023: Starting a Business With No Funding, No Contacts and No Rent in Empty Shop Units with Joe Kennedy and Jonny Burt from The Unit London Art Gallery

If there is an idea that you have, and you believe it 100% you know you can achieve amazing things, and that is a cliche thing that you hear from entrepreneurs every day, but I think when you start actually seeing fruits you know, from all that hard work and you see those rewards that you can actually achieve, it pushes you to achieve better things and become more successful. And I think it is something that we carry through every single day, you know and it is something very important to remember.

#00:01:04-6# Neil: Hello everybody, its Neil Ball here, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mindset, the committment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, in fact two of them. Joe Kennedy and Jonny Burt, but before I introduce them to you, I have a little bit of a quote for you. James Nathan Miller said, ‘there is no such thing as worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for, and questions are the breath of life for a conversation.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Joe and Jonny, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:58-0# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: As ready as we will ever be.

#00:02:00-7# Neil: When Joe Kennedy and Jonny Burt were 23, they decided to set up an art gallery that would challenge the traditional model and make contemporary art more accessible. They have built their business from scratch without any funding, experience or contacts in the industry, and after two years are classed amongst the top must-see galleries in London. Joe and Jonny, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life to allow us to get to know more about what you do and who you are.

#00:02:31-7# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Certainly, thanks for having us on the show,

#00:02:35-7# Neil: Thats a pleasure.

#00:02:35-7# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Like you say we started the business about two and a half years ago now when we were 23, we were both kind of working separately in different industries, I was working in the advertising industry, Jonny was pursuing his art, here in London and we kind of were a bit frustrated really with the 9-5’s job kind of model and we both had kind of different experiences in our different industries and kind of pulled that knowledge together, and based on a frustration really with the way that we had experienced galleries and the art world before. We had decided that we could, there was an opportunity to set up something which would provide a platform for amazing artists to showcase their work to the widest possible audience and also open up the contemporary art world to more people and make it more accessible industry for the average person on the street. So the gallery is called Unit London and we started it selling our own work, because we are both practising artists, selling our own work and a few artists that we kind of admired and who are gracious enough to give us some of their canvas’s. And we set up a tiny kind of pop up in West London near where we lived. And from there it has been lots of kind of hard work and dedication and belief in the idea and what we were doing was the right thing to do. And kind of fast forward to now when we are running a successful business, and kind of making waves in the art industry. So we are very fortunate and it has been lots of hard work and like I say, dedication but it has paid off to a certain extent.

#00:04:35-3# Neil: Mmm hmm when you say you have been making waves in the art industry, can you just embelish a bit more on that for us please?

#00:04:40-7# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh alot of what people have come to know us for is the way that we have promoted and marketed and not just the brand and the artist that we actually represent. As you said when you made the introduction, we have not received any funding when we started so we did not have any contacts or we did not know any collectors in the industry that we could call upon to kind of sell work to or put us in the newspaper or anything like that. So you know, we were completely unknown, and so we basically just called upon social media to promote the brand and the artist that we represent, and that kind of tied in with the brand that we were trying to build, and you know create a community. And trying to make it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. So we went to instagram, we went to twitter and facebook and we have just tried to promote everything that we do through those social channels, you know which is ultimately free media.

#00:05:33-8# Neil: Yeh

#00:05:34-6# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: And as a result of that you know, two, three years later we have built an army of followers, you know nearly 70,000 followers across all the channels that allow us to connect the collectors all over the world. It has allowed us to connect with artists all over the world that we now represent, journalists and its been a huge factor really in making the business a success. And you know, especially in the art industry, it is not really a sort of form of media thats used to promote galleries, you know, everything is very much routed in the old guards and so its kind of been deceived as like this new phenomenon. You know, instagram in the art market is a very new thing but it is the way that things are going, we have just kind of pushed that to promote everything that we do and its been very successful. So its a very strong arm of the business and the brand.

#00:06:29-8# Neil: I mean it sounds like a great combination that someone from advertising and someone from art and going into art and you can obviously apply your experience from advertising with the experience with art and make a business out of it and that is in essence what you have managed to do there. And obviously the not knowing how everyone else does it, has just made you break the rules a bit and do it your way, which has obviously found a nice niche in the market, would you say that is a good analysis of what you are doing?

#00:07:01-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh for sure, I think the probably the key to our success has been the branding and the marketing of the business and our artists. Because really I mean the art industry is all about creating a perceived value in a product which has debatable material value. You know the cost of creating a painting can be £100 but it can sell for 10,000% more than that. And the kind of margins that you get in the industry are all created by marketing and press stories and angles, you know, why a Damien Hurst painting sells for £25 million pounds versus something which is arguably asthetically more interesting, it can be sitting on somebody’s wall and sell for £100 / £150 in a small gallery somewhere. That difference is really all about branding and marketing so we recognise from the start that was a hugely important factor if we were going to make the business a success. I think that holds true for most industries, I think marketing and the way that you allow people to perceive your brand and your product is hugely important and yet the combination of our paired experience in advertising and the art industry kind of came together and provided the perfect foundation for us to grow.

#00:08:34-6# Neil: I think that someone somewhere said that marketing is everything in business and I think it really is, but I think that you also said that you are both artists as well, is that right? #

#00:08:44-3# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh when we were at school, you know it was really kind of a nice story because we were always very passionate, we were in gcse classes and A level and we, all the artists that we actually represent now, we were kind of studying, you know? back then you can see our sketch books and they are full of kind of reference material of all the artists that we almost idolised and we are now representing in the gallery. You know which is quite surreal when you think of it in those terms but we have always had kind of an eye for it, and we have always been kind of passionate about art and we always wanted to kind of had the idea of going into business together, but we never necessarily knew that it was going to be running a gallery, but again that was kind of accidental, and the timing was just good you know Joe was doing his advertising in Australia and I was, I came back from uni and I was very seriously trying to pursue my own art and get into galleries and stuff and hitting brick walls all the time for various, for politics basically. And again thats where the frustration came from, but we feel it would be the USP and the way that we market and we manage the gallery, and the way that we treat people in the gallery, because it is all about attention to detail and everything, you know its coming from an artistic perspective. And alot of the time in most galleries, alot of that stuff is completely neglected. You know and its just kind of chasing figures or investments and stuff like that, so we are very passionate about it and we kind of treat the gallery as our own art piece, you know. We say that alot of the time, and we are very precious about it. But it helps because when we are trying to connect with other artists we want to represent it kind of, there is already that trust, because we have been there, we know what that artist is going through and so they kind of relate to us on that level. Which I think has also helped us to get some quite impressive names you know in such a short space of time.

#00:10:32-2# Neil: Mmm well you sound like you have done incredibly well, I mean to get to the point where in two years you are amongst the top must-see galleries in London is quite an achievement isn’t it? Can I just move things on a little bit, and can you talk about what you enjoy most about what you do?

#00:10:51-3# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Enjoying, well I mean to be honest it does not really feel like work, when we are working and we work very hard, I mean since we first set up the gallery, its been pretty much 24/7 for two years, I mean we had a break this christmas which was very surreal, it did not feel normal, having two weeks off. We didn’t really know what to do with ourselves, but it does not feel like work and we do really enjoy what we do. I think a large part of that is because what we are doing is so creative and because we are both artists and we have that natural kind of creative tendency. By coming into the gallery and you know, and making the space look like what it looks like, and building a brand and talking about the brand and managing the artists, and putting on shows as well, its all creative and it feels natural, you know it does not feel like we are going to work. When I used to work in advertising agencies, alot of the time you would feel, it would feel like work and you would be stressed and that stress was not really, you were not really able to satisfy that stress, it did not feel like a real reward because you were working for something else and you never really saw the tangible benefit, of what you were doing, but here you know you create this environment, you create a culture within the business and you see the results of that, you know if you make sale, thats a direct result and you get that pleasure out of growing and building the business on a day to day basis. I think the fact that we are both two friends who are doing this together, I think that makes it very enjoyable to have someone that you can I guess share the highs and the lows.

#00:12:46-4# Neil: Yeh

#00:12:50-6# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think if one of us was doing it on our own it would be very difficult, so I think having a partner to experience all the good things and all the bad things that go along with running a business, really helps and also you know educating people about the art world, and about the art, you know the brand is very much about introducing new collectors into the contemporary art world which is obviously a world that for alot of people is just very intimidating, and an exclusive feeling. But being based in Soho and on such a prominent street and having this big social media following, we are really reaching out to new people across the world and helping them to get involved in art and start appreciating art and start learning about it and even collecting, and start acquiring pieces. That for us is really rewarding because its all about making art available to as many people as possible. And bringing back that enjoyment and celebration of you know, really amazing artwork.

#00:13:57-2# Neil: Yeh I have looked at your website and it looks like your gallery looks absolutely awesome. You have talked about obviously using the internet and obviously people coming to see you, has most of your business come through the door or does alot of it come through the internet, how do you actually do your business?

#00:14:18-1# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh obviously being in such a prominent location in Soho you know we are right in the heart there, undoubtedly we get amazing foot traffic through the door. You know and alot of those people that walk in, will be kind of just off the street buyers. So we are very fortunate to be in that position, but obviously by the same token we have alot of people that find us now online, because of our social media following. You know people are directed from instagram for example, to our website and then will get in touch with us and we might get 50 inquiries a day as a result of that now. And its really interesting because something like instagram you know, when we post an image on that platform, we potentially you know 7 times out of 10 sell it there and then. And its not that we are using it as a sales tool, but we have always used instagram since we started, we never intended to use it in that way, we used it as a marketing tool, as I said to promote the brand and the artists that we represent, but now because of the following that we have built up, internationally as a result of that it is now translating into sales as well, which is a really interesting new model and so now I think it is probably at the point where it is 50/50. You know obviously we get a lot of walk-in trade from being at this location, but also we get alot of traffic online.

#00:15:38-5# Neil: Yeh

#00:15:38-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: and its getting bigger every day really. The bigger that following gets, the more people we are connecting with all over the world, its opening up new markets everywhere and yeh so I would say its kind of a bit of both.

#00:15:53-3# Neil: And obviously your online stuff is going to drive people to come through the door as well isn’t it?

#00:15:58-0# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh and vice versa.

#00:15:59-1# Neil: Yeh thats interesting, do you use pinterest?

#00:16:01-9# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: We don’t actually, no. We have been in talks to set up an account there, one of the girls who works for us in the galleries, is kind of big on pinterest and she has been pushing for us to start an account. But instagram is really the main focus for us I think, if you really love social media strategy, alot of people will recommend that you kind of choose one platform and do it really well. And obviously each platform has its own merits and its own pitfalls. You know, twitter is great for starting conversations with people. Facebook is great for people to share your content, instagram is brilliant as a kind of brand a holistic brand image platform. And we have used instagram, we have just kind of naturally taken to it, and that has been probably the biggest social media network that has brought us some success.

#00:17:08-2# Neil: I mean what you are selling is absolutely perfect for it though isn’t it, because its all about the image isn’t it?

#00:17:1 Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh it is, its totally visual and its interesting because traditionally art is, you go into a gallery and it is you stay in there for a long time and you soak up the painting and you know you might read a long article about the painting or the artist and usually it is something that you invest alot of time into whereas now today the kind of age that we live in, and people’s attention span is just getting shorter and shorter and shorter. You know people will flick through our instagram feed and you have probably got about one second, maybe two seconds maximum for somebody to decide whether they are going to like that photo or whether or not they areouyo going to pursue it. People’s attention span is just getting so so short and I think the explosion of online and online content, has kind of facilitated that and people are people really do make snap decisions and as long as your content is good, and engaging and it attracts people and catches attention, then you do have a huge advantage and you can start making sales, and start being commercial.

#00:18:15-7# Neil: I used to sell tv’s and it can’t really use instagram in the same way to show someone a tv, you don’t really get excited about it in the same way, just looking at a picture of a tv or you could not repeatedly do that. Whereas what you are doing, every piece of work is obviously going to be different or presumably it is, so you are always going to get people feeling that they want to buy that or they want it, so I think that it is a great medium for what you are saying there, so what is it that drives you? What drives you to do what you do?

#00:18:50-0# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think the main thing is the passion, just the passion for the industry we have and passion for really talented artists and for us the end goal really is to build our artist’s careers and invest in those artists and make sure that they are fulfilling their potential. Because alot of the time you know, great artists won’t actually have the opportunity to make alot of money or to make a career out of their craft, or to get recognition and the reason we started the gallery is to for exactly that reason to provide a platform for those people to be successful. And recognising amazing talent and rewarding it, in the way that it should be. You know, you can go to alot of galleries out there, and you can question the talent of the artist, you know its an industry where sadly I guess privaleged people have a huge advantage over people who don’t have financial resources to invest into PR or they don’t have a network of contacts, who they can lean on to buy their work or you know introduce them to other collectors. And we wanted to buy a platform that kind of ignores that side of glitz and glamour and elitism, and the nepicism that you can find in the industry and actually focus on finding artists, and promoting artists who are genuinely talented, as artists themselves. And thats what drives us, I think thats what drives us, obviously there is we both have very ambitious personalities as well and its always been wanting to be successful in what we are doing as well. And I guess also fear of failure because when you start and when we started, we did not really realise what we were doing, and what it would become, if you told two years ago that we would have a 4,000 square foot gallery in Soho and we would be in all the papers and the magazines and we represent these amazing artists, we would have laughed really, we did not envisage that.

#00:20:49-8# Neil: Mmmm hmm.

#00:20:49-8# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: and so now we are kind of sitting at this, at the top of this business which is growing so fast the whole time, there is always that worry that if you take your foot off the pedal, no-one is going to be there to be there to kind of carry the mantel for you, so there is always that fear of failure or fear of slowing down that also drives you on.

#00:21:14-2# Neil: Mmm and how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

#00:21:20-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Thats a really difficult question, we rarely relax. As Joe said, like that Christmas period was felt alien, because it was the literally the first time when we were not on emails. For a long time and we were not speaking to clients or whatever, I mean the thing is when you are running your own business, as with any business, its 24/7 you never switch off, I mean we work very long hours when we are in the gallery, its very hard to leave, because the work actually become addictive in a strange way but it, I guess we might have one day off each a week and go to the gym, and do some exercise which is very important. But I mean to be honest, we are always working. You know, you have to be when it is kind of your operation, no one else is going to be running it for you, so we don’t relax much to be honest.

#00:22:25-2# Neil: Ok, so when you work in the gallery, you are obviously selling your paintings but are you painting as well? are you actually creating your own art at the same time?

#00:22:31-1# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: No. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for that anymore, because obviously the gallery does take up all of our time, and alot of people say ‘oh you must miss it so much, you have to go back to it.’ and we do miss it obviously, but at the same time we are kind of exercising that creativity in loads of different ways. You know from the marketing that we do, which is also central to the business that we also for alot of our shows, we write films and we go and shoot these amazing films, we got the film director, to promote an artist in their show. You know, or even the curating of the exhibitions themselves, you know its all a very creative process, so we don’t miss it too much, you know. As I said, we are kind of using that creativity in different ways.

#00:23:16-8# Neil: Ok and do you have any entrepreneurial role models?

#00:23:23-6# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Theres loads of people that we respect, its funny because we are not really, we sort of stumbled into being entrepreneurs, I mean if you consider entrepreneurs seem doesn’t feel right, although obviously we are in that bracket. So we have never really gone into this business thinking ‘we are gonna be entrepreneurs and we are going to become successful entrepreneurs, you know?’ its really just a passion that has turned into a business, so I mean theres loads of people I admire from a business point of view, Elon Musk, I guess has to be a pretty obvious choice but his passion for innovation and his risk taking is really admirable. And we know from first hand experience, its not, taking a risk is not an easy thing to do. But yeh, no real role models though, you know, there are not many people within the art industry, within our industry that are taking the approach that we are taking. So there aren’t many people within the industry that we are looking towards. We are very much doing things our own way.

#00:24:35-0# Neil: Yeh but that might be a great opportunity to look at what people are doing in other industries, and draw from that and put it into what you are doing, so I thought that might tie in with getting inspiration from other ideas, from other people and applying it to what you are doing is obviously what you have already done, so it would sort of be a natural extension from that, wouldn’t it?

#00:24:53-9# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh. Theres people like, somone like John Heggerty, and Rory Sutherland who are two kind of very big advertising honchos that some of their, some of the work that they have done is really inspirational, in terms of changing people’s perceptions. Turning, without really altering the material values of something by changing someone’s perception of that thing. You can actually drive profitability and you can create value without actually changing the physical product. Those kind of concepts and ideas, are really central to what we do, so I have got alot of respect for those guys, definately.

#00:25:37-2# Neil: Ok thanks for that, can we now go back to the time before you were an entrepreneur, what are the difficulties that you had to overcome when you started your business?

#00:25:48-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Difficulties, I mean well when we started, we took up a small pop up shop, and really the goal at that point was to just create one exhibition, one show that we could be really proud of. And you know we had to space on a month-to-month basis, because the landlord was, the shop was empty and the landlord was paying business rates, and we went in and we said, ‘look we will pay the business rates on this space, we are not going to pay any rent but we will handle your costs, if we can use it to set up an exhibition’ and we ended up staying in that space for about six months. And so we kind of rolled on and rolled on and at that time, I was still working full time in advertising, and so I guess one of the big issues we had starting up, was just finding the time to get everything done you know and Johnny was in the gallery on a day to day basis, and I was kind of at work, really kind of pissing off my employers because I would be constantly on my phone, or on the laptop not doing what I was supposed to be doing, and giving so much time to setting up the gallery in the showroom.

#00:26:57-8# Neil: Yeh

#00:26:57-8# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: And yet financing was probably an issue, we were losing money when we started, so that was difficult. But really it was just believing in the fact that what we were doing was going to pay off long term and you know, we knew that it was going to be difficult for people to trust us because ultimately we were just two young guys sitting in a cold freezing shop trying to sell art work to people without any background or any business acumen necessarily, or knowledge of the art industry. So we knew it was going to be difficult to get started, we always believed that long-term the brand was going to connect with people and we did have a unique message to talk about. So belief in that really, kind of kept us going. I guess.

#00:27:45-5# Neil: yeh but that finding a way of starting by offering to take up space of an empty unit and actually just pay the business rates is actually an essence of the entrepreneurial spark really, because that has given you the opportunity to obviously get to where you are right now. So thats awesome, so did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:28:13-2# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: No, literally we went to separate uni’s but when Joe came back from Australia, and I came back from my uni and sort of everything I was doing my own art, we kind of came into it with so much energy. Passion you know and like, it was all we wanted to do and we had this, we had this conversation about a shop, that pop up shop in Chiswick that had become available. And it was kind of an instant yes we are going to go for it. And we literally went into a pub and we diagnosed kind of a problem that we had received in the art world, and we kind of said like, ‘well whats the antedote? whats the solution to that?’ and we kind of just went at it, I guess you could say, naively but we did not just want to look back. We just kind of went straight into it, head first, and we had a very clear idea of what we wanted to do, obviously, when you starting out you have no idea where it is going to go. It was really kind of for a passion and a hobby, and we never expected it to go beyond a one-month pop up. You know, with that first show that we had, but you know we were kind of one month more, one month more, and we kept surviving I guess, even though we were losing money we managed to keep it going. I guess you always have that slight seed of doubt that is this going to survive? how far will it go? but I think it is just that commitment to that brand and that belief, and a hell of a lot of hard work and dedication and kind of carries you through. You know, there is no substitute for that. And again, its that kind of fear that motivates even now, you know every single day. You can’t take your foot off the pedal, you know you got costs,

#00:29:59-7# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: They have gone bigger every year.

#00:30:02-9# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: But when we started, that pop up space that we took on, that was our model really, that is what has allowed us to get to where we are.

#00:30:07-5# Neil: Yeh

#00:30:09-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Is taking on spaces which we have negotiated great deals with the landlords, you know it has been a pop up model and by evangelising our brand to the landlord and championing all the things that we are going to bring to that particular area and that locality, how great it is to be aligned with art and you know, how great our brand is. Communicating that to the landlord and then getting a good deal from them, and being that economical with all of our pop up spaces that we have had, has allowed us to make the margins that we have been allowed to re-invest in the business. You know, we would never have been able to take on you know, the rent on a space, you know, of any of our pop up spaces. We would never have been able to afford it and it would have been too damaging to our plans, to be able to do that so, by taking on them as pop ups and on highly reduced rates, we have been able to grow quite fast. And now, obviously we are in a position where we have built up the collector base and the clients and the brand equity to a point where we can take on the rent on a very big space in Soho, so its been a very economic model to get to where we have got to, its been very shrewd.

#00:31:25-3# Neil: Yeh it sounds fantastic. Are you still using pop ups, or are you in a permanent location now?

#00:31:31-0# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Permanent location now. The pop up model is really for any business, its such a great model, because from what I have just said, you know, you can grow quickly, you can get that high street presence, you can connect your people on a day-to-day basis without having to take on a lease and have that huge financial committment that you get taking on a space long-term. But the dream has always been to have a flagship gallery where we can really nail down the flag and we now have that which is amazing. But also it comes with that financial overhead as well, which you know I think about every day. Ha ha its always on your mind, you have to always make sure you are hitting the targets, and going beyond your targets, and constantly yeh, growing.

#00:32:24-2# Neil: Ok and what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey? have you made any?

#00:32:30-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think yeh, definately, we have definately made mistakes, yeh. I think delegating has been a huge thing for us. Because its, you know, you start a business and you have a very clear idea of how you want it to be run. We did not take on, for the first two years we had no staff whatsoever. And it was just the two of us doing everything from the accounts to the marketing to the trade shows, finding and managing and dealing with the artist. Sales, you know the location, the property side of things, and that is, that does take its toll, and when you spread yourself too thin, you start being less productive in the areas that really need focus. So thats been probably a slowing factor, in the business in terms of slowing down our growth and halting it a little bit, I think its really important to hire good people, and actually hire people who are better than are. And have different skill sets to what you have, in order to grow properly. But it was difficult for us, and still is to an extent, difficult to let go of those reins a little bit and allow other people to come in and bring their own ideas and concepts to the table. But ultimately, that is the best way to grow and now that we have done that, we have a great team of people who are always as passionate as we are about the business and who really believe in the brand, and the ethos and the culture that we have here. And there, we are now seeing great benefits from that.

#00:33:58-6# Neil: and what are some of the things you did before you started your business that will be helpful tips for some of the listeners, who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:34:17-2# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: We were both kind of doing our different jobs, and I think when you come out of university, you know the first thing you do is, you try and get a job because you have got rent to pay and you need to get on the ladder. So I jumped straight into advertising and that is something that I have always been really interested in because you know the business of decision making and why people make the decisions they do and how you can influence them, that decision-making process. Thats always fascinated me, so I jumped straight into that and I was working there and the beautiful thing about advertising is that you get to work on so many different industries, you know one week you could be working on a phone brand or an electronics brand, the next week you could be doing chocolate bars and you start to understand the mechanics of all of these different industries in businesses and that allowed me to build up an appetite really for business and starting up something for myself and yeh that provides a really good platform and obviously working for somebody else as well and having that, building that work ethic, kind of instills really important values in you life as you take into your business, you start that up.

#00:35:37-1# Neil: Ok thank you for that, were you going to say something there?

#00:35:41-3# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: yeh I was going to say, obviously when I was sort of focusing on my art for that year, I was also running a blog, as well that was reviewing, I mean it was kind of not only to promote other artists, but to promote my own work, a blog on my own website, that promotes the artists that I admired you know, all around the world and I would get in touch with those artists, and I would say ‘hey can I, I love your work, can I just write an article on you?’ and it was really kind of, I don’t know whether unconciously but it was, what would happen is that artist would then share that article that I had written for them with their entire social media base and then it would drive all of their traffic onto my website, so that all of these people were kind of looking at my work as well, and I guess, the result of that was two-fold you know because obviously, I was building relationships with these artists that I never otherwise would have gone into a conversation with, that I have now carried forward into the gallery, you know and as a result, now that has materialised and representing all of those artists, for Unit London, you know and if it was not for those inital conversations, it might be alot more difficult to have secured them. So I think on both cases it just comes down to applying what you’re good at, you know, if you are just sort of working a job for and transferring those skills
into an entrepreneurial position, you know because in both cases, it has been very relevant in the way that we run the gallery now.

#00:37:13-2# Neil: Yeh so doing it on someone else’s dime, which is where the American’s put it, or I have come across that, so can we just talk about the entrepreneurial journey itself Joe and Jonny? What I would like to ask you is, do you think is culture important from the beginning in a business?

#00:37:31-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh culture is definately huge. Whether it is important from the beginning, I am not sure, because when you start out, unless you really know and you have a crystal ball and you know exactly where you want to go, and where it is going to go, its difficult to go in with that culture, I think the culture kind of grows very organically in the business and it is just a kind of direct result of well I guess your personality and also of how you want your business to be perceived. And I think it does grow and alot of it is determined by the people within the organisation. That kind of engenders around culture, you know for us has always been about being very hard working, so everybody that comes on board, you know we always look for work ethic, when we are hiring. Work ethic is huge and we want people who are as driven as we are. Who we can trust to therefore take the business, you know take it home with them, and let it become their baby almost in a way. But as you grow, I think it is so important to be able to maintain that culture, and when we did set out initially to start the business, we actually sat down and we did a sort of typical advertising strategy, kind of document which is ‘why do you exist? whats the reason for our business being in existence?’ and that kind of gives you sense of what the culture is going to be because we sat down, and we said, ‘well we are going to exist because we are frustrated with the gallery system and its not serving the people and its very elitist and exclusive and the real talented artists don’t get a chance to show their work.’ So we want to exist to combat that almost and that kind of challenger culture has always been a big part of what we do and it runs all the way through from the logo and the branding, the way that is set up, the design, all the way through to when somebody walks into the gallery, you know the ways that we approach those people, its all reflected in that why we exist and everything ladders up to that mission statement. And as we grow obviously the objectives in your business change a little bit, your goals change and your ambitions and your targets change, you know be that for financial reasons or creative reasons. Things change, and you have to be adaptable as a business, and make sure that you are able to seize opportunities when they present themselves. And so, if you have that mission statement and that why you exist, then when something happens, that might cause you to want to change the business, you can always refer back to that. I think that is really important to be able to be able to go ‘remember why our business exists and you know remember the purpose of the organisation.’ And then you look at that and you can make your decision, based on whether it fits with your purpose. And as we grow, its really about maintaining that and make sure we never lose sight of that why, that why we exist, which is really important.

#00:40:34-5# Neil: Yeh, they are like core values then aren’t you with what you are talking about? Do you share those with the people who work for you?

#00:40:40-3# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh it is actually essential, it is like the fabric of the brand. You know its like whenever we are looking to hire someone we have to be absolutely sure that they are as hard working and passionate and ambitious to get involved and collaborate and present their ideas, you know because we are a small team as well, you know there are only sort of four or five of us, and it is very important that everyone is speaking to that brand message, at all times, you know because it is such a specific message that we are trying to translate to people. #0

#00:41:19-1# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think if you lose sight of that and you start trying to be the jack of all trades, I think it is easy to do as you grow and as you recruit more people. You can become more business orientated or goal orientated, and forget about the reasons, the more emotional reasons, the brand reasons why you exist and why your consumers or your customers actually went to you in the first place. You know if you are chasing the figures, it can be very easy to forget what’s important. And so for us, keeping that is crucial.

#00:41:53-1# Neil: Ok, 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?

#00:42:01-6# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think that learning curve is the beauty of starting a business really, you know I mean like as I said before, we have never followed a formula, about how things should be done. You know we have had very clear views about how we want to run our own gallery, and its very independent, and I think we don’t have any parents in the industry, we have never had any contacts or anything like that, so we have just learnt on the job, you know. Its been a very kind of .. on the stage, but we have learnt from them and we have just kind of tried to prove all the time what we are doing, whether it is to do with the shows or the artists that we represent. I think that process, that journey is really crucial, because it has been such an organic growth, the business, so that learning curve is really essential. I guess if we had known something now, changing it then, I think there would be very much to be honest, because it has been essential to make those mistakes and go through that journey to the point where we are now.

#00:43:07-2# Neil: And how much does gut feelings influence your decisions in your business?

#00:43:11-2# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: A hunger, ha ha ha. Yeh the decisions, to be honest, we make alot of decisions on intuition, and they tend to be the most successful ones, I think there are certain decisions that we have made, you know being with certain artists, or in terms of the broad business direction, where we have been swayed by kind of more rational logic and sometimes that does not work, you as the driver of your business, you understand your business, like nobody else does and sometimes you just have to trust what you feel. What you think would be best, even if the evidence does not really rack up, you have to stick to that decision and put so much belief behind it, that you do not let it fail. Thats where the most successful decisions are made I think.

#00:44:09-8# Neil: Ok, life is made of constant change whether we like it or not, and many say that the only constant is change. So how do you guys keep up with change?

#00:44:22-7# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Being adaptable is huge and being online, we are kind of driving change withing the industry that we are in, because as Jonny said, its an industry that is very old guard and very caught up with traditional models of marketing and communication. By being on social media you can you are really accountable on a minute-to-minute basis for what you are doing, it is starting very open and transparent conversations with your consumers and your customers which are on a public forum and very open, so if you say something and rub somebody up the wrong way, they can fire something back at you and that is open for everybody to see. So the age we live in is very kind of honest and transparent, and the brands that are, the businesses that are embracing that transparency are the ones that are really finding success, and the ones that cannot deal with that change and that open forum of conversation, are the ones that are struggling. So we are very change focused, we are very forward thinking, we are always looking for new ways to market the brand and interesting creative ideas that open new avenues for us. Keeping up the changes is part of what we do,

#00:45:34-8# Neil: You are almost creating the change aren’t you? #

#00:45:36-3# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Mmm and if you do that then you are doing something right.

#00:45:40-Neil: Yeh it sounds like it. And what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:45:54-1# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: In terms, because we have never really been entrepreneurs, we have never really been necessarily fascinated with entrepreneurship, we have stumbled into it, I don’t think either of us have really read any books on entrepreneurialism or business.

#00:46:06-Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: You’ve read that one on the marketing diaries though?

#00:46:10-9# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh

#00:46:13-2# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Thats been quite helpful.

#00:46:13-2# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Yeh there are certain, I mean Magnus Resh does alot of very interesting research in the changing world of contemporary art. Not really an entrepreneurial book, but it gives very interesting insights into the industry.

#00:46:29-7# Neil: Is that a book, or is that a blog?

#00:46:31-1# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Its a book, yeh, its literally called the management of art galleries and it is kind of sold out, all across the world when it was released. He did a study of hundreds of galleries around the world. It was like a long .. study over like five or six years, so he built up this huge body of research and then he went and did some objective analysis on that research and came up with very very insightful statistics in terms of gallery sales and the way the industry is run. And he suggested a kind of a new model, which is actually pretty much what we are doing. Which is cool because I have only read the book very recently. So that a good one, also there is a great book called ‘thinking fast and slow by Daniel Cannaman’ which it is on Behavioural Economics and psychology which has loads of amazing experiments and social studies that reveal insights into decision making, human decision making which for any sales person, or for anyone who is interested in influence and decision making by advertisers or the business that we are in, is really really useful, there is some amazing stuff in there.

#00:47:40-4# Neil: Ok everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time that you may be doing other things, such as driving or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book, go to freeaudiobookoffer.com as long as you haven’t already signed up then you will qualify. Joe and Jonny, are you now ready to fast foward to the future a little bit?

#00:48:09-0# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Our seatbelts fastened.

#00:48:09-0# Neil: Fantastic. What one thing would you do with your business, if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:48:18-4# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: In the future we the dream would be to kind of have making Unit London global. So to open galleries around the world would be amazing. It is our plan to do that, you know a way down the line, you know we have to very firmly establish our route in London first. So that is what we are trying to do right now. You know we want to be known as one of the leading galleries in London. You know keep building a brand, keep representing amazing artists, but ultimately it would be a huge ambition of ours to have Unit London in the States, Asia, Middle East, so probably do that.

#00:48:58-9# Neil: Ok and what skill if you were excellent at it would help you the most to double your business?

#00:49:07-1# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Engineering, so I can build a clone machine, clone ourselves. Engineering, that would be it.

#00:49:15-0# Neil: Yeh that would be useful wouldn’t it? I have not had that answer before, ha ha ha

#00:49:19-3# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Seriously its probably ah its a difficult question. It probably comes down to sales, I’m better at hiring. Delegation is so important, especially when you hit that first stage of growth. When it turns from being like a hobby into a serious business, then you have to make sure your resources are properly applied and delegation is huge.

#00:49:53-2# Neil: Ok and 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?

#00:50:06-6# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Unit London revolutionised the way that art is marketed and sold and artists are promoted in the new age that we live in to adapt to the new age that we live in, they have broken the mould.

#00:50:24-0# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: changed the game.

#00:50:24-0# Neil: we are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so Joe and Jonny what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:50:34-2# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think ‘think big, get big’ I don’t know who said that but I think thats really an insightful quote and its really something that tells a big story, I think that people, if you can envisage yourself, in five years time as a successful person, with the business that you dreamed of, you are halfway there, I think the people who genuinely believe in what they are doing, and what they are able to achieve, are the ones who achieve it. And if you have any seed of doubt, not doubt but if you have any seed of a lack of belief in yourself then it won’t happen. So I think, ‘think big, get big’ is a good one. Be a mindset that you want to achieve.

#00:51:21-8# Neil: Mmm great philosophy. And do you have any favourite online resources that you could share with us?

#00:51:30-4# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Zero is a great tool for accounting. Thats been huge in changing a small business, its basically an online accounting system which allows you to, it hooks up to your bank account and it allows you to make invoices on the fly and it just simplifies that whole accounting process which can be very stressful and boring. So thats a great tool. Psychology today is also a great website for picking up insights and interesting articles

#00:52:01-4# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: business asylum

#00:52:01-7# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: business asylum is also great. Theres a couple. But I mean in terms of specific to our industry, I think there are a few cool platforms like artsy and artspa. Artnet is great for researching artists and galleries. So they would be ones for the industry.

#00:52:21-1# Neil: Ok thank you, and what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:52:26-4# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Theres no substitute for hard work. The cliche of it is, its something we have carried through the whole philosophy of the gallery, you know there, if there is an idea that you have, and you believe in it 100% you know you can achieve amazing things. And that is a cliche thing that you hear from alot of entrepreneurs every day. But I think when you start actually seeing fruits from that hard work, and you see those rewards that you can actually achieve, it pushes you to sort of achieve better things and become more successful. And I think it is something that we carry through every single day, you know it is something very important to remember.

#00:53:12-8# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think don’t be afraid to try new ideas and embrace new ideas. I think thats very important as well. Be very open minded in your approach, don’t be stuck to one rigid formula, because things may change. Circumstances may change and you need to be able to adapt to that. So being open minded is probably a good bit of advice that I would have liked to had starting out.

#00:53:36-5# Neil: Everyone if you didn’t manage to get a note of Joe and Jonny’s favourite resources or their favourite books, you can find the links on Joe and Jonny’s shownotes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Joe or Jonny or Joe Kennedy or Jonny Burt in the search box. Joe and Jonny, is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

#00:53:58-2# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: I think you covered it all, but thank you very much for having us on the show, hopefully we can sit down in a couple of years time and we will be much bigger than we are now but we are a young business, and we are growing very fast and the ethos of the brand is to get as many people involved in the art world as possible, so if any of your listeners are interested in art, or think they might have an interest in art then we are based in Soho, open every single day so do come down and say hello and enjoy the show that we have got coming up.

#00:54:35-4# Neil: Do you ship out of the UK or is it just the UK?

#00:54:37-5# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: We do yeh, lots of our clients are international, so we ship all over the world now.

#00:54:41-7# Neil: Ok excellent, well its been an absolute honour having you on the show and its been great hearing your philosophy on business and how you have actually managed to create a niche in your market, so thank you very much for coming on the show.

#00:54:54-7# Joe Kennedy – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Thank you.

#00:54:54-7# Jonny Burt – Unit London Art Gallery, Wardour Street, Soho, London: Thank you.

#00:54:55-7# Neil: Thank you.