Full transcript: Brian Rose on 7even Figures
0:03 Suli Breaks: Hello, this is Sully Brakes and welcome to Seven Figures, a financial literacy podcast where we bring amazing guests to talk about their entrepreneurial journey in building a seven-figure business, all the practices and tips and lessons they’ve learned along the way that they can impart on you. Today I have a very special guest. It’s interesting because this guy is usually where I am interviewing the people and he does it quite well and he’s done it for a number of years but I have Brian Rose here, founder of the platform, initially started as a platform but now with so much more but the business London Real. How are you doing today, Brian?
0:40 Brian Rose: Great, Sully. It’s amazing to have you here and you are intertwined into the story of London Real because you’ve been on the show so many times and you interviewed me back in the day so you’re part of what we built but yeah, eight years and it’s London Real and it’s great to be here, man.
0:57 Suli Breaks: Boy, it’s amazing to see what you’ve built, bro. I came to the office in Old Street and I mean from your kitchen to what you’ve built right now, it’s impressive, man. How would you describe London Real to anyone who’s listening and wants to understand as a business or as a concept what it is?
1:14 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s a great question. We’ve actually just kind of rebranded and changed our tagline and what we say right now is London Real, transform yourself. So everything we do, the content I put out there, the academy I have where I teach students, our live events, our documentary films, it’s all trying to do one thing, to put an idea in someone’s head to get them to take action and transform themselves and become a better version of themselves. And I think these days you see everybody pointing a finger and saying, oh, it’s the Democrats, it’s the Republicans, it’s your fault, it’s my fault. I think the only way we’re going to get to the next level as a species is if each person takes responsibility to get themselves to the next level.
1:54 So that’s what we try to do and every piece of content, every guest, including you back in the day, was meant to just trigger someone to say, you know what, I’m going to go try to do that scary thing or start that business or start that podcast or get better relationships to kind of get themselves to the next level. And that’s what we’re about. I hate the word inspiration. I hate that word because that’s something you see on your Instagram feed, you feel really good and you go to the next Instagram post or you go watch Netflix and you don’t do anything.
2:22 I’m all about action and transformation. So that’s what we’re really all about. But it took me years to really figure all that out. But now we’re very clear on what we want from anyone who consumes our brand.
2:33 Suli Breaks: I think that’s amazing because I think what London Real is a testament to and I think what a lot of entrepreneurs need to kind of like understand or learn more is a constantly evolving business.
2:44 It’s a module that started one way, successful, adapted another way, even more successful than adapted to become even more successful. And I feel like, and we can touch on this as a story goes as we continue with the interview, but I feel a lot of entrepreneurs struggle to find that point in which they need to adjust their business or how to grow their business, you know. So I think London Real, if anyone is trying to look at a business that’s constantly evolving and changing, it’s the perfect blueprint in my opinion.
3:09 Brian Rose: Yeah, and you can watch us because we’ve been publishing every week for eight years. So it’s funny, I always thought we were going to put out messages that would inspire people to transform, but actually people have just been watching me. They’ve been watching me start from day one and get to where I am now. You know, we just had this big 1000 person live event last Sunday. And one of my guys internally took a picture of me from 2011 on one of my podcasts and a picture of me now.
3:36 And the 40 year old picture of me is this kind of like bloated looking list list, you know, guy without a purpose. And then you look at a picture of me now and it’s just like, I’m super focused. I know exactly where I’m going. And actually the 40 year old looks like the older guy, you know, and so people have watched me just transform as a person, you know, they see me start a business, start a podcast, become an entrepreneur, create documentary films, start a family and become a father, you know, become an iron man.
4:04 All these things that I’ve done through the through the show and they’re like, okay, if that guy can do it, I got to go find out what he’s doing. So, you know, people learn by example, you know, or as Gandhi said, you know, be the change you want to see in the world. So people are smart. They really look at the people. They’re like, are you doing it?
4:21 And then that’s what resonates with people. And I’ve been super lucky to have basically mentors every week come into my studio, drop knowledge on me. So I’m in the best university ever. And I’m super lucky and I’m just always constantly trying to evolve myself. I’m trying to get better every day. So it’s a constant process as an entrepreneur as well, man.
4:43 You have to constantly be learning. It’s a tough gig being an entrepreneur, but I think it makes you a better person as well.
4:50 Suli Breaks: Let’s talk about that because I’ve seen your transformation. So let’s take it back even further before London Real. If we’re really going to get to the meat of Brian and what installed this drive or this purpose in him, what was your first experience of maybe entrepreneurship?
5:04 I mean, we could talk about your past working in the city, you know, going to MIT, all this stuff. What was your first actual experience of entrepreneurship or business?
5:12 Brian Rose: That’s a funny question. So I’m from San Diego, California. You know, you might hear the accent.
5:17 I also am a British citizen as well. I’m super proud to be British. But, you know, lemonade stand probably eight years old out on the corner, making up lemon juice, put some sugar in there and sell it. And I was fascinated as an early age with selling things for more than they cost profit margins. I used to sell candy on the buses. I actually used to do a little loan shark and I was like 10 years old.
5:38 So I always had that capitalistic buzz and it’s America, you know, so the American dream is, you know, how much money can you make? Who can you become? And that can be sometimes a little toxic, but it sometimes can also create great entrepreneurs. So I always had that in me. I was a science geek when I was a kid. I mean, actually, really an introvert, you know, being on stage or on camera is not natural for me.
5:58 Suli Breaks: I don’t know if I believe that, bro.
6:00 Brian Rose: I know. Maybe I’m changing. No, very much changing. But I went to, like you said, I went to MIT.
6:04 So it’s one of the best, you know, technical institutes in the world. I study mechanical engineering. I learned some of the best. But then I got the bug to go to Wall Street. I saw the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, and I loved options pricing theory.
6:19 And, you know, I spent a summer at Ford Motor Company and I thought I’m working on a car that’s not going to be created for five years. And I’m working like I’m like a part of the, you know, the engine that’s like this big. And I’m like, I don’t want to be a part of that. I’d rather be somewhere where things are happening in real time. So I went to Wall Street, 22 years old, right next to the World Trade Center.
6:39 I get given some phones and I learned how to become a trader. So I really learned how to work the financial markets. And I came to London to be in the financial markets. And, you know, look, all my dreams came true. I made all this money and I thought it would make me happy because that’s what they teach you in America.
6:55 But it didn’t. I was actually really unhappy. I was disconnected. I was all alone in this two story, you know, apartment in shortage with all this money in the bank and basically drinking myself to death. It was really bad. And I didn’t have any family, didn’t really have many friends. And I was really unhappy.
7:11 And one day I just I figured it out. I actually took a meditation course. And about 90 days later, I quit my job in the city. And I literally just walked away and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had been watching Joe Rogan, who was one of the very early podcasters. And I loved what he was doing.
7:29 I thought it was fascinating. His content meant so much to me to hear these guys talk that I could never hang out with. And about probably 10 months later, I started London Real.
7:40 Suli Breaks: So let’s talk about this whole experience, this in-between process of you working, fulfilling all your dreams and then becoming like the founder of London Real and starting it. What interests me is you said you’ve always had this entrepreneurial mentality.
7:55 You’ve always had this capitalistic kind of American dream driven kind of motivations. Why do you think when you achieve that at that point in time, did you was you not fulfilled? Was it because you didn’t want to be in business anymore? Or was it because like it’s being an entrepreneur, is that mental aspect a key part of it as well? What was missing because you had the money you were building yourself, I suppose.
8:15 Brian Rose: Yeah, no, it’s a really good question. And it’s a complex question, which is why it took me so long to figure out. And I’m a smart guy, right? According to MIT, I’m one of the smartest in the world. And yet it took me 10 years to figure out that money in my bank account wouldn’t make me happy.
8:30 Entrepreneurialism is different from money and being rich. So as a banker, you go in every day and you’re trying to extract as much money out of anyone you can. Your clients, other banks, even your colleagues, you’re all fighting over some money. And at the end of the day, you shove it in your bank account and you go home. And entrepreneur is different. I think if you really want to be a successful business person or entrepreneur, you need to add value to other people.
8:54 Simple. All great entrepreneurs, they add value to their customers. And people get mad and point the finger at billionaires sometimes and say they don’t deserve it. But when you really look at it, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has changed billions of lives. A lot of these people have really added value to other people. And I think that gives them fulfillment.
9:11 And so for me, that was missing in my life. I was working in an industry where maybe it’s just disconnected from the customer experience and I wasn’t really creating anything. I was facilitating transactions between banks. I was good at it. It was making me millions of pounds a year. But it was just ultimately I didn’t feel like I was adding value to the world.
9:30 I wasn’t creating a community and I wasn’t growing. And so I felt really isolated and alone. I think a lot of people feel that way out there that just make their focus about money. Now, if you want to be an entrepreneur and create a business almost by definition, you have to make other people happy. Yeah. Especially when you’re starting a business and you have to try really hard because you got no reputation.
9:50 You got no capital a lot of time. So you go out of your way. And I know you’ve been involved with a lot of tech startups and you see like they’re really trying to make that that piece of tech. You know, I had one tech founder that says when you do a startup, your product has to be 10 times better than the current product out there. Or people won’t adopt it because they’ve been drinking Coca-Cola for years. They’ve been, you know, you know, buying BMWs for years.
10:12 Yours has to be 10 times better. So for me, that search to create something of value for other people actually healed me in many ways and made me happy and made me connected. So the entrepreneurial journey isn’t just about making money. It’s about building a community, making other people happy and also hopefully making yourself happy and fulfilled.
10:32 Suli Breaks: Okay. I want to touch on what you said and challenge you a little bit about it because I understand what you’re saying.
10:39 But say if I was talking to a 12 year old kid right now whose only ambitions is to buy as many PlayStation games as they can, buy as many trainers as they can. And you’re talking about this experience of having all this money and being able to do what you want financially. How do you articulate to them what you said to me? How do you explain to them that money didn’t allow them to feel that freedom that they thought they would feel by having it?
11:01 Brian Rose: It’d be very hard to, you know, and you’d turn on the television these days and what do you see? We celebrate the bling, right? Turn on MTV.
11:08 Suli Breaks: 100%. Every music video, I used to go to a barber on Old Street and the volume was down and I would stare at MTV with the volume down for 30 minutes and I’d be like, oh my gosh, this is what we value. You know, cars and bling and, you know, people dressed up. Bright lights. Bright lights.
11:22 Suli Breaks: So to try to tell the 12 year old Brian that money’s not going to make you happy might be difficult.
11:27 Brian Rose: Although I’d like to say I think kids these days seem much more aware, much more conscious about what’s going on and much more observant about what makes people happy. So I guess what I would say to the 12 year old is this. If you want to make a bunch of money and buy some sneakers or buy some PlayStations, okay, I get it. But if you’re really thinking long term, which again is really hard to explain to a younger person, you know, don’t you want to create something that’s going to be around for 10 years or 20 years?
11:53 Do you want to create a bunch of assets that’s going to get you paid every single year? What about that? What if you created a business that’s going to pay you 100 grand a year for 10 years? Maybe you talk to them about it that way. Now, what does that business have to do?
12:05 Well, it has to continue to make people happy and deliver value. So I’m not talking about you going out there and making a grand. I’m talking about creating something that pays you that over time. And that’s what a business will do if you’re thinking about the customers. So that’s what I would say to that 12 year old.
12:19 But look, it’s a hard discussion. The 12 year old Brian might be like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, old man.
12:25 Suli Breaks: I think you answered the question well, because I come up with this consistently. I’m talking to young kids around the neighborhood. And like you said, they see the bling, they see the cause.
12:34 And it’s hard to give them perspectives. I think it is interesting to say to them, why would you just want the chain right now when you can have something that every year you make money? You never have to worry about what I’m going to do to make the chain today. But every year you’ll get an exponential value out of it. Or think about someone who wants the chain and say, what if you could take those skills and magnify them by 10 or 100?
12:54 Why don’t you take those skills to get the chain, maybe you’re hustling, maybe you’re doing this, and go to the 40th floor of the HSBC Tower and do that on the phones with derivatives? Like, what’s to keep you from doing that? But a lot of times people have a real myopic view of what they’re capable of. But why not take that spirit and stop playing small? You know, step up to the big leagues.
13:14 That’s all they’re doing in the tech startups in Silicon Valley and in the city. They’re just taking their hustle to a higher level. So why don’t you?
13:21 Brian Rose: I would say a lot of people are just playing too small and playing short term. Smart players, they just play bigger.
13:27 And it’s about opening up your mind to seeing what you could be. And I think a lot of people just limit themselves. And London Real is a lot about that too. What are your own limitations? What are your fears that are keeping you from playing big?
13:41 Suli Breaks: I think, let’s talk about London Real, and I think you’ve just segued perfectly into it. London Real, let’s talk about, you’re talking about entrepreneurship. You’ve left this massive opportunity behind. We’re going into London Real. Let’s talk about it as a business.
13:54 Let’s talk about the first year of London Real. Because I remember coming to see you in that kitchen and thinking, how is this guy, like, paying for everything? How is he making this? What was the first year like, you know? I mean, what was the objective?
14:05 You know, what was it? How did you build a team? How did you market it? All that stuff, because, I mean, like, 80% of it, I saw you doing by yourself. And I think that is a journey a lot of entrepreneurs want to know.
14:14 How do we start from scratch?
14:15 Brian Rose: Yeah, for sure. So, great question. So, 2011, I walked away from banking. I just didn’t want to do that anymore.
14:21 I knew it was a toxic environment that was just going to kill me. So, I’d have a lot of money to pass on to. Well, I had nobody. I had no family. So, I was like, I got to get out of here.
14:29 Again, I found something that I loved to consume, and that was listening to other people in this thing called a podcast, which was really new back then. Joe Rogan wasn’t even on YouTube. And nobody was doing that. And I thought to myself, okay, you can try to do a tech startup. You can try to do this stuff.
14:47 But that would just be about the money from me. And so, I found something that I just loved doing. And it also challenged me in a big way. So, the first year at London Real, it wasn’t a business. It was just something that I had to do.
15:01 You know, Gary Vaynerchuk, a guy that’s in the motivational space, he says, great entrepreneurs, it’s not like, they can’t not start that business. Like, it’s in you somewhere where you’re like, man, I got to go do this. I love it. I want to see if I can do this. I want to tell people about this cool thing.
15:17 You’re not doing it because you’re thinking, oh, I can just do this and sell it on Amazon, and I’ll get out of this. So, I think it has to come from passion. And so, for the first three years of London Real, it wasn’t much of a business. It really wasn’t. It was more of a movement.
15:32 I really thought we were putting out great information. I was building a brand of something that consistently delivered this way of producing great ideas that would transform the world, but I hadn’t got around to monetizing it. To be honest, in the first few years, I kind of still stayed away from money because I thought money was bad. And I actually had to come back and realize money isn’t bad. Money, and I teach my students this all the time in my academy, is that a lot of people think money is bad, but it isn’t.
15:58 Money is the only way that you can spread your message to a bigger audience. If you want to have impact in this world, you must create profit. And I had a Hindu monk on stage at my event this weekend, Dandapani. Oh, that’s not that Dandai. Yeah, Dandapani. You know Dandai.
16:11 He was sitting there cross-legged, and at the end, he said, Brian wanted me to talk about money. And everyone’s like listening. And he said, I love money. And the whole audience is falling off their chairs because you’ve got this Hindu monk who lived on nothing for ten years. He says, if you’re making a profit, that means you’re making people happy and you’re doing something right.
16:28 He said, the more money I make, the more impact I can make. So half of my students have a dysfunctional relationship with money. And I would ask all your listeners to ask themselves that question right now. What is your relationship with money? What’s the first word that comes out of your mouth?
16:42 Some people say, hate, gross. Yeah, I love it. You know, problems. You know, some people say bills. That’s when they think of money.
16:50 You need to have a good relationship with money, and then money is going to flow to you. So that’s the one thing I would say is get that sorted and understand money is going to allow you to help more people. And so once I found that out, I started really starting creating London Real as a business. And that would have been about five years ago where I took that passion and then we started building a business. And that was kind of like phase two of London Real.
17:12 Suli Breaks: So in these stages, so were you purely self-funding it then?
17:15 Brian Rose: I was self-funding. I always joke that the banks are responsible for London Real because they funded it. Because it was all my bonuses from the banks that I lived on for that first year. And I had a couple sponsors that could kind of pay the rent.
17:29 You know, I had contacted Bulletproof Coffee. Oh, yeah. And pitched a few people because I had some ideas, but I didn’t really start building the business for a few years in. But once I did, now I understand what I should have been doing from day one. And so now when I teach my students, I basically teach them all the mistakes I made so they can do it much quicker.
17:47 I mean, it took me five years to do what I could probably do in five months now based on what I know now. So I don’t know if that answered your question.
17:54 Suli Breaks: No, that definitely answered my question. So if we’re talking about you discovering it as a business, you’ve self-funded it up until this point, what is the transition then, I mean, in terms of like how you view it? Because if we’re in this space, you know, like we said, there’s a lot of tech startups.
18:07 Tech business, your first time you start raising money, you go out to investors, you know, you go through the stages. What was your process of transitioning this media platform into a business? Because essentially that’s what it was at the time, right? Now you have this media platform.
18:20 Brian Rose: Yeah, I mean, I’d say back in the day that most people wouldn’t call it a platform.
18:24 They would say you have a bunch of videos on YouTube. I mean, you know, silly breaks had more views than I had back in the day. But you know, this is something I also teach my students, and it’s something they talk about in the tech world, and it’s this phrase called minimum viable product. And in the tech world, that means what’s the most minimum thing we can put out there to test it to see if it’s a product? That could be an app that’s really basic.
18:45 It could be a piece of hardware that’s really basic. And so something I needed to do right away at London Real was I created originally our very first product. It was a $99 product for three months of a membership into our academy. And that’s what I call minimum viable product, just to see if anybody wanted it. And I was like, no one’s going to buy it.
19:01 I feel weird asking people for money.
19:03 Suli Breaks: I remember coming into your office and you had it all on the walls. You had the post-it notes and how much money you wanted to make of it.
19:10 Brian Rose: But you know, and I was scared to launch that product. And this is a guy who had made millions of dollars, who grew up as a kid making money as a kid.
19:17 But I still felt uncomfortable and felt unready to start my product. And this is why I teach all of my students and my courses. Four weeks in, they are literally creating a product and they’re trying to sell it. Because most people live in fear. They think they can’t do something.
19:30 And so you’ve just got to push yourself and try. So start before you’re ready. And so we launched the London Real Academy. We made like $10,000 in one weekend. And I was like, oh my God.
19:41 I was sitting on all of this money and goodwill and I wasn’t going to do it. Most people are walking around with $100,000, but they just don’t know where to grab it. You know, they have that money out there. They have the value and goodwill that other people want to give it to them. But they don’t know how to set up something to extract the value.
19:58 And so I try to show them how to do it. It involves making mistakes, creating minimum viable products. Sometimes they’re not exactly right. But when you go ahead and test it, you learn from those mistakes and move forward. And that’s the story of our business model.
20:10 We started off in London Real Academy. Once I saw that, someone said, you should charge for a $2,000 product. And I was like, no one’s going to pay me $2,000 for anything. What do I know? And that’s the problem.
20:21 Most of us spend all of our lives climbing to the top of a mountain. And then we look at the other mountains and say, look at that big mountain. We don’t realize we’re standing on top of a bunch of intellectual property, ideas, value that people would pay money for. But we just don’t think that about ourselves. And so I remember the first time we launched our $2,000 product, our business accelerator, now our most popular course ever.
20:42 And we sold $20,000 to 10 people. And I was like, oh, my gosh. I could have played small for three more years and never even realized that that was there. And so it was about pushing ourselves into the fear, testing things. And that’s how we really started getting traction as a business.
20:59 And we continue to do that to this day, just constantly testing out new products and, again, constantly delivering great products in the form of media experiences. And that’s how we’ve built this up.
21:10 Suli Breaks: So when you’re talking about people challenging themselves to ask for money and know the value in their product, it’s interesting because how do they then identify the audience? Like, I may have all this intellectual property. How do I identify the audience?
21:25 Then how do I approach them? Because, yeah, probably that’s my question. How do you approach all this? Because this is a very British culture. British people, as you know, don’t really talk about money.
21:35 Yeah, and they don’t like selling. They don’t like selling. That’s what the Americans do. Yeah, exactly. So how do I get myself into that mindset that I have this, I want to sell it to you?
21:44 Brian Rose: It’s a great question. And I have a lot of British people in our academy. I have people from all around the world, but I get that vibe and I totally understand. So what I do to everybody, and I challenge anybody listening to do this as well, is I say I want 10 vlogs in 10 days. So what’s a vlog?
21:58 A vlog is when you turn on your phone camera, whichever one has in their pocket, and most people are too terrified to use, and you talk about something that you’re passionate about into the phone for like three minutes, and then you post it on IGTV or YouTube or Facebook. And it’s about talking about your passion and putting your ideas out there. Now, part of that video is for you, so you can get over it, and you can actually start hashing out what IP resonates with you and what doesn’t.
22:22 Some people come on my business course and say, Brian, I’m going to do organic coffee. I love organic coffee. They do three vlogs about organic coffee. They’re like, Brian, I’m so bored with organic coffee. So I’m like, good.
22:31 You just saved yourself three months of time, maybe a year, because you realize, and the comments are like, yeah, you seem bored about coffee. So people right away aren’t resonating. So when you post that piece of video on social media, you immediately get this feedback loop that we never had 10 years ago. So in those 10 vlogs, you’re going to do all sorts of different topics. You’re going to get feedback from your audience, and you’re going to get feedback from yourself.
22:52 And at the end of those 10, you’re really going to know the IP that resonates with other people, the stuff that resonates with you, and you’ll already be talking to your first customers right there. And they’ll say, okay, I like it solely when you talk about this. I want to know more about this. Can you teach me this? Can you show me how to do this?
23:07 Someone else is going to talk about gaming. Someone else is going to talk about human movement. Someone’s going to talk about Reiki, veganism. So they put this out there. They’re building an audience.
23:15 They’re getting feedback. And from there, I’m like, let’s create a product. I love digital products because it costs nothing to create. You can sell them from anywhere in the world. The next thing we do is we create a short digital product, like a five-step way of someone to get better at whatever you’re interested in.
23:29 So here’s a five-step way to start being a vegan, to do human movement, to do Reiki. And we sell that digital product, usually for a low price to test the market. So you sell it for $27. You put the PayPal link, and then boom. Within a few weeks, you can see, you might have a few hundred dollars of revenue, and that shows you have a business, a customer base, and a thing that you can scale.
23:49 But again, that’s minimum viable product. Most people say, Brian, I’m not ready to do a vlog. I can’t talk right. That’s a minimum viable product. Push yourself.
23:57 Go into your fear. Put it out there. Guess what happens? You put it on Facebook, and guess what happens? All your friends don’t hate you.
24:02 The world doesn’t crash, right? And then it’s like, create a digital product. Oh, I don’t want to sell. You’re not selling. You’re helping people on their journey, on your passion.
24:11 They put it out there. People buy it. They’re like, oh my gosh, Brian, people I never met before just gave me money on my PayPal. I’m like, that is what Peter Thiel calls zero to one. You’ve just created something.
24:22 But again, you wouldn’t do that unless you had to push yourself to test it. And so honestly, what I do mostly in my academy is I just push people to go into their fears and to test things out. And that’s what gets them to start businesses. And that’s why entrepreneurialism is hard, because it forces you to confront your fears every day and to go into the unknown.
24:43 Suli Breaks: So in the concept of what you’re talking about, people going out there and projecting ideas to people, there’s one kind of narrative that I’ve found a lot of the time is that there’s two schools of thoughts.
24:55 I think some people are open to it. Some people are more like, you shouldn’t share your ideas until it’s ready. Which one do you gravitate towards more?
25:03 Brian Rose: So first of all, a lot of people say, Brian, I can’t make money with my ideas. And I say, okay, I’ve got 500 guests on London Real.
25:10 Every single one of them sells ideas. Think about it. Ido Portal is considered probably the greatest guy in the human movement. He coaches Conor McGregor of the USC. Does he sell products? No.
25:20 He sells ideas on human movement. Dan Pena, the $50 billion man, the guy in the castle, high performance coach, does he sell any products? He sells ideas. All of my guests, that’s all they sell are ideas. So first of all, you can make money by selling ideas.
25:33 It doesn’t have to be an admiral or it doesn’t even have to be an event. It can be an idea. So get your head around that. That’s really important. When it comes to people stealing your intellectual property, this is what I’ll say.
25:43 And I said this to Ido Portal because we did a documentary movie about him. We went to Tel Aviv. We filmed him in his studio doing these lizard walks and monkey hangs and all this crazy stuff he teaches people at Conor McGregor.
25:54 Suli Breaks: I’ve seen you with him in action.
25:56 Brian Rose: And he let us in there.
25:57 Suli Breaks: And you almost got arrested, right? He was doing that at the park.
26:00 Brian Rose: Yeah, I was doing that at the park. It’s true. Ido says if you haven’t been thrown out of your gym, you’re doing something wrong.
26:06 That’s why I break dance. So I went there and I filmed in his studio. He never led a film crew ever before in the studio. I don’t think he’s ever let one afterwards. And I got back to London and he’s like, Brian, can I see what you filmed?
26:17 I’m worried about the world seeing it and taking my intellectual property. And I said, look, Ido, this is the way I feel about intellectual property. Give away as much as you can. And when people want to implement, they’ll call you up and pay you money. That’s what it is.
26:32 So Ido gets out there and talks about lizard walks. When you really want to learn how to change your body, you will pay him for one of his courses or go to one of his events. Dan Pangya talks about high performance. When you really want to become a high performance person, you will go pay him for his castle seminar. So I always encourage people to put your ideas out there.
26:48 And you know from the tech space, anyone will tech will tell you ideas don’t matter. It’s execution that matters. How many people said, I thought of Facebook. I thought of Uber. Everybody has a friend that had already thought of Uber.
27:00 Right? But they didn’t execute. So I say put your ideas out there. Get a customer base. And then when you put yourself out there, you will attract other partners, join venture partners, other business partners, and they’ll come to you.
27:11 I give away so much of my stuff online. I mean, I have four different accelerator courses. You can get most of the material free on my website. But I know you can’t do it on your own. I know when it comes to doing those vlogs and creating that first webinar on that digital product, you need my mentoring and accountability.
27:28 And that’s what people pay for inside my academy, for me to be there every step of the way, to literally drag them across the goal line. And so I would say that about everybody out there. Put out your intellectual property. When someone wants to implement, they’ll call you up. They’ll go to your event.
27:43 They’ll buy your digital course. And that’s how you build.
27:46 Suli Breaks: Cool. So if we’re going to talk about your academy, I want to talk about as a structure. You’ve now built this academy in which people started investing in.
27:55 You had the minimum viable product. So how do you then engineer that into the business? Say, for instance, I remember you had your first employee, your second employee. How does the financial structure work? Because I feel like you’re quite savvy as to how you manage your finance and build it into a business.
28:10 How would that work in your case? How much do you reinvest? How much do you spend back? Does that make sense?
28:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s a good question.
28:18 So I have never raised any outside money for London Real. Obviously, I personally existed on my savings, but I never put any of my personal money into London Real. So it always lived off a few sponsors, and that’s why I didn’t have any employees for the first couple years. So we only spend what we make, which is the way I encourage all entrepreneurs to start. One of the reasons I say that is it makes you disciplined.
28:40 So if I give you a million dollars in seed capital, you might go screw around and do this and do that. And a year later, you say, oh, yeah, it doesn’t work. Why don’t you prove that it works in four weeks, which is why I say minimum viable product, sell it to someone, get some revenues. If you can do that, if you can sell 10 products, I can show you how to sell 10,000. It’s about audience and scale.
28:58 So show me first right away that you can do it. Now, with all these digital tools we have for free, you can do it. You have PayPal, you have YouTube, you have Facebook, you have all the social network. So that’s why I always say to people, don’t get outside investment. Prove first that you can get revenue and use that revenue to expand your business.
29:14 So that’s what we did. Every company these days is a media company first. It’s kind of like Nike. Nike makes the most amazing stories to sell to trainers. Exactly.
29:22 And so all great companies are media companies first. And so London Real started in media, but that’s why I do the 10 vlogs in 10 days, is you starting your media company now. So it’s always about constantly putting content out there, engaging with your customers, listening to what they’re saying and constantly creating media. Now, that could be vlogs or podcasts or reviews or written content, but I believe media creation is super important. So for London Real, the first money we got in, I spent on a brand new studio that would up our media footprint, which means it just looked more professional.
29:51 We bought some lights and that kind of thing. I hired my first two employees that would help me also scale the Academy and build that up.
29:57 Suli Breaks: Was this all with the money that you made?
29:59 Brian Rose: Yeah, this is with the money we made from that initial Academy. And when we made that first $20,000 from the Business Accelerator, again, it goes right back into that business.
30:06 And so I’m constantly building audience. So at first it was a brand new set, later came documentary films. Because I thought a podcast is only going to get so many people watching. Two guys sitting in leather chairs. I mean, we’ve had a lot of views, but I thought a documentary film would get us more views.
30:21 So I’m always looking, how can I expand my audience? From that audience, they buy products. The products creates revenue and I take that revenue and I put it all back in the business. Now, I personally am all in on this with what I do. And also London Real is me and I am London Real.
30:35 It’s actually part of my life now. So for me, I take the Jeff Bezos philosophy. Now, Jeff Bezos created Amazon. He used to be a Wall Street guy like me. And he saw the internet and said, there’s something going on here.
30:46 He packed all his bags and he drove out to Seattle. And everybody sees Bezos these days. He’s got $140 billion. And he looks like the man now. He looks all alpha and he’s in shape and he’s dressed really well.
30:57 But he used to be a real dork. And if you look at the old days, his desk was a door. All the desks in Amazon were doors with like two by fours on the bottom. And Jeff took every single dollar that he made and he invested it back in the company. And for like 10 years, they made no profits.
31:12 And Wall Street was constantly complaining. And Bezos was like, I know what I’m doing. He took everything and invested it back in the company. And that’s why he’s worth over $100 billion because he didn’t try to take money out and buy cars and stupid stuff. And so, you know, Gary Vee says this as well.
31:27 You see a lot of entrepreneurs today. They make their first $10,000 and they go spend it. Yeah. Put it back in the company. Think about the first $10 million you’re going to make.
31:35 Think about the first $10 billion you’re going to make. So for me, I like taking those profits and putting it back in the company. That involves hiring people. This is the biggest, hardest challenge for solo entrepreneurs. So start solo, but that first hire is where you’re going to start to scale because you need other people to create a business.
31:53 Suli Breaks: How does that, I was going to ask you that, how does that conversation happen? I mean, you’re not massively profitable at this moment in time. You’ve just made a little bit of money, you know, but you’ve got this big vision and now you want someone to come on board and make this their commitment as well. How does that first conversation happen?
32:08 Brian Rose: Great question.
32:09 So I was alone in my studio for three years and I used to jokingly say later, I was like grandpa in the woodshed. You know, grandpa goes out to the woodshed and he’s out there all day. What are you doing? He does it sometimes to get away from people. And so for me, I was really happy in my little cocoon and I could create my stuff, work on my woodshed, but nobody was coming in to push me.
32:26 No one was helping me scale the business and I might have died in there doing that. But when you get another person involved, first of all, your workflow starts to exponentially grow. My dad once said to me, he said, Brian, the most work that one person can do is two people’s work. If you work all night and weekends, you can do the work of two people. But if you get four people in the room, you can start really building a company.
32:50 So when I had to hire that first person first, I had to allow someone into my space. They had to challenge my ideas. I had to tell them what to do. I had to start behaving like a leader. That’s a big step for a lot of people.
33:00 So first, my TED Talk was really important. I got on the TED stage and I talked about my mission for London Real. Why are we doing this? So if there’s anybody that’s listening that wants to be an entrepreneur, you have to be able to articulate your mission. What’s your business going to do for the world?
33:13 How is it going to change the world and change people’s lives? What do you really want to do? If you can’t articulate that, it’s going to be hard getting employees on board. Even if you pay them, they’re going to be showing up at work. They’re going to be on Facebook.
33:25 They’re going to be drinking coffee and they’re going to want to lead early. You’re going to have to inspire them. What they’re doing is going to help change the world. If you come over to London Real and you cut my people, if you cut their arms, they literally believe London Real. These people really believe what we’re doing is going to change the world.
33:41 So you have to sell them on that vision. So hiring people makes you step your own game up. I used to think I worked hard as a solopreneur. I worked three times harder when Julian was there watching me to make sure I came in at 9 a.m. and make sure I stayed till 9 p.m.
33:56 And so I always tell starting entrepreneurs, hire a virtual assistant, four hours, get someone in the Philippines and start offloading them the work that you can give them to allow you to make the big decisions and the big work. So if you’re doing Photoshop or you’re doing social media posts, hire someone for four hours. Tell them what to do. It’ll teach you about delegation and leadership and you go worry about the decisions that are going to bring in the big revenues.
34:20 So that’s what I say. Start off with a virtual assistant and then move up to a full-time person. But you’ve got to sell them on the vision. That’s the most important thing. Just because you pay them doesn’t mean they’ll do what you say you’re going to do.
34:31 Suli Breaks: Yeah. It’s all about that vision. So just for reference, is there anywhere you could recommend for people to get virtual assistants, just for people that made it?
34:39 Brian Rose: Yeah. We use, I’m trying to think, there’s a few online platforms.
34:42 I can’t think of the one.
34:43 Suli Breaks: Give maybe one or two, it’s fine.
34:44 Brian Rose: There’s like two or three out there and they’re really easy. You can find people. The reason I say the Philippines is because their English is really good because I think it was a former American colony.
34:52 And they’ll be out there and you can just outsource work to them and they’ll work for four or five dollars an hour. Cheap label. Yeah, cheaper than you can find someone in London. And I have about five of them working for me right now and another 15 or 20 people working at London Real. But at first I was scared about having people, but now I realize that there’s no way I could do everything I need to do unless I hired people.
35:15 That’s also a journey into your fears. I have to lead every day. I wear a suit. I show up early. I have to lead the morning meeting.
35:23 And this has forced me to grow as a human being and test my mission. Are you really living your mission? So that’s why I think the entrepreneur journey is an incredible one. I think everyone should try this because you become a better person. You become a leader of yourself, of your company, of everyone.
35:38 So I really think everyone should try this. In some way.
35:41 Suli Breaks: Yeah, I do. So let’s talk about your entrepreneur, your first employee. You’ve talked about what characteristics they have to have, but what about the relationship that you guys have?
35:50 Because a lot of people, they may start a business and be like, I want to hire my friend. I want to hire someone I trust or someone who has expertise. What was the relationship between you guys before you went into… I mean, I’m sure it was a transactional relationship at first. You was paying them.
36:05 Brian Rose: You know, the funny thing about London Real, and I’d say if you really have a great vision for your business, is that I actually had people that wanted to be a part of it before I could pay them. So Julian Bales, for example, my first hire, was working at a company called Rightster, a big multi-channel network. And he saw what I was doing, and he liked to play around with YouTube on the side, and he was like, Brian, your YouTube game is atrocious. Yeah. Yeah, you had no thumbnails.
36:29 You got no titles. Julian knows this shit. So he was working in the background just helping out because he believed in my vision. Same as Luis, my guy that directs all my films right now. He actually was volunteering his time for us on weekends because he loved what London Real was.
36:44 So a lot of my first hires were volunteering their time at first because my mission was so clear. So I would say back to you as an entrepreneur, really think about that mission and be able to articulate it to someone in an elevator pitch. 60 seconds. What’s your company about? Okay, what I want to do is I want to create a better way of growing plants.
37:00 I’m looking at plants right now. And I want everyone in their home to have a plant because I think it’s going to change the quality of their life, will be connected to nature, and as a species, we’re just going to be better. That’s why I sell plants. Yeah, I don’t sell plants to get a gold chain. No one wants to hear that, right?
37:15 I don’t sell plants to make the money, buy a gold chain, and go to the pub. I want to sell plants because I think it’s the right thing to do for the world. You’re going to have a lot of people that just want to be around you and your energy, and people are going to want to hear you talk. So I would always say that first hire is probably someone you know or someone that’s interacted with your brand already. I think I even told you that one time when you were over at my place.
37:33 I was like, that first hire is someone you probably know. That doesn’t mean you want to say I want to hire your friend because that can give weird dynamics, and you definitely want to pay them and compensate them, either in money or a combination of money and maybe equity in the company, and that’s a whole other discussion. But those were my first four or five hires. These days now, I go to recruiters and I go to people like that because we now need people at the top of their game in very specific professions.
37:59 I don’t take on interns right now because we can’t afford the downtime to train them. But when you’re starting, maybe that’s an option for people.
38:12 Suli Breaks: So how does London Real? Sorry. Oh, okay.
38:15 Oh, sorry. It’s my producer. Sorry. Yeah. So before we go on to talk, so can we update people now then?
38:21 You talk about how you started out. How does London Real exist as a business now? How do you operate? What’s your goals as an entrepreneur, as a business, revenue goals, personal goals? Give us an insight into that right now.
38:32 Brian Rose: Yeah, great question. So again, this whole journey has been one of faith. It’s been one of me having this mission that we’re going to put this content out there. We’re going to really transform the world, and I had to always believe in it. It’s hard times and hard times, and this is the way it is in an entrepreneur’s journey.
38:46 It’s lonely out there sometimes. It’s hard. So for me, it was all about building this business, and every day was about putting great content out there, about creating these academy courses, creating revenues, making movies. And so now we’re about eight years into this now, and all of those efforts are starting to pay off. So now all of a sudden, these weird surprises happen.
39:07 So we did a big event, and we sold a thousand tickets, and it was like, wow, that’s five times more than our previous event. Something’s going on here. We’ve got these documentary films happening. London Live, the television channel, calls me the other day and says, hey, we want to put your content on our TV show, and we want to put you in our print ads. And it’s like, where does this come from?
39:27 This isn’t a random luck thing. This is because we’ve been putting in the work every single day for the last few years and putting out content and putting out graduates and all those kinds of things. So we’re getting to be a critical mass right now. We’re people are starting to really hear about the brand. We’re putting people through our academy.
39:45 They’re having a great experience. We’re taking the testimonial and putting it back out there. So now we really have a funnel. We have a media profile. The people that really want to transform their lives, they come into our academy.
39:55 People that want to take it a step further go into different levels of my academy. Now other brands are reaching out to me to be an ambassador and a partner. And now is where the whole thing really starts coming together. But it’s because I started and put in the work, did the minimum viable product, and started that all from scratch. But if you’re doing all this right, now opportunities will come.
40:14 And that’s what I’m seeing right now. So now I’m trying to take London Real as a brand and trying to find out what other businesses can this brand be a part of and absorb and create. And that could be so many different things. It could mean we’re going to buy an app. It could mean we’re going to partner with this person and do a joint venture relationship.
40:32 For me, I just want to make sure we continue doing what I love, which is creating content. I love creating interviews. I love creating movies. I love inspiring people. I love graduating students.
40:44 And I love trying to transform the world. So that’s what we’re doing. I don’t know what it looks like in five years. I don’t want to grow for growth’s sake. I don’t want to have 100 people to say it.
40:53 I don’t want to be a billionaire to say it. For me, I just want to continue to love what I do, to change lives, and also see like, where can we take this? That’s what’s really curious for me. Where can we take this? I don’t plan on selling this business because it’s a part of it.
41:06 That’s a set in stone. It’s me, man. It’s me. For me, this is not a wealth play. I learned early on that money didn’t make me happy.
41:14 So I want to find something that makes me happy. Growing this business makes me happy. Making money with this business makes me happy. It does. Don’t get me wrong.
41:21 But money gives me options. Money means I can take that money and I can go do great things with it and get this brand in everyone’s head. And I really believe in what we’re doing. So for me, that’s where we’re at right now. And it’s super exciting.
41:32 But it means every day I got to push myself. I still have to get up early. I still work on weekends. I still put on uncomfortable three-piece suits every day because it’s who I have to be as a leader. And I am crazy busy, but I love it.
41:45 And it’s in a good way. And it’s all going to one focus point.
41:48 Suli Breaks: Perfect. So if we’re talking about parts of you, can we talk a little bit about family and how they fit into this whole equation?
41:56 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s a good question.
41:57 Suli Breaks: Well, I’ve met Gabby, but I’ve never met the boys before. You know what I mean? Yeah.
42:01 Brian Rose: So are you talking about work-life balance? Or are you talking about how they work, fit, and everything?
42:06 Suli Breaks: Both. How do they fit? How do they help the business? How do they inspire you? But also as well, how much are they essential to your life as part of the business?
42:15 Brian Rose: It’s a great question. So first of all, when I started London Real, I didn’t really have a family. All I had was a girlfriend, and she had a daughter. And for me, I was never going to have family. I was going to be like Rambo without the guns and the muscles.
42:29 I was going to be solo, me against the world. But that also was one of the reasons I got depressed. And like I said, I was trying to drink myself to death. So London Real actually opened my heart up. It let me connect with a lot of people, and it let me just see a different side of myself.
42:43 And by doing that every single day, I actually welcomed Gabby and Mariana into my life. And we all moved in together as a family, which is something I had never done in my life successfully. And it’s because of the show. And also, I did some things with plant medicines and ayahuasca and psychedelics, and that’s another show. But they became part of my journey.
43:04 And London Real really connects me with people and humanity. And a few years ago, I decided to have children at 45 years old. So now I have a two- and a three-year-old boy as well. So now I have this big family. When grandma comes over, we got this huge house full of people.
43:19 It’s crazy, because I was literally a bachelor alone when I was a banker, and now I’ve got this big family. So they’re a big part of it. At my event on Saturday, my 15-year-old Gabby, she introduced me on stage in front of a thousand people. It was amazing. My wife got up and introduced me.
43:33 My boys are in my latest movie. Like, everyone’s in the movie. They don’t even get a choice. You know? I made a movie last year about my Iron Man race, and I put my wife in the movie.
43:43 And so everybody’s kind of part of the brand, and they understand the brand is me. Look, as far as work-life choices, well, actually, one of my mentors, Dan Pena, says, there is no work-life balance. There are work-life choices. And I spend a lot of time with London Real, but I also try to spend time with my family. But for me, without London Real, I stop growing.
44:05 So I think they understand that. Some days, they don’t understand that. But I try to bring them into the brand, and they are part of the brand. But look, that’s my personality, man. I’m really obsessive.
44:16 Brian Rose: Yeah. I love going all in. I don’t like downtime, and most of the time, they understand that.
44:22 Suli Breaks: So before we wrap up, my bro, is there three tips you’d like to leave any aspiring entrepreneurs or any individuals that listen to this podcast and feel like they may want to pursue the similar paths that you’ve been on or just the experiences and have similar experiences?
44:40 Brian Rose: Yeah, definitely.
44:41 First of all, pull the trigger. Do it. What are you waiting for? Seriously, what are you waiting for? Tomorrow, it’s not guaranteed.
44:48 Any of you are going to actually wake up. You might get hit by a bus, and it could be over. People think you have all the time in the world, but you don’t necessarily. Every day is a precious time on this earth. You were put here to do something great.
44:59 You know, there’s a graveyard next to London Real Studios. It’s called Bunhill, and I walk through it every day, and I see all these dead bodies in the ground. And I always think, what do they wish they would have done with their life? You know, what’s that chance they wish they would have took? There’s so much they wish they would have done, because now they can’t.
45:15 So what are you doing with your life? Pull the trigger. What’s the worst that’s going to happen if you start that business or go do that thing? What’s the worst that’s going to happen? So I always say, pull the trigger.
45:24 Second thing is, go into your fears. We’re all scared of something, but 99% of the things we’re scared of are these phantoms that make us play these quiet lives of desperation. You know, most of the fears that you have will never come true, you know? And so go do them, you know? Go actually pull the trigger, and you’ll realize, wow, that wasn’t that bad.
45:43 So identify, what are you scared of and why? I think that’s a really, really important thing. And finally is get uncomfortable. Nothing good happens unless you get uncomfortable. And actually nothing fun happens unless you get uncomfortable.
45:56 You know, all the cool things you did in your life where you got that big rush of adrenaline all came because you got out of your comfort zone and did something. So find ways to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation all the time. Get on stage. Go into that meeting. Go, go to that talk.
46:11 Go do this thing. And I feel if you continue to do all those things, you’re going to have progress. And as an entrepreneur, this has never been a greater time or an easier time to be an entrepreneur than now. The bearer to entry is basically zero. Twenty years ago, you would have to pay for video production, online distribution, to an audience, right?
46:31 For a product creation. You can do all that for free now. So go out there. Pull the trigger. Explore it.
46:36 Explore yourself. And yeah, give it a try.
46:39 Suli Breaks: Brian, thank you very much. It’s always a pleasure, man.
46:42 Brian Rose: My pleasure.
46:43 Suli Breaks: Thank you very much, man. Appreciate it.
