323 – He’ll double your business in one year: Tom interviews Gavin Preston

Episode 323 - Gavin Preston
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody. It's Tom here with episode three hundred twenty three of Screw the Commute podcast. We have a prolific guest today. His name is Gavin Preston. And and we hear he does he helps people double their business in one year. I can't wait to introduce him to you now. I hope you didn't miss Episode 322. That was profitable website Exit Strategies. I've made a fortune when people are leaving my website where most people just wave goodbye and cross their fingers to get another visitor. See, smart marketers make money both when someone comes to their site and when someone leaves their site. So you learned how to do that in episode 322. And of course, you always when you want to find an episode, you go to screwthecommute.com and then the episode number that was 322. You're definitely going to want to write down 323 because Gavin's going to have some great stuff for you that you'll want to come back and review later. Now, how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the has helped you out at all in your business or given your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Check screwthecommute.com and then on the edge, there's a little blue side bar that says send the voicemail. You can leave a testimonial about the show. And don't forget to put your website on there so you can get a big shout out in your own voice in front of thousands of people. Now make sure you grab a copy of our automation book. This ebook is we sell for 27 bucks, but you get it free for listening to the show. And this book is The Techniques. I've used the handle up to 150000 subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out. And we actually figured it out a couple of years ago. It saved me about seven and a half million keystrokes, just me alone, not even everybody that works here. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And you can grab a copy while you're over there. Grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet. And there's all kinds of fancy things. We got instructions for you on how to use it so you can take us with you on the road. All right. You know, everybody's still freaking out about this pandemic.

[00:02:46] We don't know if the schools are going to open. But you know what? None of this has affected me. People I've known for 20 years are calling me say Tom you OK? And I'm like, OK, from what? I'm sitting here for 26 years, so and online, I don't have to go out and fight all that craziness. So I formalized that training as the only licensed Internet marketing school that's dedicated to that topic in the country. Probably the world is certified to operate by the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia, but you don't have to be in Virginia. If you can speak English and have an Internet connection, you can attend this school and I'll tell you how you can get a scholarship to it a little bit later. When I tell you about my mentor program, that's IMTCVA.org.

[00:03:34] All right, let's get to the main event. Gavin Preston is an international inspirational speaker. He's a business strategist. He's an author. He's a business growth mentor. And he's host of the Business Mastermind podcast. Gavin works with business owners and entrepreneurs to double their business in a year. Can you imagine what that would mean to you except for those you haven't started yet, Zero times two, zero fit. Well, we'll put that aside for a while. If you got something good, he'll help you double it. Let's see now. He's got a new book.

[00:04:08] It's called Survive and Thrive, How to Secure Scale and Succeed in Business. It's a collection of his and this guy's practical is practical tools and techniques that he has been successfully implementing with businesses.

[00:04:23] And he's worked with lots of businesses and entrepreneurs. I looked at his bio, it's a mile long and take up the whole episode just to tell his credentials. So we're going to let him bring him on here in a second. He helps businesses with strategies to accelerate their growth.

[00:04:40] Gavin, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:04:42] I thank you so much for having me on your show.

[00:04:47] Oh, my pleasure. They screw in North Wales, don't they?

[00:04:51] Oh, yes, but they have a reputation with sheep.

[00:04:53] Unfortunately not like, oh man, it's so great to meet you.

[00:04:58] And across the pond. I've already told you I was only over there once and they made me call my seminar Bum Camp over in London. But I really loved it, so tell people what you're doing now and then we're going to take you back and see how you came up to get to the prolific place you're at right now.

[00:05:15] Yeah. So I help business. I'm a business strategist. I help businesses to grow in scale. And typically people come to me either when they've hit a plateau and that sales performance in their business, the revenues of the business or profitability.

[00:05:29] And they have tried a number of different things that might have worked in the past, no longer getting traction. And I help them get that business back into growth. Top line and bottom line growth.

[00:05:41] This could be a small business or big business. The techniques will work for both, right?

[00:05:46] Yeah, I've worked most of my work is in the SME sector, most of it, which means a small to medium sized enterprise, and in particular within that usually two hundred and fifty employees or below.

[00:06:01] And my sweet spot is working with people about five hundred thousand turnover to about five million who are usually on a path or want to be on a path to sell out for a number worthy of them instead of like three or four years time. So I help them to to scale their business ready that they can either sell or whether they can step put a management team in and step back and go on to another project.

[00:06:28] So this would be called an exit strategy. Unlike the exit strategies I was talking about in our last episode, which is when someone visits your website and leaves, that's an exit strategy. But you're talking about a much bigger concept here of how they can prepare a business so somebody will want to buy it or take it over and they can cash out, right?

[00:06:47] Yeah, sure. And then sometimes people are really in survival mode.

[00:06:50] You know how I'm going to keep my business afloat so I will help them to do that. In actual fact, some clients I've helped them to to overcome, you know, kind of an economic storm for their business and then go on to helping themselves business.

[00:07:05] Well, give us some of the mistakes people make in preparing for that and for and in general for scaling their business does to make it bigger. The bigger they make it before they leave, the more they're going to cash out. So so what are some of the common mistakes that they make?

[00:07:21] So we need to looking at scaling a business and or weathering an economic storm like we might be doing to the whole of this pandemic thing is that people are underestimating how much cash they're required to either survive or how much cash they need to scale and grow their business. So cash flow forecasting sounds really sort of obvious common sense type of thing that the businesses need to do. But often it is not regularly done very time. Many small businesses update their cash flow is when the bank want to see if they're applying for a loan. So this should be a living, breathing Excel sheet or Google sheet that businesses should be using on a weekly basis. That's one area. But before we talk about know to my work, there's two sort of two or three aspects. There's the tactical. We've got to manage our cash. And here's what we do around that. This is strategic. How can we create a differentiated offering in the marketplace so that we stand out from the crowd so that we actually can attract people to in terms of the very best customers, attract the best suppliers and the best team members. And the third area that I look on is so much around the mindset and the preparation mentally for people to grow a business. And usually when a business plateaus, it's grown to the level of the thinking of the people at the top of our business, usually the business founder or owner. And what I'll help them to do is to readjust or reset their sights as to the art of the possible, where they can take their business and build shine the spotlight of absolute belief on them around. This is what you can do and the same to the team in that business. And then once we've built that belief and the excitement and that determination, it's not just about pumping them up. We then sort of build the solid foundations around business strategy, the plan, the how to in order for them to achieve those objectives, those goals.

[00:09:20] Yeah. And and that's so important in the mindset because the mindset of many, many entrepreneurs is where's the fire extinguisher? And I got to find out today. And they're not thinking. And one thing I heard you say on the I forget where I heard you say it, but you were talking about extending your cash planning horizon. So, yes. What's that concept mean?

[00:09:43] Yeah, sure. So I think this was a little bit elevated recently.

[00:09:47] And what I was talking about was most businesses, when they were going into sort of lockdown or the period of uncertainty and the March time around covid and the advice I was given to my clients at that time was make sure that when you're you're applying for government loans or any kind of financing support from your bank, that you've got enough cash to get you through to the end of twenty twenty. So the planning horizon was like nine months at that stage, eight months to get through to the end of December. Twenty twenty. And the point I was making it was that I knew that we would be heading into a recession, but I didn't expect there would be further lock down. So we're looking in the UK that we're going to have localized or regional lockdowns and we have seen that in certain cities in the UK. So we had a massive like 12. We locked down the whole the whole UK was locked down and we've come out of that lock down. And what we have seeing now is where we're seeing spikes of cases in different cities. Then we're seeing localized lockdowns and back to the cash flow thing. I think those localized lockdowns are really going to should a bit deeper in terms of your business's ability to operate, depending how much revenue you've been able to generate online. So I'm suggesting to people that they should be now forward planning with their cash flow to December 2021 to see what because there's a window of opportunity now before we start to see more lockdowns and before furlough schemes come to an end where we will see greater number of people losing their jobs, unfortunately being made redundant. I think there's a window of opportunity now to to make sure that we're generating revenues online, but also to be listening to our customers and helping meet their demands. And if we plan out to December 21, we can see whether the gaps are the holes are in terms of our cash flow, our business, and then we've got some time to do something about it.

[00:11:50] What would you say with what you've seen now with this pandemic that you would overall adjust your attitude about how long someone should plan in advance, even in normal business times? Or would you go back to a shorter period?

[00:12:05] That's a good question. The really interesting thing about this now Tom is there is so much uncertainty.

[00:12:10] And so people were saying, hey, you want me to extend my planning until December '21, should it go even further? And what we need to be thinking about is where's the overall? Direction for the business, in which direction and what's the north star of our business about where we're taking it and we need to be taking steps or making steps in pursuance of that direction, you know, taking a step forward in that direction, we're going to have a lot more variability or uncertainty that will knock us off course.

[00:12:38] But we need to keep locked on to where we're heading. So in answer to your question, I don't think at the moment we can plan a great deal ahead of the end of twenty one and some would say and do that accurately. What I really am encouraging people to say is between now and December '21, let's plan out a number of scenarios. So if this was to happen, what we would do if that was to happen, what would you do when you might have three or four scenarios that you plan out?

[00:13:04] But the important thing is when you in order to be able to come up with the creative solutions to complex problems, we need to be calm and we need to access the cerebral cortex of the top at the top of our brain there to be able to do that.

[00:13:17] If we suddenly find ourselves over the winter in a cash shortage and we're in panic or fight or flight mode and we're worried how we're going to put food in the fridge and pay the rent or pay the mortgage, then we're not in that state of mind. We're not in the right place to come when the creative strategies. So start to do you scenario planning. Now, if you if you knew your region, you're locked down again for another six weeks or something, what's that going to mean to customers? What's that going to mean to your revenue, to your supply chain, et cetera, et cetera, and start to plan out those different scenarios?

[00:13:52] So that's beautiful now. So the three major things were mindset, strategy and scaling, was that correct?

[00:13:59] Yeah, I see three sort of kind of levels that I look at is a tactical short term. This is what you need to do here now, strategic, mid to long term and then mindset. But actually I break it down into I've got a six step model.

[00:14:11] I call the strategy compass and my six step strategy compass model makes up the second half of the book, Survive and Thrive the thrive element to the book. And this six step strategy compass is what I've used time and time again to help businesses to scale and grow. And what I use is the sort of engine room or the strategy behind when I help businesses to build in a year and the six steps and put out a lot to make about the six steps is that they're not in and of their individual steps. Bruneau what I wanted to do was to synthesize all the best that was out there. That's to say if I've got six things that I need to make sure happens right in a business for it to scale profitably and sustainably, that means the six things. And you might have, for example, a book on mindset's or a book on strategy, but you don't necessarily get together in the same book. So that built those levees had a six that say the first step is about purpose, as popularized by the brilliant work Simon Sinek. Can his book start with why? So what's your purpose? What's the North Star in your business? Why are you doing it? Where you heading? Step two is mindset which we've already touched upon.

[00:15:18] If you want to increase the growth and the trajectory of your business, you need to shift the mindset, the thinking of the people at the top. Number three is outcome and you need to be clear about where you're heading. What's that destination point where you're heading once you know where you're heading? The very next question is how how are we going to get there? So that's a step forward strategy. The how step five is to to then implement that strategy. You need to get the capability right in your business. So step five is capability and capacity. And then finally, step six is action, accountability. So when you've got clarity of purpose, you've got the right mindset. You're clear on where you're heading. You've got to clear how to a strategy and how to get there. You've got the capability in your business to be able to scale and you have the right accountability mechanisms in your business to make sure things are happening. Then you can grow and scale your business and you can do it quicker than you might otherwise have thought.

[00:16:12] Ok, and all this is in the book, right? Oh, yeah, for sure.

[00:16:15] Ok, so folks, Gavin is going to have some unbelievable thing for you a little bit later with regard to the book. But what about right now? I want to take him back to the beginning and ask him, like, were you an entrepreneurial youth? Did you have a job or the dreaded job? How did you get out of it? Did you save money before you went out on this other endeavor? So give us give us a history lesson of how you came up through the ranks.

[00:16:42] Yeah, I think it came from quite an entrepreneurial family. You know, my my dad was initially a sales commission only salesman, so he survived or thrived depending on how much he sold.

[00:16:54] And then he told us, like, the value of earning money and getting getting the revenue. So we initially Saturday we can jobs, you know, in shops and retail. We grew up sailing. That was our family hobby. And we grew up playing around them on the water and on boats and particularly on the largest lake in England, which is like Windemere. And we had like a little Robert Dingy with that at. Boat engine on the back, and my brother and I, particularly my brother, was somebody was broken down because they had run out of fuel with tow the back end for four or five pounds. So so that that put gas in the dinghy, in the outboard engine and gave us some pocket money. And then we supplemented that with newspaper rounds. And we just grew we had one round between is we are we we must have six separate rounds that we did between us and got more involved when we needed extra help. So yeah, we started earning money as sort of nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 year olds doing that kind of thing. But then I actually in terms of my career, I started I qualify to try and qualify with KPMG as a chartered accountant. So yes, I got a profession, but I was always fascinated about mindset around coaching, around what were the differences that made the difference in successful entrepreneurs.

[00:18:18] Why did some people achieve those results and others didn't? And that study and that sort of constant, voracious desire to read and attended many courses and in those days listen to his body type. As I could tell you, Ted Robbins and many others just fuel that interest and passion. And then after I qualified with KPMG, I got headhunted. I'd won a prize for the top student in the north west of England, Wales, for the chartered accountant exams. And I got headhunted to go and work for the systems. And I did a management consultancy role internally. But I got my break was to go on as a common in the corporate university, doing change management, leadership and institution coaching to the top six hundred and fifty directors across the globe. And I did that for that for two and a half years. And change of leadership in that team and new broche. So the week's clean was the right time for me to leave. So kind of the right time and also a bit of a push. And I got my first kind of launch contract with a big insurance and reinsurance company in the city of London. And so that launch contract just got me on my way. So, yeah, June, June 2002, I set up my own business and started off as a solopreneurs will coaching and and training and facilitating.

[00:19:43] All right. Now, did you have money in the bank at the time when you when you took off on your own, or was this the money in the bank, this new contract you got?

[00:19:53] Yeah, it was this new contract was the money in the bank was paid with an instalment up front. And then I had I was kind of living with my girlfriend at the time, so I didn't really need my house.

[00:20:08] And so I sold the house, which helped to fuel that in hindsight. Well, I wish I hadn't sold the girlfriend.

[00:20:15] No. Yeah, something like that was the remortgage, the house I rented out all the way out that way. Still keep the assets.

[00:20:22] So, yeah, if if I could go back to the 2001, 2002 and advise my younger self, I would certainly say, hey, whatever you do, don't sell the house. Just pull the baby out with a remortgage.

[00:20:35] Yeah. What type of business entity is is most common where you are. Like we have LLCs and C corps and S corps. So what's a typical structure there?

[00:20:47] Yes, we have what's called a private limited company so we have a limited company we called here.

[00:20:55] We do have some businesses do use LPs, limited liability partnerships or sole traders. So these are just individuals that have set up a company, but they're just self-employed and the trading, as we just call a sole proprietor here.

[00:21:09] Yeah. So that was 2002. That was eighteen years ago. So how did it progress since then?

[00:21:17] So with the combination of that contract that I spoke to you about and then I also approached a larger a larger coaching company that had contracts in the city of London and elsewhere around the UK and they needed good coaches.

[00:21:33] And their model was they wanted to some freelancers to to supplement their core team. So I managed to sort of pass interview for that. So I got work via them. And that gave me a lot of great experience and got me into organisations like HSBC Bank, for example, and I on and I managed to get over those eighteen years of sort of ten of those eighteen years, several those relationships with either coaching or consultancy organisations who wanted freelance coaches or consultants to help them deliver on projects. So that helped with or supplemented the work that I wouldn't directly myself. So I built over those eighteen years a combination of my own direct. Clients and also at work with work via consultancies and coaching companies.

[00:22:26] Right now, do you have employees or contractors to help you?

[00:22:32] Yeah, yes, I've got contractors to help me now and then back in 2016, I actually had three or four employees and I had a big national speaking tour with HSBC Bank all around the UK. And we did we did eighty four gigs over two years. So they would they would fill the room between 30, between 30 and two hundred and seventy five people up and down, crisscrossing the whole of the UK and then they would invite their customers along on their prospective customers. And I did a one day event called Strategies for Growth, and it was great, was fantastic. It was it was a great win for the bank's customers because they got this day of amazing insights and development around mindset and around scaling their business and around strategy and the mechanics of doing that. It was great for the bank because the bank sort of were able to add a huge amount of value and the customers loved it. And it was great for me because increased profile. Right. And provided the lead generation source.

[00:23:31] Yeah, yeah. Well I'm just thinking. Eighty four gigs, you know, because I don't do that many in a year, but I sell at the back of the room. I'm just, I'm just in my mind I'm counting eighty four gigs. Somebody else set up for me.

[00:23:45] So, so things were going, things were going great with that. And then so I pulled in a team and then you know, we had a we had a big sort of shock to that, to the economy was that was it was the referendum result that didn't go the way that anybody expected it to go.

[00:23:59] And so then it became I had a signature program called a business program, where the promise was to work with me for a year and a business, and that was doing great. And then it became harder to sell that program and after the 2016 referendum results, because that was fundamentally sort of predicated on the assumption that it's possible to be a business in a year. And what happened then was one of my clients came to me and said, hey, could you come and join my business? Would you join the board, join the team? So I helped him grow a mechanical electrical contracting business from eleven and a half million to 19 million in 18 months.

[00:24:41] That's almost double. Yeah. Now, nobody's complaining about that of you. Didn't hit the exact target, but OK, so we got to take a brief sponsor break.

[00:24:53] When we come back, Gavin has a superduper deal on this amazing new book of his. And then we're going to ask him what's a typical day look like for him? So, folks, about twenty years ago, it kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head, made them all mad because guys at my level were charged in 50 or 100 grand up front to teach small business people what they knew. And and I knew a lot of these guys. You'd give them fifty grand up front, you'd be chasing them around Mexico, fight because they wouldn't come through. So I said, you know, that's too risky for a small business. What I'm going to do is I'm going to charge them a relatively small entry fee, but tie myself to their success. So for me to get my 50 grand, they have to make two hundred grand. And people just loved this and flocked to my program starting twenty years ago. Seventeen hundred students and it's still going strong. And then my my money is capped. So you're not stuck with me forever. So it's totally fair. And also I will put my program up against anybody on this earth because of the unique nature of it, where we teach you one on one, we tutor you, we you have an immersion week. And of course, when the pandemic's over in the great Internet marketing retreat centre in Virginia Beach and we shoot you in our TV studio and the like I said, it's one on one because I don't want people to pay me a lot of money and then feel like half the time they're bored and half the time they're lost.

[00:26:26] So ours is extremely unique. Nobody at my level will even talk to you, let alone teach you anything. Check out the details at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. And it includes a scholarship to my school, which I've had people gifted. I had one guy spend eighty thousand dollars on his daughter's education and she was working some crappy job and he got into my program and he gifted the scholarship to her. In the first month, she started making eleven hundred dollars a month on the sides. By the third month she was up to thirty five hundred. And the last time I checked a couple of weeks ago, she was at six thousand dollars a month as a side house. You know, she's only been in the school for months. So so it's very powerful things that every company on earth needs this, but they're mostly clueless. So you can start making money very quickly with a skill that people need rather than be competing for jobs at Starbucks. All right. So that's the deal. Check it out at GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:27:34] All right, let's get back to the main event. Gavin Preston is here and he is a prolific international speaker, author and consultant with large and small businesses. And in the Gavin, you got that new book of yours and you told me you were making some fantastic deal for my folks, right?

[00:27:54] Yeah. I'm so passionate about getting the strategies in the book out to your listeners and to businesses in general.

[00:28:00] There's a lot there's a lot of businesses very worried and very uncertain at the moment. There's a good number that going to be in survival mode over the next few months and years. And I want people to think beyond survival and into thriving. So survive and thrive. How to secure and succeed in business shows you how to navigate the sort of troubled waters over the coming months. And I want to get the book out. You free? I will. All you need to do is cover the postage and the handling and get that you get the book out, you free, because I want to help people who say you've taken a huge deep breath of air and to grow the pair in order to be able to step out on your own, to give up the job and to starting your own business. And I salute and admire your courage. And I know it's tough. And at times it's the highs and the lows, the highs of elation and the depths of despair. But what this book is, it's it's a guide. It's like when a big container ship or a big cruise ship comes into a port, it gets pilot on board who helps to navigate the safety of navigate safely through the local waters, helps to berth the massive ship safely. And and that's what the strategies in the book are like me as your pilot standing by the guy on the bridge of your vessel, helping you to navigate the current storm. So you go to surviveandthrive.cc. You'll be able to see the offer to have the book I pay you and cover the cost of the book. You just need to cover the cost of packaging and ship shipping. And I'm going a book straight to you. And if you like me, I'd love audio books. And there's an opportunity right there to to also set up a copy of the audio book as well.

[00:29:47] Awesome. So it's surviveandthrive.cc and the postage and handling only and that's the audio book is got an availability there while we're at it. So can't wait to to check that out. So, so, so what's a typical day look like for you now and 2020 and a pandemic and how's it going? What's it look like for you every day you get up early to work out what's what's your deal.

[00:30:19] Yeah. Yeah. So I get I, I've got two relatively young kids so a three year old and he's not the best of sleepers.

[00:30:26] So depending on how it's interrupted the night's been I'm up somewhere between sort of five thirty and six thirty depending on how late I've worked the night before. And then the first thing for me is I jump on the peloton bike. It's something that I got in and in November last year and I probably love I'm actually just sort of injured myself on my knee last week for being a little bit too overenthusiastic on it. So so that's frustrating to be this week. But at four or five times three, five or six times a week now, because I'm traveling less because of it and then I'm on the bike. And then after up to the finish in the thirty minutes, 40 minutes on the bike, then I'll go through the rest of my morning ritual. So I'll read through my goals. I'll do the sort of Tony Robbins priming exercise that you can listen to free on YouTube or the on Varner app I think a six phase meditation. So I switch between either one of those.

[00:31:30] So that's a combination. Yes. But the goals those your long term goals, short term goals are both.

[00:31:36] Yeah, yeah. So they're both. So what I'll do, for example, I have been over over recent weeks and months.

[00:31:44] I've been working on three sort of big projects business wise. I'm focusing on visualizing of successful completion of those. And then I'm also thinking about my longer term goals, about what I want to achieve in my business and what I want to achieve in terms of life as well.

[00:31:58] Right now, I don't have any kids, but aren't, you know, with the sleep problem, aren't you just supposed to give like three or four times the amount of Benadryl?

[00:32:07] And, you know, the equivalent of that is they get way to screen time.

[00:32:14] It basically you're locked out in the case without being able to go to school. You might wonder why people don't ask me to babysit for me.

[00:32:24] All right. So so then after you get through this, I guess we call this your morning routine, then what happened?

[00:32:32] So, you know, then I got to shower and get ready, grab some breakfast, and then then it's I would have prepared the day before, the night before.

[00:32:39] What's the list of things I need to get done that day? And usually that's a combination of client coaching calls or some calls in particular. And then these three big projects that I've been working on over the course of the week, time gets dedicated to those. As you mentioned in the introduction, I have my own podcast, the Business Mastermind podcast. So two or three days a month, I block time to get as many of those interviews in as I possibly can. We put three shows out a week. So there's a lot of interviewing going in there and preparing to get the audio assets across to the real audio across to my podcasting agent. You do all the or the editing and get it ready to send out. So, yeah, client projects and client coaching calls, plus the work on the podcast. And, you know, one of those projects I've been working on has been a biggie for me over the last three or four months, has been getting the book ready to go to market.

[00:33:37] Yeah. When did it come out? 30th of July. So fresh off. Wow. They could not even dry the phone to get a copy and make sure you don't smear it. Yeah.

[00:33:47] So so, yeah, that's really ready to ready to rock and roll. Do you do any media besides podcasts.

[00:33:55] Yeah. So the main thing really has been a number of podcasts has been great in terms of promoting the book and we've seen the books now being they've gone to Singapore, to South Africa, to Switzerland, to the US, of course, to the Caribbean.

[00:34:09] So it's amazing to see. And just somebody posted on social media then in Singapore reading my book. And that's just that's just really love that.

[00:34:20] It's so beautiful. So. So you have any hobbies? What do you do for fun?

[00:34:26] Yeah. So my main hobby is sailing. I absolutely love sailing.

[00:34:30] We have we have a sailboat which is on the North Wales coast, but because of the restrictions, particularly in Wales, that by the time they lifted them and we'd have had like six weeks of the season and the best of the weather had already passed. So with them, yeah, we're sitting the season out, which I personally am missing. So these trips to the beach, you know, the boys live and have some beautiful coastline around the north coast of Wales and the weather's been pretty good this season. So and we'll take them to the beach and we'll make sand castles or go swimming in the sea. And so that's that's all great from that.

[00:35:07] We can you know, I always was interested in sailing, but never, never really got into it.

[00:35:12] But there sailing simulators, you know, there is a growing area that is an absolute growing area and certainly an elite sport in the lead to sailing competition in that there is the America's Cup and simulators have been a massive part in the development of the leading edge falling boats for that. But what about beginners, like for beginners? Yeah, I suppose he does. He does.

[00:35:35] He sailing sort of programs and stuff that you can get online. But in actual sitting in a physical simulator, I, I just, I have to Google.

[00:35:43] I invent one. Yeah. You're the same. Yeah. I always wondered, OK, how does this, how do you go against the wind and you've got to zigzag all over the place and. That's right. And then I have a buddy who is a little bit crazy.

[00:35:57] He was a Vietnam veteran and he just got back from Vietnam and was just amped up. He always had to have a thrill seeking. He was actually a wing walker on airplanes at the circus, you know, so that's kind of guy. Yeah. So he invited me down on his sailboat in Cabo San Lucas and he just, you know, he just doesn't tell me anything.

[00:36:16] And so I almost got the boom, like, knocking me in the head and knocked me in the Sea of Cortez. Like the thing that could have killed me, I literally I mean, and so learn and all that kind of stuff before you get on the boat seems to be a good idea.

[00:36:32] Yeah, I was really lucky that my dad got into it when I was. Yeah. Oh yeah. You already knew. I didn't. Yeah. So that was that was a great sort of childhood upbringing played on boats. And, you know, I've been on some amazing trip to sail across the Atlantic in ninety nine.

[00:36:45] Oh I'm twenty four and a half days at sea and twenty three and a half of those days were outside outside to land. So that was, that was amazing.

[00:36:53] Well that's a book in itself or a movie.

[00:36:55] Yeah. And then another time, another time we set up to Spitzbergen in the Arctic Circle so we crossed over eighty degrees north. So that means we're six hundred miles away from the North Pole pole. So that was a that was also amazing. So, yeah, I've I've had some wonderful experiences selling.

[00:37:12] Amazing. Amazing. Well, thanks so much for coming on, man. We want everybody to go to surviveandthrive.cc and Gavin's got a great deal for you on the book. The book is free. And you have audio version available over there also.

[00:37:34] So thanks so much man for coming on.

[00:37:35] Tom, thank you so much for having me.

[00:37:38] All right. We will catch everybody on the next episode. See you later.

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