@Godfrey Muneri That's excellent @Godfrey Muneri, glad to hear you're booked so far ahead :). I'd be interested to know how you worked out your multiplier for your business if it's not too much to ask?

I agree and this is backed by science! If anyone wants to go down the rabbit hole on this, check out the book Connected by Dr Nicholas Christakis and Dr James Fowler. They tracked thousands of people over decades and proved that your network dictates almost everything, from your happiness and health habits to your ambition and integrity. The wildest part of their research is that you aren't just influenced by your 5, you're influenced by their 5, and their 5's 5 (the "Three Degrees of Influence" rule). Your immediate pack really is the gatekeeper to your entire life.

This is an interesting one. As someone who has experienced both sides of it first hand, I’d say it’s less to do with if you have street smarts or academic smarts, but what you do with them and how you let it shape you. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, a good entrepreneur will need to be able to maximise the advantages. My personal experience is that I grew up poor around gangs in London. If you didn’t learn street smarts, you weren’t going to get far no matter what you did. We all knew people who were murdered or involved with serious crime. But what I found from this community is most people had a drive for something better and most knew how to work hard. Sadly efforts weren’t always in the right direction or legal, but the drive to try hard, try something different and reach for their goals was very much there. I was working from a young age and by the time I was 14 I had a job as a cook in a chip shop when I wasn’t in school paying £2 per hour to begin with. By the time I was 16, the owner decided they were going to sell up and move back to Cyprus. I put a business plan together using CD-ROM and a lot of paperwork the bank used to give out when you wanted to start a business. This almost went through, until the owner’s daughter decided she wanted the business, so I got a job as a toy demonstrator at Hamleys. At this time I had to rely on street smarts as the school system refused to teach me. I was banned from taking all my GCSEs and was told by the teacher and my head master not to bother going to college or trying to go further in education, I wasn’t going to get anywhere. Despite this I did end up going to college to learn acting and theatre technician skills, ultimately completing two BTECs. Between then and my early 20s I set up a number of businesses with different levels of success. It was whilst reflecting on how difficult it was to get in the door with some people that I was told that could be down to not having a degree and that I would be taken more seriously if I’d had more education behind me.

As a parent the first thing I do in the morning is wake my child up 🤣, then I'm greeted by our puppy. A bit of family time is a nice reminder of why we have a business in the first place. We often then go to see the horses and on the way discuss what our days look like.