The Billionaire Case for Small Bets

My magic model was hiring people that were better than me.

“Entrepreneurship is a high-risk activity.”

I have always struggled with goal setting.

Don't set any goals. Don't try and become too big. Keep it small, prove it out, and then go big. Copy what others are doing, because it's working. We need to be very protective of our mental energy attention focus. Because I either spend more quality time with their kids, or they can put in 5 or 6 hours of extra work a week and earn more money.

Sir Richard Harbin, I have so many things that I want to talk to you about. I'm so excited for this conversation, and I just, I appreciate making the time, my friend.

I do just call me Richard Ryan. I did think that my nine tours would help me get a better seat in a London restaurant.

But then I, somebody told me that they make a surcharge. Like any true, any two good deeds, it comes with a price. You get the sur, but now you got to pay more for your next, he's very good and pint. Absolutely. Well, I want to get into something that I saw actually on your Instagram channel that fascinated me.

And it was just a snippet, but the topic, I'm really interested in hearing the more expanded version of this idea, which was the idea of big bets versus small bets. And if anyone listens to business podcasts, entrepreneurial stuff, you know, Peter D. Amanda, who is phenomenal has the moon shots podcast, everything's about big bets, burn the boats. And you had some really interesting takes on small bets and the value that small bets make and how they play a role.

And I'd love to start our conversation in big bets versus small bets from someone who's built a billion dollar company.

“Yeah, I'm a big believer that you need to prove things out small.”

And I learned that the hard way, because a great example was my original plumbing emergency business, called A1 Fast Fix, started it with my life savings, my business partners, life savings, 50,000 pounds. And we grew it and the business model didn't work and we ran out of money. We then managed to get half a million pound investment from a UK water company. And I thought, right, I'm going to grow the business even bigger.

It will get to economies as scale. And of course it didn't. Because it was the wrong business model. The business got bigger. And the losses went from 10,000 to 50,000 to 10,000 to 10,000 to 10,000 to 10,000. So my learning was, stay small bootstrapped your business, test, learn, copy, pivot and make sure you get the right business model. When you have, then press the accelerator button. And that might mean going and getting investment

to really scale the business. But don't do that until you've absolutely categorically proved your model. So why then do you think there is so much moon shots, swing for the fences,

“pornography out there? Is that just click bait to sell stuff in behind the scenes?”

All these entrepreneurs are kind of thinking the way you are. Or is this just a philosophical difference that people have in business? I think it's a message from some people that says, "Oh, you've got to go big at all costs." Venture capital in some periods have said, "Well, we'll give you loads of money to test and prove your business. But just go big and throw loads and money out it and eventually it will work." And I think that's the wrong discipline.

Keep it small, prove it out, and then go big. Jim Collins, in his book, "Good to Great," would call it firing bullets. And then when he hit the target, then fire the cannon ball. If you fire the cannon ball at the beginning, you run the risk of busting your business. Yeah, I was listening to kind of start up orient to podcast the other day and a very successful investor was on. And I don't think he meant anything negative about this. But he said,

"I want to see two or three failures before I invest. I want to know if they've run into a wall before." And in a broad stroke, I can kind of understand what he's saying. But at the same time, as the actual operator, that is devastating. And it is oftentimes you don't

which is you fire a cannon ball and you miss. That bounces back with almost just as much negative impact on you, your emotions, your relationship, your bank account, all this kind of stuff. So I'm trying to get at is, I'm trying to break this up. I'm in your camp. I'm more in your camp. This is what really fascinating to me is you're one of the few people that I've heard who's at the level of success that you're at preaching this type of philosophy. And I'm trying

to kind of wrap my head around why this is so pervasive, this constant. And maybe it's more of a, and I could be wrong. Maybe it's more of just an American cowboy, you know, shoot the big

gun first, always kind of philosophy or is this just like talking point fodder? And because the

businesses that I've seen be successful in the entrepreneurs, I've seen consistently be successful

“have more of the philosophy that you are preaching. Yeah. And I think that entrepreneurship”

is a high risk activity. I don't know the numbers in the US where quite often Americans would say that failure is a stepping stone on the way to success. It's frowned on here in the UK. Therefore, I think you get more caution. And there's two bits of advice that I would give to people at want to be entrepreneurs. And that is don't be afraid to copy somebody else's idea. If a business is already working, then that means it does work. Copy their model and improve it. I did

exactly that with with home serve in the UK. Copy somebody else's model. I'd improved it. And that was the magic model AAA for the home. And then secondly, don't be afraid to go on buy a business. There are lots of retirement sales out there. And those are existing businesses that are making profitability. And the big objection might be, well, I'm got a lot of money to go on buy a

business, where would I raise the money? And the answer is Vendor Finance. Somebody that's selling

the business, particularly if it's a retirement sale. If they really like the person that's buying the business and think they're capable, we'll say put down a small amount of your own money, maybe a bit of bank debt, because a bank will lend against a profitable business. And then the seller of the business will agree to repayment over maybe a three year period. So that's another smart way for people to get into businesses to want to do it by acquiring somebody else's

already profitable existing operation. Yeah, I love the recommendation of buying and already operating business. I don't know if you're familiar with Cody Sanchez's work, but she's been popularizing this idea as well. She calls it buying boring businesses, so she advocates for buying plumbing shops and HVCs and, you know, pressure washing businesses and stuff like that. And what I

“like about it is, I think for too long, there was almost like an ego trip around. It had to be like”

this, and nothing against Peter Taylor, because I'm a fan of him in the way he thinks, but he kind of has this, you know, be a category of one type mentality. If you can't, you know, which I think I get what he's going for, but I also think it shuts a lot of people down who are sitting at home going, I really would like to run my own business. I feel like I have the chops to do it, but I don't have some idea that's a category of one, and I think it shuts them down where what you've just presented

our ideas of, hey, maybe you see something working in a user triple A cars, but now we can move that and say, okay, we can take this idea and maybe apply it to home service and we can apply it, you know, insert other business. But if I'm, but I want to go into the buying a business, so I know you also have a venture fund, so you're very familiar with this entire game, bought businesses, et cetera. So if I'm, if I'm listening to this and I'm saying, you know,

what, I've always wanted to go off of my own, and, and but I've never had that idea that's been

maybe a big blockers. I just didn't feel like I had that original idea to start, but geez, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I loved to own a plumbing business. My dad was a plumber. I used to help him, and it's, and I get that like in this AI world, these types of physical human businesses are going to be

“have real traction. How do you start to go about that process? How do you evaluate your opportunities?”

How do you think about purchasing and already existing business if you've never done it before? Yeah, I would take a listing. So maybe go to entrepreneur magazine and look at the

particularly those are businesses that are going out and doing something in a home or in a business

“environment, and those are most likely the businesses that can be made more efficient through the”

use of AI, that are scheduling, that are routing of the vehicles, but unlikely that a skill technician going out to the home or the office is going to be taken away through one through AI. And certainly in the UK, we've got a real shortage of skilled trades people. What you would call Pros, and so I see AI shutting down call centers and releasing a lot of people's lives that have been doing, boring tedious answering of customer calls that a voice block can very easily do,

more efficiently and cheaper, and releasing those great human lives to go and work in people's homes and offices and do worthwhile things that are offering great customer service.

I actually just signed my very first traditional book publishing deal two weeks ago

and it's around this concept that I call Easy Mode, which is essentially that thing that you do that looks like cheating to everyone else. What is that thing for you and then how do we build your life around that idea? How do we use AI outsourcing or automation, et cetera, we're just simply removing something from your life to get you more into the thing that is your easy mode and out of these transactional zero value tasks that we're part of the job and took us away from

that thing, which could be twists and a rent, right? You might just love being under a saying under in the basement, fixing pipes, you know, just what you enjoy doing, but if half your time is scheduling and you know, follow-ups and, you know, AR and, you know, accounts, receivable, et cetera, like those things are taking you out of what's your easy mode. So again, where are some of the easy wins in that place? You know, having built home service and being a big part of

this service-based thing. Like when you're looking at this and examining, you know, and there's a lot of, I'll tell you, there's a lot of SMB owners, a lot of service owners that listen to the show, like where are some of the places that you're seeing some easy wins for these guys and gals

“that they can start to implement in their business and get some other time back?”

Yeah, I would say it's all around AI applications that would do the quotations that would do the the invoicing and chasing those invoices and the payments would be doing the routing and the scheduling of work. I think that's going to make a tremendous effects on the efficiency of a business so that the major cost will be the cost of the the technician going out to the customer home and we are we all want to be able to

get somebody out to do all of these repairs to assemble our flat-pack furniture rather than trying to do it ourselves. So releasing more people to get them into doing services to the home is going to one is going to really help. Where do you fall on AI with? This is I get this question quite a bit is is should I be learning quad code or codex or cursor and building these applications myself or should I be looking at some of these off the rack AI tools like in today's terms,

“right? I think in the future I don't know where the future's going to go, but but I think in”

today's terms I'm I'm kind of caught I tend to be a little nerdier so I love like I tore my entire site apart and rebuilt it from scratch using quad code, right? So we're placed WordPress or placed all this stuff and built it myself and but I'm nerdy like that's a Friday night for me. I don't know that many people are going to want to do that so when you're looking at return on time where where do you think a service professional you know in particular where should they be

spending their time. This is looking for off the rack stuff or should they really digging in and trying to understand what a quad code could do from them or build from them from scratch?

Yeah I would recommend second move advantage. So look for AI applications that

other business owners are using where it's a proven case and it's working, it's a fish and it's low cost. Don't be bleeding agent take AI applications or try and develop your own version

bandwagon but only where you can see the similar business is getting a bigger efficiency game.

“Yeah I like that so like if you're a super AI nerd or maybe even a white collar or more knowledge”

worker base maybe it makes sense to get your hands into a quad code and figure out how you can move some data around but if you're out there like I said twist and pipes or pressure wash and stuff or whatever you're doing it's just that return on time is not worth digging in and trying to build to yourself. No I'm invested in a business called Czechatrate in the UK we have over 50,000 pros on the on the marketplace and we've developed software that is called trade more and it's

available for all of our pros and it is literally AI as an app that helps a pro to work to run the business so they can free up some of their administration time and they can either spend more quality time with their kids or they can put in five or six hours of extra work a week

“another more money yeah I love that I think I think it's very smart advice guys for those”

you listening at home that I think we're all going to be pushed and it's going to be kind of shiny objects syndrome for a while with AI certainly you may even be in like the first inning of shiny objects syndrome but I think more than ever and you know correct me from wrong here we need to be very protective of our mental energy attention focus because AI in particular seems to I mean you can go down some rabbit holes and not come up for days and that's a lot of lost time if

if you're not kind of protecting your work hours and protecting your focus. Absolutely yeah yeah so okay you wrote the book nine steps to a billion

my first question was is a billion like should we be shooting for a billion is like what's

like I guess it may take this question however you wear however you want when I sit down and I'm looking to grow let's say I have a business but I but I want to grow them ambitious maybe I'm early 30s and I want you know I know I got 30 40 years a good business in front of me and I want to grow something substantial build a legacy how do I pick the target like do I go a billion dollars in revenue do I go 10 million do I go just hey let's just not have

a goal focus on systems like like how do we pick that initial target because and I'm asking

this almost very selfishly I have always struggled with goal setting because in a good

blast piece of context and then I'll let you answer I've always just in my head had I'm going to work as hard as I can no matter what whether my goal is a billion or 10 billion or 10 bucks I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can so I struggle with where to set that goal so where do you start with goal setting and and if goal setting isn't even relevant to getting there then I'd love that that discussion too yeah I didn't start out saying I want

to build a business worth a billion dollars or a billion pounds it was really just I want to run a successful business I'm not quite sure what it will be tripled it stumbled into the triple A idea and and that works once I was running the business then we did start having five year plans so we did set some goals and if you shoot for the stars and you only get to the mood then that's great so I am a believer that at some point in the evolution of the business

“that you should set some big hairy audacious goals if you don't then you won't get there so”

my recommendation would be the entrepreneur should set some objectives but when there's said the objectives then it's about also saying what's our purpose how are we going to be different from our competitors what's our economic engine and how are we going to make money and if we focus on running the business and making our customers really happy and growing the business then the dollars will be the buy products of that so I do believe in objectives but

it shouldn't just be about saying I'm focused on these big goals and getting rich quick.

work was there a moment in there that in hindsight obviously you did the best you could in that moment but in hindsight maybe there was something that you could go back and tell your younger self hey there was a moment here that you missed or there was a stat or an inflection or something

that had to do in the economy that you could have avoided the first business model not working

“or is that just part of the process that you had to go through to get there?”

I think it's going through a process to find the model at works and what I would tell my younger self today would be don't set any goals don't try and become too big just focus on finding the right model don't worry about scaling in silos you're in the founder phase and you just need to get a model at works only when you've got the model at works do you press the accelerator button and it's in that professionalizing phase that you then say right

we should set some goals we should develop a three year plan we should know where we're heading we need to know whether we need to go out and get an investor in order to fund that growth or not we need to start bringing in the an experienced team to help run the business.

“How do you know when to meet the transition from founder phase to professionalizing phase?”

When you've proved your model that you're then getting some growth and you then saying so where we're going to take this business now and at some point within that professionalizing stage it would be saying I wonder whether there's not paternity to take this business into a foreign

country many American businesses it's such a big country there Americans never need to

work expand outside of America whereas in a small country like the UK being able to globalise a business model is really really important. Yeah I was working with a company a couple weeks ago that is I was thinking about entering the US market and there are UK company and what was interesting to me and you know I don't have as much international experience both of my business careers been inside the States for the most part a little bit Canada as well but what was really

interesting was listening to them to describe the process of you know in their words kind of conquering the EU you know I mean so they did expand it out of the UK and you know hit

“Spain I think first and then France and then now they they're kind of taught top three”

leaders in their category in most of of of of the EU and then listening to to that and then the expansion into the United States and you know kind of them and I'm interested in your take on this because their take was that dealing with the 50 states the fact that it's 50 regulated bodies inside of federally regulated body was fairly unique and in and a challenge not maybe necessarily harder or or word just just fairly unique to their expansion into some of the other countries

within you know Western Europe is that is that true is that a fair assessment and how I'm very interested having coming from the United States looking out what it looks like trying to come and bring a business in yeah I my dream as a aspiring entrepreneur in my teens was to go to that big country called America and copy a business idea and bring it back to little UK

and so when I went out to the US for the first time and that was on a business trip in 2002

and utility branded home assistance cover triple it triple it for the home didn't exist I thought wow fantastic opportunity it's the we speak the same language it's going to be really straightforward to take the business model and put it across every state in America and of course it wasn't many British entrepreneurs fail in America and I was there for six years I sent a really good guy that worked for me and ran the UK sent him to America in 2003

dollars annual profit and I'm a great believer in the power of mentors there was a guy that came across that was Americanized but he was a Brit who founded capital one in the UK in the US I got called Nigel Morris he was a co-founder and I thought he can help me to crack America

“so I emailed him no response I sent a direct mail letter then a DHL urgent important”

still no response and one evening 11 o'clock UK time six p.m. East Coast Washington DC which is where he lived I didn't have his cell number but I did have his landline office number and I called it and lo and behold he answered the phone himself and I said you don't know me I'm a struggling British entrepreneur trying to make it bigger than America and I just need an hour of your time and he said oh I do remember your letters near emails and I'm sorry I didn't respond

persistence pays next time you're over in America I'll give you an hour of my time I said it just so happens Nigel I'm in Washington DC tomorrow afternoon and of course I wasn't

I got on the first flight out of London and I was in his office 2 p.m. the following afternoon

and he gave me two hours of his time and he said where are you based over here so they'll

“were in Miami said absolutely not shook his head if you want to be a serious American business”

hiring serious American business people you need to be based between Boston, New York, Washington DC, five hour time difference for the UK and he was right all the people that we hide into Miami and home certainly early days either wanted to go to beach at 4 p.m. or smoked dope that is not how you build a serious American business his second question was who if you got running your right US business out here then said our fantastic guy I sent him out six years ago

he's a Brit shook his head absolutely not Americans buy from Americans you need an American chief exact otherwise you won't be taken seriously and we were struggling to sign up all the bigger American utility companies where we wanted to use their brand name and their customer base to sell our AAA cover so I brought my Brit home we left Miami we moved to North Connecticut an hour north of New York either guy called Tom Ruson in 2010 16 years later Tom is still with

home serve as the chief executive in North America and the business paid $300 million of

EBITDA last year wow that's an incredible story I mean I love the idea of call you're me 11 o'clock your time calling him on the phone I mean that's brilliant because last one in the office you know the receptionist or you know whoever's his gatekeepers probably are to go on home for the night that's absolutely brilliant so the learning is I call it step number six go global with locals

“if you want to build a big business in a foreign country have people on the ground”

establish your presence doesn't need to be all the team you've got a higher a local chief

exact and then I call it my 15% rule don't change your business model by more than 15 percent

because if one day you're in 20 different countries around the world and if you imagine that every country was 25% different in the way that you'd change your model recipe for complexity and disaster so change the bare minimum one of the guys that I really admire built bouleron which in the US is called safe light and he turned the business from worth 200 million euros to 24 billion euros in only 23 years and the model was identical in every single country they went and the

acquired businesses and that was safe light in the US they ran as called auto glass in the UK car glass in Europe but the operating model was the same the only difference was the brand name everything else was the same so keep it really simple keep it as far as you can the same in every country I think that's fantastic advice and I think it completely applies to the states as well so my

agency that I founded and sold and it's very similar a lot of I'll use insurance as a microcosm

“but being that every state operates differently has different regulations different rules I mean really”

Montana to Connecticut to Texas it's in some cases insurance is only in name is it's similar in the way that some of these policies operate and you know when when budding insurance entrepreneurs

in particular will come to me and ask me about the you know it's funny I had never

framed it the way you have which I love that around the 15% and I don't know what that would be for insurance but you know that's one of the things that I tell them is do not run into states that force you to do things too much differently too fast so depending on what state you come from you know that kind of dictates which states you can go to first because what's funny is like in this is all contextual and probably I don't even know it's probably an interesting but like if you

come from New York right California Chicago and I'm just naming liberal states so it's probably

why Connecticut like they're very similar in the way that they operate and your operations will be

able to translate if you are but if you're in New York and you think you're an operate the same way in Florida you are in you know you you are sadly mistaken I mean it's almost a completely different business

“and I think a lot of people these are the types of details that I think separate the entrepreneurs”

that seemingly make it and those that don't and I guess my question for you there is how much of this do we need to have our hand our head out in the future thinking about brainstorming around researching et cetera versus just situational awareness in the moment and seeing kind of playing the game on a field as it comes to us if that question makes sense yeah it's really important to spend quality time on the strategic planning of the business that's in the four quadrant time management model

that's the box which is important but not urgent and it is about working out what the growth plan is researching it properly thinking about the options and then making the decision on where you're going to go and in what time frame many British entrepreneurs decide oh right I'm going to I'm going to go for global growth and they started expanding in several new countries all at the same time they might do that while there's still a lot of growth to come in the UK

they might do that before they put somebody in charge of the UK and if you've got the same team that are trying to run the home country and work on international expansion there's a big opportunity cost the UK the UK growth engine could slow down because everybody will in the business wants to work on the the shiny new stuff which is international and then entrepreneurs are naturally foxes they want to go quickly they want to go into lots of countries all the same time and they

mustn't they need to get a focus plan to one country at a time planet out correctly get the right resources higher locals in the country many businesses in the UK go bust by doing international

expansion because they got it wrong I would like to pivot for a second and I'd like to learn

a little bit more about the economy in the UK versus the US and I'll be very frank my understanding of the UK economy mostly comes from trigonometry and consenting in France this is a huge fan of

“their show and I know you know I think the entire world is dealing with you know different economic”

issues and you know the major debate here in the states is you know where's inflation I mean we completely lost the ability to track inflation because we've been rigging it for so many years and then you have numbers like true inflation which seemingly are showing almost no inflation yet if you go to the grocery store and spend more than five minutes there you know that inflation is real so so I mean there's all these issues hitting and you know what is the UK in particular facing

that you think are true headwinds versus maybe what we're just kind of hearing and media like what are their entrepreneurs in UK really dealing with boots on the ground yeah it's really tough here right now costs are going up energy prices are at a high lots of other cost inflation

and retaining people and that is that's really difficult I think there's no problems in businesses

paying taxes when they make a profit but there shouldn't be taxes on hiring and employing people so that's made it really difficult in the UK but I am a great believer that entrepreneurs are optimists the very best entrepreneurs take any problem and turn it into a bigger opportunity and if you can run a business and you can grow it in a tough time then when the times get better the business is really going to take off so I would say there's no better time than to set up a

a business in the UK right now the UK is still a really good place from which to run a global

business but actually many UK businesses that are operate again internationally they're doing

better in the other countries than they are in the home country the idea of taxing hiring and retaining people seems like the opposite incentive I mean I I you know I I uh conservative here in the states whatever that whatever that means and you know one of the things that we talk a lot about in the show when I

“talk with my guests about is like this idea of operating in reality right I think far too often”

you know and this is why I kind of doubled into some of those questions around big bets versus small bets and kind of some of that stuff is that I feel like we're given these narratives and biased trying to get clicks playing to my audience and that it's very hard particularly for entrepreneurs and just ambitious people are trying to carve out good lives even if it's not to be some mega successful entrepreneur but they want to be successful enough to take care of their family

and their kids and you know have some protection and kind of live a good life right it's very hard to parse like reality like what's actually produces real results from all the noise that we get like how do you recommend like maybe you've gone through it right but you're still ingesting I'm assuming a lot of different content and reading stories and keeping up on the work like how do you carve out reality like what's a useful data point for me and growing my business or investing

et cetera versus just the constant noise that were bombarded with from all these different angles. Businesses need to be aware of that noise and entrepreneurs can't just bury the head in the sand and say well costs are rising we're going to absorb them really important that they look at how they take costs out the business so AI is a great tool to be able to battle down some of those rising costs and reduce some headcount that isn't required and that's really

“really important but equally I think you've also got to rise above the noise and say”

I've got to focus on my growth and despite all that noise I'm going to follow the nine steps scale up my business and I am determined to turn it into a business that is worth

be $100 million or a billion dollars. How you avoid some of the societal or

political traps that seemingly are set all over business today I had a friend who he was not the owner but he was sees seaweed executive at a business with about just over 300 people and you know good guy solid guy probably you know I don't mean you know not to bring politics too much in it but probably just the center of the road type of guy you know what I mean like didn't really wasn't very vocal on either side just kind of lived his life and you know he was part of a lot of

meetings and we talked a lot about it during especially during like the kind of major woke push of the 2020-2022 of and I'm sure there'll be another swing and there's right wing versions of this so to take that out but his particular case was all this stuff like around you can't say this and you know we need to you know all these different things that and this was the conversation they were having you know and again for the audience I'm that there's not a political statement this is just

“the situation that he dealt with was they were looking at some of these things and I think”

morally they're going yeah we want people to be included and yes we want to be friendly to everybody

doesn't actually seem to align with where we're trying to go and then they made some decisions to play Kate different groups and you know as you get bigger that pressure gets much more when it's 10 people right you can kind of lay the hammer down and go no we're not doing that but as you

“start to get larger you get a board of and you get a board that you have to answer to and you have”

a responsibility to you have investors you have a fiduciary responsibility to and you're getting

downward pressure you know and let's say you're trying to get to a billion right I guess this is where

we're in that nexus point how do you keep your head clear how do you navigate those things like did you have to ever deal with that where you felt like there was pressure coming in some capacity that wasn't related to your business that didn't feel like it actually helped your business how do you navigate these things this is a major problem I think for a lot of people today I listed I peowed home serve on the UK stock market in 2004 and

was a public company chief exact for 18 years and I noticed it became harder and harder to run a

public company with more and more red tape more and more committees more and more governance

and as a public company chief exact you could be focusing on all of their governance and you get to Friday and think oh I haven't thought about how we're going to grow the business this week I hadn't put enough time into going and listening to customer calls in the call centre or a retailer going out and spending time talking to customers in their stores so you need a real discipline to say go to make sure you do comply with all of those

committees and all of the red tape and make sure you freed up enough time to spend on growing the

“business hire some people that can look after the government stuff I think it did mean that”

when Brookfield came along the big Canadian private equity house with over a trillion dollars under

management and made us an offer of 4.1 billion pounds to acquire home serve and we were a

top 100 listed company in the UK we thought that's an offer that's too good to refuse and the next stage of our life as a company will be in a private environment where there are different pressures but able to get on and run and grow the business without the such a level of short-termism and focused on the near-term results yeah you know it's really I do listen to the all-in podcast of you heard of that show yeah so Jamoth was talking the other

day on that show and I thought it was really interesting and he actually made reference to this

“that in previous years of the show I think it's like their fourth or fifth year they had talked”

about where did all the public companies go right like at least on the US exchange or used to be $8,000 only $4,000 okay and then he said what's happened and he said I'm actually not talking about that anymore it was I I'm actually starting to think that these large private companies it's actually a way better way of running a business like if you don't need that public capital like make that a last resort because you you now have the ability to kind of side step all of this regulatory compliance

committee responsibility kind of stuff and now you're just your customers your employees and your investors and that's who you're responsible for and it's much easier to manage and do you see this move almost back to more private businesses away from IPOs you see that as a future trend or trend that continues and that's certainly what's happening in the UK the the London stock market is underperforming the junior market which is called aim the alternative investment market

has got less than 700 companies listed it's fallen significantly over the last 20 years and yet many entrepreneurs in the UK dream of listing their business on the UK stock market so I do think that it's really important that we find a way that more companies can join the public markets I think there is an attraction great for small investors to be able to be able to invest in those public companies take the ones that are the best and they're getting a

sure but I think philosophically I would love to see more companies able to IPO for the reason

“the latter reason that you just suggested which is you know a personal anecdote is I invested in”

a company they're actually on a Toronto stock exchange a Canadian company that is moving into the U.S. that does licensed a psilocybin therapy for veterans specifically so PTSD you know very you know very targeted clinical you know this is a recreational at all this is targeted therapy but I mean this is like 80 plus percent response rates I mean these are these are changing you know particularly men seem to respond to this a little more than women but women just as much

if they had the PTSD but I mean changing lives I mean drastically reducing suicide rates drastically reducing you know things like domestic abuse and domestic assaults in the homes because these guys aren't coming home like just filled with rage from these situations they've been put in and here I am random guy from New York I get to put some money into this company and help support them

“and look there's my you know 10 grand or whatever I put into it does that change but you know I think”

there's something to that and and I think not just financially which I think is obviously the primary reason but there's also like a cultural component to be able to support and participate

and follow along with the companies that you believe in and I think it ultimately is good for our

society to be able to do that yeah they historically the big news in the U.K. stock market was around government owned companies like British telecom, British gas being privatized and a big opportunity for members of the public to be able to what invest in those big institutional companies and that worked really really well so we've got to find a way as a country to get back to that great stock market success yeah yeah I could talk to you about business all day I want to close with

this question you can take it with the ever way you want you know obviously I'm working on this book project but it's bigger than that I'm very interested in like what would you consider your easy mode what is the thing that when you show up to me it might look like magic or cheating but to you you know not that it's easy for you right but that man you could do it all day it adds energy to your life you're passionate about it what is that thing for you? So that is my step number five in my book

which is hiring my replacement and that's a really tough thing for our sons printers but I worked out after eight years of running homeserved that I was a rubbish chief exec that I got lots of ideas that I got vision my team said I challenged them and inspired them and together we delivered more than we ever dreamt of but my magic model was hiring people that were better than me and effectively I hired a guy that became the MD of home serve UK and that then meant I could work on the

business rather than in the business when that works and he run the UK better than I had I then thought right as we grow into other countries and I can step up in home serve rather than step out I'm going to take responsibility for internationalising our business and then went and hired great chief execs in each of those nine other countries and that was my super power was hiring people that were proven chief execs that run the businesses better than me so I could just focus on the

division and the model and the growth. So Richard Harbin my friends we're going to have the book linked up in the show notes whether you're watching on YouTube listening on Spotify or Apple wherever you listen guys scroll down you'll have links to the book but besides that where's the

“best place for the audience to get deeper into your world and file one with you and what you do?”

Yeah so first of all the book is going to be published how to make a billion in nine steps

in the U.S. next year so not too early to go online to bonds and noble into what pre order a copy of that book and then we've got lots of valuable materials that sit on a business that I own which is inspiring UK entrepreneurs to scale up the businesses it's called businessleader.co.uk so lots of resources there we will in due course be doing webinars

then would love to help and one day in the future we will be launching business leader which is our

“nine steps growth program with peer groups with master classes in in America. I love it. Thank you so”

much sir I appreciate you I appreciate the work you do this has been phenomenal conversation thank you.

Thank you Ryan I love the conversation thanks for inviting me.