[00:00:02] Speaker A: Whether it was foolish belief or bubble site, I don't know, honestly. But it was belief. And I think you've got to have belief in yourself and belief in your team and belief in what you're doing. If you've got that, then I honestly believe you can get over most issues that you face.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Well, our guest today was a founding member and CEO of Cake Solutions Limited. Now that started in 2001. We're going to hear about how he got going in business in a moment. Now, over the next 16 years, he directly oversaw the development of that business from a small startup to an international multi million pound company on the cutting edge of engineering and the process in open source software. Now, after being recognized in the Deloitte UK, Technology Fast 50, Cake Solutions was acquired by a multinational corporation and then rebranded as Disney Streaming Services. He is now building several new organizations with his business partners, Gary Fletcher and Dave Zimpano. One is a highly efficient, tech led private equity organization. It's really entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs. In fact, ehe is what it's called. Fabulous. With a focus on AI technologies to help those businesses. And with his partner Dave, they've got a legal document platform where they're moonshot. Their big vision, their big goal is to be the largest law firm in the world that doesn't employ any lawyers. Fascinating. They are digitizing, democratizing and demonetizing legal services, helping smaller law firms compete in a digital era. I'm very excited to have Guy Rahman with me here and we're gonna have an incredible journey on this wonderful story. And thank you for joining us all the way from the UK.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you, Richard. Excited to be speaking to you and to be on the show.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Amazing. Now, im really curious. Every entrepreneurs journey starts somewhere. Yours began in 2001, but it really wouldve began before that. Thats when the business got started. But what happened prior to that? Whats one of the things that you think people need to know as they consider whether theyre just thinking about starting their own business or theyre reflecting on their own journey of being a business owner?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean the, I'll give you the quick speed dating version all the way through to when I started the company in 2000, Wildcat solution.
I was very average of school and subsequently probably in my early thirties found out that I was quite highly dyslexic. My son was quite highly dyslexic, which is how I kind of cottoned onto that. And then a lot of things that happened made sense.
So, you know, I was always in the, let's put it this way, the average classes at school I came out with some qualifications but not that many. I really enjoyed playing football at school and at lunchtime rather than actually being in class. And I actually left school at 1718 and I couldn't wait to get into work and you know I joined a supermarket group called Saints over here which at the time was the largest supermarket in the UK and you know, I spent eleven years there, I really enjoyed it. It's very hands on with, you know actually the big thing I learned from that which is just, it's defined me in all honesty is I learned how to manage people, understand people, build relationships because these stores have 350 people in them and you know, you kind of learn to manage all walks of life, right? So anything from a student who comes in on a Saturday and sits on a till probably hungover from the night before to the evening ship ladies who come in and restock the shelves to the multitude of people that work on the tills in the warehouses in the canteen, you know, whatever. And looking back it really kind of helped build my unique ability which is to build outstanding teams. That's what I'm really good at and we're both aware of strategic coach.
They have this concept called unique ability and when I did it, it all heart back to those early days of working for saints in a supermarket, a big supermarket, and then I guess then I've always had the ability to make decisions quickly and to take chances and you know I saw an advert in the newspaper, I wasn't looking to leave Saint James actually. I really quite enjoyed it but I saw an advert in the newspaper for an electrical superstore. So I applied for it and I got it and it was in PC World, which is basically a computer shop and kind of my inner geek came out then. I've always been interested in tech and the future and so on and that was a really cool environment for me. And then very quickly I did that for sort of 18 months or so and that's when I then set up a business called Netcars with a couple of young guys called Reg and Louis Ricks, a couple of brothers and their father was in the car industry, had several kind of car show rooms. They wanted to do things differently, they wanted to use the Internet to sell cars effectively. So we built something called Netcars 2000 and it was in the, it was a terrible time to set a business up right. It was right at the end of the.com boom. So it was like 2000, so 2001, so you know, the early two thousands, everything went wrong with tech, it hit rock bottom kind of thing.
And, you know, quite frankly, we myself have a business partner, a guy called Rob Harrop, who turned out to be technically still one of the most gifted engineers and architects I've ever worked with, even though he was a young guy at that particular point.
And we started to build this company. He left in 2006, but by then we would begin to build a reasonable team up. So he left for all the right reasons. He's still a friend of mine. And he went and did what he did very successfully, as it happens. And I went on and began to develop cake. And to begin with, it was kind of a lifestyle company.
So we were not that ambitious, quite frankly. We were happy to do our thing and we were earning good money, and we built really quite an incredible team of technical people. And I was the commercial side of the business.
And then we got to about 2010, and my CTO at the time, a guy called Jan Mahajek, who is again, one of the. Again, one of the most talented employee engineers and architects I've ever worked with. Him and Rob, and I'll be recipe by them, work directly.
He saw an opportunity with the new technology, and this new technology would enable us to build systems that didn't fall over when there were spikes in demand. So you can imagine when there's an advert on in between a tv show and it's an advert for, you know, one of the online platforms we have. Well, you guys have Ticketmaster out there. So we had Ticketmaster and Robbie Williams was doing a gig at Nebworth, and literally within seconds of the tickets going on sale, the platform fell over and then it come back for a few minutes and it fall over and you'd literally spend four or five frustrating hours trying to buy tickets for this show. It was just a nightmare. So the technology we were beginning to use, and it was early in their early days, solve that problem, right? So it enabled these platforms to deal with mass, big spikes in demand, and they slowed down, but they didn't fall over, which was key, and they could deal with much higher bandwidth and higher concurrent user numbers and so on.
And we started to work with some companies in the UK, one of the big price comparison websites called Money Supermarket. We'd work with McClaren. We worked with Weight Watchers in New York. We worked with Bamtech, which was an out of MLB, which was responsible for streaming all the major american sports at that particular point.
And the technologies that we were specializing in and we grew up using as they developed the technology itself, as the purveyors of this technology developed it, we started to grow with the technology and started to work with companies that, quite frankly, company of our size should really never be able to work with.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Amazing. Amazing. And so you overcame a few challenges in there, obviously, dyslexia being one of them, having a difficult time again.com bubble. Not everyone maybe remembers that to the same degree that you do. But starting a tech company, I think that's clear what kind of challenges would have been faced. But now dealing with technological change, looking at what's the problem that we need to solve, finding a way to solve it, and then creating a space in the market that almost wouldn't have really been yours had it not been for the fact that you were actively trying to solve that problem for the purveyors you were working with.
What other things came about in that timeframe? Because over 16 years in business before you sold the company, I'm sure there was a lot of other chaotic moments that would have occurred, both from maybe the economic standpoint, but even just in dealing with perhaps teams and people and different maybe regulations. So what are some of the other challenges you had to overcome during that timeframe at the head of that company?
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we absolutely did, and you're quite right to call it out. So, you know, there's a couple of occasions we almost went bust. And on one of the occasions, if we'd have gone bust, I'd have gone bankrupt because I put everything I had and more using credit cards into the company to ensure its survival.
And interestingly youd have thought we started the business when the.com bust in the early two thousands.
Interestingly, actually, during the recession in 2008, we did okay. We had some really good customers that saw us through. We struggled in 2004. So I'm sure most young entrepreneurs who have built a business will kind of relate to this.
I had no clue what I was doing. I'd never run a business. I'd never had any training about running a business. I'd gone into this, I suppose, in true entrepreneurial fashion, wherever I thought, well, I can do this.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: There'S certain moments.
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[00:12:18] Speaker B: What are some of the other challenges you had to overcome during that time frame at the head of that company?
[00:12:23] Speaker A: I had no clue what I was doing. You know, I'd never run a business. I'd never had any training about running a business. I'd gone into this, I suppose, in true entrepreneurial fashion, where I thought, well, I can do this. It won't be a problem. I'm not technical, right? So I cannot write a line of code. My brain isn't wired that way. But what I was really good at was hiring the right people who could write lines of code and then eventually beginning to hire the right top team. But in 2004, we ran out of business.
We literally had no sales, and we were probably two weeks away from going bust. And honestly, it was my business partner that pulled one out of the bag on this occasion. We had one lead for a company called the National Student of union Services, and they were responsible for bulk buying and all the alcohol that students drink. You can imagine that was quite a big business.
And all our systems were manual, so they were looking for a piece of software that would help them deal with that. But also they also had really quite complicated discount offerings. And it turned out that after we built this piece of software, that they saved a million pounds a year because humans couldn't deal with the figures that were required as accurately as computers could. That was a really unexpected strategic byproduct of what they were doing in terms of building software. But if wed not won that piece of business, I said my business partner went in and knocked it out the ballpark, but from a presentational point of view, and we won the business and we survived. But we were within two weeks of running out of money and going bust. But that particular point, ID just moved house, had two young kids, a new mortgage, and I had a house. The house ID bought was from auction, and it needed completely gutting and redoing.
And honestly, if the company gone bust because I put so much money onto myself personally, I'd have been bankrupt as well. So that was a massive risk that really my family didn't know about. And I think that quite often happens in entrepreneurs, that they're not trying to hide stuff in the families, but what they try and do is shelter them sometimes from some of the things that you have to do to get to where you. I really want to get to, you've got to have that confidence in the business that it's going to work. And I did, and it did. So 2010, we made that technological change that I mentioned.
And honestly, we then had six years of sustained growth. Ten times in every multiple.
We were really knocking out the ballpark. Working with big companies, working all over the world. Big contracts in the Middle east, in the states actually accounted for a high percentage of our business at this point. And we had a few in the UK as well.
So, really exciting times. And we were different.
We still didn't ever, we never had a marketing department, we never had a sales arm to the business. What we did do was we encouraged, we built a culture. This is really important, actually. I've written a couple of books on culture now. And we built this culture within the business which encouraged the engineers to be proud about what they do and to shout about what they do in their technical communities. So, you know, we'd run user groups, we'd speak in user groups, we'd speak at conferences. You know, the last few years we were doing 20 odd conferences a year where we were speaking at them. And we'd sponsor five major conferences a year where we had quite a big presence. Usually sort of 1015 of us would be there, as well as the speakers as a support team and, you know, to talk to potential clients at these conferences. And that worked really well for us. We were, you know, we were hitting the technical people within the communities and we were also, you know, our CTO and then quite a number of the team were actually active bloggers at that point as well. So as blogging became a thing, we were at the forefront of doing that in the technical world.
And we just became, we just built this reputation for being a bunch of experts at what we did. And we also worked on some really exciting projects which the team were proud about, but it just made good stories.
That's how we grew through notoriety, through the engineers. The engineers were our salespeople. They were brilliant.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: That's a fascinating way to look at things. Cause it's certainly unconventional and uh, that's part of, you know, really that's a bit of an innovation in itself. And that you spent your time working on teams and then empowering those teams to be able to feel the, not just the confidence, but the inspiration to go and tell those stories. And it's interesting because it's literally like the reverse of a sales department. Cause if you think about a sales department, you generally don't think about a highly technical person or an engineer being in that role. Not to label engineers, of course, have a lot of engineer clients and friends who are quite fantastic, actually. Some of them aren't great at sales, but it's not what you would normally consider when you think about that, you know, that very technological kind of aspect, but going to the events and sponsoring them and empowering them to go and speak.
One thing that really comes up for me is, you know, if, if you're working with a large company and you want to have a software built or something in the technical space, you know, often the person who's at a CEO level or in a high management position, they are also not that technical individual. So they're most likely going to refer to who's the most technical knowledgeable individual on their existing team and ask for a recommendation. And so because you have your technical people talking to the technical peoples of other major firms, it's almost like a backdoor sales technique, which is quite fascinating.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: It is. And you know, what we did then, so, you know, it wasn't quite as unplanned as you might think. You know, what we did? We actually wrote five books. We started to blog, we started to speak at user groups, we started speaking conferences, and we expanded on all of those things.
And you're right. Then the technical people would speak to the C suite, and the C suite would then reach out. And then our process was quite simple. It was me or my ops director, which I probably hired, I don't know, 2012, something like that, maybe 2011. And one of us would accompany either the CTO or our technical director into the offices of this company, and we'd have a chat with them. And it was interesting because our tech guys would go toe to toe in a good way and get a real rapport with their tech guys in the room. And I would talk about the culture of our company and what we're about and what made us different and how we could help their team, not just from helping them build a piece of software, but bringing their team along for the ride. Because, you know, the technology we were using was new in the commercial world. It had been an academic language for ten years, and we then started to commercialize it and work with the guys that were building it, a company called Lightbound. And they were our biggest referrers. And because they were consultants, they werent doers. We were the doers, and we shouted about their technology. It was a perfect symbiotic relationship that didnt have any money exchange. Thats one of my principles. I do not ever. And id never ask for a kickback from any referrals I make because I want to be seen as neutral. I want to be seen for making referrals for the right reason. I still maintain that you know that principle today and do not take kickbacks for referrals because we demonstrated expertise and people wanted to work with us and they wanted their teams to use the technologies we specialize in. And we don't just build technology, we build it and we bring their teams along for the ride so they learn how to build things when we leave.
That was quite a unique proposition and worked really well, which meant that we could not quite name our price because we would never take advantage of that, but we understood what our value was at that point.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah, thats very interesting. And circling back to the point you mentioned around 2007 where you putting all the eggs in one basket, a government contract, a three month delay, although it was a little early, there wasnt the communication about the uncertainty of the upcoming market correction that was going to take place.
I'm curious, what were some of the things that were going through your mind?
Having a young family myself, considering the amount of risk that you have and knowing that you kind of got to put all your chips into this particular on this table, how was the process overcoming that? If someone's going through that today and they're watching this, what's some of the advice and things that you would give them as they're thinking through a similar situation and reflecting back on it?
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I just had belief in that we could solve the issue and if we did, then we could move forward and be successful.
And it was just belief. Whether it was foolish belief or bubble sight, I don't know, honestly, but it was belief. And I think you've got to have belief in yourself and belief in your team and belief in what you're doing. If you've got that, then I honestly believe you can get over most issues that you face.
We came close, but we always found a way of dealing with the issue. And again, you take those kind of experiences forward into your life. Now nothing fazes me anymore.
I'm okay.
I become more and more resilient and that kind of thing. And I'm happy to probably take more risks now than I've ever taken. 19 times out of 20. That pays off occasionally. You get it wrong and you know what? If you get it wrong and you understand what you know. I think you need to understand what the worst case scenario is, by the way, if you, if you do make those decisions and you've got to take the decision knowing what the worst case scenario is. And if it's not going to kill you personally or kill a business, then you know, you have to take some decisions along the way that most of the time will come off, but occasionally you'll get wrong, which is fine because you learn from that. You learn much more from that than you do from getting things right every time. And you move forward and you either adjust what you're doing or you completely pivot what you're doing and change it. And there's been a few instances over the last few years where I've had to do that in both Aterna, which is the online estate planning platform, and within ehe as well. We've made some pivots as we tried something, and that strategy didn't work in the way we expected it to. So we've made some fundamental changes.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Well, I'm excited about talking about a few of those changes, how you've adjusted those pivots, and more importantly, a little bit about the innovations you're coming up with and implementing right now as you move forward in your business life. And we'll get to that right after these messages.
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[00:25:06] Speaker B: Well, we are back hearing about the incredible journey that guy's had at this point in his life. And specifically, he's transitioned now he's sold this incredible company that he founded and built, and he's now sitting here looking for the next opportunity. And so opportunity has an interesting way of showing up for us. I'm curious, how did some of the new endeavors come up for you? What made you realize that there was something you were looking to do, and how did they start showing up in your life?
[00:25:32] Speaker A: I sold a business in 2017. I had an 18 month burnout. I actually ended up doing 21 months. And, you know, I then handed over to my technical director, who took over from me and he became the vp for Disney streaming services in the UK and I took a year out.
But you never actually take a year out when you take a year out, right? So I did a load of travelling with my family and went to some really nice places, really nice stuff all the time was having conversations with people. I ended up investing in a couple of companies and I'm still actively involved with those companies and taking them through some high growth stage and trying to help them achieve an exit.
And I mentioned strategic coach before, which has been actually quite. I'm going to give them a shout out because they were an important part of what I did. I talked about being highly dyslexic and then in my mid thirties, beginning to build my confidence and understanding. I was going into meetings in these big corporate buildings with these high powered people thinking I was nervous, nervous as hell. And I actually came out feeling a bit underwhelmed, thinking, well, they're not what I expected them to be, I'm no different. And I begin to build my confidence up. That is largely down, I think, to understanding why I was what I was in terms of the dyslexia side of things, but also through strategic coach with the tools that they have.
Beginning to understand yourself with Colby, we discussed it just before the show started where it kind of measures your natural behaviors and that helps you understand yourself. Unique ability was just a big one for me. I spent a day with a lady called Julia Waller, who's just fantastic. And at the end of 8 hours of questions and discussion, I was completely drained. But what I had at the end of that was a paragraph that described what I'm really good at. And ultimately it was building uniquely talented teams and that was all, as I said before, from my experience with stuff and having to manage all sorts of different people, I'm good at, I think recognizing other people's unique abilities and understanding where they'd fit around me or around the company that I'm supporting and helping the entrepreneur within that company build their own kind of unique team. So every company I involved with the team is at the centre. The developments of the team, the building of the team is at the center of everything that I do because ultimately I'm not going to make the company successful. They are. And that's kind of how it is, really. So yeah, coach was a massive thing for me. And actually I met both my business partners, Gary Fletcher for EHE, entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs, and Dave Sompano for Eterna.
I met them both, our strategic coach in Toronto meetings at different times but within six months of each other. And actually then we started both businesses just before COVID hit, which was in some ways useful because I was able to build out to platforms of both businesses at a time when there was an abundance of engineers available. So in some ways, as horrible as Covid was, it kind of worked in my favor in that regard.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: You also supported people who otherwise wouldn't be working because they were available. So it's a bit of a, not just was it helpful for you in growing two new companies, but also for the people that needed the ability to work on a project. It's kind of, everyone wins in that scenario.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: It does. And both projects were actually started by ex employees of mine and Kate. So these guys had the Kahunas to go out and start their own business. And I always support that. Never ever.
You know, I actually enjoy when people leave my company to go and start their own company because I think it's completely brave and noble thing to do because you need people like that to build economies and create innovation and change the world. So I'm always really happy when people leave my companies to go and start their own business, aware of possible, I stay in touch with them, try and help them and occasionally employ them. And that's what happened in this case. I employed quite a number of people that I used to work with that had set their own business up.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Thats amazing. Now, strategic coach, amazing organization. So shout out to Dan and Babs for what theyve built there. And of course, thats really the fundamental way that you and I got connected initially. And we had a great interview on our other program, Wellfelt Bay street podcast. And at the time, it was around one of these business models that you were focused on with your business partner, Dave.
But theres been some change and some pivoting that you mentioned there. So walk us through a little bit about what's the deciding factor on when you need to pivot and why. Have you made some of the changes you have in that particular technological structure?
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Out of all the companies that I'm now involved with, this has been the hardest one to get off the ground. But we've continually made progress along the route, so nothing comes easy and every business involved with has issues.
Then there's a shoe. Was that when we launched? The business model was really simple.
We build this platform, which I did. The platform's great, and we got pants on the platform, which were granted in us. And the tech size worked really well.
The plan was the business model was really to go through instead of going direct to consumer, which is always difficult.
And because it just costs so much money to get above all the noise that goes on in that marketplace, we thought, okay, we're going to go through local lawyers. So what we try to do is most estate planning platforms, in fact, all of them apart from ours, try and bypass local lawyers. They use technology to marginalize lawyers and they just maybe have a couple of their own in house lawyers. That's it. What we try and do is work with local lawyers.
So the platform. So we'd engage with a law firm, small law firm, typically.
And the idea was that they get two types of customers. They get customers that come in and want to will, and they're prepared to pay maybe a couple of $1,000, maybe more, maybe slightly less, but around about that figure to go through a process where a lawyer handholds you through that process, excuse me, in person. And it's labor intensive, right? And it's expensive because you're dealing directly with a lawyer, or at least apparently.
But then there's people that can't afford to do so. They come to the law firm and they go, you know, how much is it to do will? And they get $2,000. And then you go, well, we can't afford that. You say, okay. So the idea was then the lawyers would refer the customer to our platform and they would have their own unique URL. So it would be a turner, legal forward slash joblogs lawyers, and it would be highly personalized to them, but it would also be branded a turner. So it's a joint kind of branding exercise. And that person then would go through and self serve, really easy process, really quick and quite a bit cheap.
And at the end of it, though, the big difference at the end of it is he's still signed up by that local lawyer. And that's really important because a lot of these platforms produce wills that aren't checked or aren't checked well enough. And actually you only find out that when you go to court because someone's contesting something and you find out that actually you haven't dotted the I's and crossed the t's in the right way and therefore you don't really have a leg to stand on at that point, you lose the case. Whereas the idea going through a turner is that you have it checked by your local lawyer who signs it off, and that will stand up in a court of law if it's contested. So it gives people that peace of mind. So that's the big difference. And really it doesn't cost any more than these other platforms of charging not to use the lawyers. The lawyers benefit out of it because they take the charge of the fee. The platform benefits by taking small percentage of the fee.
All really good in theory, right? And we tried that for twelve to 18 months and we really worked hard and lawyers were interested, but the reality was they just didn't refer people in the numbers to our platform that we were expecting, needed or hoped for. So we had to change our thinking. So we still want to use the local lawyers, but this time we're going to do the marketing. So we become the marketing platform as well as the processing platform, but we still get it signed off by a local lawyer. That required a complete rethinking our model in the way that we dealt with things on the platform. So we had to change technically the workflow, not massively, but enough that it took a while to do.
And we're now going to market with this revised strategy where we take areas within states and we hit that area and we go to local companies with maybe 400 employees. You know, 70 odd percent of people who should have wills as adults in the US do not have wills will trust. So it's a big market so we can offer discounted wills through companies. The company benefits because they're offering something that is useful and needed for their employees. And we benefit because we get that business and the lawyers benefit because they get the business without having to do any of the marketing or any of the referring. So it's a different model and we are rolling that one out now. So that was a really major pivot that cost us 18 months of time.
But the signs are good. We're beginning to roll it out and it's beginning to work really quite well now.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Well, I think a couple of interesting things that I heard in there is, number one, you gave yourself a period of time to test the market before you were able to have good decisions with your business partners about when it made sense to pivot and what that pivot is. But the key thing I really heard you identify is that you had to rethink your thinking. You have to rethink the business or rethink the business model. You had to rethink your thinking. And the result of that rethinking caused some changes in the business. I think that's really important. When we come back after these next messages, I'm excited to dive into some of the new innovations that you're focusing on with some of your other incredible projects.
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[00:37:33] Speaker B: So what exactly is abundance 360? Why should people know about this organization? And more importantly, what are the technological advances that people need to be keeping their eye on as we step into a bigger, brighter future? So, abundance 360, it's an organization I'm familiar with, but our listeners may not give us a bit of an idea what this platform is and why you're a member and what are some of the things that people would expect to learn while they're there.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: I have been a member of the abundance community probably about eight years, and I've been going in person for the past five years. And honestly, I kind of said that I was a little bit of a geek. And this is my favorite kind of three working days of the year, every year without fail. I love this because you can completely geek out on all the stuff that it looks at. So, you know, he's run by a guy called Peter Diamandis. He's a futurist.
His MTP is to help millions of entrepreneurs around the world understand where technology is going and how it will affect their businesses and the businesses that they work with. One of Peter Diamandis mantras is that in the next five years, if you as a company haven't adopted AI, either in the products and services that you offer or on your internal processes, youre likely to be going bus because its going to have that fundamental impact on everything thats going on in the world. Actually, the advent of chat GPT, I think it was 3.5, wasnt it? That came out November 18 months, two years ago. Now, that changed peoples perception of AI almost overnight. It became accepted that things were going to change massively. I still dont think that people understand how big an impact its going to have on our lives. And its already having on our lives, actually.
But its huge. And as an entrepreneur, its really important that you understand where technology is going. So if you do get the opportunity to go to abundance, its an expensive conference, but they produce lots of free material. Start to look at the free material they produce. And if you get the opportunity, go to this conference because it will give you an unfair advantage over everybody else. You know what's coming around the corner. You can make sure that you account for that when you're building your company strategies and you fundamentally changed. Ehe. We moved from being a tech product investor to an AI tech product investor.
And honestly, he's already proved to be a really smart move with some of the investments that we've made before.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: We kind of hit record on our show, we were talking about one of those, and it's around using AI in a book publishing model and also with some advent to some journaling components, really from getting people at the speaking level into the writing level. And so walk us through what Clio is all about and what has you excited about that endeavor?
[00:40:40] Speaker A: A little bit of context.
I've written five books now, or been involved in writing five books, so two of my own, three within my companies, of which I've written several chapters in each of those books. But I've driven that because books are a really great way of proving credentials. If you've written a book, people automatically assume you're an expert on the subject, and you should be if you write any book on it. So that's fair.
And I used a service. I'm just like to see there's no way. I'm sort of just like to say I've got the attention span of a goldfish and I'm time poor. There was no way out in this earth that I was ever going to be able to sit down and write a book. I didn't have the time, patience, inclination, knowledge to do that.
And I came across a lady who used to work for strategy coach in the UK called Georgia Kirkland, who left Gigi coach to set our own business up. And it was a speak your book business. Perfect for me. Right? So a human at that point used to walk you through a process, and it was eight 1 hour Zoom calls. And the first one was really to understand the vision for the book, what you wanted to achieve, maybe come up with at least a working title. It might not be the finalized title, but working title. And then to come up with the chapter had himsitive. If you achieve that in your first hour, that's great. Then you have seven other hours where the human would ask you questions around each chapter. You might get one or two chapters done per session, and at the end of it it was recorded. The transcript using otter was converted into text. And then a human editor would come in, listen to the conversation you had, and it is just a conversation. Him asking you questions about that chapter and you answering those questions. And the editor would come in and use their skills to write the chapter, make it a coherent passage of text, instead of just this transcription, whilst retaining your turning voice, which is really important. And I was a bit skeptical, but they do it brilliantly. They really do. It just sound like I've written it, as if I imagined how I'd write it if I ever did, which I obviously wouldn't.
And ultimately, they produce a book. They take you through a design process, from an artwork point of view, for the COVID and the inside and so on. And then they produce these publishing files.
They got really good at this. And the last 30 or so books they did with this manual process all became bestsellers, including one of my books, which is an Ehe book called Fast Grow through funding. And all these books were actually genuine added value books. They were not an advert for my company. We had them in same livery, we had a logo very subtly put on the inside page, but that was it. They were all advice to startups as to how to achieve funding and what the process would be and what pitfalls to look out for, what to do, what not to do, that kind of thing, but great. And I've given away thousands of these various events that we go to over the last few years, and people talk about them all the time. They remember you by the book. They don't remember guy. They remember the book, which is fine, right? I wouldn't say that personally.
So, yeah, so all we've done is we've taken that manual process, digitized it, and applied AI to it. So all the way through to that first draft. Now is an AI for a phone app, iPad app, or even just the desktop, where it asks you questions. The AI begins to understand the context of what you're trying to achieve, and it then begins to suggest titles, and you fine tune that. It then begins to suggest chapter headings, and you fine tune that.
The AI then gives you prompts. So instead of you giving it prompts like you would do, it gives you problems and kind of reverse the way that it works. But it works really well. So it asks you questions about the chapter effectively, and then you just speak like me, and you are now and have a conversation with this AI, which is kind of weird to begin with, but you seem getting used to it. And, you know, ultimately, it takes all that information to your expertise, the stuff that you've spoken about, and it organizes it into a draft format, and it will get 70% of that draft done. Human editing, because AI is on perfect, right? So a human editor still has to come in and polish it and finish it off. But again, we expect that these books will be the same standard as the previous books. Well, we already have one of them that's become a bestseller already in this early stage.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: When you think about all the different endeavors that you have, I'm sure there's so many of them that you have on the go, the different companies that you're invested in. What would you say has you really excited about the future innovations that are coming out in the world, and AI being one of them, but perhaps there's another that really appeals to you. What would you like to share with our viewers about what has you really excited about the future of the world that we live in today and how technology intersects with it?
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll start with AI. So, just to finish the story on Cleo, and in the context and the question you've just asked, AI has the ability to make us way more efficient. And if we're more efficient, we can do things more cost effectively. It doesn't necessarily mean job cuts, and sometimes it will, but quite often, it'll just make companies more efficient and better at what they do and be able to do more of what they do.
And ultimately that filters down into cost savings for end consumers and maybe slightly higher profits for the companies as well, which is fine.
So AI is already affecting every part of our lives, and it will increasingly do so, and it'll be a bit like when the wheel was invented.
There will be change, and some people do change better than others, but there will be scary times for some people wherever AI is doing some of the more mundane tasks that people currently do. But what that should allow us to do is we should be allowed to use our intelligence and our skills at a higher level and let the AI do all the good work. So that's how AI can really help us.
It can demonetize services, democratize services, and, yeah, make people and companies way more efficient. There's so much stuff going on in longevity. Peter Diamandis has a longevity trip, which he does several times a year now. And he goes around all these facilities. There's people like David Sinclair, who is literally reversing the age of rats at the moment successfully. You have these twin rats. They were both. One of them was Gray and old, and the other one, who had a mixture of various things that Dave is looking into, was just undeniably much, much younger. And they're looking at ways of using genomics and stem cell serums as to how they can reverse aging in humans. And I don't think that's far off. Ray Kurzweil was on the stage. He predicted the singularity 20 or 30 years ago and he's going to be within a few years of it actually happening where we have brain computer interfaces where we can tap into unlimited knowledge in the cloud, wirelessly into our brain, and that's going to help dementia patients as well as improve the ability for humans to solve problems and tap into unlimited knowledge. So much exciting stuff. People scared about this kind of stuff. I'm optimistic about it.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: Amazing. Well, I love the optimism and I love what the future holds. And for you, being on the cutting edge of that future, as you really have been for over 20 years, 25 years, to be able to share your journey with us. Thank you for being with us today, letting us know what you're excited about, the innovations that are upcoming and your journey of overcoming major challenges in business. I appreciate you and thank you for joining us on today's program.
