Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good afternoon. I'm Tom Chaldecott and this is Stuart Amadon. Well done, Stuart. And this is another episode of A Brit and a Yank. Talk Business.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Yes, thank you. And we have three goals on this podcast. We've talked through them before. We want to help educate other people who are thinking about starting businesses. Because we experienced that the resources weren't really present for us whenever we were trying to do these things. We want to motivate people to start businesses. We want to encourage them that it is possible and to build and to move forward. And we also want to network with people who think like us. That's our three big goals. Tom, what are we talking about on the pod today?
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so today we're going to talk about kind of how our journey started. What did it look like to start a business?
So I think the idea is that if today we'll talk about how kind of my journey and then probably in a later episode talk about Stuart's journey and we can understand, or we can get an intro as to why it was page 50 and not page 49.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: I believe it would be called the providence of God. So what you're saying is today I get to interview you, I get to ask you questions about things. Okay, well then let's jump right in. Tom, you own Knox Thomas. Remind us what Knox Thomas does. Remind us what Knox Thomas is.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: What does Knox Thomas do? So over in the uk, we're incredibly bureaucratic, and that extends to selling product and using machinery within factories.
So if you're going to place product on the market, it has to meet certain legal requirements, kind of under the guise of safety, has to meet a certain level of or a certain safety standard. And the same if you're operating machinery within your facility, within your manufacturing plant. So we will go in, we will take a look, see if there is appropriate guarding to stop people sticking their hands in stuff that they shouldn't.
And we will also help people with kind of their health and safety requirements as well. So doing fun things like writing risk assessments and policies and that kind of thing.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: So you help people not get shut down by the government. That's like your space. You help businesses stay open. That's awesome. I think that's a great thing. But how old is Knox Thomas?
[00:02:23] Speaker A: So KNOX Thomas is 2 years old.
Yeah.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: So not that old. You've only been doing this for a little while. And this is your full time source of income. Like this is your baby.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: It is, yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Okay, so let's talk about why. I think that would be a big Question to first start with why would you leave the safety of a paycheck and start something risky? Because that's what business is, right? Can we say that? Can we just admit the fact that starting a business, running a business, there's risk associated with that?
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Well, I want to, I want to, I think I said this previously actually, that this is perceived. So I do want to put that caveat in. It's perceived risk.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Perceived risk. Okay, okay, okay. So why though? Well, let's, let's start there. Why would you take this particular journey? And maybe your answer to that question, the perceived risk is a part of your response.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I, I mean it, it is to some degree. So, so we've got, this is kind of a few reasons. One of them is just the need of our family and our household. So we've got five kids, we homeschool in the uk, we're heavily taxed, and I think it's the same as in the States.
Society is not geared for a single income household.
That is difficult to do and it is difficult to, you know, meet the needs of your growing family.
So I kind of realized partly, you know, if I continued as an engineer, as a consultant for a firm, I'd reach a threshold at some point and I wouldn't be able to go any further than that.
So that's part, that's, that's kind of one reason. So we're talking kind of finances in there.
But the other is that, I don't know, reading too many books I think, I think is another journey and we should talk about books at some point.
But thinking about kind of what does it mean to be obedient to scripture kind of on a Monday morning, how do we think about what should our approach to work be and how do we engage with that? Mark Twain, not a Christian, but has this quote that I quite like, which is if you ever find yourself on the side of the majority, that is the time to take stock.
So not necessarily do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, but certainly pause, reflect, why do they behave this way and should I be doing the opposite and what would the opposite look like? So I think that's quite a helpful one. So I can easily look at society in the UK and I think we're, I'm just going to call it worse than the U.S.
there's lots of things we don't have in general. Just worse, I think. So society is definitely worse. We're a bunch of socialists. I feel like I've just moved from a communist city.
I'M being a bit, I'm not being fair entirely there.
But you guys are entrepreneurial, you're pioneering and all. Yeah, you all left us. So we have no pioneering spirit, we have no entrepreneurs.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Literally all the entrepreneurs got on a boat and went across the ocean.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: They did, they did. And then no one could learn from the entrepreneurs.
They all disappeared. So there's really not many of us.
Which means it's difficult to be an entrepreneur in the uk, not only within business, but like within.
So like renting houses, for example, and I've experienced this is really difficult for an entrepreneur because people don't know what to do with you, because there aren't many entrepreneurs.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: People don't do it.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: But trying to come back to your question, kind of why do it? And I mentioned kind of reading books, but what does it mean to be faithful to scripture and what are we trying to do with our households? Well, I want to demonstrate to my children that working hard is a good thing.
We are in fact made to work like we see that in the start of Genesis. And what does that actually mean and how do we demonstrate that? So partly taking Mark Twain's comment, how do we look different to culture? And, you know, scripture tells us that we should look different.
So partly thinking about that, partly thinking about what does it look like to work hard and wanting to bless, wanting to bless people so immediately wanting to bless my family. So the name of the business, Knox Thomas is my son's name.
So immediately I want to be a blessing to him whether he inherits the business or not.
That's open for kind of future discussion because he just turned two, a whole load of other jobs that I would be super satisfied if he was a car mechanic or some sort of blue collar worker, I think that'd be awesome.
But if he wants to take on the business, be an engineer or whatever form that might look like, then I'm super stoked for that.
But I want to gear it so that he could do that, you know, very much in society, certainly in the uk. Like I ended up going to university just because that's what everyone else did and kind of other options weren't really presented as viable.
So, you know, you think about back in the day, you would do what your father did and he would hand on skills and he would hand on a business.
He would handle customers and clients and I suppose a supply chain, and he would inherit that and take it on. So that is kind of what I want to do. I want to set him up so that he has something to Start with. And he has kind of a mission to take on rather than my experience at university, which is I did this because everyone was doing it and I didn't have any grand plan post graduating.
So how do I bless my household? There's one, obviously finances are in there as well. I want this to be a thriving company that is profitable and a blessing.
I also want to be a demonstration to other Christians.
It's very easy to look around and it's very common to kind of see a very pietistic and spiritual approach to Christianity and we need that. So I don't want to detract from that and I don't want to sound like I am. But often that is completely the approach and there's no thought to kind of what does scripture say about what time I wake up in the morning?
You know, what does scripture say about my approach to work and what I should be doing with it?
So how do I demonstrate that to people around me and how am I an encouragement to them?
But also I certainly feel like in terms of the church, I've inherited next to nothing.
So the state of the church in the UK is poor.
We don't have church like a lot of church buildings are now mosques.
We don't have robust classical or we don't have robust Christian education institutes.
We don't have those things. So the only way we're going to kind of resolve that is if we get on and do it. And I've said in kind of different formats previously that it's kind of, it feels silly that I'm the one wanting to do these things or not only wanting to do them but actually doing something about it, like got to be in a pretty desperate state. If Tom Chicot is a name that is becoming noticeable.
We are, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel here. But I mean like, if no one else is going to kind of be willing to engage and do anything, like, yeah, why not make, why not stand up and, and those, those things are difficult. But like my experience is that if, if you're going to work hard, like success will come.
I can't remember if I previously mentioned there's a book by Gary north called the Five Pillars to Biblical Success and it's like a provocative name. It's not a self help book. I really like Gary north, but effectively he's saying that success is actually being obedient to God, to scripture.
That's ultimate success.
Now the world goes chasing after the, the metrics of success, so they go chasing after wealth and respectability. And whatever, the other items in there are some sort of power.
Whereas Gary North's premise is saying that if we pursue obedience as their ultimate success, then these other things will actually be fruit of success.
So we're not actually chasing them, but we are blessed with them.
And that's kind of what we see. And it's similar with business. The premise is that we serve people well, and the feedback loop is profit.
That's a good metric. If people are willing to exchange a value of wealth with you, evidently you're serving people well, and that's what we want to do, and it's not difficult.
I think an interesting topic for us potentially to discuss at some point is a little bit of biblical economics. In that society does a really good job of making economics really complicated, but it just isn't.
And I think that's a barrier to a lot of people kind of thinking about business and thinking about some of these things. So then really doesn't need to be.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Let me, if I could summarize, kind of what you're getting at here. What you're saying is you're seeing your business as far more than just money in.
You see your business as more of a vehicle for change.
You're seeing it as an opportunity to do more, to build more, and to maybe even push farther into Christendom, into England.
Am I summarizing you correctly?
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: So then let's think through that a little bit. In what specific ways do you see opportunity as a business owner to engage with the people around you more than you would have had as an employee?
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, let's talk about kind of hiring people and engaging people's services, and I'm just going to group those things together just for kind of simplicity's sake.
But there's a guy in our church who is a software developer effectively.
And I'd been realizing kind of for a little while I haven't really done anything with cybersecurity.
Okay. I don't really know where to go. And it shouldn't be like, I'm not an IT guy. I'm gonna end up wasting loads of time trying to do it myself.
So I want to be a blessing to other Christians, whether that is employing them directly or employing their services as subcontractors or they run their own businesses.
But I had a chat with this guy, obviously I had a chat with him about some other stuff first, but then real realized, kind of maybe cyber security fits here.
Rick, would you be able to kind of provide cyber security services for the business sent Him a few bits of information and kind of more specifically what I wanted. And he's like, yeah, Tom, I can do this. And my caveat is always because I think one of the things you and I are trying to do and we've observed is that Christians often don't deliver good quality. Sadly, they're not known for their quality. And when a Christian asks another Christian to do something, they probably want it for free or certainly at a reduced rate.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Oh yeah, baby, I know about that. Yeah, definitely know about that.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: The underlying piece there is that they don't understand how business and economics work.
They're kind of, they're consumerist by nature.
You know, the church has kind of enveloped socialism and socialism is kind of looked at as a Christian idea, which is nonsense.
And because of that, Christians deliver poor quality, as you would expect, and want stuff for free.
So anyway, so whenever I have a chat with a Christian, this is even, I've even done this with plumbers that I've known. I've said, can you do this? One, two. But two, I only want you to do this if this is a blessing to your household.
And if there's any doubt in that second kind of requirement, please don't do it.
Because, because I want to pay, I want to pay you at the going rate because I'm getting value from you and I want to deliver.
I want to pay you.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Correctly for the service that you've, you've delivered. So, so in that I want to set an example, I want to kind of say that within business, Christians should be engaging with this because if we believe that all of, all of Christ is applicable to all of life and all of scripture speaks to all of life, then of course it speaks to business.
The idea that it wouldn't and it be separate and we can have opinions on it is nonsense. So the other piece in there is that I want to demonstrate that this is, this is what it looks like. Please, please join me in this. Whether directly or indirectly, let's think about work differently.
And then the other piece is wanting to employ people.
So the one of the kind of full time guy who's part of the team, he's a leader in a church that's local to him.
Now our theologies are a bit different, but he's very much in his, his, he's very much in agreement and happy to be aligned with the visions of the business and he's excited about those.
And also he, he wants to kind of do various things within his church. And like, if I can enable him to do that, like, that's awesome. You know, I. I wanna. I wanna bless him. I wanna bless his household. If that means also blessing his church, like, fantastic.
So how do we, you know, it's a bit like this kind of incrementalism piece, like, or snowball effect. Like, how do I bless this guy or this thing? What does that turn into? Because he's going to. Then, you know, if he gets a sniff of kind of what the vision is, that's going to grow and snowball.
So within the Jewish community, money circulates seven times before it leaves.
Now, why are we not operating like that? Like, there's loads of pushback. You can immediately come back with immediately. But, like, why is that not kind of where we potentially want to be?
Why do we not want to build institutes that we can hand on to our children and our children's children? You know, I'd have loved it if, like, there was a business presented to me. Yeah, it's.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: It's interesting that you're explaining it this way, because this is. This is very much how I view our business. So we, we funnel money into South Louisiana from all over the country, all over the world. Okay? There's. There's revenue that comes to 50 that would not have come to South Louisiana, much less come to our family, come to our church, if this institution that God has blessed us with didn't exist.
And I've had this thought before. So as a result, the money that comes in, I want to send that money into other households.
Obviously, I want them to be deserving of the work. I want them to do a good job. None of the Christian discount nonsense.
We want to be a blessing to the people that we hire. And I do have a preferential treatment of other Christians. I do want to hire other Christians first. I do want to, even if I'm talking contractors, and I do want to work specifically with Christian clients, but I don't exclusively do that. The dollars come in and then those dollars move out to be a blessing to those families. But also, more than that, they go to the grocery store. Do you know what I'm saying?
That revenue travels to businesses, institutions, companies, renters, or, sorry, landlords in this area.
And it wouldn't have been here otherwise. That money wouldn't have come through. And, yeah, 100%, I see that as a great opportunity for Christians to be able to reach out and bring revenue into an area that wouldn't have been there before. You're building something. And so that's a big deal to me.
And you And I have had this conversation before, because where we are Appaloosas, Louisiana, the vast majority of the population inside of the city limits exists under the poverty line. We are a very poor city. We're one of the poorest cities in one of the poorest parishes in one of the poorest states in the union, you know, and so for us to be able to build a mechanism by God's blessing that brings revenue to an area that wouldn't have been here before, that's not government money. You know what I'm saying? Because we got lots of government money flying around. That's a big deal. That's a huge deal, in fact. And so I think you're exactly right. I think that's a great way to be a blessing in kingdom advancing is simply by doing good work that's worthy of its wages and then spending that money. Now you're a steward, right? Now you're spending that money strategically, both to continue to grow your business, but also to be a blessing to us others around you. Amen. I think that's awesome.
So one of the things that you talked about, though, still on the subject of money, before you realized that there was like a ceiling over the top of your family, now you are a Christian man in England. Okay? So you're already in the minority.
And you're a Christian man that believes you have biblical convictions about fruitfulness and.
And bearing children, which also means that you're a Christian man with more than one kid in England.
Right. How many children do you have?
[00:20:27] Speaker A: You got five kids.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Okay. So if you're going to be faithful, to be fruitful and multiply, insofar as the Lord will allow you to raise faithful children who follow him, you can't have a sealing.
You have to get creative. You have to operate outside of that box. Like, if you want your wife to stay home where you live to raise a family, you got to find new mechanisms to do it, right?
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
So again, exactly the same situation. Now, I think that our ceiling opportunity for people is a little higher in the United States in general, not where I live, because we already went through that.
But generally speaking, it is. But one of the things that we knew early on was that come hell or high water, we wanted my wife to be home.
And so we fought for that. And I remember finding out that my. So my wife had just gone back to work. I remember finding out that she was pregnant for our third for my son.
And I just remember having a conversation with her in the living room. I was like, honey, I Don't know how it's going to work, but we're going to make it work.
And the Lord has blessed and here we are. I think, I think there's something big here that we're kind of circling around.
Like if you walk in obedience to what God says to do, he will make a way.
Right. I think that we could just assert that to be true.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Go on, let me finish.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Sorry. It is scary.
Okay. I don't want to. There is some fear that goes along with that. There is like you talked about before, the perception of risk. Maybe not actual risk, but I've never operated in a situation where I didn't think God was not being.
Where I didn't think God was being, not being faithful. I've only seen his faithfulness.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: What was the opening question here?
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Why are we doing what we're doing? What got you started? What's the reason behind it?
[00:22:39] Speaker A: I think, I think this is kind of the other side of the coin a little bit. This is the why not.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Oh, okay, okay.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: And this is the reason that I said perceived risk rather than actual risk.
Because I think one of the blessings of kind of being self employed or starting your own business is that you fully understand your dependency on God.
Oh, and yes. The amount of prayer you're in.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Just like skyrockets, you know, your prayer.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Life gets real good.
Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: So like the, the. And, and this is, this man, this is just a ridiculousness of things like mortgages and society. You know, like my employee probably won't have a problem getting a mortgage because he has a job and he's employed, but his boss will have a problem.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: This is completely illogical.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: It's the same thing here. It's the same thing. Yeah. Yes.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Okay. So I mean, when, when you're employed.
Nassim Talib, I don't know if anyone will have heard of him, has a really interesting book about anti fragility.
And I've actually heard other Christians comment that like this is actually a Christian premise. Really? Because it's this idea that if we are stressed, we actually grow.
So that piece about Christian endurance grows character, you know, and builds hope.
So if we kind of put ourselves in those situations that are kind of stress testing, we actually become anti fragile. And there's a reason that he uses that word over kind of more robust, you know, a bit like you go to the gym, you actually rip your muscles and they grow bigger.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: So like the damage is doing something good. So.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: But coming back to kind of this idea of being employed you know what? What's stopping the jobs drying up within that workplace and you just getting fired tomorrow? And the answer is nothing but we believe in this kind of government that's going to look after us. We believe in this big thing our hope is put in, man.
And the perception is that this is more secure than stepping out and kind of going and looking for your own work and functioning as your own boss. Say, but one, you're not spending time in prayer. You're not recognizing dependency, and where is my money going to come from? You're just like, I work for this guy, and he pays me this much every month.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: This money just appears in my account. Like, it just.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: I never worked that hard.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. And I think that's a great point. So one of the things that I learned in the school of hard knocks of owning a business is if you do crap work, you don't get paid.
That's just the way that it works. If you're not putting your focus and your effort into delivering a quality product and a quality experience that people want, clients that people actually want. That's right. Then guess what? No money comes.
It doesn't just appear in your account anymore.
And so I learned that lesson early on by just not paying enough attention to what was going on with some of our clients. And then we realized, oh, they're having a bad experience.
What are they paying for? Again, we need to fix this quickly or else we're all going to be hungry. We got to fix it tomorrow.
And the Lord's been very kind to use, I think, business ownership as an instrument of sanctification, which he'll use everything as instruments in our sanctification. But I see this opportunity specifically as a strong one. And one of the things that I hope we get to talk about more in a later episode is C.S. lewis's concept of a good king and what it means to be a good ruler. He talks about this in my favorite Narnia book, which is A Horse and His Boy. It's the best one, by the way. Horse and His Boy is the best book out of the series, and I will fight someone to the death over that.
But I think.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Are you.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: No, no, I think I'm.
Oh, man. Now I can't remember the name of the horse. Win, I think, is the name of the horse or something. I feel that.
I think it's Hyn. It's been a little while since I've read this one, but he keeps shouting over and over again for Narnia and for asl and he just keeps running into battle, like in the worst possible situations. He's over committing himself and I think that's me.
But I do see that as an opportunity for us to learn more about what the Lord is calling us to do and for him to sanctify us in owning a business. I absolutely see it.
So you got started.
Feed your family.
Amen.
Provide an opportunity for your kids. Amen. Serve people around you. Amen. What else? What else was a big thing for you that pushed you and motivated you in this direction? What else?
[00:28:07] Speaker A: That is a fantastic question.
I mean, I'm going to cheat. I'm just going to say kind of God put us in a certain situation and it made. And this was it. This was the next thing to do.
So I think the journey to this point and I think this might be a.
I don't know, a slightly different conversation for another day, but it was kind of a five year.
Was it five years? I suppose three years. Three or four year kind of setup to kind of.
This is when we're going to press go.
But yeah, God was good.
You know, kind of five years ago I was reading kind of Tim Ferriss five. No, what is it? Four hour work week. And kind of bought that lie at the time.
Which. Yeah. Which I think is very easy, you know, kind of in society around us.
So one of the reasons for kind of thinking about it back then was actually how do I spend more time with my kids? Which I'm glad I've kind of revised. Really. Or it's been kind of edited.
But what, what are the. What are the other reasons? I don't know. I think, I think we've kind of.
I think we've covered them in terms of the big items.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Can we talk about what you just said though? Because I think it's actually pretty profound. So you weren't necessarily looking for it.
Would that be an accurate description of the situation you were in? You weren't necessarily looking for the business starting moment. It more of just was the next thing to do. It was in front of you.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, gone.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: So explain that though. Like, what do you mean whenever you say it was the next thing to do. Yeah.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: So there was always this.
So I suppose a brief synopsis or summary.
So in it probably was five years ago, maybe a little bit longer.
I was kind of in that state where I. So I had the opportunity or the trajectory to become a director of a technology company.
And at the time I was like, nah, I want to work less. Not More I bought all that, you know, had the motorhome, had, you know, can I just disappear away in it and kind of do anything Anyway, glad all that was kind of taken away from me. Absolutely.
So that, that was kind of a brief moment of plan. So the question was kind of how do I, how do I achieve that? How do I get there? Well, if I move into some sort of consultancy, then that's going to be the quickest way to start a business or become self employed, you know, how, how do I become kind of independent?
So that kind of happened and then I don't know, God's been good. My kind of theology approach to kind of work has evolved.
We started homeschooling the kids and I think, well, taking Christian education seriously. And I've heard many people say like as soon as you open that kind of can of worms, just who knows what's happening next, it kind of just explodes.
So then end up working for a consulting firm and being there for a while and really just kind of observing things. So being part of senior leadership for a technical, a technology company that was kind of growing, I really enjoyed getting involved in kind of business strategy and like how do we develop our people and where are we going and what kind of new products are we going to develop and who wants what within the market?
So I really enjoy that and then getting back into kind of doing the, the deliverable day to day. So being a consultant within machinery safety, working for a firm, I could see how the business was operating.
And their, I don't know how to put this, their business kind of approach and kind of know how was really lacking.
They had a good product, one that was working very well, one that was serving them and bringing in money. But they were not thinking about tomorrow. They were not thinking about how they're bringing on new clients. They were not thinking about how they developed their team. They weren't thinking about anything around the product.
This was effectively a cash cow that at some point was going to die.
So I saw those two pieces and tried to push the door a bit on the whole kind of company development piece. What do we do in this space? And they were not interested.
They really did want to stick their fingers in their ears when they were told stuff that could have helped them but was hard to hear.
So I kind of saw that and thought, okay, that's not going to work. That's not where we're going. I don't know, there isn't longevity within this business.
We're not seeing kind of development opportunities or anything. Like that. So it was then a case of thinking about, okay, how can I learn as much as I can? How can I kind of dissect their product as much as possible whilst also engaging with kind of the wider market and seeing what everyone else is doing and then pulling those pieces together and being like, okay, well, I understand business, how it operates and how it grows and the rest of it, and I enjoy that. I understand this product.
And I then kind of the next obvious thing to do was be the best I could be within that company.
And the kind of. The slightly ironic thing in there is because you were responsible for quoting up to invoicing, you knew exactly how much money you were turning over, and it was a substantial amount of money.
Okay. And then you can kind of. So I want to do my job, my job as well as possible, kind of as a test, but also I want to get noticed and I want to learn as much as possible because I want to do my job well, irrespective of kind of where it goes next. But I could use that as a, I suppose, a safe test house in the uk, they've got this language of kind of a sand pit. You can kind of play in this sandpit to check the robustness of this thing that you're thinking about doing. You can look at all the numbers. Yeah, There's a whole load of variables that you're not going to know what happens when you press go.
But all that was kind of done and tested and then just some other opportunities presented themselves.
A bit of work. I had someone kind of mention to me from the previous company, oh, Tom, this is coming in. Do you think you could maybe help us with this? It was something completely different, but they knew me.
There was also another comment from. From someone else, and I was like, okay, let's try this. Let's go.
Those things all fell through.
And there was kind of. There was the initial kind of conversation or hope that I might be able to continue kind of offering support to this company that I was working for. That fell through as well.
But these were total blessings because it meant that, like, I had to desperately go out there and try and find kind of clients and people to deliver good work to. And I didn't have anything.
It meant we were building from scratch, which totally was a good thing to be doing.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Yeah. You were able to start your company without any of the hurdles.
Right. Like, you were able to go from zero. It was similar with us. We were able to start from nothing, which meant we had less experience and knew less and so we were going to make mistakes in the front job because that's just, just the nature of the, of starting from nothing. But then we were able to build our own systems and our own networks and be our own brand rather than follow something else. Yeah, I think that's great.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Okay, so another, just an encouragement to anyone out there who's kind of thinking like I want to start something certainly. So I'm going to make this observation for the uk. I don't know whether this is true in the States, but there's a lot of lazy people.
There's a lot of lazy people.
There's actually very few people in my sphere.
There's a lot of people who are about to retire and they, they have a knowledge that is going to end up exiting the industry and they also, they've done well, they've, they're serving people well but you know, they're not really going to care about the next generation or who fills their boots.
They're earning really good money.
So it means that. And there's kind of, there's very few people between the age of, I don't know, early 30s and say mid-50s. There just isn't anyone. So it means that you can kind of step in, you can deliver service, you can try and reap knowledge from these older guys who are leaving and they're doing really well so they're pretty happy to talk to you actually. And you can build good relationships with those people because you're not stepping on their toes.
They've got plenty of money, they're not threatened in any way.
But the slight irony in there is they have become potentially complacent and some of the large companies have also.
So it means that if you have a fresh approach and you want to be a bit disruptive within the market, you're going to get noticed quite quickly and if you work hard, you're going to get noticed as well.
The other thing that you've got in here, and I think God has written this into economics, over a certain size companies become really inefficient and there is a place there for the small company, for potentially the one man band and they can step in and do things and they feel the responsibility, which is a good thing because the large companies don't. So you end up with terrible service at a really high rate because they're really inefficient and effectively all you're getting is a, is the brand name which supposedly comes with some sort of credential.
Now if you can go and find the Small people, you're gonna. You're gonna get probably. There's a good chance better work for cheaper, and they're gonna take. They're gonna take responsibility and you've got a direct relationship. The other thing that you see within the UK is people change their jobs pretty quickly because there's a shortage of people, which means that service is inconsistent. You don't know who you're talking to.
Yeah. So there's a whole load of thoughts there, really.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're pushing on 40 minutes, so let's start to wind this baby down.
But I do want to think about this.
So if we've got somebody who's listening and they're thinking about starting, what would you say they should be looking for as a.
I don't want to say sign in like a religious sense, but as evidences that they probably have an opportunity to do something. What would you say are some things they should be looking for?
[00:39:00] Speaker A: I think the question is, have you identified the person that you are serving, you are delivering to?
And then do you have enough knowledge to be able to deliver that thing to them? Or not necessarily enough knowledge, but enough of a network to be able to, like, okay, well, if I did this, I'd call upon this guy, this guy, and this guy, and this is how I would deliver it.
So it's about serving people. So if you can identify that and draw a box around it and you're like, I could do everything within that, and it doesn't even have to be everything.
You know, there's plenty of times where I'm like, I can do 90% of that, and I know people who can help me, or I know who I could talk to who would then tell me who I should talk to.
So there's a piece about networking. I would encourage people who are thinking about starting a business, they should be spending a good amount of time building their network.
And we need to talk about that at some point as well.
But totally is really, really important.
I didn't used to think that.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm with you on that one. Okay, great. Well, I think that's a great place to stop right there.
Tom, I'm encouraged to hear your story personally. Man, that's awesome. And I'm excited to see what's going to continue to happen, how you are going to conquer UK for Jesus through Knox Thomas. I'm ready for it, guys. Thank you all so much for listening to another episode of A Brit and a Yank Talk Business.
If you enjoyed it, please, like, share, subscribe. All the things and tell your friends that really all we're trying to do. We're not saying that we're the premier experts in the field because that would be pretentious, but we are saying that, hey, we've learned some things and we want to help.
So go forth, build Christendom. Start businesses. Feed the babies. We'll see you all next time.
