand why I don't understand, Steve.

Simon (26:41)

Instead of taking the tool away from kids.

Helen (26:43)

Yeah.

Simon (26:44)

Why not help them leverage it for good? So get in there and put content on TikTok that. That's going to help those kids. That's what I'm doing.

Helen (26:50)

Yeah.

Simon (26:51)

Instead of saying, right, no, kids, don't go on TikTok. It's really bad for you. I'm putting content in there that's helping them.

Brad (26:56)

Yeah. My team have asked me to start a, a new podcast called My Rich Uncle.

Helen (27:00)

Right.

Brad (27:01)

And it was like all I would do is talk to young people about, well, just pretend I'm your rich uncle who actually gives you advice. Because every kid needs a rich uncle.

Simon (27:09)

Yeah, totally.

Brad (27:10)

They need someone that can tell them the, the actual reality of how money is made and how things work and how your first job should be to get a, a mentor. Your first job shouldn't be about how much money you make. It should be about who you're going to learn from.

Simon (27:23)

But you like the, the, the, the more successful Australian version of me because, because when we started this five years ago, I did a brand profile of myself. And basically I am the rich uncle that the, the, my, my, my brothers and sisters kids respect. So they come to you and say, simon, I really want to, you know, I don't want to do my gccs. What should I do? Or like, how do I make money? You know, like, that profile is quite, you know, who can you turn to? Isn't Bullshit.

Helen (27:47)

Yeah.

Simon (27:48)

He's going to tell you the truth. That's going to help you understand things from your point of view.

Brad (27:52)

I built the Action Coach foundation was built for one purpose and that was to help young people learn that you don't have to leave school and get a job. You can leave school and give people a job.

Helen (28:02)

Yeah.

Brad (28:03)

Be, don't be an employee, be an entrepreneur.

Helen (28:05)

Yeah.

Brad (28:06)

And because for me I didn't fit in as an employee as a kid. Like I lost a lot. I was, I was asked to move on from a lot of positions very early in my career because I didn't know how to be a good employee. I just was not. But as an entrepreneur I went. This is where I'm supposed to be. That, that didn't work for me. This works for me.

Simon (28:27)

So, so I, I am, I ask you a question. I get a lot of hate from people who say I, I'm saying everyone can be an entrepreneur. Not everyone should be. I think everyone has the ability to if they're given the tools. There's different types of entrepreneurs. There's, there's the Elon Musk's of this world on one extreme. And then you've got people that just want to do a flower business and enjoy it.

Brad (28:44)

I, I will agree with them on one because my definition of an entrepreneur is probably different to most. A business owner has one business. An entrepreneur buys and sells businesses, has multiple companies. There's a distinction in my mind. Everyone can be a business owner. Everyone can be self employed. In this day and age there is absolutely zero reason why you got a desk and a phone and a laptop. Start your own business.

Simon (29:11)

Don't even need a laptop.

Brad (29:13)

Get good at something though.

Simon (29:14)

Yeah, fair.

Brad (29:15)

If you want to start your own.

Simon (29:16)

Business and it could be you buying businesses, you don't even have to be an operator. You can be good at buying businesses.

Brad (29:22)

Absolutely. I've taught many people over the years how to buy companies. That and in this day and age, in fact right now is the biggest boom potential for that because you've got baby boomers who own the majority of employer based businesses. So companies with employees are owned by people who are wanting to retire right now. Now most of them won't be able to find a buyer because there's not enough entrepreneurialism in the, the next generation down and the generation below that. But if you learn how to buy them, you will actually be able to convince that seller to lend you the money to buy their business. Vendor financing because they won't have another buyer.

Simon (30:01)

This is Financial literacy you're touching on here, too. Like, people think they need money to start a business or buy a business. No, you don't. In fact, if you're hungry, and because you don't have money, more chance you'll be successful than those that have got money and not as hungry.

Helen (30:13)

Yeah.

Brad (30:14)

It's easier if you've got money, but.

Simon (30:16)

You don't have to. By the way, I've invested in over 80 companies and my experience has been sometimes the companies with too much money fail.

Brad (30:22)

Oh, yeah, because they, they buy brand new desks, brand new WeWorks.

Simon (30:27)

WeWorks isn't even checking the leases it's signing.

Helen (30:29)

Yeah.

Simon (30:29)

You know, like, you get. They got something like 20 billion in investment. Like, this is not healthy.

Helen (30:34)

Yeah.

Simon (30:35)

I think you've got to be innovative. Like, I act like I've got no money. I. I actually tell myself I've got no money. I have got money, but I tell myself I don't have it because I actually want to be innovative. I wouldn't have gone on TikTok, I wouldn't go into the street. I talked to my other millionaire friends about going into the. Why are you going to the street, Simon? What are you doing that for? But because I have, in my mind, I've got no money. How am I going to get this business working? How am I going to make this platform help people? I go into the street and ask people, what do you need? What help do you need? And so I wouldn't have done that if I thought, you know what? I'm going to hire a marketing company and a PR company. I'm going to sit in my ivory tower, my fancy office, and I'm not going to get out there and actually, like, dig, dig it. Dig this business into, into success.

Brad (31:10)

You know, the disease of looking good, going nowhere is right.

Simon (31:14)

There's a lot of people in that. That's a lot of people in, in jobs they hate.

Brad (31:17)

You know, I remember a guy wrote to me one time and he said, you know, I need your help.

Helen (31:20)

I've.

Brad (31:21)

My kids are in a private school and I have to drive a BMW to drive them off, but I'm going broken.

Simon (31:26)

Yeah.

Brad (31:26)

And I wrote back and go, do get out of the BMW. Put your kids in a normal school you can afford.

Simon (31:31)

Yeah, but. But what?

Brad (31:32)

My kids won't have the opportunity and all that sort of stuff. You know what? Your kids will have as much opportunity as they want.

Simon (31:38)

Absolutely.

Brad (31:38)

You know, you've just got to be better example. Be a better example of taking care.

Simon (31:43)

Of money and the number one thing I tell people is like, get your cost down. Like, most people are trapped by their own. That private school thing is a really big problem. I see a lot of people that are in bank jobs, they hate it. They're not helping society. Often they're having to extract money from people that can't afford it through things, bad mortgage structures. And they are literally like only doing all of that, that thing. They hate to put their kids in private school and they never see their kids because of it. Like, I've got a seven year old, all he really wants is my time.

Helen (32:08)

Yeah.

Brad (32:09)

You know kids spell love T, I, M, E, right? That's how they spell it. Yeah.

Simon (32:12)

Yeah.

Brad (32:12)

You sit on the floor with your kid, they are more loved than if you bring them home some gift.

Simon (32:17)

Yeah. You can do both. It's good.

Brad (32:19)

Yeah. I discovered I'm an.

Simon (32:20)

My kid loves lego.

Brad (32:21)

Definite end person.

Simon (32:22)

Yeah.

Brad (32:23)

I wanted a new car and people say, oh, what car are you getting rid of? Getting. It's just an end.

Simon (32:28)

Yeah, it's just an end. No, I think, I think having the option to do it. I think to me the definition of entrepreneurship, by the way, is owning your own time and being able to buy time, not sell time. I think owning time, time is the most valuable asset. Like, I just think that that is one. People don't spend enough money on buying themselves time.

Helen (32:45)

Yeah.

Brad (32:45)

Someone said to me when I was a kid, poor people spend time to save money, rich people spend money to save time.

Simon (32:51)

Totally. Yeah. I was, I went to a restaurant yesterday and, and there was a 20 minute wait. So I said to the waiter, I'll give you £10,000 to sit me now, because that's only thing of value money brings. Saves you 20 minutes.

Brad (33:04)

Did he take.

Simon (33:05)

He didn't take it. And I, and I, and I. And I understand why. It was like an ethics thing. Right, I get it. But you know, I think what I wanted to do, he said, no, I can't. That's not right. I was like, listen, this is what you should do. You should take half of this money and go to the table. You were about to sit down and say, do they want £5,000? And to wait 20 minutes?

Helen (33:23)

Yeah.

Simon (33:23)

100% guarantee you they'll do it.

Brad (33:25)

I would have said one.

Simon (33:26)

And then you made five grand by making those people wait 20 minutes. Yeah, but I know the only thing of value is that 20 minutes.

Brad (33:34)

It's crazy that we live in an age where social media connects so much of us, but loneliness has become sort of an epidemic. Out there in the world, what are you seeing with that and how that's playing out?

Simon (33:47)

It's quite scary. And this is why, again, I believe social media has the chance to fix and not be the problem. I have literally made friends through my social media. I've never met them. Now, I think this started during COVID because if you'd asked me before COVID can you make friends with someone about meeting them? I'd say no, I need to sit with you. Touch?

Helen (34:06)

Yeah.

Simon (34:07)

See you, aura. I get it, I get it. And it does, it does, it does have something to it. But equally, I have now realized that connection is connection.

Helen (34:15)

Yeah.

Simon (34:15)

And when someone is your type of person and. Or has that thing that you connect to, it does. So social media has the chance for you to make friends. And that's what's happening for a lot of young kids, by the way. This is what they're doing. They're going on social media to have a connection because they're in a school and, and the school itself, the people in that school, they don't have a connection to them for whatever reason, they're being bullied or this or that. So where are they going for connection? They're going online, they're looking for other people that have been bullied or they're looking for other people who feel disenfranchised as a young man, not feeling like they're understood. And they're then ending up sometimes in the wrong algorithms being told by the wrong influencers what to do. But. And that again, another reason that we need to.

Brad (34:55)

Wrong videos. And then they're fed a million. Wrong.

Simon (34:58)

Well, this. That's it. But, but that connection is there and I think we need to accept that that's going to happen and then again, educate people, especially young people, about what life they could have and use that community. So, for example, I've recently started going back to the gym quite a lot. Accountability is really powerful. So if you are in a community on social media where you're all going to the gym and you're putting up a video each day of you going to the gym, I don't have to live in the same country as you even for that to feel like we're in it together, you're getting fit, I'm getting fit. I put my video up there. You put your video up today. I didn't put my video up. Why? I got sick. Are you okay? Community. You know, I think it's such a powerful opportunity. If we frame it properly, of course, we can say, oh, well, you know, my kids are watching the wrong person. That's true. Educate your kids. Don't take the phone off them and tell them not to do it. Educating the difference, make them understand the difference between a good algorithm and a bad algorithm.

Brad (35:50)

It's, it's, you know, raising kids is a lot of work because you have to do those things. You have to have the conversations. And I know with my older kids how well I listened to them when they were young, determine how well they listened to me as they got older. And I told them all, at some stage you're going to recognize, dad is stupid. Teenage years. It's gonna happen. And then somewhere in your 20s you're gonna recognize that maybe I'm not as dumb as you thought I was.

Simon (36:18)

Yeah, hopefully. I hope my kid will. Will I live that long before my kid will see that?

Brad (36:22)

My experience shows that so far out of the five, it's, it's coming true that way.

Simon (36:27)

But yeah, no, that's so true. My 7 year old is definitely smarter than me. I mean, kids teach you stuff. I think that's the beautiful thing about having kids. I never quite understood you're not really there to teach them stuff. He reminds me of like how cool a double decker bus is. I forgot how cool the double decker buses. I thought they were a bit annoying and they were very loud. He's like, look, that is cool, isn't it? I'm like, actually it is cool. You know, so they teach you stuff, don't they?

Brad (36:47)

So final area then. Personal branding you've touched on a couple of times. Why do it, how to do it?

Simon (36:53)

Okay, so first of all, if I tell your listeners, you must start personal branding, you, lot of people go, oh, I can't be bothered with social media. It's not really about social media. People are going to talk about you if you're in the room or not. And you know, and frankly, depending on your business, that whole like attraction can create businesses. So for example, you know, what's the line? It's like you can talk bad about me or you can talk good about me. Just be talking about me, you know, And I think, I think that kind of like personifies if you look at history and the success of businesses in the last, say 20 years, you know, Facebook started off by creating attention. Everyone comes to a platform. This is kind of the first wave of, of modern marketing, right? Facebook becomes, and all these apps, all these platforms become trillion dollar companies. They basically create attention. Attention goes to the platform. They become worth trillions of dollars. The next phase was layered on top. You've got like Snapchat, let's say or TikTok. These are apps that sit in a similar space. They also then attract the attention and become trillion dollar businesses. The next big one right in front of our face that no one seems to quite see and I see it because I'm in it is personal brand. So I have 14.8 million followers. I get 450 plus million views a month. I can launch a business today for zero marketing cost. That can be bigger than most people listening to this business. They've been running it for 10 years. I can launch a chocolate brand. I can launch a. This is what's happened. Mr. Beast, he launched a chocolate brand. It's now one of the biggest chocolate brands in the world. I can launch a drinks brand.

Brad (38:18)

Trust me, my son wanted the MrBeast chocolate.

Simon (38:20)

This is what I'm talking about. Like I don't. It's. It's. But personal brand. Let's just take step one. For those that are listening and think I can't be bothered to go on social media. First of all, shake that from your subconscious because it's just stupid. But let's just say that's step one. You don't want to go into social media. What is your personal brand? Have you written down a business plan for your personal brand? Who are you? What are your values? What are your red lines? What's your kind of purpose? Why are you here? How are you going to do it when you're not in the room? What do you want people to say about you? And so people don't do that. They do it maybe for a company. Not even everyone does that. Branding is totally overlooked in most businesses. Branding is where value is build a brand, not a business. Brand is where the value is.

Brad (39:00)

We, we see this in hundreds and hundreds of examples. The Jenners, the Kardashians. That kid became a billionaire overnight because of her personal brand. But people her mom had taught her to have a personal brand for 20 years.

Simon (39:17)

But the problem with those case studies is that people that are listening are thinking, well, I'm not a Kardashian, am I?

Brad (39:23)

But here's the thing. There is now it's you don't have to be on television. What took luck and connections. Connections and someone totally king you and the the universe all aligning for you to get on television.

Simon (39:40)

Exactly.

Brad (39:40)

You don't need it anymore. You just need to be good at something and communicate it to the world.

Simon (39:46)

And it could be good at crafting something with wood and you've got live streaming of it or you're videoing it. It doesn't have to be your face on camera. Don't get sucked into like talking heads. That's the only way, you know, like.

Brad (39:58)

The anonymous channels make as much or.

Simon (40:01)

More money, much more. There's a guy on YouTube is doing fireplaces who's making millions a week. He just recorded fireplaces and then people put that fireplace on their tv. He's making millions a week.

Brad (40:11)

A good friend.

Simon (40:12)

It's a whole new world.

Brad (40:13)

I remember the guys that went and played pianos out in the middle of the woods, right?

Simon (40:17)

And it's like, oh, millions.

Brad (40:18)

I like listening to the guys and watching photographs of the.

Simon (40:21)

There's a guy that records the plows farming the fields. Oh yeah, and he's making lawnmower guy.

Brad (40:29)

I got sucked into the lawnmower guy every day.

Simon (40:31)

Let me tell.

Brad (40:32)

He does power washing and it's like, holy, I'm power washing guy now. Really, I'm watching that.

Simon (40:36)

But this is the thing. I think whoever's listening, please remove your subconscious bias to all this stuff because you, you, you, if you are finding it hard to make ends meet and you can't own a home, it is very frustrating for people. But the exciting news is that although right now you can't own a home, you have this access to this reach and to this ability to create a business can compete with Walmart in a week. You can be competing with Walmart in a week. You just need one video to go viral. You're competing with Walmart in a week. This is amazing. And that's why I think everyone could be an entrepreneur because it's like this is this never. If you've got a phone, you're probably listening to this on a phone. You've got all the infrastructure you need. Fucking go do it now.

Brad (41:18)

I love that TikTok finally started rewarding at a level that made sense for content creators. Do you think the other guys will ever catch up?

Simon (41:26)

TikTok is not paying people enough for their content. I'm part of that creative fund. They're not.

Brad (41:30)

But again, they're paying more than everybody else.

Simon (41:33)

YouTube's paying number one. Yeah, YouTube's number one. Snapchat's making a big push. Instagram, you make no money on any of the content. But it's all about brand deals and partnerships. You see the matrix of making money on social media. If you have a product to sell, which is probably the, you know, low hanging fruit is, you know, have a product to sell, it could be Someone else's product have a product to sell, that's the low hanging fruit. With things like TikTok shop, you can make a lot of money on that. I had this recently, a marketing person being five years studying marketing, a very well university, very well known university, spent £65,000 on this education. I said to him, what are the four ways you make money on TikTok? They've got no idea. Right, so let me quickly tell you what a £60,000 marketing degree should look like. You make money going live. People like what you're saying, they like what you're offering, they like what you're talking about, they believe in you, they just like you. You make them laugh, they'll give you tips instantly.

Helen (42:25)

Right.

Simon (42:26)

I did one live a little while ago, I got about £8,000 in an hour. Right Now I give all my money away. I have a different strategy, that's up to me. But what I'm saying is if you're a single mother sitting at home right now struggling, maybe you can make a bit of money from that. So tipping second element is the videos themselves. Let's say TikTok in particular does pay per view. So if you make business content, you get more money than if you say make lifestyle content. So the purview revenue is dictated by the type of content you put out there. But if you get a million view video, you're going to make on average a couple of thousand pounds then. The final thing that I think people don't understand is there's so many brands out there that are so on social media, no one wants to hear from any of these brands. They need you.

Helen (43:07)

Yeah.

Simon (43:08)

So you will get brand deals coming out your backside because they can't go on TV anymore. No one's watching it. So what do they do? They'll find you on social media. So then that's just instantly three instant ways. There's loads of other things about it, like product placement, opportunities to do, you know, co branded communities. You can get subscribers which pay you a monthly fee. I mean I've got subscribers paying me a monthly fee and I, and I give them nothing. I give them nothing. And they're doing it to support what I'm doing. Yeah, I didn't even ask them to. And they're paying me 5.99amonth, like I'm Netflix. Right. It's, it, it's crazy. And, and I think it's exciting because communities can support you. If you're a single mother struggling right now, there's a community out there will Support you. There'll be people that will get behind you. If you're genuine and you're honest and you're not doing as a trick and you need a bit of help, people are nice. These platforms give you a chance to touch.

Brad (43:53)

If you're a single mother, straddling. Telling your story on there will actually work.

Simon (43:59)

It will work.

Brad (44:00)

Just tell them what you're going through. People, people love story. They love getting in with other people.

Simon (44:06)

Who want to help.

Brad (44:07)

Always finish with one thing. Best advice you ever got on success and who gave it to you and why is it important to you?

Simon (44:17)

I think the. Well, I'll reframe the question slightly, if it's okay. I think the most important thing that ever happened to me is I accidentally got a wife as a mentor. So my. My wife Helen, who we've been together 23 years now. When I first started building Fluid, this agency that did really well, I. I was quite selfish, and she made me a better person. In 20, 20, and 3. We had SARS in Hong Kong, which is kind of COVID 1.0 for those that don't know, is the beginnings of that kind of problem where a disease hit the city and the whole city had to shut down. And we had a financial problem where we couldn't pay our staff. And my instinct back then was we had to pay ourselves as business owners, because otherwise, you know, we put our own oxygen masks on first, is what we're taught, right? My own oxygen mask on first, because if I don't survive, it all dies, and we'll pay everyone else later. And Helen said to me, she said, no, Simon, these people have mortgages and responsibility and rent to pay. And we had to pay them first because we promised them we would, right? So I drained our bank account to pay everybody on the first of the month. And then we had no money for ourselves. Literally no money. No money for food, no money to pay our rent, nothing. And I was like, this is a nightmare.

Brad (45:40)

Now what?

Simon (45:41)

And luckily, everyone kept working. A client who owed us a lot of money paid us, despite saying they couldn't. And it all eased up, and we had about 20 days where me and Helen were behind on everything. We got paid. It all worked out. Now, the important thing is, in 45 years of doing business, I've never missed payroll. I would have done that day, I would have done, if I hadn't had the right person in my life at that moment, showing me the difference between right and wrong, right? Because I was taught to put my own mask on first. But If I had done that, those people would have lost faith that I was there to help them and they would have seen I was just there to help myself and they would have left. And if they'd left, I wouldn't have done the work, I wouldn't have got paid, we would have died. I would have died putting my own mask on first. And so I reframe it a little because I think it's not one person necessarily or one bit of advice. It's an experience I've had that actually helping other people has helped me survive. And I think we have that now, right now, today, if we don't help other people, I don't care how rich you are, you're going to live in a nightmare world. And I don't care how poor you are, you've got four minutes to help someone today. Stop making excuses. And if you help someone today for four minutes, they'll help you. Someone will help you, right? We can all help someone today. So I think, yeah, I think for me it was Helen, but that bit, the experience of, like, don't. What you think you think is true isn't true. Question everything. Probably the line. I question everything. Probably be a line. I give people's advice. Question everything. Everything you think is true. What your subconscious has told you is true is probably not true.

Brad (47:10)

We'll be back next week with more of your success. Hit the show notes and share and.