This morning I’m joined by the extremely hard working, ambitious and successful entrepreneur, Ying Tan.

Ying is a qualified accountant with a background in investment banking having worked for UBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, where he was one of the youngest Vice Presidents ever.

He is the founder and chief executive of multi-million-pound financial services company. Ying and his team are leading the way in the industry, providing expert knowledge and unbeatable service to numerous homeowners and property investors in the UK.

Ying is dedicated to combining high levels of customer service and understanding with building satisfying and rewarding careers for the people he works with.

He is the winner of many industry awards including most recently ‘Development and Innovation Advocate’ at the British Specialist Lending Awards.

His first book, Don’t Push Too Many Trolleys, was published by Wiley in 2020 and he is a regular commentator in a range of industry publications.

Listen to Learn:

We have lots in common with this week’s guest, John Warrillow. Small businesses have always revolved around their owner, but in 2011, John kicked off a revolution with the release of his bestselling book, ‘Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You’. (Our purpose is all about helping business owners create a business that successfully runs whether they turn up or not).

John’s book spawned a company - The Value Builder System™ - that has helped more than 50,000 businesses build more valuable companies.  I was lucky enough to spend some time with John just before the COVID crisis in February 2020 at his conference in Denver where we’d recently become a certified partner of his global Value Builder System.

John is host of Built to Sell Radio, ranked by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s 10 best podcasts for business owners. In 2015, Warrillow wrote another best-selling book called ‘The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry’ which illustrates how owners can accelerate the value of their business through creating recurring revenue streams.

Before founding The Value Builder System, John started and exited four companies, including one acquired by a public company.

Listen to learn:

- The first thing John would do if he was setting up a new company today

- The power of niching: how to become more referable & more profitable

- How to spot the shining star in your business

- Why now is a unique time in history to see what works and what doesn’t in your business and marketplace

- You’ll never be scalable unless you’re aligned

- The value in giving your customers an ultimatum when changing your business model

- The importance of constantly asking ‘why’ in an open-ended way

- John’s favourite forward-looking indicator

- The important factors in building value in your business

- Why you can’t sell a business if you, as the owner, is still needed in it, and how to solve this.

How to get to your number that allows you to live for the rest of your life

- Leadership qualities you need to build a valuable company

For more information:

Speak to us a Certified Partner of The Value Builder System: 0203 603 1112 or email: [email protected]

Books: Built to Sell, The Art of Selling Your Business & The Automatic Customer are all available on Amazon.

To receive a collection of free gifts, head on over to https://builttosell.com/

Dan is the owner of a private equity group and his primary focus is as an investor who specialises in taking companies already producing multiple six figures in revenue and accelerates their growth to over 10 million.

Before the age of 30 Dan built and sold his first business for over £1Million. By 31, he turned around a U.S. company that became listed on the U.S. Stock Market for $4.3 Million.

I’ve known Dan for around 6 years and we both share a love of numbers and finances; I have a lot of respect for him, what he does, and how he does it.

Listen to discover:

· Why better marketing WON’T solve everything.

· How to create a competitive advantage.

· The two things in business that create leverage.

· Why you need to live and die by your numbers.

· What metrics you need, and when.

· How to create an environment so growth takes care of itself.

· What Dan did when he was stuck at the mid-6-figure revenue level.

· Dan’s view on Leadership.

For more information visit > https://danbradbury.com/. 

I’m really excited about today’s Podcast because we’re delving into the world of Sports. This week we have a professional basketball coach, elite player, club founder, and PE teacher Pete Daines (or Mr Daines as our kids know him as!).

Pete set-up the Yateley Silverbacks Basketball Club 11 years ago and in that time the club has won five promotions, two League titles and four Play-off Championships with the adult sides and 8 various titles with the Junior squads. The club has mixed, male and female teams, of all ages starting from U8’s Diddy Dunkers. It’s a wonderful community club that’s like an extended family, and 'I don't work Fridays' are proud sponsors of.

Pete was also Great Britain U18 Team Manager who took his team to 6 European Championships, coached the South of England Youth squads, is a former National League player and a current BE registered referee and coach. He’s recently been selected for the GB over 45s national squad as a player.

Remarkably, this is all in his spare time, because he works full time as Head of Boys Sport at Yateley Manor, where every Friday afternoon he is my boss as I volunteer in helping his department out with Sports lessons and matches, so I get to help coach my 9-year-old twins (and learn an awful lot from Pete and his team).

Listen to this Podcast to learn:

- Managing multiple stakeholders & their expectations. 

- How teams take on the personality of their coach and considerations around this. 

- Teaching what's in front of you and adapting. 

- The importance of getting to know every single individual / child & getting the best out of each one.

- Why seeing with your eyes is more important than any statistic.

- The importance of learning from every single experience, every single day, regardless of how long you've been coaching or teaching for.

- Why sport is one big life lesson. 

- Pete's number 1 thing he'd define as a leader

I’ve known Nigel for 10 years and been lucky enough to work with him as a Business Growth Adviser, shared the stage with him, helped judge his business awards and for the last few years have been his double act for his Masterminds.

I’ve learned a lot from this guy; he’s the quickest implementor I know.

There’s a famous quote by John Wanamaker: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” This epitomises everything Nigel focuses on – what he doesn’t know about Marketing isn’t worth knowing!

Nigel ‘took the leap’, left his corporate career and started his first business in 2003. Since then, he’s started ten separate million pound plus businesses from scratch in the UK and discovered (through an awful lot of trial and error!) the framework to build and grow businesses.

Listen to the Podcast to learn: 

- Why you should avoid being welded to a product.

- How testing a proposition years ago for another business, is now on track to be Nigel's 11th million pound business! 

- The power of dividing every day into 90 minute chunks and sticking to this habit.

- Key alerts Nigel has in his business, and how his team shares ownership of these. 

- Why embracing a culture of mistakes works, and why you need the right people to fit into your culture. 

- Nigel's best advice on Leadership. 

I could have talked to Alan all day long and I learned a lot. What it did confirm is that the world of Elite Sports and the world of Business more or less follow the same principles.

Listen to us both openly share from our own coaching perspectives:

- Setting & sharing a vision

- Aligning a team to your vision, your why

- Transparency

- Interdependency & allowing every member of a team to make decisions because you cannot do it for them

- Giving team members breathing space to think and self-manage

- Playing to Win / Playing Not To lose Strategy Vs Playing the Best you possibly can be in every position

- Forget anything that you can’t influence and focus on what you can control

- Heightened levels of self-awareness

- Measuring success & lessons learned

Authentic Leadership

If you want to Follow and hear more from Alan, check him out on Twitter: @CoachKeane14

Nick Howes is Managing Director of LMI UK, part of the global Leadership Management International organisation that has been developing leaders and managers for more than 50 years in 80+ countries.

Nick joined the team in 2009 and has worked successfully with leaders and managers from across the SME spectrum as well as with large corporations and charities, being warmly received for his personable and flexible style, helping clients to achieve great results in accordance with their key goals.

I’ve known Nick for around 10 years and was lucky enough to work alongside him during my own LMI days - you'll hear how much of a massive fan I am of LMI and Paul J. Meyer.

Listen to this Podcast to learn:

- The power of trusting in a proven step-by-step methodology and process.

- How to set-up & review both business and personal goals to enable you to reach your ultimate end goal. 

- Why new isn't always better. 

- The importance of getting into a routine of daily habits. 

- The best questions to ask yourself to help with delegation. 

- Being an authentic leader. 

After a successful 10-year career in Advertising and Media Sales, Nina Alexander retired from the corporate industry at the age of 28 after deciding that she wanted to spend the rest of her life being her own boss and having a more flexible work/life balance.

Nina now runs two businesses successfully and flexibly around her 4 children, aged ten and under.

Nina is one of a handful of National Vice Presidents in the UK for Arbonne International, her online business has experienced annual double-digit growth since 2013.

A few years back, Nina was invited to speak on stage in Vegas for Arbonne’s annual conference in front of 18,000 delegates.

Nina is a Reiki Master and also runs a holistic and beauty therapy company called Detoxity.

(Oh, and Nina's husband Sven is Martin's fellow coach for the Camberley U9 Royals Football Team!)

Listen to this Podcast to learn:

- The importance of mastering a Business Model.

- Why you should encourage your team to out-perform you.  

- How belief, passion and putting your energy into your products will lead to success. 

- Why embracing a collaborative environment leads to learning from mistakes. 

- Nina's top tips on Leadership. 

Rob Kerr had a number of false starts in his own career before finding his path. A project manager for over a decade, he set up his first business in

2014 to improve his own work and family life.

Today, he works with aspiring entrepreneurs, contractors, and freelancers, supporting them through these critical decisions and showing them how to flourish on their own unique journey.

Rob’s bestselling book ‘Project Future: 6 Steps to Success as Your Own Boss’ takes the inspiration from project management techniques, and shows you how to test your ideas, get clarity, and launch a successful independent career.

Listen to this Podcast to learn:

- How he overcame confusion in his early career to working out his path to become a project manager.

- Applying project management techniques to the day-to-day running of a business.

- The importance of self-evaluation.

- Lessons learned embedded into a company culture.

- Understanding how you can let go and know someone’s still going to deliver.

- Why you need checkpoint reviews & reviews that are based on milestones.

- Rob’s no. 1 tip on Leadership.

Today, Kelly is Founder of 101 Ways, one of the most sought-after technology consultancies in London.  With 35 years’ experience in the tech industry, Kelly has a deep understanding of what it takes to bring about successful product development and delivery.

In 2010, Kelly was recognised for his work by the agile community when he won an award for being the ‘Most Valuable Agile Player in the UK’. And in 2016 he won an award for ‘most popular online contributor’ in the agile community.

He’s described as an “agile heavy-weight…inspiring individual…visionary leader”, but above all, he’s one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.

Key take-aways for business owners:

- How he went about creating a 100-person company in just 4 years.

- Why running a small business is not easier that running large teams at big corporates, it just has different challenges.

- Validating a business idea without spending any money.

- Leveraging off your experience, contacts and profile.

- The first thing he did when he set-up his business.

- Importance of recognising what you’re good at, along with what you’re not so good at.

- Developing metrics on the things that matter.

- Kelly’s one piece of advice on Leadership.