152 – Building a personal brand

Champ Consultants is an award-winning independent firm of highly experienced, qualified accountants and tax advisors, based in KQM, providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy and tax services. If you would like simple but creative answers to your tax problems, call Champ Consultants, your business partner, on 01883 349 300. Good morning and welcome to your business hour with me Shantel and today I have a guest in the studio and it's Andy. Good morning Andy. Good morning Shantel, good morning Matthew. So who is Andy you might be asking me. So Andy is the entrepreneur, founder and multi-business owner with six to seven years of hands-on experience building brands across exports, hospitality, property and consumer ventures. He started early in life buying and selling textiles at age 30 later carved out a career in retail and sales management. Now he operates four businesses including the Scoop company which is an award-winning gelato business and a luxury export business. He's passionate about opportunity, risk taking and mentoring others to realize their full business potential. So we're going to be chatting to Andy asking him all sorts of questions and basically using interrogating his brain shall we say put it like that. So Andy let's start off with how it all began because some people go oh yeah you're everyone sort of buys and sells something when they're really young but then they it's a bit like I was 12 years old and I wanted to be a professional footballer attitude you know what I mean it might not be something that happens later on in life. So how did your journey all begin? So my journey all began in I guess business sales entrepreneurship very differently. I hated school I absolutely hated it it didn't work for me academically I couldn't get on I got the stuff I understood it but I just hated being in classroom I hated the social environment of it and I took advantage of coming from my single mother background I knew how to emotionally manipulate it's the reality and I went to a place where I had 60% attendance at school and I don't promote that by the way. I was going to say they need to be going 100% and I used to not go to school and used to go to a shop that was downstairs from my home I used to live in an apartment and in that shop they used to sell textiles and used to get paid 30 quid cash an hand on the day and used to help buy and sell textiles be it towels or curtains or soft furnishings and I learned from a gentleman his name was Mike and he learned from who is really proud to say I learned from a real shrewd Jew who taught me quite a lot in business and there's so many stories that come to mind with that and I just really enjoyed not going to school and doing that and I learned so much I'm not sure this is a story that's probably a learn but it's a story that's worth sharing and that is I remember him having a billjuve with some of the textiles he had sold and asked for to go on invoice so he didn't have to pay for 60 days but they were chasing him for 30 days after that so they've already been 90 and he said oh I better get this check in the post I've told them it's lost and remembering putting the check into an envelope and then stamping all over it making it look like it was really old this envelope like I'd been lost in the post for Royal Mail because he wanted to delay that payment and support his cash flow of his business now I don't promote anyone doing that but that was kind of the things that I was privy and open to when being a part of that business and seeing it and I think I just enjoyed making money more than I did learning and also it's a real eye-opener as to how things were done that many years ago I mean obviously now it's very different yes it's like check lost in the post when nobody writes checks and nobody uses the post so we can't really go down that excuse anymore exactly that but it's that sort of like learning how people manage cash flows and manipulated what they could do at that time isn't it really absolutely absolutely I guess it's the hustle yeah I enjoyed seeing the hustle and kind of looked up to him maybe that's like a fiber figure in that aspect and just learned I enjoyed seeing reps coming in with towels in their bags that come in with all these suitcases and pull out all these textiles and like you know it's two for a fiber and he's like oh no I need two for £2.50 and the negotiation kind of the market still feel that we're still live in a retail environment you won't get that now they so you get sent you know packs and information and links and websites but it was just very interesting to see and that same business is the business that my sister ended up working for becoming a business owner within and now she has started her own business which is CB by Charlene in catering so it's really interesting how that journey is connected for her and and for myself so I have a little bit of a dabble now I'm always giving her a tough ear or say do you go in the shop and say right come on sis I need to need to put you on straight I do but doing that as the little brother the younger brother doesn't always go down too well it's like yeah yeah yeah we used to argue about it now she just kind of goes yeah sure I'll get that done and just know exactly that yeah exactly that that's exactly what she gives me so then you sort of so then you ended up working in sales itself didn't you out of the textile industry so as soon as I got my N9 number I was like 16 I'm gonna go get a job in sales and straight away I went for interviews got myself out there did CVs and I started in in shoe retail so I actually tell life started in Zara I worked for Zara sales in the men's department which is not all bad because that's where I met my wife and I still say that Zara plays a significant part in my marriage because it was in my bank statement still a good shot to go to now yeah no she'll definitely be listening and then I got poached because I was very unique I had the confidence at my young age and I got poached by Aldo shoes next door in Croydon this was and I worked for them I thought when you talk about headhunting it's not from the shoe shop next door yeah it literally was the shoe shop next door and from there I built my way up into supervisor and assistant manager quite quickly that by the age of I think I was 18 I was already on what I found what was really good money back then I think it was about 30 odd K plus a year and I was like I don't need to go to uni which was a huge disappointment to my dad by the way he was coming from an Anglo-Indian background I was going to be his first kid going to uni that he never did and I chose not to because I was like well I don't want to get into debt I I'm earning good money here and actually I enjoy the sales I enjoy the people I enjoy the hiring sometimes even the firing so yeah um that's where I started and then from there I went into I went to free mobile because I was a young dad um planned me and my wife Maria we had a child at the age of 19 and 18 I think we were and I decided I want to get a bit more money so took a sidestep into free mobile retail management and started up as assistant manager and after 12 years it was no longer a stopgap like I thought it was going to be and I worked my way up to um area manager um uh I deputized in a few roles as well and really just enjoyed working with people across central London all the way from white city uh to Stratford and they were in between on the central line and I got to work with so many different people store managers retail managers different departments bringing new stores alive new concepts flagships and that's where kind of my I call my white collar corporate background come from and I learned loads there um especially from uh from a HR perspective I really enjoyed a HR perspective of just getting a policy ripping it to shreds and really understanding what's right for the business and the person and I got loads of HR cases under my belt and it was something I really enjoyed just trying to to learn stuff and put myself in a deep end um and eventually I got to a place whereby my career started to stagnate promises started not being delivered and I felt like I was being clipped and the bonus structure changed and I was in a place where I was now diluting my savings really quick and I was going god I can't really afford my cash flow my my my lifestyle anymore with two kids a wife two dogs and this is not what I projected or foresaw for myself why didn't I ever do that entrepreneurial background and I think it's because I fell into the the life of just trying to be a family man and rightfully so I think it's a it's a has to take priority um but I said to the wife one day with the last four thousand pounds at a bank I'm going to invest this in a business um in exportation of goods and do you believe in me just that yeah yeah do what you need to do she's kind of like whatever like you saw that oh I trust you it's Maria is listening to this Maria you're probably in the most like so relaxed person I know she absolutely is when it comes to that she gives me ultimate trust so I put that in and before I knew it very very quickly I was earning more than my salary for a mobile and I was managing both at the same time didn't dilute my job or my deliveries in the retail management side um and was working all hours on the sun really still try to push for that promotion but was when one promise really got broken for me that I remember having a review with a team member who is one of my direct reports and it turned into my review he's really good at that turning things into other people rather than by himself and he said to me why don't you just go and do your business full-time why don't you just go and give it a shot so I asked for a sabbatical to give me that bit of um breath a bit of I can take this risk without worrying if I've got no job to go back to because it was a very good paid salary and from there within eight weeks of going full-time I doubled my business within 16 weeks I think we doubled it again and we've never looked back and that person's now my business partner by the way he uh I quality did a wall for wall street on me he uh rang me the day I left and went I've quit and I'm like okay why is that because I'm coming to work for you and like I can't afford to pay you I could afford to pay him and he was like well I just work on a commission basis only then I'll come and work for you I'll show you how I can grow this business and you'll want me in it and I'm like okay and now he is my business partner across most of my businesses so and uh he's like my brother from a from another mother so I called a wall for wall street you know that whether you show me your check and I'll quit right now yeah by you did it in reverse so yeah exactly wow so you're probably your background and like all the different because some people think to themselves that like where you were 13 working in the textile industry and then the shoe industry and then the phone industry and the export industry and now you've got scoop as well which is a gelato business which is obviously nothing to do with like exports or anything shoes or what clothes even um that those sorts of backgrounds don't always help them but what would you say is out of all of those backgrounds that you've had is there anything that stands out to you that like that's what's been enabled you to become that entrepreneur today yes absolutely I would say the two things the knockbacks and having to be resilient I'm not taking it personally and actually what can I do about this if if if the control is with me what can I do about it um because there's plenty of knockbacks and those sort in career roles in in projects that you're running people letting you down that can happen all the time and actually just taking that level of ownership and being super resilient 100 talking about and that's really helped me in my entrepreneurial and business side I then think the other one is people getting to meet different people different walks of life different cultures different understanding different reactions um to different environments um has given me um the skills to be able to network that's giving me the skills to be able to ask difficult questions and not feel uncomfortable actually I rather enjoy asking the more difficult questions and I do the the softer questions to be fair um so I definitely I think those backgrounds really shape that but you're absolutely right to point out that none of my businesses kind of feed into what my background was in um because for me business is finding a model making it work and it's just problem solving um and that's pretty much what my job was if you took away all the the shine and the bolts you know I remember all my family's come to me and go you work for free mobile right and I go yeah and then go can you put this contact in my phone or help show me how to get up I I don't know I can say the phone and the phone's shaking every six months I can't even tell you the phone my phone not just terrible my time used to be spent on training people given them the right attitude the right mindset the right structures the right policies and procedures the so I think or being the given them the direction and the motivation of why we're part of a bigger team or a bigger picture so when they start asking me I'm like sure I'll have a go but I didn't know myself but that background in in a big corporate you know they they worked in mobile phones that doesn't really relate to what you're doing now in terms of import export or the or the gelato not at all I think it um it's because the import and export that the products in which I do I was really passionate about and I knew there was an opportunity for supply and demand it was a reality was supply was was tight demand was high and if you can get the the supply and get it to the right place where the demand is in bigger markets for me international markets then actually you will have consistent sales our issue in in my main business of export is not sales it's actually finding the stock if you can find the stock you will have the sales for it that is the reality so it was just about connecting those dots but it's very nuanced and complex you know from from different tax structures VAT having a real good understanding of that not just in in the UK but also potentially in Europe when when Brexit happened for example when the transition split away from the same one circular VAT system understanding different costs and fees import export charges duties all of these things are really complex I remember when I first started trying to learn about the United States and sales tax and and duty tax and and federal tax and I'm going oh my lord this is complex but I think my brain to want to understand something and then starts automatically asking questions that questions is what feeds me to go deeper and deeper like I can't really read books like I've got tons of books I show off I got like all these entrepreneurial books at home sitting on the bookcase and I read a single one and I've probably read maybe one or two and the reason why is I just can't concentrate because as soon as I start reading my brain starts getting inspired by asking questions going well let me start researching that and I automatically go into researching and understanding and how it applies back to my business so the only way I can finish a book now is if I'm stuck on a plane because I can't sleep because you can't check anything out or a new technique I've learned is actually highlight with a highlighter and I write my notes in there which allows my brain to breathe and go I'll come back to out later I won't forget what I'm wanting to research and understand and now I can continue want to enjoy the book and but it doesn't it doesn't stick for all the time but it helps so going to a market like the US and finding out about its complexities and now there's all sorts of tariff changes that are going on there at the moment does that put you off or does it inspire you to try and even harder in that market absolutely try harder I think for for me um whenever you hear Brexit people go oh it's terrible it's cost us billions it's um it's really destroyed some businesses but actually it's because the the UK is itself it coming out of Europe is we are no longer trying to get items from other places we still need to rely on it we don't make a lot we don't grow a lot we still rely on it in different markets but actually we're primed for exportation and if you can start making something in Britain and saying it's best to British and exporting it to these other countries there's a huge demand for that and Britain's got a huge brand around the quality of build and actually trying to get to other larger markets the US is huge for example another place we do business with is Hong Kong again huge and obviously the capital per person over there is also huge we also do business within Italy Germany Switzerland Denmark and there's so much that we do and it's just about understanding the nuances but for me when Brexit came I was really concerned because I was all my sales were international and at the time 80% were in Europe probably more like 10% now so it has gone down since Brexit most definitely but is that because those sales have dropped or because you've increased the other markets because I've increased the other markets and actually I've been able to and that's what pushed me so you've not dropped sales it's just as a proportion of your business you spread your risk a bit more exactly that and I think it was me before Europe was comfortable it was I understood it I understood the system we were one but actually when the challenge came actually well before the challenge came I knew it was coming and I started to get the advice I needed from the right people using the right professionals getting the right advice to understand and educate yourself and paying for that was the best thing I did I think I spent the last 20 000 pounds in my bank account for my business just trying to get the right importation and exportation advice but it's made me million cents and that's the reality and most people go no but I want to keep that for myself because actually I've got paid bills or I over commit myself or actually but the business needs that I'm like no take another risk we need to try and improve knowledge to try and see if there's an opportunity elsewhere and that's exactly what we've done I do think when you look at different markets it's complex but it's about putting yourself out there to go let me understand it and I think that's what I've done really well is just adapt really quickly get that right advice and then when everyone else around me is going no that's not right I don't think you should do that that sounds too risky you sure that's correct I'm going yeah I am and and exactly I haven't looked back since then really so do you have to adapt your business when you're trading with Europe versus America versus say the Middle East or Hong Kong does business work differently absolutely um Hong Kong was a very interesting one I'll share that story with you Hong Kong was the most difficult market to get into it's almost a we don't trust you unless you are from Hong Kong and I started doing business with a gentleman in Denmark and we did quite a lot of business it grew and it grew it grew and I would I would export it all there because I understood Europe really well and eventually it was like I don't know if you know this but my main business is actually Hong Kong and I export them to Hong Kong I now I think we've got a good relationship where I trust you to go straight there and that was my first in and then from there I start I built a really good credible ratio and then he referred me to other like-minded people and other B2B customers within Hong Kong and from there that recommendation was worth more they could have seen me online they could have seen all the stories could have seen all the articles they could have seen all the all the positivity but they would not care unless there was a recommendation and then it was also very different in culture I remember like in in in the UK if you sell the items which I sell or into into Europe if they were not as described they for example there was a hairline scratch or it got damaged in transit they would ask for 100 euros back in terms of polishing or they would say now it's fine we'll get it sorted but when it goes to Hong Kong you got something like a hairline scratch that's now a used item and they're like no we want a full refund or actually we want 25% off and there's a huge culture shift in the UK you commit to a deal in Europe commit to a deal it pretty much goes through in Hong Kong if they commit to a deal you can bet your bottom dollar that they're gonna cancel it and they say well we don't care and you've got to invest it in this stock you've got to invest an item so it's the the bureaucracy of it and the culture of it is very different but if you can understand that and you can respect it and you work with people and you embrace it um it's it's always done me well brilliant so in running the various businesses that you have done and I know that the gelato business is quite new so that one um that's three years old now gelato they're two and a half years old yes gosh two and a half yeah it's flown by yeah definitely um so is there anything that you would say is the most rewarding aspects of any of the bits the most rewarding is is just the journey I genuinely enjoyed the journey a bit a bit tough difficult easy I enjoy the journey and actually the more tough and difficult it can be in the problem solving I enjoy it quite a lot so and I what people would say to me what would you do different and I go just had done it earlier I want to take the risk earlier 100 percent I do think though in terms of the scoop company that one's interesting because that was a an idea at four a.m. in the morning because I viewed a a retail unit with my sister for C.B. and Charlene and she thought was too small and we still argue to this day that I still think was a perfect size unit for her but we'll agree to disagree on that and so I decided that was too good a real estate to turn down and I woke my wife up at four a.m. went you've always wanted to do ice cream because your dad's a local ice cream man for the last 45 years and that's the only thing you've really enjoyed that daddy daughter connection why don't we not do a van and how about we do a shop and three months later shops open and we're selling gelato desserts and in a very different environment packaged very differently and a couple of years down the line you've got a second branch yep yeah in box part which is like a big step up isn't it yeah a huge step up and it's been lots of earns they actually have been putting on my corporate hat from free mobile days for a lot for a lot of that relationship built there and now we're also making around now we go to making our own yeah and I know she wrote me into learning how to make gelato I remember being in the class in Italy and they're going like why is everyone here so Marissa talked about her business her brand everything she's great for and like why are you here like because she told me I had to be here I couldn't get away so I know how to make gelato but I don't make gelato it all happens with Maria she does all the magic so you on the waiting list for a branch at Box Park Wembley next maybe maybe we're looking for our next pop-ups you know I truly think this good company is super amazing as a brand and I do think if we pull it in London it go it goes viral I think it's guaranteed to go viral I think the quality of product the quality of execution no one does it like us I'll be honest like even when we won a parlor the year 2025 we didn't put too much effort into it and I remember seeing a video online of someone that came a runner up and she was really distraught because she put in all this extra effort and my reflection was that we just did what we do and we didn't expect to win it and we won it and it wasn't one of them paid for ones it was genuinely from the from the ICA ice cream association that gave it to us and it's just what we do I truly believe going to London so I'm almost restricting it a bit because I feel there's it's still very much a community brand I want to be able to I'm looking at the likes of expanding into Rygate looking near the likes of expanding into to Bromley or Keston them sort of area seven oaks and then once we have three four five brand stores locations under our belt that's when our unleash the dragon I say and go into central London octristry Cogman garden pop-ups seven seven dollars market somewhere like that most definitely most definitely brilliant so how much so I can imagine people saying and I've done it before and I get asked the question loads of times and I'll ask you the question when you're working full-time and you know that you want to start your own business but it's not going to be you're not going to do what your business partner necessarily did one day and that is just give up work one day and just start an entrepreneurial business the next day you're going to have to run the two by two together and obviously you had a young family as well at the time how did you manage to do it because as a as a mother everyone asks me how the hell did you bloody do it but you do you as a as I just did mine but how about you how did you actually have a full-time job decide that you wanted to do this export business and be there for your wife and kids as well um I think it was that natural desire for money and the problem I was in I had to solve it and accepting that my wife isn't going to solve it but she'll give me the 110 percent belief that she knows I will um and I think just me throwing my time at it I remember waking up at five in the morning leaving the house by six um being in central London by eight thirty a.m working working till eight nine at night getting home and then uh doing calls emails for the business uh packaging myself doing library you have to be everything in the beginning of a business you have to be your marketer you have to be a salesman you have to be your bookkeeper you have to be your um your package your delivery person all sorts so I I would be up to like two in the morning doing that and then back up at five or six and I would do that five days a week and then not even work weekends and I don't say this about anyone to feel sorry for me because I still work seven days a week I still work when I'm on holiday I I literally will wake up at seven a.m on holiday go to the gym do my work kids and wife wake up at eleven o'clock they go to breakfast and then they go to bed about ten p.m and I'm there till two a.m working because I enjoy it I fit it around I find a way to make it work similar to you you find a way to work at work make it work because you want to so anyone that's got a great business idea that wants to maybe take that leap but it's committed to a family committed to a good salary and needs it because you know it's difficult out there nowadays um and more difficult even so from from when I was there around in career ladder and I would say just do it but give yourself the safety net so don't don't don't do what the best part I've done and uh just quit immediately if you've got commitments he could do that he had no commitments he still has no commitments he had no commitments it was easy don't have those kids and wife to go shopping for yeah so um and slowly grow it put in that time and effort and I know it's probably in the controversial thing to say people say oh yeah but I work hard so does that mean that you you know I don't work as hard as you and no it's not meant like that it's actually meant just get up just try try and if it fails it fails you know I actually started I think a business uh just before this uh export business that I still think is a bloody great idea by the way um and I don't know why someone doesn't do it and it was called one first limited and it never got off the ground never like did anything in the end because it was a uh a business that I had no background in but I was saying there's so many first time buyers out there I was one at the time and they don't they've got to use a lender they've got to use an estate agent they've got to use someone that uh so is their property they maybe a snagless person and it goes on and on and on right and they've got to make all these people tick as well as doing their full-time job so one first limited was you come to one place one person that does that all for you and you were able to get clawbacks and commissions from the people in which you offered and vice versa but also you'll be able to support that person would have one line of contact that would manage their property purchase for them I still think there's a great opportunity in that if anyone's listening's got a good business idea especially like our son's just bought his first property and also you do have no idea I mean like he was like phoning me up mum what do I do with the counter tax mum what do I do with gas electricity house insurance when do I do this when do I do that because you have no like you are a first timer exactly and okay if you've got parents that you can phone or you can contact then that's great but if your parents aren't property owners then they're not going to necessarily know either exactly that and not everyone I appreciate is like me where you see a problem and you want to solve it sometimes it can be overwhelming and really really scary so that was the beside but I just couldn't get off the ground because I didn't know any connections didn't know anyone I didn't have to market myself but I was like I want to register this business and get it done and I've never got it done so I failed is the reality so you do have to fail and and it's not all hunky-dory I failed within my career as well there was some real high challenges sometimes but I think it's those moments that define you and I always say to people make a decision don't don't not make a decision normally we don't make a decision is because the answer is the same we don't like either path we have to choose but just choose it no matter how small or big I always say if I didn't do that review with my business partner and he didn't encourage me I wouldn't have done what I done if Brexit didn't happen I wouldn't have gone and spent my last few pennies on learning how how export works and I'm more detailed perspective when you're coming out of the one VAT system if it wasn't for my bonus structure changing and dwindling my savings I wouldn't have started the business but I didn't sit there feel sorry for myself I got up and went what can I do about this what decision can I make and I made the decision quick and fast and I think sometimes doing that is really important just make a decision make a choice you're very brave I'm rubbish I'm such a dithera I'd be like sitting there three months later going oh should I or shouldn't I should you should always you you made your decision reasonably quickly in fact Chandel started our business before she'd quit her corporate job so yeah like you say it's a very difficult if you're quitting a very good job with a good salary to go to when you start any business to go to potentially a failed business because it's not a bad thing to fail a business I always think a failure is just an acronym for first attempt in learning anyway absolutely it's just your next step up the ladder then leave that back up yeah and they say 50% of businesses fail in the first two years so you know it's but I saw I saw a stat the other day I don't know if it's correct because sometimes you see things online that are not always correct but I think this is like 60 or 70% of businesses in the UK are new businesses wouldn't be surprised so if that's the case is if you're not doing it someone else is doing it yeah so do it yeah that's exactly why someone else is doing it for you Champ Consultants is an award-winning independent firm of highly experienced qualified accountants and tax advisors based in KTRM providing a fully comprehensive range of accountancy and tax services if you would like simple but creative answers to your tax problems called Champ Consultants your business partner on 01883 349 300 and welcome back to your business hour with me Shantel I mean Matthew and we're chatting to Andy so Andy we've talked about your businesses and I know your businesses you're local to me in KTRM I mean for anybody who doesn't know the scoop company is based in Warlingham on Warlingham Green and if you haven't been then go and their second branch is in Box Park Croydon closing soon because that was only a pop-up I was only a pop-up oh okay so um however going back to their Warlingham branch if you're gluten intolerant lactose intolerant like me and you're thinking Shantel you're talking gobbly goop how the hell can I go to a gelato place you can still go to scoop because they cater for me so they can cater for anybody but apart from that your face Andy you would have I would have had no idea that Andy Gray is involved in any of these businesses you're not the face of the business you're you're not past you're not the brand of the business or anything like that but very recently you've started to change that and become more of a personal brand person and if anybody does want to look up Andy it's Andy Gray that's GREY13 on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok so you can get him there but what has made the shift? I very luckily bumped into the venture group who do interviews with business people um just on the streets of London and I've always been anti-brand as you can see our personal brand I've kind of like I don't want the spotlight I don't really want to get involved but I think I've got to a place where that opportunity came and I thought other people would bite their hand off to have this opportunity and to do nothing with it I feel like I'll be doing that person and myself a disservice so I'm like actually this is my time to get uncomfortable and get comfortable with being uncomfortable and get myself out there and also it's my time in life where I feel like I can genuinely help people be it with business advice or or political advice my child can get a bit political sometimes but it's also about business you'll hear me saying restore common sense to Britain or restore common sense to business and it's just me sharing stories the journeys my days because if I can inspire someone to take that break decision to start their business or their side hustle or to to leave their job and go fully into a business that they're already running or give them confidence in process or opportunities that are available to them through investment or just a conversation over a coffee I just enjoy that I generally do I think I remember when I first hired my PA she said to me what would I not like about working for you I said you go into get unsolicited advice even when you don't want it um so about anything you tell me your personal life work you're going to get advice and it's going to be direct and it's going to be honest um but what happens if I really don't want it I said you're still going to get it and I just tell me to shut up but I don't care yeah so I uh I um I just like helping um uh probe it to nosy like that but I generally just enjoy it so that's why I'm trying to get my personal brand out there so venture room for anybody who has never heard of venture room before so how did all that come about because they do like videos to various business people and entrepreneurs and stuff so how did it come about for you then yeah so um I was uh we're just walking on the streets of London Kings Road and bumped into to them um and we got talking um and initially I asked to use their videographer to do um some videos for the scoop company for me so some real nice high quality videos of Maria making gelato and and that was filmed by the videographer and from there we just started establishing a relationship where we were discussing what I do in business I was giving them advice as probably not welcomed but I gave it um and uh from there they were like we would love to interview and uh you can catch that you can catch that interview on on their channel and it's also on my page and there's a couple things I share in there two of my favorites actually is one understanding balance sheets and how you can leverage them um for either investment or debt by healthy debt or I always talk about the scis and eis schemes where you can invest in a number of businesses attract or attract investors and get some benefits in in tax havens I always find people um like quick to say uh are all these loopholes you know what is all these loopholes but they're not loopholes they're designed for you to use and are correct for you to use and I I always like to share them with people because they don't know they should know and I think in that video I share that it's the it's exactly what the dragon's doing the dragon's then so why would you not do it you know exactly so how do you feel now about putting yourself out there as a personal brand after all these years of not doing it it was scary in the beginning I'm at my first video just kind of putting that camera in front of me just me alone with that phone was just like oh this is weird and awful and awkward and disgusting and I was and I didn't post it and I just mentioned my business partner but I was like should I do it and he was like you're gonna get ridiculed and I was like I love a bit of ridicule I don't mind ridicule like I'm all right with that and he's like we'll do it then just get it out there so I got it out there I got ridiculed mainly by those that are closest to me so you have got ridiculed we're still getting ridiculed but um actually especially on tiktok there's sparks quite there's a lot more comments than there are likes than actually start it sparked a lot of debate and I really think there's room in society for just positive debate um I think me and Matthew just saying off camera like you know in politics I don't really debate properly anymore it's more of a dance and actually real good debate understanding different sizes the coin different size of the story and respecting one another over it creates positive change and I think you know we would all say our country needs a bit of that at the moment is positive change and and positive debate so um yeah that's uh that's where it starts really and so do you think you'll end up within the political career then I have toyed with the idea I have absolutely toyed with the idea it's something I am considering because I'm like why am I sitting here whinging about it um uh intrigued and invested in it from an opinion from a research perspective be it if it's going to help me in my business decisions or help me in my in my stocks and shares investments or if it's just because I like to know and be in a know-how um I'm like well actually could I make a could I make a change should I run should I go as an independent should I go and represent a political party and it is something I'm looking into I've gone to a few uh local parish council meetings to understand how they work and the semantics and the politics and the bureaucracy involved in those they're quite interesting um if it seems not quite the word I would use I've been to a couple myself for various reasons when we when we've needed something from them but yeah oh my gosh as long as it's not like the the Jackie weaver uh I'm sure you've all seen that right um and then I've gone to a few branch meetings for different political parties and I've actually got a dinner with a reform at the end of the month the one in central London I'm going to um and just to to to spark some conversation and understand and I'm trying to get a a foothold in there to to to see how I can get involved if that is from advice if that is from just learning myself if that is from playing a part in a role something I would maybe consider but I don't know if I've made the full jump yet I've got a few people behind me I will back you we'll we'll invest in in your campaign and I'll be a campaign manager and maybe just run as an independent actually yeah exactly maybe maybe so as an entrepreneur is there any specific part of being an entrepreneur that stands out to you as that's what you love doing I've said it earlier it's the risk-taking I enjoy the risk-taking I think either you enjoy it or you don't enjoy it and business is a risk every day you know in the decisions you make or don't make um so I do really enjoy that um but I also really enjoy the learns one huge learn for me was um when I was first starting my export business I was going around because I knew I could see this beast wanted to blow right and I didn't know how to get lending at a time of funding from investors I didn't know how to how to talk to banks and put business plans together to try and get that funding so I was going around to people I knew that had money and basically was like would you invest and I learned quite quickly you ask for money um you get