Episode 354: The Future of AI with Piers Linney
Learning to sell is vital for a business’s prosperity, whether through traditional sales or digital marketing. Identifying effective methods or individuals to sell your product or service is crucial.
In this episode, Adam Stott speaks with Piers Linney, a successful entrepreneur and former contestant on the Dragons’ Den. Piers recounts his journey from launching a paper round business at 13, to practicing law, working as an investment banker, and finally becoming a notable figure in the AI sector. He underlines the significance of mastering sales and its influence on business success.
Piers shares his Dragons’ Den experiences and their subsequent impact on his career. He also delves into the realm of AI, outlining how businesses can utilize this technology to automate processes and stimulate growth.
Show Highlights:
- Why sales is crucial for business success.
- Focusing on generating revenue and finding ways to increase it can help overcome challenges and drive growth.
- How to hire the right people and effectively manage them as key to success.
- Embracing AI can revolutionize businesses.
- Importance of understanding how to invest in AI and how it can give businesses a competitive edge.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: Look, really been looking forward to having you here as a guest. We wanted to have you for quite some time, you know, because of the broad experience you’ve got in terms of building businesses and, you know, and we’ve got so many people in the room that are looking to grow and scale their businesses and we’ll hear from them a bit later.
[00:00:20] But you’ve had all this experience, you know, finance, being on the board of the British Bank, launching businesses, selling businesses, scaling businesses, been a dragon, lawyer, there’s a lot here. How do we unpack that? And if you took us all the way back to the start of where you started out, You know, what did a young peers look like?
[00:00:43] and how have you gone on to have this amazing career?
[00:00:46] Piers Linney: The young peers with a slimmer, better looking version of me. So I grew up in, in the, Pennines, basically in Lancashire. So I was born in Stoke on Trent, moved there when I was about nine. And I was always fascinated by the Industrial Revolution, right?
[00:00:59] So it was always all the mills and the weavers, cottages, always fascinated me. And it talks about the, entrepreneurs, you know, the, Stevenson, Isabar, Kingdom, Brunel’s, all these kind of entrepreneurs, Industrial Revolution. And the Americans, your Vanderbilt’s, Carnegie’s, fascinated me. And I always wanted to be in business.
[00:01:16] now, I didn’t really know what that meant. And, where I grew up, everybody had, you know, Graham had a quarry, Eddie had a building business, Derek had a joinery business. There were quite a many sort of manual labelled stuff in your hands, really. And when I said I wanted to go into business and finance, everybody looked at me like I was insane.
[00:01:34] So, when I was about 13, my first business I had, It was that I had a paper round five pounds a week and those days when it snowed up north, it covered your car literally. So it was quite a lot of hard work and I thought there’s gotta be a better way one morning my there’ve gotta be a better way. My, my late father said to me, one ’cause Sunday morning the news agents to asked me why.
[00:01:56] Didn’t deliver newspapers. You have to go and get it because I think they were big or whatever. They couldn’t be bothered. But they asked me to go and get my paper and I’ll give you a tip. So I’ve got my BMX, went down to the bike shop a half mile away, picked up this paper. What it’s about? They gave me a tip.
[00:02:08] You can see where this is going. So then I thought, hang on a minute, next door neighbor. That’s great. Can you get mine before? Anyway, I built this sort of Sunday morning paper round business, which was a massive bag. But of course, I couldn’t go and buy the papers from the newsagent. Because I’d be, charging the customer what’s costing me no margin.
[00:02:28] So I’m already learning these things at the age of 13 about margin. So I disintermediated local news agents, went straight to the wholesaler. Well, my dad did.
[00:02:38] And, got this big bundle of papers dropped on the door, like you see in films every Sunday morning. Sorted it all out, wrote who got what, delivered them, I earned 20 quid on a Sunday morning for four hours work.
[00:02:51] So I learned there, talking about, you know, what you learn is that if you see a problem, a niche, or you solve it for somebody, what’s your problem? Solve it for somebody. You can do it where there’s enough money was a margin of your time to make it worthwhile and Let’s not forget you put a lot of hard work in Let’s not forget that then you can create some wealth and make some money and I wanted to buy a BMX bike I’m still in bikes.
[00:03:17] I love bikes and Allow me to buy my first sort of bike Posh BMX, basically, but I took a lot of way. Remember when it was on the side? It was a Curtis. I’m actually still helping the bike company today. Curtis BMX. I’m talking to the guys who had a mongoose. Do you remember them? That’s cool. Yeah, mine was a British brand.
[00:03:36] All right. But I took this all away and you learn a lot from it that I kind of took through. And at the age of about 60, I think it wasn’t cool to pay around anymore. So it was my first exit and I sold it for 200 quid. Did you know it’s an M& A? So you can see the whole, almost the whole life cycle of a business.
[00:03:56] The days where you didn’t want to go out of bed or it was raining. but that’s, that was how I got into it. And then after that, I was, I don’t know how old you are in the room, but who remembers Bettaware? Bettaware, cool. So delivering pots and pans and the things to help her and not, you know, an older lady open a jar.
[00:04:12] And I was selling things pre Amazon. I was selling these like door to door stuff. And that’s where I learned to sell. Because nobody really wanted a bit of rubber to get a lid off a jar, but I could sort of try and persuade you to buy one off me. And that’s why I understood about, you know, more, that was more, I’d say, a bit about selling a bit about customer service and also dealing at quite a young age with quite a large company as it was.
[00:04:34] Adam Stott: How important was that learning to sell? Because I truly find that obviously we train thousands of business owners and you know, We have done for many years. Often if this pace is missing, it can really, you know, make it tough for an entrepreneur, isn’t it? So learning to sell early, how much do you think that helped you?
[00:04:56] Piers Linney: So I think, I made a video on this. Posted somewhere once. So in, you know, retail, it can be location, In any business, retail included, is sell and sell some more. If you, so as you probably, you’ve learned building businesses, that Revenue solves a lot of problems. There’s money just coming in the door.
[00:05:19] You can make lots of mistakes with revenue. If you haven’t got revenue, make a mistake, even more costly, could slow you down, could be very risky. I like that way of putting it though. If you can’t sell, so forget location, occasion, location, sell. So if you can’t sell, or even if you try to learn to sell and you’re not confident, you’re not the right personality or he’s not very good at it.
[00:05:41] You’ve got to find somebody else who can. If it’s online, it’s digital. You’ve got to find someone who understands and really can be aimly retentive about data and analytics and converting and A B testing because that’s not for everybody either. So if you can’t do old fashioned sales, which I’ve done or to the digital marketing, which is kind of sales on a page, find someone who can.
[00:06:02] Otherwise, you will not succeed.
[00:06:05] Adam Stott: And that’s simple. And you learning that a better way going out. So you
[00:06:10] Piers Linney: actually
[00:06:11] Adam Stott: went door to door.
[00:06:11] Piers Linney: You did a bit of pamphlet, gave it a bit of chat, and then you came back a week later. So anything you want, they’ll be like, Oh, look to that. Look to that. Then you become like pointing at the page, say, oh, you should definitely get a, an easy hole can opener or whatever.
[00:06:25] And then you sold it. And then after that, I did things like a, Well, university, of course, I did party, things like that. And at law school, I did company formations, learning how to form companies. And when I was a trainee solicitor, I did film finance. So EAS, like funding into films, you could put some money in and get a part in the film as an extra.
[00:06:44] Usually a corpse on a battlefield. So it wasn’t that exciting. So even for my paper run, I guess, after that, I was always in business. So I was sitting there in my as a banker at Credit Suisse after being a lawyer in the city of M& A banker Even then I was doing the film finance and then a dot com was a side project called side hustles now I don’t like the word hustle.
[00:07:09] It’s not hustle. It’s a business and then That became something I stepped into out of the city into my first dot com in 99
[00:07:18] Adam Stott: what might cuz you do you add that very much that and then? that corporate career, you were, and those companies you mentioned, Credit Suisse and You say that.
[00:07:26] Piers Linney: So when you look at my, you look at my CV and you go, well, you know, you went to Manchester University, you got a degree in law and accounting.
[00:07:33] You then went to a law school, a decent law school. You then joined a good law firm, qualified as a lawyer. You then joined a good bank. You then moved up to a better bank and became a hedge fund manager. It Well, it looks like I had a plan. Yeah. Right. If you look at from my end, right? Yeah. I didn’t have a clue any of that was, I didn’t know what being a lawyer was until I got to university.
[00:07:54] I didn’t know what being a banker was until I was a lawyer. I knew none of this stuff. I didn’t have a Scooby at all, and that’s sort of battle my way. Climb upon a box and look over the hedge until that’s interesting. I wanna do that. But the beauty of it is, I always say that when I said I wanna be a corporate lawyer, people said to me.
[00:08:10] People like you don’t become lawyers. You know, you didn’t go to the right school. You didn’t go to Oxbridge, got Oxbridge then. You didn’t go to Oxbridge, you know, don’t get your hopes up. So I became a lawyer. When I was a lawyer, people said to me, I want to be an investment banker. And they’re like, it’s very hard to move from law to banking.
[00:08:26] Luckily, I did an accounting and law degree, so I knew numbers. And again, people like you don’t become investment bankers. So I became an investment banker. So you can see, I was always
[00:08:35] Adam Stott: rebelling,
[00:08:36] Piers Linney: quite blinkered in a way, but very, determined to sort of get on.
[00:08:42] Adam Stott: And I think that rebellious streak though, of, is quite a good thing for an entrepreneur.
[00:08:47] You know, that if somebody says that you can’t do it, if somebody says you can’t have it, just actually having that strong will to go and create it is a real entrepreneurial trait, thing though is,
[00:08:57] Piers Linney: if you’re, successful, I don’t know how you measure that, and you, so imagine you, I don’t know, you’ve got your chips, and you put it on red, comes up.
[00:09:04] Yeah. And you think, I’ll put it on red, comes up. I’ll put it on black this time. Black comes up when you think I’m a genius. That is so true. If you put them all on red, black comes up. That is so true. So you’ve got to be slightly careful. You’re hedging your bets along the way and when you’re successful that you’re not all just putting it all on red again.
[00:09:22] Adam Stott: And it is, I’ve definitely been there a hundred percent where you feel like you, everything you touch turns to gold and then you realize it sinks.
[00:09:32] Piers Linney: You know, because of, because that means you feel like a fool. Yeah. Well, why would I have done that? Yeah. but again, it’s experience.
[00:09:38] Adam Stott: Yeah, definitely is experience.
[00:09:40] So, so when you went through that process and you go out and you step out of that world into, to starting your business, what kind of, what did you experience, what changed for you? Did you see things differently? Did you?
[00:09:53] Piers Linney: Yeah, so it’s an interesting time, so I, kind of left it. so I was a lawyer, I joined Credit Suisse, First Boston, which was a bit like Goldman Sachs, a big bank.
[00:10:00] So I was earning like, you know, a quarter million quid a year at 25. Bought my first car and a debit card. And then I thought, ooh, this is great, I bought a flat in there for cash, almost. My bonus. I was giving my mum bonuses, and she was crying. It was just like, money. And, and I was crying. Because the problem is, no matter how much money you earn, At that age, you spend, 110 percent of it.
[00:10:19] guest: So,
[00:10:20] Piers Linney: so I had that issue. the property prices were growing then, so that was alright. But what was interesting, I think, is that, so I, I could, I understood law, finance. I knew, I was good at presenting things. A lot of banking’s PowerPoint and presentations, not the numbers. It’s selling deals to companies.
[00:10:37] Like, you know, we were trying to, you know, merge, Halifax and HBOS, that kind of thing, into HBOS, and, And I came out and I thought, well, I’ve got all these skills. How hard can it be? So you have a business plan and you go out and someone gives you raise about a million quid. I think put a million pounds and you’ve got a business plan.
[00:10:55] You get your little office, you know, well, how hard can it be building a business? And then very, quickly reality bites, you know, hiring people, building a team, technology, managing technology, building technology, which wasn’t as simple as it is today with cloud technology. So we realized very quickly, actually, that the reality is quite different today.
[00:11:13] It’s in a textbook, you know, it is, and essentially it’s about people, managing people.
[00:11:20] Adam Stott: And how did you learn on the job? How did you learn on the job? You started to build that team out, but maybe the first time you’d done that part of it, what was it like for you?
[00:11:30] Piers Linney: So I’m quite a fast learner. I’ve tended to have until I had one business more recently, which didn’t quite work out where I had a co founder.
[00:11:37] So was that co founders that sort of, augmented me, augmented each other. so I learned very quickly, but you tend to learn by making lots of mistakes. you know, both in terms of strategy, execution, people timing often, but we had in the dot com. Phase of what this is late 99. What was interesting is we raised the money and in March, you know, the bubble burst quite literally So suddenly we’re going from raising money when I left credit suisse I left you see the films like there’s like hollywood films where they’re in a big bank and they get fired They got a box of a plant in it.
[00:12:12] It’s literally like that So you go and get your bonus make sure it’s you make sure it’s arrived your bank account Yep, and then you go and resign, and they give you a box and you plant, and off you go. And as I left the building, people said, well, what are you going to do? Where are you leaving? I’m going to start dot com.
[00:12:27] I raised 700 grand leaving the building. Did you? I probably closed about 400 of it. But in terms of people that are up, put some money in. That’s how, that’s what it was like. So I went from that, to Halving the size of the team, couldn’t raise any more money, doing a down round with existing investors, and then me having to end up leaving because I was too expensive as well, even though I was earning half less, but 10 percent of what I earned as a banker, and then my co founder’s family funding and I left.
[00:12:54] So I saw kind of really a whole economic cycle that would probably take you a decade normally, maybe a bit shorter now, but a decade in about 14 months. So I learned a lot very quickly. and then I went into dance music and record labels and all sorts of interesting things. But eventually then what I did was I came out of that and I thought, What is my core skill?
[00:13:16] What can I do? Which is quite important is, you know, play to your strengths. Don’t just always try and reinvent something that you don’t know anything about or you’ve seen on YouTube or read a book about. You know, Do things you’re innately or can learn to be good at. And then just be world class at it.
[00:13:33] And I thought what I’m very good at actually is selling. and finance. And being innovative in finance. So I ended up I ended up going to Manhattan. I built a website, looked like Goldman Sachs. Went to Manhattan, CV. Kind of stacked up. And I ended up, again there’s lots of hedge funds. Like investment funds are due to the technical investments and I put in putting hedge fund money into broadly mostly UK Listed company investment opportunities.
[00:14:03] So I became an estate agent for hedge fund money. That’s why I first made some cash
[00:14:08] Adam Stott: Yeah,
[00:14:08] Piers Linney: but it was playing to my strengths
[00:14:10] Adam Stott: Which was selling and finance. So understanding the finance world, and bringing it to people that pretty much didn’t understand it. Almost, yeah? Solving that problem. And that set you on the path, right?
[00:14:23] So I made some
[00:14:23] Piers Linney: money, and then I was always, I wasn’t spending it, I was investing it in, friends businesses, trying to do a bit of M& A. He just fascinated the whole thing, helping someone set a company up, buying a bit of a business when we bought a couple of businesses. And one of them was, we bought off Dixons.
[00:14:41] That’s quite big money by now. You’re buying companies like that for five million. Maybe it’s not enormous for five million. And then we bought a company, our firm Dixons, which is, Curry’s, and it was a mobile phone business that they weren’t interested in. And we built it into quite a big business, about 45 million in revenue, about five million EBITDA.
[00:14:59] And then we sold that. So that’s my first kind of. I made money like income and capital. Yeah, that was the first kind of exit then after that a few sort of exited What I found me I have to keep planting seeds like a farmer. Otherwise, I can’t harvest them They I can’t sort of I get this sort of dry patches sometimes then after that really I went into cloud I bought a business in cloud.
[00:15:21] This is that cloud infrastructure. Everyone’s used to it now. You think about, you know, you don’t think about it. Back in the day, you know, you were putting servers in a room in the corner of your office, and you were calling it the server room, and that’s all in the cloud now. You don’t think about it. And I was one of the first, one of my businesses, one of the pioneers, trying to get businesses to adopt cloud technology.
[00:15:40] And we built that up, and we won a massive tender. Tender didn’t, the tender, I won’t mention the name, big telecoms businesses, didn’t get to market in time. And we ran out of money. I had to sell it in a fire sale. I lost about two million quid.
[00:15:53] Adam Stott: Did you really? Wow. And it’s so interesting you mentioned cloud.
[00:15:57] You know, I remember many, I think this must have been I remember them talking about cloud and I remember watching Mark Benioff talk about the launch of Salesforce and at a Tony Robbins event, and I was really young, I mean this is like ages ago, and that went on to be a multi billion pound company, but what’s really interesting is as we were sat outside, and we’ll come back to this maybe in a minute, you were talking to me about AI, and how that’s where your focus is, or a lot of your focus is at the moment.
[00:16:26] I think that’d be really interesting, which we’ll come to in a minute. But one of the things that I’ve been doing with the team, obviously what, an amazing career team, right? Hugh, you know, amazing. And obviously you’ve got to have a very strong mindset, and you’ve got to be, you know. We’ve
[00:16:38] Piers Linney: only got to 2010.
[00:16:39] Right.
[00:16:41] Adam Stott: Yeah. We’ve only got to 2010. Well, you, you then got this, fast forward a little bit, We’ve been talking about Halo Effect today, and building a brand, and how when you become known, things typically become easier, for you. You get more opportunities. Well,
[00:17:01] Piers Linney: let’s talk about that. That’s not always the case, but go on.
[00:17:03] yeah.
[00:17:03] Adam Stott: No, I’d be really interested to hear your take on it, which would be awesome, especially for everyone in the room, because, you know, there’s people at different stages. There’s people here that have gone on and built really great businesses. There’s some people early in the stage, some people at the beginning, some people that are looking to grow, some people looking to scale.
[00:17:18] We’ve got all these different sizes and they’ve got to make themselves known and build that brand. I know that you took the, how did you come to find yourselves after all of that, getting yourself onto dragons then? How did that come about?
[00:17:30] Piers Linney: So you don’t kind of get yourself to kind of come and find you.
[00:17:33] So I, so about 2008 I was approached by the government to be a role model for young black men and boys. And I was kind of like, why? I never thought about it, because I was just doing my thing, and they said, well look around you, do you ever, meet yourself? I don’t. Especially, my mum’s from Barbados, my dad’s from, my dad was from Manchester, so I never met anyone with Caribbean heritage in anything I ever did.
[00:17:54] So I became a role model, and from that I ended up on a list of the most influential black Britons. The hundred most influential black Britons, my dad used to say in at 99 some well done So and then through that the research is not looking at TV programs How do I find someone that ticks a few boxes about what I do?
[00:18:10] Yeah, comprehensive school kid, you know mixed race a lot of stuff grew up in Lancashire and ended up doing the secret million He remembers the secret. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was in 2011. I was on the secret millionaire little interesting thing there So I’m I don’t a lot A lad in prison, I was in prison basically, and the young offenders, and he got 11 years at the age 19 for drugs and firearms related offenses.
[00:18:33] Wasn’t as bad as it sounds, but that’s what he got. And, I, want to mentor him. The producers lost their minds, they can’t give him money. I said, I’m not gonna give him money. So he came out, I did a mollycoddling, I was like the uncle he never had, bit of advice, his first rent guarantee, gave him a job actually as a support engineer in our IT business, he loved IT, made him redundant, slightly awkward day.
[00:18:56] he then started a business, didn’t work out, went back into sort of computers and cloud. And now, what, 10 years later, I saw him about, Three weeks ago, we went to his house. He’s probably only 130 grand a year. He’s a cloud infrastructure architect with a family. So the point there is, in your life, or people you work with, or anyone’s life, if you can deflect it here, right, 10 years down range, right, it’s somewhere very, different.
[00:19:23] So that’s what that story’s about. Anyway, through that, the researchers then approached me, saying, do you want to go on Dragon’s Den? And I was do I? Do I? Do I really? I don’t know. And, I was away. I’m busy. I was away with, I’m going to drop some names now. I was away with Sir Richard Branson at his private game reserve in, call it Ulusaba, in Kruger.
[00:19:44] Not because he likes me, because I gave his charity about 50 grand. So
[00:19:47] guest: So
[00:19:50] Piers Linney: we were all away in this place, right? It’s like a But there’s a lesson in that. Well, yeah. And to be honest with you, I did a lot of work with the Bransons after that, and I’m still friendly with, at least Holly. It was a good networking to do.
[00:20:02] Anyway, it’s got this sort of James Bond layer in the bush with a satellite dish on top of it. And they kept ringing me saying, Where are you? What are you doing? We need to know. And I thought, who do I talk to about how you mix business and the media? So I haven’t conversations with Branson on having. I remember this clearly.
[00:20:23] It’s not. It’s not some made up reverse engineered founder story. This they often are. we’re in a Corona sitting on this like table looking at lions chasing impalas around. And I went through the whole thing, and he goes, No, you should do it, you’d be good at it, on people on TV like you. He said, I used to get on a plane for a TV spot.
[00:20:40] You know, don’t forget the power of TV. It’s just slightly pre, like, you know, Instagram taking off. And he goes, you should do it. I go, yeah, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. And I got up to walk off. And he goes, get back here, made me call the producer, who I know to this day, and said, and tell her that I’m in.
[00:20:57] That’s ended up on Dragons Den. . So, and I get, it now. Not sticking up my arm. I get this thing thinking that you’ve gotta remember that you’re this comprehensive school kid, you know, the only black kid in school of two and a half thousand kids at big school. You’ve gone from there. You failed.
[00:21:12] I did my, I failed my 11 plus, did my A Levels twice, did, an A level twice. So I got into law and then suddenly sitting with Sir Richard Branson being entrepreneur I’ve ever, looked up to on his private game Reserve, asking for advice whether he should be a dragon on Dragons den.
[00:21:28] Adam Stott: Pretty amazing, right?
[00:21:29] guest: And
[00:21:35] Adam Stott: I have to ask because I think really I love the fact that you gave to the charity what motivates you to do that was, you know, where did that come from?
[00:21:45] Piers Linney: Well, I have 50 grand.
[00:21:46] Adam Stott: Yeah
[00:21:48] Piers Linney: So partly it’s I’ve always been a I think philanthropists are a bit strong. But I’ve always been, So my, the only mentor I’ve ever really had is a chap called Sir Ken Alissa.
[00:21:59] So Sir Ken Alissa is a Lord Lieutenant of Greater London. If you ever see the Royal Family out in London, coronations, funerals, weddings, he’s the mixed race looking guy in a nice black suit with a sword. He looks after the Royal Family. And I meet him every six months. I met him about a week ago actually, two weeks ago.
[00:22:15] I have a little mentor session. And he’s actually got a coat of arms, I aspire to have and he’s coats of arms underneath it says do well do good I think that says it all doesn’t it? So my view is that if you can give back if your glass is You know overflowing no matter how much it is have some of the bigger glasses.
[00:22:35] you should give back and my focus has been diversity and inclusion Not just in terms of ethnicity. It can be gender sexuality anything but my view is that ambition like this room You Right, different ages, sexualities, genders. Ambition, as far as I’m concerned, is evenly distributed, right? Access to things like this, what you do, if, guidance, finance, support, isn’t.
[00:23:01] And you need to connect the dots because everyone should have a chance of being the best person they can be so if you can And what you even this room you often you’re here. You’re learning you’d be up You’d be surprised that how much social capital you’ve already got.
[00:23:14] Adam Stott: Yeah,
[00:23:15] Piers Linney: and you can meet somebody just like the idea with Daniel 10 years ago.
[00:23:18] Yeah, deflection. He met me. All I did was some guidance, some social capital. Social capital is just you, your contacts, where you grew up. You might have a bit of extra cash to help out. And by deflecting his life there, you know, 10 years down range, he’s in a very different place. So I’ve always thought about giving back.
[00:23:36] Something I’ve always done. I’ve started, I found it about, Two charities one with Sir Ken that aim to do that.
[00:23:42] Adam Stott: Nice. How did you meet him as a mentor? How did that come about? I think
[00:23:46] Piers Linney: he’s a good example how you get a mentor. So I met him at an event I think it was like the sort of the black powerless where I was on this list of influential black Britons He was number one and I thought I want him to be my chairman And then we got talking.
[00:24:00] He became my chairman.
[00:24:01] Adam Stott: So you actually sought him out?
[00:24:02] Piers Linney: Yeah, he was my chairman in the business. It took him about a year to say yes. And then, I helped, well, I was a founding trustee of a charity fund. It’s called the Alito Foundation. Helps, sort of help, most of the Afro Caribbean leaders of tomorrow.
[00:24:17] And we helped him start that charity up. And then he became my chairman. And then that business is the one that didn’t work out very well, the cloud business. And then, but since then, he’s been my sort of mentor. And he’s the guy that, you know, people blow smoke at my backside, right? Quite often.
[00:24:30] Sometimes too often. And he’s the guy that I went to about just after COVID, you know, I didn’t wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. I was just getting over getting divorced, lots of various issues. And I sat down, I was going about, he kind of said to me, Piers. I mean, what, sorry, what?
[00:24:47] And he It’s a self pity, it does not suit you. Sort yourself out. And he’s one of the few people that can literally pull him by the hair and go, Get out! And I remember leaving him thinking, you know what, he’s absolutely right. And sometimes you need that.
[00:25:02] Adam Stott: A hundred percent, yeah, that sounds So, he helped you and you took that opportunity when you’re with Richard Branson in South Dragon’s Den.
[00:25:13] What happened next, and how did that impact you? So you,
[00:25:16] Piers Linney: let’s say you come on Dragon’s Den, you turn up at the set, they put some makeup on, because they clearly needed it, and they, you sit there in this chair, and you’re like, Deborah, Peter, what the hell? And then they, come out of the lift, which is not a lift actually, it’s a, it looks like a lift, they go in a, they go in a cupboard, there’s some footage of some machinery, and they come out of the cupboard again, so.
[00:25:37] The magic of TV and, and you’ve got your 50, you’ve got your pile of 50s, which is not actually the top two of 50s. And they paint the sides, but the, I’m giving it all away. I’m ruining it for everybody. But the, artists who make those things, but you can be in the lift literally, where they’ve got that old paint dripping down or where some, old canisters scratched the lift side.
[00:26:01] It’s all painted, but it looks so real. It’s amazing. So you sit down there and these, Entrepreneurs start coming out, you know, and they, you probably see what, 12 minutes on a full pitch maybe, four on a little short version. But they’re there for an hour and a half,
[00:26:16] guest: grilling
[00:26:16] Piers Linney: them. And I did nine deals, nine handshakes, six happened, some don’t because They’re not really there for the deal.
[00:26:23] They’re there for the PR. Yeah, Some of you do something, which some people do forget. It’s called due diligence. yeah. So, you actually find out that it’s just a load of pile of nonsense. yeah. You just make it up as it went along. and then six, well, it got on quite well. One, didn’t work out.
[00:26:40] I quit my business. I’m still friendly with the founders. well, we’re now four. I got my money back. Comes a day where you’re like, look. it’s lifestyle business. Yeah. Ain’t nobody got me involved anymore. And they’re like, I’ll give you the money, jog on. So I did. And then I invested in one called Wonderbly.
[00:26:56] Everyone got children. These beautiful, personalized books. And I think that’s the best deal ever done on Dragon’s Den. best deal in terms of investing, build a business, sell it. so I put in a hundred grand in there at five percent. I was the first to do kind of tech deals, really. All the dragon, this is like Debra, Peter, Ken Oppen and Duncan.
[00:27:16] I know Duncan quite well to this day. And they were like, what are you doing? You can’t get 5%. about. You’re going to ruin it. You know, coming here, changing everything. And I was like, what are you talking about? It’s a tech investment. 30 percent for 30 grand? No. And they had a term sheet from a VC. So I thought, well, someone’s done some due diligence.
[00:27:34] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:27:35] Piers Linney: And therefore by the valuation, I’ll go with it. And they sold it for, it’s not a public number, but I got a 45X return.
[00:27:43] Adam Stott: Nice.
[00:27:44] Piers Linney: Well, we’ll have that. All right. Well done. So, so, you know, and that’s like a real, if you know, venture capital, my portfolio on Dragon’s Den is like the perfect miniature venture capital portfolio.
[00:27:59] A few don’t work out. A few go bust. Some become what they call things you’re never going to get out of because they don’t grow enough. And one returns the fun. That’s what they call it. And that’s what it did. So. A great experience, but like I was saying before we came in is that you were saying that it’s always good having a profile and this, but I think with a profile, it’s like you need to know, you need to understand who you are, what it is and what you want to do with it.
[00:28:25] I wasn’t sure. I ended up on TV suddenly and I, they call me a reluctant celebrity, you know, I didn’t go to the opening of a fridge or the opening of an envelope. I wasn’t interested. I had to think about, you know, well, who am I? You know, what do I represent? And I actually just sit down and remember. It’s probably after Dragon’s Den as well, actually.
[00:28:41] I sit down and think, well, who am I? What do I do with this profile? What can I do to make money? What can I do in terms of leverage it for good? And what else could it be used for? It took about, I’d say four years, probably. To really sort it out. And I remember Sir Ken saying, right, Piers, you can now become a celebrity and go in the jungle and eat witchy grubs, whatever the hell it is, or you can be serious.
[00:29:04] So I became a trustee of Nesta, the UK’s largest innovation foundation, a national lottery of money, 600 million foundation. Learned a lot there. Ended up on the board of British business bank, joined COVID. Bounced back loans. We put 90 billion into the market. I didn’t sleep for about a year doing that.
[00:29:20] Signed up for a board meeting a month within two a week. 200 pages of reading, you know, saying, you know, should we, release 15, 20 billion into the market to SMEs with no credit checks? Is this kind of conversations? glad we did. So I kind of went the serious way.
[00:29:41] Adam Stott: What was the impact of that?
[00:29:42] I mean,
[00:29:42] Piers Linney: it’s been a longer arc. I think it’s become good over time. So do you think people have, they saw me as a celebrity at first, like, now they probably see me more as, he’s more of a serious. Person that was a celebrity. So I haven’t been defined by dragons then I think it’s quite important
[00:29:59] Adam Stott: and the banking that you did and you were involved in that and you did, you know, the British business bank was the one that did all the loans.
[00:30:06] As you mentioned, what do you think the impact on the economy that will have or long term? Do you think is the right decision? Do you think it was the right deals saved it? Yeah, I think
[00:30:17] Piers Linney: about, you know, if you’re trying to Yeah, The problem now, people go for these committees and they try and think about the past.
[00:30:23] It’s very hard to imagine what it was like to be in the past, in the future. But you know, at the time, it was like, initially, the economy is shutting down, literally on a daily basis, the lights are going out. So what do we do? We need to get the money out of the door. So any barrier you put in front of it was going to be an issue.
[00:30:40] Also, creating a whole new scheme would have been difficult, it takes time. What they had was the loan guarantee scheme. So use the same rails, but put a different train on it, essentially, and then got into the market and didn’t do the credit check. So, you know, you know, there’s going to be fraud, there’s going to be, you know, complications, but it’s the only way to do it and then that saved the economy.
[00:30:59] guest: Yeah,
[00:31:00] Adam Stott: very massively powerful in terms of the impact. They did keep the lights on for a lot of people, didn’t they? I tell people that,
[00:31:05] Piers Linney: and
[00:31:05] Adam Stott: they’re like,
[00:31:06] Piers Linney: you’re on the board of business? They can’t, it’s, sometimes, that’s life. Kick myself and Kings quite amazing actually that I was there at that time Which was you know important time for which can have an impact on the economy if the next four generations, actually
[00:31:22] Adam Stott: Awesome.
[00:31:23] So I guess the next question is what’s next?
[00:31:27] Piers Linney: so I am so I’ve Been involved in web 1. 0 the internet really.
[00:31:34] Adam Stott: Yeah,
[00:31:34] Piers Linney: and then I was kind of I kind of did a bit in blockchain But everyone in blockchain got lost making money out of crypto So I did a bit of that a bit of social media then web 3 kind of crypto blockchain And then now the big one really is you know, I’m gonna say is artificial intelligence So I when so when I was a trustee of Nesta did a lot of research on the impact of AI and robotics on regions.
[00:31:55] So imagine that I did a post recently that kind of blew up on LinkedIn. Imagine that in the Northeast, broadly speaking, there’s a lot of call centers, right? Employing hundreds of thousands of people, right? The days of humans, and you can talk about this maybe in terms of your businesses, the days of humans answering the phone.
[00:32:11] In first line customer support, the days having a team doing prospecting, the initial prospect qualification, they’re done. It can be done by AIs. And even last week, OpenAI launched a chat GPT for Omni. Oh, that’s even better. I mean, they sound like humans, they can do things, they can interact, they can set appointments, they can update calendars, they can integrate APIs, update your CRM.
[00:32:35] They’re infinitely patient. You don’t need a desk, a phone, a headset, a call center, a building, or heating, rates, lights, blah, blah, blah. It’s all going away. The call center is going to be disappear and sucked up into the cloud. Anyway, so we were looking at that kind of research and how is it going to affect the economy?
[00:32:51] That’s why I first got interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning. And then when you saw Chachi Patee arrive, I thought, This is the one, right? Anything I’ve ever done in my whole life is pointing at this, and I thought, do I invest in it because it changes so quickly. The things are just, you know, I’ll give you an example that, you know, you saw that there’s a model called Open AI Sora, which makes 60 second HD quality videos more prompt.
[00:33:17] You could say, I want to fly through of, I don’t know. There’s one example which is an old west town. It looks like an old west town. Looks like you filmed it on a helicopter. Unbelievable. And when they posted it on Twitter, because of X, sorry, X then starts populating my feed with all these video, all these adverts from text to video startups.
[00:33:39] And literally, my fees full of adverts of companies have just died. So that’s the danger of AI, it’s moving so quickly that it’s knowing where to invest. The beauty of AI, for everybody in this room, is that you’ve now got cloud infrastructure, which means that you don’t need to own infrastructure, you don’t need to own anything at all, almost.
[00:33:58] It’s all subscription based, it’s fully scalable. And on top of that cloud infrastructure now, you’ve got large language models and AI. And that might not prove to be the technology that works, but right now, it’s a large language model. So we, collectively, can innovate across the top in ways that you couldn’t, you could not have dreamt of two years ago.
[00:34:16] So my view was, how do I paddle into this wave? So I started a company with another chap I’ve known, so I started a company with another chap I’ve known, For a while, I was on one of my podcasts a few years ago. He’s a dentist by background. He did a machine learning how to look inside your mouth with a laser and do your dentistry.
[00:34:32] And we set up a company. We thought a lot about the branding and we called it Implement AI. So, it’s just, say what it is on a tin, basically. So we help companies, understand it, embrace it, and automate AI. Think about automations. Where do you spend hours doing stuff that you shouldn’t be doing? Admin, the mundane, automate it.
[00:34:56] And then, secondly normally, where can I use this technology to do things in new and interesting ways? Like, you know, prospecting or customer service, knowledge bases.
[00:35:06] Adam Stott: So your new, your company, Implement AI, How do you, is that something that you supply businesses with? Yeah. That’s all. So how does that work?
[00:35:15] So we do
[00:35:16] Piers Linney: some product So you might have
[00:35:16] Adam Stott: a client here.
[00:35:18] Piers Linney: So we do like productized consulting really. So what is it, embrace some training. Software with technology, if I talk about it in the room, a lot of you are thinking, well, what do you mean, how could I use it in my business? So unless you’ve done, until you’ve done some training, you don’t really understand these capabilities.
[00:35:34] And once you’ve done a bit of training, you can then say, ah, yeah, That’s what it can do. So actually it could automate all this crap that I do every Tuesday morning or weekend. No one spent time with the kids or walk the dog. So it’s a bit of training. It’s a bit of understanding your workflows and processes, picking off the ones we can add some real value and then automating them.
[00:35:54] There’s like a pilot. Once you’re comfortable with it, you understand it, you start to automate everything you possibly can.
[00:36:00] Adam Stott: So the product that you’re building, will that serve businesses of all sizes or is it start off a bigger businesses? Yeah,
[00:36:07] Piers Linney: the consulting is the best one there. Yeah, but we work on an attorney investment.
[00:36:11] So it’s just got to say, look, listen, work out what it’s costing you today. Let’s say a call center, you know, in a call center, we do a lot of voice stuff in a call center. The cost of you maybe add it all up for five pounds a call. We could do it for like a pound without the stress and the training and the amount of power.
[00:36:31] it just does it. So if there’s one thing I. For my session today, I want for you to take away of hopefully some of the tips I’ve given you is sign up to ChatGPT plus or Claw Pro, one of these paid for AI models and use it, not that they want to. I don’t want to ruin Adam’s business here, but use it as a mentor.
[00:36:52] Adam Stott: Do you know what’s ironic? Do you know what’s ironic, Piers? It’s one of the things I did as I was driving in this morning. I pulled my phone up and said, give me every single detail on Piers Lindley and give me seven really powerful questions to ask him.
[00:37:05] Piers Linney: I did that to you. I probably got more on you than you did on me!
[00:37:15] So OpenAI have just launched this Omni, it’s just come out, can’t get it yet. And what’s amazing is, they’re making that available to the free model. So now, have you seen the film Her? So you’ve seen the film Her, where this guy falls in love with this flippin Siri, basically. And, so, the free model now of chat GPT, not the plus one gives you a few bells and whistles, you can now talk to it, and it will talk to you, and it sounds like a human.
[00:37:40] It’s fast, you can change the voice, the intonation, the way it talks to you, you know, it’s sex, it’s gender, whatever you want, and it is, basically, you have a infinitely patient, sounding board, mentor, business partner. You can ask any question and if it’s stuff that’s a bit tech about your business, doesn’t understand, you can upload information in the background, give it context.
[00:38:01] So now it becomes an expert in, I don’t know, Dog walking or, who’s got the holiday homes, whatever it might be, someone mentioned, so you can give it context, understands you, who you are, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you do. So when you talk to it, you’d have to keep doing it every time, it’s just there.
[00:38:19] So that will, I will say it’s like, so imagine you’ve been dragged out of this room now and you’ve been forced to get into a cage fight to the death, and it’s a seal cage, right? And there’s a big, massive dude in there has been caged by all of his life or woman. And you can take, I am man with you and you go, yeah, you know what, nah, I don’t know it works.
[00:38:43] It’s like that initially, you are missing out on that kind of opportunity to change your outcomes.
[00:38:49] Adam Stott: What I find incredible is that a lot of people, and it’s amazing how fear dictates people taking
[00:38:56] Piers Linney: action. Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Yeah. So with any technological wave, you have the old curve called S curve.
[00:39:02] So you’ve got the early adopters, rapid adoption, then it slows down and tapers off. You see a mobile, everyone’s got one now, so it’s tapered off. And then you get the new tech comes in, which might be glasses that you can talk to, you don’t need a phone anymore. Cool. But this case is AI. So AI kicks in, and you get this period as the new tech kicks in, the early adopters of FUD.
[00:39:24] Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And on my website, there’s an article I wrote, a blog, and it’s saying that FUD, this time, could be fatal. So FUD with cloud didn’t really matter. You know, you could, you can go to the cloud tomorrow, next year, in five, doesn’t really matter, right? Digital transformation, You might get another website, maybe Google.
[00:39:46] A. I know. So in a I think of it this way. Picturing your minds. There’s a big, shiny ship leaving the harbour. We’re all sat on the quayside and we can all still make the leap onto that ship. But it starts to move away faster and faster. That is the exponential speed at the point where you cannot make the leap onto that ship.
[00:40:04] And if you’re not on it, It is not coming back this time, you know, and a large part of society are going to be left on that key side and we all need to collectively work out how we support those people, but especially in business, in an exponential world, being late is fatal. You can never catch up. It’s an exponential.
[00:40:24] So I always say, People struggle with it, right? So give, try this. How can we
[00:40:28] Adam Stott: adopt, you know, I love, this conversation. So I think it’s really awesome for everybody in the room, actually, you know, even if it’s not the sort of conversation you were looking to be exposed to today, I think it’s an important one.
[00:40:41] Piers Linney: It’s, it will can change the way you operate. Oh, I think
[00:40:44] Adam Stott: so important. Yeah.
[00:40:45] Piers Linney: You can build a business now where you think of adding people and costs. So now you build your revenue and your cost doesn’t do that anymore. It’s flat. There’s more revenue, more profit. The point is this, you know, think about you walking your dog past a lake, massive lake, can’t see the other side, and there’s a tiny bit of algae just there, and you look at it, next day you walk past, it’s doubled in size, next day it’s doubled in size, and it doubles in size, blah, blah, blah.
[00:41:08] And after 30 days, it’s just about covered half the lake. So, in an exponential world, how long will it take for it to cover the rest of the lake? It’s a day. It’s two lakes in two days. That’s exponential change. So the key is not to panic about it, but it’s to understand it, use it, embrace it, and just learn more about it.
[00:41:29] What are the
[00:41:29] Adam Stott: sort of things that you’re doing to stay on the front foot?
[00:41:32] Piers Linney: I mean, I live and breathe it. I’ve got, we’ve got a podcast. It’s all we talk about every week.
[00:41:37] Adam Stott: What’s the podcast?
[00:41:39] Piers Linney: It’s called the AI Assisted Organization. The AI Assisted Organization. So we call it We call these AI assisted organizations.
[00:41:46] It’s an all good podcast platforms. Well, they didn’t do them last week Because I was in mountain biking so probably call one tomorrow or tonight or tomorrow night And that’s really about how do you use AI for business? Not for consumer and all this, you know, how do I make a nice picture of some fluffy dog with a pink ears?
[00:42:05] Just how do I use AI in my business? That’s what we focus on and I write all the notes, do the research myself. I want to learn. And even I struggle to keep up with it. So it’s not really worrying about that. It’s use the platforms that are evolving. So Google, Gemini, Claude is very good for documents, Claude Pro, implement, Open AI, ChatGPT, you’ve probably heard about it.
[00:42:29] Use them and just understand it so that you can start to understand, well actually, I can actually automate this, and you could do this for me, or I can improve my sales prospecting, or my customer engagement. So now, I’ve got a video, I won’t get it out, but, I was in Wales at the weekend, and I created an avatar of myself, took 20 seconds, and I typed in something saying, this is Pierre, talking different languages, and also Welsh.
[00:42:53] So then it talks, it’s me, and my lips are like deep fake, they’re changed, to look like I’m speaking that language, it’s English. So it’s me speaking, it looks just like me. Bit posher, the accent, but it kind of looks like me. And then, it’s me again in Welsh. You know, I don’t speak Welsh, right? And my lips are shaped, look like Welsh.
[00:43:12] And I asked the Welsh speaker there, because we’re in Wales, and then I kind of said, that’s pretty good. Not, oh, I didn’t do this, didn’t do that. It was like that. They were quite shocked, actually. So now you can engage customers in any language in real time. That’s amazing, actually. With your
[00:43:26] Adam Stott: face. Yeah.
[00:43:27] That’s pretty incredible on it. All right, there we go after launching China. Now, you know, but that’s the sort of thing, isn’t it?
[00:43:37] Piers Linney: The beauty of AI is that we always said that cloud meant that small companies could go after big opportunities. Now, it’s about infrastructure, right? The large language models on top of that cloud about this additional infrastructure that allows you to innovate in ways you’ve never been able to do before.
[00:43:54] So even now, even more than ever. It’s a great time to have a small business because you can now do things and compete with the big operators in which you’ve never been able to before, and you’re going to be more nimble. What’s interesting, though, I have to say, is the big companies get it because they understand this is winner takes all.
[00:44:12] They’re throwing millions at it. So unlike some technology. The big companies are really, you’re seeing it, it’s happening, they’re embedding this technology because they know what the ROI is.
[00:44:23] Adam Stott: And, I think all real top entrepreneurs, you know, it’s interesting that you’re saying to it. So I remember I was listening to someone interviewing Mark Cuban, for example, the other day.
[00:44:31] And Mark Cuban was just like, listen, I’m all in on AI. I’m forgetting everything else. I’m just going all in and he’s like, I’m taking the training courses. He was doing all the, you know, like really trying to, it’s really, interesting.
[00:44:42] Piers Linney: So don’t think of AI, think of automation. How do you augment, how do you automate the mundane?
[00:44:48] How do you get rid of admin? How do you embrace customers, engage customers in new ways? You know, so we’ve all got an email list, right? And you have customer avatars, personas. So you might say, I don’t know, I’ve got a thousand people on my email list. There’s about five types of people. So I’ll send 200 emails of five different types to this thousand people.
[00:45:08] Now, you can send every single person, based on their profile, their website, what you know about them, what’s in your CRM system, an individual personalized email in any language that you’re speaking to them to a thousand different people. So you’re getting into hyper personalized engagement. So who’s going to win that customer?
[00:45:27] You doing that or somebody else sending an email after 48 hours with a, you know, from
[00:45:33] MailChimp.
[00:45:35] Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, I think it’s, I’ve loved, the conversation. It was real good. should we give, it up for Piers, yeah?