October 4, 2025 • 20 mins
Join Andrew Roberts, founder of Kraken Media, as he explores the essential mindset shifts that every creative freelancer must embrace to transition into a successful business owner. In this episode, Andrew shares his personal journey of overcoming challenges, the importance of clarity, and how to break free from the overwhelm. You’ll walk away with actionable strategies to empower your entrepreneurial spirit and build a business that thrives.
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https://brainworkframework.podbean.com/
Connect with Andrew Roberts:
Company website: https://kraken.media/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KrakenMediaPro
skool: https://www.skool.com/futurecreator/about
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-james-roberts-85264ba1
Connect with Chris Troka:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-troka-3a093058/
Website: https://focused-biz.com/
Website: https://christroka.com/ #brainwork #framework #business #entrepreneur #freelancer #mindset #revolution #strategies
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And it's a case of you startoff working for someone else and
(00:02):
they're exchanging time for money.
Then you go from there to freelancer andif you take the typical journey that most
of us have have, this is where you go.
And then the next step is freelancer.
Now you are trading yourtime for money directly.
You have productized your time andyou are getting a lot more for it.
'cause you're also assuming the risk.
'cause that's how everythingworks in business.
(00:23):
It's just risk management essentially.
But then you hit a threshold likeyou are still trading your time for
money, even though you have a lotmore control over everything and you
are getting a lot more for your time.
'cause you now keep all theprofit margins in between.
And then the hardest step, at leastof what I think is going from there to
being a business owner where you ownthe systems that operate with other
(00:44):
people in them that make you money.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com
welcome back to another episode.
With us today is Andrew Roberts,the founder of Kraken Media, how he
was able to build a UK based videoproduction company entirely from Scratch.
So excited to have him on.
Andy, how you doing today?
(01:05):
Excellent.
Off to a fantastic start.
It's perfect.
Andy, tell us about your journey.
What were you doing that kind of ledyou into what you're doing today?
Mate straight into it.
Okay.
It's been a long one.
The TLDR is I've alwaysbeen into performance.
I was into drama a lot at school.
I did photography at school as well,and I've always had that creative
vibe in me and I came outta school,didn't have very good grades.
(01:29):
I was one of those kids thatcouldn't focus on anything.
And after working at a few jobs as youdo, I just found myself looking at it
and going, why can't I be the guy upthere making all the money like that?
That makes sense.
I'd rather be up there.
And I started analyzing itand trying to figure out.
I need to start a business.
It's a normal thing.
You come outta school,they're like, you did theater?
That's nice.
Well you gotta go get areal job now, haven't you?
(01:50):
Off you go, go on, let's godestroy that soul of yours.
And I did the real job thing and Ikept looking and I got into audiobooks.
I went through a slew of businesses.
The motto I have is when Iheard the story that 9 outta 10
businesses fail in their first year.
I need to start 10 businesses andthen I'll have one successful one.
(02:11):
And I took that literally.
Turns out it's actually morethan 10 attempts 'cause you
have a lot of lessons to learn.
And later on, one of the lessons I learnedis, when you look at the stats for second
businesses, it's almost the inverse.
Once you've learned how to startone business, you've learned all the
lessons you need to learn typically.
And the success rate for secondbusinesses is like nine out of
ten second businesses succeed.
There's this barrier for entry.
(02:33):
But for me, I just went for aslow businesses and then one day
I was listening to audio books.
Listened to loads of audiobooks'cause I was working in a warehouse
at the time and I can invest inmyself and I can utilize this time.
And I was very arrogantly.
Very cocky.
How hard can this be?
I love reading.
It's the perfect job.
I'll go and do that.
(02:53):
Anyway, that was a nightmare.
I attempted to record an audiobook.
It was as bad as you can imagine.
And that led me to startlearning audio engineering.
And then I was like, okay, now Isound like someone that's in a hostage
situation, so I gotta fix that.
I started working on the performanceaspect and then eventually I started
producing okay-ish audio books.
And from there I got into voice actingand voiceover and that sort of thing.
(03:14):
And I built a little business doing that.
I built a voiceover business thatwas just about enough for me to
buy a house during COVID, as theabsolute industry got knee capped.
We had loads of people trying thesame thing, it got really saturated
'cause everyone was at home for COVID.
And just after I got into theindustry, everyone else was
like, that's a great idea.
I'm gonna do that.
I'm like, no, leave me alone.
(03:36):
And then AI came in and justslaughtered the industry.
And rather than trying that,I did what I always do.
I adapted and I'd been looking at thecamera in the corner for a while and I
really wanna get into photography again.
I wanna make it more than a hobby.
I wanna make a business out of this.
I want a fuse business and passion.
I really wanna make this work.
And then one day a client, I'dbeen messing around with a few
(03:58):
different things, saw one of thethings and went, Hey, we're paying
you to voice our YouTube channel.
How much to do it with a camera?
What?
Yeah, sure we can do that.
And I started hosting YouTube channels andlater down the line, here we are now, we
make video content for some big brands.
And what we do is we bridge the gapbetween the creative and the businesses.
Because a lot of businesses, they needthe creative, but they need it in their
(04:22):
lingo 'cause they don't understandthey need sort of helping in that.
That's where we position ourselves andnow I help other creative freelancers.
Learn how to do that as well andhave conversations with businesses
so that they can sell their creativeservices to businesses at fair rates.
And that's the long and short of it.
I mean, I can go for all of the fairbusinesses if you want, but we'll
be here for a really long time.
No.
It is a fantastic journey and quitesimilar to mine and many others
(04:45):
where, we try the corporate life.
That's just not for us.
We see opportunities and we justtake that risk and through all the
obstacles, all the failures, those arethe lessons that we learn along the way.
And specifically for you, after tryingthose failed businesses, what were
those lessons that you finally learned?
Where things started to click, where youstarted getting clients and revenue and
an actual sustainable business model?
(05:10):
It never ends.
It's still going on.
I had one business here you go.
Here's a fun story for you.
One of my first business ideaswas the idea of the repair hustle.
And I got good at fixing stuff.
I grew up very poor.
And if I wanted anything, I had tofix it, make it or do it myself.
And it's very good skill to learn.
And I could do two things.
I could fix motorcyclesand I could fix laptops.
(05:30):
That's the two things I learnedbecause I wanted a laptop and the
only way I could get one was bygetting bits of one and assembling
until you learn a lot doing that way.
And one day I came up with anidea, me and my mate started buying
mopeds, like 1, 2, 5 and 50 ccs, thesort of things that teenagers buy.
And what we did was we boughtthem and we fixed them.
Quite often.
We bought non-runners, but we reallyfocused down on what we thought was low
(05:53):
hanging fruit, which is MOT failures.
MOT being the road worthysafetyness inspection.
If you drive a vehicle on a UKroad, it has to have an MOT,
which is a safety inspection, andit's really easy to fail that.
But quite often the fixes arequite easy if you know how.
And we bought MOT fails, fixed them, put anew MOT on it, had them inspected and then
(06:13):
sold them as working ready to go things.
And it's okay, this is brilliant.
And we got really good at thatuntil one day we ran outta mopeds.
We literally ran outtamopeds we could buy.
Our supply has disappeared.
Well mopeds are wortha couple hundred bucks.
Cars are worth a couple hundredbook bucks more than that.
Why don't we suck it up?
Hire a trailer for the day and go andtry and do the same thing with a car.
(06:36):
And we found a really good car and we wentand picked it up and we brought it home.
And then we realized wehad no idea how to fix it.
And then after several attemptsat trying to fix this damn
car, we were like, that's it.
Our entire budget is inthis car, all of our money.
We are dead lost now.
We can't fix it.
We can't even make it run.
It's like, no wonder theprevious person gave up on it.
And after we bought some parts forthe car, I realized, hang on a minute.
(06:58):
Hang on.
These parts are really expensive.
And I started looking at it andpricing up the car in parts.
Wait a minute.
This car's worth way more inparts than it is as a whole thing.
Just take it apart and sell the bitsand then we can put 'em on eBay.
And we built this whole system, wetook all the bits off the car and
I'm like, smart, I'll batch it.
(07:20):
And we took the bits off thecar, we photographed them.
I had a nice little booth setup, we just brought in one part,
photographed it, brought in the next one
in photo turn photo, photo turnstraight into a bag with the part
number written on it or the skew.
We had an internal skew systemand that went really well.
We got about 10 grands worthof inventory off of every car.
It is a lot of work 'cause wehad to do each one we only had.
(07:42):
Each item was one of one.
And even if we had two cars withthe same parts or the same car had
different parts, we still had to doit as one of one 'cause there's slight
variations in condition and stuff.
That was a nightmare.
But it was always fun up until myvery loving and supporting wife.
One day I was like, look, the househas turned into an absolute oil trap.
Could you please stop?
And I was like, yeah, fair enough.
(08:03):
I can just imagine your wifeopening the cupboard and there's
like a muffler sitting there likesome spare car parts just labeled.
Open the dishwasher.
Why is there car partsin the dishwasher again?
That story was incredible 'cause I thinkit showcases one, the struggle and a lot
of the lessons that you can learn from it.
You had a model that was going great untilyour business relied on another piece
(08:27):
that was not able to come through anymore.
You had to pivot and find newopportunities once you tried an
opportunity that seemed to go good.
That was almost a money pit.
And you said, how do Isalvage this situation?
You say, usually the sum is greaterthan the whole of the parts, but
this time the parts were greaterthan just the car altogether.
It was about pivoting being crafty,but more importantly, the systems.
(08:50):
The system you described, okay,we're gonna take a photograph, grab
different angles, we're gonna putit into a bag with a part number.
That sort of system, thatorganization often goes overlooked
by a lot of other businesses.
They just get into it and thenthey realize later, it's a mess.
What have you learned from yourexperiences through just system
systematizing processes, being organized,automation, just kind of that whole area?
(09:14):
Sure.
I'm missing about automation alot at the minute of AI automation
and NA10 and that sort of thing.
And for me it's definitely a lesson.
Although I was a warehouse managerbefore, which is why I knew how to build
all these systems, flight inventorymanagement and this sort of thing.
But for me personally, I'm goingthrough that at the minute.
Again, I'm relearning systems becausemy business has got to the point where
(09:34):
we've just gone from me being a freelancerto this is now a business and we have
other actors and we have other writers.
And we have projects coming throughthe business that I haven't touched.
It went all the way by itself.
The system is working.
We are scalable.
At last, finally, we havesolved the scaling issue.
Took me two years tofigure out how to scale.
And now we've got to the point.
We need to write this down and weneed SOPs and we need to systematize
(09:56):
this and we need to have differenttriggers and different Passover points.
And it's the same principle, the same ideaof everything creates an action point.
And every action point hasan outcome oriented SOP so
that anyone that gets stuck.
For example, key members off innext week for two weeks, but it
should be okay because we haveSOPs in place so we can look at
whatever it was that they were doing.
(10:18):
And it's just relearning those processesin a slightly different setting.
But now that once you've learned thelesson earlier on, if we systematize
everything and standardize everythingit becomes very much smoother.
And the zone I help creative freelancerswith a lot is like, you need to somewhat
standardize what you are selling
even though it's a creative thing,you need to somehow package it.
(10:40):
And if you are struggling with theparticular market you're in, you
hit a key thing earlier, which isthe sum is always worth more than
the components except for used cars.
And if you are a creative freelancer andyou're struggling 'cause you just do this
one part, well go and work with otherfreelancers for the part after and the
part before, because now you have a wholeproduct that you can sell to a business.
(11:01):
And you sell that whole productto the business and then you buy
the individual parts and thenyou're profiting off of each part.
And you're also enabling other peopleto get more work which is wonderful.
You are helping out both ends
absolutely.
I love that story because ithighlights both that you took the
previous experience and with thechanges in technology and software.
You had to kinda relearn things orredo your process, but you were still
(11:24):
taking all the stepping stones, all thefoundational knowledge that you already
had and you had to learn something new,but you built something even better.
I think it highlights for us asentrepreneurs just always have
that, always be learning my mindset.
, The moment you stop learning, that's whenyou stop growing and you stop improving.
But then you were able to createscalability from your product
(11:45):
and your service that's a hugenext step is kind of removing the
bottlenecks within your business.
How do I take that to the next step?
The scaling part.
That was a massive one for me tryingto figure out as a YouTube, I mean,
it's a little bit more complex now,but imagine you're a YouTube presenter,
you've got this really valuable product.
But this is not like youcan look at it that way.
This is not an equitable business.
(12:06):
You don't have a business, you have a job.
We need to make this transition.
How do I scale as a videopresenter and an actor?
You're literally just trading your time
That's not scalable.
What you've done is you'veincreased the value of your time
and this is a fantastic journey.
And it is a great part of things.
It is not a bad thing at all,trading time for money until you hit
(12:28):
certain threshold and you get stuck.
And I think it's Robert Kiyosaki laysit out really nicely with the quadrants
where you have employee, self-employed,business owner, and then investor.
And it's a case of, you startoff working for someone else and
they're exchanging time for money.
Then you go from there to freelancer.
And if you take the typical journey thatmost of us have, this is where you go.
(12:52):
And then next step is freelancer.
Now you are trading yourtime for money directly.
You have productized your time and youare getting a lot more for it 'cause
you're also assuming the risk becausethat's how everything works in business.
It's just risk management essentially.
But then you hit a threshold likeyou are still trading your time for
money, even though you have a lotmore control over everything and you
(13:12):
are getting a lot more for your time.
'cause you now keep all theprofit margins in between.
And then the hardest step, at leastof what I think is going from there to
being a business owner where you ownthe systems that operate with other
people in them that make you money.
If you asked me before I would'vetold you the most difficult
part is going from employed toself-employed, but now I've done that.
(13:35):
It's easy.
I am sure in another couple ofyears when I'm the investor.
The hardest part is going frombusiness owner to investor.
But it's true.
I think it highlights just that again,you're expanding on your own knowledge.
Questions you would've asked yourselfyears ago would change because you
have new information, new experiencesthat have evolved and shaped you.
(13:56):
But all of that helps buildupon what you've done.
Again, it's always be learning.
If you could go back in timeto give yourself one piece
of advice what would that be?
That's a tough one.
It would've been one of two things.
It would've either been.
I start reading sooner 'cause I didn'treally get into reading until I was
an adult 'cause I thought personalgrowth books and self-development
(14:17):
books and nonfiction books were cringe.
I said my interpretation of personaldevelopment books were cringey.
Eighties sitcom, when you see himon the sitcoms, on the old TV shows
where you learn French while you'reasleep, sort of thing, so that's fine.
Number one, start reading.
Just start absorbing knowledge.
And the other one I might gowith is, don't ever get a job.
Just be hungry.
(14:40):
Hunger is is somethingthat really motivates us.
That was kind of what it took meaway from the corporate nine to five.
I thought I had it all.
It was something that I was proudto share with people and I thought
I was making okay money, but atthe end of the year, I only had
500 bucks left in my bank account.
Thankfully, I had something.
Most people are just paycheck topaycheck, but I was like, is this
what the next year's gonna be like?
(15:00):
You are taught over and over again.
It's drummed into you over and over again.
Get a nine to fivecouncil job, big company.
You are secure, you need that security.
If you go out and you're a freelancer,you have no security, you have no
guaranteed of paycheck, and I'm like, no.
That is complete and utter a hogwash.
That is completely back to front.
If you have a job, no matter howwell contracted it is, even if
(15:21):
it's in Europe where you have allof these employee you go into work
tomorrow, you piss off one person.
You no longer have a job andyou no longer have a paycheck.
And you're probably already livingpaycheck to paycheck because
your wages do not increase at thesame rate as everything else, to
the point where it makes senseto change jobs every two years.
I don't know why we can't retain staff.
And it's like you are offering anew position at a much higher rate
(15:45):
than you are offering your existing.
How does that make sense?
What about freelance then?
But you might not get any work.
It's like, no, look for me to go fromwhat I have to zero, which is the same
as losing your job in a matter of anhour, you can go from what you have to
zero for a freelancer to go from whatthey have to zero, they'd have to piss
off at least 25 people can sec consistentconsecutively at the same time, you'd
(16:07):
somehow have to piss off 25 people atworst you lose one, maybe two clients.
Cool, you just adapt, move on.
Don't go out for dinnerthat month, whatever.
But it's wild how everyone's like,get a job 'cause it's secure.
Have you stepped back andlooked at this situation
gestures around, haveyou seen what's going on?
And I know people perceive securityin different ways, but I always
(16:29):
felt like I would rather makethe risk and the bet on myself.
I'd rather bet on myselfthan another company.
And sure, there's benefitsto it but I don't know.
I just feel like more in controlthat's more secure for me.
And the risk aversion like yousaid, you have to really piss off
a lot more people to really do thatpoorly 'cause there's always more
customers available to you as well.
(16:51):
If anything goes wrong andyou're in a freelance situation,
you just gotta go hustle.
We've all been there.
This is a bad month.
Oh God, there's bills coming.
Okay.
What you do?
You go pick up the phone.
You start emailing people.
The earnest is on you.
The bull is in your court.
You are empowered to win or to fail.
It is up to you what happens, but theresponsibility of that decision and that
inertia and that momentum is also yours.
(17:13):
Whereas I think when you have a job,all of that responsibility is offloaded,
which is what makes people feel secure.
I completely agree.
Now, what are you looking forward tomost to wrap up 2025 at the time we're
recording, we're about halfway through 25.
Do you have any new productlaunches or services or ways that
you're gonna be pivoting thatyou're excited to to get into?
(17:34):
Loads.
We have so much going on at theminute, we're focusing on one or two
products, one of which is a ad creativepackage, which we've put together.
We have tested it with a fewclients, and it's very well received.
It's very uniquely situated it's in likea barren no man's land price point wise.
We really don't have any competition.
The whole idea of positioning yourself ina market of one, we've got that nailed.
(17:59):
The actual value of what we're offering isfantastic, but we still have good margins.
That's working really wellfor us and we've got to the
point where the process is now
all SOPed.
We now have a process for the wholething and we're experimenting running ads
and trying to optimize our ad campaign.
That we have this position nowwhere we have ads that are working.
(18:20):
We have a landing page that's working.
We have a funnel that's working andwe have almost the whole system built.
And I am just waiting for those lastone or two pieces to click into place
so we can just pull the lever and thenwatch how fast this bad boy can go.
And that's gonna be our big win forthis year is getting that going and
really scaling on a bigger level
That is so exciting, that is really allcoming together and really excited to
(18:41):
see those final pieces come together.
A lot of what we do in business isjust test and trial and error and you
tweak some things, you pivot, you makechanges and then you just scale and
grow from there, which is very exciting.
Where can people find andconnect with you online?
If you wanna follow me for help withworking as a creative freelancer
and getting more business and howto interact with clients and how
to package and position yourself,just check me out on social media,
(19:04):
Andy Kraken Media on most places.
And if you wanna work withus, it is just kraken.media.
Give us a shout.
I love it.
We have one final question.
I'm curious to know.
It's about failure.
What are other businesses doing wrong?
That is preventing them from succeeding,
not failing enough, failhard, fail forwards.
(19:24):
Had this conversation very well said,Hey, who's just making the transition?
And my biggest philosophyis, you're gonna fail.
Why not?
9 outta 10 businesses fail.
Okay, hurry up and fail nine.
Every time you fail, it's one step closer.
It shouldn't people fail once or twice.
I tried.
It wasn't for me.
I tried, I failed.
Just keep failing.
That's how you learn the lessonsand that's how you get there.
If there's one lesson I havefor anyone about failing, it's
(19:45):
you are not failing enough.
When you fail, you should do it witha big ass smile on your face because
it's one step closer and you shouldbe looking for your next failure.
What can I go and try next?
I'm not a hundred percent sure work,because that's the learning space.
If it's gonna work.
You are not progressing.
You need to be pushing your boundariesand that's where failure is.
It's the golden zone.
(20:06):
Andy.
Very well said.
We appreciate it.
Thank you for sharing your journeywith us and all your tips and tricks.
Make sure for our audience thereto check out the show notes and the
description so you can find the linksto get connected with Andy here.
We appreciate it.
Congratulations on all your successand your future endeavors as well.
Thanks Chris.
Thank you for having me.
And it's a case of you startoff working for someone else and
(00:02):
they're exchanging time for money.
Then you go from there to freelancer andif you take the typical journey that most
of us have have, this is where you go.
And then the next step is freelancer.
Now you are trading yourtime for money directly.
You have productized your time andyou are getting a lot more for it.
'cause you're also assuming the risk.
'cause that's how everythingworks in business.
(00:23):
It's just risk management essentially.
But then you hit a threshold likeyou are still trading your time for
money, even though you have a lotmore control over everything and you
are getting a lot more for your time.
'cause you now keep all theprofit margins in between.
And then the hardest step, at leastof what I think is going from there to
being a business owner where you ownthe systems that operate with other
(00:44):
people in them that make you money.
You are listening to Brainwork Framework,a Business and Marketing podcast,
brought to you by Focused-biz.com
welcome back to another episode.
With us today is Andrew Roberts,the founder of Kraken Media, how he
was able to build a UK based videoproduction company entirely from Scratch.
So excited to have him on.
Andy, how you doing today?
(01:05):
Excellent.
Off to a fantastic start.
It's perfect.
Andy, tell us about your journey.
What were you doing that kind of ledyou into what you're doing today?
Mate straight into it.
Okay.
It's been a long one.
The TLDR is I've alwaysbeen into performance.
I was into drama a lot at school.
I did photography at school as well,and I've always had that creative
vibe in me and I came outta school,didn't have very good grades.
(01:29):
I was one of those kids thatcouldn't focus on anything.
And after working at a few jobs as youdo, I just found myself looking at it
and going, why can't I be the guy upthere making all the money like that?
That makes sense.
I'd rather be up there.
And I started analyzing itand trying to figure out.
I need to start a business.
It's a normal thing.
You come outta school,they're like, you did theater?
That's nice.
Well you gotta go get areal job now, haven't you?
(01:50):
Off you go, go on, let's godestroy that soul of yours.
And I did the real job thing and Ikept looking and I got into audiobooks.
I went through a slew of businesses.
The motto I have is when Iheard the story that 9 outta 10
businesses fail in their first year.
I need to start 10 businesses andthen I'll have one successful one.
(02:11):
And I took that literally.
Turns out it's actually morethan 10 attempts 'cause you
have a lot of lessons to learn.
And later on, one of the lessons I learnedis, when you look at the stats for second
businesses, it's almost the inverse.
Once you've learned how to startone business, you've learned all the
lessons you need to learn typically.
And the success rate for secondbusinesses is like nine out of
ten second businesses succeed.
There's this barrier for entry.
(02:33):
But for me, I just went for aslow businesses and then one day
I was listening to audio books.
Listened to loads of audiobooks'cause I was working in a warehouse
at the time and I can invest inmyself and I can utilize this time.
And I was very arrogantly.
Very cocky.
How hard can this be?
I love reading.
It's the perfect job.
I'll go and do that.
(02:53):
Anyway, that was a nightmare.
I attempted to record an audiobook.
It was as bad as you can imagine.
And that led me to startlearning audio engineering.
And then I was like, okay, now Isound like someone that's in a hostage
situation, so I gotta fix that.
I started working on the performanceaspect and then eventually I started
producing okay-ish audio books.
And from there I got into voice actingand voiceover and that sort of thing.
(03:14):
And I built a little business doing that.
I built a voiceover business thatwas just about enough for me to
buy a house during COVID, as theabsolute industry got knee capped.
We had loads of people trying thesame thing, it got really saturated
'cause everyone was at home for COVID.
And just after I got into theindustry, everyone else was
like, that's a great idea.
I'm gonna do that.
I'm like, no, leave me alone.
(03:36):
And then AI came in and justslaughtered the industry.
And rather than trying that,I did what I always do.
I adapted and I'd been looking at thecamera in the corner for a while and I
really wanna get into photography again.
I wanna make it more than a hobby.
I wanna make a business out of this.
I want a fuse business and passion.
I really wanna make this work.
And then one day a client, I'dbeen messing around with a few
(03:58):
different things, saw one of thethings and went, Hey, we're paying
you to voice our YouTube channel.
How much to do it with a camera?
What?
Yeah, sure we can do that.
And I started hosting YouTube channels andlater down the line, here we are now, we
make video content for some big brands.
And what we do is we bridge the gapbetween the creative and the businesses.
Because a lot of businesses, they needthe creative, but they need it in their
(04:22):
lingo 'cause they don't understandthey need sort of helping in that.
That's where we position ourselves andnow I help other creative freelancers.
Learn how to do that as well andhave conversations with businesses
so that they can sell their creativeservices to businesses at fair rates.
And that's the long and short of it.
I mean, I can go for all of the fairbusinesses if you want, but we'll
be here for a really long time.
No.
It is a fantastic journey and quitesimilar to mine and many others
(04:45):
where, we try the corporate life.
That's just not for us.
We see opportunities and we justtake that risk and through all the
obstacles, all the failures, those arethe lessons that we learn along the way.
And specifically for you, after tryingthose failed businesses, what were
those lessons that you finally learned?
Where things started to click, where youstarted getting clients and revenue and
an actual sustainable business model?
(05:10):
It never ends.
It's still going on.
I had one business here you go.
Here's a fun story for you.
One of my first business ideaswas the idea of the repair hustle.
And I got good at fixing stuff.
I grew up very poor.
And if I wanted anything, I had tofix it, make it or do it myself.
And it's very good skill to learn.
And I could do two things.
I could fix motorcyclesand I could fix laptops.
(05:30):
That's the two things I learnedbecause I wanted a laptop and the
only way I could get one was bygetting bits of one and assembling
until you learn a lot doing that way.
And one day I came up with anidea, me and my mate started buying
mopeds, like 1, 2, 5 and 50 ccs, thesort of things that teenagers buy.
And what we did was we boughtthem and we fixed them.
Quite often.
We bought non-runners, but we reallyfocused down on what we thought was low
(05:53):
hanging fruit, which is MOT failures.
MOT being the road worthysafetyness inspection.
If you drive a vehicle on a UKroad, it has to have an MOT,
which is a safety inspection, andit's really easy to fail that.
But quite often the fixes arequite easy if you know how.
And we bought MOT fails, fixed them, put anew MOT on it, had them inspected and then
(06:13):
sold them as working ready to go things.
And it's okay, this is brilliant.
And we got really good at thatuntil one day we ran outta mopeds.
We literally ran outtamopeds we could buy.
Our supply has disappeared.
Well mopeds are wortha couple hundred bucks.
Cars are worth a couple hundredbook bucks more than that.
Why don't we suck it up?
Hire a trailer for the day and go andtry and do the same thing with a car.
(06:36):
And we found a really good car and we wentand picked it up and we brought it home.
And then we realized wehad no idea how to fix it.
And then after several attemptsat trying to fix this damn
car, we were like, that's it.
Our entire budget is inthis car, all of our money.
We are dead lost now.
We can't fix it.
We can't even make it run.
It's like, no wonder theprevious person gave up on it.
And after we bought some parts forthe car, I realized, hang on a minute.
(06:58):
Hang on.
These parts are really expensive.
And I started looking at it andpricing up the car in parts.
Wait a minute.
This car's worth way more inparts than it is as a whole thing.
Just take it apart and sell the bitsand then we can put 'em on eBay.
And we built this whole system, wetook all the bits off the car and
I'm like, smart, I'll batch it.
(07:20):
And we took the bits off thecar, we photographed them.
I had a nice little booth setup, we just brought in one part,
photographed it, brought in the next one
in photo turn photo, photo turnstraight into a bag with the part
number written on it or the skew.
We had an internal skew systemand that went really well.
We got about 10 grands worthof inventory off of every car.
It is a lot of work 'cause wehad to do each one we only had.
(07:42):
Each item was one of one.
And even if we had two cars withthe same parts or the same car had
different parts, we still had to doit as one of one 'cause there's slight
variations in condition and stuff.
That was a nightmare.
But it was always fun up until myvery loving and supporting wife.
One day I was like, look, the househas turned into an absolute oil trap.
Could you please stop?
And I was like, yeah, fair enough.
(08:03):
I can just imagine your wifeopening the cupboard and there's
like a muffler sitting there likesome spare car parts just labeled.
Open the dishwasher.
Why is there car partsin the dishwasher again?
That story was incredible 'cause I thinkit showcases one, the struggle and a lot
of the lessons that you can learn from it.
You had a model that was going great untilyour business relied on another piece
(08:27):
that was not able to come through anymore.
You had to pivot and find newopportunities once you tried an
opportunity that seemed to go good.
That was almost a money pit.
And you said, how do Isalvage this situation?
You say, usually the sum is greaterthan the whole of the parts, but
this time the parts were greaterthan just the car altogether.
It was about pivoting being crafty,but more importantly, the systems.
(08:50):
The system you described, okay,we're gonna take a photograph, grab
different angles, we're gonna putit into a bag with a part number.
That sort of system, thatorganization often goes overlooked
by a lot of other businesses.
They just get into it and thenthey realize later, it's a mess.
What have you learned from yourexperiences through just system
systematizing processes, being organized,automation, just kind of that whole area?
(09:14):
Sure.
I'm missing about automation alot at the minute of AI automation
and NA10 and that sort of thing.
And for me it's definitely a lesson.
Although I was a warehouse managerbefore, which is why I knew how to build
all these systems, flight inventorymanagement and this sort of thing.
But for me personally, I'm goingthrough that at the minute.
Again, I'm relearning systems becausemy business has got to the point where
(09:34):
we've just gone from me being a freelancerto this is now a business and we have
other actors and we have other writers.
And we have projects coming throughthe business that I haven't touched.
It went all the way by itself.
The system is working.
We are scalable.
At last, finally, we havesolved the scaling issue.
Took me two years tofigure out how to scale.
And now we've got to the point.
We need to write this down and weneed SOPs and we need to systematize
(09:56):
this and we need to have differenttriggers and different Passover points.
And it's the same principle, the same ideaof everything creates an action point.
And every action point hasan outcome oriented SOP so
that anyone that gets stuck.
For example, key members off innext week for two weeks, but it
should be okay because we haveSOPs in place so we can look at
whatever it was that they were doing.
(10:18):
And it's just relearning those processesin a slightly different setting.
But now that once you've learned thelesson earlier on, if we systematize
everything and standardize everythingit becomes very much smoother.
And the zone I help creative freelancerswith a lot is like, you need to somewhat
standardize what you are selling
even though it's a creative thing,you need to somehow package it.
(10:40):
And if you are struggling with theparticular market you're in, you
hit a key thing earlier, which isthe sum is always worth more than
the components except for used cars.
And if you are a creative freelancer andyou're struggling 'cause you just do this
one part, well go and work with otherfreelancers for the part after and the
part before, because now you have a wholeproduct that you can sell to a business.
(11:01):
And you sell that whole productto the business and then you buy
the individual parts and thenyou're profiting off of each part.
And you're also enabling other peopleto get more work which is wonderful.
You are helping out both ends
absolutely.
I love that story because ithighlights both that you took the
previous experience and with thechanges in technology and software.
You had to kinda relearn things orredo your process, but you were still
(11:24):
taking all the stepping stones, all thefoundational knowledge that you already
had and you had to learn something new,but you built something even better.
I think it highlights for us asentrepreneurs just always have
that, always be learning my mindset.
, The moment you stop learning, that's whenyou stop growing and you stop improving.
But then you were able to createscalability from your product
(11:45):
and your service that's a hugenext step is kind of removing the
bottlenecks within your business.
How do I take that to the next step?
The scaling part.
That was a massive one for me tryingto figure out as a YouTube, I mean,
it's a little bit more complex now,but imagine you're a YouTube presenter,
you've got this really valuable product.
But this is not like youcan look at it that way.
This is not an equitable business.
(12:06):
You don't have a business, you have a job.
We need to make this transition.
How do I scale as a videopresenter and an actor?
You're literally just trading your time
That's not scalable.
What you've done is you'veincreased the value of your time
and this is a fantastic journey.
And it is a great part of things.
It is not a bad thing at all,trading time for money until you hit
(12:28):
certain threshold and you get stuck.
And I think it's Robert Kiyosaki laysit out really nicely with the quadrants
where you have employee, self-employed,business owner, and then investor.
And it's a case of, you startoff working for someone else and
they're exchanging time for money.
Then you go from there to freelancer.
And if you take the typical journey thatmost of us have, this is where you go.
(12:52):
And then next step is freelancer.
Now you are trading yourtime for money directly.
You have productized your time and youare getting a lot more for it 'cause
you're also assuming the risk becausethat's how everything works in business.
It's just risk management essentially.
But then you hit a threshold likeyou are still trading your time for
money, even though you have a lotmore control over everything and you
(13:12):
are getting a lot more for your time.
'cause you now keep all theprofit margins in between.
And then the hardest step, at leastof what I think is going from there to
being a business owner where you ownthe systems that operate with other
people in them that make you money.
If you asked me before I would'vetold you the most difficult
part is going from employed toself-employed, but now I've done that.
(13:35):
It's easy.
I am sure in another couple ofyears when I'm the investor.
The hardest part is going frombusiness owner to investor.
But it's true.
I think it highlights just that again,you're expanding on your own knowledge.
Questions you would've asked yourselfyears ago would change because you
have new information, new experiencesthat have evolved and shaped you.
(13:56):
But all of that helps buildupon what you've done.
Again, it's always be learning.
If you could go back in timeto give yourself one piece
of advice what would that be?
That's a tough one.
It would've been one of two things.
It would've either been.
I start reading sooner 'cause I didn'treally get into reading until I was
an adult 'cause I thought personalgrowth books and self-development
(14:17):
books and nonfiction books were cringe.
I said my interpretation of personaldevelopment books were cringey.
Eighties sitcom, when you see himon the sitcoms, on the old TV shows
where you learn French while you'reasleep, sort of thing, so that's fine.
Number one, start reading.
Just start absorbing knowledge.
And the other one I might gowith is, don't ever get a job.
Just be hungry.
(14:40):
Hunger is is somethingthat really motivates us.
That was kind of what it took meaway from the corporate nine to five.
I thought I had it all.
It was something that I was proudto share with people and I thought
I was making okay money, but atthe end of the year, I only had
500 bucks left in my bank account.
Thankfully, I had something.
Most people are just paycheck topaycheck, but I was like, is this
what the next year's gonna be like?
(15:00):
You are taught over and over again.
It's drummed into you over and over again.
Get a nine to fivecouncil job, big company.
You are secure, you need that security.
If you go out and you're a freelancer,you have no security, you have no
guaranteed of paycheck, and I'm like, no.
That is complete and utter a hogwash.
That is completely back to front.
If you have a job, no matter howwell contracted it is, even if
(15:21):
it's in Europe where you have allof these employee you go into work
tomorrow, you piss off one person.
You no longer have a job andyou no longer have a paycheck.
And you're probably already livingpaycheck to paycheck because
your wages do not increase at thesame rate as everything else, to
the point where it makes senseto change jobs every two years.
I don't know why we can't retain staff.
And it's like you are offering anew position at a much higher rate
(15:45):
than you are offering your existing.
How does that make sense?
What about freelance then?
But you might not get any work.
It's like, no, look for me to go fromwhat I have to zero, which is the same
as losing your job in a matter of anhour, you can go from what you have to
zero for a freelancer to go from whatthey have to zero, they'd have to piss
off at least 25 people can sec consistentconsecutively at the same time, you'd
(16:07):
somehow have to piss off 25 people atworst you lose one, maybe two clients.
Cool, you just adapt, move on.
Don't go out for dinnerthat month, whatever.
But it's wild how everyone's like,get a job 'cause it's secure.
Have you stepped back andlooked at this situation
gestures around, haveyou seen what's going on?
And I know people perceive securityin different ways, but I always
(16:29):
felt like I would rather makethe risk and the bet on myself.
I'd rather bet on myselfthan another company.
And sure, there's benefitsto it but I don't know.
I just feel like more in controlthat's more secure for me.
And the risk aversion like yousaid, you have to really piss off
a lot more people to really do thatpoorly 'cause there's always more
customers available to you as well.
(16:51):
If anything goes wrong andyou're in a freelance situation,
you just gotta go hustle.
We've all been there.
This is a bad month.
Oh God, there's bills coming.
Okay.
What you do?
You go pick up the phone.
You start emailing people.
The earnest is on you.
The bull is in your court.
You are empowered to win or to fail.
It is up to you what happens, but theresponsibility of that decision and that
inertia and that momentum is also yours.
(17:13):
Whereas I think when you have a job,all of that responsibility is offloaded,
which is what makes people feel secure.
I completely agree.
Now, what are you looking forward tomost to wrap up 2025 at the time we're
recording, we're about halfway through 25.
Do you have any new productlaunches or services or ways that
you're gonna be pivoting thatyou're excited to to get into?
(17:34):
Loads.
We have so much going on at theminute, we're focusing on one or two
products, one of which is a ad creativepackage, which we've put together.
We have tested it with a fewclients, and it's very well received.
It's very uniquely situated it's in likea barren no man's land price point wise.
We really don't have any competition.
The whole idea of positioning yourself ina market of one, we've got that nailed.
(17:59):
The actual value of what we're offering isfantastic, but we still have good margins.
That's working really wellfor us and we've got to the
point where the process is now
all SOPed.
We now have a process for the wholething and we're experimenting running ads
and trying to optimize our ad campaign.
That we have this position nowwhere we have ads that are working.
(18:20):
We have a landing page that's working.
We have a funnel that's working andwe have almost the whole system built.
And I am just waiting for those lastone or two pieces to click into place
so we can just pull the lever and thenwatch how fast this bad boy can go.
And that's gonna be our big win forthis year is getting that going and
really scaling on a bigger level
That is so exciting, that is really allcoming together and really excited to
(18:41):
see those final pieces come together.
A lot of what we do in business isjust test and trial and error and you
tweak some things, you pivot, you makechanges and then you just scale and
grow from there, which is very exciting.
Where can people find andconnect with you online?
If you wanna follow me for help withworking as a creative freelancer
and getting more business and howto interact with clients and how
to package and position yourself,just check me out on social media,
(19:04):
Andy Kraken Media on most places.
And if you wanna work withus, it is just kraken.media.
Give us a shout.
I love it.
We have one final question.
I'm curious to know.
It's about failure.
What are other businesses doing wrong?
That is preventing them from succeeding,
not failing enough, failhard, fail forwards.
(19:24):
Had this conversation very well said,Hey, who's just making the transition?
And my biggest philosophyis, you're gonna fail.
Why not?
9 outta 10 businesses fail.
Okay, hurry up and fail nine.
Every time you fail, it's one step closer.
It shouldn't people fail once or twice.
I tried.
It wasn't for me.
I tried, I failed.
Just keep failing.
That's how you learn the lessonsand that's how you get there.
If there's one lesson I havefor anyone about failing, it's
(19:45):
you are not failing enough.
When you fail, you should do it witha big ass smile on your face because
it's one step closer and you shouldbe looking for your next failure.
What can I go and try next?
I'm not a hundred percent sure work,because that's the learning space.
If it's gonna work.
You are not progressing.
You need to be pushing your boundariesand that's where failure is.
It's the golden zone.
(20:06):
Andy.
Very well said.
We appreciate it.
Thank you for sharing your journeywith us and all your tips and tricks.
Make sure for our audience thereto check out the show notes and the
description so you can find the linksto get connected with Andy here.
We appreciate it.
Congratulations on all your successand your future endeavors as well.
Thanks Chris.
Thank you for having me.
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