Jeremy Hall – Confessions of a serial entrepreneur

It’s time to write a book

In the UK alone, more than 200,000 books are published every year. Per capita, that is more than America and I would image a lot of other countries in the world. But do you know, the sales statistics are incredible. The average new book published sells about ten copies!

I do not confess to knowing this industry well. I might own a publishing company, but we are in a highly specialised field of biographical reference books and even then, in a sub-sector of vanity publishing – or some might say the other way around. I pick a bit of knowledge up every now and then and can blag my way through a conversation if needed. But what I do know is that throughout the UK, there are no are than a handful of authors that would even earn a good income from publishing. People have this misconceived idea that every author makes a good living. J.K. Rowling, Archer, Cartland, Francis and Wilber Smith do, but most others do not.

People publish a book for a variety of reasons

1. It is their job -  they earn a living from it
2. Vanity – for the thrill of being known as an author
3. Research – interest in a subject
4. Hobby – they just enjoy it
5. Lifetime achievement – one of those things you want to do whilst you are alive

And there is another reason; it can consolidate your position as an “expert” in a particular topic.

Now with my new mission being digested and thought about every day, I need to undertake certain tasks to ensure it is achieved. One of these is I need to write a book on the subject, well actually it will be two books. It/they will not be best sellers, in fact they may not sell more than ten copies each, but that is not the point. Once you are respected as an expert in a field, once you have proven this by being an author, your value goes up. Other people will trust your judgment more and listen to what you have to say.

And on a final note, it is not my plan to make a million in three years from writing a book, or even in ten years for that matter.

Mr. Nonexistent

On Friday I spend a half hour on the telephone with our solicitor talking about the case of Mr. Nonexistent. He has written back to us in an e-mail packed with semi-solicitor speak and powerful arguments that are not only going to break my case, but also ensure he can claim his £1,000 damages.

Surely, some of the facts he has put down simply just cannot be true I ask myself? He claims to have spoken to the bank involved in the lease transaction and has documentary evidence from them that completely contradicts what they have said to me. To make matters even more serious, Mr. Nonexistent even states that my contact at the bank does not exist.

I call my Director contact at the bank (the person he is claiming does not exist) and forward the e-mail from Mr. Nonexistent. “Even I am annoyed now” replies my contact, I will be more than happy to sign an affidavit for you. He jokes, “ I do exist, you can see my details at Companies House.”

After speaking to the bank and dismissing the lies in the e-mauil from Mr. Nonexistent I ask for help from the solicitor to make sense of this. “It is total lies,” I say to the solicitor. “Why would someone be so stupid, he will get ripped apart when this goes to court?” “You would be surprised what people do, this is not unusual” comes the reply.

The solicitor thinks that his strategy is for us to just drop the case, he is not worth the effort. And in 99% of occasions I would agree, when you are dealing with a lunatic for a small sum of money, my advice would always be just drop it, move on, focus on the positive things in life and go out there and make some money – and for those of us who write a blog,  do not waste valuable “diary” time on this issue.

 But this situation is the 1%, so, the case continues as we say.

p.s. I forgot to say, I asked the solicitor two further questions:

1. Can we keep invoicing Mr. Nonexistent on a weekly basis?

2. Will we win the case?

Yes, came the answer to both questions!

Back to University

Thursday evening, I turned up at a University Student’s Union bar to see an up and coming band, Missing Andy. They have some great music and are looking to hit it big time later this year. They have spent the last 3 ½ years recording, touring, practicing, meeting people, shaking hands with strangers, living in the back of a van and cheap hotels on nothing more than the basic wage. In their own way, they are entrepreneurs, working extremely hard, persevering, using “entrepreneurial thinking” to create and write music. If you read this chaps, well done, keep it up, you will make it.

I was invited by a person I know in the leasing industry. He and his business partner have invested in the band and have brought on board another investor. So there I am in my jeans and boots trying to blend in to all the other 18 year olds with my bottle of water and bald head. What did they think – probably a sad old man with nothing better to do or a wealthy music mogul?

Our group of ten people was made up as follows:

1.  Someone who is just about to buy a big football club (not League two or three! – we are talking League One here)
2. A person that owns a niche leasing company and is probably in the top 1% of earners in our sector. (Amazing coincidence here – he was in Canada last week with a bit of time spare. He (without knowing me at all then), goes onto Linkedin, sees I have sold a few companies and contacts me) – and there I am a week later meeting him through a completely separate contact
3. A lady who had a number one music hit some years ago
4. My leasing contact whom I am looking to acquire his customer base
5. Myself and five others

All this came about because I have been searching leasing companies that have gone out of business in the last couple of years. The company credit report did not show my contacts (the directors) details so I decided to see if I could track him down by LinkedIn, and it worked.

Business life is funny, it is an amazing journey full of twists and turns, unusual events, coincidences, meetings in strange places and deals that come about via obscure means. Would I have thought a week ago after spending hours searching leasing companies that have gone out of business, I would have been in a University students Union watching a band getting to know a new business contact.

My Pulp Fiction moment

I arrived in the office very early yesterday, not because of an 8:00am meeting, but because I was buzzing with “my plan,” I just had to get in to start mapping it out.

Work should be fun, it should provide you will not just wealth, but with purpose and give you something to look forward to before you go to bed and when you wake up in the morning. The best part of my career has been like that, on Sunday evening I might have been resting but I was also looking forward to the day ahead. Getting up early was not an act of an alarm clock or a documented set of objectives, (you know, those New Years resolutions that say I will get up at 6:30am every day and do something with my life,) it was because you wanted to get out there and develop the business.

It’s funny, in my spell in Entrepreneurs Wasteland, getting up was a challenge. I even wrote down on my personal plan -  two days a week I will get in early and work late. Looking back that did not work, why – it makes sense today, it was my LEFT hand side of my brain doing the work again!

The RIGHT hand side of my brain is taking over with the mission statement I have set myself. Without realizing it, some unbelievable ideas have just dropped into my head. I would normally digest these ideas, sleep on them and correctly so – dismiss them as either rubbish or not core (i.e. I dismiss them due to lack of focus etc.) The most important development about what I am doing with this idea is that it is highly correlated to my mission statement. Thinking about, developing and implementing this idea will help me achieve the mission and I will be able to satisfy other financial and personal needs.

I knew that on 1^st January 2010 that it might take some time to work it all out. Entrepreneurs, business people, sports personalities, people in public life always will go through a “baron” period in their lives where the ideas, enthusiasm, energy for life dries up.  The strong, the determined, the focused ones will get it back. I might not be John Travolta, but I am Jeremy Hall, and I have just started to film “my” Pulp Fiction. (For those of you that are not film buffs, Pulp Fiction was the film that re-launched the career of John Travolta in the 1990’s after his own spell in Actors Wasteland.)

Danger, danger, I have just incorrectly wired my brain

I have had a lesson today from Ms. Influence in how your brain is made up of a right and left hand side. (It is amazing the things you learn as an entrepreneur.) On getting back home, I went onto Google to do a bit of research on this.

In summary, the left hand side of your brain deals with logic, it is detail orientated, rational and deals with facts. It deals with the PAST and FUTURE. The right hand hemisphere is in touch with your unconscious mind. It deals with colour, sight and space. It is visual and deals with information in an intuitive and simultaneous way, looking at the whole picture and then the detail.

“Well Jeremy, that is great, but what has that got to do with making a million?”

Well, it’s like this. Decisions get made in the right hand side of the brain. You have made a decision even before you have become aware of the fact you have made the decision in the first place!  (There is research to back this up, you know, you make a decision about someone even before you have started talking to them.)Equally importantly, the left hand side of the brain deals with “past and future.”

So, I have spent time working on my Personal Business Mission Statement and it starts with “I will be…” Every time I repeat this statement to myself, I am using the LEFT hand side of my brain but decisions get made in the RIGHT hand side of the brain. By accident I have wired my brain incorrectly, a serious offence for any entrepreneur.

Thank God, it is only a couple of days I have been like this. If I had spent months repeating my mission statement talking about the future, the misison would never have been achieved. So what I have done is to change, again, my statement, my mission in business. It now reads, “I am growing my wealth by…” It is present tense, it about now, today, not what has happened or what will happen in the future.

For all out there that says this is a load of rubbish, let me make the million (£10m) and then I will prove otherwise.

Terminate the negative attitude

The solicitor’s bill for £750.00 has arrived and is due to be paid. This is the cost of us taking legal action against another company that sold equipment belonging to us and then went out of business. (Not to be confused with Mr. Nonexistant.)

I chat to the brief and run over the cost and our chance of winning. It should be simple, a director of a company sold equipment that was on lease with us. They tried to hide the crime by getting us to invoice them directly. The Commercial Director of this company (after having a conversation with me last year) decided to spill the beans and told me what they had done. In summary, an open and shut case of theft, the director of the company should be quaking in his boots.

Outcome –  it will cost us a lot of money to progress this and even if we do win, does he have the money to pay compensation? Chasing the cash from this “negative” situation will only drag us down. I am to not pursue this anymore. My energy will be used positively elsewhere in the business. We do not have the time to fight this and Mr. Nonexistant at the same time.

Unfortunately for my buddy Mr. Nonexistant, it is more a positive challenge than a release of negative energy.

Mr. I Do Not Exist plays poker

That is a bit of a mouth full, so from now he is just plain Mr. Nonexistent. He has replied to our letter with his extensive defense. He will not be climbing down on this one.

I spend over an hour preparing a reply to his letter that the solicitor will then put into their specialised language of “save this” “save that,” that will cost me an arm and a leg for them to send out. I sit down and think, “hold it Jeremy, is this the best thing to do?” I can walk away, I lose the cost that we have had to incur in buying the equipment. Mentally, I can wipe the cost off in seconds. This process is taking up my time, my highly valuable time. To move it forward, I will have to lump over £500 to the solicitors which will wipe out any profit on the deal. Not only that, I am slipping into the world of Mr. Nonexistent, a world of total lunacy. If I waste my time and money fighting this case, it will not make me a wealthy successful person. The process will sap me of the energy needed to drive the business forward. Ultimately, I fall down to his level of lunacy.

This is a real problem in business, the cost of fighting a case (money and time) is greater than the potential outcome. Most sensible business people walk away. And that is the game Mr. Nonexistent is playing. By confusing the pitch, defending his case, winding us up, he hopes we will drop the case, why wouldn’t we, we are running a business with much better things to do. It is just so wrong.

If someone tries to have a go at you in business via legal means, the best thing is to counter sue. Throw up a smoke screen, put them off the scent. Make them feel you will defend it all the way, give them reason to doubt they will win the case. Best case scenario is they will retreat with their tail between their legs, worst case you have a starting position to bargain from. Part of me says “put your pride away Jeremy, get on with the job. Mr. Nonexistent is just a total arse and what goes around comes around.” The other part says “no, he is playing poker and has just raised the stakes.”

Well Mr. Nonexistent, I have a royal flush and I am upping you £500.00!

I am not loosing focus, honestly!

I have been offered 20 days consultancy and am to be paid £20,000 for this. It is in a field of business where I have no real knowledge and nothing to do with any business I am involved in. The person/company that will be writing the check wants to grow via acquisition and they are happy to pay for my knowledge of buying companies.

For the record, what fantastic value they are getting. My specialised knowledge has come about by many hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment  in the past and has taken years to accumulate. Will they get value, absolutely? They will find and acquire a few targets that will pay for my £20k fee many times over.

Why do it, surly you are losing focus again Jeremy?

No, I will also learn a lot in those twenty days. You can add to that a bit of guaranteed income, but most importantly, it does keep me focused and in a funny way, helps me keep to my Personal Business Mission Statement.

Writer’s block

Well it’s not so much writer’s block, more I just cannot write what I would like to. I am seeing and hearing some absolute horror stories out there, people with historically great business’s that are on the verge of extinction. These business owners are rabbits in headlights, confused, worried and at a loss as to what to do. It would be grossly unfair to mention business sectors, let alone give any clue to who they are. I do hope they pull through, the last thing they will need is a spell in Entrepreneurs Wasteland.

Sleeping on the Personal Business Mission Statement

I feel quite fired up today. The fog has been removed, if I keep to my mission statement, I will achieve my plan and make the £10m.

I review and change the wording from “I want to be…” to “I will be…” The statement is now eleven words long. These simple words makes success all sound so easy. The statement is made up of two parts, “what” I will achieve and “how” I will achieve it. It encompasses what I really like doing, what I think I am good at and most importantly, what I honestly believe I need to do to find great success and wealth. All in all eleven words, just one simple sentence!

I know quite a few people who read this blog will say what a waste of time, it is a total load of bollocks written by an egotistical megalomaniac. To be fair, they are probably correct. Even I think some of the words I put down on paper are a load of old rubbish and I do have an ego the size of a house – well a large house. But taking time out to think about business, and planning out what you are to achieve and how, is time well spent. This blog is my “thinking” time. Add to that success is a self fulfilling prophecy, and I will get the desired result.

Presently, I am in two minds whether to advertise on this blog what my Personal Business Mission Statement is. By advertising it to the world, I am putting a stake in the ground, I will be judged by it. That is positive, if people are watching, you will be focused on keeping to it. For the time being though, I wish to keep it personal. I want to work this Personal Business Mission Statement. This time, I will do it first.