S2 #18 James Uffindell | The Purposeful Project Podcast

Key Takeaways

[Music] welcome to this week's episode of the good luck club podcast our mission here is to help one million people start a business of their own we believe no one is born anything not a doctor not a lawyer of course not an entrepreneur we can all be trained to be these things there's many different types of doctors there's many different types of lawyers they all require different skills the question isn't are you an entrepreneur but what type of entrepreneur are you and then what resources do you need to become the entrepreneur you want to become my guest this week is james affindel founder and ceo of bright network i think you're going to really enjoy his insights story and business model james welcome thanks simon really great to be on the podcast lovely if you could start off by just telling the audience a little bit about yourself and what you're doing thanks so much james offendall i have always been an entrepreneur actually i'm sure maybe i'll talk about in a bit more detail started my first business from my student bedroom but um had other businesses before that and uh my current and at the moment kind of like kind of core mission um is i'm the founder and ceo of bright network which i set up uh in 2013 having built and kind of scaled and sold my first business i set up right now in 2013 and we are building the workforce of tomorrow um so our ambition is to help bright young people um fulfill their potential in the world of work we have about 400 000 young people um over 400 000 young people on our network it's all free for them so we call it the career service you never had and on the other side it's all paid for by about 250 um top employers so everybody from the likes of google goldman sachs pwc these employers fund our work to upskill inspire and connect to the next generation it's really amazing what you're doing i've been one year myself trying to help young people with starting businesses and and your organization always comes up people just really loving what you're doing so thank you for helping people right now i think right now more than ever this is really quite needed so um fantastic job i wanted to ask you we appreciate the kind words well no it's a world well deserved um just just looking back at your history i think when people um tune into our podcast they want to understand how it happens how do people become entrepreneurs how does it happen i look back at your career and basically on linkedin you know you've pretty much been an entrepreneur ever since you started you know listing what you do on linkedin but how did it start did it start family how did it all begin it's a very incredible interesting question kind of art and it wasn't one that fascinates me kind of our entrepreneurs kind of made or are they born so i don't i said always i'd always been entrepreneurial i'd always had kind of ideas about um how things can maybe work better and how things can be different um and my very first business actually my mum sent me a photo of the day which kind of really wowed me it was me aged about i know probably about eight or nine maybe even younger and i had a table outside the cottage we lived in and i was selling uh selling conkers um to the kids in the village which was i think quite a thing given there's a conquer tree just down the road and i also noticed on it there is a sign um and all the money from this con this conch adventure adventure was going to the uh the cornish seal sanctuary which is where we used to go on holiday um and and that was a real memory and my dad likes to remind me as a kid probably about i don't know five or six i used to ground up bricks and try and sell them as ant dust to kill the ants because i think they might have had some amps running around or something so i'd always been that entrepreneurial kind of character and school i used to sell sweets out of my locker to undercut the school um canteen or tuck shop or whatever used to go to the cash from carricks i think i'd always had that uh where did that come from i i don't know i mean growing up um mum and dad got divorced when i was um when i was when i was young when i was three um there's a lot of kind of change i'd say in my family growing up and that i'm very lucky that um they're both amazing parents but you know fundamentally brought up by a um a kind of a single kind of working mum i suppose and both my parents kind of remarried and i think there's a lot of probably changed i was probably used to change and uncertainty and newness and then and then having to adapt to kind of different situations kind of um step siblings step parents etc etc and and i spent a lot of time with my dad and which was great my dad was actually a shepherd so he believe it or not you know they both left school at 16. um mom was the secretary dad was a shepherd and and actually interesting i'd kind of watch him because he's you know his his day job was being paid the car for other people's sheep but then actually started to buy his own sheep and then and then he basically started selling his own meat he sat this little it was literally like a cupboard um on in the middle of nowhere selling his own meat and so i think watching him and and then listing it all together and people often say you know well how do you start your own business but i think you know fundamentally it's just about getting a product and supply to a customer if you're very focused on keeping your customer happy then that's good um so yeah watching watching him was definitely kind of helpful um but yeah i mean it's interesting i don't know where it comes from ultimately but i completely agree with what you said in your opening statement about everybody has to be entrepreneurial now like the reid hoffman book um the the startup of you and everybody now has to kind of think entrepreneurially if not be um you know run their own business in terms in terms of being a typical entrepreneur and some of my best friends are entrepreneurs they work inside companies leveraging their entrepreneurial knowledge and skill so it is definitely a skill set more than anything else i think that people can learn agree more and it's important we need it now more than ever particularly obviously with um with covert 19 how we build that better the challenge we've got around kind of climate change um automation with with ai the whole concept of a job for life now is i think obviously anathema and there's a brilliant book called the 100 year life which kind of paints a wonderful story about really excitingly we're all living longer now so the queen used to have one person that would write a letters to people when they hit 100 and she now has i think seven and we're all living a lot longer so the idea of a three-stage career education work and then retirement the problem now is if you retire at 60 you might be retired for longer than you actually worked so we all need to be kind of entrepreneur in terms of i think managing our careers and those skills are essentially about i think managing risk seeing opportunities trying to do things better i completely agree those skills can all be developed and and learn and also it is it is also a mindset thing and that too can be worked on yeah it's also um you know part of the opportunity right now given how technology is kind of freeing us all from frankly the office before covid we were you know free of the office really if we wanted to be and and the opportunity in the shared economy is is there but but your point about ai is also quite an important one too i mean technology is going to disrupt those that don't innovate so you also have to retrain yourself in a way absolutely and that ongoing experience in learning something we're really passionate about at bright network um with our 400 000 kind of young people how we equip them for the world workers is super critical to us on our mission um and there's all sorts of funny things going on so 25 of graduates um are in jobs that don't require a graduate degree for example so how do we make sure they're kind of educated and equipped the right way one things we did when covert hits was we could see cobra was coming we can see and work experience is so important for young people and we could see face-to-face internships are being cancelled left right and center so very quickly we spun up it took about six weeks we spun up something called internship experience uk we launched that at the beginning of i think beginning of may so covered obviously hit kind of like mid-march i think we launched it in may and you know students wanted more experience firms still wanted to access talent and we we built a coalition over 120 20 partners everybody from cbi tech uk and then we delivered a million hours of online learning through the summer and and we had over 120 000 applications for young people and they were basically doing three-day three-day virtual um internship experiences but what was wonderful that to see in our team i mean we're a small team with 45 people at bright network was was at the start of the year there were no plans to to to do this and it became the biggest thing we did in the year and to watch the team kind of do all the business as usual um stuff they were doing but also do this it was remarkable and one of our one of our three values is growth mindset so it was incredible to see them spin that up so fascinating and i i want to interview your dad and ask um he was looking after someone else's sheep and then he took the plunge and started his own in any any why would he reply why did he do that oh that's a great question why would he do that i think why did he do i should ask him actually let's ask him let's do it as an add-on later i'd love to i'd love to know what what changed you know what made i'm going to ask him actually he went from a steady salary you know he went from that kind of safe structure you know took some of the money he was making him sure it wasn't loads of money and bought some sheep that's all a bit of a risk isn't it interesting yeah well he'd always been quite kind of like entrepreneurial minded remember one of his first ventures um because obviously you know in the don't i mean this was obviously back in the 70s and 80s the dark and the rain and the wind and he'd be like up on the doing the lambing right and he invented this kind of heater box which is about keeping the lambs warm as the lambs were born and to try and kind of uh kind of uh help them and i think i think um yeah that whole idea of kind of shepherding and helping and supporting i i i there's definitely something in there in terms of now kind of thinking of how i think about the the bright network members and like creating and helping their careers all the way through but yeah it's an interesting question i don't know where he where he where he why he decided to to to take that risk and where these ideas come from is i think is absolutely fascinating also just a shout out for your mother i think anyone who's a single parent bring up a child wow i mean i've got a three-year-old and now i've got help and my wife and myself and we are all very tired so i really appreciate that she'll it's interesting with parents isn't it kind of what you learn and and um and yeah i was very very lucky with both my parents but um my mom she's an amazing woman she has phenomenal tenacity and resilience and while she you know she was she was you know kind of a secretary in the local company and um and then actually she got promoted to kind of a sales manager and but kind of that idea like going you know working single mom and um you know through a three-year-old a three-year-old kid but she she has just phenomenal tenacity and i you know i as i you know self-reflect i guess as we all do on our own careers um obviously being entrepreneurial there are multiple setbacks like all the time like one of my favorite quotes is that japanese saying get knocked down seven times get up eight times i guess if you just refuse to get to give up and and i you know i love endurance sports like things like kind of marathons and triathlons and that kind of like that i definitely i'm a i'm very bad athlete by the way i'm not i'm not athletically gifted sadly but the things i do like doing like cycling at kind of massive mountains that kind of stuff whilst i'm often at the back um i do like that kind of challenge point and that's nasty point so kept referencing your point on parents i think um yeah my my mom has absolutely kind of phenomenal levels of tenacity and um and i think yeah going back to your talking around entrepreneurship i think you can pick up things from from everybody and learn kind of learn from everybody around you yeah and i often say to people if your parents aren't inspiring you find someone that is but i think that there's a book called bringing up boys which um i think is really good but it talks about probably i think what's caused you to be what you're doing very purpose driven person comes from actually father it comes from the mother i mean for the son it comes from the mother so that's why you know my wife actually works as well and i think it's really important for my son to see that especially if we're trying to break cultural biases as well you know like that my wife works and we co-parent it's not just my wife's responsibility to look after my son and my son will grow up realizing we're equal and it really starts at that young age and it sounds like that naturally happened to you which is awesome absolutely and i i i believe that as well um around you know you you can learn absolutely you can learn from everybody and finding finding other mentors and one of the things that brought me into bright network was um as my first organization for my student bedroom that was a help about helping get students into universities because um uh i i was very lucky i went to um i went to a good university i went to oxford but my school didn't send lots of people to oxford and cambridge when i got there i realized um that there was a challenge in terms of um basically kind of kids from certain backgrounds not not applying to university or not applying to those kind of those kind of top universities so yes sir actually there is no problem was that this is 1999 on your oxford applications business yeah so but was that because people didn't believe that they could get in so it didn't apply was that the problem that was that was the big um that was the that was the big kind of thing i noticed anyway so i i basically um went went to oxford as i said my school didn't send um send many people talks and games when i got there i realized that you know how often there are some schools that were sending literally a hundred kids a year to oxford in cambridge and they had two things they were they were believing in those students and um and uh encouraging them to apply and then secondly when they were applying they're equipping them with essentially you know a i would call it a bit of a um an advantage in terms of how they approach the application system and and i thought when i um i saw based on some of my second year i worked in a um works in the pub and then i went into railing um where i'm not sure we've done it but i'd highly recommend it to anybody i think it's under the age 26 you can buy a ticket and just basically jump on a train and went off with a mate and this idea came to me that that that what i should do is like um try and spread the knowledge around and so yeah that was my first venture which i started in my uh in my bedroom at my a university and i and i built it up and sold that to private in in 2013. so you know there's there's so many things i want to unpack from this i think it's really important my audience don't miss the really i think a really really crucial point you're making here which is my view it's important to fail to but but to try and and so you know applying to oxford high chance you'll get rejected but if you don't try right i think there's such an important lesson there that it sounds like i mean why did your school who doesn't normally put so many people forward put you forward was it was it was it a pressure from your family side or was it just they spotted the talent in you or luck so it's part of the it comes everything down slightly to the power of the individual so yes basically i got lucky because an incredible teacher arrived um when i moved into sixth form and he he was an oxford graduate and he he basically encouraged me to apply i wouldn't have applied definitely would not have applied without him if i had applied i definitely wouldn't have got in so so that that teacher absolutely um and i never i've never thought about that before i've never thought about it's a really interesting thing to reflect on because and also like my life hopefully would it would have been fine if i've gone to any any university and i'm a big believer in just constantly making the best of those circumstances but i completely agree with your point around risk of failure and and um and what i was saying earlier about i think being entrepreneurs about managing risk and i've just finished uh i think it's called um invent and wonder which is jeff bezos's uh most recent book and he gives a brilliant example of um the uh the fire phone so amazon had a go at making a mobile phone which um i think this was like kind of 10 or 15 years ago complete failure didn't work they burnt loads of cash but out of it came um alexa and echo in terms of the similar type of the type of technology around around voice and search et cetera so and and this whole book is all about the importance of of of uh of risk and and and failure is a wonderful wonderful teacher um you don't really learn much from winning you just learned you did the right thing um but actually you only do learn from your failures because then you think about how you iterate and you improve and you develop the next time so yeah and i i could i could talk to you for five hours let alone one hour about all my many many failures in life and all the things that have gone wrong but i do think that is the only way you can grow and develop the butterfly not the only way um there's other ways as well but i think it's the key way no i know what you mean it's it's a fascinating butterfly effect to watch how people's lives unfold actually really anchored around this point which is taking that chance trying things willing to fail um and and i think this application point you're making it you know you look what you're doing today i would argue you'd be doing something else perhaps but you wouldn't be doing what you are doing today if that process hadn't played out like that if that teacher hadn't come into your life influenced you supported you believed in you and then my instinct is you really worked hard on the application and you put a lot of effort into making sure that you know your chances of success were high absolutely and i completely agree the point i think that talent talent is everywhere or opportunity isn't um and if you think about the human race if you go all the way back to all the millennia you know we were fundamentally all just running around in caves and hunting mammoths and we've progressed to the state state we're in we obviously have multiple challenges which we need to address as um as as a race at the moment as a side not in terms of global societies but you know it just shows that ability that the talent if supported the right way can do great things and we're ultimately standing on on the shoulders of giants and and then how you point that talent the right direction unleash it and one of the things um absolutely to your point there that really galvanize our mission at bryan network is taking these really super bright kids so it's the next you know the the we've gotten they've got into their universities so currently we're just focused on graduates or undergraduates we may expand that but currently it's just focused on undergraduates and and that actually came about which i'm going to later is because of my own experience of these these students i'd helped apply to university coming back to me being like how do i now connect with the world of work and i thought surely it's not as bad as when i was at university but the most satisfying thing at bright network is taking these members so their members is all free and then getting them their first job and and the reason the organizations we work with and we're so lucky with all the incredible global businesses that we work with is they they genuinely want to find the best talent because talent is the number one thing that ceos think about when it comes to their businesses and our technology so we've got about 70 million kind of data points on our network of 400 000 the way i think about it is is the tap on your shoulder so if you're lucky enough to be born into a professional kind of like a professional services family or kind of a well-connected wealthy family you're constantly getting the tap on the shoulder so when i was at university i remember there's a guy and one of my kind of contemporaries and he ran off in the second year to go and do a vacation scheme and i was like 19 i i was like what the hell is a vacation scheme i've got no idea what it is and he was doing it because his sister had done what it is it's something for those not no it's basically an internship for lawyers right so it's just a assistant phrase it's an internship to be a lawyer so if you want to be a lawyer um mostly you will need to do a vacation scheme all the time but i had no idea what this was and he then became a lawyer right you know big city job high earning because his essentially had that inside kind of track so what we do with our network is try and replicate that and say look if you come from a low-income background um kind of wherever you come from but you know you've got xyz we can then help employers give you that tap on the shoulder using um using what we know about you and the great thing now is our members they trust us more and more um so our mps score is actually um i think it's about 75 currently it's actually higher than airbnb apple etc um in terms of our trust point because we treat each one of our members as um as part of a really kind of um you know we treat them really really well but because of the 70 million data points we can say for example um we you know we're just introducing psychometric testing um but we can say look you know you are x y and z firm x wants x y and z you should go and do this and it's so unleashing that potential and seeing them get there get their roles is brilliant and also it's great for us as a business because um word of mouth marketing is as we know it's it's free and people trust it and if you've and we think about our members as as um as our as kind of like the key our key partners and if they love the products and services all for free then they're more likely to tell other people it's uh it's very interesting there's another a nugget here i don't want my audience to miss which is a in my view around the access you have to opportunities and i think a lot a lot of people i i hope quite a big following tick tock and a lot of people when i talk on tick tock will complain you know um or you know the rich get richer right so you're connected you're kind of talking about it here a little bit you know you're in the right network so but i think the opportunity with a platform like yours and i think what's happening now with the decentralization of of everything actually there is an opportunity for you to go and be a part of any network you want if you can have some clear idea what it is that you want right so if you can get the tools and education to figure out what you want and that can get you can get that from youtube frankly you can get inspired by an individual and but then you need to place yourself in the right networks again get the same access that perhaps i would say 20 30 years ago people were going to oxford got but now it's it's decentralized right it's it's the opportunities out there i completely agree and it's quite interesting watching this in terms of what we do around kind of basically from graduates into first jobs i think initially when uh it's probably ten years ago kind of the conversations properly really started around um diversity inclusion social mobility i think a lot of the big corporates were probably a bit kind of worried they didn't you know the routers they were a lot of them were stuffed with you know kind of white middle class males um they they were in slightly panic mode there was a slight sense of like we need to do something because we need to do something whereas now and this is an exciting thing around i think convergence of everything from um kind of neuroscience psychology education all the data shows that uh you know obviously if you want to succeed in business have a great business you need the best people because businesses don't actually exist they're just collections of people right there they're um they are an amalgamation of talent and if you want that then you need to access that best talent so how you go about doing it so to your point absolutely if you're if you've got those qualities and you're kind of you know you're hungry you're driven you want to succeed etc etc that then then i think there's a plethora of opportunities out there for you um so yeah i think i i i couldn't agree more i think there's there's there's a ton of opportunity out there oh it's fascinating i i just wanted to go back and look at your history again because i think people can get a lot of learnings from from from your process so so i can see you know 1999 2013 you build oxford applications you sell it that that's amazing i mean it's not an overnight success because there's 14 years worth of work there but i noticed last year i was still at uni so i was doing my uh somehow doing fine i mean upstairs is crazy system where you don't really have any coursework and you just you just have these things called finals it's like this these two weeks ridiculous um exams but i was uh yeah i was basically doing but doing the research essentially what i was doing was i was studying success i was trying to work out why people who got in i was getting people to do questionnaires understanding why people who got in to package it all up and then yeah did it so the last year was kind of like the foundation laying and then and then i started the business yeah so yeah but it was yeah technically 14 years yeah i feel like asking you what's the key and i'm sure you're going to say apply the key is you know if you don't apply you definitely won't get in right you've got to you've got to you've got to be in the race to get in if that is your ambition and just to be clear like you know yes i went to oxford but but it's not for everybody um i think there's a lot of like pros and cons um and but absolutely here's something one aspires to and i think absolutely kind of applying the apply in the first place and i think actually interestingly coming back to the point you're making there about kind of failure i mean we've got a big problem to start at the moment of kind of all these kind of glittering a stars and these exam factories and essentially um you know all these kind of really um these places that seem to be producing very unhappy children who are you know who are kind of you know ticking all the grades on um getting all the grades but maybe kind of aren't you know um where they where where uh where where in terms of uh maybe aren't in an ideal space but i think coming back to the point around failure the big thing that um oxford and cambridge look for is kind of i guess kind of curiosity in mind being okay with ideas you don't understand so the whole the whole interview process in my opinion is a having i guess you know been supporting people or supported people for 13 years through it and we had a network of about 3 000 um graduates who then do a lot of the mentoring and support for our members and we were doing thousands and thousand mock interviews and we had um you know a whole range of experts but the biggest thing is you know when you get thrown a new a new concept in your interview how do you respond and are you okay with new ideas which obviously are very relevant to kind of the idea of failing and entrepreneurship but it's how it's the process and how you go about it it's not thinking there's some perfect answer and we'd see these kids who you know would be you know 10 stars the most kind of acting right but they would they'd been essentially so prepped through the machine that that when they were presented with a new concept new idea they just because they didn't know the answer they'd freak out it just dawned on me this teacher that um believed in you and put you forward you've kind of taken that teacher encouragement support model and scaled it that's kind of what you did um and i i want to see right that's exactly that's exactly what we've done and the idea and i'm pretty sure there's some research on this i don't know for sure but in terms of and young or anybody fulfilling their potential idea of having somebody believe in you i'm pretty sure it may have been proven if it hasn't this is me just um kind of espousing but i think having somebody believe in you is a huge factor in one's success um so you think about you know they talk about like the elites like the david camerons or whatever and they you know they talk about like entitlement culture but if you're if you've always had somebody believe in you and tell you that you can do it then you kind of just think well obviously i i i can do this so so that's that's actually what we're trying to do with bright network we're trying to take what those kids are lucky enough to get if they get born in certain backgrounds and you know they go to top private schools and they have villas and you know that kind of stuff and they have that wonderful kind of upbringing um which you know nobody i think you know can progress on that but it's like but taking that and then putting that into bright network through um through digital scale so what we can do because obviously that's very hard to do with a personal element so we're 45 people in the business but we support a network of 400 000 with technology and digital communications you can then personalize and that's where we get so much growth because we know so much about our members then because we trust them and you know we support them we're ethical we're doing the right thing we constantly got their back so yeah it's it's a really nice observation thank you because i've never i kind of thought about a bit subconsciously but i think you're right i think that's what we're trying to do yeah it's uh it's it's i guess so important people that affect your lives in this way and give you this insight and and i think you maybe think that nike need to update their saying that they're basically saying just do it but i think they should say you can do it absolutely and i i i that kind of believing in aspiration ambition you can go further um and and one of the things i'm really think about a lot at the moment and not quite a lot of my mind is is that idea of success and kind of what success looks like because and i know i was definitely there in my 20s i think you know i was obviously you know i was afraid to kind of a young man in a hurry and i was you know working when i was called sense etc etc and i wanted to you know be successful but i think and there's probably a definite financial part of that and that's what's quite satisfying to start business build and sell it and that has been something i'd always wanted to do for various reasons i think um just as an interesting process i think the financial security element i think um if you get to a point where you you know you've got really hopefully good financial security then you you almost constantly then reinforces the idea you're doing things because you you you want you want to do them not because you have to do them um but then obviously then as you develop you then think actually you learn more about life well they've proven it right like money and success are kind of inversely related i think it's like you get a certain income level i think it's 70 000 which obviously is not an insignificant amount of money but after that there's no correlation um and and one one of my favorite graphs is that graph of uh wealth and basically you know growing wealth in in um in the western world combined with increasing um well decreasing levels of uh of mental satisfaction which actually is really really depressing if you think about it so yeah yeah it's a fascinating point and i saw the study too that shows it's very hard i think i know a lot of my listeners um frankly find it hard some weeks to pay the bills and so you know when you're at that level there's there's no conversation around how you know money is not important but you know i just talked personally for a second you know i i made a lot of money and in a way it actually took away my hunger for a while um i was always i was i left school at 15 left home at 15 i was homeless it made me fight it made me come back and have hunger and then when i actually chased and got the money um something something changed you know there was no longer an excuse to work that hard and and so interesting so not to turn around but i wanted a question for you then just quickly did you um did so i completely understand like the hours the hours may have shifted but then did that make you work on things that arguably have bigger scale because you could think a bit more longer terms and more strategically about the things you're working on yeah i mean i i was really impressed with your early story when you're talking about like beating the tuck shop and the bricks grounded up and and and those those ideas because i didn't really have that i didn't i didn't i had quite a simple upbringing you know used to play football if i could stay out late playing football i was rubbish at football but just playing it was fun with your friends right but you know but i didn't have that i didn't have that purpose you know i didn't have i didn't have the word purpose never crept into my mind probably until my first big success in business um where i started them thinking oh hold on a minute you know this isn't just about making money um but but i think you had it much younger i feel like you had it much younger you kind of you know even with your first business your very purpose-driven concept you know helping people i i was always about like arbitrage which is basically you know taking making money you know like making making a living it's interesting and i think almost the points kind of converge because don't get me wrong like you know i i kind of i think you knew the corporate world wasn't wasn't for me um for various reasons um i really admire what people do there but i just knew it wasn't the right kind of fit for me but it was very much you know when i started um my first business it was very much a business but i guess that subconsciously there there was the mission and there was a kind of a if we can help you know help schools the business model you know we would go to schools and schools would pay us it was great like i was 21 and i'd just be like driving around the country in my little car like going to places i've never been to before like kind of um skits and halifax and clitherow just turn up there with my like in my suit and my kind of powerpoint or whatever on how to get into university but and so it was a business model and then the schools would these schools would pay us because they wanted to kind of help help their students and but yes it was a business but it was almost built into i guess it comes back to that kind of whole reason about why like if you can improve people and if you go back you know and help and deliver something i guess people want then then you should be you should be rewarded for that totally agree and so i i i know you do uh private investing you're an angel investor um what makes you invest in someone what what's the criteria for you yes very well so when i am sold uh the first person applications 2013 i i decided i wanted to do um angel investing for um for i guess kind of two two main reasons um one of them there was actually the primary reason was actually to switch it um having been an entrepreneur and still being an entrepreneur who as a business owner and somebody runs it to put myself in the investment seat so to actually have the investment experience i think that's made me a better business um or better ceo because we have i mean we've raised about eight million on uh on bright network in terms of investment and i think i think i can relate more to what investors are thinking about and and the the other element was to to just to share what i'd learned in terms of starting building and selling a business to answer your question um and i guess now kind of a bit further down the journey i can't remember exactly i've known six or seven of them um and and actually still waiting for the outcomes on some of them it's quite interesting like the whole story that angel investing always takes longer than it should do but i think the answer to a question and i think and i'm obviously not kind of a great entrepreneur shape or form but i think the things i look for in when investing is it i think it does come down to the individual um so it is basically the hunger the determination the grip the resilience how they think how their mind works and actually i'm not sure have you ever read the book sapiens nope i know it's good it is mind-blowing so as i've always i've always been interested guess like the social sciences i did like economics and philosophy and politics at uni and i can't believe um it's uh it's actually um an ex-girlfriend who recommended this book and i'm so glad glad and thankful to her that she did because um i wish i read it 10 years ago it was it was understanding what what it means to be human so that the book is called the story of humankind i mean also the story of them i think it's safe into the story of humans basically but the only thing that differentiates all humans essentially we've all got you know we all look pretty pretty similar it is the brain and and and cognitive ability we've got this thing that no one can see this kind of gray matter and if you think about what separates like an oprah winfrey or an obama or a jeff bezos or bill gates from everybody else and it it's that it's that it's that kind of organ like what is going on and and how quickly is that brain moving and how does it think and how does it work because if you get that right then pretty much everything flows from that because that brain will assess opportunities the right way hire the right people be you know make the right impact on clients so that's what i've learned however um so person um market size really really important um how big a market is um in terms of just quite frankly how much money is in that market i think that's that's that's the kind of uh second thing and then thirdly i think looking for some kind of product market fit like you know entrepreneurs have an idea there's a market is there a fit there have they have they got it working i think those would probably be the three things but it's i'm probably like i'd say i'm up overall um probably i need to check the sheets but but actually the biggest thing i definitely learned it was a bit like doing a mini mba for me like i've never done a never had any any formal business um training um and actually just having experience of seeing these businesses and just like what's going on with them because all businesses i think are essentially the same like they they have so much more in common they can look so different but fundamentally they are there is so much you know obviously around kind of people strategy finance and and you just learned so much i think watching those business watching businesses that way i really like your take on angel investing as well about getting an understanding on the other side of the table how how the world works i think it does make you a better ceo it makes you have you done some major investments on i i have i've invested in 69 startups i just invested in one yesterday um so it's uh but i've invested in lots of different ways i i invested direct of course i invested via um funds like angel list i've i've worked with people on investments it's it's quite an experience it's and and for me i still don't consider myself a prolific investor i i see myself as a business person who likes to help other other business folks but i learn a lot by investing in people almost average is what the top three things you've learned or the one what have you learned on your range in the best thing you get your own podcast show you should you should you should just i just always love learning yeah maybe later maybe one for later yeah no way but it is it is a fascinating thing but um you know ultimately i completely concur with you and i want my listeners to pick up on this because a lot of our listeners are looking to raise money and so a lot of the time i get i probably get 10 people a day um asking for money and i think the key is a big part of it is is your your authenticity your your energy and and the idea almost comes second to most people i know it sounds crazy most people lead with the idea but but we are you know you've said it we i think everybody who's who's putting money into things at the angel level for sure is is doing it based on people because often the idea itself you know isn't even working yet nine times out of ten so and you're going to have to pivot so you're relying on that person to pivot you're relying on that person to have a moral code that's in line with yours and so on i i couldn't agree more and yeah similarly you get lots of approaches and and i think it's ironic in a way because i think one of my early mistakes was being under capitalized and i you know it's just one i can't tell you now and we we are in such a lucky position i'm touching the wood on this table under here uh just to have have capital actually i think it's a big it's a big thing in the uk versus obviously the us like not having enough capital behind you but then adversely i think people can get very obsessed about raising money when they've just got an idea and actually what they what what can help is just cracking on and getting it started and focusing on on the products and you can always i think you know you can always hustle some cash together i think in some way shape or form or another but you know that whole people often want to raise money before they start and the whole like um in imperfect action be perfect an action rule yes as you know right like you know you you're getting started it's just so in in some way shape or form is rather than obsessing about like how do i go and raise you know five million then all your time is spent around raising the money not actually on on the product market fit and solving the solving the need of the uh of whatever need you want to solve as an entrepreneur well um i forgot to say earlier i want to say anybody that's listening that has been uh touched by your support both all the way back to oxford applications to to today's bright network i want to hear from them i want to hear them in the comments i'd like to interview them i'd love to see um the butterfly effect i'd actually like to interview your teacher uh they originally gave you and i told you this inspiration i don't know donna bust his uh well no i was gonna say i mean if if he's listening um i think he should send you an invoice you know like for success today i'll send i'll send you i'll send i'll send the link to him yeah yeah he he was the original you know muse for this so he he deserves a big check i think but um but anyway uh i i do love i do love looking at the history of it and you mentioned there you know selling your business and and i know you know sometimes i've sold my business so i sold my business fluid to pwc and it's a fascinating story beyond just the headline um is there any learnings you had from selling your business was there any insights that the audience that might be worth sharing well learning's on selling well where to start so i would i mean it was great i i i'm i'm it was i'd always and it because it was very clear for me i always wanted to start building and sell so people talk about kind of like oh it's you know people like oh it's your baby and you're emotionally connected etc but it was for me like it was very clear i knew why i wanted to do it in terms of um the reasons i kind of referenced that referenced earlier um and it was it was it was a lovely feeling like you know when that money is obviously you had as well right and that money arrives your bank can it's like he just kind of you have this kind of sense of achievement but also there's a sense of kind of like lightness and it's kind of very empowering um and and i think there's multiple multiple reasons that people might buy your business i think um there's lots and the key is it does it fit with the strategy of um of what an acquirer what what they want to do and actually um the reason we got bought like i've never been able to predict the reason that we got bought by who we got bought and it was it was a great deal and and uh and actually it's been really nice then build i think it's important to build a premium business that goes on to succeed because on the one hand you can be a bit like oh you know sold it too cheap or whatever whatever and and that first business has gone on to kind of continue to grow and develop but actually that's really great because you know yes it's um worth more than um when it i expect it's worth more than when i sold it but but that's great in terms of you know building reputation for building kind of premium premium assets and i think i mean there's a load of stuff around um you know using advisors i think they're kind of um often underrated but getting a good advice that you can help you essentially a kind of a broker obviously who can help you getting good advice did you get a broker did they approach you so i did actually yeah i did but um and it's a very it's a you probably talked for an hour about that topic alone right but uh that for me that was that was useful and then and then the the process um took about i think was about nine months in the end um which which was fine but there's and it was very similar to raising money i think in terms of like you get everything ready you go out to market you then do the deal so there's three stage processes which probably take about two to three months but um yeah for me it was a really good experience so um yeah and i'm really glad that business is still doing well there's a lot of warring factions i guess um within the entrepreneurial community about you know building a business to sell it um i've often you can catch me on camera after selling don't build a business to sell it but i think i think there is an important nuance to what you're talking about here and i really like this point and i don't want the audience to miss it either which is sometimes you sell a business and it goes on to do better things without you and as you said quite rightly and i also love it which is you know a deal is about both parties winning and so when i sold my company flew it to pwc about a year afterwards the head of pwc said to me simon oh business is doing so well don't you wish you'd held on to it you could have got double and i was like i am so happy that it's working you know i am so happy that it was an acquisition that had substance and it wasn't you know it was something that actually was useful to your organization i was very happy with what i got brilliant yeah and also the great thing is if you've got if you've got a concept and you're passionate about a vision actually having new people come in with new ideas and also quite frankly investment capital who can then elevate it to the next level it's like really nice and also for the team as well like the the team um seem to have a good experience so yeah it's but i guess getting the right bar i think is really important well when the pwc brought my business everyone got a pay rise so straight off the bat they looked after their people yeah totally and then i felt bad i was underpaying everyone for too long but um we had a table tennis table you know so we made up for it somehow but but yeah it's really interesting now just touching on on raising money now the last thing i read you raised eight million pounds for your business what was that process like so so i think with stage is how i describe it so so i i funded the business originally the bright network um uh with um some the capital i got from my first sale then then it was angels um so classic kind of you know friends and family contacts et cetera et cetera actually there weren't any phone i don't know what i'm saying that but like uh you know his family and friends it's a model more than actually family yeah you know people you know who they know who they have money and they they were putting in kind of checks of you know 10 20 50k etc and and then we moved um into institutional which obviously is a whole different ball game um but uh yeah has um has been working really well for us and we're very very lucky we're we're backed by a venture capital fund called maven and they are absolutely fantastic and and it was very flattering actually because the first time having never done institutional it's the first time we went out to institution we've got four offers in two we