Episode 297: Building a £90 Million Drinks Brand with Steve Perez
Success often comes after facing setbacks and persevering through difficult times. Aspiring entrepreneurs should stay focused on their goals, surround themselves with the best people, and never give up on their dreams.
In this episode, Steve Perez talks about the significance of delegation and assembling a strong team, developing a product with an excellent taste and a powerful brand, and the difficulties of being an entrepreneur, such as facing rejection and taking risks. Steve tells up-and-coming business owners to be ready for both positive and negative experiences, pursue something that they truly love and understand, and put in hard work and perseverance.
Steve Perez is well-known in the drinks industry as the creator of VK, Shake Baby Shake, Hooch, and more RTD brands. Away from work, Steve is a four-time national rally champion, and an avid chef – having authored a Spanish-inspired cookbook called Mi Casa. Listen to learn more!
Show Highlights:
- How Steve first started in the drinks and hospitality industry
- What are Steve’s early entrepreneurial ideas
- Failing in his business and going bankrupt
- Steve’s new business opportunities and VK’s rapid success and growth
- What can you do if you have difficulty obtaining funding from banks
- Importance of focusing on relationships and credit control
- Steve’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic and his new business ventures
- Steve’s thoughts on the future of the hospitality industry
- The importance of passion in entrepreneurship
Links Mentioned:
Check out more about Steve Perez on LinkedIn or visit the Global Brands website: https://globalbrands.co.uk/about/
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
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Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
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Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
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Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott:
Hey everybody, Adam Stott here. Thanks for checking out my podcast, Business Growth Secrets. You’re absolutely in the right place. This podcast is going to reveal to you all of the secrets that you’ve been looking to discover. They’re going to allow you to cure your cashflow problems, attain more clients, bring in more leads for your business, and create systems and processes that give you the growth that you want. You are going to discover the business growth secrets you have been looking for that I’ve used to sell over 50 million pounds worth of products and services on social media and help clients everywhere to grow their businesses on demand. So let’s get started on the Business Growth Secrets podcast. Hello everybody and welcome to Business Growth Secrets. I’m really, really excited today because I’ve got a gentleman with me as a guest who is a true entrepreneur. And I’m really, really looking forward to this chat myself. I’m sure I’m going learn some great things as well as we talk to Steve. So Steve Perez has founded the global brands, which is the drinks brand, which has gone on to found drinks such as VK that many people will be familiar with hooch and so many more. He has expanded that business and grown it. Been named Entrepreneur of the Year multiple times. He’s been able to go out there and really make a dent in the drinks industry as well as the hospitality industry, having hotels and restaurants and achieve some amazing things. So I’m really, really looking forward to talking to you, Steve. Welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on and really looking forward to getting to know you more.
Steve Perez:
Yeah, likewise Adam. I’ve listened to your show quite a few times. I think it’s really great what you’re doing here for entrepreneurs such as myself because the most difficult time you will ever have in your business is when you start or when you think you’re just starting. And maybe I can sort of show you, tell you some of, my experiences which might help people, might encourage people, that you might put some people off.
Adam Stott:
Well, certainly get an outcome, right? You know, and that really sort of sets it up perfectly. Obviously, you’ve gone on achieved amazing success. Building a 90-million pound company is no easy fee. Where did this all start for you, Steve? How did you get started? What was the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey? And what did that look like?
Steve Perez:
Well, I kind of think back, you know, having heard some of the stories on your podcast about when I was a kid and I remember when I was probably about 16. Yeah, my dad said, well, you know, what are you going to do? Cause my father was in the restaurant business and I said, I’ve got this great idea to open a coffee shop and sell records. That’s when we had records and probably about the same time as Richard Branson was starting. Oh, I never heard of him at that point. I remember my mum burst into tears and said, I need to be an engineer or something. And that kind of put me off a lot, but so my father was a restaurateur and then I actually kind of joined his business, worked in his business. But then my father died when I was fairly young, when I was just 19. And so I went off and went, eventually worked for industry, worked for a big company. Tetley’s, big brewer, and as a pub manager. One day, my boss said to me, Steve, you’re fantastic. You did a great job. Yeah. Yeah. Numbers are higher than anybody else. You’re making loads of money for the business. I wish I had more guys like you. Yeah. How do you see your future? I was just about 25, 26 at that time. I said, well, one day I want your job. And he said, well, you got no chance. So, why’s that? Well, I’ve seen your CV and you don’t have a degree. So you need a degree to you to be an area manager. Oh yeah. So have you got a degree? So yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve got a degree. So what have you got a degree in? So I’ve got a degree in Greek Mythology. Yeah. So he suggested that. I went out and got a degree, go to night school and I thought, you know, this isn’t really for me. And one day, I just decided I’m just going to leave. I was kind of because I wasn’t gay anywhere. And then I had a few ideas, but I noticed at that time, premium imported beers, like, people never heard of stuff like Stoll and Beck’s and Bud and all these brands. But because my pub was what they call a fun pub, we were selling stuff like this. I thought, well, we could be a good market locally or whatever, importing some of these beers. And it was quite a struggle to start with because of course I got no money. And we got a van, so I was delivering. At one time, and I was putting my tie in, those days you had to wear a tie to go and sell, and it was quite difficult, you know. So this is Budweiser, it’s from America, and you drink it out of the bottle. Out of the bottle? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you drink it out, but don’t pour it in a glass. And the business, yeah, turned eventually, ended up turning over about 10 million pounds. meanwhile, brewers and all sort of caught on to the idea, and some of the bigger businesses and all gone for likes of Budweiser and Sol and Corona, Groschen, all had contracts which meant I was no longer able to import them. I had to buy directly from, you know, from the brewer. And a recession in 1996 came along, a few bad debts, quite a lot of bank borrowings and all that sort of stuff. And one day, the bank said that’s it, we’re pulling the plug. And it’s pretty scary thing if you, you know, if you built a business up for 10 years and, you know, I’m not saying I was making a fortune, but I managed to buy myself a second Porsche, you know, so I was quite proud of that. But when the receiver come into your office and say, yeah, I want your keys. I want your keys to your car. And well, can I help you with anything? No, no, don’t worry. We need you. We’ll call you. And I remember getting on the bus because I didn’t have a car and going home.
Adam Stott:
Well, which is incredible, really. And I think it’s really important because a lot of people, I think that in that example you’ve invested a decade of your life into something, and especially when it’s your first business, you’re quite emotionally tied to it, right? You know, and it can be crushing and then it’s the fallout of that. And I think pretty much all successful people have had a scenario like that. Some to the extreme, some not to the extreme, but that is a decade of your life. But the one thing I do think, and it’d be interesting to hear your perspective on this is the skills that you learned along the way, you know, in that decade is really what you’re left with. Isn’t it, right? That’s your ROI. Your return on investment is your ability to be able to do certain things. How do you see it? How did you kind of reflect on that situation?
Steve Perez:
Well, it wasn’t a waste 10 years.
Adam Stott:
Yeah.
Steve Perez:
Sure. You know what I learned, well, for start built up relationships, yeah, I mean, business is all about relationships. Yeah. You start off nothing about business. Yeah. I learned how do I, yeah, how do I negotiate how to get on with people. I also learned, you know, how to get things produced. And that put me in good stead for my next business. And I also learned a lot of very valuable lesson in terms of how to manage your credit control is because those times probably, yeah, let people have too much credit and then yeah, they went boss. You know, and I’ve, you know, I’ve heard you talk about your numbers. You’ve got to get your numbers right. And in those days, I don’t think my numbers were right. You know, you look at what you’re sure, there was lots of external factors that cause a business to fail. But yeah, if I look back, yeah, there were things we probably could have done better.
Adam Stott:
Do you know what? I think that’s the trait though of a really great entrepreneur that you said that you looked inwards. Cause I think that actually a lot of people don’t look inwards. A lot of people look outwards because it’s easier to blame something else than actually looking inwards. But I think looking inwards is actually where you learn, right?
Steve Perez:
Yeah. And you learn from, you know, you learn from your mistakes, whatever you do. You know, we’re creating brands even now and, you know, not everything works and say, well, why did that fail? We don’t have to point fingers at people. So you know, you screwed up there. You created brand and it hasn’t worked. What can we do better next time? And you know, lots of entrepreneurs, very successful entrepreneurs, people told me this at the time, but it didn’t really help. So don’t worry people, you know, people like you pick up, start again and you’ll be successful again one day. I really did not believe it. I look, I remember looking in the mirror coming back from London and pointed at myself and going failed businessman.
Adam Stott:
Did you really? Wow.
Steve Perez:
Yeah. It really hurt being a fake. And I kind of said from that, I said, I’m, you know, I’m never going to have what I determined, yeah, a big business then 10 million pound business. Yeah. I said, I’m good. It’s just I got it. I managed by the skin of my teeth just hanging on to my house and I had a like a bit of a smallholding. I thought I’m going to grow my own vegetables and try to live off the land and stuff like that. Although it didn’t last for long. Just missed the Porsche too much. Yeah, well, yeah, it’s where it’s a bit like, you know, it’s a bit like falling in love, you know. I’ll never fall in love again, you know.
Adam Stott:
No, I think that’s so transparent and, you know, honest and anybody going through that scenario. There’ll be no doubt that people, if they don’t go through that scenario, you know, it’s something that happens to most people, right, that really go big you know. And a lot of people afraid to go big because of that fear holds them and actually never really discover their true potential. And I think those skills are honed right is when, you know, I know that in, you know, the first business that I really shot up really, really fast, I know the mistakes I made, you know. And I know I had a lot of great things happen along the way, but I also had a, you know, an exit that didn’t quite works well for me, right? And I wish I would have done things differently. But the truth be told is on better for it, right? You know, I think that my biggest lesson I ever learned was going through that. And I think that you sharing that and saying, Hey, that’s where I was at, how did you pick yourself up? Which I think is the really, you know, really will be, you know, interesting to hear. So you’re in one moment you’re like, I failed. I’m gonna live off the land. I’m going to do things differently. What happened then?
Steve Perez:
And then kind of, yeah, I’m an opportunist, you know. Opportunities arose because we’re going through a recession. It meant, yeah, that there was some out of date, you know, product on the market. Cheap, cheap Alka Pops really, as they were called at one time. So we started to buy cheap, yeah, it cost maybe five pound a case in those days, five pound a case. So we could, because of my previous knowledge and experience in the customers, I could go along and sell it to the customers and say, Oh, it’s yeah, 10 pound a case. Oh yeah, kind of double money, I suppose. Just one thing I can’t, yeah, and I can’t really give you any credit because I’ve got no money, you know. Oh, I dunno. What can I pay in a week? And, yeah, anyway, usually, and so we started to buy, there was stuff on the market like met, if you remember. Yeah.
Adam Stott:
I do. I said before we came on, you know, I thought it was really interesting that you’re almost there. You’re in the narrative of my youth, right? Having VK and Hooch is your brand. And actually one question, you know, one that we used to all drink as the alcohol pop. When was 2020? You know, so when you, do you remember 2020? Well, you weren’t behind that, were you?
Steve Perez:
No, no, I wasn’t. But we created something similar called Bombers, which was in a little, yeah, in a little bottle. Yeah. 15%. Yeah. Yeah. Very similar.
Adam Stott:
That was savage, right? You sell, you do some deals and what happens? What happens to your mindset and your mentality then? That’s really important ’cause how did that start to change?
Steve Perez:
Well, you know, what? He was really grateful and actually at that time it was, I say I had no money, and one of my guys, a guy called Mark James, who’s my MD now, he actually was one of my sales guys, a young guy. And I said Mark, look, yeah, I don’t know if I can afford to pay you, but I could do with some help, you know. So, but what I’ll do, I’ll give you 10% of the business. And it’s kind of almost like a throwaway remark.
Adam Stott:
Yeah.
Steve Perez:
Mark joined the business. And they say still in the business. And we started to just trade buy and sell but would buy a few, you know, container red stripe and pre-sell it and say, well, you know, we made two grand on that container. And it was really great fun. Yeah, because we dealt with a lot of cash and carries. One thing, we used to work quite late into the night. One thing we’ve always noticed with, you know, particularly Indian cash and carries, we always used to be working late in the night. Yeah. Yeah. Eight, nine o’clock we’ll get a call. Have you got a deal? Yeah, we’ve got a deal. We’re buying and selling. It was really, yeah, good fun. But we’re just made enough money really then to say, you know what, why don’t we, and a lot of these products became more difficult to buy, but yeah, but short-dated stuff. And so we just make her up. Oh, I know from the previous company, we’ve done some manufacturing or had stuff contract pack for us. So we knew a few, we had a few connections. So I said, well, let’s make something and people were drinking vodka Red Bull and that was a drink. Yeah. So we thought, what should we call it? I thought VB like nerds, VB, Vita, VC, Victoria Cross, got to VD, couldn’t call it that and eventually, he got to VK.
Adam Stott:
Probably was behind a bit of that.
Steve Perez:
So he got to VK. So that sounds quite cool. VK, what’s it called? VK, vodka kick, kick, vodka kick. Yeah, it’s got a kick like a Red Bull. It was just, it was kind of in the pub. No business plan, no big idea. Oh yeah. So we went out and kind of got it produced. Spoke to the old nightclubs that we used to deal with and said, look, Bacardi Breezer was a big drink then. You’re buying Bacardi Breezer, it’s costing you 12 quid a case. We can, whatever it was, we can sell you this at 10 quid a case. All right. Well, but what we did, we actually found there was a little niche in the market whereby by dropping the ABV from 5% to 4%, there was about 20% saving in terms of the, you know, cost price. And most of the clubs said, yeah, that’s fine because, you know, people only have two drinks. If it’s 5. 5%, they’ll probably drink three drinks. And also it’d be less messy and all the rest of it. So VK was born and the year VK was born, we were kind of smallish business. We’re turning over about 200, 000 pounds. VK just went through the roots. Of the first year we turned over 2 million. The second year we turned over 16 million. Third year we turned over 35 million. And fourth year we turned over 64 million.
Adam Stott:
That’s incredible, right? That’s incredible.
Steve Perez:
We were fourth, third or fourth fastest growing business. Sunday Times fastest growing business in the UK. And people said, well, people always talk about hadn’t. Yeah. And it’s particularly difficult trying to fund an alcohol business because the duty, you know, you have to pay upfront, you know, you have to, unless you can get a bottom. And because I’d have a business, and this is one of the problems that maybe you’ve experienced, I had a business that had gone bust. You know, the banks at best thought I was incompetent and at worst thought I was a crook. And so I got very, very borrowing from the bank. I remember one day the bank saying to me, I got all these cheques going through, but there’s not enough money in the account and I wasn’t really careful about the numbers. So yeah, there is. So, yeah, but those other cheques haven’t cleared. I said, oh, come off it. You know, you can’t expect every cheque to clear before. No, no, no. With your reputation, you know, I can’t take any risks. So that’s what he said to me. So I then went [17:30.9] then which was my delivery vehicle. But I don’t really deal with another bank and said, got the cash for the, and I said, look, that’s a 5 grand. If you take that money, will you clear those cheques? I said, yeah, yeah, I’ll clear the cheques. And I said, well, clear the cheques, close the fucking account. And then the business just absolutely kind of took off from that. But the difficult to say trying to, so how do you raise questions? You can’t borrow money from the bank. Yeah. Now, these days, it wasn’t crowdfunding. Everyone talks about crowdfunding going public. There wasn’t no, I’d never heard of it until a few years ago. But there’s a big untapped source of funding out there that nobody realises and it’s called your creditors, your suppliers. What I did, I went and spoke to the guy, the company supplying the glass, the sugar, the ingredients, your haulage. And I said, look, I’ve got this great business. I’m doing really well. Come to my office. I’ll show you all my accounts. I’ll show you my bank statements. If you give me some credit, extra credit, [18:42.6] with credit. Give me an extra month’s credit, give me 50 grand’s credit, you know. I’ll stay loyal to you, and I’ll send you my bank statements every day if you want. Yeah, I’ll send you my management accounts. And all of them agreed. And it’s free money. They don’t charge interest. It’s good for them and good for us. And I can never understand why people don’t talk about that.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, it is something one credit control that people don’t talk about, which you’ve mentioned as well, which is really important, and getting paid upfront, which I think is really, really important for any business, but actually leveraging the suppliers 100%, you know, because then they’re going to get more business and you can build those long-lasting business relationships. I think that actually tightens business relationships, doesn’t it? When you’ve got a really good relationship with somebody for sure you know. And like you said, everyone grows together, right? And then if you’re growing together, as long as that stays on track, it’s, you know, really, really, you know, really positive way, isn’t it? Which is awesome. So look, I think that’s, you know, an incredible transformation. What was it like dealing with that growth? Because that is monster growth, right? You know, going from a, that’s actually one of the things. It’s funny because you think everyone fears failure, but actually a lot of people fear success. Yeah, it’s incredible because that wasn’t, that’s something I think, well, that’s a good problem, right? That’s a good problem to have. But a lot of people like, Oh, my God, what if I got too big? What if it all got out of control, you know, and I couldn’t then control it. And that’s kind of one of their fears, which I find incredible. But it really is. In growing a business, growing, going from 200 K to 2 million to, you know, a few years later doing, what did you say? It was like, it, it grew to 30 million, didn’t it? Just a couple of years.
Steve Perez:
We kinda leveled off a few years for 60 million.
Adam Stott:
60 million pounds, which is incredible growth. What was that time like? And when you go back to, if you transport yourself back in time, what did that feel like? You know, what was, how did you manage? Did you, you know, what were some of the things you did to manage that exponential growth?
Steve Perez:
The best days ever. It was so much fun. You know, when, when you say, Oh, imagine if we turned over a million pounds in a month. Shit, we’ve done a million. We’ve done 2 million. Oh, we’d never hit 3 million, 3 million a month. That’s impossible. Yeah, we kind of set ourselves targets. And we hit, you know, we kept hitting and breaking up, you know, our targets, but yeah, the brand had just got so much inertia that, you know, yeah, the brand was, we were sort of being carried at that time by the brand, as opposed to, yeah, it wasn’t really a case of how much can we sell? How much can we make? Which is a great position to be in because when people start negotiating and they say, Oh, well, how long I’ll give you supply and demand, right? That’s a surprise, but I can sell it.
Adam Stott:
Yeah.
Steve Perez:
It’s not like that now, unfortunately.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, of course.
Steve Perez:
But what you have to, what you have to do as a business, yeah, so what you have to do with a successful business, as you grow, you have to metamorphosize. You’ve gotta be a chameleon, you’ve gotta change. Yeah. Yeah. I’m, look, I’m a white van man. Yeah, I saw you driving around doing delivery, you know. I’m not that man anymore. I’ve had to change out, you know, I’ve got, I employ 400 people. But the key thing is I’ve got a great team and then your skill set has to change. How good are you at employing people? How good are you at really giving people, you know, giving people responsibility. Giving, you know, I’m a great believer in you’ve got to, you’ve got to delegate. You know, the problem is a lot of entrepreneurs I see, they want to do everything. They want to be involved in everything. You can’t, yeah, the control freaks. Yeah, I suppose in some cases, we’re all a bit control freak, but you have to let go. Otherwise it’s impossible to grow.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, absolutely. So delegation, really important, building that really great team. And I like, I like the call on the skill set, right? How good are you at employing people?
Steve Perez:
Yeah.
Adam Stott:
Because it’s always, you know, a challenge. I had a really successful guy say to me recently, which I thought was a good analogy, you know, he said, one thing that people miss is that a business is like a living organism. You know, it’s always moving and growing and you’ve got to be constantly nurturing that living organism and allowing it to grow and allowing it to, because a lot of people think once I’ve done this, I’m done. It’s never that way, is it? Well, once you’ve done this, it’s the next thing, right? Which is really important. And then, when did it come to the point, so you’ve got this really good product. So this is what I wanted to ask you, what I took out of that, what you were saying. You created this amazing product and you mentioned it as a brand. So did you believe that it was an amazing product, or do you think it was an amazing brand, or do you think it was both?
Steve Perez:
Yeah, I think it’s a bit of both. I mean, one thing we’ve always, you know, we did right from the beginning, because of my experience of sort of selling a lot of these cheaper Alka Pops is some of them tasted bloody awful. And we really worked really hard on, you know, on the taste. And we did lots of sampling and really got, and even today can guarantee any of our products taste better than our competitors. And I know I was doing some tasting against another blue product with a similar sounding out yesterday and I couldn’t believe the difference. You know, I got such great job. So, and then you’re going to get creating a brand is more difficult of course, if you, because you haven’t got millions of pounds marketing budget. And I think one mistake entrepreneurs make, and I see this quite a lot as well, people come to me with stuff that they get. You know, they get some funding for wherever they think, well, I’m going to spend a lot of money in marketing. Let’s do festivals because they sound like great fun and you get lots of exposure of the brand. But the first thing, what you have to get is you have to get the opportunity to purchase. There’s no good, everybody know about your brand. Nobody been able to buy it. So there’s a lot of chicken and eggs. So, how do you create a brand? So I, you know, my belief has always been first thing you have to do is get the distribution. Now you can market within those distribution boards. Yeah, obviously I’m talking about drinks brands now, consumer brands, which I know best. But with a drinks brand, if we get it into nightclubs, we can promote and we used to do stuff like VKTV and a web based at that time. But we’ve always marketed direct to the consumer because we’ve not had the big budgets that [25:41.2] the big players have. So, and I think you need to think about, you know, be able adage about, you know, every pound you waste, every one in every two pounds of money you spent on marketing with difficulties working out which half you lose. Yeah. What? Well, what you so, but you can’t afford when you start out, you can’t afford to lose one penny. You can’t, you got to make sure, right, can I see a direct correlation with that marketing money I’m spending to sales?
Adam Stott:
I really want to mention actually, because I meant to mention it at the time, but I was enjoying the direction we’re going in. What I think is really crucial for a startup is what you said is we were buying and selling. You know, that you mentioned that you said, Hey, that’s how we got going. We were buying and we were selling and I think fundamentally that’s what gets the wheels in motion, isn’t it?
Steve Perez:
That’s what a business is, you buy and sell it.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, that’s it, right?
Steve Perez:
The old boys don’t, whatever you’re doing, you buy and sell it to them.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, it’s just amazing that I trained thousands of business owners, Steve. And there is a real fear around the selling, right? You know, there’s a real fear around the selling. Talk to me about that. Did you ever, was that something natural for you? Was it a necessity for you? Did you, what’s your mentality on rejection?
Steve Perez:
I tell you, I am not a natural salesman. I do it, yeah, I wish it was and I’ve tried to hone my skills and I’ve read loads of books and all that kind of stuff, but it’s not my, yeah, natural, it’s not my natural environment. Yeah, most salesmen are really good at chatting girls up in nightclubs. I think it’s probably not done that way these days.
Adam Stott:
Over a VK, yeah?
Steve Perez:
Yeah.
Adam Stott:
Something like that anyway, right?
Steve Perez:
Yeah. Because I always feel that rejection. Yeah, I don’t like that feeling, but none of us do really. But Mark, actually Mark James is great salesman. He came from, he was selling photocopiers. Now he’s selling photocopies, you get rejected all the time. And I’d say, actually, if I’d start it again, I’d probably go and get a job. It’s doing something like telesales, where you get lots of rejection. And the two that I don’t like about it is because it’s so personal to me. Yeah, my business. Yeah, my brands. And when I get rejected, it really hurts. I was great when he’s, when you, you know, when you get a success, but it does, well, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got to sell. You know, you’ve got to, you know, and I’d say, you know, get on courses. There’s loads of stuff these days on, you know. Podcast, all the rest of it about, but you, yeah, you’ve got to learn to sell. And I read a great book. I don’t read that many books, but when I first started, there’s a book I read called Going For It by Victor Kiam. Now, do you know who Victor Kiam is?
Adam Stott:
Do you know what, I’ve not actually read that.
Steve Perez:
Right, so Victor Kiam was a man, he had a [28:43.17] ‘70s, and he bought a Remington, his wife bought him a Remington Razor, and it was such a good shape, bought the company, so he’s the man behind Remington. And he said, he started, he said, he wasn’t, I wasn’t the cleverest, I wasn’t the best salesman, he said but what I could do, the one thing I could do, is kind of work hard, I was determined. And when the snow came down, he was selling hardware. I was out there selling hardware and I’m going to the hardware store and the guy would say, why are you come all this way? You know, I can’t believe everybody else has canceled. Well, I’d have one, two hours with that guy. And that’s it. If you work hard and persist and yeah, selling is difficult, but you just, if you work hard, get out there, you will be successful. And I think one of the problems with a lot of entrepreneurs or buddy entrepreneurs, you expect to go from A to Z in one step, but there’s a lot of stuff in between. It takes time. And it’s not you know, it’s not about, you know, to me, you know, and you’ve said this, you know, business is a competitive sport. And it’s not just, you know, if you’ve just got the iron on the money, if you just going into business because I want to make money, I want to make money, you probably won’t be successful. You want to go into business because you love business, you love your product, you’re really passionate about what you do, you’ll be successful, you can’t fail. But it’s not, yeah, everybody wants to be rich, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You know?
Adam Stott:
And it’s got even worse, isn’t it right? With sort of modern culture. And especially the patience thing that you mentioned. I think there’s two things that comparison. One, comparing yourself against other people, but then you never really know what they’ve gone through. I think that’s a big problem. And then a second problem is, you know, the guy gets a Lamborghini on Instagram and the kids think, well, I want a Lamborghini. Yeah.? And they end up following a path for the wrong outcome, you know. Rather than actually saying, you know what? I want to create something. Which is what I think an entrepreneur is somebody that creates something and takes that risk to go and put their creation into the world, right? And I think that’s what’s missing a lot of the time. So actually, a lot of people getting started for the wrong reasons rather than the right reasons. And I love what you said you know, if you’ve got a passion, that’s what keeps you going through the challenges, right? Because when you get that knock, you pick yourself back up, right? You know?
Steve Perez:
Yeah, you know, the money is kind of a byproduct of having a successful business. I mean, because I’ve had failures as well. We’ve been really, I’ve been really careful. Actually, I’ve got lots of lovely cars and stuff like that but if you look at my, you know, my business, if this year we turned over nearly 90 million pounds, it’s all published. We made 8 million pounds, but our director’s dividends were sort of just a few hundred thousand pounds. Why? Because I want to invest back in the business.
Adam Stott:
Keep the cash in, yeah.
Steve Perez:
Keep the cash in the business. Yeah, as with the bank, we’ve got property, you know, we own our own premises. Because, you know, my philosophy of business, it’s not all about make a lot of money to please the shareholders this year, make more next year to please them. I’m looking at it as a long-term project and there will be ups and downs. And we’re going through risks, but if you’ve got a business, and actually, yeah, this year’s quite tough for us, actually. You know, it’s not, we’ve had three fantastic years, but it affects all of us. But we’ve got cash, we’ve got property, we’ll be absolutely fine. But you’ve got to get some wool on your back, you know, it’s not a case of building a business and go, oh, I made this much. I’ve seen loads of guys, they made him a few quid, go and buy a brand new car, BMW, Porsche, next thing, oh, he’s gone bust, oh, yeah. So, yeah, that’s kind of when I say putting people off, you know. You might say, you know, you might be better off working for, you’ve got the security, working for someone, you’ve got guaranteed it, you’ve got pension, you’ve got, you know, it plays havoc with your relationships, having your own business, you know. [32:51.2]. Yes, they’re a divorce and a, you know, she’s terrible. You don’t see your kids as much as you want to. And he’s really hard. He’s lonely. So you’ve got to be prepared for all of that.
Adam Stott:
So despite all of that, because they’re so real. It is lonely. You do play havoc with your relationships. You know, there are ups and downs. There are hairy moments you know. There are moments when you feel on top of the world. There are moments when you feel like, Oh, my God, what am I doing? You know, you go for all of that. But knowing all that now, what is the level of how do you feel about being a business person? You know, I’m sure you wouldn’t swap it for the world, right? You’re glad you’ve gone for it because I love the challenge. And I think that’s what people should fall in love with is the challenge.
Steve Perez:
Well, exactly. I mean, I don’t, yeah, my, you know, my other life is I’m a rally driver. I’ve won four British rally championships and I kind of started that once the business got successful. I thought all I do is work. I need a hobby, you know, and yeah, [33:50.5]. It gets loads of cars. So it’s kind of a bit of a, you know, sort of where, yeah, I could promote my business and I’ve been very successful in it. Because yeah, motorsport, particularly rallying, I think it’s all about taking risks. And I’ll take it and it’s exciting, you know. And it’s, I suppose, risk is, yeah, is exciting, you know. And busy, you’re only playing with money, you know, and actually in a rally car, you know, you’re playing with your life. Yeah, I’ve had two accidents, I broke my neck in Africa six years ago. Hence, why I’ve got a bit of a squeaky voice these days. I was in a fire in Belgium and I was on a ventilator for about four weeks. And yeah, so yeah, crazy sport. But yeah, and businesses yeah, it’s risk-taking and it’s exciting and it’s intellectually stimulating. Yeah. And all of those things, you know, I can, but you know, as you know, it shouldn’t be about the money. It should be about you, but look, you know, freedom, being able to sort of, you decide. You know, you tend not to take those holidays because you’re working, but yeah, well not to have something so no, you can’t have that week off. Yeah, you can’t have that day off or whatever, you know. Certainly, yeah, you’re a master of your own destiny.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s really key and crucial and, you know, everything we’ve been, I think it’s amazing. The journey you’ve had Steve, you know, building global brands and building that business to a 90 million pound business or having all that success and then going off doing the rally drive and it, you know, it’s an incredible journey and I think the things that you shared can be very, very, very helpful and useful to the business owners listening. I just wanna ask you one last question, if I may. If you were talking to somebody that came and they were at the beginning of their business journey, they were just starting up, they were just getting the pieces of the puzzle together, what would be the kind of three bits of advice you would give them from your experience? What would you say to them in order to, you know, help them a little bit along their journey? What would those three things be?
Steve Perez:
Well firstly, it’s not going to happen overnight. You’ve got to be prepared for ups and downs. You’ve also got to be prepared the fact that you’re probably not going to make a lot of money for quite a while. Yeah, I see people who, you know, get crowdfunding and expect to earn 100 grand a year or whatever in there and expect somebody else to put the money. You’ve got to, it’s going to be, so you got you, so be prepared for that. Yeah. You can’t beat hard work. Yeah. Persistence pays. Yeah. If you are out there and you work, if you’re working hard, and I think really important thing is you’ve gotta do something you know and understand. Yeah. You know, I start my business up drinks, but that’s my background. Now, see people all the time coming into my business from other businesses thinking, well, I know it’s like it, created a brand and for lots of reasons it fails. Yeah. And they say I’m going to IT because I don’t kind of use IT, but I don’t really understand it. So, going to do something you really enjoy, do something that you really understand. Yeah, because you imagine, you know, it’s easy. Well, actually, all we do is we pour a bit of alcohol with some sugar and fruit juice and put it into a bottle. It’s not that difficult, is it? Anyone can do that. So, yeah, you’ve got to do something you really, really understand and you’re passionate about.
Adam Stott:
I think that’s really, really amazing advice and really meets people where they’re at as this advice, the advice they need really. All right. So no, I think, thank, thank you so much. I mean, where can people connect with you, Steve? If they wanted to connect with you, are you on social media?
Steve Perez:
Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook and depends if it’s about rallying, it’s usually Facebook and Instagram.
Adam Stott:
You’re on Instagram as well. What’s your Instagram handle? Usually people like…
Steve Perez:
I don’t know if you’ve got Steve Perez in, I think you’ll find me somewhere.
Adam Stott:
Steve Perez. So go and connect with Steve, you know, if you want to follow his journey, even more of building global brands. I really enjoyed the conversation. I love it. You know, real entrepreneur, you know, very transparent. I think it’s been really, really valuable for the audience. So I really appreciate you coming on. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation today, so thank you ever so much. And to our listeners, if you haven’t already, if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, perhaps you could go and share this with somebody just by going up, clicking the three dots, and share this episode with someone that you feel could really benefit maybe. You know, somebody getting into business, growing a business, Steve has shared some massive amounts of wisdom here. So go and share the message as that is how this podcast grows. Thanks everyone, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Business Growth Secrets. Hey everybody, Adam here, and I hope you loved today’s episode. Hope you thought it was fabulous. And if you did, I’d like to ask you a small favor. Could you jump over and go and give the podcast a review? Of course, I’ll be super grateful if that is a five-star review. We’re putting our all into this podcast for you, delivering you the content, giving you the secrets. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please go and give us a review and talk about what your favorite episode is perhaps. Every single month, I select someone from that review list to come to one of my exclusive Academy days and have lunch with me on the day meeting hundreds of my clients. So if you want that to be you, then you’re going to be in with a shout if you go and give us a review on iTunes. Please, of course, do remember to subscribe so you can get all the up-to-date episodes. Peace and love and I’ll see you very, very soon. Thank you.