006 – Start a Business & Create a Product That Solves a Problem to Reduce Your Risk with Ex-Dragons Den Star, Tom Hunt

Hello everybody, Neil Ball here. Thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepeneur’s journey. The vision, the mindset. The commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Tom Hunt. Before I do, I am going to give you something to think about. David Packard said, take risks, ask big questions, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, if you don’t make mistakes, you are not reaching far enough. The entrepreneur way is about asking questions, and we like to get the insight and the inspiration and the ideas that we can apply in our businesses by asking those questions. Tom welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

I am ready.

Brilliant. Tom Hunt is Tedex speaker, a Dragon’s Den failure, and a location independent founder of virtual valley. So Tom, can you provide some more insight into your business personal life to allow the listeners to get to know more about you and what you do?

So, until I was 23 years old, I just felt like I just sort of followed in a template life that was set out for someone that was born in the time that I was born in at the place that I was born. And it sort of felt like I just followed the herd blindly. Up until this time through school where I studied hard and got good grades through university, where I studied chemistry and received a 2:1 from Imperial College in London. From then moving into the corporate world, in London where I worked as a management consultant, for three years. And it did not really feel like I ever really connected to what I really wanted to do.

Mmmmhmmm

I enjoyed studying chemistry, but it was not really my passion. I enjoyed aspects of the work that I was doing, in the corporate world and in the City of London. But I never really felt, I guess the word is passionate. Until me and my friends had an idea, on the bus returning from a Halloween Party in October 2012. We actually wore tights. Some very well patterned and colorful tights to a Halloween Party.

Excellent.

They felt really comfortable. Looked really good, and actually had the idea on the bus on the way back. We should sell these. Obviously you can’t really sell tights to me because they are partially see-through so we thought leggings would work. And I am sure loads of different people think ‘I’ve had load of different ideas like that.’ That you are just messing around with your friends and you come up with. The only difference with this one, was that one week later, we were stood at a very cold market stall in Brick Lane Market, East London. With 22 pairs of female leggings that we had purchased from ebay. Typexed our logo onto, to make them male. And had purchased this spot on this stall, for I think it was £150. So we then proceeded to stand around on this stall, attempting to sell these leggings for 8 hours. And this was the 22nd December 2012. So, it was cold.

Ha ha

How many pairs do you think that we sold?

Wow, how could I guess? ten?

We sold zero pairs. Ha ha. But we had a good time, and on the way back from the market. Because we had such a good time, and maybe because we had a couple of beers in the afternoon. We decided that we were going to carry on. And so in the next two months, we found a supplier in China, designed our own actual male leggings and set up a simple ecommerce store on the domain stitchleggings.com and so that was the start of 2013. And I think it will end like my history, here. I am sure we will get onto other areas in future questions. But the reason I told that story is because it was at this point, that while I was on the stall. While we were working with the supplier in China. While we were building the ecommerce site. I actually felt passionate about what I was doing. So it was this first taste of creating something for yourself that will help people.

Yeh

That sort of set me on the path since then. Since the start of 2013 to where I am now.

Mmm hmmm. Can you talk a little bit more about where you are now.

So I currently, I have a problem with focus, so for the past three years, I have probably started 12 online based businesses. But I have become aware of my tendancy to lose focus and for the past six months I have focused on one opportunity. And this is an online market place that connects entrepreneurs with people in the Phillapines that want to work for these entrepreneurs.

Yes

And this market place was born out of the previous business which was an outsource service company. And so that was me providing people in the Phillapines to work with start-ups in London that could not afford to hire people in London for the time. So in that business, I was the middle man and we charged maybe double the salary of the Phillipino and that money went to our company and I provided sort of advice and consulting on how they could outsource and I would support like ways of helping them out. This was actually the company that enabled me to leave the corporate world because we scaled to six clients. And I had like a sufficient revenue for that company to put, replace my salary.

Mmm hmmm.

However, that model was, I had not really. This comes down to the definition of the word entrepreneur, I had not really built a business. I had built myself a job. So I was part of this system that was creating value. I was not sitting above the system. And sort of tweaking and improving. If I walked out of that company, then everything would fall to pieces. So I decided to stop my business and to build a system. Where I would sit above and the system would run without me. And I was there to improve and to tweak. So move from the service business to the market place and we launched this market place a week ago today actually and now as an entrepreneur, you can join the platform, create an account, hire a team member in the phillapines within five minutes and 7 clicks. I think we calculated.

You can then take that team member from the platform, you can view the contact details of that team member once you have hired them by validating your paypal account. You then work with them off the platform and our software tracks all of the time that a person spends. Their active time, which is whether they are on the keyboard or moving the mouse. And also some screen shots from their screen. All of that data is then sent back to the dashboard, that you can log in and see as an entrepreneur. Then automatically at the end of the month, the amount of time that they have charged is multiplied by the hourly rate. That you agreed when hiring and then that amount is reviewed and then taken from your paypal account.

Wow, that sounds fantastic actually.

Thank you.

I have done outsourcing before and obviously you never really know how long it takes somebody to do something, so to have a system that actually tracks what they are doing whilst they are doing it, that sounds awesome. So Tom, one of the things that I said in your introduction was I talked about you being a Dragon’s Den failure. So that might be worth talking about a little bit if you could please.

Yes I think I put the word failure in like exclamation marks, because we have these words that we use and each person assigns a different meaning to these words that we use. My definition of the word failure, actually I don’t really have a definition of the word failure because I don’t truly believe it exists.

No

To call something a failure, I think you have to impose completely arbitry time boundaries to an event, which I believe there is no point in doing. So yeh if you looked at our Dragons Den appearance, and we can put a link to the YouTube video below I guess. If you took that 30 seconds or the 15 minutes we were in the den and you looked at it, at an event that occured in time. Yes you could say that is a failure. But then if you … it over the next year, the definition would potentially change. So I can tell the Dragons Den story. We had been running after the market stall incident. We spent a year, selling these leggings online and we are all working full time, so we spent a couple of hours a week and we managed to sell 150 pairs through our website.

At the end of that year, I was sat like on a sofa on my ipad just sort of browsing at internet and I stumbled across the Dragons Den Website. Saw that you could apply. Wrote out an application and sent it in, in about 15 minutes. Something about the application must of resonated with the people that manage the applications. And we actually got invited to submit more information and go to the BBC Studios to audition. So we did that and throughout the process, they were saying ‘we are probably taking a big risk on you, we have no idea how the Dragons will react’ but we were more than happy to continue. We knew that if we did get on the show, we would be exposed to the two million people that watch it, live on the Sunday night. So we decided to go ahead

And it was actually like a fantastic thing to do. Like it was really fun. We were there. Me and the two guys that I started the business with, we are all like best friends. We had to have models walk into the studio with us. And they were just three of our friends. So it is just hilarious. Like the whole experience. Like and when we actually got into the den, like as you can see in the video below, we got tore apart. Ha ha ha. There were some horrendous moments, but it was still fun.

Yeh sounds good.

Yeh and the press we got afterwards was fantastic. We obviously saw an increase in sales and an increase in traffic so yeh, the whole experience was awesome.

I Good on you for going for it. You touched on that thing about failure, I actually came across something the other day that talked about failure and defined it as failure is not falling down, it is not getting up afterwards. And I think you have obviously proven that, that is the point so really you didn’t fail so really the speech marks around the word failure are quite appropriate there. So what is it you enjoy most about what you do Tom?

That is a very good question. I think that I enjoy, the one thing that I enjoy the most in what I do is helping people. And I used to think when before I was exposed on entrepreneurship or business. That people in business didn’t help people, I used to just think they just took money from people. And I started to research money and research the thing that money represents. Value. And I realise that you will only be able to sell something if the person that you are selling to believes that thing has a greater value than the money that you charge for it. So this means that when a transaction occurs, between a business and a customer, there is actually a surplus of value that is created in the world. It is quite hard to put your head around that but therefore whenever someone comes to the platform and hires a team member, and they work together and it helps them with their business. I believe that the world is like even on a tiny scale a slightly better place. And it is that process of creating something that will help people, and actually helping people that I really like.

Right ok, that is a superb explanation of what it is about and I think you have really hit the nail on the head of misconception of people there. So what drives you?

Good question again. So I think there are a number of reasons, some more noble than others. I know there is definately, my ego really seeks like the validation of others, like for example this interview, I can take this interview and share it on my social media channel, so that I can send it to my friends, I can send it to my mum. And they will probably think, ‘oh thats good Tom, you got interviewed.’ and my ego will gain some sort of recognition from that fact. So I know that probably won’t bring lasting fulfillment and happiness but that is definately a reason why I do things. Even if it is for the recognition of my ego. But there are other reasons,as we discussed in that past question, helping people and I think, that is a more sort of that will provide greater fulfilment and happiness in future by helping people. So the ego validation. The adding value to the world. And I think the third and most powerful reason that I am driven, is to be able to build up value for myself. Like in the form of assets or money that I can then in the future, invest into making the world an even better place.

So if you look at people like all of them the richest people in the world. Now are giving their money away to charity. Like absolutely amazing what Mark Zuckerburg has just done by pledging 99% of his fortune to a charitable foundation. That is exactly what I see myself doing in say ten years. If I manage to amass wealth. Is to use the skills that I have built to create that wealth, to give that wealth back to the world. A method that I think is valuable.

Awesome, so how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

I like, I think there are two ways, theres interacting with people, completely outside of the business world. So people that are potentially not, well definately not involved in your business. And potentially not involved in business at all. And so is being present, in that interaction. And I go out and I think having fun is a great way to recuperate. So that is method number one and method number two is through use of a physical body. So becoming present, for me is running or weightlifting. I think provides a massive amount of recovery from the interlectual hassle. Not hassle but the interlectual strain that you go through when building a business.

So Tom, are you ready to now go back to the time and think about the time before you were an entrepreneur?

Mmm hmm yeh

Right, so what difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business?

If we talk about the leggings business, we had no idea what we were doing . We didn’t because none of us had started a business before. One of my co-founder Jo had a degree in business, but me and Luke did not. So we had none of the skills required to both build the product, but also to sell the product. So we, like our issue was obviously wanting to try and put the product out into the world. But in order to do that effectively, we had to develop the skills, so instead of sort of splitting our time between developing the skills, and actually implementing to try and sell the leggings. Because we are all working full time, we did not really spend the time to develop the skills, we just tried to sell the leggings. So this meant that our early efforts were not rewarded and we had a very long learning curve because we did invest our time intelligently. So what I would urge anybody to, if they are starting a business like without any experience is to be intelligent about how you spend your time between executing and developing the skills required to execute effectively.

But you also do not want to go to the other end of the scale, where you spend all your time say learning to code, or learning to copyright, without executing. So the tip that I am giving is to just be aware of where you are spending your time and to adjust as necessary.

That is great advice that. And did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

With the leggings, no. We did not, because as I mentioned, there was a week between the idea to the implementation of the market stall. So there was not any doubts there but I think that was because we had other motivations. Now I think it is a really useful concept to harness. Whenever you are considering, whenever you are weighing up the options to do something. If you can choose to do something where you would win, regardless of the result. Then, that is really useful. So, I will give an example of a podcast that I am just starting for this platform that we discussed earlier.

Mmmm

Now the result of a successful result of that podcast would be gaining clients by doing this podcast. Which, that is the result. But I have also engineered the podcast so that I win regardless because the podcast is just ten minutes a day. Like summarising our progress and also talking about obstacles that we are to overcome. So that podcast also doubles as a sort of accountability tool for myself. So I know that each day I have to record a podcast so that I need to do something. And also it enables me to teach things and I think the best ways to learn things is to teach. So there is those two other factors there. Like, I am going to experience the benefits from. Regardless whether the podcast gets clients. So with the leggings, we actually wanted to have a market stall on that market in east London because we knew there was loads of attractive girls on that market. And we wanted to go and do that right?

Ha ha ha

So if you can choose to do something where there are multiple benefits regardless of whether you make sales on the market. Or you get clients from your podcast. Then that is awesome. Does that make sense?

Yeh absolutely. So what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey? Unless you did not make any?

Yeh I have made so many mistakes. Ok so

What would you say is your biggest one?

Yeh yeh, I have got it right. So as I mentioned we spent about six months building this platform and I was in Venezuala, and it was Saturday, and we were due to launch the platform on the Monday. And on that Saturday, there was malware, I got an email from google saying there was some malware on a separate website, so I found a contractor I had worked with, once before, and I say can you just sort this out because our website was live and we were still making sales and I wanted to fix that. So I enabled this contractor to go into the hosting, a shared hosting account there. I have as all of my web properties. Though the contractor did not know this, so he took a back up of just that one site that he was supposed to fix. And cleared out all of the files for every other web property that I had.

Good

and contacts that I spent the last three years trying and failing with online businesses. So I probabably had like six websites live through that account and he just deleted them. And the company hostgator do provide weekly backups for every account that they have. It is like complementary. But it did not run for a month before because I was over assembling it with the account. So we had effectively just lost the previous three months of development work and my personal blog that I had been writing on for nine months. Now I think I probably could have taken that in a couple of ways. I could have got like really angry and tried to sue the contractor or and just like given up. And I definately wanted to do that. But I think the way I took it was quite immature in that I took full responsibility, it was my fault for letting that person inside the account when I didn’t really know his capabilities. And for not ensuring that we did have back ups of everything in there.

Mmmm

So like taking that responsibility has meant that now, I am pretty sure I will never make that mistake again. And it just delayed the development or the release of that platform by a month to six weeks and now we are up and running and everything is fine. So I think the moral of the story is on a journey to anything, on any journey you are going to make mistakes. And yes you should do everything within your power to prevent making them but if you do make them, regardless of what this situation is, I think it is useful to take full responsibility, and just make sure that you learn the lesson. So that in the future, you don’t make it again.

Yeh, did you manage to get your websites back?

So in short no,

I don’t know if you know this, but there is a website, I think it is called archive.org. And you go on that website. It takes full saves of websites to get any traffic to them.

Really?

Yeh so you might actually be able to get some of it back.

That is an awesome tip, I will check that out, later today.

Yeh I think it is archive.org or archive.com, I can’t remember what it is, but it definately does it because I have used it recently for something else.

Awesome.

Ok Tom, so now what I would like to do is talk about the entrepreneurial journey itself with you, so just moving forward from the beginning. In your business, how important is culture and do you think it is something that is important from the beginning?

How do you define culture?

Culture is, I am defining that as something as the way you treat your staff and the way you incentivise and motivate people. And general you know the vibe of where you work I suppose. Or the environment that you create. And that is the type of thing I am talking about. So for example, you might start a business and they might just employee somebody and say here is the job go and do it. Whereas someone else might start, might employee somebody and they might have a manual and give them all these instructions on how to do it, so that they know how to do the job properly. And I just wondered what your thoughts were on that?

So a book that I love about this is called ‘Start with Why’ by Simon Sinekbeth. People have probably heard of it, he has 17 minute Ted talk you through the book, so if you don’t want to read the book, just find the Ted book. So he says that everything is more effective if you start by explaining the why so if you start your advertisement for your business, explaining why you exist, if when you hire a new employee and you are training them on your business, you explain why you exist and why you do what you do? Because I think that when people connect with the why or they understand the why, they are far more empowered. They are far more, they can. They will be far more motivated in order to pursue that ‘why’ as well. So if you look at the leggings company, our why is that you should be able to wear what you want. As opposed to what you should. And so we sort of lead with that, on our website and on our social media channels. And I believe that is one of the reasons why we have been successful. Is because people, our customers connect with our why. And become more engaged.

Mmmmm

If we then talk about this platform then we have launched now. And our why’s, our why is to sort of enable entrepreneurs to build businesses. And have discussions with everybody I bring in to our team about that and about why they would want to connect with that and that is a big part on who I would recruit and who I have recruited as people that agree with that sort of why and that mission. So in answer to your question, I think that culture and the why is crucially important for any business. And the reason it is so important is because its ability to motivate.

Right, yes that is great. Actually just one other question which I forgot to ask you before which is what are some of things you did before you started your business that would be helpful tips for some of the listeners who have not taken the first step of the entrepreneur’s way?

I think it is to be curious. So as you go about your day-to-day life, you have to become aware and become curious about problems and the pay-in points that these problems solve. I think possibly the worst thing that you can do is to create a product without being aware of the problem that you are solving. Because then you could spend a long time or alot of time or resources on creating a product when it is not actually solving a problem. So if you flip that on its head and you go about your day-to-day lives, like when you are at work, when you are in the shops, when you are with your friends, and you are just aware of potential problems. And if you find one that you think is viable, invest more time into understanding that problem. And then you start a business and create a product that directly solves that problem. You are going to reduce your risk of starting a business. I think the key is awareness and curiosity.

Knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out, would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

Good question. I think it is what I just mentioned there. Is, with the leggings we did not have a problem in mind when we created that business. With the outsourcing service company, I did not really have the problem in mind when I started that business. The market place that we have now before I decided to go ahead and create that, I spoke to about ten entrepreneurs. That we were using that were hiring virtual staff. And I talked to them about their problems and their pay-in points and then tried to solve them. And so again, in order to reduce the risk and thus to reduce the amount of time or money that you will lose, by starting a business is to make sure that you have spoken to people that will buy your service or products before you create it. Thats official.

Ok thanks for that. And how much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

Good question again. I don’t trust my gut feeling. I am not sure if you should or not, I don’t think I can provide an opinion on that. But if I have a gut feeling, I try to become aware of that feeling and then try to interlectually understand where it is coming from, and why it is occuring. And maybe that is not a good strategy to try and intellectualise the truth. Because the gut feeling I believe probably is the truth. But the way I have done it previously is to not trust that feeling.

Ok, I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer really, I think some people do and some people don’t and some people do the sort of thing you are talking about there. So, it is just interesting to see how different people see it, so. Thanks for that Tom. Life is made up of constant change, whether we like it or not. So the only constant in life as far as I see it, is change, so Tom, how do you try to keep up with change?

That is great. I am really glad that you raised that actually. Because it is something that I have only really discovered in the past six months or really got with that idea in the past six months. And I actually finished a book recently where I said there were three constants in life and one of them mentioned was change and the other two were humour and paradox. That book is the ‘Way of the peaceful warrior’ which is an awesome book by the way. So your question is how do I keep up with change? I am going to give – the answer I am going to give is meditation. So I believe that when you meditate, you enable yourself to or you are building your skill of creating positive emotions, where they are not connected to your external environment. So, that means that regardless of change, you can still be happy because you can cultivate that happiness yourself. If you build the skill set of meditation. So that is how I, it is not why I started meditation but it is what I realised after meditating after six months. Is that even if I am in a really rubbish place, the business is going really bad. I can sit for ten minutes in the morning and still feel good and happy about life through this skill set that I have got.

Mmmmm. That is an interesting answer you have given me there Tom. I have not heard that one before, that is awesome. Ha ha what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism? Business, personal development, leadership, or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

I might give a couple here. The first is, for someone who does not like the theory and the spiritual side and someone who just wants to build a business that will create a lot of value and ultimately make you really rich – its called The Millionaire Fastlane by M J De Marco. And he is a guy who like dropped out of college, just had loads of small rubbish jobs, and then he sat for six years in his bedroom. Building a website that would connect people that wanted a limo with limo companies. And he eventually sold that for hundreds of millions, and now is a millionaire and just writes books and relaxes and he just talks you through how he exactly did that and the mindsets that he needed to do that.

So for me like in terms of tangible, get-money books, that for me was the one that has really made the most difference. So that is for someone who really wants to go out there and do it. In terms of the more intangible or spiritual side, I would say Seth Godin’s book, the Icarus Deception. And in this book he talks about, I am sure you are aware of the Greek Myths of Icarus. Where there was a man who was banished to an Island and his son, attempted to fly from the island back to the mainland – I am probably butchering this story but the dad built some wings out of feathers and wax. And he told his son before he left that he should not fly too close to the sun because the heat will melt the wax and he will fall and drown. And what he also told his son, but if not re-told him a myth, is that don’t fly too low to the sea because the salt will mess up the wings and then you will drown.

So what actually happens is the son, flies too close to the sun, and drowns. But the interesting thing that Seth writes about in this book is that, that myth is re-told without the fact that the dad explains to the son that you should not fly too low. So what he is saying is that everybody in the world, is told through this myth not to fly too close to the sun, and not to take risks and not to follow your passion and to build businesses and to help people. But was actually told in the story was that you should not fly too low either. So you need an easy medium. And that is what that book is about and that was the book that made me decide to leave the corporate world.

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Right can I quickly jump in there?

Of course.

So, I think alot of people spend alot of time moving between place A and place B. And those two places are like your home and your work. And if you add that time up. Twice a day, every day can add up to like masses and masses of time. And what you can do in that time, if you are interested in starting a business or building a life that you enjoy more, if you don’t enjoy your life already. Then an excellent opportunity and the easiest thing to do is to use audio books as you go between those two places.

Thanks for that. I am glad you agree. Tom, are you ready now to fastforward into the future? Tell me your dreams.

Yeh

What one thing would you do, with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

Good question. One thing that I really want to test out with this platform, is to make it ‘invite only’ – so an entrepreneur can only create an account if they have been invited by a friend. And a team member can only create an account on the platform as well. If they have been invited by a friend. Now I think that will be awesome. I think that will actually increase the number of new sign-ups we get, because when you get invited to something, and it is like ‘invite only’ you are like wow! I’m special. I think it would also increase the quality of the people on the platform. Because the people can only come on if they have been invited, and that is assuming the people who are already there are good, are awesome. So that is something, if I knew I could not fail, I would do that. But I think that I am not doing that because I am scared that it will actually reduce the sign-ups. Maybe I will toy with that in the future.

Ok Good answer. Excellent. It is always a dilemma that isn’t it? I have been in a similar position in the past of a business and never known what to do. Maybe try launching an alternative one and trying it with that one.

Yeh and testing it out. What skill if you were excellent at it, would help you most to double your business?

Copywriting. So putting words on a screen that will inspire people to act. And that is a skill that I have not developed and I have just started doing that this week actually. So each morning I spend time handwriting really good sales letters and trying to analyse why they work. Because I believe it is the same as selling face-to-face, so if my business was face-to-face business, like not online then selling would be that but because that is not what I am doing. I have to sell through a computer screen with words. Or you could do it with video as well but I am not doing that at the moment. That I think is the most crucial skill for anybody selling online.

Yeh it is very powerful isn’t it? In five years from now, if a well known business publication was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

That is a really good question. Not just as they will provide like a good insight and value for the listeners of this programme. But also because I think that it a really good question just to ask yourself, in order to get good ideas and to get good answers, so that is awesome and what would I like it to say, I would like it to say that Tom and Tom’s team from virtue valley has enabled x amount of entrepreneurs to build businesses, successful businesses, and improve their lives where they could not have previously done that.

Ok thank you. We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so the first of those is do you have a favourite quote that you have? and can you tell us how you have applied it?

There are so many, ok so these are quotes originally from shakespeare and I am not, don’t take me as a literary genius. These are the only shakespeare quotes I have ever enjoyed or know. But it was told to me through a video by a guy called Alan Watts. Who was an awesome philosopher, an author. And it relates back to our discussion earlier about change and I am going to try and say it from the top of my head now, but I might get it wrong because it is quite long, and it also includes words that do not really make sense in our modern language. But here we go, ‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, I all in itself will inherit. And like a cloudless tagent fading leave not a rag behind.’ I probably got that wrong and I might look it up, I will look it up after and I have probably butchered that. But what he is basically saying, is that all these great things, ‘the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces’ are going to disolve with time. And leave nothing but a rag behind, and I am not sure what that final part means but what I take from that quote, is that change is constant. And that everything that you might value, like in your life, your possessions, or your shoes. Are eventually going to fall apart and will not be there. Which empower me to focus on the things that matter more. Such as my time and relationships.

Yeh, awesome. And what is the best advice that you would give to other entrepreneurs out of all the things you believe?

If I had to give one piece of advice, it would be to not build something that people don’t want. Is to before you invest time and money into building something, speak to the people who will buy it. And if five people say they will buy it then go ahead.

Yeh it is pretty good advice that or you have not got a business have you? Everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Tom’s favourite resource or his favourite books, you can find the links on Tom’s shownotes page. Just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Tom or Tom Hunt in the search box. Tom, is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

I would like to have a quick discussion going back to that point about being an entrepreneur and being self-employed.

Yeh.

So the reason that, for me the reason why I chose to build virtue valley was to empower entrepreneurs. And when you first start your business, you cannot be an entrepreneur because you potentially do not have the funds to employ people to do alot of the tasks within the business. So the reason why we build virtue valley is to reduce the cost as much as possible to take on those first employees, to do the task within your business to enable you to move from being self-employed, move away from that job that you have created yourself to sitting above a system, and then the time that you spend is actually being an entrepreneur. And the book that really clarified this for me is called the emyth revisited by Michael Gerber where he talks about the difference between being a technician, a manager and an entrepreneur. That if a goal of virtue valley is to enable people to become entrepreneurs. And that is the last thing I would like to add.

Thank you for that. Tom, it has been an honour having you on the show, you have really provided us with some useful insight into the entrepreneur way, and you have certainly inspired us all, and given us a lot to think about so thank you very much for coming on the show.

It is a pleasure Neil and I really appreciate what you are doing. Because I think the effect that you could have on potential entrepreneurs could be massive and what if one or many people, who were not going to start a business, do so because of the inspiration that you have provided? and the effect that that could have like on the world. I think it is really good.

Thank you. I appreciate that and I appreciate you coming on here.

Pleasure.