Episode 259 · 18 December 2025 · 1:48:51
One year in: lessons from my first year as a full-time coach, with Jeremy Cline. Change Work Life X Truth, Lies and Work
One year in: lessons from my first year as a full-time coach, with Jeremy Cline. Change Work Life X Truth, Lies and Work
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Introduction to the holiday crossover episode
Life after a 20-year career: leaving law and becoming a coach
interview#career-change#coaching#law
The first month: excitement, fear, and keeping busy
interview#starting-business#fear#excitement
Advice to his past self: get focused sooner
interview#advice#focus#self-reflection
The empty car park syndrome and finding your niche
Mean Uncle Al: the honest conversation about business viability
Lifestyle business vs. scalable business
50 conversations: the research phase
The offers stage: building something people want
Lessons learned: niche, focus, and taking action
interview#lessons-learned#focus#action
Show notes
One Year In: Lessons from My First Year as a Full-Time Coach — with Jeremy Cline
Episode 259 — Al and Leanne share a special holiday episode from their friend Jeremy Cline's podcast, Change Work Life, where Al joins Jeremy to reflect on his first year as a full-time coach.
What actually happens when you leave a 20-year legal career to build something from scratch? No glossy "quit and make six figures" narrative — just the real, messy middle that most founders and coaches quietly go through.
In this special crossover episode (Jeremy's 200th!), Al and Jeremy dig into the emotional, financial and identity shifts that come with starting your own business, what surprised Jeremy the most, and why meaningful conversations — not logos or websites — became the backbone of his first year.
If you're thinking of going out on your own, supporting someone who is, or you're simply curious about what a year of reinvention looks like behind the scenes, this is the perfect listen for the quieter days of December.
🧠 What We Cover: The Reality of Year One
Life after a 20-year career Jeremy left a long legal career to become a coach, and the biggest challenge wasn't logistical — it was the identity shock of asking "who am I now?"
Self-employment and the fear of the first step Instead of hiding behind planning, Jeremy forced himself into real conversations — the uncomfortable kind that actually move a business forward.
The messy middle of reinvention Testing ideas, discarding bad ones, refining offers, working through insecurities — the emotional work was bigger than the strategic work.
Why conversations matter more than ever Despite global connectivity, genuine, real-time conversations are becoming rare. Jeremy argues that this is where opportunity lives.
Opportunities come from putting yourself out there Jeremy explains how reaching out to people — including Al — created unexpected relationships, support and new directions for his business.
The truth about coaching as a business He talks candidly about client work, self-doubt, capacity and the grind of turning passion into something that pays the bills.
Top 3 Takeaways
Get focused sooner than you think you need to. The temptation is to keep planning, keep tinkering, keep perfecting — but the real progress comes from committing to a direction and getting help with that focus.
Conversations are the backbone of a new business. Nearly 50 conversations formed the research phase of Jeremy's coaching offer. Real, genuine conversations — not websites or logos — are where opportunity lives.
The first 12 months probably won't make you money — and that's okay. The goal at the start is enough cash coming in to keep going, not a six-figure exit. Sustainability beats scale in year one.
🔗 Connect with Jeremy
- Episode page & resources: changeworklife.com/one-year-in-lessons-from-my-first-year-as-a-full-time-coach
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeremyjcline
📬 Connect with Al & Leanne
- LinkedIn (Show): linkedin.com/company/truthlieswork
- Al Elliott: linkedin.com/in/thisisalelliott
- Leanne Elliott: linkedin.com/in/meetleanne
- Email: hello@truthliesandwork.com
- Book a call: savvycal.com/meetleanne/chat
- Podcast Website: truthliesandwork.com
All of the above in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd my name is Al, I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd normally we're here to help you simplify the science of work and create amazing workplace cultures, but today we're doing something a little bit different.
Al ElliottYeah, this is the beginning of what we're calling our holiday content. So I know over the next—
Leanne ElliottThat means we're on holiday.
Al ElliottHe's going on holiday and also you will be too. And he's also worked with holidays, which encompasses all of Christmas and New Year. So over the next, uh, sort of 4 or 5 episodes, it's gonna be something a little bit different. Uh, this actually, what you're gonna be listening to today is episode 200 of another podcast called Change Work Life, hosted by Jeremy Cline. He's a career coach and he's recently left his job to embark on a new exciting adventure, which I'm sort of helping him with.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I've been helping Jeremy behind the scenes for the past year or so as a coach. As a sounding board, as somebody who's been there and done it when it comes to—
Al ElliottAs an ass kicker.
Leanne ElliottYes. When it comes to building your own business. And I think what I really enjoyed about this episode is how honest it is. It isn't one of those, I'm gonna quit my job and make 6 figures in 3 months, goddammit. Um, it's not one of those stories you see on social media. It's something very, very different.
Al ElliottYeah, it's kind of the opposite. It's Jeremy, who was a lawyer for 20 years, talking about that first month of waking up and thinking, am I unemployed or self-employed? We've all been there, brother. It's about spending months tinkering with different ideas and Feeling that resistance to send that first scary email asking for a conversation.
Leanne ElliottAnd what is interesting when it comes to starting your own business is it's actually as much about managing your own insecurities and fears as it is having a brilliant idea and running with it. And often with career transitions, that emotional and identity work is more challenging than the practical work.
Jeremy ClineYeah.
Al ElliottAnd Jeremy actually did the work like he properly did it. He went out and had those uncomfortable conversations to test his hypothesis rather than just doing what I think a lot of people tend to do, building something, designing the logo, creating the website, and hoping people are gonna show up, which is how most businesses fail, including some of the ones I've started.
Leanne ElliottSo if you've ever thought about going out on your own, or you know someone who has, or you're just curious about what that journey looks like when somebody's being honest about it, um, well then this is well worth your time.
Al ElliottYeah. So after this very short break, you'll hear episode 200 of Change Work Life with Jeremy Cline. It is about an hour and 40 minutes, so grab a brew, grab a biscuit, and see you on the other side. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Jeremy ClineNice.
Al ElliottCheck out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Jeremy ClineIt's been just over a year now since I left my job to start my own business full-time. So how's it been going? What have I been doing since then? To celebrate episode 200, we're pulling back the curtain and I'm going to show you just what it's like to start out on your own. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello and welcome to Change Work Life, the podcast that's all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach, and in each episode, my guests and I bring you tips, strategies, and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. This is episode 200, and to mark the occasion, we're going to do things a little bit differently. Some of you will know that at the end of 2023, I left my job to become a full-time career coach. But what's happened since then? How's it been going? And what have I learned? To help me unpack all of this, I'm delighted to be joined by someone who has been a very important part of my journey so far. If you're a subscriber to my email newsletter, you'll have seen me make somewhat cryptic references to my business mentor. Well, in good old-fashioned Scooby-Doo style, it's time to pull off the mask and welcome Al Elliott back to the podcast. You may remember Al from episode 178 when he and his wife, Leanne, came on to talk about burnout. Well, since then, Al has been helping me figure out what I really want to offer as a coach and how to make that happen. Welcome back to the podcast.
Al ElliottWell, thank you for having me. And I'm very honored to be called a mentor. I'm not sure many people call me a mentor. I've been called lots of names before, but mentor is not, not usually one of them.
Jeremy ClineWell, it's definitely appropriate here. Why don't you start by reintroducing yourself to the audience?
Al ElliottYeah, I'm Al Elliott. I'm the co-host of the Truth, Lies and Work podcast, which is the number one work podcast in the UK, and we're working on America. So, um, we'll hopefully be able to say that soon. And, um, I suppose I'm a full— I'm a full-time tinkerer. Um, I've had several businesses, some of which have worked very well, some of which have not worked well at all. And so I quite like just mucking about with things, hence where the podcast came from. Just taught myself how to podcast and, uh, and that's that. So I don't really have a job title, I suppose, really. People refer to me as the co-host, which I'm, I'm, I, I'm not even that because Because my wife is the expert in the podcast. She's a business psychologist, chartered, and all the fancy letters after her name. So she's the actual expert in the podcast.
Jeremy ClineI feel like you're doing yourself a disservice there. I feel like people get an awful lot out of you as well as Leanne. The intention is that Al and I are going to kind of ask each other questions, and it's going to be quite conversational. So a bit different from my usual interview style. So to kick us off, Al, you and I started working together on my business around, I think it was May or June 2024. What questions do you have for me to help the audience understand a bit about what I was doing between leaving my job and you and me starting to work together?
Al ElliottYeah, I think it's probably gonna be quite useful for listeners because they'll have heard your podcast. And generally in your podcast, you take the interview role. So you don't often talk a huge amount about what you do. So I think what'll be really useful is just to establish a timeline. There was a point at which you left your job, which I think first of all, it's important just to remind people what you did. And secondly, just give us an idea of the timeline of when you started, when you went out Yeah.
Jeremy ClineSo I was a lawyer. I was what's known as a private client lawyer. So I tended to act for very high net worth individuals and families, a lot of tax advice and various other things related to that. I left my job just before Christmas 2023. So I gave myself a couple of weeks off over Christmas before starting in January 2024 as a full-time coach.
Al ElliottOkay.
Jeremy ClineI think I described myself as either self-employed or unemployed, depending on how my mood was at the start of the day. The question as to what the plan was at the start of the year, pretty undefined and unclear is a good way of describing it. I had decided at that point that I wanted it to involve coaching because I was enjoying that. But the question of who I was going to coach, what I was going to coach them on, where my niche was going to be was all a little bit undefined. And one of the first things I did work on was to almost do a kind of mini-analysis of the various areas that I could go into. So looking at various sectors that interested me. So small business owners was one, professional services was another, And trying to score those areas. So depth of market, my connections, my interests, that kind of thing. And I did that. And initially what came back was the result what I was expecting, which was that professional services lawyers had the highest score. But I kind of felt a little bit disappointed at that stage, whether I really wanted to go back into that. And I don't know what the resistance was there, whether it was that other things just seemed a bit shinier and more exciting. But yeah, I kind of spent the first few months thinking about that and also trying in those different areas. So trying to get some coaching with small business owners, trying to get some coaching in the professional services side, trying to get some coaching in the Bitcoin community, which regular listeners will know has been something that's been increasingly of interest to me. But yeah, largely tinkering around with things without really making a decision about where I was going to go.
Al ElliottWell, let's get into the tinkering in just a second. What I really, I think what would be useful for someone listening who perhaps has gone through a similar situation might be, how did you feel? So you left your job. You said you described yourself as some days unemployed, some days self-employed, which I know was a joke, but a lot of these sort of flippant remarks do sort of come from deep-seated fear or worry or whatever. How did you— tell me about that first 30 days of you waking up, not going to your job. How did you feel each morning?
Jeremy ClineA mixture of excited and scared. I kept myself busy. I mean, that was one thing. Certainly the first month or so, I actually felt like I was really busy, Part of that was because one of the, um, the benefits I got when I left was access to outplacement support. And what that looks like is, um, I had some one-to-one sessions with an outplacement counselor to help me to figure out what I wanted to do. So kind of like a coach stroke counselor. But also the organization had a huge raft of webinars that you could do. So there were 3 different ones on LinkedIn. There was one on sort of becoming like a freelance consultant. There were things on brushing up your CV. There were, you name it related to careers, they had all sorts of things. And I probably signed up to most of them. So that took up a good part of my day. I was still keeping going with the podcast. So there was that. And one of my sort of early, I'll call it strategies, but my early activities was to offer free coaching sessions within sort of certain communities. So like an online business community I'm a member of, I went in there and said, you know, hi, I'm a member. Part of the support of this community has been getting me to this position. I would really like to offer free coaching. And I got—
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy Clinequite a few coaching sessions through that. I think one of the important things for me to do early on was to verify that I did really want to do coaching, that it wasn't just sort of something I thought, yeah, I like it. And then suddenly when it's your thing, when it's the thing that you're doing all the time, that I suddenly discover, oh, crikey, am I really going to be doing this day in and day out? I don't fancy that. Getting that kind of verification that it was something that I wanted to do was quite important. I've not really answered the question about how I felt. Kind of optimistic. I felt like it was okay to allow myself to explore, and I think it was, but it became apparent that all the exploration wasn't actually getting me That much further because it was quite bitty, a bit of shiny object syndrome. Oh, see this? Let's try that. Oh, see this? Let's try that. And I suppose there was a frustration that I didn't feel like I was getting very far. Maybe that frustration came in a bit later than the first 30 days, but I certainly didn't have a feeling, oh, what am I going to do now? I felt Busy— not necessarily strategically busy, but busy. And the freedom and flexibility, that's something which— I mean, that was one of the reasons I went down this route, and that's still something which I really like. I do try to keep structure to my days, so I do make sure that I'm at my desk, and I'm usually working by about 9 o'clock, and I usually finish by—
Al Elliott5.
Jeremy Clineabout 5 o'clock, but in that time, I can go into town and meet someone for a coffee or have a day in London meeting people. So, I'm enjoying that aspect that I can just go, oh yeah, no, I'll do that. I can take time off to go to my daughter's assembly without feeling guilty that I'm taking time off work, or if I'm feeling guilty, I'm only feeling guilty to me rather than I'm somehow abusing company time. So that aspect of it has been really positive, and I've enjoyed that. So it's definitely been, yeah, mood swings. There are days where I thought, what am I doing? I can't do this. I can't be a business owner. I can't make a living by myself. I mean, who am I trying to kid? And then there'd be other days when I'd be thinking, No, I can do this. I can do this. Other people do this. Maybe I'd had a particular success that day and it had given me enough encouragement. Trouble is that kind of encouragement that doesn't then last all that long. You kind of get a buzz for about a day or so and then you go back into the, oh, well, I had that, but there's been nothing since then. And so, can I really do it? So it's definitely been quite a lot of up and down.
Al ElliottI have a question. The question is going to be, what would Jeremy 2025, January 2025, what advice would he have for Jeremy January 2024. But just before we go on to that, I think this is a really important thing you've brought up here is particularly if someone is just moving into being self-employed or just moving into doing their own thing and they feel the ups and downs, like some mornings you wake up and you're like, yes, this is going well. Other mornings you're like, this is going really badly. Some mornings you wake up and go, I can't do this. What am I even pretending? That happens whether you are successful or not. One of my most successful businesses, which Being Frank kind of set me up, or me and Leanne up for life in terms of money. Even on the best days, there were still days I'm going, oh my God, what am I doing? I can't do this. And I think it's important for anyone to know that if they are gonna start out, that that doesn't go away. There's gonna be Marc Randolph, the CEO of Netflix. I'm sure he wakes up some mornings in a cold sweat going, oh my God, I can't do this. So I think that's a really, really important thing. But just that was the sort of like a little aside. I think it's, People didn't tell me that when I was starting out, and I felt like I had to have all the answers. And you don't. You will always have bad days and you will always have good days. And hopefully you will always have fear that you're not, you can't do it because then that drives you to be better. And I think that's really, really important. The day where you think I've got it sorted is the day that things start going downhill. I know lots of people who, um, the worst thing that can happen to an entrepreneur is to have success in their first business because then they go, oh, look at me, I'm really good at this rather than I was lucky. I was at a particular point in time. And I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life trying to chase that luck again, and it's probably not gonna happen. So anyway, slight aside from that, the question I had, the long way around to get to that question, January 2025 Jeremy versus January 2024 Jeremy. Is there any advice that you would love to have given yourself a year ago when you first started this?
Jeremy ClineIn summary, I think it's, it's get focused sooner than I did. And get help with getting that focus. So I think it was okay to allow for a bit of exploration time. Maybe what I would like to have thought I'd have done in hindsight is put a time limit on that. So put a date in the calendar. Okay, by this date, you would need to have made a decision on where to focus in the business. So I think I probably allowed that to drift a while and also get support in doing that. It's kind of a weird thing.
Leanne ElliottThere's—
Jeremy ClineI don't know if it's just me or whether this is common, but there's this element of resistance to getting help. I don't know if it's a feeling of You should be able to do it all by yourself anyway. But the times when I have made most progress have been the times where I've had one-to-one support. So I've been a member of business masterminds where you've got 5 or 6 people you meet regularly and you help each other out. So there's one where every, say, 10 weeks, I'm in the hot seat. I'm the one who says to the others, okay, this is the thing that I really need some help with at the moment, open to ideas, and everyone chips in. That has been great, and I've been part of one group for 4 years. They are an amazing bunch, and they've definitely helped me. But there's something about one-to-one individual support that just gives me a kickstart. So getting that to help figure out the focus and then move on from the focus, I think in hindsight, I wish I'd done that sooner. And it's something— what's the expression? The good thing about making mistakes is you recognize when you're making them again in the future or something like that. But it's something I want to take that forward and remember that if there's something that I want to do and I'm Finding it harder, I'm finding it's taking longer than I want to, then getting help with that, whether that's coaching, mentoring, you know, whatever, it's almost certainly going to help me to kick things on.
Al ElliottSo I do want to get into this idea of you choosing your niche because I call it the empty car park syndrome. We've talked about it before. We use it in terms of like, we live in Europe, my wife and I live in Europe. And we can live anywhere in theory. And so that makes it really difficult to decide which country or even which town you want to live in. When you are at the situation where you can do anything, you are at the situation where you were looking at all kinds of different ideas because you almost feel like, well, I could be a Bitcoin guy, I could be a mining guy, a Bitcoin mining guy. You know, I could be a coach, I could be this, I could be that. Without— was there a particular point where you realized you could— you had to start getting rid of some of these ideas that you had on your piece of paper? And if so, how did you decide Which ones were the ones you weren't going to spend time on?
Jeremy ClineWell, the time when that happened was the point when you started to take an interest in my business. So let's just talk about that to set the scene, because I mean, I'm curious as to what it was that kind of led you to start asking me some pretty pointed questions about my business in a very supportive way. And now we've been meeting fairly regularly for a few months. You and I stayed in contact after you and Leanne came on the podcast. We talked a bit about some of the things that you were working on, so the RX7. I'm going to really butcher explaining what that is, so maybe I'll leave that to you, but it's something, an offering that you and Leanne were working on.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineBut yeah, I'm, I'm kind of interested from your side what it was that made you go, oh, you know what, this, this guy, he's all over the place. I'm going to start asking him some questions about that. So, yeah, where were you when, when that happened?
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's us by the way, and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fell, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals. Seamless.
Al ElliottSeamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Jeremy ClineWe've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work.
Al ElliottAnd we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stories If you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Jeremy ClineIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Jeremy ClineDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out.
Jeremy ClineKeep that in.
Al ElliottWell, I suppose just to give a little bit of context, I love asking questions and listening to people. And my wife and I, we actually met at Samaritans, which is a listening service in the UK for those people who haven't heard of it. And we learned, we had the best training ever on how to actively listen and how to be a good listener. And that has really helped because then when we do interviews and stuff, I'm curious, genuinely curious about why did you make that decision? And business always fascinates me. I describe myself as a tinkerer and it is. I'm just, I just love getting into someone's mind and going, right, okay, where Where is the commercial application? And I suppose I was intrigued about someone who'd come from a professional background, someone who essentially sold his day in 5-minute sections, because that's the way that lawyers work, isn't it? You record how much time and then you tot it up and say, that's the bill. Going into something which is a very different field, which at the time you were talking about coaching, and that seemed to be whatever you were doing, you seemed to be like this underpinning of coaching. And I was like, Huh, I wonder where this is gonna turn out. And there may be a little bit of macabre in that because I'm like, well, this, you know, if it doesn't turn out, this will still be a fun journey to be on and see what happens. Now, I don't mean that that was the reason why I evolved, but I think I'm just interested in why other people make decisions. I'm interested in, you know, I, I love waking up and going, oh, wouldn't it be cool if this was in the world? And so by listening to someone who actually wants to put something into the world that either doesn't exist or exists but could be better, It's a fascinating thing for me. I just really like asking questions and I guess jabuz from when someone goes, I've had a breakthrough. And I know you and I had a bit of a breakthrough maybe about episode, episode, that's my podcast mind, maybe sort of session 3 or 4 or 5. I remember there was a bit like, oh, and there was a Japanese word. I've forgotten what it is. I know you'll tell me.
Jeremy ClineIkigai, yeah.
Al ElliottThat's the one, which was really interesting. And I'd heard the concept but never really seen it in practice. So I suppose it was, it was more of a, I wonder where this is gonna go. I'm lucky and fortunate enough to have a bit of spare time that I can go, right, cool. Well, let's do this. You know, I don't need to charge for it. Um, let's do this and see where we go. And it was really that. And the more I got into your mind, the way it worked and what you could potentially bring into the world, the more it excited me that, yeah, this guy really could make a difference. It could bring something into the world. And as you know, you've only got a certain number of hours in the day. If you're a bit lazy like me, you'll get even fewer. So I don't want to start another business, but God, it's exciting being on the journey of someone else starting another business.
Jeremy ClineSo when we had that first conversation where you started to ask me pointed questions and you suggested that we chat again in a few weeks' time, were you envisaging that this could be— and I know you sort of didn't kind of The word mentor didn't quite sort of resonate with you at that point. I mean, did you think that this was going to be like a thing which would go on for several months, or what were your expectations at the time?
Al ElliottI don't know that I necessarily had any expectations or any thoughts about the future. I think it was more like, you know, if I can help, because I know you'd helped supported the pod and you've always been a big fan of ours and, you know, and you've been sharing our stuff, which is fantastic. And it was more like, well, I have some time. I enjoy talking about this. Let's just see if he, you know, if we chat another couple of times or it might be a more regular thing. I don't think at any point in time was I looking and saying, right, let's see if we can turn this into a commercial agreement. Most of the successful ventures I've had in the past have started this way. I had one with another guy who just after Christmas randomly sent me a few grand and went, oh, thank you. I've just made some sales. So there you go. There's some, there's You know, a percentage of it. And I didn't expect that. And that wasn't the expectation, but it was like, wow, that's really nice. And I also feel that if you can help and you have the time, then you should. Because even if I wasn't experienced in business, I still think I'm pretty good at asking questions. And I think I'm pretty good at calling someone out and saying, that doesn't sound right. So why wouldn't I help? And I think I'm just being really honest. If things got really busy, I'd be like, Jeremy, I'm sorry, I don't have time. But what we can do is maybe a quarterly thing. But that was sort of like the background behind it. And I know that sounds— that's a bit wishy-washy, doesn't really help anyone because I'm not really saying, oh, here's a strategy. But if you find someone who has done something and they're genuinely interested in success and genuinely interested in building things, There's a good chance they'll be interested in helping you if there's something in it for them, which is probably vicariously living through building another startup without having to put any money into it.
Jeremy ClineThat's interesting because something that I've got involved with is mentoring at the University of Westminster. They run a program and it was something that I got into through my last job. They were corporate members or something like that. But I've found talking to undergraduate law students who are trying to figure out what they want to do when they graduate, I'm really enjoying it. I feel like I've got something, I've got extra experience that I can offer, not just from having been a solicitor for 20 years, but also having gone through this career change process and having learned so much through my podcast and other podcasts about the world of work and interviews and that kind of thing. So I feel like I've got a few dimensions that I can offer, and there is something very satisfying about being able to offer that. So having— I mean, genuinely, I still can't believe my luck in terms of the fact that the work that we've done together. I suppose it's kind of like— what am I trying to say? That yes, I can see it from having had that experience myself that it's It's something that I get a lot out of, even if it's still being a voluntary thing and a way of supporting others. So that is interesting. Let's talk about niching because that was how we kind of came onto this. I feel it was when we had that first conversation that you kind of laid bare the fact that I was kind of in an empty coaching car park that I knew I wanted to coach, but I didn't know which space to go into. And we had a couple of false starts. So there was one point where I was going to focus solely on lawyers, not necessarily with the same specialism as me, but a particular segment of the of the legal market in the UK, which led to me doing a bit of coding with ChatGPT's help. That was an unexpected thing to try out, but it was quite a fun project that never actually went somewhere. But it was when I think you said, okay, the next conversation we are going to decide on your niche. Because even at that point, and having done all that work, I was still a bit ambivalent about—
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy Clinewhether that was going to be the thing that I worked on. And it was knowing that I had that conversation coming up, I think, that started to turn the cogs in my brain. And I don't know why it needed that push, but that was what made me go, hang on, why aren't I going back into the private wealth world that I spent 20 years working in. So not just private client lawyers, but that whole branch of professions whose job is to support the needs of the very wealthy because they need all sorts of professional services. And I don't think I'd actually included that when I did my initial sector analysis way back in January 24. I hadn't really added that and I don't know why, but there was something, something sparked in my brain. I kind of went, oh yeah, why don't I go back into that? So I'd kind of, knowing we had this conversation coming up, I kind of pretty much set on the niche or thought, yeah, this is a niche I could get behind. And so then the question was, okay, so that's a niche, but what do I actually want to do in that niche? What do I want to offer to the private wealth professions market? And so what I did before we spoke, you mentioned it, this concept of ikigai. ChatGPT is something which I've been using increasingly since I went self-employed. There are times when metaphorically I want to throw it out the window because it just acts like a childish 6-year-old and doesn't do what I want it to, despite me giving it specific instructions. But when it works, it's amazing. And I asked ChatGPT, first of all, I wanted to check we were on the same page. And so I asked it about this concept of ikigai, which is like a 4-circle Venn diagram. So you're looking at the intersections between 4 circles. Let's see if I can actually remember what they are. It's something like what the world needs, Yeah. what you enjoy doing, what you're good at, and what you can be paid for. I think that's right. And if you can find something which meets all of those, then that's your ikigai. And I can't actually remember what the word means, but that's kind of like the nirvana, the epicenter. So if you can find that, then you're set up. And so what I did with ChatGPT was I said, okay, well, here are some of the things that I've liked doing. Here's the things that I'm good at and so on and so forth. Help me find my ikigai. And it did. And it identified the fact that bringing people together, community groups, is something that has always been a common thread going through my life as something that I enjoy doing. And so that in this niche through some kind of a coaching lens was probably going to fit the bill for the sort of thing that I might enjoy doing. And it got me so far, but it was when I discussed that with you at our next meeting that you suddenly came up with, uh, oh yeah, well, you know, this kind of thing exists in other spheres. So I mean, do you want to Talk a bit more about that.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd I think the, the Ikigai, I'd heard the term, I'd never actually done the, done the exercise. And I think it's really cool. And I think it does give you some direction, but I always like to keep things simple. And I always go, right, you need to be solving an expensive and painful problem. And that is basically the Ikigai does all that. But my Venn diagram is just 2 things. It's expensive, painful problems, and then things that you could, problems you can solve. And in that little ellipse in the middle, I'm drawing it in the Yeah. I know this is an audio podcast. I mean, that bit in the middle is the things you can sell. And the Icky Guy, I think, is really good because it gives you a much more nuanced version of that. But what I found really, I think what I really wanted to get to was, okay, so there's 2 parts to this. First of all, what's the expensive painful problem? Because a lot of people say, I'm going to create, I'm going to be an artist for dogs. I'm going to Draw people's dogs and paint them and send them off. Okay, lovely. Brilliant. Is that an expensive and painful problem that people have? No, it's probably more like a nice to have. You can make some all right money from it, but that's not expensive painful. Whereas you think about, in fact, for your private wealth, you know, the high net worth individuals that you were dealing with in your previous life and potentially some of your clients do now, their expensive potential problems are tax, are, you know, I've got a problem with a lease. I've got a problem. That's an expensive painful problem.
Jeremy ClineYeah.
Al ElliottAnd so that's where the real money is. Now, I'm not saying that everyone should go out there and say, right, I'm going to create— I'm going to go and build a business that's going to make lots and lots of money. That's fine if you don't want to. Absolutely fine. But the easiest and quickest way to get yourself to 10 grand a month is to be the expert in one specific problem. Now, what painful, expensive problem? Now, where I suppose I brought something to the table a little bit was that I am genuinely interested in business and in offers and in niches. So where some people would sit on a Saturday afternoon and watch football, I like football, but I wouldn't go onto Twitter then and start conversations and, you know, like, oh, well, you know, who's gonna play, who's gonna win and what's this? I see, I tell, I can't know much about football. What I do do on a Saturday afternoon and almost every single day, probably spend an hour on Twitter looking at what people are doing, following certain people and going, I wonder what they're doing next, listening to their or reading their take on things. So I get exposed to probably 10 to 20 different business ideas a day, and some of them I'll follow them down a little rabbit hole and go, I wonder how they make money from that. I wonder how they actually generate leads for that. Try and think, how would I do that? And then when it came to your specific situation, I knew there was something called Hampton, which is by a guy called Sam Parr. He's one half of, uh, My First Million, uh, podcast, another podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. But it is actually a genuinely good, good podcast, and they're 2 interesting guys who are doing interesting things.
Jeremy ClineYeah.
Al ElliottAnd so I happened to know about him doing the Hampton thing, looked at his website, tried to work out how he was doing it. And then when you were explaining what you wanted to, what you potentially, your ikigai was, I was like, oh, well, that sounds like Hampton's, but for this. And that is such a, such a great thought process for anyone who's looking to get into, to start their own gig, or perhaps niche down a bit more, is go, can you be the X for Y?
Jeremy ClineYeah.
Al ElliottCan you be the Netflix for lawyers? Can you be the Hamptons, which is a private members club for badminton players? You know, and so if you can get that, then you already have this structure. You already know that Hamptons, first of all, exists. Secondly, is very expensive. Thirdly, is obviously— well, I say obviously very, very, very successful. I'm guessing it is because it's 25 grand for each person to join. And I think they've got about a 200 or 300 members. So I'm guessing that's a, you know, a fair 7-figure business. So by using patterns of what people have already done, that's such a great way to kind of like hone what it is that you are actually going to do. So be the X for Y. And I think that is such a good starting point. Does, does that make sense? Does that sound like from your point of view, was that, that sound like it was what I was doing or was I doing something different?
Jeremy ClineThat does completely make sense. I think the fact that you were aware of Hamptons, this organization where they get together small groups of entrepreneurs, business owners, and you identified that as being kind of adjacent to something that would fit for me. I mean, that was a massive breakthrough moment, and we'll, we'll come on to that. There's something I wanted to pick up earlier. It was a concept which you introduced to me, which you touched on there, the difference between painkillers and vitamins. How vitamins are the, yeah, they're nice to have, you probably should do them, you're not likely to see the effects of them in any short timeframe, versus the, I have a problem, I need this solving now, help, I don't really care what it costs, just make this problem go away. And Trying to focus more on that side of things, the painkiller side of things, rather than the nice-to-have sort of thing. So that was a really valuable thought process. I think where I thought the sort of ikigai process was valuable was the risk of starting something which solved a problem, but then it turned out that you just didn't enjoy solving that problem in a particular way. And this was something I did have firsthand experience of because during— it was actually during the early days of the COVID pandemic, I had identified that one of the hot topics for podcasters was producing transcripts. And the options were either you got a human transcriptionist, which was quite expensive, or you got an AI transcription, which was a lot cheaper and also gave you something which wasn't terribly readable. It wasn't something that you could easily publish by itself. And me being the perfectionist I was when I started my podcast, I kind of did a a mix of the two. So I got an AI to generate my transcripts and then I paid a VA to go through them and to basically turn them into proper English. And I realized that that was scalable, that I had a system which I could then get other people to pay for. And I started to do the maths. I figured, well, if I pay my VA X amount for a transcript and I'll get X number of podcasters. And I can't remember what the numbers came up with, but I figured out how I could monetize it and turn it into a business itself. And I started to offer a few freebies and then I got one or two paying clients and I did this, but I realized pretty early on that I just wasn't enjoying it. I didn't know why, or at least I didn't really know why until I got some coaching, which went through things like my own personal values. And I realized that whilst the idea was good, and I think probably still is quite a good idea, it didn't fit with me. So I think that that's kind of like the one, the one lesson that I had in my mind was that There's something around it not necessarily just being enough to solve a problem. MJ DeMarco, Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted, he says how he could drive down the motorway and see 5 problems, which are all potential business ideas, which is great. But what I learned from that episode of offering this transcription service was that It wasn't enough just to solve a problem. It had to be something that I actually quite enjoyed solving. Yeah. Interested in your take on that.
Al ElliottOkay. So you're now going to meet for the second or third time only, mean Uncle Al, because I am going to be mean to you and say, it is not your business to enjoy your business for the, till you get to 100 grand a year, 200 grand a year, 300 grand a year. It's a bonus if you enjoy it, but you've got to put your own gas mask on first. If you have a— when most people have a runway, and when I say runway, it's the nerdy talk for you've got this amount of money to last you, and when that's gone, that's gone. So most businesses have that. Most people who start a business, they go, right, I've got a year to get this to work. And then I think a lot of people will spend the first 3 or 4 months going, well, I really like painting, so I wonder if I could do a painting thing. Maybe I could do painting workshops. And it's like, Your business, it's none of your business whether you enjoy your business until you get to a point where your gas mask, your air mask, what do I mean? You know, on the planes, you put your oxygen mask on. Then, all right, you're getting 10 grand a month coming in. That's enough for you to live. Now you can go and enjoy. And I think that a lot of people, they leave a job they don't like. Not saying you did this because I know it's slightly different with you, but they leave a job you don't They don't like and go right. I just want to wake up in the morning and just love my life and get excited about it. And I love making clay pots, so that's what I'm going to do. I tell you what: when you when you have to make twenty clay pots a week, and you are behind, and you have to work on Friday night to make your clay pot to hit to get them delivered for Saturday morning because you ran out of time because something happened with your cat and you had taken to the vet or whatever, then you're not going to enjoy making pots anymore. So I think there's. Again, still being mean Uncle Al, it's not always about doing what you enjoy because if you do that for a business, it'll soon become something you don't necessarily enjoy and you could ruin it for yourself. So I think the mean advice is till you get that 6 figures in the bank or whatever your runway is, or till you get to a point where you're making enough money so that you go, great, I can relax a bit. Systematize it so you don't have to do it. So like you did with your VA, great. You've got AI, you've got VA to polish it. You potentially could tighten up the lead gen system so that you're actually bringing in leads automatically from ads or whatever. Once you've got that in place, then you probably need to just, you know, it's like, you know, you just need to go over and have a look at it once every week and look at the metrics and go, yeah, yeah, everything's within the agreed or the expected numbers. Great. Leave that go. And now you can go off and do what you want to do. Now, I think you are fortunate in that what we found is an expensive and painful problem is something you actually really enjoy doing. And I think you're very fortunate and you've engineered it that way. But just being really frank, for those people out there who are listening and going, I'm gonna leave my job and I'm gonna love my day, you know, I know that most days consist of extreme highs of this is working to extreme lows of going, oh my God, I can't do this. And that doesn't matter whether you've been in business for 10 years, whether you're a deca-millionaire, whether you've made 100 grand, you're still gonna have those days. And so I think it's really important for people to, to go into it thinking it's not just gonna be a beautiful existence where you can wake up and you can do what you love and then go to bed at night and make, you know, make money.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYes, some people are lucky to have that, but it's to start off with, your goal is to have enough cash coming in so that you can go and spend 3 days a week playing with another idea. And that's where your painkiller vitamins come in. Your first business should be a painkiller. It should be solving a very expensive and painful problem for a lot of money. Get that sorted. Then you can play around with vitamins. You can say, I wonder, I wonder whether the ultra wealthy would pay for You know, modern art of their dogs. That's a cool idea. Let's go and find out, see if they'll pay 20 grand to get Damien Hirst to do a version of their dog or something.
Jeremy ClineCool.
Al ElliottBut that's not your first business because that's a vitamin. Did that sort of like, I feel like, okay, I'm going to exit mean Al and go back into like normal Al, but is that harsh?
Jeremy ClineI think the thing I would be concerned about would be sustainability. So when you say taking your hobby, taking your passion and making a business out of that, I completely agree with what you say there. I'm an amateur musician. The idea of doing that to a professional level where I have to do it, where the pressure is on and all that kind of thing, absolutely no way. There's no way I would do that. It's a hobby. It's something I do on the side. It opens up a different Part of my brain. So I agree that the first business needs to be a painkiller business, that it needs to solve a problem. Where I get— or where I feel like there could be a bit of nuance, interested to hear your viewpoint, is— Whether it's still got to be something, it's not doing what you love, but it's kind of loving or at least enjoying what you do. So, I don't know, maybe you have identified that there is a real problem with, I don't know, clearing dog mess off the pavements, you know, and some, you have identified that people will actually pay you to do this.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineBut you just, you know, you do it and you are miserable. You can feel your life draining away as you're doing it. Yeah, you're getting paid, but you're just, it's sucking the soul out of you, which was kind of, maybe I didn't give it long enough, but it was kind of how I felt with the transcription side. It solved a problem, but it didn't excite me at the same time.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineAnd so I don't think that I would've had the drive to keep it going because it was, yes, the money part absolutely was important, but it was just demotivating. Whereas we'll come on to talk about what my idea looks like now. It is something that as well as hopefully solving a painful, expensive problem, it's also something which lights me up, which makes me go, yeah, and I think I'm going to be good at this, and I think I'm going to enjoy this. And who knows, maybe that's not realistic, but I just worry that just doing something because you know that there's a problem you can solve, if it doesn't engage you, then it's just going to be really, really hard and quite soul-sucking to do it. Over to you. Am I being too nice?
Al ElliottNo, that's a really, really good point and a good elaboration on my point. So dog muck off the pavements. Yes, that's a great example of something which you wouldn't enjoy doing. I think that if you're going to create, if you're going to solve an expensive, painful problem, then you first of all have to have respect for the person you're solving it for. So if you are socialist and you're like, nope, Labour, this is what I voted. I don't believe in extreme wealth. And then you try and start a business to help the ultra wealthy, that's not gonna work because it goes against your beliefs. So you're not gonna enjoy that. So you've gotta have respect for the person that, the person who you're solving the problem for. And you've gotta be, you've gotta at least tolerate to enjoy, like on that scale of a scale of hate to love, tolerate in the middle. You've gotta be definitely right of the tolerate because it's gotta be something that you actually enjoy doing. If I think there's, there's 2 types, like there's, there's several ways that people approach Starting a venture, a gig, a business, whatever. And I think a lot of people go, right, I need to do something that I'm going to enjoy because I'll be doing this for, you know, the foreseeable future. Cool. What they're starting is a lifestyle business where they are essentially doing somewhere between 50 and 100% of the work and they want to enjoy their day. Cool. Then there are other people who look and say, right, I'm going to start a business, but it's a mechanism. It's like investing. I invest in property in the UK property. I've got a few houses. I don't— some of those houses I haven't been in for 15, 20 years. I don't care about the house. One of them burnt down. I was like, well, how much is it going to cost me? No one was hurt. You know, it's like, but I see them as a box to make money. Whereas I think a lot of people would go in and certainly first or second time landlords, if I can continue this analogy for a second, will go, oh my God, the tenants have left and they've wrecked that beautiful fireplace that me and my partner built. How am I gonna get it back to how it was? You shouldn't have put the fireplace in the first place because it was a box to make money. So I think that there's 2 ways of looking at your business. Are you, if you're gonna be like, I'm gonna be doing the work myself, cool. Yes, you're right. You can't have something that you don't like. You, you probably won't like it some days and some days you'll love it. Or you look at it and go, right, I'm gonna start a business to make money. And this, I'm gonna create, instead of a box to rent out, I'm gonna create a system that will, that will turn £1 into £4. Or $1 into $4. And there's 2 different ways of looking at it. And I think that it's really important to know what it is you're gonna start. A lifestyle business could evolve into a systematized business that's actually a, a thing. Rarely would a systematized business evolve into a lifestyle business because you're actually looking at it from a, an investment point of view. So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is that, yes, I think if you, if, if you intend to be, I think they call it IC, individual contributor. Is that the right term? If you intend to be the deliverer of the service, Then yes, you're right. You definitely need to be certainly near the I love this side of it. But the podcast transcription, you had an AI, you had a VA to do it. You had AI who did the basis of it. And I don't think it's an expensive, painful problem for podcasters because most podcasters don't have money. But it could be like, okay, well, I'm going to do it for the top 5% of podcasts who do make like $100 grand a year. For them, where a grand a month will be like, oh yeah, okay, that's worth it because I'm going to get a really good transcription from it. You could still start that business because you, all you have to do is essentially put, add one more customer a month. So 5 phone calls, one of those will buy. That's 5 phone calls a month. Your VA takes care of everything else. Your AI takes care of everything. So that's a systematized business that you don't necessarily have to love, but it's bringing you in 10 grand a month. So I know I've come at this from a, probably an angle that we didn't expect, or you might not have expected to go down. Because I do respect what you've done with the icky, uh, what's the word again? Icky guy. I do respect you on that, and I think that's great. I just want to underline that you— people starting out in venture have got 2 choices, and one of them is to do something which they're going to love, and the other one is you don't necessarily have to do it. You don't necessarily have to love making sandwiches, but you could easily go and get a Subway franchise and make yourself a nice bit of money, which will allow you to spend time doing the stuff you do love. Back to you.
Jeremy ClineYeah, and this is something that I've reflected on the difference between lifestyle business and scalable, you're not working in the business, you're working on the business kind of thing. And I wonder whether it is helpful if you are someone who will enjoy creating a scalable business. So there are people who it kind of doesn't really matter what the business is, They want to figure out the way of scaling it and systematizing it and eventually selling it. And it could be turning one small sandwich shop into a franchise, or it could be manufacturing widgets, or it could be goodness knows what. And it's the process of doing that, of understanding the business. So I wonder whether there's If you're going to do that kind of thing, then it helps to have a propensity to want to do that, to be excited by that. Because I'm conscious that if what I'm working on does take off, then it could scale. It absolutely could scale. I could see a path to that. But at least for the first couple of years, it is likely to be more of a lifestyle thing where I am doing Most of it myself. And having believed what I'd read that, oh no, you've got to scale it, you've got to take yourself out of the business, you know, almost like lifestyle business bad. I've kind of come around to the thinking, well, as long as it works and I'm enjoying what I'm doing in it, I'm kind of okay with that for the time being and see, see where it goes. So that's—
Al ElliottI think that's a really, really important distinction to think about why you're starting a business. And if you are a 22-year-old and you don't mind working 20 hours a day because you've got the energy to work 20 hours a day and all you want to do is be a millionaire by the time you're 30, then that's a different business to when you are perhaps our age and you're like, well, I don't either don't have or don't want to spend, you know, most of my time on this. Cool. And I think that if you watch Dragon's Den, a lot of you'll have this idea that a lifestyle business is a bad thing. You know, quite often they'll go, well, this is just a lifestyle business. You know, and it's like, fine. Because that's beautiful. If you want a lifestyle business, that's your, that's your business. Have it. I think they are very much looking and going, the whole idea of me getting room boxes that I can rent out, that's the way they look at businesses. How do I turn my £1 into £4? Or in Levi Roots' case, my £1 into Mm-hmm. £400. That's, they've got a different way of looking at it. So Dragon's Den's fun to watch, but it's not something you should be emulating unless you are, you desperately want to make money or you desperately want to, not desperately, but you want to increase the cash you've got on hand. Fine. If that's that, go and start a systematized business. Most people want, certainly at our age, they want to start something which they're going to wake up and enjoy. And you've made that decision and that's cool. And the reason why Mean Al came out was because I wanted people to hear that You don't always have to love what you do if your priority is to make money. And the other thing is that if you are running outta runway, which I know you are not, but if you are running outta runway, you may need to do that. You may need to do something. I know there's, there's a guy, uh, called Chris Cardell. He was maybe about 15 years ago. He's quite famous. He used to do all the online, like, workshops and stuff, marketing, et cetera. And when he started his business, he wanted to do workshops and sell media. He was one of the OGs of the selling content. He wanted to do that, but what he did was he did consultancy on the side for companies he didn't really want to do consultancy for because that paid the bills to allow him to work in evenings on the other thing. And I just want, I think I want people to, your listeners to understand that it's not all, you don't, very few people say, I'm going to start a business. And then in month 3, they're going, it's going really well. I made 100 grand this year. Most people spend the first 12 months making no money. And that's when they give up because they have to, or they don't see a route to it. Just do something on the side to make money. You'll put that oxygen mask on first. The most important thing for you is to have as much runway as you need. Because let's be honest, a lot of people don't necessarily want to be rich. They just want to be able to go to the cash machine and take 50 quid out whenever they want.
Jeremy ClineAnd what you just said there about the first 12 months, you probably won't make any money. I think that's something that people need to hear. And I heard somewhere that someone say that 18 months is probably a good period of time that you're looking at before you're going to be making any money. And you can find lots of stories around social media of people who have managed to shorten that time period, but they're probably going to be the exceptions. That's why there's a story around them. So XYZ had nothing and then 3 months later he was making his first million. That's unusual. On the one hand, okay, someone has done it, so why can't you? Well, yes, and they are probably still an outlier. And so whilst it might work out that way for you, chances are it won't. And so it's kind of Tinging this idealism with a pretty healthy slug of reality as well.
Al ElliottExactly. They are noteworthy because they are, as you say, the outlier. And I think that the other part of that, which is quite damaging really, is that if you go on Twitter, you see, particularly if you get, you know, the algorithm starts serving you stuff up that I see, then you'll see like, oh, I made 10 grand this month and I started it last month and it's an AI wrapper. And It was brilliant. And you go, yeah, cool. But what you haven't seen is there's a great guy called Marc Lovino, Lovin, he's a French guy. And what you don't see is the 9 other AI rappers they started over the last 5 years that made absolutely nothing. And so I think the first lesson is you're right, don't take everything at face value. If it's noteworthy because they made money, then it's noteworthy for a reason. It's newsworthy because it's the outlier. Secondly, You don't understand what's gone on. The, the sort of the 10-year overnight success. Most people who are successful have been at it for 10 years. I was bankrupt. I lost, I lost everything. I got my car repossessed and I had 2 houses repossessed when I went bankrupt back in 2005. And then 2007, that's when I started. That's when my, my second or third business went really well, which is in the property and built some wealth. But had you seen me in 2005 not being able to pay my rent, Having no car, having to get the bus everywhere because my car had been repossessed, that would've been a different story. And then if you'd just taken, oh well, he got into property at the right time in 2006 and look, he built X amount in 18 months. Yes, we did. But that's because I got bankrupt. That's because I got repossessed, because I entered the repossession. I also started 2 other businesses before that. They didn't work either. So really it's, the journey was from like 2000 to 2006. Rubbish, really bad, negative bank balance. 2006, 2000 and mid-2007, very nice, thank you very much. But don't judge me based on those 18 months, 19 months. Judge me based on the entire 8-year period.
Jeremy ClineYeah, completely.
Al ElliottI feel like I went off on a rant there. We need to, uh, we need to pull this back to you because I started talking about myself.
Jeremy ClineNo, I think that was a really Valuable diversion. I think it's something that people will benefit from hearing. I think it's something that I probably need to remember more often than I don't. So I think that it's definitely a, that was a well-worth tangent dive to dive into. Let's talk about research and development because we had had this thing. So you had said, there's this thing called Hampton. You could do something similar in the private wealth space. And I still had some doubts about whether it was going to be a painkiller rather than a vitamin. Oh yeah, this private members club, it kind of sounds nice without necessarily solving a problem. And I also knew enough about business at that point that build it and they will come does not work. You need to—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeremy Clinedo a lot more sort of research on figuring out what you are going to offer. So, yeah. So did you want to talk a little bit more about, you know, we'd had this conversation about, okay, this is a possibility. Next step to finding out whether or not it, or indeed something else, is the thing which effectively becomes my first offer. Yes.
Al ElliottAnd this is something I get really passionate about and really excited about. And the reason One of the key things that I tried to get across early on, and you picked up on straight away, was that what we're doing here is we are testing hypotheses. Hypothesis. What's the plural of hypotheses? Hypothesi? I don't know. So you're testing hypotheses here. So don't— what we don't want to do is come and say, right, my beautiful business idea, I want you to sign an NDA before I even tell you it, and it's going to be brilliant. And you go out and you go, right, and now let's launch it. And then nobody comes because then you've got your ego wrapped up and all your dreams and everything wrapped up in this, in this beautiful business. Instead, we treat it like a lab. You and I, we were like, okay, we've got a lab. Hypothesis is that private people in the private wealth space— this isn't necessarily the clients, this is just the people who work there. So we're talking accountants, we're talking tax advisors, that kind of thing, estate managers. Hypothesis was that those people would want to meet Regularly. And again, we're not, don't forget, we're not putting like a monthly or weekly or quarterly. We're just saying regularly with other people in their industry so that they can chat through their problems, potentially network, and they're gonna pay for it. And that was our hypothesis. And it kind of like had 4 sort of elements. Will they pay for it? Do they want to even do it? I forget what the other 2 were, but there was, there was essentially parts to it that we were ticking off. And our idea was that we're gonna go out and try this, and if it doesn't work, then one of those, one or all of those things are off. So it might be that people want this, they need it, they love it, but they're not willing to pay for it. Okay. So that's still a decent idea, but is there some kind of, can, can you look at it from a different point of view? Oh, I wonder if we could get it sponsored by someone. Would that be interesting? Barclays Wealth Manager, would they sponsor your events for you? So you start thinking a bit outside your box as opposed to having this concrete idea going, well, it's got to work because I've now got all the business cards printed. I've done the website for it. I think that's an important thing to remember actually at this point. Am I right in thinking at this point when we're going out there and we're actually testing the hypothesis, you had no website, no business cards, nothing, no business plan for this. Is that right?
Jeremy ClineYeah, that's absolutely right. And I'd say the The exercise that I did next was, it was almost, it was kind of part of testing the hypothesis, but it was almost like the bit before even testing the hypothesis. So what you had me do essentially, what I did was arrange lots of conversations with people who I knew in the sector. So old colleagues, old contacts, that kind of thing. Yeah. And I did mention the idea, but I didn't mention it first. So I planned the sorts of conversations I was going to have, these sorts of informational interviews. And originally I was going to say, look, I've got this idea and I'd like to talk you through it. What do you like about this idea? What don't you like about this idea? What would you need to see to make this a no-brainer for you? That kind of thing. But It was actually from one of my mastermind groups. When I mentioned the idea to them, they said, well, what about making that the second part of the conversation? Why don't you, in the first part of the conversation, just open with some really broad questions like, what are the biggest challenges that you face in your job? Start out with that. So, don't go in with any presupposition about where you want to lead people. It was really hard for me because even by that stage, I was quite invested in the idea. I really liked it, but I could feel myself just— I had to pull myself back and ask these open, non-leading questions to find out what people thought. And then if the responses to that made me think, okay, they could be interested in them, then bring in the idea and ask them what they thought of it. And I'm so glad that I did it that way. One, because it meant that people were just really open about answering my questions and saying what the biggest challenges were. Side note here, I was pleasantly surprised about how open people were. I mean, there were plenty of people who either didn't respond to my email requesting a conversation, Or who said no, but there were a lot of people who said yes. And for the most part, they were very open and frank and honest about what were the difficult bits in their job, which was all incredibly valuable. And it also effectively wrote my copy for me. I mean, I could just— there were regular themes which came out, which I could then draw out when it came to putting a document together. Explaining what the offering was. So I did that first, and then it was in the second part of the conversation where I said, look, this is an idea I've got. What do you think of it? And I made sure that it was framed in terms of, this is an idea, I'm asking for your advice on the idea. I don't actually have anything to sell. And the conversation was, can I keep you posted on how things go? And then that would help inform me whether—
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineIt would be someone who I would follow up with later if they thought it sounded interesting. There were a few people who said, I think it's a great idea, but for me, I can't imagine doing anything worse than going into these groups and sharing my problems with them. Whereas other people were like, yeah, this is a neat idea. And I don't think that anything exists like this already. So yeah, no, do keep me posted. But I remember after I did that, you and I had a conversation. where I was still doubtful about whether the idea, having this offering where I offered to facilitate these groups together, whether that was still a painkiller, whether it was actually solving these particular problems for people. And then that was when I think you said, look, Jeremy, this is a science experiment. You're the scientist here. Your job Now you've got this. Now you've got a really good understanding about what people's pain points are. And we did some work on turning that into effectively a sales document. Now it's your job to go out there and see whether on the back of the conversations you've had with people, this is something that someone is willing to pay for.
Al ElliottYes. And I think what really impressed me about this, because I, I was being really honest. I was skeptical whether you were actually going to do this because it was painful and I could see it in your face when I was saying you need to go out there and talk to people. You're a bit like, oh, is there not another way? Can I not just ask ChatGPT or can I just email them or send them a survey or something? But to your credit, like you sent me a message, I think 2 weeks after going, right, okay. Or maybe even 2 days afterwards saying, right, okay, I've emailed 40 people. I've got 30 calls booked. I'm like, that's brilliant, mate. That's absolutely brilliant. And I didn't think that you would. Do as much of it as as you did, and you did, and it was phenomenal. I think this is the most important thing that you need to do. There's sort of like I've just made up an idea an idea of the three stages of business where you start off with the scientist, and that's the bit you're doing now. So that's working out hypotheses, testing hypotheses with the market. Then you become the artist. That's when you actually create your offer, and you take it to market, and you design all what is going to look like. You design the whole thing. Then there's capitalist, and that's the bit where you. You essentially say, can I put £1 in this and get £4 out? And those are sort of like your 3 stages, which sounds to me like I should write a book on this called, called the SAC method or something in self-coaching or whatever. Anyway, I jest, obviously. What you were talking about there with the scientist phase was something based on the book called The MOM Test, M-O-M, because it's American. I forget who it was by. Definitely, definitely worth reading. And he's, he's talking about when he's creating software. Yeah. And he says, if you go to your mom and you say, I've got a great idea for this piece of software, what do you think? She's gonna go, oh, love, that sounds brilliant. Yeah, yeah, I bet you'll be a millionaire from that. And if you go to your friends and you ask them, what do you think about this piece of software? They're gonna say the same thing because they wanna support you. What you did was what he advocates, which is go in there and just have a conversation and say, one of the best things you can do with software is say, What are you currently using Excel for that is really cumbersome? Because that uncovers so many niche software opportunities that could be built now with Cursor AI, with, um, uh, Wind— I can't remember what it's called. Uh, there's lots of them out there. Bolt. So you can uncover that. So what you did there was go out there and essentially say, what do you use Excel for?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottBut in your world, you know, what are you doing manually? What are you— what's your biggest problem? What really annoys you? What's cumbersome? Now that's, that's from The Mum Test, and it's definitely well worth reading for anyone who's listening to this. Go stop now, pause, go and buy that if you're in this stage, because I think you're gonna love it. Second book, which is a bit OG, is by a guy called Ryan Levesque, uh, called Ask. And that one is more about surveys. That's worth reading, but he seems to suggest that all you have to do is send out a survey and you get all the responses and then you get Essentially, you can build your product. It's not like that. You need to have these one-to-one conversations that you had. And I think, first of all, well done, dude. You did it. You did the hard work. You uncovered some problems. Secondly, well done because you went in it not trying to validate an idea, but more like trying to test a hypothesis with the, with the idea that you will change it if it doesn't come back with the results, which I think is cool and why you're on the road to success so quickly as you are. Whereas most people would be like, no, I think Facebook for dogs is definitely, we're going to call it Dogbook. I've registered the domain, which is great.
Leanne ElliottYou know.
Jeremy ClineYeah. And the idea of having these conversations, it was one I was already aware of. You know, you and I are both aware of Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income, and he was someone who is always saying that. And yeah, so I was kind of aware of the idea, but again, it was one of these things. Okay. Yes. All right, I need to do it now. And you're right, I was terrified at the idea. It's one of these things where it felt really uncomfortable and it probably took me 2 days to send the first email just because I just met this massive resistance. I'd maybe draft the email and it's like, oh no, let's just see what's going on on Twitter or whatever it is. But something that I've learned is that When I break the seal on it, so to speak, it kind of gets its own momentum and you realize that it's not that scary, especially when people come back to you and say, yeah, sure. And it generates a bit of a flywheel. And I'm sure I've found this in loads of situations, like when I started the podcast, those first few emails to people saying, would you like to be a guest?
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineIt just feels really difficult and you start questioning it. Who am I to ask this person to be a guest or to have a conversation? But I think like anything, it just comes with practice. And the coaching, like the coach training that I did definitely helped because I know the value of asking open questions and making sure if someone says, oh, well, I don't like this idea because of this, I don't come back with a, effectively in the nicest possible way saying, well, you're wrong because, but asking them instead, okay, so what makes you say that? And how would you answer that question? So that's valuable, but just doing it, just starting the process. And I'm starting to recognize those feelings of resistance. So I'm now at the stage where I'm having conversations with people To see whether they would like to participate in my offering. And when that started, again, I was meeting the same resistance, even more so because I wasn't just asking people for a conversation, but I was asking potential customers to pay me for something, which is really— doing it when it's something for myself rather than in a business, it just felt really, really uncomfortable.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineI guess it's one of these things. Once, if it's a muscle that you've never exercised before, then yeah, of course it feels uncomfortable. It's not surprising, but the more you do it, the more comfortable it starts to feel.
Al Elliott100%. I think we're going to go on to that, the artist stage in my little, my new paradigm that I'm going to be copywriting before you put this out. But we'll go into the artist in a second. But just going back to the scientist thing, there's a reason why most academics and most intelligent people are not good at starting businesses because they are so used to having all the answers and they're so used to being right and they hate someone saying no to them or they disagree. Whereas the people who start businesses are the ones who don't care whether someone says yes or no, because the fact is that most won't. You see lots of people going, well, if I could just get 4% of the people who wear shoes to buy my To buy my shoes, then God, I'm gonna be a billionaire. It's like, most won't. You're talking about 0.0001% of people who you could potentially get to buy your shoes unless you're Nike or Adidas or something already got an established market. The basis of almost every business is foundational blocks built on the number of times they've said no. So if you can imagine that you're building a house, the foundations of the house and most of the walls Well, every block represents a no because you have to— now, I'm slightly contradicting myself in a second, but I'll expand on that in a second. But when you ask, when you get to the point where asking people to meet up with you, the majority of people will say no. Not because they don't want to meet up with you, although that's true for some of them, but most of them because they've got so much in the day. They're like, I just haven't got the time. I can't be bothered. When you send out 100 emails, personalize those 100 emails, you might go, I've just spent 2 days personalizing these emails. So every single one of them is perfect.
Jeremy ClineYeah.
Al ElliottAnd you'll notice that probably 60% of them don't even get a reply. They're probably not even opened. But the fact is you've had to send out 100 to get 20 replies to get 10 calls. You've had to do that. You can't just send a better email to get those 20 calls and send 20 emails out. You have to go 100. So you start off with a, you know, 100 people you contact, 20 people reply. 10 of them get on a call with you, 5 say they'll buy, 3 will actually pay you some money. That's the universal way of human nature. It's the way that you sell anything. Even Apple. You think Apple, one of the most successful companies on the planet, yet overall in most countries, they, most people don't have Apples, Apple phones. Most people have Android. You know, so even the most valuable company in the world only has a 30% worldwide share of the smartphone market. And you think, God, well, Apple, they can do no wrong. Well, 7 out of 10 people decide they don't want an Apple phone. So I think it's really important to understand that. I think a lot of people sit there and go, well, if I write the perfect email, then everyone will reply. No, you could write the perfect email and still 40% of people will never even open it.
Jeremy ClineYeah. And I think one point that's worth adding to that is it's another Pat Flynnism where he says the riches are in the niches and the fortune is in the follow-up. So you send an email, you don't get a reply, and then a week later you send a follow-up. Just seeing if you've got that email, I'd love to have that conversation or something like that, something short. The number of times that that second email converted was quite telling. That made me think, yes, it's worth doing. And there was part of me which was like, oh God, now I've got to chase them. Oh no, now I've got to chase them again. But you get results that way. Sometimes you just need that extra touchpoint. And so I would have that, the fortune is in the follow-up, going through my head every time I thought, no, they're not interested. I'm not going to send it, because it's not my job to know whether or not they're not interested or whether it was just the wrong time or whether an extra nudge means they're going to get back to me. So that was really important actually, I think.
Al ElliottYes. And I think that's something which a lot of people miss because again, that fear of no, that fear of saying no, of getting someone replying back with some kind of expletive or someone saying, please never contact me again. It's hurtful. It's not nice. But you have to, you have to get to the point where you follow up with people respectfully because you are going to get a few Foxtrot Oscars and you're going to get a few People who say yes. Okay. And I think just, just as a little story, um, when I had my property company, um, essentially we did sell and rent back. So we would buy people's houses who were getting repossessed. We'd buy them and rent it back to them on a 100-year lease. Um, so we tried to be the most ethical way we could do it, but we were giving them 20, uh, 75% of what the house was worth. That was what was in it for us. Then we gave 'em an option to buy it back and we tried to be as, as like, you know, as, as, as whilst making sure we had money, we made money. We tried to be the best in the industry and we were the best in the industry for our offer. Which brings us onto the offer in a second. But one of the things I used to do was every Monday I'd sit there and I'd print out, I wrote a bit of software that would essentially track where people were up to and they had 7 letters that went in the post. So this database would essentially track who needed what letter and then it would print out a load of letters for me. I'd fold them, put them in envelopes, probably took me most of the morning, put them in envelopes, put them in the post, knowing that if we're sending out 100 of these a week, Almost nothing happened. But then occasionally, once a month, we get someone ringing up and going, yeah, okay, look, can we come around and chat to you? You saw us back in April. I've, I've, I thought I was back on top. I'm not. Can you come in? We wanna talk to you. And almost all of them said, the reason why I chose you is because you kept writing to me. Everybody else came down, made me a low, lowball offer. When I said no, they took that, you know, they took their stuff and went off home. And those were worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, those letters, because they brought in those people who everyone else had given up on.
Jeremy ClineYeah. Let's talk about the offers stage or the artistry stage in the patent-pending Al Elliott business framework.
Al ElliottYes, let's talk about one of my favorites.
Jeremy ClineSo I had these Nearly 50 conversations. I was identifying some patterns. I had some great copy quotes I could use. I now had to turn this into some kind of an offer, and I still had these doubts about whether what I was going to offer was the group membership.
Al ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineProgram.
Al ElliottAnd just before you go on, I think it's— sorry to interrupt, but I think it's probably important just to identify, just to establish, when we say offer, we're not talking about a special offer. We're talking about what we're gonna actually go to market with, what the actual product or service is going to be offering. And I think it's just important because some people listen to go offers and that's their only concept is buy one, get one free. That's not what we're talking about here. Sorry, carry on.
Jeremy ClineNo, no, no, quite. That's Really important. So then you brought to my attention the book, $100 Million Offers, Alex Hormozi. And one of the exercises he mentions in that book is going through all the problems and challenges that people mention and figuring out what would be the solutions that you could offer. And he encourages you to be as creative as possible, even to the point of ridiculousness. So if a challenge that someone has is they don't have time to go and shop healthily, then you could provide a personal shopping service. Clearly it's not scalable and it probably wouldn't work as a business idea, but he says don't discount that. So from memory, that was kind of the next phase was going through that exercise. Is there anything you'd like to add to that?
Al ElliottPlenty, plenty. First of all, go and buy Alex Hormozi's book. I'm not on commission, obviously. Alex doesn't even think about me at all. But the book is phenomenal and it just, it's nothing brand new. Sorry, Alex, there's nothing in there that's new. It just consolidates all the existing knowledge into, A, as the first part of the story, which is cool, and B, he just puts it into a formula, which I wish I could remember, but essentially he's like, How, um, in fact, you know, I'm not gonna spoil it. Go and look at the book and you'll see the formula about a third, a third to two-thirds of the way through. There's an entire chapter on this formula. Follow that and you will come up with a $100 million offer, guaranteed. What I think is cool about this though is you didn't just go, all right, this is my idea. Let's go through the book and let's craft it according to that, which you could have done. But what you've actually done is all these, what, probably 20 to 40 hours worth of conversations you've got with people that you've logged, you've transcribed, you've kept, you've added into ChatGPT. To sort of analyze and whatever. They're all add-ons, like you've said. So you can look at it and go, right, well, my biggest problem, let's imagine the biggest problem is time. That's gonna be the biggest problem for everyone. I haven't got time. You go, well, I can't really do too much about that. What we can do is we can have a time management course on this, or we can have a time management speaker coming in, or we can talk about, what about if we talked about the types of software that could be used? What happens if we actually went to a software house and went, we've got a load of clients here. You write software. Their problem is this, they're using Excel for this. Why don't you create something and we'll sell it and I'll take a percentage of it? It opens up all these ideas. But also what it does is it answers the question, what else could I A, sell, or B, give away that would make this the, a no-brainer offer, make this something people would feel stupid saying no, which I think is Alex's actual Actual terminology. And that's where this qualitative research— is that right? Is that the right word or quantitative? Anyway, asking people. That's where that comes into it because you have all the answers. You have all these transcripts, these, you know, hundreds of hours or scores of hours of where people have told you exactly what they want and exactly how your offer needs to look for them to go, well, I'd be stupid to say no. And that's where I think the— it all comes in with that whole scientist, artist, and then you go capitalist. I think these— the artist is so much better when you've spent that time being a scientist because you have all the information and it's difficult to get and it's more exciting to go to the offer and create an offer. But man, you did it the right way and you did it beautifully. And now, even if this idea doesn't resonate as well as you think it does, You still have enough data to go back and go, right, what will, how do I tweak it? Oh, do you know what was interesting? A lot of people seem to say that this was a big problem, like meeting other or talking to other accountants who deal with high net worth individuals. That's a very small subset. But if you have 80% of those people in the UK in your database, you suddenly become one of the most, you know, one of the most sought after people in the UK because you can connect Dave with Judy.
Jeremy ClineYeah. It does make sense. Yeah. So I think this kind of brings us up to date with where I am now. So we're recording this just at the beginning of February 2025, where I've now started to go out into the world and say, largely to people who I've already spoken to, following that conversation, this is where I've got to.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineAnd I'm still largely framing it in terms of, what do you think? There's been a few people who have said, I'd like to invite you to this, to be a beta member, become a member of the first group. And I still feel like I am in experimentation phase. So I've had— well, there have been people who have said yes, which I don't know why I should be surprised at that, but I was a bit. And I think what I'm looking to do is to see whether enough people say yes, that I can at least get the first group going. And that's also, I think, been quite important, is to focus on the what's next. Because my mind has been expanding with all the ways that I could grow this. So multiple groups, groups aimed at different types of people at different levels of seniority, bringing in guest speakers, having annual dinners, offering extra things, which I don't know what they are yet, but there's all sorts of things that I could add on in the future. But one of the things that I've been saying is, yes, and that's all great, but the most important thing you do now is to get this first group together, get 6 people, maybe even 4 people, 4 to 6 people who say, yes, I am prepared to be a guinea pig in your beta group and to try you out. That's, that's the thing that I'm now focusing on above all else and trying desperately not to get distracted by anything else.
Al ElliottWell, that seems like a really good point to start talking about sort of like lessons and stuff that we, that we've both learned from this process. So do you want to, I mean, if you were to summarize, because there's a lot to summarize there, we've been speaking for an hour and 20, but if you were to summarize it, what, what's, what would you say were the top 3 lessons for someone listening that you've learned whilst you've been down this, this route?
Jeremy ClineNumber one, Finding a niche, finding that focus. So that was something that you said in one of our conversations. When you have that niche and have that focus, you know what you're going to do when you get up the following morning, rather than getting to your desk and thinking, well, crikey, what am I going to do now? Because you've just got so many different ideas. Number 2, which again, we touched on earlier, For me, definitely getting that help and support, I can't tell you how much difference it's made. I genuinely count my lucky stars that you decided to take an interest in me. Goodness knows what I would've been doing at this stage had we not started working together. But it's something I need to— whenever I feel the resistance to, oh, I could just figure it out myself, I know that I really do need to get someone else involved. So that's probably the second most important lesson. What am I going to put in my number 3 slot? I think it's this idea of recognizing and acknowledging the discomfort. So even saying to myself, I am scared about doing this, I'm nervous about doing this, having the awareness of that, but doing it anyway. I think that's also been an important awareness. So when I feel myself procrastinating, and I might even go to myself, Jeremy, you're procrastinating. Okay, you're going to allow yourself to procrastinate for the next 10 minutes and look at Twitter, but then after that, you are going to do this. It's having the awareness that once you get through that fear and do it, break that seal, that's where the— it's that old cliché about the comfort zone and where the growth happens. You genuinely do need to get out of the comfort zone in order to make that growth happen. And what I'm just going to add onto that is that there are ways to make that easier. I remember, crikey, it must have been 30 years ago, going to the US and going to the Yeah. Aerospace Museum on the Mall in Washington. And they had a great big cinematic thing about Air Force pilot training. And they said it takes so many hundreds of hours of air combat before you're basically good enough and basically likely to survive your first engagement. And the way they give you that experience is by doing a load of dummy exercises. They make it as close as possible, but they give you that experience through this training. And that's something that I have incorporated using AI. So using the ChatGPT voice function, I have told it, I've told ChatGPT who I wanted to be, and I have practiced some of these conversations. So the first conversation, these informational interviews where I was asking people their problems and challenges. I practiced that with ChatGPT first, and just the act of doing it and actually saying it out loud and responding to what the AI was sending back to me was really, really valuable. And then again, I've practiced subsequent conversations. So just sort of doing that just to get used to hearing the sound of your own voice and doing something a bit different. That's actually been really helpful in kind of breaking that fear. So those are my top 3 lessons.
Al ElliottAnd I love this one about ChatGPT. I think what a lot of people, probably not your listeners, because they're probably already into ChatGPT, but bear in mind that we are a very small subsegment of the population who understand ChatGPT and know how to make it work. You know, the majority of people have never even heard of it, or they've heard of it and don't know what it is. They think it's some computer in the sky. The one thing that I think is people don't understand or don't use ChatGPT properly enough for is exactly that. Treat them like a child, or as my business partner in the property thing rather unfairly says, like a lawyer, in that they are incredibly intelligent, but you have to tell them specifically what to do. Because a lawyer is not— their job is not to be creative. Their job is to protect you and solve problems. And you need to tell them, right, this is exactly the scenario I'm trying to protect against. And the lawyer will be incredible and come up with all kinds of things you never would have thought of. But you can't just say, make me a contract, because they'll be like, well, I need to know a lot more. Same with ChatGPT. I think that's the first thing is that don't expect them to be a magic box. They are incredibly, incredibly intelligent, but you have to tell them what you want. And secondly, there's something which you've done is you can create actual chats and you can give custom instructions to say, right, you are now a customer, potential customer. You're, you're a lawyer. You do this, you do this. I am gonna pitch you on this and I want you to make the pitch difficult for me. And then use a voice and they'll push back with objections that you probably wouldn't have come up with and go, oh, bloody hell, how do I say that? Well, how do I deal with that? But then that's the kind of thing which is, we really, yeah, I think ChatGPT is incredible when you know how to use it. And treat it like a very intelligent but petulant child that will not do what it's told until you very specifically tell it what it's told. One cool thing I learned, in fact, I use Claude more than ChatGPT now, but is just to reply to whatever they've given you and say, this is great, but do you think you can do better? What would you improve? And generally, I mean, I think you and I have talked about, you may have even given me the phrase to do that. And the resulting output is usually twice to 3 times as good.
Jeremy ClineYeah. A friend of mine said something similar. He responds to almost everything with, I don't think that's right. Try again. And that seems to get results. So those are my kind of 3 biggest takeaways. I'm curious to know, and slightly fearful of asking the question, but curious to know what you've seen from the outside as we've been working together. What's the kind of things where you've thought, how should we put this? Things I've done well, things I could do better, things I need to do more of. So yeah, something like that. Pick a framework, whatever feels good for you.
Al ElliottI think what I really have liked seeing is you taking action on some of the difficult things, because for most people, the thing you put off is a thing that you really should be doing. And whether that's exercising, whether that's sales, whether that's whatever, the thing that you go, oh, I really don't wanna do that, is probably the most impactful thing. And to begin with, I felt that you were, I didn't push you much cuz I didn't even know what relationship we had at the beginning.
Jeremy ClineYeah.
Al ElliottBut then latterly, I did push you and go, this is the most important thing. And I could see your face going, I don't wanna do this. But then you did it anyway. And that the first time you did that, that actually surprised me that you did it because I was expecting to come on the call and you went, yeah, I tried a couple of those emails, didn't really work. So I've got a new idea. And you didn't, you went, no, I've done it. And that was fantastic. I think I've made a couple of notes as you were talking there. Um, I think the second thing that I've really enjoyed watching your thinking develop. And I mean, being a coach, I'm sure you come across Jim Rohn. If listeners haven't come across Jim Rohn, he's the guy who I think was Tony Robbins' mentor, and Tony Robbins learned everything from Jim Rohn. I think that's right. Please don't sue me, Tony, if that's not right. But he said something like, in order to get what you want, help others get what they want. And that was something which you almost innately had. And that was cool. When you were, when you were sitting down, you weren't going, how do I make loads of money? How do I sell this thing? You were like, okay, how do I help people to live a better life? And that was cool. And I thought that was brilliant. Um, the third thing, which again, almost might be Jim Rohn again, um, is that you are the sum of the 5 people you spend most time around and you recognize that. And also what's interesting is that you've referenced it 3 or 4 times now in this chat.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottThat you needed to be around people who are willing to push you a bit more. It's the temptation is when you start a business to find someone who is like you and go, right, let's go into business together. And in fact, you should find someone who's completely the opposite, who you're gonna argue with all the time, because if they have the same skills you've got and the same outlook as you've got, then you're, you're only one part of an entire organ of, of, of the, of the trifecta you need. To create a great business. So I think there's that. I think actually you were pushing for like, yes, I'm ready to talk to you now because I've done my work. That was cool. So I think for anyone who wants to, who wants to have a great relationship where they're gonna get lots of effort and success out of coaching, the top 3 things that you've done well is come with a very open mind. When I talked about being a scientist, it clicked with you. You went, okay, yep, got it. All right. I'm not in love with my idea. I'm in love with helping people. Secondly, take action on that most unreasonable and uncomfortable thing that you need to do. And thirdly, whether it's just accountability, whether it's actually getting advice from someone like me, I don't know. I suspect that it's more the accountability than it is my experience. I don't know. But just be accountable to someone. And whether that's— don't find someone who's like you, a bit Not like you generally, but like you, if you're a bit flaky, don't find someone who's also flaky. Find someone who's actually gonna go to you, you didn't do that, why not? And then stop talking because then you have to justify all of the reasons why you didn't do what you said you were gonna do, which is very uncomfortable. So that's kind of my thoughts on it.
Jeremy ClineYeah. And I think learning humility is really important. Being able to accept, you know, Fortunately, most of the people that I've worked with will usually say things in a nice way, but there's a point to this. So there's a friend of mine who will say something like, I say this with love, but... And then you know the fist is coming. And it's something that I've definitely had to work on is accepting that. And I mean, just for me personally, that was, I suppose, a bit of a challenge because historically I was like the school swot, very academic, used to get things right. And so consequently, God, I could probably go back into childhood a bit here, but criticism could feel hard, could feel uncomfortable. And so wanted to avoid that. Whereas now I'm like, Yeah. No, this is someone who's trying to help me. They've got valid points. I need to be open to that and to accept that. And it takes a lot of work, but I'm finding that that's, it's a more successful mindset doing it that way.
Al ElliottTotally agree. And I think it's interesting you saying that you were the SWAT, you were right. I kind of have Yet another idea for a book in my head, Be Rich, Not Right. And I think the idea is, I don't think you can be both. I think you have to get it wrong a lot in order to make money because let's be honest, if you're day trading, 90% of your trades won't work, but the 10% will more than account for those 90% of losses. I think I feel like I'm gonna take charge here, but I know we've only got a couple of seconds left, but I do want to hear from you what you are most excited about. for this venture and maybe what you might be scared about?
Jeremy ClineI think it's two sides of the same coin. I'm excited about what it could look like if it does work, and I'm scared that it won't. So it really is something that lands with me. So the idea of me being in groups, facilitating groups, doing a bit of group coaching maybe with all these people that I know their backgrounds. I used to work with some of them. Creating this space, and if it works and people are getting a lot out of it and they want to renew and be part of it for another year and that kind of thing, just the idea of creating that thing and it working really excites me.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineSaying, taking a step back and going, I can't believe that I've made this and people are loving it. The idea of that really excites me. The idea of it failing and it not being the thing. And then I know that I'm not going to go back to square one for the reasons that you said about the fact that I had these conversations with people. And so I've already got a lot of background information, but there is a big part of me that's, try as I might not to get invested in this idea, it is still a really cool idea that I really like. And so, there's part of the, yeah, but what happens if it flops? What happens if it doesn't work? What the hell do I do then? What happens is that the end of that runway comes closer and closer. So, that's probably the thing that I'm most scared of. And I guess my way of dealing with that at the moment is just to Keep going and see what happens.
Al ElliottI love that. I love that. And a very amazing honesty there. I think the key thing, I think the key takeaway I'd love if anyone listened to this entire, well, obviously people will listen to this, but if there was one thing they were taking away from it is that what, where I think you'll succeed is that you're still in scientist mode and you're not going to move to artist mode until you actually have a working hypothesis. And the fact is that you say, I'm worried that people are not going to like what I'm doing. Some of it they won't. Some of the, some of the events you'll put on, you'll do this and people go like, why have you done that? That's a waste of time. I really don't like that. But if you keep asking them, how can I make it better? What did you not like about today's session? What did you love about today's session? You're going to start to tease out all that stuff that people actually love and you double down on that. And again, it's the whole point is being rich, not right. You don't have to get it right first time. You won't get it right first time. But if you expect you will, I think you're going to end up with being very disappointed and probably very poor.
Jeremy ClineI've absolutely loved this conversation. So grateful for you. Well, for everything that you've done, but also for coming on today. Give some people some links for where you'd like them to find you.
Al ElliottCool. Yeah, I think the best thing to do is if you like this and you want a conversation with me, then go to chatwithal.com. You can book a call with me. If you just want to help us and you'd support us, then go and maybe just download download an episode of Truth, Lies and Work and try it out, see what you think, because we're very proud of it and we think it's great and we have some fabulous guests on it. That would be the best way, I think. So truthliesandwork.com or just search your podcast app for Truth, Lies and Work.
Jeremy ClineAnd I will emphasize that Truth, Lies and Work is a fantastic podcast. I think I've almost gone back through the entire back catalog and thoroughly enjoyed it. So it's been great. Well, um, thank you so much for coming on.
Al ElliottThank you for having me.
Jeremy ClineOkay. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Al Elliott. Big shout out to Al, not just for coming on the podcast and being part of a conversation that I really enjoyed there, but for all the help that he's given me over the past few months. Something I would like to draw out from that conversation, which we didn't really touch on. Now, I recognize that I have been incredibly lucky to have someone like Al Giving up their time and helping me out with my own business. I absolutely meant what I said when I mentioned that I just couldn't believe my luck. Having said that, the opportunity wouldn't have arisen had I not met Al in the first place. The way I met Al was to invite him and his wife Leanne onto my podcast. At the end of the interview, I had some questions for them about the work that they did and how I could potentially get involved in that kind of work because it really did interest me. And so that then led to further conversations, which then eventually led to Al going, come on, let's take a look at your business. Opportunities arise when you put yourself out there. You don't necessarily know what's going to come from a particular relationship or a conversation, but you'll never know if you don't instigate it in the first place. I'm an introvert by nature, And certainly to begin with, and still to some extent, I find it pretty tough to reach out to random strangers to ask their advice. And when you don't get a reply, it can be pretty disheartening. But I've learned that when you do get that positive reply, when someone goes, yeah, sure, I'll have a conversation with you, something is going to come out of it. You'll learn something, or that person will have another connection that they can introduce to you, which might help you.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Jeremy ClineOr you may have a connection for them that you can introduce to help them. We're kind of at this weird point where technology makes it both really easy to connect with people on the other side of the globe, but there seems to be less willingness to have conversations. And I mean conversations where you're talking to one another, not just exchanges of emails or exchanges of WhatsApp messages or whatever. For me, it's those interactions, whether on screen or in person, where Magic really can happen. So if there's just one thing I'd like to leave you with, it's that. Look for those opportunities to have conversations, and I mean those conversations where you are opposite that person, whether on screen or in real life, in real time, talking to one another. I'll put the show notes for this episode on the website at changeworklife.com/200. That's changeworklife.com/200. And wow, it does sound a little bit strange saying that number. 200 does feel like quite a lot of episodes, actually. And this one was a bit different. Perhaps it was a bit more business-focused, although I think there's an awful lot in there that you can also take into a work situation. When I'm coaching around job applications or interviews, it often comes up that people hire because they have a problem to solve. They've got work which needs doing, and they don't have the capacity to do that work.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Jeremy ClineSo you are a potential solution to that expensive, painful problem. But what I'd really like to know from you is, what did you think of this episode? It was a bit different. Did you prefer the format? Do you prefer my usual interview format? Did you like the topic? Any and all feedback will be welcome. And you can send me a message using the contact form on my website at changeworklife.com/contact. So thank you for making it this far. If this is the first episode you've listened to, or if you're a regular listener, thank you for being part of my journey to 200 podcast episodes. And guess what? I'm not stopping. There's more great interviews and great episodes coming your way. So if you haven't subscribed to the show, make sure you do, because there's going to be another great interview in 2 weeks' time, and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye.
Leanne ElliottThat was Jeremy Cline on Change Work Life. Hopefully you found that useful, whether you're thinking about going out on your own or you're just nosy about what really goes on behind the scenes. It is rare to hear someone be that honest about that messy middle bit, isn't it? It's not just that I quit my job story, um, or now I'm successful. Um, it's the uncomfortable bits in between. That's the, that's the humanity and the reality of it.
Al ElliottYeah, exactly. And massive thanks to Jeremy for letting us share his episode 200 with you lovely If you wanna hear more from Jeremy, and I recommend you do, 'cause he's got some brilliant guests on, you can find Change Work Life wherever you're listening to this podcast right now.
Leanne ElliottYeah, just search for Change Work Life. You, you know what to do. You put the— you put it in.
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottAnd it'll pop up.
Al ElliottAnd you press play.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Or you can go to our show notes below.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd there'll be a link and you just click on that.
Al ElliottBut you might as well just search for it anyway. Have we said Change Work Life enough, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottChange Work Life.
Al ElliottThere you go. Okay, so we are back next week with part 1 of our listener highlights. And part 2 is a week today. So next week you've just got listener highlights. And it is, it's a really fun night. Leanne and I don't take it too seriously. And it's just a really fun kind of 2-part show.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it is lots of highlights, including Listener's Choice Award for the guest of the, of the year and our most downloaded episode.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah, of 2025. So there's some, some big reveals. So go and enjoy. And if we don't see you before Christmas, have a lovely Christmas. Have a good one. Um, yeah, love to, to you and yours.
Al ElliottYes. Okay, speak to you soon. Bye-bye.