Moonpig Founder: How I Built A $150 Million Business WITHOUT Sacrifice: Nick Jenkins

[0] So you do something with greeting cards?

[1] Is that something you do in your spare room?

[2] Nick Jenkins, former CEO and founder of Moonpig, a company now worth $1 .6 billion.

[3] My first proper business was Moonbig, which although it's been a success.

[4] Of course, it went through various ups and I was like all overnight success as it took 11 years.

[5] I've got to confess, I probably slightly stumbled on it.

[6] I look at it now and think, wow, that accidentally was a really good business model.

[7] Unfortunately, too often we measure the things that are easiest to make.

[8] And the easiest thing to measure is how wealthy someone is.

[9] I'm reluctant to create this illusion that if you work incredibly hard, you can make a lot of money and that will make you successful.

[10] You have to be a successful human being.

[11] The most exciting times I ever had in my business were when my back was absolutely against the one thing, this is going down.

[12] Bizarrely, I found that quite invigorating.

[13] At one point, my shale's all said, look, Nick, this is never going to work.

[14] It's never going to make money.

[15] By the time I'd got to the end of it, I was pretty much down to zero.

[16] Nick Jenkins, former CEO and founder of Moonpig, a company now worth $1 .6 billion.

[17] Nick's achievements are miraculous.

[18] He's incredibly inspiring, and he created a business that's touched many of our lives.

[19] But the thing that I found even more intriguing about Nick was he bucks most of the typical entrepreneurship and success narratives.

[20] I think we're all sold the belief and the story that in order to be successful in business or any discipline in life, you have to undergo tremendous sacrifice.

[21] You have to work yourself into the ground.

[22] Nick, and his story and his philosophy, disprove all of that.

[23] He's got another way of doing it.

[24] If listening to this episode does anything outside of just inspiring the hell out of you and giving you very practical business information, it will definitely prove, in my view, that there is no such thing as a born entrepreneur.

[25] And also, once you become an entrepreneur, the path to success isn't the same for everybody.

[26] A lot of what you've been told is a lie.

[27] Without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the dire of a CEO.

[28] I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

[29] Nick, super intrigued when I meet entrepreneurs, because there's a huge sort of narrative, and I guess a debate that's happened in the entrepreneurial community about whether entrepreneurs are made, whether they're born, or whether it's something that can be taught.

[30] And from listening to you describe your early years and your school years and your upbringing, I wondered what your opinion on that was and also whether you think you are a born entrepreneur.

[31] I think there are some traits that are common to all entrepreneurs.

[32] Well, one of those is decisiveness.

[33] You've got to be able to take decisions.

[34] And after I worked in Russia for a bit, went and did an MBA.

[35] And when I was there, there were lots of people on that course who were brighter than me. And they would come up with a beautiful PowerPoint presentation of five different choices of strategic options.

[36] But actually sometimes he's just got to say, haven't got the perfect knowledge, let's go with that one and take a decision.

[37] And so I think decisiveness is a very, and an attitude to risk is the other thing.

[38] I think I took the view that, you know, I started with nothing, I could end up with nothing.

[39] I wasn't that worried about failing.

[40] And that's quite important.

[41] So I think those sort of things are innate.

[42] You can teach someone like that to be a better entrepreneur.

[43] And to some extent, I mean, I went off and said the business, I had nothing else to do, to be honest at the time.

[44] I came back from Russia and I had a spare year and I thought, I couldn't think of a cunning business plan.

[45] So I thought, I'll do an MBA while I'm coming up with a cunning plan.

[46] And that was, that probably made my first business a bit better because I gave me more of an idea of the, rounded idea of business and, and so on.

[47] So I think, but if you're, if you're risk averse, you're not going to do it.

[48] Where does decisiveness and that risk appetite come from, do you think in people?

[49] And what, I guess, where does the alternative come from?

[50] Where does the fear and the lack of willingness to make a decision come from in people?

[51] Or in you.

[52] Like, where did that decisiveness come from in you?

[53] I don't know.

[54] You have some people who are physically courageous.

[55] They will leap in, you know, rugby players will leap in and do things.

[56] And other people who are not.

[57] And then you have some people who are intellectually courageous who will just, they just not frightened of saying, let's do it.

[58] No, I'm not, I'm not sure, but I think, I think it comes from not having a fear of, a fear of failure, or not, you know, we're all going to make mistakes and things will go wrong, but, but if you're frightened of ever making a mistake, then, then, then you won't do it.

[59] Much time it's like, if you, if you, if you ski and you're frightened of falling over, you're never going to be a great skier, you are going to fall over.

[60] It's got also, you were just talking there about the, almost that mental assessment you made on what failure meant, because you were like, well, if I go, to zero, that's okay.

[61] Yeah.

[62] That doesn't mean death.

[63] No, no, no, no, it doesn't.

[64] I mean, it wouldn't be great, you know, but it's survival.

[65] And I've, of all the friends I've seen who've gone through that, and I've had a lot of friends who've gone through, who've gone through business failures, the ones I admire the most, are the ones who, it's the way they've dealt with that.

[66] And some of them have thought, well, I can't change that.

[67] I can't, so all I can do is change the way I approach the next step and move on.

[68] And if you just dwell on failure, what does that mean, how does that reflect on me, then then you'd never move on.

[69] So I think it's our own attitude to failure that's quite important.

[70] What was your underlying drive to even start a business versus just going and getting a job at I don't know, pizza hurt or something?

[71] I suppose I probably looked at that and thought, if that goes well, I'll probably make more money per hour than if I go and work at pizza.

[72] So there's an element of one, I mean, maybe there's an element of laziness that comes into this.

[73] It was wanting to take that shortcut and think, well, actually, if I start my own business, and that goes, and it goes well, then obviously it's better than an hourly paid job.

[74] One of my great philosophies on business is just keep everything as simple as you can possibly make it until you have to make it more complicated.

[75] People often start, they start, you know, way too complicated and over -engineer things.

[76] If you read that book, The Lean Startup, it kind of talks to some of those values about just trying to find the simplest way to test their hypothesis.

[77] as cheaply as you can without losing years of your life.

[78] And there's nothing quite like not actually having any money to do that.

[79] So Moonpig, when we raised money on a very bitty basis, you know, there was never, it's like a well that occasionally we'd pour something in it, you know, you'd hear it hitting the bottom, but it never actually filled the well up.

[80] So we never really had much money to experiment with.

[81] So we had to be very lean with what we did.

[82] And I think perhaps the one useful thing, the only textbook that I ever went back to from my MBA years was a statistics textbook.

[83] Because what I wanted to work out is the least money I could spend to get a statistically significant answer to how much a cost of customer acquisition is for a particular channel.

[84] Because why spend $2 ,000 ,000, finding out that a particular channel doesn't work for you when you can get the answer for $2 ,000 and a half thousand?

[85] And I mean, you must see this all the time.

[86] But you get people who say, we're going to spend a million pounds on a, when you've got too much money, you just let's throw some money at this and see what works.

[87] Why waste it?

[88] When you can get the answer for two and a half grand.

[89] And then, and then, and I was look at that and I don't think, I don't think I've wasted two and a half grand.

[90] I've spent two and a half grand.

[91] Some of that will have been, let's say, I was aiming for a £10 cost of customer acquisition and actually it was 20.

[92] Well, then £1 ,250 of that was spent on acquiring customers at the right price and £1 ,250 was spent on finding out that I should never do that again.

[93] And that's, that's the way I would look at that.

[94] But if I'd spent £25 ,000 on it, then, you know, it would have been a waste.

[95] If you can, the more, you spend money to find out the answers to things, and when you've got those answers, and you're then putting that in your business band to raise money.

[96] I'm always more impressed when people say, right, I want to raise money for marketing.

[97] This is what we've done so far.

[98] This is what it costs us so far.

[99] So if we scale this up, that's what we can do.

[100] As opposed to just saying, please give us lots of money to spend on marketing.

[101] We don't know what we're going to do yet.

[102] Yeah, I had this conversation actually with my gym owner the other day.

[103] I didn't even know that he was aware of who I was, but I was leaving the gym and he goes, can I just have two minutes?

[104] It pulls me into the back room.

[105] And he tells me about this idea.

[106] And to be fair, I can't say the idea because he, and we're going to talk about this topic as well, he thinks that if you tell the idea, then I'm going to run off with it.

[107] We'll talk about that.

[108] I get that all the time.

[109] Yeah, we'll talk about that straight after.

[110] But, but, but, so it's an idea for rolling out gyms in the country.

[111] He said, I need to, I need to raise investment to put 10 of them in.

[112] And I was like, you're, this idea you have is totally contingent on this central hypothesis.

[113] I'm just going to say, he doesn't listen to the podcast, that, um, people that drive long haul want to work out in service stations, you don't need to put 10 in to figure out if that hypothesis is correct.

[114] You can put a shipping container in the car park, keep it there for free, and if anyone picks up the dumbbells, that's an indication that your hypothesis is correct.

[115] And then introduce another variable, which is cost.

[116] So then charge them to pick up the dumbbells.

[117] And if you come back to me in six months' time and say, Steve, they picked up the dumbbells, they worked out and they gave me £10 a month, then all you need is capital.

[118] And we'll go make 10.

[119] of them.

[120] Yeah.

[121] We're on the same page.

[122] I mean, you know, prove what you can prove on the least amount of money first.

[123] And evidence is, evidence is always so important.

[124] And people miss that.

[125] But let's talk about that topic then.

[126] So this idea of it really, really, it shows me that the entrepreneur is somewhat naive when an entrepreneur comes up to, I'm sure you get this all the time.

[127] They pitch you an idea and then they say, well, they sound cagey to tell you the full thing because they think you're going to run off and do it.

[128] Yeah.

[129] Yeah.

[130] Yeah.

[131] Well, I would say to them, look, if you get the the day you go live with that the moment you start advertising that idea you're you're opening you're lifting your skirts to the whole world so so you're going to have to go live with us at some point otherwise you're not going to sell anything if you don't sell anything you're going to raise any money from anybody so at some point you have to uh you you have to tell people what you're doing with moon pig there was no way that i could i could protect that idea the only way you can protect it is be the best and and and be the biggest amen yeah i mean and then i we had probably 20 competitors that followed after Moon Pig, you know, during our time there.

[132] And they'd pop up and they'd flare up and then they'd die off again.

[133] And even now, Moon Pig is 65 % of the market.

[134] When you started Moon Pig, was there anyone else doing personalized sort of gifting cards online?

[135] Yeah, funny enough, that there was.

[136] There was a very, I came up with a business ban and I developed it.

[137] And then I looked, the first thing I always do is I look around not just at what direct competitors I've got, but how people are trying to solve that problem in other ways.

[138] Because, you know, if you're trying to solve a problem, clearly that problem exists.

[139] already, and people are trying to solve it in one way or another.

[140] And I did come across a company that was doing personalised greeting cards.

[141] And I approached them and said, I've got a choice.

[142] I can either, I've come up this plan, and I can either do it myself or I can invest in your business.

[143] And anyway, the terms he offered were ridiculous.

[144] And also, the other problem was, I could see that is we were going to fall out over the content of the cards because I just didn't think he had a very good eye for cards.

[145] But that business, I don't think he ever turned over more than 300 ,000 a year.

[146] And then it died about two years later.

[147] And Moon Pig went, so I went off and did my own thing.

[148] And what it taught me actually looking back at it is that it was all about the content.

[149] It was about the quality of the cars, the quality of the design of the cars.

[150] Because actually the customer doesn't really care how the car was produced.

[151] They don't care about the technology at all.

[152] What they want is the end product.

[153] And we have the best end product.

[154] That's so interesting because a lot of entrepreneurs are put off from starting an idea because when they Google their idea that they have, they find 10 of the people that are already doing it.

[155] And I really want to touch on this point because I think it's quite liberating for entrepreneurs listening when I started my business.

[156] In fact, every business I've ever started that's been successful, had a major incumbent already.

[157] And we became the biggest and it's for exactly what you described.

[158] It's those, there's probably a thousand small details that go into making a successful bit.

[159] Remember this more.

[160] Let's just say there's a thousand.

[161] A thousand small details are going to making a business.

[162] And you're basically going to war on a thousand details.

[163] Yeah.

[164] And if you can, you know, if you can be better in just certain ways, and sometimes you only need to be better in a few simple ways, I think it can.

[165] I agree.

[166] And then, but then you, if you look at the example of bread, people have been eating bread for thousands of years.

[167] You know people like bread.

[168] We know what people are prepared to pay for bread.

[169] That's half of your market research done already.

[170] You don't have to say, we've got this thing called bread.

[171] Do you do you like it?

[172] You can cut in slices, you just ham in the middle and call it a sandwich.

[173] All that's been done for you.

[174] So then you've then got to work out, right, well, I know, I know that there's a market for this.

[175] So how do I just make it a little bit, a little bit better?

[176] Do I make it, you know, add seeds to it?

[177] Do I put cumin in it?

[178] Do I, or do I have a shop that is in a location where that isn't well served?

[179] So you only have to tweak an idea that's already there.

[180] So your chance of success, your chance of succeeding, your chance of surviving, your chance of surviving, is considerably greater because you've answered most of the questions already before you've even invested any money.

[181] The chance of that becoming, the chance of that multiplying by a factor of a thousand and suddenly think, it's a guy in short it, she was just invented a stuff called bread, it's amazing, never had it before.

[182] So you don't get that.

[183] And I think that's an important thing for entrepreneurs to think about is that you don't have to be unique.

[184] I think that's, you know, people always say, what's unique about it?

[185] You've just got to be, I agree with you.

[186] You've got to be better in some respect.

[187] And people tie themselves in knots trying to think, trying to invent things.

[188] So I think it's a really hard, it's the hardest possible way of making money.

[189] I mean, actually, when you, I read a report about the fact that the people who have, most people who've made money have made money doing something they were previously employed to do.

[190] Because, because they've spent 20 years learning how to do something.

[191] They know all the contacts and then they start up their own business.

[192] It's logical.

[193] And often, you know, when I'm looking at investing in people, I think, well, you know this industry really, really well.

[194] You're very convincing.

[195] And you know all the pitfalls in advance.

[196] So of course you're more likely to succeed.

[197] Yeah.

[198] But they also know, they also, because they know the pitfalls, they know where the opportunity to create a better product would be as well.

[199] Yeah, yeah.

[200] You know, because so often I will come up with a business idea and look at it, and it's only after I've gone through this sort of fourth iteration of the business brand, then I think, and that is why no one has done this before.

[201] Yeah.

[202] That's very, very true.

[203] If you'd known how hard it would be to start a business and to make it successful, do you think you would have started?

[204] Because here I'm asking, I want to know a little bit about the, like, the important.

[205] importance of delusion.

[206] Ha ha!

[207] Well, funny, if that's something I've always believed that an element of self -delusion is very, very important.

[208] And I think that's one of the reasons why, actually, when I, when I, when I finished my own V. I did have the opportunity to go and join a VC firm.

[209] I thought, if I can work for a VC firm for three or four years, I'll get more experience before I start my own business.

[210] Anyway, I went for a job interview, shock horror, they turned me down.

[211] So I had to go and start my own business.

[212] And I realize now that if I had gone through several years of investing in other people's businesses, I probably would have developed that kind of, that hard skin of this is actually incredibly hard, but this is why this won't work.

[213] And I see that, I see that a lot now, in me now that I look at, as an investor, I look at a lot of things.

[214] And I'm, I'm less wide -eyed than I was when I started Moonpick.

[215] And I can see the reasons why something won't work.

[216] And you become, you can become too cynical about it.

[217] Whereas when I started Moonpig, if I'd known all of the problems that I was going to come up against, I may not have started it.

[218] And believe me, there were plenty of times in the middle of that when I would have happily given it up.

[219] I mean, people often say, was there a difficult period?

[220] And there was just one, but it lasted from 2000 to 2005.

[221] And it was...

[222] That was difficult.

[223] It was tough.

[224] And I was wondering how to pay the salaries and I'd...

[225] Talk to me about the detail of that difficult period.

[226] Well, as you know better than anybody, starting a business is one thing and coming up with a product that people might want is one thing.

[227] Getting customers is probably the same.

[228] most difficult thing about setting up any online business.

[229] And I think most people underestimate that.

[230] And we tried all sorts of permutations.

[231] And bear in mind, this was 2000.

[232] So this was well before social media.

[233] So a lot of stuff was very manual.

[234] You know, you will laugh at this.

[235] But when I was doing affiliate deals, I would phone up a company and say, we'll put an advert on your thing.

[236] And if you send any traffic to us, we'll give you a bit of commission on this.

[237] And I'll send you a spreadsheet every week to tell you how much I owe.

[238] Literally, it was that manual, and I would write up a contract for each separate contract for each individual company, had a big filing cabinet of them.

[239] I mean, that sounds like very dinosaurish, but that's how it was.

[240] And now it's much, much easier.

[241] But we were, we were struggling to find ways that we could throw money at driving traffic, because everything that we threw money out was too expensive.

[242] And the only thing that was really working in all of this was the viral effect, that we knew that we got very, very good at measuring everything.

[243] And we could see that if we brought a hundred customers in that, and those 100 customers, we knew exactly how many of them would buy cards, we knew how many of them wouldn't come back again.

[244] But of the ones that bought cards, we knew that they would attract about, for every customer that we had, they'd attract a third of a customer, just because I send you a birthday card, you think it's funny, you look on the back of it, moonpig .com.

[245] And so that viral effect was the thing that kept us going for five years.

[246] And it was only really because I understood the statistics behind that.

[247] And I could understand the model and think, right, although everything else appears to be failing, although this online campaign doesn't appear to be too expensive, that appears to be too expensive.

[248] And we, we can't, I couldn't tell you, if someone had given me 10 million pounds, I couldn't have told you what we could have thrown it at to make it work.

[249] I could see that just the customers alone were driving the sales growth.

[250] And if only we could survive that long, that we would, we'd make it through.

[251] But I was the only person who believed that.

[252] All of my shareholders, I mean, one point, my shareholders all said, look, Nick, you know, it's not going to work.

[253] This is never going to work.

[254] It's never going to make money.

[255] And you, you know, we're not going to put any more money in.

[256] And we really recommend that you don't put any more money in, too, because when this all goes wrong, you're going to have to have some money to pay the rent.

[257] And it was that bad.

[258] How much had you bet on this personally?

[259] Well, I mean, I put in, I was, I'd gone off and worked in Russia for a while.

[260] And I'd probably made about a million.

[261] And by the time, by the time, and I put about 150 ,000 pounds into Mubik at the beginning to get the idea off the ground.

[262] By the time I'd got to the end of it, I was pretty much down to zero.

[263] I think I'd taken all the equity out of the flat, which previously had no mortgage.

[264] I'd taken all my savings and all that.

[265] So I'd pretty much got down to zero.

[266] So at the point when people are trying to discourage you to...

[267] I was pretty much already at zero.

[268] Zero anyway.

[269] So that's when it's finally it started to turn.

[270] And, you know, but I could see the stats.

[271] I could see where it was going.

[272] it's just that, you know, after four years of three or four different business plans, I know the last business plan wasn't, you know, is accurate, but this one, this one's better.

[273] Oh, and I know the previous two weren't that accurate, but this one, this one, this one works.

[274] Yeah.

[275] It's tough.

[276] That's that delusion.

[277] Did you ever genuinely consider quitting?

[278] No, no, I can, no, because I could, because I could see where the numbers were going.

[279] And I did have a firm belief that the repeat rate was there, the viral effect was there, and I could see how, I could see how we went through a year.

[280] We spent no money on marketing whatsoever, no money on customer acquisition, and our sales grew by 30%.

[281] So now I appreciate, having invested in lots of other e -commerce businesses, I appreciate how unusual that is.

[282] It was my first business, so I didn't know quite how unusual it was.

[283] But I knew that actually, look, it's not as if there's so many businesses I see now that the moment you turn the marketing tap off just goes to zero.

[284] And that's one of the things I'm always really aware of now when I'm investing is when I say, well, what's going to happen when you turn that tap off?

[285] Because when we did turn that tap off, it just kept on growing.

[286] And that's what I see is the real quality of a business is when you're adding layer upon layer of customers.

[287] Now, you know, not all businesses are as good at repeat business as Moonpig was, but that was the thing that I recognised that kept me going through all of that and stopped me from throwing the towel in.

[288] And that's thankfully because you had a great product underpinning Yeah.

[289] The main focus was do people like what we're selling?

[290] And we knew that.

[291] We knew it was a very, very popular product.

[292] We could see that in the viral effect with people not only to people who bought it liked it, but the people who received it liked it.

[293] So the main focus was always on create a really, really good product.

[294] And then, of course, on top of that, you've then got to make sure that you've got your production right so that your gross margins are right.

[295] And you're tweaking all of those little knobs within that engine.

[296] And the key thing also is just is understanding every metric.

[297] And we looked it like, it's like a luge run that you're polishing every day you're looking at.

[298] Is there anywhere where anyone's getting stuck along this journey?

[299] And are they not understanding what we're, you know, the button that they're supposed to press next?

[300] Are they getting confused in which goes, polish that one out?

[301] So there was a constant process.

[302] That time when we weren't spending any money on customer acquisition, we were spending all of our money on customer retention and just, polishing that luge run of the customer coming in through the front door and getting into the shopping basket.

[303] When you reflect on that and the fact that Moon Pig ultimately succeeded in the market where many others failed, you talked about, you know, the guy that you, his business you tried to buy, and you say, what was it about what we did that made us succeed or what was it about me, Nick, that made this business succeed?

[304] What is your answer?

[305] Well, I think I probably did have a good understanding of what people wanted in a card.

[306] And the, if you get down to the simplest version of that is that is that a card is about showing someone that you've want to show them that it's relevant, you've thought about them, so you've chosen something which is relevant to them that they're interested in, well, that's something you both find funny, and you can weave their name into that as well to show that you've made an effort, and then the double whammy, I would always personalise a mumpy card, have it sent back to me and write on the inside.

[307] So that's like a double personalisation, and it basically is about showing you've really thought about them.

[308] And it's amusing as well.

[309] And the great thing is a quirky British sense of humour that we love slightly mildly offending each other and then we stick the cards up on our fridge.

[310] Find it funny.

[311] So if you focus on that, focus on the product, everything else follows in behind that.

[312] Focus on the product and then make it very, very efficient and everything else should follow.

[313] Whereas if you don't focus on the product and you're just constantly selling something that people don't really want, it's incredibly hard work.

[314] On the product, a lot of people have this idea, I think, when they start businesses, that you have to have your hypothesis, your idea of what this business is going to become the product yourself, perfectly nailed before you launch.

[315] And then, you know, I made the mistake of when I started my business, kind of being too romantic about that initial idea.

[316] So I was trying to force the idea into the world as opposed to listening.

[317] If we'd go back before you started Moonpig, what was your hypothesis?

[318] like what in terms of like personalisation what you know how did you arrive at a card it was it was very simple actually i i thought through the different ideas and i and and i realized right the this internet thing is is going to happen so i don't know much about it but no one else knows anything about it either but i did at least understand how to build a team so i'd spent 10 years in russia building a team of people and building a successful business um and and i went through this thing of what things could i what how can i use the internet to make a business and digital digital product were all being given away for free.

[319] So everyone had this idea that if you could download it, it ought to be free.

[320] Well, that's a hard one to make money in.

[321] The advertising business back in those days was incredibly tough because there wasn't much of a market.

[322] Not much spend was going online.

[323] And you were spending more money to get people to come to your site to look at the adverts and people are going to pay you for the adverts.

[324] That was tough too.

[325] Then I looked at physical goods.

[326] And if you take, say, a digital camera, one of those things I looked at, if I took my sort of Satsuma Fujitsu 32DB, I figured that somebody at some point, with write an algorithm that would merely compare the price of my Fujitsu 3 -2DD with someone else's and then they'd buy the cheapest one.

[327] And that ultimately would end up squeezing all the margin out of that game.

[328] So you'd end up with a lot of physical stocks, stuff sitting in warehouses and minimal margins.

[329] So I looked at what are the things that I can, what are the things that I can sell on the internet where I can actually improve the product and make it better?

[330] And personalisation is one of those things.

[331] It's very difficult to do personalisation in store because it takes up floor space and equipment and so on.

[332] And I thought of a number of different things, including personalized CDs.

[333] Well, I'm really glad I didn't do that one.

[334] And cards occurred to me because I used to, I used to tip -eck my cards and tip -ex out the caption and write something a bit funnier and more relevant on the front.

[335] And equally, journalist friends of mine would, whenever anyone left the office, they'd be given a spoof magazine front cover, which would take a, you know, a day and a half of graphic design time to put together.

[336] And I, and I, and I, figure, well, look, we've got digital, digital printing was beginning to develop at the time, and you've got the internet, and it made it possible to combine those two, to make it possible for someone to order a single personalised greeting card, which has hands down got to be better than the unpersonalised thing.

[337] And then I could charge more for the product online than for the product in the shop.

[338] But more to the point, there's no stock.

[339] So all we've got is a pile of cardboard in the corner of the room and a pile of envelopes.

[340] That's the only stock, which I think represented about a quarter of a percent of turnover.

[341] So compared to the digital camera business where you might have a whole load of digital cameras on the water coming in from wherever you buy them from, load in the warehouse and so on.

[342] It was a very efficient business model.

[343] I mean, I got to confess, I probably slightly stumbled on it rather than, you know, it being, I look at it now and think, wow, that accidentally was a really good business model.

[344] You get paid up front.

[345] You pay supplies of 60 days.

[346] There's no stock.

[347] I mean, it's, it It was great.

[348] So, but fundamentally, it was a better product.

[349] And on day one, right from the very beginning, my, the business plan I came up with when I was doing my MBA was, I want to make it possible for a customer to buy a single personalized birthday card, which technology has suddenly made possible, whereas previously that would have been 200 quids worth of graphic design time, a bit of litho, I mean, just not possible.

[350] But core to that is that the person who's receiving it has got to think that's a really cool card.

[351] And there was a point where you made the decision to sort of step back from operations?

[352] I've always tried to...

[353] My general approach to this is try to focus on the things that only you can do.

[354] And when you really narrow it down, and as you become a bigger company, you realise that actually that really does narrow it down a lot because I always tried to hire people, replace the things that I was doing with people who could do it better than I could do it.

[355] And then once they're doing it better than I could do it, you think, gosh, well, I'm not going to interfere with that anymore, so leave them to it.

[356] And then it eventually then comes down to a role.

[357] My role eventually that became that of an executive chairman.

[358] So I brought in a CEO, and I became executive chairman.

[359] And I suppose then my role was that strategic role of making sure that we're pointing in the right direction.

[360] And also that we take those big decisions.

[361] What are you bad at?

[362] Or not as good as someone else at, shall we say?

[363] I think I'm good at short -term detail.

[364] I can sprint on real fine detail.

[365] So I can sit on a spreadsheet for six hours overnight and come up with a beautiful bit of financial modelling.

[366] But I've got a million and one things going on.

[367] And so I don't know that I'm necessarily a complete finisher.

[368] And there are people who are good at that.

[369] So interesting, when I'm looking at hiring people, I will often, although academic results aren't everything, that you always need someone who has got straight A's at A level because they're very good at understanding the question and delivering it, delivering the answer.

[370] So they understand what's expected of them and they deliver it in a very predictable way.

[371] Whereas CEOs can often be quite maverick and you ask them one question and they will answer something else completely different but much more interesting.

[372] And that's fine.

[373] You can afford to have one or two of those mavericks but somebody in the company has to be a good completer finisher.

[374] They understand the question and they deliver it.

[375] Have you, this is interesting.

[376] So there's certain people in my, in my, in my previous business where I knew they were like useless at organisation and process and they were, they were just dread, they could, they were like unreliable.

[377] But they had one skill, which was genius.

[378] Yeah.

[379] And so it would almost be like making an exception for them within the company where, okay, they might take a long time to reply to emails and stuff like that.

[380] But that one point of like creative genius that they brought to the company was worth it.

[381] Yeah.

[382] Did you ever have that?

[383] very definitely you've got you've got some people I think creative genius always comes at a price and it becomes because someone has focused on one thing at the expense of something else generally and so you just have to work with it and say right okay well let's recognise a person doesn't do that and actually those skills can easily be dealt with by something else get them a good PA someone who can get a good completed finisher behind them who picks up after them and and then they will come up with the ideas that nobody else would have come up with.

[384] Yeah.

[385] I think that works.

[386] You were talking about that struggle you had for the first five years at Movedig.

[387] I heard you talking some interviews about, you know, three, four, five, et cetera, being particularly hard.

[388] But what was, what was the personal sacrifice of that?

[389] I'm thinking now about how easy it was to maintain like relationships and friendships when, you know, in your head you probably have that red, read those red numbers from the management accounts sort of etched into your mind.

[390] at all times.

[391] Can't be honest.

[392] Never really got it in the way.

[393] Never got in the way.

[394] No, I, a lot of people confuse, there's all we're running your own business.

[395] You're working all the way house at God's ends.

[396] I never did.

[397] If something needed to be done, and only I could do it, then I would do it.

[398] And there were time, you know, there's the odd time when, I remember once when our entire printing team were off ill. And I came back from a business trip to Australia to discover that we were three days behind on our printing schedule.

[399] And I simply got in the printing room.

[400] I was the only other person qualified to use the printer.

[401] So I just sat in the printing room and I worked 24 hours a day for three days, I think, to get it all done.

[402] So yes, there were times.

[403] But I had a great social life.

[404] I've always been a great believer also that I like to manage a business, you know, during reasonable hours.

[405] I don't think it's important that people need to sacrifice themselves on the altar of my business.

[406] And I don't like them doing that.

[407] One, because it makes me feel guilty about skiving off.

[408] You know, if you've got all of your, all of your people in the office and they're working 24 hours a day and you're sort of, you know, taking half the day off to go and do something fun, you know, if you're awful.

[409] So I try to make sure the same standard supply and that people should, people should work a proper day, you know, proper day's work in the hours that they would like to work within reason.

[410] But I do expect them to go off and go and do something different and recharge their batteries in the evening and the weekends and, you know, Because otherwise, you just run out of steam.

[411] And particularly, it was a creative business.

[412] You know, we're trying to make people laugh.

[413] If you're exhausted and miserable, that's tough.

[414] It goes against a lot of the sort of typical narrative, doesn't it, in entrepreneurship, like the hustle porn star entrepreneur.

[415] He just like fucking doesn't sleep and just caffeine and just, you know, they're like crying in the street.

[416] And they're like, you know, eating ramen noodles and stuff like that.

[417] What does that narrative make you think?

[418] Well, I think that's true.

[419] if you start a business with, a lot of people start a business with nothing, and a lot of businesses fail.

[420] And as those businesses are failing, clearly, obviously you're down to your last pennies, and that's tough.

[421] And so I think that the thing that they're describing is that is the last sort of death throws of a business.

[422] And I've seen lots of businesses that I've invested in go through the same thing, where there is no money left, you can't pay salaries, and the founders are down to, you know, they're living in the office under the desk and eating noodles.

[423] And so that happens, but it isn't an essential part of the journey, but generally the death throws.

[424] And occasionally, you survive.

[425] I mean, you know, had I not had, had that last bit of cash that I put in, I may well have been one of those cases.

[426] What about focus?

[427] A lot of entrepreneurs, you know, have, I get a lot of messages from entrepreneurs that have multiple businesses, three or four startups they're doing at the same time.

[428] Well, I wouldn't invest in anybody that had multiple startups.

[429] You know, because if I'd had three businesses going at the same time as MoonVick and MoonVick was going badly, you focus on the one that's going well because it makes you feel better.

[430] So, and then the person, then they turn around to the investors who put money into the third one and they say, yeah, and I've given up with that one.

[431] I'm off to, so there is no way.

[432] I mean, when I invest in a business, I would make sure that there is a clause that says that the founder shareholders have to be 100 % focused on that.

[433] They're not allowed to have more than a 5 % stake in another unlimited company.

[434] I mean, pretty strict about that.

[435] Yeah.

[436] I mean, I just think it's laughable.

[437] Yeah.

[438] Absolutely laughable.

[439] That people come along and they go, yeah, I've got three ideas and I'd like you to invest in this one.

[440] But I've got those just in case that one doesn't work.

[441] Yeah.

[442] For me, it's, for me as well, I tend to think all three will fail because you're giving like 30, in the way that I view, even if you're not prioritising, you're giving 33 % of your time and energy to, and all your competitors are giving 101 % and a lot of them might be sleeping under the desk.

[443] So if you're giving 30%, you're, it's, it's, it's, it, it, it, it, it, it, it's already hard enough to succeed, giving 100%.

[444] Yeah.

[445] So you're really setting yourself up to failure.

[446] But I think there's this weird thing where entrepreneurs find it impressive.

[447] Some entrepreneurs find it impressive to list multiple businesses that they're doing.

[448] And I swear, if I hear an entrepreneur come to me with an idea and they've also got another thing they're doing, I'm immediately deeply unimpressed by them because I think they've got this focus problem.

[449] And maybe they're, you know, like maybe they sat down and tried to think of a business idea.

[450] And for me, like, when business ideas don't come from some type of inspiration, when they're literally just contrived from, I'm going to try and think of a business idea, I think that it's typically more difficult.

[451] I think like some form of inspiration, even if it's a small thing of inspiration as a, it's integral to success and creating something unique.

[452] But yeah, that's another thing that irritates me about.

[453] I get just as irritated by that.

[454] There are times when you have to push on through that barrier.

[455] and if you've got three things going and one of them is an easier journey that's where you're going to focus yourself when in fact that is the absolute time that you need to be completely focused on crashing through that wall that you've come up against and that's where the best inspiration I ever had and sometimes actually looking back the most exciting times I ever had in my business were when my back was absolutely against the one and think this is going down this is going down and bizarrely I found that quite invigorating really good.

[456] When everything is going incredibly well, there were times when I think everything's going very well.

[457] Everyone's doing their job.

[458] Frankly, I could be here or not be here.

[459] It doesn't make much difference.

[460] In terms of skills as well as an entrepreneur, I heard you talk about public speaking being integral to, you did public speaking at university.

[461] I did a lot of public speaking at university and a lot of debating.

[462] And the skill I think that's important is the ability to be able to persuade people of your ideas.

[463] Not necessarily public speaking, but in every meeting that you go to, you need to be able to look people in the eye and convince them that your idea is right.

[464] And that could be, in a sales role, it could be sitting around a table with a bunch of developers and one of them saying, I think this is the right way forward.

[465] If you can't articulate yourself properly, then you're never going to be listened to.

[466] And that's a skill I think is, it's being recognized in schools.

[467] I do a lot in education now.

[468] So I see now more and more they recognize that that's a skill that is really important, that people you should be able to look someone in the eye and be able to explain yourself very, very coherently.

[469] I tend to actually believe I'd go one step further and think I can't think of a more important skill in life and business.

[470] Then I refer to it as sales because, and we think of sales, we think of trying to get cash out of someone else's pocket by giving them something.

[471] But I think of it as like, meet a girl in a nightclub, you know, try and communicate your idea to your team, investors, employees.

[472] Everyone you encounter, I think, is to some degree you're trying to sell something and it's usually yourself.

[473] Yeah.

[474] But those that are, you think about how that compounds over the over 70 years of your life being good or bad at that one skill yeah yeah will anything change the trajectory of your life more than being a like a good sales person and and and that comes as you say from being able to articulate yourself and speak and yeah and just think coherently and put down a logical argument that people think yes okay i get that i understand it how does one get better at that i think a lot of that's practice um um and i i think people you know people make this uh sort of binary thing between public speaking, standing on a stage and speaking to a crowd of people versus not doing anything at all.

[475] And actually in between there's a whole load of stuff which is working within a team and being able to...

[476] And that's where most people come up against it is that they'll be sitting in a meeting with four or five other people and they've got something I want to say and they're too nervous about saying something, they just don't say anything at all and then their ideas are never listened to.

[477] Yeah.

[478] And then they're devalued in that context.

[479] And similarly, may not necessarily be spoken word.

[480] You've also got to be able to write well and convincingly.

[481] Then there's another side of it, which is the numeracy side.

[482] And I find that the most convincing thing is when I love a good spreadsheet, but when you can express ideas in numbers and you say, look, this is the model that works.

[483] And you can prove it in numbers.

[484] It is a very convincing thing, particularly for an investor.

[485] If we do this, this is the evidence we've got.

[486] That's what will happen.

[487] That's very convincing.

[488] So there's also being numerate and being able to explain things in numbers, which is...

[489] Persuatively.

[490] Yeah, yeah.

[491] It's so true, yeah.

[492] You can be like orally persuasive, which is, you know, anecdotal persuasion, I guess, and then you can be persuasive with numbers, which is a...

[493] Or graphics, and that's the other thing.

[494] I do see the quality of decks in the last 15 years has dramatically improved.

[495] And in that, oh, they're much, much more engaging.

[496] And there's some real creative genius behind some of the stuff.

[497] I mean, occasionally they don't talk about the numbers, which is quite important.

[498] Beautiful, beautiful presentation.

[499] And, you know, big sort of, you know, you go through the same.

[500] that there's docks end and all fantastic looks lovely beautiful graphics and then you think you have kind of missed out the point about how you're going to make any money but but so there's a lot more so again but that comes down to how you persuade people and how you present how you present ideas not all of us not all of us understand things by listening some people understand by seeing I see patterns in numbers but not everyone does and I I realize that now that that just because I happen to see something one way doesn't mean to say that everybody else sees it in that way and you have to understand how people how people communicate one of the on that point about, you know, persuasion and communication, one of the most amazing things that happened to me inadvertently was, well, one of them's right here, I started doing a podcast.

[501] And I, from, I never, the unintended consequence of me being forced to speak on stage because I was running around the world, talking about marketing, and being forced to write out on, I do quotes on Instagram, write these quotes every single day at 7 p .m. on Instagram.

[502] And then write, I used to write this podcast.

[503] I used to just be on my own, was that I, A, was able to, I was able to develop my ideas better.

[504] So if you ask me any question on marketing, well, I've already written it out.

[505] I've written an essay on it because I had to do a blog, because they had to run my personal brand.

[506] Or if you ask me something else about my life, I've already spent, you know, a thousand hours talking on this podcast about it, was I became much, I'd say, 10x better at communicating.

[507] And the impact that had on my life was just profound.

[508] So my conclusive point here is, I really think for young people that there are ways to force yourself to accelerate that learning.

[509] One of them like keep, like, you know, keep a blog, start a podcast, even if no one's listening to it.

[510] And I, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think the more beneficial thing is the skills you'll learn from doing it.

[511] And oh my God, sales is just everything to me. You're right.

[512] When you have to write a blog, actually write the words down.

[513] It really forces you to think about how to express things coherently.

[514] In a way that verbally, you can get away with a lot less discipline.

[515] Dragon's Den.

[516] Something we share in common.

[517] Yes, indeed.

[518] Yeah.

[519] I've just started on the show.

[520] it was a yeah i mean the first pitch everything walking in behind the set i mean i first watched it when i was 12 years old and it was also surreal how was your experience on dragon's done and what advice would you have for me let's do the first question okay well so my so i i love the experience um i mean partly because it's it's very forgiving television to make in the sense that uh you arrive on set and apart from the fact that there are seven cameras um which for was distracting for about the first hour or two other than that It's people walking through the door and they're saying, this is who I am, this is my business.

[521] And it's one of those things that I think, I think if you're thinking about that as a potential career, it's about as realistic as you can get while still being entertaining.

[522] These are real businesses that people have spent sometimes several years developing and put their life and sold into it.

[523] It's not some concocted thing that, you know, here's a hundred pounds, go and see how much cheese you can sell on the market, the type of thing that you see in The Apprentice.

[524] These are real businesses.

[525] And I think it's been very inspiring.

[526] I've seen a real shift in the time that I've been around in people's attitudes to becoming an entrepreneur.

[527] Because of, yeah.

[528] Partly because of that.

[529] I think there's also been a shift in attitude generally.

[530] And a lot of young people aspire to the idea that actually when you're young and you've got nothing to lose, you can afford to make more mistakes.

[531] So rather than, so you can just go straight into it after school, start something and crash and burn, start again.

[532] And you can do it all now from your phone as well.

[533] You know, you can set up a shop using Shopify on your phone in a couple of minutes and sell, you know, you can even drop ship things so you don't need a warehouse or anything like that.

[534] So it's very incredibly accessible now.

[535] Yeah.

[536] More people, young people want to be entrepreneurs than ever before.

[537] But I think it's, I'm really looking forward to seeing, seeing this new series because I think you will add a, kind of a different dimension to it in terms of thinking, particularly the way that business is now, you know, the way that, particularly tech businesses, and the way that they're funded.

[538] is very different from 20 years ago.

[539] Yeah.

[540] One of the things I didn't expect as well was how useful the other dragons are when it comes to analysing the business.

[541] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[542] Because they all come from different disciplines.

[543] So Deborah's going to help me with the numbers over here and Peter's got his background in tech and, you know, logistics and all the amazing things he does and Tuka's going to be able to really sort of interrogate the supply chain and Sara understands the craft industry and business generally.

[544] And so it's really a...

[545] So sometimes you just got to let them in tech, The business from all of their angles.

[546] I learned a lot.

[547] I learned a very, very important lesson from Debra about the food business and going to supermarkets.

[548] She was interrogating somebody and talking about their gross margin.

[549] And she said, well, of course, as soon as your sales go up, your gross margin will go down.

[550] I'm thinking, what are you talking about?

[551] And then I asked her about this afterwards and she said, well, the problem is that supermarkets love to have young pioneer brands in and they will allow you to be on their shelves.

[552] so there was pyramid of products, and they allow you these little, innovative little companies to add interest to their shelves.

[553] The moment that it looks interesting and you want to sell more of it, the supermarket goes, aha, now let's talk about the price.

[554] Because they know how to make that stuff even better than you do.

[555] They know how to squeeze you down to a barely acceptable margin.

[556] And so your margin, which looked okay at the beginning, they'll say, well, you can sell a lot more, but we're going to have to have a different price.

[557] And that was a lesson I learned from Deborah.

[558] So sitting back and listening sometimes, and, you know, like, you know, of supply chain and in textiles in particular.

[559] It's quite fascinating.

[560] So jumping back to your business then, Moon Pig, so eventually you sell the business.

[561] Yeah.

[562] Um, fully or in part?

[563] Well, I sold, I sold most of it in 2011 and I rolled over, um, I rolled over into the venture capital investment in the new, in the new company.

[564] We basically merged two companies.

[565] We merged photo box and Moon Pig together, um, with a lot of venture capital money.

[566] And, and so I reinvested in that.

[567] And then we sold, sold it all out in 2016.

[568] Um, so, there's a couple of things here.

[569] That was the first point where you became really rich.

[570] Well, funny, moving started making a lot of money before we sold.

[571] Oh, really?

[572] So we were probably making about 10 million a year in dividends.

[573] So, because it was making money faster than we could spend it on advertising.

[574] So, so we just paid it out as dividends.

[575] I think we paid out about 30 million pounds in dividends before we sold.

[576] Oh, wow.

[577] So, um, quite literally printing money.

[578] So by the time I sold, actually, it wasn't as if it was transformational because I hadn't spent the money, I'd still got all the money that I'd taken out as dividends.

[579] So if you, you'd already built enough wealth to take care of all of your sort of basic Maslovia needs, clearly, you know, so when you sell, how does that feel?

[580] Well, it was funny.

[581] I was, I was interviewed afterwards on Sky, I think, and they said, well, you know, what are you going to buy?

[582] What are you going to do now?

[583] And I said, well, what did you do immediately afterwards?

[584] And I thought, well, I cycled home and I made a peanut button jam sandwich.

[585] I mean, that was, because there was a, it's a slightly, it's a bit of a weird anti -climax selling.

[586] I didn't know how it was for you, but I went into a large room and I had to sign about 200 documents on my own, and then I sort of done it now.

[587] And they could, oh, great, well, money would have been bank later on, well, back on the bike, cycle home.

[588] That was it.

[589] Oh, there was no sort of, you know, da -da -da -da, no trumpets, you know, no signing, shaking hands.

[590] It was quite a non -event, really.

[591] So the money arrives at the same day when you've sold?

[592] Yes.

[593] Well, not all of it.

[594] I think it was done in stages, but most of it arrived on the same day, yeah, yeah.

[595] And so you sold the company over a hundred million at the time.

[596] Yeah.

[597] Rolled shares into the holding company as well to keep a sort of festered and interest in the business.

[598] Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a shit ton of money.

[599] Was there sort of a loss in, because you've given up your business here.

[600] You've given up your focus, your baby.

[601] Was there a bit of a lot, like a loss of orientation?

[602] Like, what do I do now with my life?

[603] Yes, though at the same time, I think I'd got to a point where I delegated everything within the company and I had been largely focused on the sale process for a year or so.

[604] So after that sales process was over, you think, well, now the day -to -day running of this business has been left to the team.

[605] They're all doing a fantastic job.

[606] They're all bright and they're probably better than I am.

[607] So me sticking around in that company, if I decided to carry on running the business for profit, I could have done, but I felt as though I'd run my course.

[608] I felt as though I'd added everything I could add.

[609] to that business.

[610] And there were lots of other things I wanted to do in life.

[611] So in a way, it was a challenge to sort of create an identity outside of that, you know, because for a long time I'd been Mr. Russia.

[612] I'd gone to Russia and everyone knew me as the person who went to Russia and did things in Russia.

[613] And then I did, as I started Moonpeg, I fell into obscurity again.

[614] People think, oh, poor Nicky does something with greeting cards.

[615] And I go home at Christmas, you know, back to Shropshire and my parents' friends would say, so you do something with greeting cards.

[616] Is that something you do from your spare room?

[617] Very, very, very, I mean, having, because I've run quite a big business in Russia, and then, of course, it started, it turned into something serious.

[618] So it was an interesting challenge, which is how do you sort of reinvent yourself after that?

[619] And I actually stopped and I went into the charity sector full time, and I became a CEO of a children's charity for, so for a year full time, and then I became a trustee of that for another four years.

[620] Why?

[621] Well, partly because I think, I think I'd, I think I sort of satisfied, felt as I'd satisfied everything that I needed to, you know, I didn't want any more stuff.

[622] So I wasn't, it was, it was going to be hard to get motivated just by making more money.

[623] So, so I wanted to have, I wanted to make sure that whatever I did after that was useful, it was socially useful in some respect.

[624] But for that, you've got to kind of do the work.

[625] You've got to understand how to make a, how to make a difference.

[626] And, and that first year really made me realize how complicated it is and how difficult it is to make a, to make a, to to make a real difference in the world.

[627] So it's fascinating.

[628] And I wouldn't have been able to do that.

[629] If I hadn't sold the company, I wouldn't have had the freedom to go off and do that.

[630] Isn't that interesting that people, they typically, this is a super like generalisation and it's not necessarily the truth, but it appears that we all start quite selfish in life.

[631] It's like, let me get rich and free first.

[632] And then you see that transition when people do make money, is their joy comes from philanthropy and helping others.

[633] I think you, but I think, you know, in that very privileged position of having seen what it's like afterwards, because of course for most people, they want more things.

[634] I think money, a lack of financial problems can bring you happiness, not having financial problems.

[635] Financial problems brings you misery.

[636] When you're beyond financial problems, you're neutral.

[637] And then there's, and then there's financial freedom, which is I'm now free.

[638] I don't have to do the 95 job.

[639] I have the option if I want to to do to do other things.

[640] that, I'd say it's pretty diminishing marginal returns.

[641] I mean, I think for some people, the more money they make, it's about, it's not about the money itself, it's more about their position in a, you know, if you're very competitive and there's a hierarchy of people, and there's someone up there who's, you know, who's made, you've got Jeff Bezos up there, and they see themselves on that trajectory, they'll never quite be happy until they're up there, and they'll never get there.

[642] So I realised very early on that if you, if, that I wanted to avoid getting into that, into that sort of competitive mindset of thinking that I have to be somewhere on that trajectory.

[643] I've satisfied what I, what I need in terms of, in terms of, you know, stuff, housing and whatever.

[644] And thereafter, it's about being free to explore other things.

[645] One of the things I noticed about you that's, like, very different to the other successful people that I've talked to.

[646] And we've touched on that a little bit was you, and we've talked about a little bit earlier, but my questions, I'm slightly related, is there seems to be a lot of like neurotic obsession with people's businesses, hobbies.

[647] I mean, I remember sitting with Eddie Hearn here and him telling me how, like, how, I mean, his book is called Relentless, like, how relentless he is.

[648] And to the point where he will sacrifice his family for the business, and he'll tell him, he'll speak to have the conversation with his wife and say, my business is everything.

[649] If I, you know, don't make the date.

[650] If I don't make this, then it is what it is.

[651] I am obsessed.

[652] Yeah.

[653] You don't seem to be like that.

[654] and that makes one would therefore assume that the problem that sometimes comes with being like that which is a severe cost to sort of relationships wouldn't be present in you I think you can be driven by two things you can be driven by demons or driven by passion and it's much better to be driven by passion than demons some people are some people were offended at the age of 11 by a comment that somebody made to them that they'll never amount to anything and they have struggled ever since to prove to that person a teacher said something bad to them and then finally they go back 35 years ago they go back to school and they find this old teacher who says well I always thought you'd make something of yourself and they think I was hoping it's going to be more gratifying it was you know the teacher might just say I just felt you needed a bit of a kick to get yourself off you and it worked didn't it so some people are driven by and the people who are driven by demons are often it doesn't make them happy like an it's scratching and it just makes it makes it worse.

[655] Amen.

[656] Eddie Hans basically like that.

[657] And he was quite honest about that.

[658] His dad, basically, he was always trying to live up to his dad's expectations of him.

[659] And I remember saying to him, I remember saying to Eddie, I was, you know, what's the goal then, Eddie?

[660] Well, you know, we're going to sell it for $5 billion.

[661] Yeah.

[662] And then he's like, well, you know, then I'll have my cigar and I'll go to the beach.

[663] Do you actually think you'd go to the beach of a cigar?

[664] You just told me you're obsessive and really, and he goes, probably not, probably won't.

[665] And actually, the difficult thing is then what do you do afterwards?

[666] I think it's one thing that a lot of people they think a business is a starting a business is about you start a business and then you're working towards an exit and happiness comes an exit.

[667] It doesn't.

[668] Happiness comes from the process of building a business and working with people and pulling together bright people watching the work and creating this thing.

[669] I love the learning process.

[670] I think that's perhaps one of the other things that I learned out of all of this is that I really, really enjoy learning and it doesn't matter how much money you've got, you can't learn Japanese any quicker.

[671] Well, you can learn it a little bit quicker if you've got some really good...

[672] But basically, you've got to put the work in.

[673] It doesn't matter how rich you are.

[674] You can't buy that.

[675] You've actually got to put the work in.

[676] That drives you.

[677] So do you think you're a balanced person?

[678] I'm trying to get, I'll be honest, what I'm trying to understand here is a lot of the entrepreneurs that I meet, that the reason why they're successful is because of, as you say, you described it perfectly, because of demons or something.

[679] Yeah.

[680] And then that costs them somewhere else.

[681] Yeah.

[682] You seem to be, as was the case with the CEO of Deliveroo, who sat here a couple of weeks ago, fairly balanced person.

[683] So I'm assuming then you have really well balanced.

[684] relationships?

[685] I think so.

[686] I've got great friends and great friends and great relationships and a lovely family.

[687] But that's part of it comes down to, part of it comes down to standing back at it and thinking, you know, what is success?

[688] And I look at success, that more rounded thing, what makes you a successful human being?

[689] And if you look at that, then you're constantly looking, you're constantly measuring yourself by, well, like, actually, what do my friends think of me?

[690] Do they think I'm a good person?

[691] Do I think I'm a good person?

[692] Do I think I'm a good person?

[693] am I going to look back on my life and be embarrassed at the way that I've trodden on people on the way up and in which case, you know, don't tread on people on the way up.

[694] So it depends on what you regard as success, what you define as success in the beginning.

[695] I think, unfortunately, too often we measure the things that are easiest to measure.

[696] And the easiest thing to measure is how wealthy someone is.

[697] So when I go back to talk at schools about, or my old school, about, and you're invited along, presumably because everyone's heard of a business that you, you've created.

[698] I'm reluctant to create this illusion that, that, you know, if you work incredibly hard, you can make a lot of money and that will make you successful.

[699] You have to be a successful human being.

[700] What is this successful human being?

[701] Well, I think it's all the, you know, those things.

[702] One, you've got to be a, you've got to be a good citizen.

[703] You've got to make your fair contribution, you've got to make a good contribution to society.

[704] Now, if you're good at business, you are, of course, helping to pay a lot of the bills, which is a great thing, if you pay your taxes properly.

[705] But equally, it's about the way that you treat your employees.

[706] It's And all of those things, I think there are things that you look back on your own life and you think, did I, did I lead a good life?

[707] Was I, was I a good person?

[708] Or do I regret, look back and think, you know, I was a bit harsh?

[709] As you look ahead in, you know, the next chapter of your life.

[710] Yeah.

[711] We talk, you talk there about how the journey is actually the rule of the fun and fulfillment lives.

[712] Yeah.

[713] And you kind of like, because I think we all kind of like mentally map out what the next phase of our life will look like.

[714] We don't necessarily know the details that have a business plan.

[715] But we understand like the, the, the fundamentals of that phase.

[716] What are you hoping will be part of that phase?

[717] At the stage of life you're at where money isn't, you know, money isn't going to mean that you can, can or can't eat.

[718] What are you trying to put into that chapter of your life?

[719] Well, the other thing I've realized, and I listened to something Bill Gates said, which is that if Bill Gates have become a doctor, he could have affected quite a few people's lives.

[720] But by going into business, he affected millions of people's lives.

[721] And he was very good at making money.

[722] And so I don't see anything wrong with pursuing.

[723] I mean, now I'm actively pursuing the businesses that I'm involved with and I would love to make more money.

[724] But then that gives me the freedom to do something useful with that money.

[725] It has a whole other dimension to why are you doing it?

[726] I mean, I'm chasing because I need another Lamborghini because I've got a very old battered discovery.

[727] And Lamborghini, it's just not what I was going to say, I can imagine you in a Lamborghini.

[728] No, no, I'm just a very, very tired old discovery, which I'm driving into the ground before I buy an electric car.

[729] But there's got to be a reason for doing it.

[730] And the reason, the reason for creating companies, partly because it is good fun.

[731] I mean, I thoroughly enjoy, you have an idea and you're creating something.

[732] And seeing your idea come play out and you think, yeah, I was right.

[733] That hypothesis was right.

[734] So we pulled together as good people and it starts to work and then 10 years later, absolutely that worked.

[735] And we've got a whole lot of people in employment.

[736] They're enjoying themselves.

[737] And the great thing also is when you step back from that and you think that thing, I mean, Moonbig has a life its own.

[738] I mean, I was in the car, the the other day, and there was a moon being advert came on the radio.

[739] I've been out of that for a long time now.

[740] I haven't been involved, you know, haven't worked there for 10 years.

[741] And yet that's, it sort of carried on without me. There's a huge sense of pride in that when you see that it must be, surely.

[742] Yeah.

[743] And actually, you know, when you sell a business, it's also a sense of pride that it worked for them as well.

[744] I think the very best deals are deals where both parties came away happy.

[745] Will you ever be a CEO again?

[746] I don't know that I will because I enjoy, I enjoy the sort of that being, having the freedom to do different things.

[747] Yeah.

[748] And there are plus and minuses to have this, this plural life.

[749] I've realised that having, doing 10 % of 10 things is twice as much work as doing 100 % of one thing.

[750] Twice as much work?

[751] Definitely twice as much work.

[752] I mean, partly, from a very simple perspective, is the, is the, I mean, necessarily now post -COVID, but before that, actually simply they're getting from one place to the other.

[753] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[754] And that gets in the way of things.

[755] But also, it's the constant juggling in your head and then suddenly you think, I haven't focused on that for a bit.

[756] And it's more work.

[757] So I would like to be more focused.

[758] I want to get interested at a level where I feel as I'm able to make a positive difference to it.

[759] And that means actually a smaller number of things.

[760] I had a job when I was at university, the most boring job ever.

[761] It was transcribing license details.

[762] It was working for a Ford dealership, transcribing license details from one ledger to another.

[763] and I'd get to about 10 o 'clock in the morning physically it was so boring it was physically painful and I would I would think surely it must be 5 o 'clock it's not it's still 10 o 'clock in the horrible absolutely horrible and and the one thing I look back at my life but it's one of the greatest things is I've never I've always got to 5 o 'clock wishing it was 2 o 'clock and that's that's I think a sign that you're not bored and there's the stuff I'd like to be doing I look for I wake up on Monday morning and think fantastic I can get stuck in and I can do stuff.

[764] And so, but that idea of, that idea of, of there not being enough hours to do to, to get the stuff done is, is a sign that it's enjoyable.

[765] The ones that don't like what they do, you know, because I've worked jobs at call center, night shifts for, you know, just pick up the phone, book the hotel for them because they can figure out how to use the computer.

[766] Yeah, yeah.

[767] You know, for Dorothy.

[768] Yeah.

[769] Yeah.

[770] She just doesn't know where she wants to stay.

[771] She just wants to stay in Manchester, doesn't know where Manchester.

[772] You know, night shifts of doing stuff like that.

[773] And I've had worse jobs as well where I had to open the yellow pages and just call someone and try and tell them something, which was awful.

[774] But what is that, what liberates people from that place?

[775] I mean, I would maybe guess that it's information and maybe skills, so maybe they could...

[776] The other thing is, is when you've got one of those jobs, you take the view, look, I've got an opportunity to learn how this, to learn how this works.

[777] If I learn how this does work, what works well, take it seriously and do it well, then I actually might know what it takes to become a supervisor.

[778] If become a supervisor, I might have them what it takes to go up to to go one notch higher, and suddenly I'm actually then managing people, and that's a little bit more interesting than what I was doing.

[779] So to some extent you have the control to be able to sign how much time and effort and enthusiasm you put into it.

[780] And there are some jobs that will not be that interesting, but then say to yourself, right, what can I learn about doing this that's going to enable me just to do my boss's job?

[781] And actually what your employers will be looking for is someone who's applied, who's interested, and they'll look amongst the 10 people who are doing that job and think nine out of those people are just doing this because they want to pay the bills.

[782] This one is genuinely trying to work at how to do the job better.

[783] I've got one last question for you never asked this question before but it feels like I should you're you know you're you know several years ahead of me in business right so you've experienced a lot more than me you've had a child you've gone through you know even Dragon's Den you've been through that experience as well and had a taste of all of that you know attention and press and all that stuff what would be the one piece of advice you'd give to me it can be relating to anything if just you you know maybe was something that you think I need to learn or know based on me being I'm 20 you know 28 29 now I think I've just left my companies just sold my shares a little bit yeah um as you go as you go through through time you you can get to a point where you think right I've had a huge success and I look at moon pig and think will I ever have a success as big as moon pig I don't know I don't know but I've got to be okay with that and in order to be happy I have to be I have to be okay with the idea that may never I may never better that um because if if if you're always constantly thinking, right, I've done that, I therefore have to do that.

[784] It can be a recipe for misery.

[785] And I, like, you look at pop stars who, who have a huge career, and then, and they're kind of done by 25.

[786] And actually, you know, you know that they're not going to quite come back.

[787] And, and then a couple of years later, you sort of see, and, and so I look at it, and I think, well, I don't have to better what I did in terms of, I don't, I'm not going to judge myself by having a business that was worth more than Moon Pig, because actually that's setting myself on almost impossible task.

[788] What I'm going to do is make sure that whatever I do, I feel as though I was being, I feel as it was useful.

[789] And some of those might not be as obvious or as prominent as setting up Moon Pig.

[790] Because sometimes you catch a wave.

[791] And I look at Moon Pig and I think, did I just catch a wave?

[792] I was in the right place at the right time.

[793] I had a good idea and I managed it well.

[794] But actually, I just caught that wave perfectly.

[795] And sometimes you, that can be hard to recreate.

[796] So I think being managing your own expectations is an important part of human happiness and thinking, okay, I may never better that but actually I'm going to do something different now and that will be just as interesting and that'll be just as rewarding as what I did before.

[797] Do you ever regret?

[798] So like with my company, I think I left in 2019 when the valuation was maybe 200 million.

[799] I think now it's like 500.

[800] Yeah.

[801] And it's probably going to go, I shouldn't, I don't know, with, I'm guessing here, okay, I'm not involved in the company anymore.

[802] I'm probably going to go to a billion, I reckon.

[803] Yeah.

[804] Do you ever regret, Moon Pig is now worth what, one point something, billion?

[805] One point, one point six.

[806] Well, I, I, for a long time, I said eight years after I sold the, but when I sold the business, it was making about 11, 12 million pounds profit.

[807] Not even a proper profit, like money you could spend.

[808] And, and eight years later, it was making about 18 million.

[809] So I think, yeah, it was an improvement on where it was, but it wasn't so spectacular that it was, so that they're happy with their deal, and I'm happy that I've got the chance to go off and do something else.

[810] And then I looked at floating and think, well, of course, the thing about floating is that nobody knew we were going to have COVID, and that obviously massively boosted the business, and I think probably has permanently put more people online.

[811] So that was a fairly unpredictable part of it.

[812] Then there's the other question, which is, if I had stayed in running that business, would it have done as well as it has?

[813] And I don't know that it would have done.

[814] to be, if I'm really honest, because the guys who came after me, is a guy called Stan Loron, who came into Moonbig after me, who was awesome.

[815] I mean, he was brilliant.

[816] And then, and then Nicom Rathar, who's running it now, has taken it to another level.

[817] So, where he came in and he's just, so, so, so I, I'm not sure that I would have done, I'm not sure had I stayed in, there's no guarantee that it would have done what it, what it did.

[818] In fact, I'm not sure it would have done.

[819] So, you know, and actually I've done some really interesting things.

[820] So if you're asking me the question, would I rather have had sort of 36 % of 1 .6 billion?

[821] Yes.

[822] What I'm questioning is whether we would have got there if I'd remained with the helm.

[823] Well, listen, Nick, thank you so much for your time.

[824] It's been an incredibly interesting diverse conversation.

[825] And thank you as well for you sent a text message, I think, to our mutual friend before I went on the show, just giving me a piece of advice.

[826] And you passed that over to me. And I kept that in mind.

[827] I won't share what that advice was.

[828] I kept that in mind.

[829] And yeah, I mean, your story is super inspiring and there's a British success story and someone that's so, I'm so fascinated by you because you're so unorthodox in so many ways and you also don't bullshit.

[830] So a lot of people, it's tempting to portray yourself.

[831] Even with the last example there, you could have said, well, you know, you basically said that you're unsure whether the business would have performed better or worse without you.

[832] I think that takes great humility and self -awareness to admit that.

[833] And that's the reason why I started this podcast, because, you know, to share some of that honesty with the world.

[834] So thank you for coming on.

[835] Thank you for being an inspiration to me. Thank you for being one of my favourite of dragons as well.

[836] You were just very real and funny.

[837] Thank you.

[838] It was good to have a real sense of humour.

[839] Well, it's been a real pleasure meeting you in person, so.

[840] Brilliant, superb.

[841] And, yeah, hopefully we'll get you back again once to talk more about your charity in particular, which I wish we had more time to talk about because that was super inspiring to read about as well.

[842] But yeah, thank you.

[843] Thanks, Nick.

[844] Great.