Business
In this episode, Paul interviews Nick Bradley of the Scale Up Your Business Company and Podcast. Nick comes from a venture capitalist background, he has been buying and scaling businesses for a long time and has a huge amount of experience and knowledge. Listen in to hear all about Nick’s personal story and to gain invaluable business knowledge. KEY TAKEAWAYS Nick has been buying and scaling businesses for a living for the past 15 years. He has worked with over 100 different acquisitions in both the US and the UK and been involved in 24 business exits. He also runs the Podcast ‘Scale Up Your Business’ and has enjoyed the connections and success this has brought to him. Both Nick and Paul are on clubhouse and think it’s an incredible platform, especially for business and networking. When Nick was in the private equity world he found the extremely high financial rewards and the power brought out the worst in him. He found himself not being a very nice person due to the need for significance and needing to feel like being the alpha. He started to experience this a little bit when he first went on clubhouse so he had to dial it back a bit. He now goes on a lot of small rooms so that it is just about connecting and meeting people rather than followers. Nick has seven different companies, all of these sit under his personal brand but they have different dimensions. He has multiple business that are their own entities so they could then be sold independently down the line. A mistake new start-up businesses often make is they don’t recognise early enough the need for good leadership, team management and other essential parts to scaling up. They don’t realise when the business is at the point of growth that they need to focus on these things, they still see themselves as small. Pushing yourself physically has an effect on your mental strength, that is why it is not surprising that lots of successful CEOs are also endurance athletes. They are training their bodies to train their minds. Just buying a business and not knowing what to do with it means you will struggle to be successful. You would need to partner with someone who has business experience or gain your own experience. You can buy businesses using other peoples money, by using other financial tools and leverage the deals so that the amount you put in is tiny in comparison to what you are buying, but there is no such thing as a ‘no money deal’. If you are thinking of buying businesses internationally then you need to have contacts and someone to help you with the deal that is in the country the business is operating in. It's also advisable to establish what position they are in, would they be happy being CEO or do they want a hands off approach? Nick advises to never buy a business abroad where you don’t have someone in place who will be there to takeover when the business is bought. Nick called his podcast something literal that delivered a promise. He believes this is one of the reasons it has had organic success as well as telling his story in his early episodes and by being super clear by the message he was trying to deliver. Nick didn’t find instant success with his podcast but started to get into the charts around 5 months in. He also found that after some time there were people who started binging his podcast, almost like it was a Netflix series! BEST MOMENTS “It was a gift from the gods that fell on my lap” “It’s very easy to be caught up in other peoples politics” “The magic is not the acquisition, it’s the integration” “Those who start businesses are not necessarily the ones that are good at scaling them, it takes a different mindset” “Everything is easy if you’re prepared to gain the knowledge and do the work” “Be really real” VALUABLE RESOURCES BulletProof Business Podcast ABOUT THE HOST Paul Abercrombie Entrepreneur, Speaker, and Founder of Multiple Businesses. Paul is on a mission to help business owners and Entrepreneurs achieve success. "In 2008 I left my full-time job to follow my dream of owning my own business and building a better life for me and my family. Since then I have started 12 businesses, generated millions in sales revenue and employed hundreds of people. I have also had some epic failures, made many mistakes and it’s my mission to ensure other can learn from my experience, avoid the mistakes I have made and achieve success in both life and business!” CONTACT DETAILS Paul Abercrombie LinkedIn See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.