April 15, 2021 • 44 mins
This episode is about becoming an entrepreneur and actually the process and life in entrepreneurship. I speak with James Saward-Anderson, a co-founder of Social Tree Global with his business partner, Max Hannah. They started their business as a project in a bedroom back in 2016. And it's now grown to become one of the largest dedicated business-to-business, social media agencies, working with leading brands like UBS, IBM and Meltwater.
James and Max have also helped educate over 10,000 marketing and communication experts about the latest social media intelligence insights in finance and healthcare. Both of them ran to Rome together, and after that experience decided to start a business. They now have a team of 11 staff and a seven-figure turnover.
I ask questions around:
- What made him decide to go into entrepreneurship?
- What made him choose the business that he was in and pivot to it?
- What makes a good business partner and the benefits of having one
- Values that have helped his business grow and having a mission
- The struggles actually with balance when you're running a full-time business, i ask a lot of the questions that you might ask if you are looking to become an entrepreneur and make a career change yourself
- What's the one thing that made James burn from within?
Resources:
- Social Tree Global - James' 7-figure social media agency he runs with his business partner Max and team of 11 staff in London
- James Saward-Anderson's LinkedIn profile - connect with him here directly to ask questions about becoming an entrepreneur, social media and to work with or in his agency!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (00:28):
This episode is about becoming an
entrepreneur and actually theprocess and life.
In entrepreneurship.
I speak with James HowardAnderson.
Who's a co-founder of socialtree global.
He had a similar background tome.
He was a conference producer.
And has built a highlysuccessful business.
(00:49):
And I really I'm fascinated withhow he did it.
And so I asked questions around,what made him decide to go into
entrepreneurship?
What made him choose thebusiness that he was in and
pivot to it.
I tried.
He tried a few things before hesettled on the social media
agency.
We talk about.
Having a business partnerchoosing one.
What makes a good one?
(01:09):
We talk about values andspecific values that have helped
his business grow.
Around resiliency and adventure.
We talk about having a missionin your business and purpose.
Giving back.
And the difference that makesand the struggles actually with
balance when you're running afull-time business, having, 10
staff and a seven figureturnover, So it's a real
(01:31):
conversation and i hope youenjoy it and i ask a lot of the
questions that you might ask ifyou are looking to become an
entrepreneur and make a careerchange yourself The full show
notes and transcriptions ofother interviews.
Are available@benfromwithin.comforward slash interviews.
So listen all the way throughand enjoy On today's show, I
(01:55):
have James soured Anderson, whois the co-founder of social tree
global along with his businesspartner, max Hannah.
They started their business as aproject in a bedroom back in
2016.
And it's now grown to become oneof the largest.
Dedicated business to business,social media agencies, working
(02:18):
with leading brands like UBS,IBM and Meltwater.
James and max have also helpededucate over 10,000 marketing
and communication experts aboutthe latest social media
intelligence insights in financeand healthcare.
Now, James is a formerconference producer.
I very much relate to himbecause I was one too.
(02:39):
And his business partner was aprevious business development
and commercial manager.
Both of them ran to Rometogether, I believe.
And then after that experiencedecided to start a business.
So James, welcome to the show.
James Sawand-Anderson (02:55):
Thanks Matt, for having me really
excited to be here today.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (03:00):
Awesome.
Yeah really great to have you onas well.
And I'm so glad to bring you onhere really to talk about the
power of.
Having a business partner tostart a business how to even
start a business in general.
When we're thinking aboutchanging jobs, changing careers,
essentially.
Yeah.
I talked earlier about this tripto Rome.
(03:21):
What was it about that trip withyour now business partner, max
that made you realize that youtwo would be great business
partners and actually make thatleap into entrepreneurship?
James Sawand-Anderson (03:34):
I think the, yeah the experience, the
run to run and was obviously oneof, a lot of training, a lot of
dedication and lots of time.
Met many people who fought.
We all insane doing that event.
Many people who he didn't thinkhe'd do it.
And so all those comments, allthose things were.
(03:55):
Very similar to the idea ofstarting a business.
The idea of business as manysame characteristics, it's a
very long, slow, hard slog manypeople who don't think it will
work and it's difficult.
So I think the skills we learnedfrom that by no means just not
exclusive.
There's plenty of people who dosports together who don't make
(04:16):
good business partners.
I think it goes beyond justthat.
I think there's a.
The personality kind of mix,which needs to work.
I think he has had complimentingas attributes and similar values
as this sort of many differentareas of things that have to
work.
But yeah, I think not incombination of being friends it
was really helpful.
And I think you have to applymain different criteria before
(04:39):
you ultimately.
Decide to go into business withsomeone because there's a big
commitment for both parties.
Business partnership isdifficult to sustain and it's,
it's really important to getright.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (04:51):
I'm really intrigued about your your
current world record holder inkettlebell sports.
I looked up your record in theGuinness book of records, you've
lifted in one hour.
12,400 kilos in, in doingkettlebell swings, squats
alternating 24 kilos and 16kilos, the world record holder.
(05:11):
And I think you and yourpartner, max talk about the
relationship between thephysical fitness world and the
lessons that you've learned fromthat and translating that into.
Starting and growing asuccessful business.
Tell me a little bit about whathave been the biggest lessons
learned from the physicalfitness world and how you've
(05:33):
translated that into startingand growing STG.
James Sawand-Anderson (05:36):
I think the relationship between
training and business is reallyimportant.
I think there's definitelyparticularly a young guy.
I think the first, every namewhere she can.
Test yourself is sports.
You're too young to really goout and commercially test
yourself in other areas andsport.
(05:56):
Is there a way in which you canin a quiet, safe environment,
and obviously as a continuingfallout of that, the idea of
physical fitness is reallyimportant as well.
So using your body physicalfitness to actually.
Pushed herself and understandthe limits of your potential.
Now I'm not saying that everysingle entrepreneur is to be
really fit.
I'm not saying that at all.
(06:16):
I'm just saying that in thequest to become fitter and you
can develop characteristics andskills, which will help you.
If you are an entrepreneur.
So I think that's one of thethings that we see, I learned
I've been in particularly thesports I focused on were around
endurance.
And it was focused on what kindof pushing the body and
different kinds of sports.
(06:37):
So there was kettlebell,Scottsdale was press up events.
There were obviouslyendurance-running events and all
these events were really helpfulin shaping my.
Values when it comes tobusiness.
And I think most things are warof attrition and I think that,
wherever it's business any otherareas of your experience or you
want to get some kind ofproficiency and it requires
(07:00):
repeat it sustained hard workand yeah, last assignment,
physical fitness.
So I think there's a massivebleed out of between the two.
And I think that if you can of arelative master over your own
body and mind.
I wouldn't say master.
It's ridiculous to have amastery, but our relative
acknowledgement andunderstanding of your limits.
(07:21):
I think it really helped me withwhen it comes to business.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (07:24):
Yeah.
I'm really interested about howyou actually started your
business and you know that whenyou made a decision with your
business partner to.
So I'm going to, we're going togo into business together.
What was the kind of journeybetween that decision to
actually starting STG youragency now?
Cause I know that you actuallypivoted a few times to to
(07:46):
actually work out that was thebusiness that you wanted to do.
Can you tell me a little bitabout that journey and some of
the transitions you had.
James Sawand-Anderson (07:54):
Yeah.
So the original idea was wewanted just to start a business.
So we didn't have an idea.
We just had a desire to start abusiness.
So that was the main thing wehad to design side of the
business.
And in, from that desire, cameSocial Tree Global So we
originally started off as beinga reseller in telephony, which
didn't really work.
So we wanted to start abusiness.
(08:16):
Didn't matter what end we justwanted to start something.
So I think now is a big thing.
Initially it was understandingthat the main driver was
starting a business.
It wasn't necessary.
This is the idea we weren'twedded to a singular idea, which
I think is really helpful.
So with that kind of knowledge,we just we're very agnostic as
to what we actually do.
(08:37):
So that allowed us to be muchmore flexible, malleable with
ideas.
And I think sometimes you canget to.
When it, to your ideas and someof the biggest values or things
I've learned is that having aconcept based approach to life
in terms of thinking aboutthings as concepts, rather than
having a sticky idea can be veryuseful.
(09:00):
The concept of entrepreneurship.
Is really interesting.
Your idea might not work, but ifyou want to be an entrepreneur,
it doesn't really matter whatthe idea is because yeah, the
art of entrepreneurship, theskill, the practice of
entrepreneurship, it's likebeing a blacksmith.
It's like being the carpenter.
You love starting businesses.
(09:20):
It doesn't matter what businessis, but the process of starting
your business and running it iswhat engages me.
So I can start business inanything.
It must be, it could be an armysetting.
Yeah, whatever you name it.
There's certain thing,computers, setting phones or
setting watches, whatever it is,the art of entrepreneurship is
why I enjoy it.
It's a skill of that.
(09:41):
And I feel like that's what alot of people miss is.
People want to, people want tothey look at the outcome of
think that's what I want to be.
So I want to be a I wanna run a.
E-commerce e-commerce store.
Yeah.
Without understanding thatprobably won't work.
The idea you initially set outto start probably wouldn't be
the idea you ended up being.
(10:02):
So if you fall in love with theidea, then you're going to feel
like you're going to be in aworld of pain.
It doesn't work once you fall inlove with the concept and you
fall in love with the practiceand art ones for ownership.
Then that idea might fail, butyou'll still be motivated to
continue because you love thehustle.
So to speak, you'd love theentrepreneurship process.
I think that's one of the, themain things we had early on,
(10:24):
which was really quite helpfulin the early days to really
understand our motivation.
when we had nothing.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (10:33):
Yeah.
Where do you think you got thisconfidence that things were
going to work out?
Cause obviously you shifted fromtelephony products into starting
quite successful social mediaagency.
Like how did you know.
That was going to work and thatyou were re you, you became
resilient enough to actuallykeep going and make it happen,
(10:54):
make it a successful, like wheredid that inner confidence come
from, that you kept at it?
James Sawand-Anderson (11:01):
There's also a luck element to this.
we were lucky enough that withinnine or 10 months, we've managed
to start earning an income, avery small income, but if it
carried on for another three orfour months and no income, we
would have failed.
There is a massive amount ofluck in anything, but the thing
is you can't change.
You can.
(11:21):
It's almost a psychology oflucky in that the more
opportunities you present toyourself, you're more open to
the more lucky you can become.
What you can control is yourwork ethic and your mindset who
you connect with, your attitude,all these things you can
control.
You can't control your luck butyou can control the amount of
opportunities you get to play.
(11:41):
And it's like a lottery.
Now you say unlimited lottery.
The more times you played, themore times you might get
rewarded.
So my motivation came from thefact that we were relatively
lucky that within eight or ninemonths, we managed to find
something and start to make usmoney, but it could have gone
either way in the early days,for sure.
But I suppose the inherentmotivation during that eight
(12:02):
months to making absolutelynothing, it was about eight or
nine months of zero income.
Is there a literally no moneywas the, yeah, it was a dream of
being self-employed.
It was a massive ambition is amassive thing for us to become
entrepreneurs.
That was for me.
Anyway, the burning motivationfrom day one, when I was in uni,
when I was working, only thing Iwanted to do was be an
(12:25):
entrepreneur.
Now there was no other job Iwanted to do.
I wanted to become.
I, I practitioner ofentrepreneurship as if you were
learned in carpentry, when it'sunderstand how it's been an
entrepreneur, and that was mycraft and that's what I wanting
to do.
That's what carried me throughthere's lots of wantrepreneurs
people who liked to read aboutentrepreneurship and they like
(12:47):
to listen to entrepreneurs.
They like to dabble in things.
That's fine.
There's no problems in that.
And I think everyone's going tohave.
A degree, the way the world'sgoing.
I think we're all going to be inthe future, doing some degree of
side hustle so I thinkeveryone's going to have to some
appreciation of whatentrepreneurship is, but I think
(13:08):
if you want to become a fullyfledged entrepreneur, you have
to have a desire.
Love.
I'll do it because that's whatultimately you did before,
because the numbers comemeaningless.
You have success with people.
If you just keep doing business,no matter what they do.
So I think that's what it isreally.
It's their motivation comes fromthe love combined with not
(13:28):
speaking of luck and ourparents, time.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (13:31):
Yeah.
And I'm still curious about,what made you decide on social
media agency?
I've read, you guys certainlymax has had a passion for social
media for awhile.
Was there like an element of,I'm passionate about this skill?
And so let's try this as abusiness or were you looking
for, hot trending businesses andjust going for something that
(13:54):
might be on a growth spurt.
James Sawand-Anderson (13:57):
I think social media cadence for us
because we were using socialmedia a lot for prospecting.
So that's why social media cameto our site.
It was more of a case of we weredoing social media anyway, and
he saw that there was this,there was demand for social
media, which hadn't beensatisfied.
So that's where I think the mainspark came from.
It came from, hang on, meanpeople aren't doing this, so we
(14:19):
should probably do this.
So we actually startedgenerating a lot of demand, a
lot of leads from doing thisstuff.
Yeah, that's how initially.
Came to be.
We started doing social mediaand realizing, Oh, Hey man, this
stuff, this really works.
People are using LinkedIn andnot using Twitter.
And it was mainly LinkedIn.
And then from that, we doubleddown on that process.
(14:40):
So yeah, through doing LinkedIn.
Early on.
We realized, Hey, the ma maybethe money isn't in selling
telephony but selling ourservices, generating demand, we,
the problem wasn't the problemwasn't demand.
It was the product.
So we just solved the demand.
That's what we did.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (14:59):
Yeah.
So it was a case of you juststarted, you started a business
and then you developed skills.
Some of them were your previousexperience and then you built on
that and develop skills inLinkedIn, and then you realized,
ah, okay.
They're not a lot of people aredoing this let's we're good.
So it was a kind of recognitionof.
(15:20):
We are good at this with with Dworks.
And also there is not many otherpeople doing it, and that was
the spark of creating thatentire businesses.
James Sawand-Anderson (15:29):
Yeah, sure.
This is that's exactly
Matt Garrow-Fisher (15:32):
right.
Now I was reading about some ofyour values in your business and
some of the values that define asocial tree global, that
resiliency and adventure, andand actually they guide every
step of your company.
Tell me, how did you decide tofocus on those values and how
(15:54):
has that helped your businessand also personal lives too?
James Sawand-Anderson (15:58):
So the idea of resiliency for me now
he's about to use is when youget more as idiot, you don't get
better app.
Carrying your burdens, you getstronger.
So you get stronger.
You still carry that burden.
There was any agency isn'tdiscarding a bird, and it's
being able to carry yourburdens.
You develop the strength, thecarrier burns.
(16:20):
You never lose your burdens.
You never forget the bad things.
What happens to you?
You carry them through your lifeand you don't your problems.
Don't get.
Yeah, they don't diminish.
You just get stronger indelivery and dealing with your
problems.
And I think that's one of thebig analogies I think it was
intercedes it's is incrediblyit's framed around.
And I think that one of theissues is you can become
(16:44):
resilient through practice, butultimately resiliency in its
base form is something which is.
I would need going to be asstrong as the support network
around you as well.
Becoming resilient means thatyou have the necessary apparatus
to actually cope with difficultthings going on so I think
resiliency is a difficultconcept to kind of master, but
(17:07):
in terms of our own business,resiliency is, just by putting
one foot forward every singleday and doing the basics every
day, amounted to a massivechange.
And I think there's any urgencyis that, it's been hours to do
the small daily things everysingle day.
And you think this hasn'tchanged, but over time you, you
have changed.
And what are we other than justthe state of now anyway, because
(17:29):
people always think about lifein terms of key benchmarks in
terms of, I can't wait to getthis.
I can't wait to get that.
I can't wait to get this thing,but ultimately, most of your
life.
It's just the mundane.
It's waking up.
It's going outside.
It's talking to people, it'seating food.
It's going to the toilet.
It's sleeping.
That is existence all the time.
(17:51):
And the outlying moments youthink about in life.
Like the big moments, they arejust little saw the flags in the
path of your life.
The majority of it like 99.9% ofyour life.
It's just existing.
So you have to find that somemeasure of comfort in your
existence because that step,gonna whatever you do, wherever
(18:13):
you become a millionaire,wherever you become
impoverished, a weldaccomplished athlete, most of
your life is just living.
It's not what you think.
All these are the key moments,bit of common, a champion that
lasts what, like five minutesthen you're living again.
So I think Vassar is the idea ofresiliency is in our
understanding, the process isreally important is that it
(18:34):
isn't in fact everything thatwe, I always had an ambition.
that getting to Rome would bethis.
Amazing euphoric thing.
And it wasn't really, it wasgreat to get to Rome.
What I learned was the processof getting to Rome was the
magic.
That was the essence ofeverything.
It was the steps.
It was the day-to-day grind.
The process in itself was theanswer.
(18:55):
It wasn't the gold.
And I think resiliency is theadmission that life is
essentially a recurring exercisein.in day to day habits and it's
up to you, what habits you form,but the cumulative has habits
can either help your life ormake your life a lot sadder.
So the first idea of resiliencyis understanding that the grind
(19:17):
is everything and you shouldenjoy the grind.
If you don't enjoy that, thenyou really are doing the wrong
thing and cause that's most ofyour life.
And the second one, obviouslyadventure is precisely the idea
that, The sense of adventure isso important.
The sense of adventure meanssomething playful.
It's something unknown.
It's being experimental.
It's going out beyond thecomfort zone.
(19:39):
And I think that's reallyimportant.
And you have to have a sense ofadventure in the world.
You have to try things.
And obviously this year we'vehad lock down and it's been
really hard to do that, but youcan have your own sense of
adventure by doing somethingonline.
Yeah.
If we digital, yeah.
You can have a digital eventtoo.
You can try things on LinkedIn.
You can try some new content.
The spirit of adventure runsthrough our veins, regardless of
whether we are fixed in terms ofgeography or not, because we
(20:03):
always try new things.
And our idea of business saysthe sense of.
All the adventure, the sense ofwe're going to try some new
things.
We're not afraid to fail.
We're not afraid to do, thingswrong sometimes because they are
resilient and we have a sense ofadventure.
And I think those two thingstogether really distill the
essence of our business
Matt Garrow-Fisher (20:24):
I know I'm actually curious about.
If you didn't take this trip toRome, do you think you would
have started your business orwould you have started it like
so soon?
Was that the real kind ofinspiration that the gave you
the belief that, Hey we have theresilience for this.
We've worked out thisstep-by-step, we're doing it
(20:44):
step by step and we've and wemade it work.
It was a tough challenge.
We did it together.
We can do this.
We can make a business.
Was that physical challenge likethat a metaphor that changed
that actually changed yourbelief and.
If it was, would you encourageother people that aren't sure of
themselves to take on a similarchallenge?
James Sawand-Anderson (21:05):
I say we did want to change to our
business before it runs around.
It was always talking aboutstarting a business.
So we did myself business forthat.
I would say that.
The idea of other people, again,super break, Kathy, what you
want from life, becauseparticularly now with the weld
and lockdowns and remoteworking, and a big part of why
(21:26):
people want you to startbusiness was the idea of
freedom.
I can work when I want now withtechnology that kind of is
becoming reality.
So I think people should be verycareful about excuse me wanting
to be an entrepreneur.
I think you feel it's Oh, it'sjust something I should do.
But what you need to think needto dig deeper than that.
Because entrepreneurship is a,is, like I said, it's a school
(21:47):
where it's a practice thatdiscipline.
So the art of entrepreneurshipis become a black sphere.
So you might like to Midcoastsalts, but you may not
necessarily want to make thesword.
So you might not, you might lookat the business, but you may
hate this.
Process of building a business.
The process of forging a swordinvolves a lot of skill, effort,
(22:09):
failure, discipline, growing abusiness is incredibly hard.
It's a life consuming thing.
You have no holidays.
You had no, really any otherfolks assigned the business is
consumed your whole life.
And it doesn't matter if you'remarried.
If you engage, if you're goingto have children, if you have
family, whatever it is, yourbusiness is going to consume.
(22:31):
A sizable chunk of yourconscious day.
So when you go on this path tograb business, now this is
obviously if you want to grab alot business.
So I'd say if you're looking togrow a business, a million pound
business or above many accountbusiness, like a large business,
and you're not most businessesin the UK are the average
revenue business is half amillion, but most businesses are
(22:53):
micro businesses.
90, I think 92% of allbusinesses are market
businesses.
And they do revenues off of thething, a hundreds of 300,000
pounds.
And there's the whole army ofpeople who are self-employed
contractors.
So again, this is the questionlike you want to be an
entrepreneur, but let's decodewhat that means.
Do you want to work foryourself?
Great.
Do you want some freedom?
Amazing.
(23:14):
Or you could be a contractor andhave the entrepreneurship.
You have your income, you haveyour new business.
You have this contracted limitedcompany.
Get your money.
Go home.
No, I want to start the fullnessbusiness.
I want to grow a business.
I want to get to 7 millionpounds on a set of business and
find very different kettle offish that, that super full
business that's hiring staffthat scaling a business that's
(23:36):
that's, maybe the company ascorporation tax, that's all the
residual for the businessownership.
We'll run very different things,very different goals, very
different objectives.
Again, it's a wide spectrum,this all of entrepreneurship,
but I feel like.
We don't really sang on sayingto be an entrepreneur is not
good enough because I know likeyou, that it doesn't help
(23:57):
anyone.
I think that's the answer toyour question is around about
my.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (24:02):
Yeah, so interesting.
I A lot of people that arelistening to the show that,
thinking about career change andthey've had this itch of our,
everyone starting a business.
Now, maybe I can do that.
It will give me freedom.
I'll maybe I could be amillionaire.
But what you've just highlightedthere is, it comes back to your
value of resiliency.
(24:22):
You really have to, It's painfulat some points and you really
have to work, and it's not awalk in apart by any means.
And you need to mentally beprepared for that and know that
you're going to enjoy theprocess.
Like you want to be anentrepreneur and you, because
you love the, you actually lovethe concept of entrepreneurship
(24:43):
and actually grinding away andcreating something versus just
the dream of, I want to make amillion dollars or I want to
make I want to build a hugecompany or whatever.
I think a lot of people focus somuch on the golden.
They forget about the process.
And that's why I dunno, I don'tknow what the stats are in terms
of.
Business FA business startupsfailing, but it's, I think it's
(25:05):
pretty high in the UK.
Certainly in the U S somethinglike 60%, but does that bat
right?
I'm most sure.
James Sawand-Anderson (25:12):
Yeah.
And I think you're right.
Besides the process, again, it'severything.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you make.
X amount money because there'sentrepreneurs who I still work
at, even when they're mini andmultimillionaire.
So that's a myth you're nevergoing to find.
You're never going to findenough money to be satisfied.
I, because there's always goingto be.
(25:34):
A lifestyle, which will meetyour income.
So if if you wanna make amillion pounds, okay, so you get
a nice house, get a car, you getthe Knight's area, designer
clothes, then you're living alife in which you have to make
money and you need more in it,10 million pounds.
And to get 10 million pounds,you're hanging around people who
have yachts, and then you go Ineed to get, I need to get a
(25:56):
superyacht and I need to be abillionaire.
So be very careful about Ghanapark, because there's never
enough money in terms of a humaningredients, limitless.
That's the first thing thesecond is yes, absolutely.
Do after that, the process,because that's all we have,
there's no, if you think thereis a finish line, there's not,
I'm afraid and you can take itas a.
(26:16):
As a negative or positive, butthis is it the existence when
you have now in gray cup everyday, we think ourselves, we go
to the toilet, eat food thatday.
I don't think people talk aboutthe mundane about life.
That is life.
So if you think about the bigmarquee moments, the social
media doesn't help because youget this feed of people posting
(26:36):
their marquee moments, which isfine.
Great your style posting yoursuccess.
But the reality is if you don'tknow that person a better
happier and all, they might bereally unhappy and you might be
really happy and you don't knowyou because you think you're
not, you should be doingsomething else, but maybe you
shouldn't, you know it becauseultimately the process is what
matters.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (26:56):
I was going to ask what's your goal in your
business now.
I You've got, I think 10, 10team members can staff and like
revenue wise, are you in thekind of seven figures now
almost, or over.
James Sawand-Anderson (27:10):
Yeah, so we want to, I call it, this is
the greats of 5 million pounds,so many pounds now, and anyone
to get to 5 million pounds is anext big step for us.
So we have the, a team of seemsto be 11 staff and you have a
really great team and therevenue for us, you can insert
into the figure, the mostimportant thing I said before,
waking up and having a teamaround you, having a good ethos,
(27:33):
having a good culture.
At mission, the money, therevenue is always going to
change when he gets afive-minute, it'd be 10 minutes
and relative John's view, that'sstill quite small business.
Okay.
I'm not saying, most peoplethink about business as Mark
Zuckerberg, Facebook I'veSilicon Valley.
I will look at me.
(27:54):
That's not going to happen.
I think most people are going togo in them to get to 200,000
pound business.
I think you can get there.
I think half a million.
I think, you know what?
You could probably do it.
Half million is I think thecutoff point, I think half
million, then you're going toneed a bit of luck.
You're gonna need a product it'sgoing to need to really read,
understand, and then you'regonna need to level up the Gulf
(28:14):
between half a million and amillion, I think is a big Gulf.
I think that's where the coughis between I can black this half
million, 2 million pounds.
You can't black, a million poundrevenue per year.
So that's the big jump.
But yeah, our goal is to, Ithink, to get to 5 million pound
revenue by 2025, 25, five six,and the team.
(28:35):
And it's not just me.
It's not just the rest of theteam.
And we want to, grow a greatagency and the team you have
now, I want them to be, to bepart of that growth and speed,
part of the leadership team andgo from there.
But as you said, going fullcircle, this conversation, a lot
of this is the process isenjoying the process and trying
to fall in love with it everyday, because that's all we have
(28:57):
and that's all we're gonna everhave.
And.
Unless someone tells meotherwise, or we've got, this is
short timeline.
So enjoy it.
Enjoy the grind.
If you don't enjoy it, thenchange because life is so short.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (29:11):
A lot of people on the show talk about,
passion, purpose, and balance,and certainly with purpose.
I think your mission is tohumanize corporate social media,
by putting people in theirstories at the heart of their
message.
What's the importance of settinga mission.
In your business or life, Iguess as well.
(29:32):
And at what point did you setyours and what difference did it
make when you had that on paper?
James Sawand-Anderson (29:37):
Yeah, I think your mission is really
important because it's going tohave ups and downs.
Do you have days where you haveterrible days?
Yeah, I'd have a thesis as astrong framework in which you
operate.
Then when bad things happened toyou have no way of calibrating
that and going, wow, I am it.
They didn't want to see themout.
I'm on the, I'm on the journeyto this objective here.
(29:58):
So I think having a mission isreally important.
It doesn't have to deal with youwashy, but yeah, for us, I
genuinely believe that socialmedia is completely changing our
interpretation of how brands andbrands engage.
We think this is a massivetransfer.
The tension away from monolithicbrand entities to the people,
which make the brands and yeah,I, that's why I wake up
(30:21):
generally believe and I believesocial media is a powerful tool,
which can be used for bad aswe've seen.
It's well documented.
You can you have to have anappreciation for mental health
considerations, but I also thinkis a as a tool for great, good.
I think it has a huge potentialfor good in the world.
Yeah it's a mixed bag.
And that's what I feelpassionate about when I'm old
(30:41):
and dying.
I want to look back on my lifeand say, you know what, when
some way in, in helping to bringa aloud transparency to tease
companies which were previouslynot there.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (30:53):
Yeah.
And we talked earlier about theimportance of actually just
enjoying your day and like thepeople you work with versus,
just chasing money, because asyou said, like when you get to
six figures, seven figures,billion dollar businesses, You
keep working.
Cause you just enjoy it.
You enjoy like the environment,everything you do in your day.
(31:13):
You've already started an onlineAcademy with a mission to give,
I think 10,000 students did justskills.
They need to compete in the jobmarket.
And you're also, I believeleading an initiative this year.
Where you aim to educate ahundred thousand students from
Britain's biggest universitieson the usefulness and power of
LinkedIn, what is it about.
(31:36):
Doing these projects likevoluntary projects and giving
back this contribution aspectthat is important for your
business, for your culture andalso for you, for your whole
kind of purpose and drive andwhat you're doing each day.
James Sawand-Anderson (31:52):
I've always fought.
Life is there's three phases tolife.
The first phase of life you'regetting helps and zero it's 20.
So you are.
Yeah.
You're helpless.
You need help.
The second phase is helpingyourself.
I think you need to helpyourself.
You need to be selfish.
I think you can be too selfless,which means you can't actually
help others because you haven'tdeveloped your own skills.
(32:12):
You haven't developed thecapacity to help.
So I think you should be selfishin the twenties and your
thirties to some degree,necessarily the forties, because
you need to get yourself in aposition where you are going to
be able to will and maximumchange.
Do you need to have the cloudsget out to help others, not
should Marsh in the plane.
If you had to put the oxygenmask on yourself, you die and
your home, your kids die.
(32:33):
So getting helped helpingyourself in the first phase of
life is helping others.
I think that you, as a human, Idon't think you can live a
healthy and I'm selfish in manyways because I don't think I can
be completely happy.
If I know that I haven't doneanything in my short time enough
to help others.
I feel like you can, you canbecome a very unhappy person
(33:00):
pursuing your own self,interested to such a degree that
you forget that ultimately.
The only thing, most importantthings that are raised well,
humans really.
Like that's all it is.
Wait, all businesses did it,humans, religious person.
But the trap from the fact thatI selfishly I think that it's
(33:21):
important to, now I'm in mythirties, obviously at the
moment, these products are quitesmall.
But I want to start doing thembecause when I get to the first
phase, which is helping others,I'd like to.
That they can't a little, mytime when I'm older to helping
others, because that's what it'sall about.
It's about passing the Weldon ina place, which is slightly
better than when you joined it.
It's given people an opportunityto giving people a shot.
(33:42):
So I always give people a shot.
I'll try my best.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (33:45):
I just curious about how you.
Live with balance or how you getsome kind of balance running
such a successful business andhaving quite a large team now.
And is, have you been able torestore a level of kind of
balance to your life so you canfocus on, other things like.
Your relationships and yourhealth and all that kind of
(34:07):
stuff.
Cause I can imagine when youstarted your business and like
you weren't earning any moneyand then obviously growing a
business, it was just all handson deck.
Has that changed?
And have you been able to setstructures or routines to enable
you to actually have a lifebalance?
James Sawand-Anderson (34:25):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Again, it goes back to the pointaround button.
This is my life is not badbecause the business is so much
part of my life.
And that's just the way it is.
We don't earn our, we're not abusiness which where we and max
go home.
We aren't Lowe's and my neighbornow knows nothing.
Like our income is parity withsome stock.
(34:46):
Because that's just the way weinvest the money and run the
business, so it's, yeah, it'snot, it's a slog where I need a
business we're relatively small.
And because we, we've bebootstrapping the whole thing.
So there is bad.
The thing I'd say that I've gota really good supportive fiance
who is, in a relationship.
I think that's really importantto have.
(35:07):
This again, full circle havingcontrasting, but complimentary
personality traits, I think werereally important.
So I think there's a, with mylife and very fortunate to have
someone who really understandsand appreciates how I work and
works with me.
So yeah, absolutely.
I would like to some point have.
Definitely a more about it.
So I think at the stage of thebusiness, it can't have that.
(35:28):
It might've been, but yeah, veryfriends had people around me
that support me.
But at the same time, Yeah.
People who say, Oh, you don't tosupport me in the beginning.
If your idea isn't, if you tellsomeone an idea and they support
you off the bat, then your ideais crazy enough.
In my opinion, I think peopleshould, your family should say
yo ass not go.
You show me what to do.
(35:49):
That's great.
You should want that reaction.
And you owe it on your family toprove them wrong.
You don't, you shouldn't assume.
Support is given.
And I think that's ridiculous.
I wouldn't want my familysupport me jumping off a cliff.
They'd like us to read about it.
And mindless support is reallybad.
It's a sycophant.
There's one that type of energy.
(36:10):
You want people to kick back usout if you have a good idea, but
that's not a, Hey.
That's not a high as someone whois not someone who is looking
out and saying, yo, that's not,I don't think you should stop
visit.
That's perfect.
You it's your job to turn themaround.
It's your job to work hardenough and to just prove them
wrong.
But don't think they're haterfor putting the idea off because
(36:32):
it's stupid and any idea, whichis quite frankly stupid and
crazy is a good idea.
That's the idea.
Those are the ideas that shouldbe really going to change the
world.
I think there's a bit of, peoplejust think that if your family
don't support you straight away,then there's some kind of
Hayden's.
But if you idea side a bit, it'son the businesses and having to
do crazy things.
(36:52):
So don't expect that in theother days.
Yeah.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (36:55):
It is a crazy thing and like I've.
I've started businesses myself,and I'm an ex I'm an extroverted
person and you are as well.
And I think your businesspartner is working in a sales
background.
What like, do you think thatthis kind of concept of being
extrovert, I struggled workingon my own.
(37:17):
I really did like it.
And I think it's because I wasextroverted and I really liked
working with the team andbouncing ideas off people.
Do you think Your partnershipand having a business partner
was like really helped becausebecause you were extroverted and
what do you think has been thebiggest gift from having a
(37:37):
partnership and in business,like with looking back in all of
the years, you've, the last fouryears, five years, like what's
been that biggest gift fromhaving an actual partner.
James Sawand-Anderson (37:49):
I think definitely sharing the burden.
I think, yeah.
Having somebody who's doing thebusiness, I think it has a
massive thing.
Like having a business plan issuper important to that.
But also came out to the journeything.
We have with this process, theprocess of working with someone
that, I really get on with max,all my best friends and we've
always got on and seeing hisdevelopment and him seeing my
(38:10):
development and seeing obviouslyour lifestyle changes.
We've got the older mask gotmarried.
Kids, aren't going to get nice.
There's a whole sort of, you cansee the mirror of the progress
through the other person,whereas when you're on your own,
you don't really see that asmuch.
So I think that's one big thing.
And I think, yeah, it's havingthat.
I think word, I think a moments,a double when they shed.
(38:31):
Having a, this is all about lifeis, and I get, I realize it is
just about.
The people around you and we'reall seeking some kind of
meaningful engagement withsomeone else.
Now, what is business?
We're trying to influence otherhumans, it's online, but so much
about this life is about that.
And I think we are in a positionwhere a lot of the there's a,
(38:56):
there is an anxiety momentbecause I feel like we don't
really, or we're forgetting.
What it means to live a goodlife and that what you associate
with happiness is somethingwhich can be attributed very
easily.
So if you want peace andcontentment, happiness, that
will come very easily to comesthrough introspection, you can
(39:18):
be peaceful and happy in apacked tube.
All you can be at peace andhappy in any situation because
happiness is this fitness comesin and comes out.
And I think another thing I'velearned is that, my emotions are
happiness and sadness go outsidekind of stock market graphics.
They pass through me for a day.
It's I feel sad.
(39:39):
I feel happy about it.
Hang on it.
I'm not doing it.
If this is just, this is someweird external thing I'm happy
and I'm sad.
What are some moments I'm reallyhappy in situations, but I
shouldn't be when someone whohungry, sad and middle specialty
retail.
So I've learning now.
This is not something I havecontrol over.
If I'm hungry, I'm happy.
I'm not happy.
So I think, yeah, theappointment business part is
(40:01):
like, the process is so potentbecause that's all that matters.
The process, does having abusiness partner.
Does it enrich your day or doyou wake up going?
This person is I hate working ifthey richer day and you enjoy
and you both have a goodrelationship.
I think it's fantastic.
And I think statistically,you're more likely to succeed as
(40:22):
well.
I think businesses with abusiness partner are
statistically more likely tosucceed and those that don't.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (40:29):
That's solid advice actually about like
really getting on with someoneand actually them enriching your
day and you enriching their dayto make that whole journey much
easier.
Where can people get in touchwith you?
Find out more about social treeglobal James.
James Sawand-Anderson (40:44):
I think it is the one that James said,
Addison.
I'm always happy to connect andlearn.
And thank you so much, Matt,obviously for, for the vitamin a
show.
It's great.
It's really enjoyed talking toyou and yeah, LinkedIn's a one
off you want to follow me onTwitter, dura James, but yeah.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (41:01):
So I call it like, Someone that's passionate
about what they do purposefuland have some kind of a burning
desire to just keep going, likereally motivated.
I call that to burn from within.
And my question I always askguests is what's the one thing
do you think has made thebiggest difference for you to
(41:22):
burn from within you and yourbusiness to, to just really have
that drive and burning desire tokeep going?
James Sawand-Anderson (41:28):
Good question.
I think the idea of adventure, Ithink that's what makes me, and
it's this desire of where are wegoing next?
This best grind is this path.
I think it's the adventure, Ithink is the opportunity there.
The tension that we're neverreached yet, I'll never reach
perfection.
You'll never get there.
You're never been perfection.
The eventual never finish, butwhat matters is the process is
(41:51):
the art of pursuing perfection.
It's the art of pursuingadventure.
That is the essence ofeverything.
So it's almost falling in lovewith that and appreciating
that's all we have.
That's what keeps me going everysingle day.
Waking up with a smile on herface and saying that I'm here
again for more of the same,bring you on, and let's see
where.
(42:12):
Last taste me,
Matt Garrow-Fisher (42:14):
James at Anderson.
Thank you very much for that.
It's been an awesomeconversation.
I really appreciate it.
Wow.
That was a really interestingperspective.
And to the life of a, of anentrepreneur.
An entrepreneur, that's grown ateam and A seven figure
business.
To really show, there's a lot ofwantrepreneurs out there and
that's fine.
But the reality and thesacrifices and the hard work and
(42:37):
the actual process.
And the grind of.
Entrepreneurship and making itwork.
Is not to be underestimated.
That was a big takeaway fromthat conversation with James.
And, knowing that he wanted tobe an entrepreneur for a very
long time and that drive.
To make things and create thingswhatever.
(43:01):
It takes, that.
That really came through in thisinterview.
And I think.
If you are.
Looking for a career changeright now and want to be an
entrepreneur.
Not a wantrepreneur andentrepreneur.
Really take note in terms of thesacrifices that you will have to
make.
Is this an a.
Task list that's given to youeach day, like a nine to five.
(43:21):
You make your own tastic scarp.
You have to motivate yourself.
If things aren't working, you'renot making any money like James
and max didn't.
From the first nine months oftheir business.
You have to have the resilienceand determination.
And self-belief that you willmake things work.
And just.
Being exposed to stories likeJames is is good.
(43:45):
Preparation, I think forembarking on that journey.
And I would encourage you toreach out to James directly
through LinkedIn.
I'll leave his profile link onthe show notes.
And any other entrepreneuractually.
By doing informationalinterviews and really finding
out what life is like.
In their shoes, if you want tobe an entrepreneur theory is one
thing.
(44:06):
Living that life and the processof it is a very different ball
game.
And you might absolutely love itand it might be the right.
Career path for you.
So hope you enjoyed thatepisode.
Any questions, please drop me aline, matt@aburnfromwithin.com
with it at double T.
Don't forget to rate.
(44:26):
The bone from withinpodcast@ratethispodcast.com
slash burn from then until nexttime they with passion, purpose,
and balance.
And ben
This episode is about becoming an
entrepreneur and actually theprocess and life.
In entrepreneurship.
I speak with James HowardAnderson.
Who's a co-founder of socialtree global.
He had a similar background tome.
He was a conference producer.
And has built a highlysuccessful business.
(00:49):
And I really I'm fascinated withhow he did it.
And so I asked questions around,what made him decide to go into
entrepreneurship?
What made him choose thebusiness that he was in and
pivot to it.
I tried.
He tried a few things before hesettled on the social media
agency.
We talk about.
Having a business partnerchoosing one.
What makes a good one?
(01:09):
We talk about values andspecific values that have helped
his business grow.
Around resiliency and adventure.
We talk about having a missionin your business and purpose.
Giving back.
And the difference that makesand the struggles actually with
balance when you're running afull-time business, having, 10
staff and a seven figureturnover, So it's a real
(01:31):
conversation and i hope youenjoy it and i ask a lot of the
questions that you might ask ifyou are looking to become an
entrepreneur and make a careerchange yourself The full show
notes and transcriptions ofother interviews.
Are available@benfromwithin.comforward slash interviews.
So listen all the way throughand enjoy On today's show, I
(01:55):
have James soured Anderson, whois the co-founder of social tree
global along with his businesspartner, max Hannah.
They started their business as aproject in a bedroom back in
2016.
And it's now grown to become oneof the largest.
Dedicated business to business,social media agencies, working
(02:18):
with leading brands like UBS,IBM and Meltwater.
James and max have also helpededucate over 10,000 marketing
and communication experts aboutthe latest social media
intelligence insights in financeand healthcare.
Now, James is a formerconference producer.
I very much relate to himbecause I was one too.
(02:39):
And his business partner was aprevious business development
and commercial manager.
Both of them ran to Rometogether, I believe.
And then after that experiencedecided to start a business.
So James, welcome to the show.
James Sawand-Anderson (02:55):
Thanks Matt, for having me really
excited to be here today.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (03:00):
Awesome.
Yeah really great to have you onas well.
And I'm so glad to bring you onhere really to talk about the
power of.
Having a business partner tostart a business how to even
start a business in general.
When we're thinking aboutchanging jobs, changing careers,
essentially.
Yeah.
I talked earlier about this tripto Rome.
(03:21):
What was it about that trip withyour now business partner, max
that made you realize that youtwo would be great business
partners and actually make thatleap into entrepreneurship?
James Sawand-Anderson (03:34):
I think the, yeah the experience, the
run to run and was obviously oneof, a lot of training, a lot of
dedication and lots of time.
Met many people who fought.
We all insane doing that event.
Many people who he didn't thinkhe'd do it.
And so all those comments, allthose things were.
(03:55):
Very similar to the idea ofstarting a business.
The idea of business as manysame characteristics, it's a
very long, slow, hard slog manypeople who don't think it will
work and it's difficult.
So I think the skills we learnedfrom that by no means just not
exclusive.
There's plenty of people who dosports together who don't make
(04:16):
good business partners.
I think it goes beyond justthat.
I think there's a.
The personality kind of mix,which needs to work.
I think he has had complimentingas attributes and similar values
as this sort of many differentareas of things that have to
work.
But yeah, I think not incombination of being friends it
was really helpful.
And I think you have to applymain different criteria before
(04:39):
you ultimately.
Decide to go into business withsomeone because there's a big
commitment for both parties.
Business partnership isdifficult to sustain and it's,
it's really important to getright.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (04:51):
I'm really intrigued about your your
current world record holder inkettlebell sports.
I looked up your record in theGuinness book of records, you've
lifted in one hour.
12,400 kilos in, in doingkettlebell swings, squats
alternating 24 kilos and 16kilos, the world record holder.
(05:11):
And I think you and yourpartner, max talk about the
relationship between thephysical fitness world and the
lessons that you've learned fromthat and translating that into.
Starting and growing asuccessful business.
Tell me a little bit about whathave been the biggest lessons
learned from the physicalfitness world and how you've
(05:33):
translated that into startingand growing STG.
James Sawand-Anderson (05:36):
I think the relationship between
training and business is reallyimportant.
I think there's definitelyparticularly a young guy.
I think the first, every namewhere she can.
Test yourself is sports.
You're too young to really goout and commercially test
yourself in other areas andsport.
(05:56):
Is there a way in which you canin a quiet, safe environment,
and obviously as a continuingfallout of that, the idea of
physical fitness is reallyimportant as well.
So using your body physicalfitness to actually.
Pushed herself and understandthe limits of your potential.
Now I'm not saying that everysingle entrepreneur is to be
really fit.
I'm not saying that at all.
(06:16):
I'm just saying that in thequest to become fitter and you
can develop characteristics andskills, which will help you.
If you are an entrepreneur.
So I think that's one of thethings that we see, I learned
I've been in particularly thesports I focused on were around
endurance.
And it was focused on what kindof pushing the body and
different kinds of sports.
(06:37):
So there was kettlebell,Scottsdale was press up events.
There were obviouslyendurance-running events and all
these events were really helpfulin shaping my.
Values when it comes tobusiness.
And I think most things are warof attrition and I think that,
wherever it's business any otherareas of your experience or you
want to get some kind ofproficiency and it requires
(07:00):
repeat it sustained hard workand yeah, last assignment,
physical fitness.
So I think there's a massivebleed out of between the two.
And I think that if you can of arelative master over your own
body and mind.
I wouldn't say master.
It's ridiculous to have amastery, but our relative
acknowledgement andunderstanding of your limits.
(07:21):
I think it really helped me withwhen it comes to business.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (07:24):
Yeah.
I'm really interested about howyou actually started your
business and you know that whenyou made a decision with your
business partner to.
So I'm going to, we're going togo into business together.
What was the kind of journeybetween that decision to
actually starting STG youragency now?
Cause I know that you actuallypivoted a few times to to
(07:46):
actually work out that was thebusiness that you wanted to do.
Can you tell me a little bitabout that journey and some of
the transitions you had.
James Sawand-Anderson (07:54):
Yeah.
So the original idea was wewanted just to start a business.
So we didn't have an idea.
We just had a desire to start abusiness.
So that was the main thing wehad to design side of the
business.
And in, from that desire, cameSocial Tree Global So we
originally started off as beinga reseller in telephony, which
didn't really work.
So we wanted to start abusiness.
(08:16):
Didn't matter what end we justwanted to start something.
So I think now is a big thing.
Initially it was understandingthat the main driver was
starting a business.
It wasn't necessary.
This is the idea we weren'twedded to a singular idea, which
I think is really helpful.
So with that kind of knowledge,we just we're very agnostic as
to what we actually do.
(08:37):
So that allowed us to be muchmore flexible, malleable with
ideas.
And I think sometimes you canget to.
When it, to your ideas and someof the biggest values or things
I've learned is that having aconcept based approach to life
in terms of thinking aboutthings as concepts, rather than
having a sticky idea can be veryuseful.
(09:00):
The concept of entrepreneurship.
Is really interesting.
Your idea might not work, but ifyou want to be an entrepreneur,
it doesn't really matter whatthe idea is because yeah, the
art of entrepreneurship, theskill, the practice of
entrepreneurship, it's likebeing a blacksmith.
It's like being the carpenter.
You love starting businesses.
(09:20):
It doesn't matter what businessis, but the process of starting
your business and running it iswhat engages me.
So I can start business inanything.
It must be, it could be an armysetting.
Yeah, whatever you name it.
There's certain thing,computers, setting phones or
setting watches, whatever it is,the art of entrepreneurship is
why I enjoy it.
It's a skill of that.
(09:41):
And I feel like that's what alot of people miss is.
People want to, people want tothey look at the outcome of
think that's what I want to be.
So I want to be a I wanna run a.
E-commerce e-commerce store.
Yeah.
Without understanding thatprobably won't work.
The idea you initially set outto start probably wouldn't be
the idea you ended up being.
(10:02):
So if you fall in love with theidea, then you're going to feel
like you're going to be in aworld of pain.
It doesn't work once you fall inlove with the concept and you
fall in love with the practiceand art ones for ownership.
Then that idea might fail, butyou'll still be motivated to
continue because you love thehustle.
So to speak, you'd love theentrepreneurship process.
I think that's one of the, themain things we had early on,
(10:24):
which was really quite helpfulin the early days to really
understand our motivation.
when we had nothing.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (10:33):
Yeah.
Where do you think you got thisconfidence that things were
going to work out?
Cause obviously you shifted fromtelephony products into starting
quite successful social mediaagency.
Like how did you know.
That was going to work and thatyou were re you, you became
resilient enough to actuallykeep going and make it happen,
(10:54):
make it a successful, like wheredid that inner confidence come
from, that you kept at it?
James Sawand-Anderson (11:01):
There's also a luck element to this.
we were lucky enough that withinnine or 10 months, we've managed
to start earning an income, avery small income, but if it
carried on for another three orfour months and no income, we
would have failed.
There is a massive amount ofluck in anything, but the thing
is you can't change.
You can.
(11:21):
It's almost a psychology oflucky in that the more
opportunities you present toyourself, you're more open to
the more lucky you can become.
What you can control is yourwork ethic and your mindset who
you connect with, your attitude,all these things you can
control.
You can't control your luck butyou can control the amount of
opportunities you get to play.
(11:41):
And it's like a lottery.
Now you say unlimited lottery.
The more times you played, themore times you might get
rewarded.
So my motivation came from thefact that we were relatively
lucky that within eight or ninemonths, we managed to find
something and start to make usmoney, but it could have gone
either way in the early days,for sure.
But I suppose the inherentmotivation during that eight
(12:02):
months to making absolutelynothing, it was about eight or
nine months of zero income.
Is there a literally no moneywas the, yeah, it was a dream of
being self-employed.
It was a massive ambition is amassive thing for us to become
entrepreneurs.
That was for me.
Anyway, the burning motivationfrom day one, when I was in uni,
when I was working, only thing Iwanted to do was be an
(12:25):
entrepreneur.
Now there was no other job Iwanted to do.
I wanted to become.
I, I practitioner ofentrepreneurship as if you were
learned in carpentry, when it'sunderstand how it's been an
entrepreneur, and that was mycraft and that's what I wanting
to do.
That's what carried me throughthere's lots of wantrepreneurs
people who liked to read aboutentrepreneurship and they like
(12:47):
to listen to entrepreneurs.
They like to dabble in things.
That's fine.
There's no problems in that.
And I think everyone's going tohave.
A degree, the way the world'sgoing.
I think we're all going to be inthe future, doing some degree of
side hustle so I thinkeveryone's going to have to some
appreciation of whatentrepreneurship is, but I think
(13:08):
if you want to become a fullyfledged entrepreneur, you have
to have a desire.
Love.
I'll do it because that's whatultimately you did before,
because the numbers comemeaningless.
You have success with people.
If you just keep doing business,no matter what they do.
So I think that's what it isreally.
It's their motivation comes fromthe love combined with not
(13:28):
speaking of luck and ourparents, time.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (13:31):
Yeah.
And I'm still curious about,what made you decide on social
media agency?
I've read, you guys certainlymax has had a passion for social
media for awhile.
Was there like an element of,I'm passionate about this skill?
And so let's try this as abusiness or were you looking
for, hot trending businesses andjust going for something that
(13:54):
might be on a growth spurt.
James Sawand-Anderson (13:57):
I think social media cadence for us
because we were using socialmedia a lot for prospecting.
So that's why social media cameto our site.
It was more of a case of we weredoing social media anyway, and
he saw that there was this,there was demand for social
media, which hadn't beensatisfied.
So that's where I think the mainspark came from.
It came from, hang on, meanpeople aren't doing this, so we
(14:19):
should probably do this.
So we actually startedgenerating a lot of demand, a
lot of leads from doing thisstuff.
Yeah, that's how initially.
Came to be.
We started doing social mediaand realizing, Oh, Hey man, this
stuff, this really works.
People are using LinkedIn andnot using Twitter.
And it was mainly LinkedIn.
And then from that, we doubleddown on that process.
(14:40):
So yeah, through doing LinkedIn.
Early on.
We realized, Hey, the ma maybethe money isn't in selling
telephony but selling ourservices, generating demand, we,
the problem wasn't the problemwasn't demand.
It was the product.
So we just solved the demand.
That's what we did.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (14:59):
Yeah.
So it was a case of you juststarted, you started a business
and then you developed skills.
Some of them were your previousexperience and then you built on
that and develop skills inLinkedIn, and then you realized,
ah, okay.
They're not a lot of people aredoing this let's we're good.
So it was a kind of recognitionof.
(15:20):
We are good at this with with Dworks.
And also there is not many otherpeople doing it, and that was
the spark of creating thatentire businesses.
James Sawand-Anderson (15:29):
Yeah, sure.
This is that's exactly
Matt Garrow-Fisher (15:32):
right.
Now I was reading about some ofyour values in your business and
some of the values that define asocial tree global, that
resiliency and adventure, andand actually they guide every
step of your company.
Tell me, how did you decide tofocus on those values and how
(15:54):
has that helped your businessand also personal lives too?
James Sawand-Anderson (15:58):
So the idea of resiliency for me now
he's about to use is when youget more as idiot, you don't get
better app.
Carrying your burdens, you getstronger.
So you get stronger.
You still carry that burden.
There was any agency isn'tdiscarding a bird, and it's
being able to carry yourburdens.
You develop the strength, thecarrier burns.
(16:20):
You never lose your burdens.
You never forget the bad things.
What happens to you?
You carry them through your lifeand you don't your problems.
Don't get.
Yeah, they don't diminish.
You just get stronger indelivery and dealing with your
problems.
And I think that's one of thebig analogies I think it was
intercedes it's is incrediblyit's framed around.
And I think that one of theissues is you can become
(16:44):
resilient through practice, butultimately resiliency in its
base form is something which is.
I would need going to be asstrong as the support network
around you as well.
Becoming resilient means thatyou have the necessary apparatus
to actually cope with difficultthings going on so I think
resiliency is a difficultconcept to kind of master, but
(17:07):
in terms of our own business,resiliency is, just by putting
one foot forward every singleday and doing the basics every
day, amounted to a massivechange.
And I think there's any urgencyis that, it's been hours to do
the small daily things everysingle day.
And you think this hasn'tchanged, but over time you, you
have changed.
And what are we other than justthe state of now anyway, because
(17:29):
people always think about lifein terms of key benchmarks in
terms of, I can't wait to getthis.
I can't wait to get that.
I can't wait to get this thing,but ultimately, most of your
life.
It's just the mundane.
It's waking up.
It's going outside.
It's talking to people, it'seating food.
It's going to the toilet.
It's sleeping.
That is existence all the time.
(17:51):
And the outlying moments youthink about in life.
Like the big moments, they arejust little saw the flags in the
path of your life.
The majority of it like 99.9% ofyour life.
It's just existing.
So you have to find that somemeasure of comfort in your
existence because that step,gonna whatever you do, wherever
(18:13):
you become a millionaire,wherever you become
impoverished, a weldaccomplished athlete, most of
your life is just living.
It's not what you think.
All these are the key moments,bit of common, a champion that
lasts what, like five minutesthen you're living again.
So I think Vassar is the idea ofresiliency is in our
understanding, the process isreally important is that it
(18:34):
isn't in fact everything thatwe, I always had an ambition.
that getting to Rome would bethis.
Amazing euphoric thing.
And it wasn't really, it wasgreat to get to Rome.
What I learned was the processof getting to Rome was the
magic.
That was the essence ofeverything.
It was the steps.
It was the day-to-day grind.
The process in itself was theanswer.
(18:55):
It wasn't the gold.
And I think resiliency is theadmission that life is
essentially a recurring exercisein.in day to day habits and it's
up to you, what habits you form,but the cumulative has habits
can either help your life ormake your life a lot sadder.
So the first idea of resiliencyis understanding that the grind
(19:17):
is everything and you shouldenjoy the grind.
If you don't enjoy that, thenyou really are doing the wrong
thing and cause that's most ofyour life.
And the second one, obviouslyadventure is precisely the idea
that, The sense of adventure isso important.
The sense of adventure meanssomething playful.
It's something unknown.
It's being experimental.
It's going out beyond thecomfort zone.
(19:39):
And I think that's reallyimportant.
And you have to have a sense ofadventure in the world.
You have to try things.
And obviously this year we'vehad lock down and it's been
really hard to do that, but youcan have your own sense of
adventure by doing somethingonline.
Yeah.
If we digital, yeah.
You can have a digital eventtoo.
You can try things on LinkedIn.
You can try some new content.
The spirit of adventure runsthrough our veins, regardless of
whether we are fixed in terms ofgeography or not, because we
(20:03):
always try new things.
And our idea of business saysthe sense of.
All the adventure, the sense ofwe're going to try some new
things.
We're not afraid to fail.
We're not afraid to do, thingswrong sometimes because they are
resilient and we have a sense ofadventure.
And I think those two thingstogether really distill the
essence of our business
Matt Garrow-Fisher (20:24):
I know I'm actually curious about.
If you didn't take this trip toRome, do you think you would
have started your business orwould you have started it like
so soon?
Was that the real kind ofinspiration that the gave you
the belief that, Hey we have theresilience for this.
We've worked out thisstep-by-step, we're doing it
(20:44):
step by step and we've and wemade it work.
It was a tough challenge.
We did it together.
We can do this.
We can make a business.
Was that physical challenge likethat a metaphor that changed
that actually changed yourbelief and.
If it was, would you encourageother people that aren't sure of
themselves to take on a similarchallenge?
James Sawand-Anderson (21:05):
I say we did want to change to our
business before it runs around.
It was always talking aboutstarting a business.
So we did myself business forthat.
I would say that.
The idea of other people, again,super break, Kathy, what you
want from life, becauseparticularly now with the weld
and lockdowns and remoteworking, and a big part of why
(21:26):
people want you to startbusiness was the idea of
freedom.
I can work when I want now withtechnology that kind of is
becoming reality.
So I think people should be verycareful about excuse me wanting
to be an entrepreneur.
I think you feel it's Oh, it'sjust something I should do.
But what you need to think needto dig deeper than that.
Because entrepreneurship is a,is, like I said, it's a school
(21:47):
where it's a practice thatdiscipline.
So the art of entrepreneurshipis become a black sphere.
So you might like to Midcoastsalts, but you may not
necessarily want to make thesword.
So you might not, you might lookat the business, but you may
hate this.
Process of building a business.
The process of forging a swordinvolves a lot of skill, effort,
(22:09):
failure, discipline, growing abusiness is incredibly hard.
It's a life consuming thing.
You have no holidays.
You had no, really any otherfolks assigned the business is
consumed your whole life.
And it doesn't matter if you'remarried.
If you engage, if you're goingto have children, if you have
family, whatever it is, yourbusiness is going to consume.
(22:31):
A sizable chunk of yourconscious day.
So when you go on this path tograb business, now this is
obviously if you want to grab alot business.
So I'd say if you're looking togrow a business, a million pound
business or above many accountbusiness, like a large business,
and you're not most businessesin the UK are the average
revenue business is half amillion, but most businesses are
(22:53):
micro businesses.
90, I think 92% of allbusinesses are market
businesses.
And they do revenues off of thething, a hundreds of 300,000
pounds.
And there's the whole army ofpeople who are self-employed
contractors.
So again, this is the questionlike you want to be an
entrepreneur, but let's decodewhat that means.
Do you want to work foryourself?
Great.
Do you want some freedom?
Amazing.
(23:14):
Or you could be a contractor andhave the entrepreneurship.
You have your income, you haveyour new business.
You have this contracted limitedcompany.
Get your money.
Go home.
No, I want to start the fullnessbusiness.
I want to grow a business.
I want to get to 7 millionpounds on a set of business and
find very different kettle offish that, that super full
business that's hiring staffthat scaling a business that's
(23:36):
that's, maybe the company ascorporation tax, that's all the
residual for the businessownership.
We'll run very different things,very different goals, very
different objectives.
Again, it's a wide spectrum,this all of entrepreneurship,
but I feel like.
We don't really sang on sayingto be an entrepreneur is not
good enough because I know likeyou, that it doesn't help
(23:57):
anyone.
I think that's the answer toyour question is around about
my.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (24:02):
Yeah, so interesting.
I A lot of people that arelistening to the show that,
thinking about career change andthey've had this itch of our,
everyone starting a business.
Now, maybe I can do that.
It will give me freedom.
I'll maybe I could be amillionaire.
But what you've just highlightedthere is, it comes back to your
value of resiliency.
(24:22):
You really have to, It's painfulat some points and you really
have to work, and it's not awalk in apart by any means.
And you need to mentally beprepared for that and know that
you're going to enjoy theprocess.
Like you want to be anentrepreneur and you, because
you love the, you actually lovethe concept of entrepreneurship
(24:43):
and actually grinding away andcreating something versus just
the dream of, I want to make amillion dollars or I want to
make I want to build a hugecompany or whatever.
I think a lot of people focus somuch on the golden.
They forget about the process.
And that's why I dunno, I don'tknow what the stats are in terms
of.
Business FA business startupsfailing, but it's, I think it's
(25:05):
pretty high in the UK.
Certainly in the U S somethinglike 60%, but does that bat
right?
I'm most sure.
James Sawand-Anderson (25:12):
Yeah.
And I think you're right.
Besides the process, again, it'severything.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you make.
X amount money because there'sentrepreneurs who I still work
at, even when they're mini andmultimillionaire.
So that's a myth you're nevergoing to find.
You're never going to findenough money to be satisfied.
I, because there's always goingto be.
(25:34):
A lifestyle, which will meetyour income.
So if if you wanna make amillion pounds, okay, so you get
a nice house, get a car, you getthe Knight's area, designer
clothes, then you're living alife in which you have to make
money and you need more in it,10 million pounds.
And to get 10 million pounds,you're hanging around people who
have yachts, and then you go Ineed to get, I need to get a
(25:56):
superyacht and I need to be abillionaire.
So be very careful about Ghanapark, because there's never
enough money in terms of a humaningredients, limitless.
That's the first thing thesecond is yes, absolutely.
Do after that, the process,because that's all we have,
there's no, if you think thereis a finish line, there's not,
I'm afraid and you can take itas a.
(26:16):
As a negative or positive, butthis is it the existence when
you have now in gray cup everyday, we think ourselves, we go
to the toilet, eat food thatday.
I don't think people talk aboutthe mundane about life.
That is life.
So if you think about the bigmarquee moments, the social
media doesn't help because youget this feed of people posting
(26:36):
their marquee moments, which isfine.
Great your style posting yoursuccess.
But the reality is if you don'tknow that person a better
happier and all, they might bereally unhappy and you might be
really happy and you don't knowyou because you think you're
not, you should be doingsomething else, but maybe you
shouldn't, you know it becauseultimately the process is what
matters.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (26:56):
I was going to ask what's your goal in your
business now.
I You've got, I think 10, 10team members can staff and like
revenue wise, are you in thekind of seven figures now
almost, or over.
James Sawand-Anderson (27:10):
Yeah, so we want to, I call it, this is
the greats of 5 million pounds,so many pounds now, and anyone
to get to 5 million pounds is anext big step for us.
So we have the, a team of seemsto be 11 staff and you have a
really great team and therevenue for us, you can insert
into the figure, the mostimportant thing I said before,
waking up and having a teamaround you, having a good ethos,
(27:33):
having a good culture.
At mission, the money, therevenue is always going to
change when he gets afive-minute, it'd be 10 minutes
and relative John's view, that'sstill quite small business.
Okay.
I'm not saying, most peoplethink about business as Mark
Zuckerberg, Facebook I'veSilicon Valley.
I will look at me.
(27:54):
That's not going to happen.
I think most people are going togo in them to get to 200,000
pound business.
I think you can get there.
I think half a million.
I think, you know what?
You could probably do it.
Half million is I think thecutoff point, I think half
million, then you're going toneed a bit of luck.
You're gonna need a product it'sgoing to need to really read,
understand, and then you'regonna need to level up the Gulf
(28:14):
between half a million and amillion, I think is a big Gulf.
I think that's where the coughis between I can black this half
million, 2 million pounds.
You can't black, a million poundrevenue per year.
So that's the big jump.
But yeah, our goal is to, Ithink, to get to 5 million pound
revenue by 2025, 25, five six,and the team.
(28:35):
And it's not just me.
It's not just the rest of theteam.
And we want to, grow a greatagency and the team you have
now, I want them to be, to bepart of that growth and speed,
part of the leadership team andgo from there.
But as you said, going fullcircle, this conversation, a lot
of this is the process isenjoying the process and trying
to fall in love with it everyday, because that's all we have
(28:57):
and that's all we're gonna everhave.
And.
Unless someone tells meotherwise, or we've got, this is
short timeline.
So enjoy it.
Enjoy the grind.
If you don't enjoy it, thenchange because life is so short.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (29:11):
A lot of people on the show talk about,
passion, purpose, and balance,and certainly with purpose.
I think your mission is tohumanize corporate social media,
by putting people in theirstories at the heart of their
message.
What's the importance of settinga mission.
In your business or life, Iguess as well.
(29:32):
And at what point did you setyours and what difference did it
make when you had that on paper?
James Sawand-Anderson (29:37):
Yeah, I think your mission is really
important because it's going tohave ups and downs.
Do you have days where you haveterrible days?
Yeah, I'd have a thesis as astrong framework in which you
operate.
Then when bad things happened toyou have no way of calibrating
that and going, wow, I am it.
They didn't want to see themout.
I'm on the, I'm on the journeyto this objective here.
(29:58):
So I think having a mission isreally important.
It doesn't have to deal with youwashy, but yeah, for us, I
genuinely believe that socialmedia is completely changing our
interpretation of how brands andbrands engage.
We think this is a massivetransfer.
The tension away from monolithicbrand entities to the people,
which make the brands and yeah,I, that's why I wake up
(30:21):
generally believe and I believesocial media is a powerful tool,
which can be used for bad aswe've seen.
It's well documented.
You can you have to have anappreciation for mental health
considerations, but I also thinkis a as a tool for great, good.
I think it has a huge potentialfor good in the world.
Yeah it's a mixed bag.
And that's what I feelpassionate about when I'm old
(30:41):
and dying.
I want to look back on my lifeand say, you know what, when
some way in, in helping to bringa aloud transparency to tease
companies which were previouslynot there.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (30:53):
Yeah.
And we talked earlier about theimportance of actually just
enjoying your day and like thepeople you work with versus,
just chasing money, because asyou said, like when you get to
six figures, seven figures,billion dollar businesses, You
keep working.
Cause you just enjoy it.
You enjoy like the environment,everything you do in your day.
(31:13):
You've already started an onlineAcademy with a mission to give,
I think 10,000 students did justskills.
They need to compete in the jobmarket.
And you're also, I believeleading an initiative this year.
Where you aim to educate ahundred thousand students from
Britain's biggest universitieson the usefulness and power of
LinkedIn, what is it about.
(31:36):
Doing these projects likevoluntary projects and giving
back this contribution aspectthat is important for your
business, for your culture andalso for you, for your whole
kind of purpose and drive andwhat you're doing each day.
James Sawand-Anderson (31:52):
I've always fought.
Life is there's three phases tolife.
The first phase of life you'regetting helps and zero it's 20.
So you are.
Yeah.
You're helpless.
You need help.
The second phase is helpingyourself.
I think you need to helpyourself.
You need to be selfish.
I think you can be too selfless,which means you can't actually
help others because you haven'tdeveloped your own skills.
(32:12):
You haven't developed thecapacity to help.
So I think you should be selfishin the twenties and your
thirties to some degree,necessarily the forties, because
you need to get yourself in aposition where you are going to
be able to will and maximumchange.
Do you need to have the cloudsget out to help others, not
should Marsh in the plane.
If you had to put the oxygenmask on yourself, you die and
your home, your kids die.
(32:33):
So getting helped helpingyourself in the first phase of
life is helping others.
I think that you, as a human, Idon't think you can live a
healthy and I'm selfish in manyways because I don't think I can
be completely happy.
If I know that I haven't doneanything in my short time enough
to help others.
I feel like you can, you canbecome a very unhappy person
(33:00):
pursuing your own self,interested to such a degree that
you forget that ultimately.
The only thing, most importantthings that are raised well,
humans really.
Like that's all it is.
Wait, all businesses did it,humans, religious person.
But the trap from the fact thatI selfishly I think that it's
(33:21):
important to, now I'm in mythirties, obviously at the
moment, these products are quitesmall.
But I want to start doing thembecause when I get to the first
phase, which is helping others,I'd like to.
That they can't a little, mytime when I'm older to helping
others, because that's what it'sall about.
It's about passing the Weldon ina place, which is slightly
better than when you joined it.
It's given people an opportunityto giving people a shot.
(33:42):
So I always give people a shot.
I'll try my best.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (33:45):
I just curious about how you.
Live with balance or how you getsome kind of balance running
such a successful business andhaving quite a large team now.
And is, have you been able torestore a level of kind of
balance to your life so you canfocus on, other things like.
Your relationships and yourhealth and all that kind of
(34:07):
stuff.
Cause I can imagine when youstarted your business and like
you weren't earning any moneyand then obviously growing a
business, it was just all handson deck.
Has that changed?
And have you been able to setstructures or routines to enable
you to actually have a lifebalance?
James Sawand-Anderson (34:25):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
Again, it goes back to the pointaround button.
This is my life is not badbecause the business is so much
part of my life.
And that's just the way it is.
We don't earn our, we're not abusiness which where we and max
go home.
We aren't Lowe's and my neighbornow knows nothing.
Like our income is parity withsome stock.
(34:46):
Because that's just the way weinvest the money and run the
business, so it's, yeah, it'snot, it's a slog where I need a
business we're relatively small.
And because we, we've bebootstrapping the whole thing.
So there is bad.
The thing I'd say that I've gota really good supportive fiance
who is, in a relationship.
I think that's really importantto have.
(35:07):
This again, full circle havingcontrasting, but complimentary
personality traits, I think werereally important.
So I think there's a, with mylife and very fortunate to have
someone who really understandsand appreciates how I work and
works with me.
So yeah, absolutely.
I would like to some point have.
Definitely a more about it.
So I think at the stage of thebusiness, it can't have that.
(35:28):
It might've been, but yeah, veryfriends had people around me
that support me.
But at the same time, Yeah.
People who say, Oh, you don't tosupport me in the beginning.
If your idea isn't, if you tellsomeone an idea and they support
you off the bat, then your ideais crazy enough.
In my opinion, I think peopleshould, your family should say
yo ass not go.
You show me what to do.
(35:49):
That's great.
You should want that reaction.
And you owe it on your family toprove them wrong.
You don't, you shouldn't assume.
Support is given.
And I think that's ridiculous.
I wouldn't want my familysupport me jumping off a cliff.
They'd like us to read about it.
And mindless support is reallybad.
It's a sycophant.
There's one that type of energy.
(36:10):
You want people to kick back usout if you have a good idea, but
that's not a, Hey.
That's not a high as someone whois not someone who is looking
out and saying, yo, that's not,I don't think you should stop
visit.
That's perfect.
You it's your job to turn themaround.
It's your job to work hardenough and to just prove them
wrong.
But don't think they're haterfor putting the idea off because
(36:32):
it's stupid and any idea, whichis quite frankly stupid and
crazy is a good idea.
That's the idea.
Those are the ideas that shouldbe really going to change the
world.
I think there's a bit of, peoplejust think that if your family
don't support you straight away,then there's some kind of
Hayden's.
But if you idea side a bit, it'son the businesses and having to
do crazy things.
(36:52):
So don't expect that in theother days.
Yeah.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (36:55):
It is a crazy thing and like I've.
I've started businesses myself,and I'm an ex I'm an extroverted
person and you are as well.
And I think your businesspartner is working in a sales
background.
What like, do you think thatthis kind of concept of being
extrovert, I struggled workingon my own.
(37:17):
I really did like it.
And I think it's because I wasextroverted and I really liked
working with the team andbouncing ideas off people.
Do you think Your partnershipand having a business partner
was like really helped becausebecause you were extroverted and
what do you think has been thebiggest gift from having a
(37:37):
partnership and in business,like with looking back in all of
the years, you've, the last fouryears, five years, like what's
been that biggest gift fromhaving an actual partner.
James Sawand-Anderson (37:49):
I think definitely sharing the burden.
I think, yeah.
Having somebody who's doing thebusiness, I think it has a
massive thing.
Like having a business plan issuper important to that.
But also came out to the journeything.
We have with this process, theprocess of working with someone
that, I really get on with max,all my best friends and we've
always got on and seeing hisdevelopment and him seeing my
(38:10):
development and seeing obviouslyour lifestyle changes.
We've got the older mask gotmarried.
Kids, aren't going to get nice.
There's a whole sort of, you cansee the mirror of the progress
through the other person,whereas when you're on your own,
you don't really see that asmuch.
So I think that's one big thing.
And I think, yeah, it's havingthat.
I think word, I think a moments,a double when they shed.
(38:31):
Having a, this is all about lifeis, and I get, I realize it is
just about.
The people around you and we'reall seeking some kind of
meaningful engagement withsomeone else.
Now, what is business?
We're trying to influence otherhumans, it's online, but so much
about this life is about that.
And I think we are in a positionwhere a lot of the there's a,
(38:56):
there is an anxiety momentbecause I feel like we don't
really, or we're forgetting.
What it means to live a goodlife and that what you associate
with happiness is somethingwhich can be attributed very
easily.
So if you want peace andcontentment, happiness, that
will come very easily to comesthrough introspection, you can
(39:18):
be peaceful and happy in apacked tube.
All you can be at peace andhappy in any situation because
happiness is this fitness comesin and comes out.
And I think another thing I'velearned is that, my emotions are
happiness and sadness go outsidekind of stock market graphics.
They pass through me for a day.
It's I feel sad.
(39:39):
I feel happy about it.
Hang on it.
I'm not doing it.
If this is just, this is someweird external thing I'm happy
and I'm sad.
What are some moments I'm reallyhappy in situations, but I
shouldn't be when someone whohungry, sad and middle specialty
retail.
So I've learning now.
This is not something I havecontrol over.
If I'm hungry, I'm happy.
I'm not happy.
So I think, yeah, theappointment business part is
(40:01):
like, the process is so potentbecause that's all that matters.
The process, does having abusiness partner.
Does it enrich your day or doyou wake up going?
This person is I hate working ifthey richer day and you enjoy
and you both have a goodrelationship.
I think it's fantastic.
And I think statistically,you're more likely to succeed as
(40:22):
well.
I think businesses with abusiness partner are
statistically more likely tosucceed and those that don't.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (40:29):
That's solid advice actually about like
really getting on with someoneand actually them enriching your
day and you enriching their dayto make that whole journey much
easier.
Where can people get in touchwith you?
Find out more about social treeglobal James.
James Sawand-Anderson (40:44):
I think it is the one that James said,
Addison.
I'm always happy to connect andlearn.
And thank you so much, Matt,obviously for, for the vitamin a
show.
It's great.
It's really enjoyed talking toyou and yeah, LinkedIn's a one
off you want to follow me onTwitter, dura James, but yeah.
Matt Garrow-Fisher (41:01):
So I call it like, Someone that's passionate
about what they do purposefuland have some kind of a burning
desire to just keep going, likereally motivated.
I call that to burn from within.
And my question I always askguests is what's the one thing
do you think has made thebiggest difference for you to
(41:22):
burn from within you and yourbusiness to, to just really have
that drive and burning desire tokeep going?
James Sawand-Anderson (41:28):
Good question.
I think the idea of adventure, Ithink that's what makes me, and
it's this desire of where are wegoing next?
This best grind is this path.
I think it's the adventure, Ithink is the opportunity there.
The tension that we're neverreached yet, I'll never reach
perfection.
You'll never get there.
You're never been perfection.
The eventual never finish, butwhat matters is the process is
(41:51):
the art of pursuing perfection.
It's the art of pursuingadventure.
That is the essence ofeverything.
So it's almost falling in lovewith that and appreciating
that's all we have.
That's what keeps me going everysingle day.
Waking up with a smile on herface and saying that I'm here
again for more of the same,bring you on, and let's see
where.
(42:12):
Last taste me,
Matt Garrow-Fisher (42:14):
James at Anderson.
Thank you very much for that.
It's been an awesomeconversation.
I really appreciate it.
Wow.
That was a really interestingperspective.
And to the life of a, of anentrepreneur.
An entrepreneur, that's grown ateam and A seven figure
business.
To really show, there's a lot ofwantrepreneurs out there and
that's fine.
But the reality and thesacrifices and the hard work and
(42:37):
the actual process.
And the grind of.
Entrepreneurship and making itwork.
Is not to be underestimated.
That was a big takeaway fromthat conversation with James.
And, knowing that he wanted tobe an entrepreneur for a very
long time and that drive.
To make things and create thingswhatever.
(43:01):
It takes, that.
That really came through in thisinterview.
And I think.
If you are.
Looking for a career changeright now and want to be an
entrepreneur.
Not a wantrepreneur andentrepreneur.
Really take note in terms of thesacrifices that you will have to
make.
Is this an a.
Task list that's given to youeach day, like a nine to five.
(43:21):
You make your own tastic scarp.
You have to motivate yourself.
If things aren't working, you'renot making any money like James
and max didn't.
From the first nine months oftheir business.
You have to have the resilienceand determination.
And self-belief that you willmake things work.
And just.
Being exposed to stories likeJames is is good.
(43:45):
Preparation, I think forembarking on that journey.
And I would encourage you toreach out to James directly
through LinkedIn.
I'll leave his profile link onthe show notes.
And any other entrepreneuractually.
By doing informationalinterviews and really finding
out what life is like.
In their shoes, if you want tobe an entrepreneur theory is one
thing.
(44:06):
Living that life and the processof it is a very different ball
game.
And you might absolutely love itand it might be the right.
Career path for you.
So hope you enjoyed thatepisode.
Any questions, please drop me aline, matt@aburnfromwithin.com
with it at double T.
Don't forget to rate.
(44:26):
The bone from withinpodcast@ratethispodcast.com
slash burn from then until nexttime they with passion, purpose,
and balance.
And ben
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