00:00What's the one thing that you wish you knew now or you wish you knew 30 years ago that you know now? I think
00:06The importance of working closely with people getting people on board is absolutely critical to this sort of process
00:13But I think it's it's also the book is primarily
00:17Just to address something which I felt was a gap
00:19Which is that people think of entrepreneurs like Steve Joves or the Hewlett Packard
00:23Packard guys and if you want to set up a business you want to be an entrepreneur you've got to start from nothing
00:27Starting from nothing is really really tough your chances of success very low you you're not going to get paid
00:34A lot of things are going wrong
00:36So actually was it sort of struck me one of the biggest courses at Harvard now is is
00:41Entrepreneurship through acquisition and I didn't feel anybody had addressed that and what I like to suggest to people is that
00:47Buying a two or three million pound business and I explain in the book how you can buy it for nothing
00:52That's the way to get going and if you really want what if you really want to run a company be the boss
00:58It's a much better way than sitting at your kitchen table going. What can I do? Will anybody buy it?
01:04But Charles is it different we were just talking about you know the the new caring boss
01:08I mean, this is a man that you know has a vision and certainly I've met him a couple of times like he he's always known what he wanted
01:14Right, no matter what sector is it different being leader of a listed big company or in management at like a junior level or like mid-management to be an entrepreneur?
01:25I think management is the same in what whether it's a family company whether it's big whether it's small
01:30Clearly when you get to very large companies it becomes quite a lot of matrix management and a lot of stuff
01:35Which is why I've tended to specialize in small companies once it gets towards a billion of the value
01:41And I'm not the sort of person to run that sort of business sets back realizing those things
01:45I think the other theme in the book is is that I've been running creative companies for 30 years taking very small ones to quite larger and I had a disaster and
01:54That disaster in eight months taught me far more than I could than I could have could have learned we have a sign
02:01What did you learn? I learned?
02:03Uh, what my weaknesses were where my blind spots were
02:07Um, when something gets into trouble you've got to really expect everything to get worse and worse
02:13You realize that people can be great people when they're and there's trouble around
02:18You've got to look after them because everybody's going to behave pretty badly
02:21So that was actually the genesis of this book. I started writing it to work out
02:25What I'd done so wrong in 2007 and those lessons when I started writing the book in 2008
02:31To the go. Why was I so useless?
02:34So do you think you could have saved the company or uh, or done it differently?
02:39Absolutely. I mean, I'm a bridge player and I described it
02:42I was dealt an abysmal hand and I played it appallingly and from that the next company I start I got involved with
02:49It was a small quoted company worth one or two millions
02:51And it got to market cap 500 600 million primarily through acquisition
02:56And I'm a sort of buy and build person
02:58But it's interesting how I'm very thrilled that the son of a friend of mine
03:02Uh, he and a partner one worked at goldman sachs the other worked in private equity
03:07And I had a long chat with them about life now
03:09They're running their own business, which is a vehicle leasing business in the northwest and doing brilliantly
03:14Classic retirement sale. I'm really excited about how you can rejuvenate companies
03:19Particularly at the moment when it's actually quite tough for sort of older business owners
03:24They're getting hit with taxes everywhere and you need energy to run those things
03:28But it also seems that I have a lot of ceos on the show that you know
03:31You get told well, it's a legacy company
03:33I mean even if you make toothpaste that everybody needs every day, it's still a legacy company
03:37So it's only the sexy stuff. That's a I like actually how do you stick up for companies that we used day-to-day or things that we need as humans
03:45Okay, I'm very I've I've work in tool hire
03:49Laundries I store bits of paper and cardboard
03:50Real stuff Charles
03:51Oh god, yeah
03:52UK's biggest office removal firm
03:55I mean I got involved in when we had the box business and then I ended up with the removal business because I want I bought the removal business because it
04:02It had a lot of boxes in storage
04:04And then I was poking around the back of one of their sites as I normally do
04:08Just I let everybody get on with it, but I like to sniff around I saw this old IT equipment myself
04:15How does this work? So then a year later?
04:18We bought a little very small 2 million turnover business IT recycling
04:22We sat on it for two years to sort of go
04:24How does this market work and now with the biggest IT recycler in the UK?
04:30That's it's it's practical stuff. It's all the same things
04:33People are a lot nicer in blue-collar businesses than they are
04:37Is there a danger that that people just want the new that look too much into the new technology?
04:42I think that there's there
04:44There is a place there's a huge place for new technology and certainly a lot of the people who
04:48I'm encouraging to buy into old-fashioned businesses are up to speed
04:52On AI things like this and that that can rejuvenate them, but the
04:58The technology sector is is not the only sector in which you can take something as i've done in the past very small
05:04Grow something large partly through acquisition
05:06Become national champions and have have have a lot of fun with with with less risk than you might do from trying to
05:12Set up your own app or whatever. I'm Charles. I mean you start by saying it's always the people everybody always says it's the people
05:18So what have you learned about dealing with people? Do you have to get them on board from the start?
05:23In buy run build in the book which takes you through all these things
05:27One of the things is when you go into a business that is in trouble. There are three types of people the first type are
05:34Pretty good operators and they're going hey. This isn't this isn't working around here. Where do I get to go to next?
05:40The second lot are a real pain. They say Charles why you know this is wrong. What are you going to do about it?
05:45This and you it's a nightmare the third group of people perfectly sensible who go I turn up I get paid
05:52I'll do my job the people you really want are in that second group the ones who are of pain who are going Charles come up
05:59What are you doing? You're doing it wrong those people care they care about themselves. They care about the business
06:04They want to get it right
06:05So when you when you're going into a business, which is which is in trouble look for those people
06:10The other two groups nothing wrong with them
06:11But look for those people because they're the people who are going to be in the trenches with you
06:15Charles we just have a little bit of breaking news
06:16So we understand that amazon web services has suffered widespread disruption today monday morning that affected services and other platforms in a ex post
06:27Formerly known as twitter robin hood said for example. It's investigating the issue as the aws outage impacts its services
06:34We understand that multiple other platforms at snapchat roblox fortnight verizon. We're also experiencing issues
06:40That's according to down detector
06:42I mean in a day since you you've been on air. I've had like 55 breaking news
06:45I'm so admiring how you do your job, but as a ceo or entrepreneur. How do you cut?
06:51You know the noise away from what you need to do day to day
06:55It I think i'm very keen on locking power responsibility together and give driving as far down the organization as pro as as possible
07:03So my divisional managing directors. I expect them to deal with everything
07:07I have time I like I like to go around all of our sites, which is a waste of everybody's time apart from mine
07:13I like to have have space and time so that when something blows up actually i'm around
07:18It's that's that's how I approach it. And then you know that if
07:24Say if all of a sudden some big your biggest customer tells you that that they're pushing off
07:29So there's i've actually got time to go
07:32How the hell did that happen?
07:35And and and get stuck in so I always think a ceo's got to have time so so you can't micromanage
07:40I can't and I i need people around me who are really good and absolutely
07:45I push everything down to everybody else, but always give them responsibility
07:50But never forget the power give them power get it down to the people in the workforce
07:54They will do amazing things if you let people get to get on for it
07:58Just make sure you lock power and respond responsibility without power is dreadful and power of responsibility
08:03We know we'll be all that was that well that was actually what the press barons were called I think you know
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