BBXUK

In this episode of Biz Bites, presented by CommTogether, the host interviews John Attridge, a bestselling author, internationally renowned speaker, and successful entrepreneur. Originally from Victoria, Australia, and now based in the UK, John shares his journey from starting businesses in Queensland to expanding internationally. He discusses the dramatic impact of the Brisbane World Expo on his car rental business and how a pilots’ strike almost led to its downfall. This challenge prompted him to innovate with a trade exchange system, which evolved into the BBX brand, now boasting 480,000 accounts worldwide. John also delves into the importance of recognizing and utilizing spare capacity within businesses, using a hotel’s unused rooms as a case study to highlight how businesses can significantly increase their revenue and efficiency. Drawing from his personal experiences and various business ventures, John provides valuable insights into sales, the importance of focusing on spare capacity, and adopting modern payment methods like cryptocurrency to enhance business growth.

00:00 Introduction to BizBytes and Guest John Attridge

00:54 John Attridge’s Journey: From Aussie to Global Entrepreneur

01:56 The Rise and Fall of a Car Rental Empire

04:42 Innovating Through Crisis: The Birth of a Trade Exchange

07:22 Expanding Horizons: BBX and the Power of Digital Trade Credits

10:06 Understanding Spare Capacity and Its Business Impact

17:32 Realizing and Utilizing Business Capacity for Growth

23:20 Unlocking Business Potential: Spare Capacity and the 80/20 Rule

24:18 Innovative Business Solutions During COVID-19

25:56 The Power of Focusing on Existing Customers

26:32 The Importance of Community in Business

27:11 From Business Blunders to Speaking Engagements

32:35 The Art of Sales and the Value of Disqualification

41:44 Revisiting Education and Entrepreneurial Spirit

TRANSCRIPT:

Anthony Perl: Welcome to Biz Bites brought to you by CommTogether, helping businesses like yours build their brand through telling amazing stories to engage and grow audiences on multiple platforms.

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites. And my guest today is a bestselling author. He is, uh, an internationally renowned speaker. His business has been going gangbusters. Um, and he’s going to tell us a lot more about that, but he’s going to tell us all about, I guess, lots of, there are lots of things to learn about business from our guest, John Attridge.

And I’ll let you introduce yourself a little bit first.

John Attridge: I, uh, Anthony and, uh, nice to be on the program. Um, I started, as you can probably tell from my accent as an Aussie, uh, born and bred. Down in Victoria, moved to Queensland in the seventies and, uh, began businesses there. Uh, with varying degrees of success, uh, over the years, we’ve moved into many other countries and currently resident here in the UK.

So, uh, people say, John, how come you moved to the UK? And I’ll say, well, it was for the weather. Um, You know, and I ring people up and 30 in Queensland and 30 in here, just one Celsius and one’s Fahrenheit.

Anthony Perl: Absolutely. And, uh, for those of us that have spent any time in the UK, we know you are not talking nonsense here.

That is the absolute truth. But, uh, but you do get to spend a fair bit of time in Australia as well. So, um, you get the best of both worlds, right?

John Attridge: Yeah, I still got all family, uh, down there, my mom, kids, what have you. So, uh, we try to get down there for a few months every year.

Anthony Perl: John, let’s just start, um, by talking a little bit about as by means of a bit of an introduction, talk to me about, um, you know, the business that I know when we spoke, um, previously, uh, you know, you’ve kind of, you’ve bought and sold it.

Um, you know, a couple of times over. So tell us a little bit about that business for starters and what your involvement is today.

John Attridge: Yeah. So, uh, for those of that are old enough, uh, I was on the Gold Coast, had a successful car rental business. We had world expo in Brisbane in 1988. And, uh, as fast as I could clean cars, uh, returning cars, the next person in the queue was ready to take off and, and, uh, enjoy.

Uh, World Expo. So we had more than a hundred percent occupancy, Anthony, for a 10 month period, the six months of the Expo and the two shoulder months either side. So it was, you know, what a great business. And, you know, it was as fast as you could get a car on there. It was making you money. And, you know, I was late twenties and thinking, you know, this business, Lark, is pretty simple and, you know, you just got to provide the product and everything else goes Swimmingly and you know, it’s all a beer and skittles and, but fast forward to 1989, uh, the, all the pilots for those that remember, uh, the commercial pilots went on strike.

And I mean, this wasn’t just a strike for a day or two. It was for five months and it took the then prime minister, Bob Hawk to threaten them with getting back to work. Otherwise he’d revoke their commercial pilots license. So I’m not a labor guy, but, uh, Bob Hawk did us all a favour by. You know, the, the threat worked and I don’t believe that half of them went back to work and then half were never ever flying over Australian skies again, not in a commercial capacity anyway.

So, but the, the problem with that, with business and a little bit like COVID, you know, Mike Tyson once said that everybody’s got a plan until you get a smack in the face and you couldn’t see this coming. So we went from hero to zero in the space of, you know, two to three weeks, we went from over a hundred percent occupancy to almost zero.

And we still had all our overheads, you know, we had our lease payments to Mazda and the staff to pay and the rents to pay from our offices. We had no revenue. So we thought, wow, what do we do? You know, this is beyond our control. Um, and I’m a great believer in, uh, if you can fix something, get to it and take immediate action.

And if you can’t ignore it. So my mental health, I know that’s a big one these days is, is great. Cause if, if I can’t fix something, I ignore it. But anyway, that’s another story. Um, yeah, so, um, we got together with a group, fortunately, a couple of years before I’d seen this idea in the United States of, uh, what was called a trade exchange.

So it was appointing a central record keeper, adopting a unit of currency that business people agreed was one to one. And in this case with the Australian dollar. And we would replace the Australian dollar with our own trading currency where we could trade with each other, but not one to one by having a unit of, of exchange.

And so, um, we got started with this group with 50 people, uh, business owners, and we had lawyers and dentists and doctors and restaurant owners and hoteliers and mechanics and, you know, trades people and all sorts of different people. And, uh, so we had our own little trading community going, uh, while this was all happening, creating currency that, that, uh, no one else had.

So we used to write checks to one another. This was, uh, a, um, uh, an opportunity to be in the digital age. In an analog form back in the day, we didn’t have internet back then. We didn’t have, um, mobile phones or any of that sort of stuff. So I had a car on the driveway. It had rent me on it. And, uh, the solicitor that was in the group in, in day one came in and wanted to rent a car for two days.

It was 50 bucks a day. He wrote me a check for these hundred trade dollars. So I went back as the record keeper, credit his, uh, credited my account with a hundred bucks and debited his, we gave everybody an interest free credit line, To create an economy because if you don’t do that, no one could make the first purchase.

So anyway, uh, that’s fine. He’s off renting the car. And, um, uh, we then sent two people to have legal advice at 50 bucks an hour. So he got two new customers. They wrote him a check for 50 bucks. So his account went from negative a hundred to negative 50 to zero. I went and spent my a hundred bucks with buying some cleaning rags, uh, off a rag supplier to do up a car, uh, to sell, to get some, uh, sterling or some Aussie dollar revenue, um, which I needed for some of the things that I, uh, uh, couldn’t trade for.

And so. Uh, I bought a hundred bucks worth of him, wrote a check. So my account went from a hundred positive to zero. He’s now got a hundred quid. So if you do the whole math on that little circle, the rag supplier now has a hundred. The two people that got legal advice, um, Oh, 50 each. And so, you know, uh, the lawyer was back to zero.

I was back to zero. So we call it a debit zero economy. One thing led to another. I did a trade sale, uh, for a decent figure to a competitor in the year 2000. I took equity as part of that deal. We then floated that on the second board of the aim here in London in 2011 for a, uh, a decent size eight figure some, and then, um, I was out of the industry for 12 months and then.

The actual BBX brand that I represent today, I had helped start that brand back in 1993, uh, because the founder was down in Sydney and Adelaide and I was operating primarily in Queensland. Um, and so we had a reciprocal arrangement with those guys. And so I, as soon as he found out that, uh, that I was back in the marketplace after my, uh, exit period, Cliff had finished, um, He, uh, got me down to Oz, spent a week or two down there and, uh, and then I started the brand, uh, of BBX here in the UK 10 years ago.

So the group directly branded BBX as well as through our white label service in the International Trade Association has grown from 50, uh, accounts back in the day to about 480, 000 today.

Anthony Perl: Wow. That is absolutely amazing. Um, there’s so much to unpack there about the journey that you’ve been on. Um, but I just want to touch on initially as well.

I mean, is this, you know, what you were talking about, you’re obviously on the birth of what we now, you know, terming crypto currency really, isn’t it? That’s the, that’s the start of that, um, of how that came about. Yeah.

John Attridge: That’s that thought process. Although, um, we are a digital trade credit nowadays. And so we’re a central ledger.

Yeah. Just as we were back in the day, but instead of writing checks to one another, it’s all done through an app and online and all the brilliant services that you have to, to be more cost effective nowadays. So cryptocurrency is really an, uh, an offshoot of blockchain technology for those people that understand that.

And we are not blockchain. We’re a central ledger of debits and credits. So what we’d started 35 years ago is still today. It’s just a very more efficient format that allows transactions to take place. Cryptocurrency, which is another method of payment. And that’s why I advocate around the world that if you own a business, then you should offer as many opportunities for people to come and do business with you as possible.

So in my quiver, I’ve got cash, I’ve got debit card, I’ve got credit card, we’ve still got a few dinosaurs that use cheques nowadays. Um, But why not add another couple in there? Why not add cryptocurrency? Why not add a digital trade credit, other ways of doing business contras and that sort of thing. If you have spare capacity, Anthony, and that’s, that’s the key to the whole thing, you know, most businesses stop and measure their P and L they get management accounts every month.

They look at their balance sheet, they talk to their accountant, their financial advisor, but they never stop. Firstly, to measure the spare capacity opportunity that is in their business. Most of the people don’t even know what I’m talking about. So I then teach them what spare capacity is. We identify it, that’s the step number one.

We then measure it, step number two. And then we undertake a series of, um, opportunities to monetize that wasting spare capacity. So spare capacity simply is the ability to take on more revenue without increasing fixed overhead. So that’s a pretty neat thing. So, and then I say, do something with that. And capture it in whatever form.

Cryptocurrency is one digital trade credits is another, and people are pretty familiar with the others.

Anthony Perl: It’s attractive proposition really, isn’t it? Because it’s attractive, obviously, because you’ve got spare capacity, so you may as well use it. But the fact that you can then use it to bring in other things that will benefit your business is huge, isn’t it?

I mean, it’s like a lot of the time people look at it, I can’t really afford that service or, but in this kind of environment. A, things can become a lot more affordable, but B, using that spare capacity in order to help you drive the business to grow. So you increase your capacity even further. Just makes sense.

John Attridge: And, um, you know, I use a case study and that might help people understand what I’m talking about. Because the first time I explained this to a lot of people, it’s like Linda Blair from The Exorcist. And, uh, I can see the, you know, the eyes going round and the head twirling. Um, it’s by, it’s by an example.

So let, let’s say we have a hotel and that hotel just for the sake of the math has a hundred rooms. It sells every room for a hundred pounds, a hundred bucks, whatever a night. And it’s got, let’s say 70 percent occupancy. That tells me it’s a good business. It’s making 7, 000 pounds bucks, die, but whatever, um, a, um, a night, but it’s got 3000 in unsold rooms.

It’s 30 times a hundred. Most business owners just say, Oh, I had a really good year. I’ve got 70 percent occupancy and I turned over 3 million and they’re not brilliant. You know, but there’s another million left on the table. What happened there? Uh, yeah, I didn’t think about that. If I could, I’ll put it on group on, I’ll do something, sell it for 20 pence in the pound and, and think that’s a good idea.

Um, but that’s another story. So instead of doing that, the critical thing with spare capacity is not to discount. And, you know, and I talk about it in my book, you know, discounting really is for people that are lazy, in my opinion, and not only are they lazy, but they’re self destructive. Cause they’re bastardising their price forever.

And you’re also, you’re also annoying all the people that paid a hundred bucks to go and stay in your hotel. Um, cause if they talk to the people that only pay 20 through Groupon, you know, um, that creates a little bit of, uh, interesting feedback. So instead of discounting, you sell your, your list on, on my platform and you list your hotels, empty rooms.

Now people from the community come and stay. So you get the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. They come and stay in a room and let’s say that they’ve bought three rooms of that night. The hotel owner now has 300 digital trade credits and three new customers instead of three empty rooms. So it’s still got some empty rooms, but you know, I’ve been able to help fill some of them.

Six things change if they sell some of those empty rooms. Let me just cover them. Three are marketing, three are financial. Let The marketing things are the first thing is you’ve got a new customer in the room instead of an empty bed. So that’s got to be a good thing. Second thing is if they like this day, they might even write a nice positive review on TripAdvisor, tell all their friends, and that might drive traditional revenue in your front door.

So, you know, that’s got to be a good thing. An empty bed can’t give you a recommendation. And then the third thing is, They’re not staying in a competitor’s hotel, running the risk of liking it. And so, you know, uh, how many times have we done business with certain person? And for whatever reason, we can’t, we go and find an alternative and think, Oh, gee, that alternative is not too bad.

Um, and so you run the risk of losing the business, even if it was an existing customer. So they’re the three marketing reasons that leaving an empty bedroom is a dumb idea. The three financial is that we’ve now attracted a hundred pounds of new revenue at a cost of a bar of soap, a squirt of shampoo, egg and bacon for breakfast, maybe cleaning in the room.

Plus in my case, the fee that I charge, uh, for people to come and stay, uh, when I, uh, do that, I get a success fee. That’s how I make money. So let’s call that 20 quid in total and I’m being generous, of course. Because none of the fixed costs rise, you know, the receptionist still gets the same salary, the chefs on the same money, the rates bills the same, all the other fixed costs remain unaltered.

So I’ve now earned a hundred pounds or a hundred dollars and it’s cost me twenty to earn. I now go and spend that on buying some marketing, paying an account and doing some window cleaning, going on holiday, whatever I spend discretionary money on. Even though I’m spending a hundred digital trade credits, it’s really only costing me 20.

So I’m getting an 80 percent discount without having to ask. And I’m preserving the price of my product upfront. So that’s a great financial benefit. Imagine everywhere you went, you’d be able to write yourself a discount for 80, 80 percent without asking. The second thing is if you’ve got a balance sheet and you want to loan money, the additional revenue counts one for one goes through your books.

It’s not a tax dodge in any way, shape, or form. Uh, you, you, you put it through as regular revenue. It counts as an asset in your balance sheet. So you’ll get better lending. Rates as with a stronger balance sheet. And then finally, Anthony hit the nail on the head. When you go to sell your business down the track, then you get a greater sale price and therefore multiple of EBITDA because the additional revenue counts through your books as a revenue multiple.

So there’s six pretty good reasons that leaving an empty bedroom empty is a pretty dumb idea when you’ve got an opportunity to do something about it. Now, if you don’t care, then that’s another story. So, three motivations people have in business in order to get a better result that we work with. The first of all, they want to grow their business.

They’ve got to have spare capacity, which most businesses have. They want to grow their business. They want to get a better lifestyle from running the business. Cause if you could earn another, 500 bucks a week and you can spend that on going on holidays, you know, uh, giving your kids a gift or whatever it happens to be, uh, cause you can spend digital credits, uh, personally.

So a better lifestyle and then the exiting for more at the end. So they’re the motivations. So if you don’t have any of them, then stop this podcast right now. Cause anything I say after this will mean nothing to you.

Anthony Perl: Well, you definitely have to have those motivations. Um, you know, and it’s just, it makes so much sense.

Um, With, with all of this. I wanted to ask though, a little bit about the, the recognising capacity, because it’s a really interesting idea of knowing that. And I think all of us who have been in business know sometimes when it’s, we get a deadline and all of a sudden, you know, it’s amazing how quickly we can get things done when there’s a, when there’s a quick deadline, which sort of points to the fact that perhaps there is more capacity than what you need.

I mean, there is that theory, isn’t there, that, that. Things take as long as you give them to take. And so capacity may be, uh, there may be a lot more capacity in there than perhaps what you realise, but that’s the key isn’t it? Actually being able to recognize that.

John Attridge: Yeah. So you can stop and measure it.

There’s a mathematical formula. It’s on my website. You know, if you want to, doesn’t matter what sort of business you have, you can go in and calculate that, but everybody has it, you know, speaking to a media company yesterday and these are 20 million turnover business. So these are. Decent sized media company.

And that guy said, Oh, I don’t think we have spare capacity cause we feel every issue. And I said, well, let me ask you, uh, when’s the next issue go to print? And he said next Thursday. And I said, if I rang you up with camera ready, art ready to go, could you throw another ad in today? And he went. Yeah. And I said, there you go.

You’ve got spare capacity. You just didn’t know it. Um, yeah. And people can be busy. We’re not saying that you have to be sitting around idle. You can, and you pointed that out. You can be busy. Yeah. I’ve got a wide format sign and print business that I, uh, am an NED with. And when we get a massive order in, you know, you just get pizzas in for the guys and you might give them a bit of overtime, but during the course of the day, they can probably double their regular production that, that happens in a regular day.

Um, you know, if you’re a web designer, you can always squeeze in another, another job, even if it’s, uh, and you’re upfront with the person and say, look, you know, this might take, um, you know, two months and if you’re prepared to wait, I can squeeze it into my downtime. So everybody has the opportunity that has the motivation to do something with it.

Anthony Perl: I love it because you’re absolutely spot on with, with that. Part of it is the motivation really, isn’t it? But it’s what. You know, goes through your head immediately when you start thinking about that is, is how busy we are at being busy. And a lot of that can be offloaded. If you, if you unlocking your capacity and you’re trading it for other things, um, there are opportunities.

I mean, you know, I, I think I’m, I’m not different to any other business owner in that. I know I spent part of today, uh, doing things to try and generate more work. Coming in, but yet there are probably better people qualified to do a lot of those things. And I’d rather be doing some of the things that I, you know, love doing, like sitting here having a podcast.

And so there you go immediately points to, to, to capacity, doesn’t it?

John Attridge: I talk about that in the book as well. And it’s, uh, yeah, focusing on the stuff that you’re passionate about Anthony and you’re great at. You know, I’ve got a client, um, that I was working with last month and, you know, they love, um, doing all the parts of their business.

They’re in a floral business. And I was speaking, uh, and Tilly said, Oh, you know, I love all love this business. I’ve been in it 13 years and it’s gets me up out of bed and motivated of a morning. The only day I hate is Fridays. And I said, why? She said, I have to be in the shop all day and I’m doing accounts for most of it.

And, you know, it’s really, I hate it. I said, why don’t you outsource it to an accountant? Oh yeah, I can’t afford it. I said, well, hang on. Let’s, let’s have a look at this. Have you got any flowers that you ever throw away at the end of the day? Yeah. Every day. How much is that worth? And we worked it out. It was like a hundred pounds worth on average.

So I said, you know, if you could sell that into the community, you get 500 pounds a week, that you could then pay a bookkeeper and you could then focus on Fridays of getting out with the girls and doing whatever you want to do, or, you know, be in the shop or whatever you like doing, and, and pay digital trade credits for the bookkeeper to come in one day a week.

And she went, Oh my God, I’ve been in business here all these years and it just didn’t occur to me. And so her life’s almost changed to, you know, significantly in the last month or so since she’s been outsourcing the books. Yeah. She still has to have a little glance every now and then make sure there’s no faux pas that have gone on.

She’s outsourced a task that not only was she hated doing, but she was bad at it. It took her ages. Cause what she was doing in a whole day, this guy comes in and does it in three or four hours, you know? So that’s, that’s an example.

Anthony Perl: It’s huge. And I look, I know I’ve, I’ve had been down that path myself when I started off in, in business for a number of years, struggled to do the, uh, the basic bookkeeping tasks and getting the, uh, you know, the Baz in and all of that sort of stuff, and I was terrible at it, I made mistakes at it.

And I hated every minute of it. Um, I’ve got a bookkeeper that I’ve now had for some time and it, yes, we meet, um, on a, on a semi regular basis to make sure that things are in line, but that’s a small conversation instead of me actually doing all of that stuff. Um, and how great is it that you can trade what you do love doing?

For, and what you’ve got the cost before to cover that cost. It just makes sense

John Attridge: in the hotels example, if the hotel owner did that, then they’d get an 80 percent reduction in the price of the bookkeeping by selling some empty rooms. So that’s right on the money. So, um, yeah, so. You know, there’s plenty of things, you know, the three main things I talk about in the book are doing something with spare capacity.

The other one is Stephen R. Covey’s second habit of highly effective people, which is starting with the end in mind. And if I’d have known that many, many years ago, I would have saved myself a lot of time, money, effort, and energy. Um, and then adopting Richard Koshaw, who wrote about the Pareto principle, the 80 20 rule, which is, uh, which is a fascinating read and, uh, it changed my life about 25, 30 years ago, uh, when I focused on doing the stuff and the outsourcing came as a result of So that, what that basically says is focused on the 80 percent of tasks, uh, the 20 percent of tasks that drive 80 percent of your revenue.

Uh, and that, that involves sacking bad customers, but there’s another story. Um, and that frees you up with time for your good customers. You know, I had an interview, I did the world’s first 24 hour nonstop, uh, global in spot insights, inspiration, uh, fest when COVID struck back in 2020. Cause part of the other thing with our community, not only is you save money, you get new customers, but we have a LinkedIn type profiling system where the only difference between us and LinkedIn is that every owner on our platform owns the business.

So it’s owner to owner contact rather than owner to random. And, um, I had a guy called Kevin Byrne on the show because we did 60 interviews and plugged them into a 24 hour non stop show to give small business owners a little bit of hope and inspiration when COVID was at its highest. And so we had webinars, seminars, and, um, um, we had an expo that went on after the event.

We had thousands on that. So it was a good show, but one of my guests was Kevin Byrne. It was the founder of Checker Trade here in the UK. Kevin started the little business, uh, on his kitchen table. And it was, the idea was how do you find a decent trading? And, and I know that’s another rings, doesn’t matter where in the world you are.

Uh, and again, that’s another story. So he started this thing called Checker Trade, which is a recommendation and a, and a forerunner to a lot of the, um, uh, TripAdvisor type platforms, but was interactive where the buyers and sellers could write one another. And he said one thing and he ended up selling it by the way for 78 million pounds.

That’s like 120 million Aussie dollars. So not a bad little idea. You know, one man band and away he goes 20 years later.

Anthony Perl: Bit of

John Attridge: pocket

Anthony Perl: change.

John Attridge: Down his couch. Yeah. So, um, so he, uh, he said, drop just one little nugget in the course of the conversation. And he said, most people spend 80 percent of their advertising budget on new customers.

He said, I spend 80 percent of mine on my existing ones. And I went, man, there’s a profound statement. Um, and again, that’s another story, but, uh, that’s using the 80 20 rule, uh, which is a little bit counterintuitive than what you, uh, first think. But, uh, I can assure you that that is a decent strategy to have a little look at.

But one of the points I’m making is that, uh, Because we’re part of a massive business community, you get, you meet some fascinating people and business is a lonely place at times for a lot of people. And if you can take away that loneliness, share an idea, you know, with people that you don’t feel as though can threaten whatever it is that you do, you pick up some little nuggets in there that are just so, so invaluable.

So that, that’s the other point to the. To my community.

Anthony Perl: Well, I should, I should point out as well that, uh, to everyone. And we, we of course will include some links to, to it in the, uh, in the show notes, but, uh, business blunders and bloody good ideas. Um, it’s a great title for a book, um, that you, that you’ve written there.

And I think, you know, part of what you’ve been speaking to now, um, obviously speaks to the title and speaks to, to all of those things. Um, You know, I gather the book came from all of these experiences that you’ve had over, accumulated over, over this period of time. And it’s put you in demand as a speaker as well, hasn’t it?

I mean, that’s the, that’s the other big thing that you’re doing. Tell me a little bit about that because plenty of people aspire to be speakers. Um, but, but what’s the, what’s got you in demand? What are the things that people want to hear the most about?

John Attridge: It’s the actuality and just one small thing. It’s been business blunders and bloody great ideas.

Yes. So we’ve, we’ve, we’ve even stepped it up another level. Um, but you know, people want, you know, I’ve been around the world in the last two years, I’ve been speaking in Las Vegas, in Australia, in Dubai here in the UK. Um, and. You know, a lot of people in business, it’s, it’s a lonely place and the sad statistic is, and this is based on Peter Drucker, anybody wants to Google that name, that Peter made the observation many, many, many decades ago that 92 percent of businesses are product led and their entrepreneurs are product led entrepreneurs.

Only 8 percent are sales led entrepreneurs. So what that means is that only 8 percent of people love and enjoy sales. And the sad thing is that if you, if you have a business and you have a business and idea, and you don’t have sales, you don’t have revenue. And if you don’t have revenue, you’ve got a hobby.

Um, and that’s the statistics. So where that, that, uh, 80 percent of sales led businesses succeeded. And only 20 percent of product led businesses succeeded. So that’s a sad, that is a pretty, you know, silent and deadly number if you do the analysis on that. So what I speak about is, is the three main things as I say is, is adopting 80 20, um, starting with the end in mind and then doing something with spare capacity.

That’s usually the theme for, for my, uh, addresses. I usually also like to involve the audience, which frightens the poo out of some of them, but, um, because I’ve dealt Anthony, my business community has over a thousand verticals and I’ve met with. people that have done just about everything I can imagine.

And, and you too, if I looked at the old yellow pages in the index, I’ve had a conversation with an owner of that business over the last 35 years. So you get to know how business runs, where it’s spare capacity is, what it’s fixed costs are, what are some of the dumb things that people have done? What are the, some of the bloody great ideas like the one I shared with you?

And so why audiences seem to attune to me is that I like telling stories based on fact. These are my real experiences of real case studies with real businesses, with real business owners that I’ve met. And I share some of those stories in a 20, 30, 40 minute, uh, onstage, um, performance, depending on how long I’m booked for.

So what I think the most thing is that I say to everybody, um, buy my book, you know, the unashamed plug, but if you don’t get one great takeaway that you can implement implement immediately. Then come and send the book back and I’ll give you your money back. I’ve never had to do it yet. Um, whether they’re just too embarrassed, I don’t know, but no one’s come back to me and no one’s thrown rotten tomatoes at me either.

That’s another plus. So, The, the, the core message is I’ve heard many speakers and you can tell almost immediately they’re reading from notes or they’re following some, uh, uh, um, slide show. And you think, you know, Oh God, you know, how can I get out of this? Cause I can go and read that, Google it. You won’t be able to Google my information.

That’s the key, I believe. Um, even if you read the book, it doesn’t contain, cause I can go off on little tangents as I’ve probably demonstrated now, uh, someone will just spring a keyword at me and we’ll go off on a little rabbit hole for a minute or two. So I think that’s the reason Anthony.

Anthony Perl: And, uh, you know, to me, that’s, you know, one of the reasons why we connected, uh, originally, and we, we had an extensive discussion a couple of weeks back.

And I think that it’s. It’s very much about those authentic stories, which differentiate you in the marketplace. I mean, that’s the lesson for business itself, isn’t it? Because what makes you different from your competitor is your ability to tell those meaningful stories. So what you’re actually demonstrating on stage is what businesses should be doing anyway.

Um, you know, it’s why I love this particular medium and why we can have this. This, you know, kind of open discussion because there are so many twists and turns that we can go down. Uh, it, it makes it interesting and unique.

John Attridge: I, my only thing is I have to be kept on track to time. Otherwise we can look down and it’s four hours have gone past, but anyway, that’s.

Anthony Perl: Well, we, we won’t give everyone the four hour podcast, but we will, um, we will, uh, make sure that we, we’re going to do this again, I’m sure in the future, but I did want to ask you a couple of other questions, um, as well. And one of the things that you were, you were sort of alluding to there when you, when you started talking about the, uh, the kind of the different way of looking at the 80, 20, and, uh, you know, it’s, it’s very interesting to me about, Uh, how you say about the people that don’t love sales.

I hear that all the time and I’ll put my hand up and say, it’s not my favourite thing to be doing either. But I guess that’s the interesting part as well, is that the way that you’ve developed the community means that you can avoid some of that as well, because you can bring people in to help you do some of those different areas that, uh, that you may not love.

And do it at a hundred percent

John Attridge: and a hundred percent. And that’s what community is all about. And then the other myth that keeps getting propagated around the world at the moment is that you can never sell anybody on the day. You’ve got to develop a no like and trust relationship and it’s got to be there.

And you’ve got to hug them and kiss them and and cajole them. And over a period of six months, get to know them intimate, intimately. And then you can do business, which is a whole lot of garbage. That it depends on the need and your solution. So, you know, if you had someone that was drowning in a river and you came along with a life vest and said the life vest is a hundred bucks, do you want one or not?

Then you can do a sale immediately, my guess. And I know I’m being a little bit emotive, uh, with that, but if so long as there’s a fit, then sales doesn’t have to be this nice cup of coffee, canoodling process that takes years. And by the time you get there, you’re gone broke. That’s just another little conversation.

Anthony Perl: No, no. And that was where I wanted to pick up as well, because it. I think I’ve had this conversation with a few different people that sales is changing, right? That, that, um, you know, particularly I think in Australia and I’m sure it’s, it’s very similar in the UK, whereas it seems to be a little bit different in the US in that we generally speaking don’t like being sold to anyway.

And we often can see through those things. Um, and so we know when we’re being sold to, and we. We’re all educated enough, generally speaking, to understand the processes and what’s being attempted to happen here. It is, um, I think is changing the way that those conversations happen and that that narrative happens.

And that’s talking to that need. And that emotive part is, as you say, becoming more and more important because that’s really trying to work out and say, is this, is this really a priority for you? And, you know, it’s, it’s a question of. Um, you know, people coming to you and being ready to buy, it’s just a question of what to buy.

And I think that’s the, that’s the, that’s the kind of the apple example, isn’t it? Because the majority of people that walk through an Apple store are going to buy something, it’s just a question of what, not whether they will buy or not.

John Attridge: And, you know, and, uh, you know, the old days of having a sandwich board on your back saying, buy my stuff down the, down the street, it does work.

You know, there, there will be a small percentage of people that just happen to want to buy whatever it is that you’re selling on your, on your, on your board. Um, that’s why direct mail still works bizarrely, you know, snail mail. Uh, is making a comeback by the way, there’s a little tip, uh, cause everybody gets flooded with emails.

When you get a nice little colored handwritten envelope arrive on your desk, what do you do? You open it. So there’s just someone that I should say,

Anthony Perl: I’ll do a little cross promotion there for a previous podcast episode with, uh, with Greg Smith from Send Handwritten and Buntu as it’s now called, because that’s what they do.

And, uh, if anyone hasn’t heard a listen to that episode, go back and have a listen, because it’s, he’s got some, some gems in there about that. Because absolutely. Some of these older things are getting cut through because everybody’s thinks that they’ve got to move to the latest and greatest.

John Attridge: Yeah, I’m still, I’ve still got a pair of green, uh, flares and, uh, purple platform shoes just in case they come back and, you know, I’ve been hanging on to them since the seventies, but that that’s another story.

Um, lucky. Yes. We’re not doing video here then. So, uh, one of the things with sales, yes, some of the old methods still work. Um, but it’s more about disqualification nowadays, Anthony. So I advocate disqualifying prospects. Most salespeople try and flog your stuff. And it’s like the guy down with the sandwich board, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, which are totally unqualified.

So. I’m, I’ve moved down the pathway, which is what we’ve always done, by the way, but just not so many of us, but it’s moving towards trying to push you away from me, right? If you don’t qualify, you don’t own a business, sorry, Anthony, I can’t help you. I might be able to introduce you to some people that you might make some friends with, but I can’t help you.

If you haven’t got spare capacity, I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I’ve done a measure. I can’t help you. And I’d rather do that and be upfront in that process because every time I can’t help you, You get the other reaction. Every time you push someone away, they come closer to you. Bizarrely. It’s like money.

People that try and make money is just, it’s seeing I’ve never, ever, this probably sounds gloating, but I’ve never, ever chased money. I’ve always moved away from it and chased what I have to do. And it always chases me bizarrely. I know. And I know that’s another story, but, uh, if I go down that one, it’ll sound too conceited and I don’t want to do that with sales.

The more you push people away, the more they come to you, because, uh, if nothing else, you can always give them a recommendation. So I always look to people on the B2B level. At least if I can’t help you, I tell you, I can’t help you. And why, and. Ask who I can help. And those, even the people that I can’t help become some of my better referrals.

Because they then know someone that I can help. So there’s another side conversation.

Anthony Perl: And it’s always about timing too, isn’t it? I think you alluded to that. It’s, it’s, it’s, um, you know, understanding that sometimes I think that, uh, people want to make it a priority for someone when it clearly isn’t, but that doesn’t mean that the timing won’t change.

So why burn your bridges? And, uh, we’ve

John Attridge: got, we’ve got our drowning, drowning person. You know, they had a lifeboat life, uh, jackets that they walked past in, uh, Kmart and whatever other place that they went to for the last 30 years. But if we come along in a, in a row boat and they’re in the river and they want some help and I’m selling, uh, life jackets, I bet you I make a sale.

Anthony Perl: Yep.

John Attridge: So it’s not the fact that they never, it never liked, disliked life jackets. It’s just that the need wasn’t, uh, there disproportionately to a hundred bucks. I could probably offer a thousand bucks and still make a sale. If it was at that critical moment.

Anthony Perl: Yes. And that, that is absolutely the truth. Isn’t it?

Sometimes it’s, we, we believe that money is the obstacle and, uh, and clearly isn’t, uh, you know, more often than not. And I’ve seen that, uh, you know, myself with a few things, uh, in, in recent times where people have, uh, said, Oh, they’re thinking that money’s the obstacle and suddenly something happens and they’re paying an absolute arm and a leg for it because they needed it.

And. That’s, you know, that’s a lesson for all of us in business because pricing is the hardest thing to do at times, you know, to work it out,

John Attridge: create a toilet paper shortage in Australia, and then see what price means to the purchase.

Anthony Perl: We did that during COVID.

John Attridge: Well, I know that’s what I’m saying. So as soon as there was a shortage, what happened to the price?

Anthony Perl: Yeah. Up,

John Attridge: up it went. And then, and there were queues of people trying to buy it at a higher price.

Anthony Perl: I mean, I still look back on that in absolute amazement that that was that, that, that, that absolutely happened. But, uh, and I think that will be one of the things, I think, um, you know, the, the, the next generations who look back on that COVID period, who, who haven’t lived through it, will just shake their heads and go, did that really happen?

How did that happen? It was. Strange,

John Attridge: but, but a perfect example for supply and demand and price.

Anthony Perl: Absolutely. Absolutely. John, just before we, um, before we wrap up the main part of the podcast, there are two things that I wanted to, uh, to, to say to people is that, uh, um, stay tuned because John and I, if you, if you’re going to, if you’re willing to subscribe to our bonus bit of content, John and I can have a little discussion about, uh, exitable businesses, because, uh, it’s been something that he’s been involved in and done, uh, and done extremely, extremely, extraordinarily well.

Say that properly, um, out of, so that’s in the bonus content we’re going to have, but I just wanted to, to wrap things up a little bit, John, and just, just go back and say, you’ve been on this amazing journey and you’ve, you’ve, um, you clearly enjoying what you’re doing. Cause you know, financially speaking, you probably don’t have to do it.

Um, and I, and that’s something that everyone aspires to, but. Take me back to the John in high school. Um, you know, what was the, what was the objective to want to be in? What would you go back and tell him these days?

John Attridge: Oh, wow. Um, I had this, uh, economics teacher, Mr. Kaplan. And, uh, he taught me two things. One was gambling, uh, which is, you know, people would be horrified nowadays.

Uh, I used to go back to his house and he’d give me 10 bucks and I’d go on down the bookies and put some bets on for him

Anthony Perl: because he was

John Attridge: trying to teach me.

Anthony Perl: I was just going to say, uh, I can, I can, I can totally relate to that. I had a maths teacher who went on to become a bookie. So, um, you know, I hear you.

John Attridge: So, well, my uncle John Attridge, same name was one of Melbourne’s premier bookmakers. So, uh, maybe it runs in the family or the gene somewhere. The other thing he did, we had this, uh, competition on, uh, at the beginning of the year in economics and buying shares. And, uh, uh, we all had, we’re given 10 at the beginning of this process.

And, uh, this is all, it must be form four or five maybe. And, um, I chose Mr. Whippy and I put all my 10 bucks with Mr. Whippy. Mr. Whippy was one cent. And I thought, uh, for no other reason I was going to get a lot more shares. So if it went up, I’d get a bigger multiple. And, uh, during, uh, at the end of the period, Mr.

Whippy was at $1 42

Anthony Perl: oof.

John Attridge: And at the end of the 10 months that this thing went on. So, uh, I had no influence over it at all. I had no, uh, uh, reason to buy it other than it seemed like a good multiple at the time. ’cause if it went up a penny, I’d double my price. Uh, clearly I won the share. Uh, competition by some, I don’t know, 400, 000 percent or something for the next person.

This is all, uh, um, monitored by Mr. Kaplan. Uh, but going back to school, you know, I think the difference is, and I’m on the board of a thing called Let’s Localise. which is a international charity headed by Joe Foster, the founder of Reebok. So Joe’s the chairman. I’m on that board and Joe only sold his business for a little four billion exit.

So, you know, uh, people might, Remember the name Reebok. And Joe and I’ve got very similar thoughts on, uh, the school system at the moment that it’s unfit for purpose. And, you know, we’ve got a series of well meaning educators and that’s right through to university. We’ve got a system that encourages our younger people to get off and get a degree.

Um, and it’s, again, it’s like, buy my stuff. We’re trying to shoehorn people into the wrong thing. And so two things have changed. I think, education has become more and more online and therefore less real and less case studies because the old teachers had case studies of what they used to do.

Anthony Perl: They

John Attridge: gave us practical things that we could use and I’m not suggesting gambling and, and, and, uh, investing in the share market is, is the, The best example of this, but they gave us practical things that we could do to transit from an education into business or into, into working life.

And I think we’re losing a lot of that today. And, uh, for a number of different reasons, I, um, you know, I had a young person come to me recently at a job fair and he had a basket, a baseball cap over his eyes and he was coming for an interview. And I said, uh, can you just tilt your cap up so I can see your eyes?

And he says, I don’t think I’m comfortable doing that. And I thought, Oh my God, really? I felt so sorry for the guy. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s just our education system at the moment needs a whole lot more. Back to the good old days of practical case studies, observations, insights, inspiration, leading from some perhaps business people that have been there and done that too.

Cause I think, you know, business people have leaders have got some responsibility to take, because most of the educators nowadays, you don’t see many that have been out in a business and then moved into education. Most of them have come through the education pool. So you’ve never left school. Um, so I’m not having to rip at anybody, but that’s, uh, so getting back to the question of, uh, of, um, uh, my upbringing, you know, I, the old analog upbringing, I don’t think did me any harm and it taught me some entrepreneurial, um, activities that have stood me well during the years, albeit there was certainly not that intention at the delivery point.

Anthony Perl: I love it. You’ve taken advantage of so many opportunities. There’s been in front of you and, and learning from them, but now giving it back, uh, to the, to the broader audience in so many different ways. Um, I’m looking forward to the extra bit of, uh, content that we’re going to make available to people.

Just a very brief chat on how to. Uh, make your business more exitable. We’re going to have that conversation in our bonus content, and there’ll be links to be able to access that. But in the meantime, for this part of the show, uh, John, thank you so much for being a tremendous guest. Uh, there’s so much that we can learn from you.

I can completely understand why people should be reading the book and why they should, why you’re such an in demand speaker and you’ve been very generous with your time and I appreciate it.

John Attridge: It’s been my pleasure. And if we can help, uh, just one person do business better, then we all, uh, get a better result out of that.

Anthony Perl: Fantastic. And thank you everyone for listening into Biz Bites and uh, click on the link to get the bonus content. Biz Bites is brought to you by comm together for all your marketing needs, so you can build your brand, engage audiences on multiple platforms. Go to comm together.com au, follow the links. To book an appointment for a free consultation.