Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a real community, create a movement, and make a true impact—while still having a ton of fun? Don’t miss the latest episode of GSR Place, where our host B.D. sits down with the unstoppable Ben Keane: founder of Rebel Book Club, RAAISE (helping fund climate change startups), and Superfli!
From living on a remote island in Fiji to launching a decade-strong book club, Ben shares jaw-dropping stories, game-changing lessons on tribe-building, and the secrets behind turning big ideas into REALITY.
🌎📚Get ready for candid conversations about: ✨ The wild origin story behind Rebel Book Club ✨ Why building a community beats just chasing customers ✨ Making what the world really needs (not just another product!) ✨ Startup wisdom you’ll ACTUALLY want to try.
This episode will inspire you to stop scrolling and take action on your boldest ideas.
https://benkeane.com
From living on a remote island in Fiji to launching a decade-strong book club, Ben shares jaw-dropping stories, game-changing lessons on tribe-building, and the secrets behind turning big ideas into REALITY.
🌎📚Get ready for candid conversations about: ✨ The wild origin story behind Rebel Book Club ✨ Why building a community beats just chasing customers ✨ Making what the world really needs (not just another product!) ✨ Startup wisdom you’ll ACTUALLY want to try.
This episode will inspire you to stop scrolling and take action on your boldest ideas.
https://benkeane.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Grow, Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bead Dalton, author of the Assisted Purchase, True Gravity, and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bead with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, everybody, Beaty Dalton here, Gross Sell and Retire Podcast today.
I'm here with I'd call him mister Tribe, so we're
gonna call him Ben Keene, founder Rebel Book Club. You've
got Rays which helps with funding climate change startups, and Superfly.
I think I've got that spelled right and said right.
(00:50):
So Ben, welcome to the Gross Selling Retire Podcast. Tell
us a little bit about you and a little bit
about each of the projects, and then we'll dig deeper
into him as we go.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Through the episode. It's great to be here, b D. Yeah,
So you've got those bang on and you know, you're
probably more accurate than most of my family and close friends,
Like what are you working on now? So? Yeah, serial
entrepreneur for good and good and bad? You know, always
on this being always on this journey, which started I
guess for me, you know twenty years ago when I
was leaving university and I, you know, all my friends
(01:20):
were off to working corporate city jobs, and I was like,
why are we doing this? And even if it's a
great opportunity, why are we doing this when we're interested
in other things in our lives, it seems from our
time together. So I went off traveling like you do
in your early twenties and you want to run away
from things, and I learned a lot about the world
that way. My first business came about because I was
(01:41):
working community and eco tourism and it was the time
of my Space. What else was going on in the
technolog tech world at the time. BlackBerry phones were the thing, MSN, Messenger,
hotmail dot com. So that was the kind of tech
stack and the question that a friend and I would
answers like could we bring people together online and linked
(02:03):
to a destination in the world a bit like bands had,
you know, MySpace for their fan basis. Now this is normal,
but in two thousand and six it was a radical idea.
So that was the first ventures. Could we crowdfund bring
people together around a destination in the world, and we
found this island in in the South Pacific, real Island,
not Internet island, and we crowdfunded the development of an
(02:26):
eco tourism project on that island, and so I lived.
My first venture was really living in the South Pacific
for five or six years in my twenties, building this
physical community alongside the local Fijian team and chief, and
then an online community. So that was my baseline. That's
that was my MBA that as you can imagine it was.
(02:49):
There was a it was a big adventure. It sounds
as adventurous. It was as adventurous as it sounds. And
read a book about it, and there was a lot
of attention on that project. But from it came this.
The clarity that came from it and has remained in
my work and ventures since then, is one, how do
we bring people together to connect with each other with
(03:11):
a shared purpose to try and solve a problem in
the world and have fun. Why we do it? That's
the tribe building element. And the second part is how
do we use the tech tools available to us right now?
They're a low cost and super powerful and creative to
to advance our missions and our goals. And that's the
(03:32):
thing that those two things have stayed constant even though
all the different projects have changed.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
How did you choose the island? How did you choose
what you were going to do? I mean, and and
your book came off the back of it, Like you said,
tribe wanted so you tried to set up this community
on this island in the middle of big in the
middle of nowhere. How did you choose the island? And
how did what was what was like the best thing
that came out of it and the most challenging thing
that came out of it?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Oh yeah, I mean I could say I wrote a
book on this, so you could. I could talk a
lot about this. We found the island through Well you
talk about technology, it changes your life b D. Like
I always ask people this question, what change your life?
Was it the tamagotchi, the iPhone? What you can age
people based on this? Right HTML? So for me it
was Google Search. Right So just now as eighteen year
(04:19):
olds today growing up with LMS and AI tools, I
discovered Google Search and I was like, oh my god,
I can find any information I want. And this was
really exciting. In two thousand and five and so I
searched Islands for Sale and because that was the thing
we had in mind, is like, we wanted to be
(04:41):
kind of the opposite of an online community. What is
the opposite of what we call back then a social network. Well,
perhaps it's a remote tropical place somewhere very different to
life in the UK in the winter. And so yeah,
when I had googled Islands for Sale and entered this
world of millionaires and super yachts and eventually found my
(05:01):
way to a blog by an Australian called the Ilo
Maniac as someone who was obsessive about writing about islands
and blogging was big. Blogging was a big thing in
two thousand and five. So I messaged this guy and
I said, hey, look, we've got this idea for a
kind of crowdfunding eco tourism project. He's like, are you
what weed are you smoking? It sounds pretty strong. I
(05:22):
was like, no, no, we're not. This isn't The Beach
if you remember The Beach, the Leonardo DiCaprio film, so
that was out at the time. I said, no, no,
we don't want to run away from the world. We
want to connect the world and showcase a place support
its sustainable development, showcase eco living and have a great adventure.
So he said, ah, there's this place in Fiji. They's
just come onto the local sort of real estate platform
(05:44):
that he knew of and the local community they are
looking to develop it. The actual real story from their
side was that the chief had been been prophesied to
him by his friend and gardner that one day the
world would come to this island, and so he had
accepted that as like this was real and therefore spoke
to his nephew, and his nephew said, well, if you
(06:05):
want that prophecy to come through, it might help if
we put an add up on the local real estate board.
And they are two worlds met.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
That's fabulous. So so let's get in this. So you
have all sorts of businesses you've got, so so really
quick walk us through the Rebel book Club. What what's
the premise around it and how it's it's a community,
because I want to get into the next question about
community and customers.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
But yeah, so Reubel book Club. I don't know, I
can't see your bookshelf b D. But a lot of
us suffer from this thing that the Japanese called so
t s u n d o ku son doku and
so is a Japanese word that means the growing pile
of books on your There we go, on your.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Twenty books.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
There you go, and he's only written half of them.
So the growing pile of books that you have or
could be on your e reader or your kindle or
your bedside tape wherever they are. That you keep buying
the books, but you're not reading the books, or you're
only reading. You're not keeping up pace. Yes, because it
takes two minutes to buy a book, it takes quite
(07:10):
a few hours to read a book. So the Japanesque basically,
your mind, your curiosity is bigger than your ability to
consume the knowledge. And this is an age old problem,
we thought. My friend and I compared our kindles at
the time, we all have between we had very similar books,
mainly nonfiction, mainly about you know, business and politics and
environment and things going on in the world, personal development,
(07:32):
health and wellbeing. And they were all between ten and
thirty percent read, or about three chapters in. Yes, and
I said to him, I said, why are we both
struggling to read further than chapter three? Some of these
books are really great books. Why are we struggling to focus,
and he's like, oh, we need some accountability. We need nonfiction.
You have to work a little bit harder than fiction.
Sometimes it's not always a page turner. And so we're like,
(07:56):
we'll do this radical thing. We'll start a book club.
No one's ever done that, do it for thousands of years, right,
but we said that we'll do it. We'll try and
do it slightly differently. The Rebellion and Rebel book Club
was one, could we finish the book so we would
be rebelling as enthusiastic buyers of these nonfiction books by
(08:17):
actually finishing or improving our reading habit at the very least.
And two, could we rebel and not just go, oh,
that was a great book, I learned so much and
put it on the shelf and just not apply any
of it to our lives, our work or lives. Could
we Number two, could we try and apply one or
two things from that book to our lives by sharing,
(08:39):
coming together and sharing. So that was the idea Rebel
book Club. So that was May twenty fifteen, and we
picked a theme. We picked three nonfiction books. We invited fifteen.
We said, let's try and get fifteen people to join us.
It was a really unambitious project, which is why it's
so fun because a lot of the projects I've been
involved with have been like, Wow, we're going to change
(09:00):
something big and try and solve a big problem, which
Rebel book Club was like, can we improve our reading
habits and apply what we learn a little bit more
and have fun and let's just try and do this
for one month. So the key thing I think early
on Beady that made it work was that we put
a price point on it. So we said it's a membership.
(09:21):
You'll pay, you're invite to join Rebel, but or you apply.
We actually for the first couple of hundred members we
did you have to apply, So you apply, if you
if you're approved, pay fifteen pounds and then you can
come join the Rebel book Club. And at the time
that included a book and a cocktail and an event.
I mean, it's way too generous for that la for me.
(09:41):
But the cool thing was is we got fifteen people,
we broke even, and I think that first month we
got twenty four and we're like, that was fun, Let's
do that again. And so that was May twenty fifteen.
In May, this year during this week. So two months
ago we celebrated our tenth year and we haven't missed
a month. So we've r Rebel book Club every single
month for a decade. That's one hundred and twenty months
(10:04):
in a row, and it's just been this really fun
it's not gone huge, it's not gone massive, but it's
been this really fun, consistent project that's made a positive income.
It's a little nice little business.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
We've earned a little salary from it, those of us
who've been running it for a decade, and some amazing
connections through it. So that's Rebel book Club.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And what was this year? What was your best book?
Your favorite book in the last twelve months that you
guys pulled up.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Well, the one that's on my mind is by Fern Brady.
I've got them all here on the shelf. So from
months one to month one hundred and twenty two now,
so the theme was autism and your adversity. So we
just change the themes each month. This month's Personal July
is personal finance. Last month we were reading about raw
materials and supply change, so it's a real mix autism
(10:53):
and your diversity. We read strong female character by Fern Brady,
who's a Scottish comedian who came from a small village,
working class background, suffered, struggled with this this thing, this identity,
and what didn't discover until she was in her late
twenties that she was clearly autistic. And she tells this
(11:15):
very funny, dark story of her life and her coping mechanisms,
and through it references how what she learned about autism,
and then as a reader you learn about it. So
there's a strong human story and it made a real
impact on our community because one it's so it's such
an engaging read human story, and two because you learn
(11:36):
a lot about autism if you didn't know about it
through her journey, and it led some great conversations. And yeah,
really good impactful book.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
That's fabulous. Okay, so let's go into you talking about
building that. So not every business needs a community, not
everybody everybody like you know, but when do you switch
from that that thought process of full nonprofit customer clients
focused to actually this feels like it needs to be
(12:09):
a movement kind of these people won't leave me if
things go bad. Community style organism, organization. Where do you
where do you feel that great. This is a great
essay question, bed, I know it's a question.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah, yeah. Well look, my version of this, and I
think we all probably have a different version of it,
is not a dictionary definition this, but my version of
community in business and is it so marketing? You know,
people call communities when they've just like followers on social
channels and there's commenting. That's not in my definition. That's
(12:46):
not community. Community is when people interact between each other
in that group. So maybe that like Lady Gaga's whatever
she calls them, her fans have those sub communities where
they come together and they form groups. But you know,
it's not top down, it's it's peer to peer. So
that's community. And then the way that I define a
kind of tribe in the in the world that we're operating,
(13:08):
not indigenous communities but like set up projects, is community
with a purpose. So it's someone like and go back
to the island story, right, Okay, we're going to do
this thing. Who wants to follow me? I'm going to
do this thing. Join me, and we're going to go
on this adventure. These are the terms and conditions or
the values of the tribes. This is the role you'll play.
This is the business model of it. Off we go,
(13:30):
and so it's a purposeful We're going to try and
do this thing in the world, build an eco island
village and learn from it. Start a book club with
a purpose, you know. So that's that's how I define it.
You're I think you're absolutely right to say not every
business and it should be a community or needs to
be a community. And I think the key is not
doing it as an as an add on, as a
(13:50):
marketing channel, which I think has been the mistake that
a lot of people have made, understandably because it's been
marketed aggressively as a tactic and a tool of the
last ten twenty years. It's not something you can just
add on and go, oh, yes, so we've got paid
ads over there and SEO there, and then we've got
community tactics here. It's like, no community has to be
(14:13):
to be this real connection between people and you current.
It does have structure and you can foster it. And
there's so many brilliant examples, and there's a little formula
which I'm happy to share. It's not rocket science that
I've learned and observe within the projects that have worked
for me. But also for the ones I've seen out
in the world that have worked, is that this is
the book I haven't yet written, but you know, on
(14:35):
tribe building, but really around the practices that make community successful.
But the ones that tend to work more often than not,
the ones that start with community at the beginning. It's like,
we're doing this because we're we want to bring people
together to do this thing. It doesn't mean they can't
be profitable, by the way. I think there's some really
(14:55):
good examples whether they can scale to a real great height.
I mean CouchSurfing, Airbnb. There's an interesting period in that
sort of area of community to big business. So CouchSurfing,
if anyone remembers, was what it says, right, you can
go and you can go on this I don't know
if you remember it b bed, but you go on
this site and you just could book a couch somewhere,
(15:17):
which sounds wild, like people would like, here's my couch,
you can come and sleep on it, and you're like,
what about the trust issues there? But it worked because
it was community first. Katie Fenton, I think, the founder
of that, and this was in the sort of late
nineties noughties and it was this real edgy but like
it was strong. The trust was there because people believed
(15:40):
in the in the key principles, and it worked most
of the time. And an Airbnb kind of rode the
wave off the back of CouchSurfing and said, we're just
going to add a business model to this to create
a bit more structure, a bit more security because and
even then people like it's wild, you're letting people into
your own house. But at the beginning of Airbnb, there
was this strong sense of like, this is a better
(16:01):
way of doing travel, and then it became more about
all sorts of trips and for a while that was
really really powerful, and obviously they drank the kool aid
around it. The guy is running it, and I think
they probably really did believe it, But there's clearly become
a point where you know, it's hard to maintain that
community at such a scale.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And that gets there. So when you've done your thing,
and I'm a big, big fan of having things written down,
but when you're looking at things, when do you get
to that spot of with all of your ventures and
people you work with, business plan versus forget the business plan.
Saw the business plan get rid of the business plan
(16:43):
when is it a gut check versus something that needs
to be written down in a lot of your ventures.
So you go to Fiji, you buy this island, you
get three people to come along, and it starts to
not go the right way. I know that didn't happen.
But when do you go, oh crap, you revisited the
business plan or run away? You know? How do you
(17:04):
do that when you're looking at adventures and helping people?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, so the art of the start is like something
I think I've got. You know, I've done a lot
of so I've learned a lot about it and quite
quite good at the art of the scale is kind
of what the face I'm trying to move into now.
So on the art of the start, I think and
I've run startup schools and being you know, work with
hundreds of brilliant impact entrepreneurs and helping them get idea
(17:32):
out into the world. This is a bit that I
don't find difficult. I know many do, But I think
it's all about there's two things going up once. One
is you've got to be really clear about why you're
doing this. If you're not clear why you are doing this,
thing is going to get messy down the line, like
any relationship or projects in the world, Like, are you
clear about why even if it's like i just want
(17:54):
to make some money quickly because I've got to pay
off this debt or get you know, whatever it is,
be clear on your motivations and then it won't help.
That will help you with your decision making. Once you've
got that, then it's about can I, you know, how
do we start this thing with the least risk possible
to see whether it's a good idea because we can
(18:15):
be excited. I mean, we could generate ten business ideas
in the next ten minutes, half an hour together and
we could go, let's got a toolkit on network, let's
launch the one that we think is best. And each
of those ideas is full of assumptions that we've made.
And we may be more experienced about the you know,
the working world, but we're still making a bunch of
assumptions even with all the data we have, and we're like, well,
(18:39):
based on this research and this evidence, and we think
there's an opportunity here. Great, which of those assumptions is
your biggest risk in like all the things that you're
this idea is going to try and do watching your
book club. Which is the biggest risk here. Is it
that people don't turn up? Is it that people don't pay?
Is it that you can't deliver the service or the product?
(18:59):
And as you know, we only need two things really
to start. We need we need to be able to
make the thing or deliver the thing. So if you
if you're making the if you're selling water bottles, you're like, well,
we either got to make it or sell it from
someone or buy it from someone who's really good at
making them and sell it on for a profit. And
so you've got to do the product or service bit.
And then you've got to have the audience or access
(19:23):
to the audience. And if you haven't got it, you've
either got to pay for it or find someone who's
got access. So at the start, if you and your
partner fellow co founders can do those two things, then
you've got a chance. And if there's only one thing
that you can do at the start, it's like access
to audience, because without audience customers this is obvious, right,
but so many people start businesses without that and then
(19:44):
they put time and money into a product or service
and go and then cross their fingers or throw waste
money on marketing, whereas actually you need to build, do
the customer development, the m VY, you know, the first version,
So risk de risk the start. Basically have crazy ambition
and ideas, but make it the risk of start, so
that if in and then it's all about speed. So
(20:06):
the other thing I've just learned a lot with these
projects and ventures is if you can this accelerators that
used to run called the Escape School. People would come
in with their big ideas. You know, they've been thinking
about this stuff for years, and this was their moment.
They were going to launch it, and you were there
to mentor and coach them through it and give them
some tools and tactics. But the most valuable thing that
(20:26):
I ever helped any of these people with was like
pushing them off the cliff. And but the cliff was
only three meters off the water, right, it wasn't thirty meters,
So the chance of them failing was very low. It
was the only thing that would really fail would be
their ego because they'd be like, oh, it did work,
whereas like no one cares, No one else cares.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Nobody saw it because nobody bought it. So it's okay.
No one bought it.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
The thing that usually happens is it's just silent, like
everyone's like, HiPE, pipe pipe, pipe bill. We're going to launch,
We're going to launch it. And there it's just like
and it's like, it's just a really frustrating moment if
you've a painful moment, if you put too much in.
So get it out there quick, get feedback. We know
all this stuff right, don't put too much pressure on
(21:12):
the idea or yourself because it will, it will collapse
under its own weight. Just one quick example of where
it worked really well. So there's these two guys came
on the escape course, Jack and Alex, and they're like, yeah,
we think we've got this this twenty fifteen sixteen. We've
got this idea for a sparkling water drink. So sparkling
(21:34):
water with fruit and fuse. But the fruits from their
won key fruits, so misshapen fruits. They're fruits that would
have been thrown in the bin. So we're fighting food
waste and we're delivering a premium, really nice cold and
helping people get off sugar sugary drinks. I say, guys,
there's lots of stuff going on there. You need to
test these different things. Is it the one key fruit
environmental thing, is it the low sugar thing, or is
(21:54):
it just a cool sparkling water idea. They're like, okay, yeah,
we've got a brand idea, we've got a marketing plan,
and we're going to raise some money and then we're
going to get a run of a few thousand cans,
and then we're going to go into these retailers. We're
going to do pop up stands. I was like, guys,
what you're talking about there is part three of your business,
(22:14):
not part one or two. Part one is the lemonade stand,
like the old school way. Just get out on the
street and make this stuff like the Innocent smoothies guides did,
and just get out and you know the great thing
about food and drink is you can sample. I was like,
and then you can try and sell a few cans.
And they did that. They luckily, they followed my advice
(22:35):
and they did that and they got positive feedback. They
made a couple of tweaks. They then rolled out a
bigger can run got into and this year they sold
So that was seven eight years ago. This year they
sold fifty million cans so called dash Water drinks brand,
and they're doing amazing things on both the sugar getting
(22:55):
people off sugary drinks and tacking food waste. But I
think a big part of their success, which I'm not
taking credit for, is that they just got out there
and started.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, you need traction. That's the thing people say, Oh,
I've got the greatest thing in the world, but if
nobody's going to buy it. And the death now is
we don't have competition. I had that from a guy
the last week that's very knowledgeable, and he goes, well,
the best part about this is I just don't know
the competition. And then I said, what about these guys,
these guys and these guys I've never heard of them.
(23:28):
It's such Oh no, It's like okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
And also, competition isn't what we I also think competition often,
I mean it is sometimes like very similar looking businesses,
but often it's like it's not the same product or
service at all. Rebel book Club, nice example, what's our competition?
It's not other book clubs. Really, it might be a
little bit is, but really the competition to Rebel book
(23:52):
Club is like, how else do people spend that time,
like when they would be reading, coming to book clubs
where they might be going to theater. They might be
doing wrong clubs, it might be you know, so how
do you convince them of the value of spending your
time doing this versus those other things? And that's what
you're competing with.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
And I think we've we've moved into the space of
you know, we had share of wallet because everybody only
has so much that and we've moved to share of scroll,
I mean share of time because people are scrolling through everything.
And so why would I come to rebel book club
when I can just scroll and have five tiktoks that
will explain the rising levels of seawater to me? You know,
(24:29):
It's like.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Right, So, so the knowledge is but this is what's crazy,
especially as we move into the AI era. Right, so
knowledge has been there at I thinker tips in it
is Google search, and so I start looking for islands
for sale, a version of the world's knowledge, not all
of it and not perfect, but quite well organized for
the first time. And now we've got an intelligent version
of this knowledge again with lots of biases built in.
(24:50):
But it's unbelievable, Like how we can discover and learn
content if we've got an Internet connection and the phone.
So we're in this like of knowledge and information of abundance.
But we also have this growing you know, the Center
for Humane Tech call it the wisdom gap. So we've
never had so much, we've never had so many solutions
(25:14):
to our problems. We've never bettered that, we've never known
like how to fix things more than now. Climate change
is the perfect example. But we seem to be doing
a lot less. We're not solving them right or not
at scale. There's lots of brilliant innovation in the world,
as we know, but so we have this wisdom gap,
(25:34):
and it's just interesting to try and understand why we
have that wisdom gap. And I think it's because my
senses anyway, is that we've accelerated so much in the
last twenty thirty forty years that we're struggling a little
bit as we go through this messy transition as a
species to like make sense of it all. And we
need to slow down a bit, we need to detox
(25:55):
of it, we need more community. But at the same time,
these tools can help us really help us solve some
of the big problems in the world. Which we have
to solve quite quickly because they're so serious. So it's
this real I don't know how you feel bad, but
I like oscillate between feeling hopeful and excited and motivated
to feeling really like bloody, how it's too much? And
(26:18):
and I'm you know, midlife. I think I've got a
decent psychological mental work talkit. I'm very lucky, you know,
have privileged life. But even I go, WHOA, this is
a lot to cope with. So yeah, it's it's it's
a weird time to be living in. But there's loads
of opportunity as always, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
A massive overload right now from especially when when you
have people that are successful like you, mentor people do
all this type of stuff, and we still sit back
and question ourselves and how we can change things and
how we can you know, it's going to be the
hottest day ever in the UK in July. You know,
it's like, how are we changing that? I think that
(27:00):
knowledge gap, like you talked about, it's just massive because
people don't even know what to do with it. I
think we have so much information that people don't know
how to digest it and redeploy it or what they
should deploy it on. So it's yeah, it really it's
really a big challenge. So I call this the rewind moment.
So this is the one thing that you I want
you to leave talking about tribe, talking about community, just
(27:23):
business focus. But the rewind moment is your one question
or your one main comment that would make people rewind
back to the beginning of the episode and go wow,
or they just take this and this will be your
This will be your on your on your tombstone kind
of you're like, wha, this is cool. So what's your
rewind moment? Been keen?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
If it's a question, Bedie, I think the question is
what are you making what the world needs or are
you working on something that the world needs? And by
the world, what I mean is like, is this if
you if this thing that you're working on or you're
building was successful, like it got to scale, it was
commercially successful, whatever the definitions of success are are people
(28:07):
and nature and the world that we live in. And
they're going to be like, thank you for making that BD,
We're grateful for it. Or are they going to be like, oh,
nice one, you rinsed, you made a load of money.
It's sort of inadvertently exploited some people in your supply chain.
You might not really have been connected to that, but hey,
come on, you gained, but really the world didn't. And
(28:32):
that's another way of asking that question. Are you watch
your purpose? What's your impact? You know all that Simon
Sinik stuff, which is brilliant, but in my mind, it's like,
are you making what the world needs? And it doesn't
need to be this grand thing. It doesn't need to
be this We're going to solve this big problem in
the world. But it's just it's just a check in
am I working? Because what the great thing about this
(28:55):
about asking that question and then trying to follow it
and you know, adjust yourself and your work too. Are
answering that question is that you get a better journey,
you get more chance of success, it's more fulfilling, you
have stronger connections and community. So that's what I've learned
(29:15):
is that have am I making? And I use that
as a sense check quite regularly. Am I making something
that's really needed in the world?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
That's amazing? Ben Keen. Where can we find out more
about you? Where's your preferred method of contact and chasing
you down or talking to you.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Chasing me down. Yeah, always up for collaborating, connecting where
it's aligned to that question. So yeah, find me online
Benkeen dot com. I do a lot of public speaking
on all these different themes I've been sharing today. I'm
doing a lot more on AI for Good, which is
an exciting new space, and I'm on LinkedIn and various
(29:50):
other channels, so just yeah, look me up. And I'm
really open to people sharing their projects. I can't promise
to respond to everyone and support everyone, but sharing and
then if I can make key useful connection. But yeah,
the more we share the stuff that we're working on,
it makes make what the world needs and the more
chance of a success.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Ben King, thank you so much for coming on. Really
enjoyed speaking with you and sharing amazing things with my audience.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Thank you BD so much. Cheers.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Thanks for joining us on grow Sell and Retire. For
more information tools or to book one of our team
members to work with your team business, or to speak
at your event or conference, visit Rockfine dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BD's
three books, The Assisted Purchase, True Gravity, and the book
The podcast is based on grow Sell and Retire. If
(30:41):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
Grow, Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bead Dalton, author of the Assisted Purchase, True Gravity, and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host, Bead with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, everybody, Beaty Dalton here, Gross Sell and Retire Podcast today.
I'm here with I'd call him mister Tribe, so we're
gonna call him Ben Keene, founder Rebel Book Club. You've
got Rays which helps with funding climate change startups, and Superfly.
I think I've got that spelled right and said right.
(00:50):
So Ben, welcome to the Gross Selling Retire Podcast. Tell
us a little bit about you and a little bit
about each of the projects, and then we'll dig deeper
into him as we go.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Through the episode. It's great to be here, b D. Yeah,
So you've got those bang on and you know, you're
probably more accurate than most of my family and close friends,
Like what are you working on now? So? Yeah, serial
entrepreneur for good and good and bad? You know, always
on this being always on this journey, which started I
guess for me, you know twenty years ago when I
was leaving university and I, you know, all my friends
(01:20):
were off to working corporate city jobs, and I was like,
why are we doing this? And even if it's a
great opportunity, why are we doing this when we're interested
in other things in our lives, it seems from our
time together. So I went off traveling like you do
in your early twenties and you want to run away
from things, and I learned a lot about the world
that way. My first business came about because I was
(01:41):
working community and eco tourism and it was the time
of my Space. What else was going on in the
technolog tech world at the time. BlackBerry phones were the thing, MSN, Messenger,
hotmail dot com. So that was the kind of tech
stack and the question that a friend and I would
answers like could we bring people together online and linked
(02:03):
to a destination in the world a bit like bands had,
you know, MySpace for their fan basis. Now this is normal,
but in two thousand and six it was a radical idea.
So that was the first ventures. Could we crowdfund bring
people together around a destination in the world, and we
found this island in in the South Pacific, real Island,
not Internet island, and we crowdfunded the development of an
(02:26):
eco tourism project on that island, and so I lived.
My first venture was really living in the South Pacific
for five or six years in my twenties, building this
physical community alongside the local Fijian team and chief, and
then an online community. So that was my baseline. That's
that was my MBA that as you can imagine it was.
(02:49):
There was a it was a big adventure. It sounds
as adventurous. It was as adventurous as it sounds. And
read a book about it, and there was a lot
of attention on that project. But from it came this.
The clarity that came from it and has remained in
my work and ventures since then, is one, how do
we bring people together to connect with each other with
(03:11):
a shared purpose to try and solve a problem in
the world and have fun. Why we do it? That's
the tribe building element. And the second part is how
do we use the tech tools available to us right now?
They're a low cost and super powerful and creative to
to advance our missions and our goals. And that's the
(03:32):
thing that those two things have stayed constant even though
all the different projects have changed.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
How did you choose the island? How did you choose
what you were going to do? I mean, and and
your book came off the back of it, Like you said,
tribe wanted so you tried to set up this community
on this island in the middle of big in the
middle of nowhere. How did you choose the island? And
how did what was what was like the best thing
that came out of it and the most challenging thing
that came out of it?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Oh yeah, I mean I could say I wrote a
book on this, so you could. I could talk a
lot about this. We found the island through Well you
talk about technology, it changes your life b D. Like
I always ask people this question, what change your life?
Was it the tamagotchi, the iPhone? What you can age
people based on this? Right HTML? So for me it
was Google Search. Right So just now as eighteen year
(04:19):
olds today growing up with LMS and AI tools, I
discovered Google Search and I was like, oh my god,
I can find any information I want. And this was
really exciting. In two thousand and five and so I
searched Islands for Sale and because that was the thing
we had in mind, is like, we wanted to be
(04:41):
kind of the opposite of an online community. What is
the opposite of what we call back then a social network. Well,
perhaps it's a remote tropical place somewhere very different to
life in the UK in the winter. And so yeah,
when I had googled Islands for Sale and entered this
world of millionaires and super yachts and eventually found my
(05:01):
way to a blog by an Australian called the Ilo
Maniac as someone who was obsessive about writing about islands
and blogging was big. Blogging was a big thing in
two thousand and five. So I messaged this guy and
I said, hey, look, we've got this idea for a
kind of crowdfunding eco tourism project. He's like, are you
what weed are you smoking? It sounds pretty strong. I
(05:22):
was like, no, no, we're not. This isn't The Beach
if you remember The Beach, the Leonardo DiCaprio film, so
that was out at the time. I said, no, no,
we don't want to run away from the world. We
want to connect the world and showcase a place support
its sustainable development, showcase eco living and have a great adventure.
So he said, ah, there's this place in Fiji. They's
just come onto the local sort of real estate platform
(05:44):
that he knew of and the local community they are
looking to develop it. The actual real story from their
side was that the chief had been been prophesied to
him by his friend and gardner that one day the
world would come to this island, and so he had
accepted that as like this was real and therefore spoke
to his nephew, and his nephew said, well, if you
(06:05):
want that prophecy to come through, it might help if
we put an add up on the local real estate board.
And they are two worlds met.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
That's fabulous. So so let's get in this. So you
have all sorts of businesses you've got, so so really
quick walk us through the Rebel book Club. What what's
the premise around it and how it's it's a community,
because I want to get into the next question about
community and customers.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
But yeah, so Reubel book Club. I don't know, I
can't see your bookshelf b D. But a lot of
us suffer from this thing that the Japanese called so
t s u n d o ku son doku and
so is a Japanese word that means the growing pile
of books on your There we go, on your.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Twenty books.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
There you go, and he's only written half of them.
So the growing pile of books that you have or
could be on your e reader or your kindle or
your bedside tape wherever they are. That you keep buying
the books, but you're not reading the books, or you're
only reading. You're not keeping up pace. Yes, because it
takes two minutes to buy a book, it takes quite
(07:10):
a few hours to read a book. So the Japanesque basically,
your mind, your curiosity is bigger than your ability to
consume the knowledge. And this is an age old problem,
we thought. My friend and I compared our kindles at
the time, we all have between we had very similar books,
mainly nonfiction, mainly about you know, business and politics and
environment and things going on in the world, personal development,
(07:32):
health and wellbeing. And they were all between ten and
thirty percent read, or about three chapters in. Yes, and
I said to him, I said, why are we both
struggling to read further than chapter three? Some of these
books are really great books. Why are we struggling to focus,
and he's like, oh, we need some accountability. We need nonfiction.
You have to work a little bit harder than fiction.
Sometimes it's not always a page turner. And so we're like,
(07:56):
we'll do this radical thing. We'll start a book club.
No one's ever done that, do it for thousands of years, right,
but we said that we'll do it. We'll try and
do it slightly differently. The Rebellion and Rebel book Club
was one, could we finish the book so we would
be rebelling as enthusiastic buyers of these nonfiction books by
(08:17):
actually finishing or improving our reading habit at the very least.
And two, could we rebel and not just go, oh,
that was a great book, I learned so much and
put it on the shelf and just not apply any
of it to our lives, our work or lives. Could
we Number two, could we try and apply one or
two things from that book to our lives by sharing,
(08:39):
coming together and sharing. So that was the idea Rebel
book Club. So that was May twenty fifteen, and we
picked a theme. We picked three nonfiction books. We invited fifteen.
We said, let's try and get fifteen people to join us.
It was a really unambitious project, which is why it's
so fun because a lot of the projects I've been
involved with have been like, Wow, we're going to change
(09:00):
something big and try and solve a big problem, which
Rebel book Club was like, can we improve our reading
habits and apply what we learn a little bit more
and have fun and let's just try and do this
for one month. So the key thing I think early
on Beady that made it work was that we put
a price point on it. So we said it's a membership.
(09:21):
You'll pay, you're invite to join Rebel, but or you apply.
We actually for the first couple of hundred members we
did you have to apply, So you apply, if you
if you're approved, pay fifteen pounds and then you can
come join the Rebel book Club. And at the time
that included a book and a cocktail and an event.
I mean, it's way too generous for that la for me.
(09:41):
But the cool thing was is we got fifteen people,
we broke even, and I think that first month we
got twenty four and we're like, that was fun, Let's
do that again. And so that was May twenty fifteen.
In May, this year during this week. So two months
ago we celebrated our tenth year and we haven't missed
a month. So we've r Rebel book Club every single
month for a decade. That's one hundred and twenty months
(10:04):
in a row, and it's just been this really fun
it's not gone huge, it's not gone massive, but it's
been this really fun, consistent project that's made a positive income.
It's a little nice little business.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
We've earned a little salary from it, those of us
who've been running it for a decade, and some amazing
connections through it. So that's Rebel book Club.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And what was this year? What was your best book?
Your favorite book in the last twelve months that you
guys pulled up.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Well, the one that's on my mind is by Fern Brady.
I've got them all here on the shelf. So from
months one to month one hundred and twenty two now,
so the theme was autism and your adversity. So we
just change the themes each month. This month's Personal July
is personal finance. Last month we were reading about raw
materials and supply change, so it's a real mix autism
(10:53):
and your diversity. We read strong female character by Fern Brady,
who's a Scottish comedian who came from a small village,
working class background, suffered, struggled with this this thing, this identity,
and what didn't discover until she was in her late
twenties that she was clearly autistic. And she tells this
(11:15):
very funny, dark story of her life and her coping mechanisms,
and through it references how what she learned about autism,
and then as a reader you learn about it. So
there's a strong human story and it made a real
impact on our community because one it's so it's such
an engaging read human story, and two because you learn
(11:36):
a lot about autism if you didn't know about it
through her journey, and it led some great conversations. And yeah,
really good impactful book.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
That's fabulous. Okay, so let's go into you talking about
building that. So not every business needs a community, not
everybody everybody like you know, but when do you switch
from that that thought process of full nonprofit customer clients
focused to actually this feels like it needs to be
(12:09):
a movement kind of these people won't leave me if
things go bad. Community style organism, organization. Where do you
where do you feel that great. This is a great
essay question, bed, I know it's a question.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah, yeah. Well look, my version of this, and I
think we all probably have a different version of it,
is not a dictionary definition this, but my version of
community in business and is it so marketing? You know,
people call communities when they've just like followers on social
channels and there's commenting. That's not in my definition. That's
(12:46):
not community. Community is when people interact between each other
in that group. So maybe that like Lady Gaga's whatever
she calls them, her fans have those sub communities where
they come together and they form groups. But you know,
it's not top down, it's it's peer to peer. So
that's community. And then the way that I define a
kind of tribe in the in the world that we're operating,
(13:08):
not indigenous communities but like set up projects, is community
with a purpose. So it's someone like and go back
to the island story, right, Okay, we're going to do
this thing. Who wants to follow me? I'm going to
do this thing. Join me, and we're going to go
on this adventure. These are the terms and conditions or
the values of the tribes. This is the role you'll play.
This is the business model of it. Off we go,
(13:30):
and so it's a purposeful We're going to try and
do this thing in the world, build an eco island
village and learn from it. Start a book club with
a purpose, you know. So that's that's how I define it.
You're I think you're absolutely right to say not every
business and it should be a community or needs to
be a community. And I think the key is not
doing it as an as an add on, as a
(13:50):
marketing channel, which I think has been the mistake that
a lot of people have made, understandably because it's been
marketed aggressively as a tactic and a tool of the
last ten twenty years. It's not something you can just
add on and go, oh, yes, so we've got paid
ads over there and SEO there, and then we've got
community tactics here. It's like, no community has to be
(14:13):
to be this real connection between people and you current.
It does have structure and you can foster it. And
there's so many brilliant examples, and there's a little formula
which I'm happy to share. It's not rocket science that
I've learned and observe within the projects that have worked
for me. But also for the ones I've seen out
in the world that have worked, is that this is
the book I haven't yet written, but you know, on
(14:35):
tribe building, but really around the practices that make community successful.
But the ones that tend to work more often than not,
the ones that start with community at the beginning. It's like,
we're doing this because we're we want to bring people
together to do this thing. It doesn't mean they can't
be profitable, by the way. I think there's some really
(14:55):
good examples whether they can scale to a real great height.
I mean CouchSurfing, Airbnb. There's an interesting period in that
sort of area of community to big business. So CouchSurfing,
if anyone remembers, was what it says, right, you can
go and you can go on this I don't know
if you remember it b bed, but you go on
this site and you just could book a couch somewhere,
(15:17):
which sounds wild, like people would like, here's my couch,
you can come and sleep on it, and you're like,
what about the trust issues there? But it worked because
it was community first. Katie Fenton, I think, the founder
of that, and this was in the sort of late
nineties noughties and it was this real edgy but like
it was strong. The trust was there because people believed
(15:40):
in the in the key principles, and it worked most
of the time. And an Airbnb kind of rode the
wave off the back of CouchSurfing and said, we're just
going to add a business model to this to create
a bit more structure, a bit more security because and
even then people like it's wild, you're letting people into
your own house. But at the beginning of Airbnb, there
was this strong sense of like, this is a better
(16:01):
way of doing travel, and then it became more about
all sorts of trips and for a while that was
really really powerful, and obviously they drank the kool aid
around it. The guy is running it, and I think
they probably really did believe it, But there's clearly become
a point where you know, it's hard to maintain that
community at such a scale.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And that gets there. So when you've done your thing,
and I'm a big, big fan of having things written down,
but when you're looking at things, when do you get
to that spot of with all of your ventures and
people you work with, business plan versus forget the business plan.
Saw the business plan get rid of the business plan
(16:43):
when is it a gut check versus something that needs
to be written down in a lot of your ventures.
So you go to Fiji, you buy this island, you
get three people to come along, and it starts to
not go the right way. I know that didn't happen.
But when do you go, oh crap, you revisited the
business plan or run away? You know? How do you
(17:04):
do that when you're looking at adventures and helping people?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, so the art of the start is like something
I think I've got. You know, I've done a lot
of so I've learned a lot about it and quite
quite good at the art of the scale is kind
of what the face I'm trying to move into now.
So on the art of the start, I think and
I've run startup schools and being you know, work with
hundreds of brilliant impact entrepreneurs and helping them get idea
(17:32):
out into the world. This is a bit that I
don't find difficult. I know many do, But I think
it's all about there's two things going up once. One
is you've got to be really clear about why you're
doing this. If you're not clear why you are doing this,
thing is going to get messy down the line, like
any relationship or projects in the world, Like, are you
clear about why even if it's like i just want
(17:54):
to make some money quickly because I've got to pay
off this debt or get you know, whatever it is,
be clear on your motivations and then it won't help.
That will help you with your decision making. Once you've
got that, then it's about can I, you know, how
do we start this thing with the least risk possible
to see whether it's a good idea because we can
(18:15):
be excited. I mean, we could generate ten business ideas
in the next ten minutes, half an hour together and
we could go, let's got a toolkit on network, let's
launch the one that we think is best. And each
of those ideas is full of assumptions that we've made.
And we may be more experienced about the you know,
the working world, but we're still making a bunch of
assumptions even with all the data we have, and we're like, well,
(18:39):
based on this research and this evidence, and we think
there's an opportunity here. Great, which of those assumptions is
your biggest risk in like all the things that you're
this idea is going to try and do watching your
book club. Which is the biggest risk here. Is it
that people don't turn up? Is it that people don't pay?
Is it that you can't deliver the service or the product?
(18:59):
And as you know, we only need two things really
to start. We need we need to be able to
make the thing or deliver the thing. So if you
if you're making the if you're selling water bottles, you're like, well,
we either got to make it or sell it from
someone or buy it from someone who's really good at
making them and sell it on for a profit. And
so you've got to do the product or service bit.
And then you've got to have the audience or access
(19:23):
to the audience. And if you haven't got it, you've
either got to pay for it or find someone who's
got access. So at the start, if you and your
partner fellow co founders can do those two things, then
you've got a chance. And if there's only one thing
that you can do at the start, it's like access
to audience, because without audience customers this is obvious, right,
but so many people start businesses without that and then
(19:44):
they put time and money into a product or service
and go and then cross their fingers or throw waste
money on marketing, whereas actually you need to build, do
the customer development, the m VY, you know, the first version,
So risk de risk the start. Basically have crazy ambition
and ideas, but make it the risk of start, so
that if in and then it's all about speed. So
(20:06):
the other thing I've just learned a lot with these
projects and ventures is if you can this accelerators that
used to run called the Escape School. People would come
in with their big ideas. You know, they've been thinking
about this stuff for years, and this was their moment.
They were going to launch it, and you were there
to mentor and coach them through it and give them
some tools and tactics. But the most valuable thing that
(20:26):
I ever helped any of these people with was like
pushing them off the cliff. And but the cliff was
only three meters off the water, right, it wasn't thirty meters,
So the chance of them failing was very low. It
was the only thing that would really fail would be
their ego because they'd be like, oh, it did work,
whereas like no one cares, No one else cares.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Nobody saw it because nobody bought it. So it's okay.
No one bought it.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
The thing that usually happens is it's just silent, like
everyone's like, HiPE, pipe pipe, pipe bill. We're going to launch,
We're going to launch it. And there it's just like
and it's like, it's just a really frustrating moment if
you've a painful moment, if you put too much in.
So get it out there quick, get feedback. We know
all this stuff right, don't put too much pressure on
(21:12):
the idea or yourself because it will, it will collapse
under its own weight. Just one quick example of where
it worked really well. So there's these two guys came
on the escape course, Jack and Alex, and they're like, yeah,
we think we've got this this twenty fifteen sixteen. We've
got this idea for a sparkling water drink. So sparkling
(21:34):
water with fruit and fuse. But the fruits from their
won key fruits, so misshapen fruits. They're fruits that would
have been thrown in the bin. So we're fighting food
waste and we're delivering a premium, really nice cold and
helping people get off sugar sugary drinks. I say, guys,
there's lots of stuff going on there. You need to
test these different things. Is it the one key fruit
environmental thing, is it the low sugar thing, or is
(21:54):
it just a cool sparkling water idea. They're like, okay, yeah,
we've got a brand idea, we've got a marketing plan,
and we're going to raise some money and then we're
going to get a run of a few thousand cans,
and then we're going to go into these retailers. We're
going to do pop up stands. I was like, guys,
what you're talking about there is part three of your business,
(22:14):
not part one or two. Part one is the lemonade stand,
like the old school way. Just get out on the
street and make this stuff like the Innocent smoothies guides did,
and just get out and you know the great thing
about food and drink is you can sample. I was like,
and then you can try and sell a few cans.
And they did that. They luckily, they followed my advice
(22:35):
and they did that and they got positive feedback. They
made a couple of tweaks. They then rolled out a
bigger can run got into and this year they sold
So that was seven eight years ago. This year they
sold fifty million cans so called dash Water drinks brand,
and they're doing amazing things on both the sugar getting
(22:55):
people off sugary drinks and tacking food waste. But I
think a big part of their success, which I'm not
taking credit for, is that they just got out there
and started.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, you need traction. That's the thing people say, Oh,
I've got the greatest thing in the world, but if
nobody's going to buy it. And the death now is
we don't have competition. I had that from a guy
the last week that's very knowledgeable, and he goes, well,
the best part about this is I just don't know
the competition. And then I said, what about these guys,
these guys and these guys I've never heard of them.
(23:28):
It's such Oh no, It's like okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
And also, competition isn't what we I also think competition often,
I mean it is sometimes like very similar looking businesses,
but often it's like it's not the same product or
service at all. Rebel book Club, nice example, what's our competition?
It's not other book clubs. Really, it might be a
little bit is, but really the competition to Rebel book
(23:52):
Club is like, how else do people spend that time,
like when they would be reading, coming to book clubs
where they might be going to theater. They might be
doing wrong clubs, it might be you know, so how
do you convince them of the value of spending your
time doing this versus those other things? And that's what
you're competing with.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
And I think we've we've moved into the space of
you know, we had share of wallet because everybody only
has so much that and we've moved to share of scroll,
I mean share of time because people are scrolling through everything.
And so why would I come to rebel book club
when I can just scroll and have five tiktoks that
will explain the rising levels of seawater to me? You know,
(24:29):
It's like.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
Right, So, so the knowledge is but this is what's crazy,
especially as we move into the AI era. Right, so
knowledge has been there at I thinker tips in it
is Google search, and so I start looking for islands
for sale, a version of the world's knowledge, not all
of it and not perfect, but quite well organized for
the first time. And now we've got an intelligent version
of this knowledge again with lots of biases built in.
(24:50):
But it's unbelievable, Like how we can discover and learn
content if we've got an Internet connection and the phone.
So we're in this like of knowledge and information of abundance.
But we also have this growing you know, the Center
for Humane Tech call it the wisdom gap. So we've
never had so much, we've never had so many solutions
(25:14):
to our problems. We've never bettered that, we've never known
like how to fix things more than now. Climate change
is the perfect example. But we seem to be doing
a lot less. We're not solving them right or not
at scale. There's lots of brilliant innovation in the world,
as we know, but so we have this wisdom gap,
(25:34):
and it's just interesting to try and understand why we
have that wisdom gap. And I think it's because my
senses anyway, is that we've accelerated so much in the
last twenty thirty forty years that we're struggling a little
bit as we go through this messy transition as a
species to like make sense of it all. And we
need to slow down a bit, we need to detox
(25:55):
of it, we need more community. But at the same time,
these tools can help us really help us solve some
of the big problems in the world. Which we have
to solve quite quickly because they're so serious. So it's
this real I don't know how you feel bad, but
I like oscillate between feeling hopeful and excited and motivated
to feeling really like bloody, how it's too much? And
(26:18):
and I'm you know, midlife. I think I've got a
decent psychological mental work talkit. I'm very lucky, you know,
have privileged life. But even I go, WHOA, this is
a lot to cope with. So yeah, it's it's it's
a weird time to be living in. But there's loads
of opportunity as always, it's.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
A massive overload right now from especially when when you
have people that are successful like you, mentor people do
all this type of stuff, and we still sit back
and question ourselves and how we can change things and
how we can you know, it's going to be the
hottest day ever in the UK in July. You know,
it's like, how are we changing that? I think that
(27:00):
knowledge gap, like you talked about, it's just massive because
people don't even know what to do with it. I
think we have so much information that people don't know
how to digest it and redeploy it or what they
should deploy it on. So it's yeah, it really it's
really a big challenge. So I call this the rewind moment.
So this is the one thing that you I want
you to leave talking about tribe, talking about community, just
(27:23):
business focus. But the rewind moment is your one question
or your one main comment that would make people rewind
back to the beginning of the episode and go wow,
or they just take this and this will be your
This will be your on your on your tombstone kind
of you're like, wha, this is cool. So what's your
rewind moment? Been keen?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
If it's a question, Bedie, I think the question is
what are you making what the world needs or are
you working on something that the world needs? And by
the world, what I mean is like, is this if
you if this thing that you're working on or you're
building was successful, like it got to scale, it was
commercially successful, whatever the definitions of success are are people
(28:07):
and nature and the world that we live in. And
they're going to be like, thank you for making that BD,
We're grateful for it. Or are they going to be like, oh,
nice one, you rinsed, you made a load of money.
It's sort of inadvertently exploited some people in your supply chain.
You might not really have been connected to that, but hey,
come on, you gained, but really the world didn't. And
(28:32):
that's another way of asking that question. Are you watch
your purpose? What's your impact? You know all that Simon
Sinik stuff, which is brilliant, but in my mind, it's like,
are you making what the world needs? And it doesn't
need to be this grand thing. It doesn't need to
be this We're going to solve this big problem in
the world. But it's just it's just a check in
am I working? Because what the great thing about this
(28:55):
about asking that question and then trying to follow it
and you know, adjust yourself and your work too. Are
answering that question is that you get a better journey,
you get more chance of success, it's more fulfilling, you
have stronger connections and community. So that's what I've learned
(29:15):
is that have am I making? And I use that
as a sense check quite regularly. Am I making something
that's really needed in the world?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
That's amazing? Ben Keen. Where can we find out more
about you? Where's your preferred method of contact and chasing
you down or talking to you.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Chasing me down. Yeah, always up for collaborating, connecting where
it's aligned to that question. So yeah, find me online
Benkeen dot com. I do a lot of public speaking
on all these different themes I've been sharing today. I'm
doing a lot more on AI for Good, which is
an exciting new space, and I'm on LinkedIn and various
(29:50):
other channels, so just yeah, look me up. And I'm
really open to people sharing their projects. I can't promise
to respond to everyone and support everyone, but sharing and
then if I can make key useful connection. But yeah,
the more we share the stuff that we're working on,
it makes make what the world needs and the more
chance of a success.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Ben King, thank you so much for coming on. Really
enjoyed speaking with you and sharing amazing things with my audience.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Thank you BD so much. Cheers.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Thanks for joining us on grow Sell and Retire. For
more information tools or to book one of our team
members to work with your team business, or to speak
at your event or conference, visit Rockfine dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BD's
three books, The Assisted Purchase, True Gravity, and the book
The podcast is based on grow Sell and Retire. If
(30:41):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
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