031: How to Double The Size of Your Business in One Deal with Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group

Its very easy to sit around and kind of think either that you have got the greatest idea ever or sit around and think that you know that the business is lousy but actually the only thing that matters is what the market says.

#00:00:48-9# 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, Callum Laing, but before I introduce you to him, I have a little quote for you. Jonathan Cossal said, ‘the answers I remember the longest, are the ones that answer the questions that I did not think of asking.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Callum, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:41-5# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : I certainly am.

#00:01:41-5# Neil : Great. Callum Laing is a business owner and investor who lives in Singapore. Callum, 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?

#00:02:01-3# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Yeh sure so I am actually a Kiwi, so I was born in New Zealand, but I grew up in the UK in Cambridge, and then moved out to Asia about 14 years ago. And I have been pretty much building, buying and selling businesses ever since, spent alot of time trying to learn the entrepreneurship game and trying to learn how to create enough value for customers to convince them to part with their hard-earned cash. And today I am a director of a number of businesses, and so one of the companies that I launched into Asia is called, ‘become a key person of influence’ which has been very successful in the UK, US, Australia and I have launched it here in Singapore. So we have a community of business owners and executives that are looking to raise their profile beyond their business and into the industry. And I am also a partner in a private equity company, that works with business owners to help them get better valuations for their business, so what that means alot of times, is helping them to take their businesses public. So I can have on there, on the investor side, now have entrepreneurship, which is a fun place to be.

#00:03:25-7# Neil : Mmmm hmm, and what do you enjoy most about what you do Callum?

#00:03:32-1# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : I love working with people who get stuff done. Thats what, I guess what really energises me, my days are spent in meetings with entrepreneurs, business owners, you know, they are creating stuff, they are making jobs, they are serving clients, they are serving shareholders and yeh its just an inspiring environment and I get lucky enough to meet lots of cool people that have built lots of cool businesses. Yeh the more time I spend in that, the more fun I have.

#00:04:07-3# Neil : Mmm hmmm, and what is it that drives you?

#00:04:14-0# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : I think I have always been pretty driven. As a kid, I always had little business ventures I think the first one was kind of washing cars and then I had a home-made ice-cream business in Cambridge when I was selling to pubs and restaurants and just kept kind of growing from then, I do I sort of have a geeky fascination with business and love finding out about new business models that are working and understanding about business cultures. And what works in some countries that does not work in other countries, and that sort of stuff all fascinates me so I guess the primary driver is again getting a chance to, thats what I love doing, get a chance to be surrounded by other people that also love that and get to wax lyrical about business opportunities.

#00:05:10-2# Neil : Mmm hmm and how do you relax when you are not working in your business?

# #00:05:18-7# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Mainly through sport and exercise. Obviously, you cannot be an entrepreneur without going through some pretty stressful times and I have had my fair share of pretty dark moments, and one of the things that I learnt was that often as an entrepreneur, when you are going through those periods, its very likely that you kind of get stuck in an endless loop of asking yourself the same questions and getting the same answers. And it is very difficult to switch off from that, and I discovered that if I play competitive sports, at least while I am in that moment, that my mind is completely occupied with the sport, so I play alot of football, but I also go to the gym and run and anything really that is keeping my mind off thinking about business. Which is useful sometimes.

#00:06:21-3# Neil : And do you have an entrepreneurial role models?

#00:06:28-2# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Yeh I have lots and I tend to try and find ways to work with people that I admire the most, so I think one of the foremost thinkers of entrepreneurship at the moment is based in the UK, is a guy called Daniel Priestly, so Daniel actually wrote the book, become a key person of influence, he then wrote, entrepreneur revolution, and a third book, over subscribed. So I think he is incredibly switched on to what is happening in the entrepreneurship world, at the moment. So I reached out to him and now work with him, have launched his stuff here in Asia. And then on the other end of the scale, Jeremy Harbor is probably the number one thinker in terms of small business mergers and acquisitions very very innovative guy and so yeh, reached out to him and ultimately became a partner in his private equity company, so yeh where I see people doing cool stuff, I like to try and figure out how I can create value for them and ultimately end up working with them.

#00:07:53-2# Neil : Mmm Callum, can we talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur, though it might be difficult if you started pretty young by the sounds of it, what difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your business?

#00:08:09-3# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Just complete incompetence. My own incompetence was the hardest thing I had to overcome, yeh I mean the yeh I have always made a point of trying to find people that are smarter than me and aligning myself with them so I can learn with them, but that has not stopped me making huge amount of mistakes along the way. So yeh just as with any entrepreneur, you get your experience from going through those learning cycles. So when I was starting out, I obviously had a few of those. You know, somebody recently said to me, ‘that you know the most about entrepreneurship the day you start your business’. Every day since then, you realise how little you do know. And I think that was probably right, I think that while I have had a lot of kind of small businesses on the side, as I was growing up, my first grown up business was a recruitment company that I built out of Amsterdam, we had offices in Amsterdam, Dublin and London. That was very successful, I think I was 23/24 at the time, and I thought that success was due to my innate talent and good looks, but actually we were serving Telco companies in the height of the dot.com boom. So, we were successful despite my incompetence. And when the dot.com boom collapsed, it turned out that I was not nearly as clever as I thought I was. So that was a nice bit of humility served up to me at a young age, so its all good is all part of the journey.

#00:10:16-8# Neil : Yeh I think having a bit of success without having had failure, does have that effect on you quite often, doesn’t it? you think you can touch anything and turn it to a success then?

#00:10:27-1# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Thats an interesting lesson about putting yourself in an environment where success is happening, so when you are in something like the dot.com boom, for those that can remember back in 97/98/99 and finding yourself in a tech space was a great space to be. And part of the reason why I moved out to Asia was you could start looking at the macro trends, and everything was pointing to Asia. So I made a decision 14 years ago that this was a good place to be. Have not looked back since.

#00:11:13-5# Neil : Good, and did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:11:21-3# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : No not really, because I pretty much started pretty early on, so I have certainly had doubts about starting new businesses, along the way. I have also started new businesses when I should have delayed and so a little bit of over confidence. I liked the idea of starting my own thing and naively thought that if I started my own thing then I would be in control, which anyone who actually owns a business will tell you, you won’t have nearly as much control as you think, you have when you are an employee.

#00:12:12-6# Neil : Yeh and what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:12:17-0# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : So many ha ha ha. The list is long, I guess you make different mistakes as you go along, I have made mistakes when I have tried to do too much myself, I have had mistakes where I have tried to delegate too much, definitely made mistakes about some of the people I have hired, I have made mistakes about some of the people I have fired. I have made mistakes about which niche to go into or which clients to target. Yeh the list is long and illustrious, but yeh I am still making mistakes today so some you learn from and some, I am quite a slow learner, so I usually have to make the same mistake a few times before I get the lesson.

#00:13:16-4# Neil : And what are some of the things you did before you started your business, that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:13:27-7# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : So I have a slightly different sort of take on it, there is lots and lots of media out there, suggesting that entrepreneurs are the new rock stars and you should follow your passion and get out of your just over broke, and all of that sort of stuff and I tend to have a different view on it. Most of the successful people I know, have managed transition from employee to entrepreneur. Started something on the side, and managed to build it into a successful business before they left, the safety of their current role. And what I have noticed about the people that do that, it is, a. they have got more certainty about them because they know that they have got their own salary coming in every month, so they don’t have that kind of desperate look in their eyes that many entrepreneurs have when they are trying to settle something. And b. because they can’t solve all the problems themselves, because they have got a day job, it tends to make them much more effective at hiring people, and giving them responsibility. So I see alot of people that kind of follow this advice of follow your passion and they quit their jobs and they jump out and they try and start something new and unfortunately more often than not, you see people that end up passionately hating whatever it was that they were passionate about before, because it is now driven them to a place where you know, they are not making the money they were. They are now in charge of HR, IT marketing sales, making coffee, and actually I think for a lot of people what they are looking for is creative freedom. And they think if they start a business that they will get that creative freedom. And actually I think if you, focus more on understanding how you create value in the world, then its quite interesting, if you look there is a number of top entrepreneurs, have gone back to work as employees in companies and part of the reason is that entrepreneurship at its heart is about taking resources and creating something. Something bigger, something better. And companies often have resources that most entrepreneurs could only dream about, and so I think there is a bit of a danger with the kind of leaping into that stuff if you can start something up on the side, which is so much easier to do now than it ever was. Its never been cheaper and easier to start a little side project on your own. So if you can do that while you have still got the safety of a monthly salary, I would strongly recommend that.

#00:16:36-4# Neil : Ok and can we just talk a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and move forward a bit here, so can you tell us, do you think culture is important from the beginning in a business?

#00:16:55-0# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Yes and no. A culture will happen by default, so in an ideal world, you can try and control it but for most entrepreneurs when you are at the, when you are trying to learn everything that goes with starting a business, often times culture is going to be one of the first things that gets dropped as a deliberate process. But it will happen accidentally anyway, so yes it is important. But if you do not get the fundamentals right of being able to generate more revenue than costs then just by definition you could have a great culture and go bust very quickly. Or you can have a lousy culture and be profitable and have a chance to build that culture later, so I think there is a tendency to look at companies with great cultures and say they are successful because they have a great culture, or look at companies with fantastic branding and say they are successful because they have got fantastic branding. And you can also find plenty of examples, with horribly toxic cultures that are still successful. Or terrible branding, that are still successful, but what they have done well is they know how to create value for customers. So its kind of like, we have all got tales of maybe our electricity provider or our mobile phone provider that you know their customer service is horrible. Their costs are expensive, but because they have better coverage than the next provider, we stick with them. And so I think just in terms of getting your priorities right, understanding how to create value and get more cash coming in than going out, is a priority before things like culture.

#00:18:58-4# Neil : Mmm its a great answer. 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? ha ha

#0 #00:19:11-5# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Again, lots and lots of things, and I have forgotten most of the things, but I think that one of the things that I always try to do, was to get smart people around me, and I think I probably did quite a good job of that, I am not sure I listened to them as much as I could of done. I think one of the, I guess a personal thought of mine, I spent alot of time trying to come up with the next great product and the next great idea. And actually, if I had spent more time focusing on the people that I wanted to work with, the clients that I wanted to work with, and finding great products for them, that are not necessarily products that I had created that were products that would have created value for them that I could have moved alot quicker, alot faster. I think alot of entrepreneurs do tend to think that they do have to come up with something new and unique themselves when actually you can kind of adapt. Adapt other people’s products and if it serves your target customers well, then its probably easier to do that than to try and re-invent the wheel.

#00:20:38-1# Neil : Mmm, and how much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

# #00:20:45-7# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Mmm, it used to influence them alot, in the early days, less so now, in fact I tend to bet against my gut feelings. So one of the things that, one of the mistakes that I used to make alot was thinking that my ideas are brilliant, so I would kind of come up with an idea and then I would find half a dozen people to reinforce that was a brilliant idea, and then I would invest loads of time and money in creating that product or that business. And then I would go out and try and sell it to the market. And I would become much more disciplined, over the years, if I come up with an idea, I need to generate revenue from the market, before I will invest any time and money into it. I am also much more discipled about putting my own money into businesses, I generally don’t do that any more. If I cannot convince somebody else to invest in the business, or if I cannot convince customers to forward order, then it does not matter how good an idea I think it is. I won’t pursue it, because the market does not agree.

#00:22:04-5# Neil : Some wise advice there. Life is made of constant change, whether we like it or not, and some would say the only constant is change, Callum, how do you try to keep up with change?

#00:22:19-4# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Mmm I quite like change, and one of the attractions of Asia, is that there are some huge changes going on, so obviously some of it in terms of global macro trends, you have got the largest shifting of wealth in the history of the planet from west to east, you have got this massive shift from rural to urban, you have got this huge demographic cliff of the baby boomers about to retire, and then you have got the massive shifts that are happening because of technology. Now every time you get a shift like that, it causes value differentials. And whenever you have value differentials, that is when entrepreneurs can jump in and create profits. Now profits don’t last because any company that is making big profits, attracts tons of competitors and eventually, it finds its equilibrium. So actually, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, it is much much easier to make money in fast changing markets, than it is in old industries or traditional markets because there is a lot less change going on. So yeh, I am a big fan of change and I try and I try and keep up to date with new technologies and just exploring whether gaps are occurring and what profit opportunities are around them. #00:23:59-5

Interviewer:

#00:23:59-5# #Neil : # And what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership, or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:24:10-7# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : I read alot of books and generally there are quite a few that I will go back to based on different where you are and different cycles of the business, or different cycles of product creation. One of the best authors I think in terms of business, but its quite heavy, is a guy called Ivan Fallon out of the UK. And one of what I think is his best books, is billionaire, which is about the life and times of Sir James Goldsmith in the 1980’s, and he just gets really good access to behind the scenes on deals, so you hear alot about take-over deals and stuff. Big multi-million take-over deals. Its very difficult if you are on the outside to have any understanding of what is really going on behind the scenes, and somehow this guy Ivan Fallon managed to get alot of the background behind that which if you are a business geek like me is very interesting. So that is what I come back to, I also, obviously Richard Branson’s, ‘losing my virginity’ is kind of the bible in terms of, it just covers so much ground, and it is also a great one to read whenever you are going through a bad period because generally however bad period you are going through, he went through worse periods. So it is always nice to remind yourself about that. So there are some great books out there and I mentioned a few that Daniel Priestly has put out some. I have my own book, coming out in a couple of months called progressive partnerships, which is about how to scale your business up through business partnerships and alliances. But yeh I would not position that as one of the great business books of all time, but hopefully your listeners will find it interesting.

#00:26:28-5# Neil : Ok thank you. And everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when 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 www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify. Callum, we are now going to speculate about a few things here, so can you tell us what one thing you would do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:27:10-8# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : No. ha ha ha ha no I don’t know, the businesses we have got at the moment, are in very good shape and I guess, I don’t know really, its, I got so used to working on business strategies that assume a high level of failure which just allows you to protect your downside and move up the, I don’t spend too much time thinking about that ‘if I could not fail’ stuff.

#00:27:59-2# Neil : What skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

#00:28:06-4# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : So I spent alot of time, when I was younger, working really hard to learn about sales and influence and persuading, basically in the belief that anything in that kind of communication space that can move someone from where they are to where you want them to be is a powerful skill to learn. I think one of the things I have sort of come to realise later on, is that for all that is very valuable, that being able to articulate value is one of the most important skills, actually I think if I had spent more time on focusing on products that people actually want, then you actually have to do alot less sales, and yeh I would much rather have a great product that people want to know sales skills and a terrible product and a great sales skills but fundamentally, I think the better you are able at communicating your value to the world, the faster you are going to progress.

#00:29:23-2# Neil : 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?

#00:29:35-6# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Hopefully that we have, that I have managed to help a number of businesses grow, either through helping them, the three areas I tend to focus on, on any business owners that I work with are, assets, alliances and acquisitions. So most small businesses tend to have just a small number of assets that they are out there trying to sweat and most successful businesses have a large number of assets that serve them. Then, that is kind of a value in the business, and the way that you leverage that value is through alliances and partnerships and so again, the book I have got coming out is about ‘how to use partnerships to grow’ and then the bit that I think is the least talked about, you know entrepreneurship is the exit or the acquisition and for most business owners, they kind of dismiss acquisition as its something that is going to happen in three years time, when I build a successful business. Yet if you look at successful entrepreneurs, they view acquisition as the quickest way to grow their business is by acquiring other companies. And so I think it is probably the bit that I am now focused on is helping businesses to grow through acquisition and no money down deals and debt-free deals. But I also think its the bit that is probably the least talked about in the business. You know there is tons and tons of information out there about how to start up and sales and marketing and systems and processes and how to hustle harder and all that sort of stuff, but also, you can double the size of your business in one deal if you understand acquisitions, so yeh, I guess reference to helping business owners having to grow through assets, alliances, and acquisitions would be great.

#00:31:47-2# Neil : I think acquisitions, there is obviously an art to doing acquisitions, because quite alot of companies do them, and actually they do not benefit from them, do they? obviously that is the down side of it for some companies. Would you concur with that?

#00:32:02-1# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Yeh, I think there is a difference between there are lots of high profile mergers that go wrong, and often times I think it is ego driven, it is, so you have got companies that will buy another company, because they love that company and then they insist on putting their logo over the door and pushing down their best practises. And so the top staff leave and the top clients leave, that is the kind of very traditional M & A model. And I think there is definitely a trend towards acquiring companies and letting them continue to run as is and you know, you look at some of the most valuable companies in the world, facebook has got over 50 acquisitions, under its belt, google has got 180 businesses that they have acquired, under their belt. And so we kind of get it as a big company, I think we sort of assume that it needs lots of lawyers and accountants, and that sort of stuff but actually, the smartest people, the most successful entrepreneurs I know, are just you know, if you need clients in your business, then acquiring a company that has already got your clients is a very successful way to create a business. If you need great staff, so alot of companies are acquiring smaller businesses just for the purpose of getting their staff. So I think its a very effective path to growth that I guess alot of entrepreneurs just don’t think about because its not sort of commonly talked about.

#00:33:51-7# Neil : Thanks for sort of expanding on that, we are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so Callum, what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:34:04-5# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : I don’t really have a favourite quote, I think quotes tend to jump out at me, at different times based on sort of where I am in various business cycles or what I am trying to wrestle with at any given time. We have a phrase within the key person of influence training which is all around, getting stuff done, for the purposes of this podcast. and G8GSD and its just a reminder that just to focus on getting output into the market because its very easy to sit around and kind of think either you have got the greatest idea ever or sit around and think you know that the business is lousy, but actually the only thing that matters is what the market says, so we definitely have a bias to get stuff done. So that definitely drives me on a day-to-day basis.

#00:35:17-2# Neil : Yeh I think you just said another one there, you did not realise it, ‘the only thing that matters is what the market says.’ thats a good one.

#00:35:23-4# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Sure enough, sure enough.

#00:35:25-9# Neil : Do you have any favourite online resources that you could share with us?

#00:35:34-5# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Yeh well I lived most of my life using one tool or another. I was lucky enough to have an advisor in my company, who is the former head of mobile for google page and I always used to say to him, like whenever you see .. can you just thank them for the amazing tools that I use every day, pretty much for free. It one of those interesting things, when you kind of grow up with it, its very easy to take for granted, the amount of quality tools, that you can just access completely for free and so I am a big google fan boy, kind of all my businesses are run on google docs and while I am working hard to extract myself from handling any emails, its obviously a key part of my business. And I guess the other one is platforms that allow me to outsource work, so I used to put a huge amount of business through e-lance over the years which is now being absorbed into up-work. And so yeh, if I am running new projects or new products, I often look to outsourcing platforms to bring them to fruition quicker.

#00:37:07-8# Neil : And what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:37:14-5# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Don’t do it, quit, run away. Its kind of what I have been saying all along, which is, ‘find good people to be around, it makes such a huge difference’ I think if you have got the right people around you, 99% of the problems disappear and so I think one of the useful bits of advise I was given years ago, was to ask more ‘who questions’ so as an entrepreneur, when you come up with a problem, and the problem might be, ‘how do I get more clients?’ ‘how do I expand the business without the cash flow?’ or all of those questions are, we tend to try and go straight in to solve that problem. And generally, we either can’t solve the problem so give up. Or we don’t really answer the problem, and press ahead anyway which is not the brightest move. And what I was told was to focus more on asking ‘who’ questions. So who already knows the answer to this question? Who would stand to benefit, if I was successful at this? You know who could mentor me through this, this period of time? And so by asking that, it just kind of allows you to you know, there is always somebody that can give you a bit of direction, a bit of steer and hopefully get you past that sticking point.

#00:38:52-4# Neil : Ok everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Callum’s favourite resource, or his favourite books, then you can find the links on Callum’s shownotes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Callum, or Callum Laing in the search box. Callum, is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

#00:39:15-0# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : No, only if you are looking at business, I would urge you to think globally, from day one, there are huge opportunities out here in Asia, we would love to talk to you. If you are a successful business, so if you are kind of already at the point where you are doing a million or two million, and above, then there are some very creative opportunities to join groups of other companies and list those groups and I would love to talk to you if you are in that space.

#00:39:48-9# Neil : Ok, Callum, its been an honour having you on the show and thank you for sharing your vast knowledge with us, its been really enlightening, and you have given us some great insight into what it takes to be an entrepreneur, so thank you very much.

#00:40:02-9# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : I hope I have not put too many people off.

#00:40:04-8# Neil : I don’t think you have, thank you.

#00:40:06-6# Callum Laing Partner at Unity Group, Founder of Fitness-Buffet & Key Person of Influence Director : Thanks.