Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Good evening or good morning or afternoon, I suppose whatever time it is that you're listening to this. Welcome to another episode of A Brit and Yank Talk Business. I'm Stuart.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: And I'm Tom.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: And we're here to talk business.
Today. We've told our stories in previous episodes. We talked about how we came to start.
Today we're going to be talking more about when should you start?
When is the right time to start a business?
And obviously that's, I mean, I think that's a loaded question from the jump. But you know, we'll just talk about it anyway because it's fun. Tom, when, when would you say when, when did you start yours? When, when was the like defining moment that you were like, I should start Knox Thomas, I should do this?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: I mean it was in, it was in 2020. And I think I, I think the thing that could be an interesting conversation here is how much, how much do you plan, how much do you lead up and what are the things that you could do in order to kind of plan?
So, so our plan was probably three years in the making.
So I knew I wanted to start a business.
I mean, I studied engineering at university and the problem with doing something like studying engineering at university is in and of itself, you kind of struggle to offer your services as an independent.
You could do it in certain spheres, you could be involved in kind of product design, something like that.
But often you need to be part of a team in order to kind of fulfill whatever the thing is.
And I was working in a technology company where we were developing ultrasound. And don't ask me anything about ultrasound because I won't be able to tell you a thing. So like the thing there is, you've got to be able to draw a box around the thing that you can provide.
That's one of the key things with starting the business. And who are the people that you directly going to serve? So within that engineering role, I was there kind of scratching my head thinking, well, what would I do? Like I can, I can kind of, I can do project management, but then how do I find people who need that as a service?
So the easiest thing and the quickest thing I thought to do was if I go and work for a consultancy, at minimum I'd be able to just step out of that and go into self employed consultancy. And that would help me identify kind of like, okay, what does the client look like?
Because you're there functioning as a consultant and at the same time a different conversation for a different day. But that idea of how can we be self employed or function as self employed people whilst being employed?
So if we can operate like that and we can think about, okay, even though I'm employed, hypothetical, I can still operate saying I have a resource that someone needs and I'm going to use that resource and we've got an input, we've got an output and how can I kind of operate in the most effective and efficient way possible.
Kind of preparing yourself to then go, okay, then I'm going to become self employed and I'm going to take myself kind of, I was going to say seriously, but it's kind of in a different role. So my, my kind of. My proposal is how do you set yourself up so that you operate as though you're self employed, as though you're kind of running your own business while sat inside another business that you're kind of learning from and you're able to grow and kind of test things. So the kind of the fortunate thing I ended up with when I was working for the consultancy, fortunate for me, unfortunate for the consultancy is that I was doing everything from quoting through to final delivery.
So I saw the whole thing.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: So you're getting all the experience? Yeah. You were seeing how it runs?
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
So I could see the whole thing so effectively and it didn't take me much to kind of be like, okay, well I can quite easily engage with this as though I'm a consultant or self employed.
And how can I kind of push the limits on those things to like, how do I get more involved in business development? How do I get more involved in the admin and the sending out the invoice at the end of the day? Because then you're getting kind of a full screenshot of everything that you would be doing within the business. And I mean the other thing in there is I just, and I'm sure we'll get into kind of just like tricks and tips that we kind of did. Like, don't ask for permission for things, just do them.
And like, if you think you need permission, well, propose that you're going to do this. You know, let's just try this out for six weeks and we can, and we can undo it.
And often they'll let you do it and then they'll forget about it and you'll just keep doing it.
You know, just there was various bits and pieces like that. I mean, even I got to the point where I think one of the things that God has blessed us with is, is hard, is working hard and efficiently. So like I can quite happily sit down for two hours and just stare at a report.
Now I have to kind of get into it and you know, we have good times and bad times, but I can do that. And because I could do that, I was able to complete work incredibly quickly. I'd ask for more work and I wouldn't get it. And I'd work like two and a half days a week because they wouldn't give me any more work. And there was a point where I'm just like, okay, I've told you enough times that I need more work.
You're not giving it to me, so I'll just won't ask.
And then it was a challenge to say, okay, how quickly can I deliver this stuff? How can I do it faster?
You know, and this is almost like a kind of a prep for like, what's it going to look like when I step out? So, so it was kind of a, it was kind of a three year journey from this is what we're going to do. We're going to, we're going to go into, go and get experience.
We're going to get as much experience as we can and kind of pretend to be self employed for a bit and then we're going to start marketing ourselves and try and line up a few things to be like, okay, we've got some, we've got some potential work that's going to come in. Let's, let's press go. And at that point, nothing that I kind of planned came through, but it was awesome.
So I think there's a significant opportunity to be like, I want to set up a business and what are the things that I'm going to do today to actually get there?
And you'll probably end up there quicker than you think.
There's a lot you can do within the safe space of being employed. There's a lot you can do in that space.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Yeah, you prepped far more than I did.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: I thought you might say that far.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: More than I did, but that's interesting to me. So I think that's great though you had a strategy from the jump. This also fits perfectly with who you are and your personality. And you said, this is what I'm going to do in our world. It was more of I have to figure this out and I think I can do this.
So here we go. You know, that was really it. And I think the first paying job that I actually had in our space was just taking pictures and videos of a wedding. That was it. And it. And from there it just perpetually evolved Again and again into taking pictures and videos at a business opening, looking around and saying, hey, I think that this marketing agency that hired me, I think I could do this in my town. Okay? And there was nobody doing it in my town, so I said, okay. And then I turned one of those on and called somebody and they actually paid me for some reason to do it for them. And I said, wow, okay. And then, you know, 12 years later, we have what we have, and the Lord's been very kind to us. But.
But I was also. I was in a slightly different situation too, because I had income, although not a ton, which is why we had to start a business as a pastor.
So there was some kind of. There was some kind of money coming in, so we weren't starving, but we just knew that there was greater needs coming on the, on the horizon that we had to. Had to look forward to. But let me ask you that. So, like, why did you decide to, though. What was the. So that's the how, right? This is the how I set myself up. What's the. What's the why? What's the why behind what you did?
[00:08:16] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, I. I kind of feel like we discussed that, what would be two episodes ago.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yes, yes. But remember, not everybody's listened to those. Somebody might be starting to repeat ourselves.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: So what. What is that? Well, I think I want to come back. I want to put a pin in the money thing. Cause I think a lot of people will have in their mind.
I think there's a few different things there. So why do we start the business wanting to demonstrate? Well, our business names are Knox Thomas. That's my. My oldest son's name. So wanting to build something that I can. I'd love to hand on to my. Well, our children, my children wanting to build something that's kind of long lasting. You know, we. I always think, you know, the, the stuff that we've kind of inherited is it's got no heritage to it because no one ever kind of took the time to think, if we build something with longevity and takes time to build, we can actually hand it on and it could be a blessing to our children. You know, we. We've never received that. I want to demonstrate what it looks like to do hard work.
So there's an opportunity there.
God blesses us. I think there's an opportunity here to bless others. You know, how can we employ other Christians? How can we bless them with business, use their services?
And also because we've got five kids, we could do with earning a bit More money than I would if I was employed.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Five kids and still counting. Right, right.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: I mean there's space in the van, Stuart, so.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Let'S go.
Yeah, that's great, man. And so you're, but you said let's, let's, let's think a little bit about the money because I think.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: I think people will often, you know, people's immediate thought is going to be, okay Tom, you can kind of, you can map this out so that you've got the, the potential skill set, but the day that you hand in your notice and, and here we've, we have particularly long kind of notice periods of up to three months.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Oh wow.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty common.
So you could have a notice period of three months but then like you've still got your bills to pay after that point and kind of, what, what do you do?
So we, we were very fortunate.
What did we have? So we, we'd made quite a bit money buying like, not intentional by any stretch, but buying and selling houses. We'd, we'd sold houses for a lot more than we paid for them.
And we owned a, and this in. Okay. In the UK, this is big. We had a 7 meter long motorhome, which is big in the UK.
We also had a Land Rover Defender, one of the old ones, which was a lot of fun.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: You don't have it anymore?
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Well, we started the business, Stuart. This is, this is where this is going. So, so we sold them, you know.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: So, so that gave us enough capital to, I don't know, potentially last a year, maybe last a bit longer with no income coming in. So that, that gave us a significant buffer.
And yeah, I think it was just kind of the right time to, to get rid of those things. They'd been a total blessing to us, we'd really enjoyed them. But you know, we want to invest in something else. And I think that's the other thing here. Like this is totally an investment.
Yeah. Even, even if like that money kind of gets spent up, you, you will have learned just so much and it will totally have been worth it.
So instead of being kind of concerned about, you know, but, but I can't have that holiday or like I'm going to have to sell my fancy car and get a 15 year old Volvo like mine or whatever it might be to then go out and do this thing.
And I think that's the exciting thing. These are the opportunities where God blesses obedience and bless his kind of stepping out in faith and courage and trust.
And I think we often have A mindset that is the wrong way around. As Christians, we're often worried about tomorrow.
Obviously we're told we're not to worry. If anything, that's sinful to worry about tomorrow. But how do we flip that and go instead? How can I be excited about God delivering on his promises and providing for our needs tomorrow? Like it's going to look like something and I have no idea what it's going to look like. So if I can put myself, and you know, we want to be wise and we don't want to be reckless, but how can we step out in kind of faith and trust and obediently steward the things that we've been given in order to then see kind of a five, a return on what? On our investment, on our obedience.
So I think we need to flip that in our minds.
Yeah, I'd love to encourage people in that.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think it sounds like what we're really talking about is risk. And people have different personalities when we start thinking about risk. There's the people who are risk averse and the people who are ignorant that there's risk at all.
And we got to make sure that we are not just afraid and therefore not moving. You know, don't, don't be the risk averse type. There's always going to be risk involved in what you do. You can try to mitigate it as much as you possibly can, but at the end of the day, like you said, you could start and everything could burn. It could just totally flop and the contracts that you thought were coming in might not arrive.
But at the same time, you want to be wise.
So I think that if people are listening to this, that's probably the space that many of them are in. If they're thinking about starting a business, they're trying to say, what's a reasonable amount of wisdom to have? Whenever I'm navigating these risks, what should I do? How should I prepare? What are the things that I would do? And the first thing that I would tell them is you need a pastor. You need a pastor and wise counselors around you to help you think through these things well, to help you reason through them well and get some good feedback and talk to other Christians who have done it.
And we already talked about how you and I are different.
You had a much more calculated approach than I did.
And I would probably say that between the two of us, I am the one who's less risk averse just by our personalities in and of themselves. I fly close to the sun. That's just kind of how I operate.
But we got to help people think about what they should do, what they should do. So what would you say? What do you think some good general rules would be for somebody who's getting ready to start a business? What are some good general rules?
[00:14:53] Speaker B: I'm going to go back three steps.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Oh, you're gonna go back three steps. Okay, let's go. Yeah.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: So there's a guy called Nassim Talib, I don't know if you've heard of him, he wrote a book called Anti Fragile, which is quite cool book, but one of his points in there. So this is off, this is you talking about risk because doing nothing is risky. Okay?
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: And I kind of want to expose perceived risk.
So he kind of gives two examples. One is the taxi driver who's self employed and the other is, I don't know, say someone who works in banking, very well paid, stable income.
So the taxi driver. And it's all about what is it? It's kind of fluctuate exposure to kind of uncertainty. And the question is how much uncertainty are you exposed to and what's the fluctuation? So your options are micro fluctuations or macro fluctuations and you've got to pick one.
So micro fluctuations. So the taxi driver who's self employed, he doesn't know whether or not he's going to get 10 fares tomorrow or 100, he doesn't know. But over the course of a week he's probably going to get on average, I don't know, 20 a day and the odds of that are high. But he's going to have micro fluctuations day to day, but he's going to be relatively secure in the long run.
The guy who's employed, he's not going to be aware that he's exposed to risk day to day. He's going to be working his seven and a half hours here in the UK and he's going to get his salary at the end of the month. But one day someone could turn around and say, oh, there's no more work coming in, we're making you redundant, then what?
And the first guy probably would be like, okay, this is happening, I've got to deal with it, what can we do? The second guy, because he's never been exposed to kind of these, I think Talib calls it volatility, but this volatility, he doesn't know what to do.
But the thing is that they're both exposed to the same amount of risk actually. It's just where is it on the aggregate?
What does it look like so the doing nothing, which is effectively what the guy who, the guy with the full time job, he's done nothing effectively but he's still exposed to risk.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: It's like a pretend isolation because the business can still fail. The same things that would affect an independent contractor affects the guy who's the employee. There might just be one more degree that it passes through, one more layer that it passes through before it gets to you, but it will get to you.
Yeah, I think that's a great point. But we do. I mean I've been a part of jobs where pay cuts are involved.
I've never actually been sacked. Not yet. Have I been sacked?
I don't think so. I can't remember if I have been. So maybe I just blocked that part out of my life. But I definitely have been around when the pay cuts come and I find that that's helpful because it reminds you that there is still risk that's involved in what you've got going on. You're not actually removed all the way from it. And like, as a business owner with employees, one of the things that I say to my employees all the time is I'm like, hey guys, as long as we do good work, we get more contracts and the money comes in. But if we suck, we don't get contracts and we don't get money anymore. And now no one has jobs, you know, like it's you, you. But you get this perceived safety as an employee that you don't have at all as a business owner because you know exactly how much money comes in and how much money goes out, you know? You know, and employees feel as though if you're an employee, there's this interesting thing. And even banks works this way. At least in America. A bank will give a loan to a W2 employee the next month that they to to buy a house. They'll give them to month two of your job. Here you go. Who's alone to buy your house? They would never do that for a business owner. For a business owner they want two years of proof of income before they are like, okay, I guess that you can. And I could make 10 times what that guy makes, you know. But it doesn't matter. They want me to be able to prove my income over the course of two years before they would consider us for a loan. It's just fascinating the way it works.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I felt that acutely recently with trying to rent a house like that. They're not interested in renting to somebody who's self employed. Or runs a business that's just.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: That is fascinating to me. I just.
Yeah, I remember you and I talking about it. You were rolling around with these guys for so long and finally found somebody who would rent you one. Actually, I love your house. I've seen pictures. I think the weight was well worth it. The Lord has blessed you. But it's wild.
It's wild to see and think and operate this way. Now, I do know that statistically there are a lot of failed businesses. Right. Like, happens all the time.
And this might be a conversation for a whole different podcast, but I would argue it's because those businesses started the wrong way.
There should. A lot of times we think that we should start a business because we have a dream.
I have a dream where I'm going to sell.
I'm going to own my own ice cream stand.
Because when I was a little boy, I loved ice cream. And I want to bring that ice cream to other people.
And you start a business because you want something, not because the people around you want it.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Or the other one. That's kind of the same as that. And I think incredibly common is the. I've got this genius idea. I've got this new tech idea that we just.
I hate all this language. I loathe it. But, like, we just need to find market fit. You know, we've got a product we just need, like, no, you need to, like, kill this idea and go and deliver what people need. And I mean, I would love to buy a car garage. Okay. Now, I'm not a mechanic in any way, but, like, everybody needs a mechanic.
And, like.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: And this is the same with most of the trades, certainly in the uk, like, the service isn't the best.
Like, you've got to wait ages to actually get hold of someone.
If you go to a garage, typically they're all filthy.
Like, if you could just tidy up some of those things, streamline kind of customer service like you, you'd make a killing.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: And I mean, it's. Identifying these things that, like, everybody needs is totally serving people, but the people typically do it. But they're typically kind of like dirty jobs that people would rather not do. Like.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: As your point makes, like, business isn't about choosing things that you want to do. Business is about serving other people.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: And typically that's doing the jobs that they don't want to do.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Yes.
And they'll pay you for it. They don't want to do it so much that they'll give you money in order that you People hire us all the time to run their social media account. It's not because they're bad at it or they can't do it. It's because they don't want to. They call us because they're like, I really just don't want to do this anymore. Can you just do this for me? I'm like, sure, buddy, no problem. It'll be this much money and thank you very much. Like, it's, now my kids can eat. But it seems like, yes. When is the right time to start a business? When you see another way to say it would be a hole in the market. When you see an opportunity, when you see people who need a particular type of service and they're not getting it and you can provide it. That would be the. I would say there's one of the key moments to know that it's a good time to start a business. And starting a business, too, doesn't mean. Sorry, let me say this because I think this is important.
Starting a business does not mean. And now I immediately go full time.
That's another thing. Like starting a business does not mean now I pay my salary day one. Starting a business just means. It could mean we made $300 last month. Okay, great. Well, you've got a $300 proof of concept.
Somebody was willing to pay you for this. That means something, Chase that.
Let's see what more you can build out of it.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's more than 300 quid, isn't it?
We use quid like you guys use book. I think.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: So. I appreciate you providing that context for our listener.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's that opportunity piece. It's the identification of opportunities and then how to serve people from what you've spotted there. Rather than trying to shoehorn your kind of dream, your ice cream stand or lemonade stand into something, into a space that doesn't exist. Yeah. And, yeah, you see all the time, like, I assume. Well, in the States, I think it's quite different. But in. In the uk, you have.
You have high streets. Okay. And the high street's been around a very long time.
And most of the shops on the high street are dead. And nobody goes to high streets anymore. You know, everyone buys everything from either Amazon or you might go to what you guys would call a mall.
I probably haven't pronounced it correctly.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Okay, okay, that was good. You'd say a mall. We went to the mall together. Yeah.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Okay, one of those.
So it means that, like, the high street's dead, but then you have a lot of people who are kind of reminiscing, going, like, oh, we've got to save the high street. Like, oh, it's really sad that high streets are suffering or. Or they're not doing very well and, you know, let's prop them up with government funding.
But, like, no, we've moved on. Like, technology is now at a state, and society is at a state where the high street is no longer serving a need. It's no longer providing for whatever the opportunity was. Amazon's replaced it, and your. Your large shopping. Shopping center has replaced it. So we need to move away from that and accept that some things die and we move on. And, like, what is the new opportunity now that we've moved on? And how do we bless people through that?
[00:25:11] Speaker A: Yes, well, this. This goes back to the. The current technological revolution that's happening in our world today, which is AI.
You either embrace it and love it or you hate it. And the biggest fear that people have is AI is gonna, you know, you can finish the quote. It's gonna take all our jobs. And the fact of the matter is that people thought that tractors would too. Farmers thought that tractors were gonna come in and shut their whole business down. And so what did they do? No, we don't want tractors. But, you know, what wound up happening was that the farmers who adopted tractors flourished, and the guys who didn't, well, they did get shut down.
You have to be able to assess actual needs in the actual climate that you're in and then meet those needs with the tools that the Lord has put in front of you. That's what being Christianly and taking dominion is. We can't.
Doug Wilson does a phenomenal job in his book Plot Activity by setting up a theology of technology from the very beginning. And I thought that was just genius and very helpful. But his point is, you are not to be a technophile, which is just that technology rules me now.
And you are also not to be a technophobe, which means I will never endorse technology. Never. No matter what. Which would mean, what? Do you not use finger clippers? Now, how far did we draw this line? At what point do you not use technology?
And so instead, we have to be Christians who wield the tools that we have before us and in a Christian way, in Christianly. Now, sure, there are some aspects about different tools. I mean, you work in machine safety. There are aspects of different tools that you need some safeguards with. Like, don't put your finger in the press.
Put a sign on it, hey, guys, don't Forget this could chop your finger off. Don't put your finger in the press.
There's general things like that that we have to think about, and with the advent of artificial intelligence, we have to think about those applications there.
But that's inevitable in the development of any new technology.
Anytime a new tech shows up, there's always going to be this whiplash effect that happens in society where people are learning how to adopt it and utilize it correctly. And there's, you know, people who screw it up the first time and ruin things this way and they cause problems over here. And that's happened with AI, where people are worried, oh no, they're going to. What was the most recent thing I heard?
They're going to create false images that'll be used in court cases.
Okay.
I don't think so. In fact, I think all the AI images are coded in a particular way where they're flagged. But that's something that we'll have to explore and think about at some point and develop safeguards for it when we get there. That's right. That's right. So we should not be afraid of our current circumstances, rather look around and find opportunity and run. Go for it, Give it a shot.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: I think I'm going to off on a bit of a tangent here, but what, what we're do, what we're doing here is we're talking about specialism.
So yes, specialism is a good thing. And, and I would argue biblical and post mill. So the more specialist we get, the more that we can serve one another. So like, you know, social media didn't exist 15, 20 years ago or however long ago it was. So your job, 50% of it at least, didn't exist.
So that's this technology, this technology appeared. And because this technology appeared, you ended up with specialists in different aspects engaging with this, this like platform thing where there's only like five of them, or maybe not even that. And, and Stuart, now you specialize in like a particular thing in these particular platforms.
So what's happening there is we're able to kind of leverage efficiencies and gains.
I'm delivering a talk next week and I've managed to shoehorn in kind of that Malthusianism is wrong and Gail Pooley is right.
So I'll just kind of backfill some of that. So Gail Pooley, no one, I can't.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Remember, this American that's listening to this knows anything that's happening.
We're all lost, we're all okay.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: So Malthusianism is This idea that every person kind of added into the world is another mouth to feed.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: And it's effectively another burden. Okay, so the population increase. The population increases. Problem. Okay, okay, okay. So. So that's the proposal there.
Gail Pooley, and I can't remember who the other author was, wrote super abundant.
And he looked at. I really enjoy economics. Okay, so he looked at the time price of light.
Okay, so back in, like, I don't know, 750 BC, you'd. They'd typically be getting oil for light, and they would typically get it from sesame seed. So how many. And the question there is how many hours worth of, kind of the average worker would require? Would you need to create an hour's worth of light?
I can tell you it's a lot. Okay, and then what, say like 500 A.D.
you're using kind of animal fat and you're potentially kind of. And then later on, you're kind of hunting whales and you're using whale blubber. So the amount of time required to get an hour's worth of light is coming down further and further. And today, you know, I leave my. I leave a lot on at night for the kids when they need to get up in the middle of the night or whatever it might be. And I don't think twice about it. So the point there is the cost, the time price, kind of getting rid of kind of inflation, and the rest of it is significantly coming down. So Gail Pooley looked at this data from 1980 to 2017, and he looked at kind of 50 different commodities. So looking at kind of energy, light, raw materials, food.
And there was two things that he plotted. So one was the time price of these commodities. And over that period, it came down 64%.
Okay, so in 2017, light, or whatever it was, was 64% cheaper than it was in 1980.
Now the question is why? Okay, what else happened? I'll tell you what else happened between 1980 and 2017 is the population of the world went up 70%.
Okay, you've almost got a one to one correlation between the increase in population and the decrease in the cost of goods or the, like, increase in quality of life.
The stuff that we can get today because of specialism, because of businesses, has. Has vastly expanded.
And I'm kind of, you know. Okay, the next question is kind of why? What is that?
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Why?
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Why is it not kind of mouths to feed as the problem? Well, where do ideas or where do things come from? And who are we created in the image of? So we're created in the image of God. And what does God do? He creates things.
Now we can't create things like God does. So thankfully we're never going to invent genuine artificial intelligence because it's not going to be possible.
So we can use AI and it's pretty safe. Awesome.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Wait, so you mean the Terminators aren't going to come and try to kill us?
[00:32:40] Speaker B: Terminator is not going to come. We're okay, everybody breathe.
So, but God has given us the ability to create things, you know? And like how do we start with creating things? Well, it starts with a conversation, it starts with an idea, it starts with learning. And what do you need to do those three things? Well, you need people.
Okay. And the more people we have, the more conversations we can have, the more ideas can be developed and they can be put into action. And those people can do things to make stuff and bring the cost of things down. So, you know, Musk has identified that like the population decrease is a real problem. And he is totally right.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: But we can be, we can be excited, you know, God, God telling us that we should be filling and subduing the world is totally a good thing. And I just love it that you don't only.
Yeah, of course you can go, God said this, we should just do it. Absolutely, I'm for that. But so often we can also go, God told us to do this. Oh well, this thing over here makes sense if you look at it through that lens and like the world operates correctly and surprise, surprise, it's in line with God's law. And like that's just so exciting.
Yeah, there's my piece. So I'm hopefully pitching this to a bunch of pagans next week.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Let's go. Well, so what you're really saying, and this is what you could say to your pagan audience that you have coming up next week, what you're really saying is that the best way to advance the world forward is to serve those around us.
And you could even go as far to say, and I would argue, guys, that you should serve them like Jesus served us.
That's it. If we follow the commands of God and love our neighbors and look to put others needs before our own preferences to care for other people, then the default setting is progress. The default setting is the up and to the right trajectory of the world to shout out to my post mill bros out there. That's just the way it goes. If you obey God, things get better.
Amen.
Let's have a cow.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Super simple.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: And the difference between and this is the difference between now where we're living in the New Covenant and the Old Covenant, it's not a coincidence that technology has rapidly progressed since the resurrection of Jesus and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. That's not a coincidence.
We have been transformed by Christ who lives within his people, and the Holy Spirit being poured out upon them to serve others at greater magnitude than we were equipped to do before the New Covenant. That's it.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Like, where and where does all that. Where in kind of more recent history have we seen all that? Well, it's been in the Western world, where typically people have been. Christians.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Where has the majority of technology advanced? Where Christianity was and is.
And where does it cease?
Where Christianity stops. Where does your progress stop? Your progress stops as Christianity stops advancing. I mean, we're in a population collapse right now.
Wonder why? It's because we all started believing the lie that we should not be fruitful and multiply.
It's because we all stopped believing that truth. We all stopped believing that God said we can go and fill the earth. We can be free to do so, and as we need to, we'll innovate. We have all functionally become Thanos.
There. There's my pop culture reference for the day.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: I could not have guessed that our conversation went where it's been.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: Let's sum it up. We're at. We're, you know, I'm sure we're at the end of our friend's attention span so far, but let's sum it up. Let's bring it back. So the big point, right? When do you start a business?
I would say, have you found a need?
I think that would be the fundamental question. Have you found a need? And all the risk worries and concerns. There's wise ways to navigate that. Get a pastor, have those conversations, ask questions, get some wisdom, get a multitude of counselors. All those things are important. Yes.
But step one A.
Is there a need?
Is there a legitimate need that you can meet or help facilitate for it to be met?
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think your latter point in there is a good one as well, because I, I think.
I think there's an opportunity. I'm giving away all my ideas. I think there's an opportunity for. For in tradesmen. So I, I don't think, like, I don't think tradesmen charge enough. And the reason that I can say that is because, say my boiler breaks. It might be a week before someone comes in with the correct part to fix it. That's too long.
So how do. How do we kind of Solve that kind of delay problem. Well, if we increase the price, the, the demand will come down a little bit and I'll be able to get a good plumber within two days. And then what's the next thing that's going to happen? Well, people are going to see an opportunity and go, plumbers earn a lot of money.
We should become plumbers. And it'll bring the cost back down. You know, we're talking about natural law here. We're talking about God's law of economics.
So even just, even just arranging that, because plumbers typically, they don't have kind of that economic mindset or that kind of management finance mindset. So having someone else come in and go, okay, we're going to help coordinate these plumbers, they're going to earn more money.
I'm going to serve these people because they need a plumber tomorrow and they need a good one.
And how do I arrange that? So there's totally an opportunity for there. Someone like me who knows nothing about plumbing. Well, that's not strictly true, but like, you don't want me plumbing your house. Okay, so. But to help serve people who need a plumber.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: So some of this is knowing yourself and knowing what you are good at and your skill set. Certainly. And is there anything in there that you could go, okay, I have this bit of skill set now, if I had this bit as well. And we kind of those two things complemented one another. Now that doesn't have to be you going out and learning the thing. It could be you just finding someone else.
You know, you could find the other skill set.
And I think what we often do is we often, we often kind of look at ourselves. And I think, I think this is probably common to everyone. You look at yourself and you just assume that everyone thinks like you do and everyone has the same skill set that you do and therefore.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Or that everybody has the same relationships and connections that you have, because that's worth money too. But keep going, keep going.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: So, so if we assume that everyone is the same as us, we just think, oh, well, we can't offer anything more than kind of the next person, so we just won't do anything. And that. And that's nonsense. So, you know, don't, don't kind of jump the gun without kind of working it through and considering it. But do think about like, what am I good at? What do people ask kind of me to do? What, what? And even thinking, like, what do I find frustrating about Stuart? Oh, he's not very good at admin.
Okay, so it might be, it might be that I'm actually quite good at admin. Okay, that's a totally legitimate question. You know, like in working those things through, of course there's loads of stuff Stuart can do that I can't. But like in working those things through, you're learning about yourself and you'll be, you're being able to identify kind of what are the skill sets that I can potentially offer and then where do I find the opportunity? How do I partner with someone else or how do I develop my skill set so that then my offering serves these people over here.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: And Tom saying to me, stuart, I think you're bad at project management might have been one of the most helpful sentences I've ever heard in my whole life. Because then I hired somebody who was good at it.
I took the resources that I had and moved over in this direction. The Lord provided and it's great. Honestly, I'm very, very excited about that new season of our life that we're beginning. But it's also true.
I mean, what's a contractor?
What is a contractor? A contractor is a guy who took a test and has a special license and knows a bunch of skilled guys who can build something. That's what a contractor is. I mean, obviously people who are contractors are going to listen to that and be like, I do a lot more than that. I mean, I agree, you know. You do.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: You're talking about building.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: Yeah, building. Yeah. Or even like agents, Even an agency like us. Functionally, I'm a contractor in a lot of the services that we provide. I have full time employees in house that provide particular services. So they're very cost effective. But there are some things that I have to send to subcontractors. And so I operate really as just the connection between point A and point B. I say, you need this service. I don't have this service, but this guy has this service. So I'm going to connect you to him through me and I'll make a little bit of money and my kids can eat. Yay. And I'll handle the administrative side which my subcontractor hates and would never want to handle themselves.
And I'll handle the client facing side, which they also don't want to do. Ta da. We've created this beautiful beneficial thing where people get to do what they want to do and still get paid.
There's opportunity out there. So.
Yes. Amen. Okay.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: I think we need a conversation around value at some point because I think, particularly in the uk, what you've Just described that kind of middleman and the three way relationship.
People in the UK are going to be like, no, that's like kind of taking money or taking advantage. And I think we should unpack that at some point. I feel like I've given my kind of like, if you're thinking about doing this, this is what you should go out and do.
What is yours, Stuart?
[00:42:30] Speaker A: If you're thinking about starting a business, what should you do? Are you asking?
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Or even if you're kind of just before thinking about starting a business, like it's a warm feeling in your stomach.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you're thinking about starting a business, I would say start.
That would be my go to do. Start something. Just swing at it. Don't swing at it irresponsibly. Don't quit your job in some weird Disney movie style fashion and go out and try to take over the world and then starve your children. The Bible gives you very specific commands that you should provide for your family. And a man that doesn't provide for his family is worse than a non believer. So you have certain responsibilities and obligations. Hold to them.
But start.
One time I had a contract to build a website for somebody and it was a little bit over what I felt comfortable kind of taking on myself.
But I had a friend who didn't have a ton of experience, but he really wanted to jump into web development.
And so I called him and I said, hey buddy, you want to get paid to learn because I will pay you for you to just do this thing that I can't quite do and I don't have the time to invest in, but you could, you want to start. And he was like, let's go now. He's very capable and can custom build and code and do all kinds of things like that. But he had, he was given an opportunity, he saw a need in front of him and he said, okay, let's start. And now he's got an operational business that generates, I don't know, probably 40% of his household budget. It's still not full time, but he makes good money from this particular thing. Figure it out, look for a need and then just do it, man. And also recognize, I would say that you're going to do it wrong for a while.
You can't be a perfectionist. If you really want to be an entrepreneur, you have to eventually say, well, good enough, ship it. You have to be able to do that and say, next time I do it, it'll be better.
This is still worth what they're Paying. All right, I'm done. Let's move on to the next thing and just accept the fact that you're also occasionally going to have a contract or a deal or a job where you just totally screw it up and you're going to have to eat it and take it on the chin and you're going to have to own it, too. You're going to have to say, hey, I totally screwed that up.
This is my fault. Here's your money back.
And please don't write a bad review or whatever, whatever you gotta do, and then you move on to the next thing.
Just do it. Just start and recognize that, you know, you'll get better, you'll improve over time and experience is an excellent teacher. An excellent teacher. So that'd be what I would say. So there you go.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: There's loads in there.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. We really. It's like the more episodes that we record, the more episodes we realize we have to record.
So that'll be good. But that's enough for this one. That's enough for this one.
Thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of A Brit and a Yank. Talk business. If you have ideas or questions or thoughts or concerns or prayer requests. No, just kidding. Although we would pray for you. I'm sure. You can email those to me at stewartage50p a g e F-I-F-T-Y.com and we would be happy to consider those as things to talk about in future episodes. If this is beneficial to you. If this is beneficial to you, I would say please, like, share, subscribe, tell your friends about it, and, you know, we'll see you guys next time.
