Episode 282: Fearless Marketing with Dominic McGregor
Being fearless means not being afraid of challenges and most especially, not being afraid of FAILURE. While not all entrepreneurs and business owners have the qualities to be fearless, helping them to become one is not impossible. Luckily, our guest today, Dominic McGregor, is on a mission to help us become one.
Dominic McGregor, the co-founder of Social Chain alongside Steven Bartlett, an award-winning and hugely innovative social media marketing agency, and the co-founder of the investment firm, Fearless Adventures, which supports entrepreneurs on their journey both financially and emotionally.
In this episode, Dominic McGregor talks with Adam Stott about his journey as a young entrepreneur and his experience with a social media-based company. Dominic also shares what his new company, Fearless Adventures, does for companies and entrepreneurs to help them grow. Listen to learn more!
Show Highlights:
- Challenges that Dominic had to face when he was just started his business journey
- What prompted Dominic to continue his business pursuit amidst the failures in the early days
- Social Chain’s first successful product
- The idea of becoming the first social media-based company to go public
- How Dominic’s new company helps out companies and entrepreneurs
Links Mentioned:
Check out Fearless Adventures and The Fearless Academy or reach out through Dominic’s LinkedIn
Join the Ultimate Three Day Business Event and learn more Business Growth Secrets
Be part of our Facebook Group Big Business Events Members Network
Connect with me on Instagram @adamstottcoach
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott: Hello everybody and welcome back to this very special episode of Business Growth Secrets, you’re with your host Adam Stott.
I’ve got an amazing guest on today who has had some massive, massive successes and created some amazing companies and is gonna be sharing lots today. It’s Dominic McGregor from Social Chain. He was the COO and one of the co-founders of Social Chain, which went on to become a public company for a nine-figure business.
He also has founded and created a new venture called Fearless Ventures. We’re gonna have a chat about today, which is gonna be really good, looking forward to it, which really helps companies grow and invest in businesses. So, welcome Dominic. How you doing, buddy? You good?
Dominic McGregor: Yeah. Good. Thank you. Thanks for having me, I’m looking forward to this discussion.
Adam Stott: Yeah. Fabulous. So look, really happy to have you on. You’ve had some massive press and success around the company social chain, which you are one of the co-founders of. And what we wanna really get across today is there’s a lot of people that wanna grow businesses, want to create that success.
And lots of people, listening today that want to go on that journey. You’ve certainly come out the other side, taking that company public, creating great results, and now investing in businesses. But of course there’s gonna be a, a story behind that. So why don’t we go backwards a little bit. How did you first get into business? What was the start like and what were some of the challenges that you faced at the beginning?
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, I think, Probably like a lot of entrepreneurs, I kind of fell into business. So I never kind of was that kid at school selling sweets that wasn’t me. I wasn’t a pure entrepreneur. I never really wanted to go and I did that roadmap to be honest.
But university I, started a Twitter account called student problems, which is basically me just following my life at university. Noticing some things that you kind of discovered for the first time when you leave home, like how expensive cheese is, for example. You know, that was a big shot for me and it just documented rest of my life at university and the kind of things I was facing and that quickly kind of blew up to 10,000 followers and it was in the kind of early stage of social media back in 2013, you know, it’s 10 years ago now when that started. And yeah, I just started to find myself having a kind of knack for running the social media account because, you know, I was, I just said to everyone, I’m at the average student, you know, my life is just very much middle of the line. I experience most things people have other people experience and, it started to grow. So I just put an email address in the bio expecting that I want to reach out just in case someone wants to get in touch with me. And, I’ve got two emails, one from a guy in Birmingham and another from a guy called Steve Bartlet.
For some reason, I just decided to email back. The guy called Steve and just thought, You know, this guy said he is got an opportunity for me to make some money. I was thinking, if I can make 200, 300 quit a month from this, that’s gonna help me from university, it’s gonna be great for me. So, I remember I think it was the 1st of April, (2:43) April Fool Day this guy rang me and said, look, you know, I wanna meet you. We tried to build a student, be on Twitter, have not done as anything as close to what you’ve done. Do you wanna meet? And I said, yeah, let’s meet. Let’s meet. So I met this guy. He told me about his plans, which was this business called Wall Park, which is basically (2:59) for students. And you know, for some bizarre reason, after meeting him, once I kind of decided, look, actually this is an opportunity I can’t say no to.
I feel like I’m going to, something could happen here. And why not try it at 19 years old when you’ve got nothing to lose? So I decided to drop out of university said that I’m going to come and work on this wall park thing. So, moved to Manchester. Got rid of every single commitment I ever had, and yes, started building more and more social media pages and, got to the point where I had about 5 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and realized that, you know, we had a bit of a powerhouse when it came to social media.
This was back in the early days, you know, lad bible, unilad, were starting to come to fruition. And we were talking to brands around how to navigate social media and how to use it, and unfortunately at that time, Wall Park as a business failed. So we kind of wrapped that up and, just decided that, you know, we’ve got these social media pages, let’s try and make a living from it. And it was a point where we had no income and we had no option other than trying to make some money from these social media pages. I remember emailing people who were all got interested in the student space, and I think about three of them got back to us and three of them actually ended up working with us, on these gold, silver, bronze packages.
And yeah, that, that for us was the kind of start of, of social chain. And we came up with a name, which was a, a chain of social media pages. So that’s where the, the kind of name came from and started speaking to more brands around how they, we could work with ’em on social media.
Adam Stott: Amazing story, and I think that you’re, you’re fast forwarding through, but one thing that I really want to, which I think is really important for the entrepreneurs listening is that the original venture failed.
So why did it fail? And I think this is important because a lot of people get into quick, obviously developed some assets in terms of the social media pages, but what gave you the confidence through failure to sort of keep going, and what was the reason that it failed? What, what did you see during that failure that helped you to get the success.
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, look, the idea was to create a student hub where people and students came for office, discounts, accommodation, connecting with people, and we did loads and loads and loads of growth pockets trying up people onto the platform. So we owned every single pressure group in 20 13, 20 14, we tried to get every single person going to the, you know, the core cities onto it.
And we had no money, so everything we were trying to do was free. So we were literally just hacking away at what we could do. And social media obviously was a free place to play. So, what we started to realize is, you know, we tried the, the groups, we tried sending tons of traffic there from our Facebook pages, and people weren’t sticking, you know, people didn’t want this.
And what we were discovered is actually the groups we built is where the conversation happens. And once you get to university, actually the conversation then moves off, off social, onto like private messaging. So, we had that world where, you know, WhatsApp was probably our biggest competition. When WhatsApp got Facebook, we, our biggest competitors, you’re probably playing in the wrong market.
So, decided that, yeah, you know, we rate, we’re not gonna raise a couple capital fire run outta money and, had to go back to the drawing board. And as you said, you know, the social media pages we’ve built during that period. With that, kind of growth hack, that was kind of what we had done to, to try and drive.
People to it. And I think that what kept us going was necessity. Look, you know, we’d started this business, we’d started to get a bit of accolades, we’ve been doing entrepreneurs. The idea of quitting and failing and going back to university was a, was a huge sense of, a driver to move you forward and try and find something else.
So, You know, in my mind I had taken time bomb of six months until September when I have to go back to university or I’ve gotta try and make something work. So I had time, energy, I was young, I had confidence, and it was just about trying to find something to plug the gap of what we were doing then. And you know, thankfully social chain was born from that, from those moments when we realized that we’re gonna have to figure out something and that’s what we figured out.
Adam Stott: And how hard was it in those early days? What was it like when you were running a business with no money?
Dominic McGregor: Look, you know, the beautiful part about it was that we also had no costs as people as well. You know, there’s no mortgage, there’s no kids. We’re 19, 19 years old, so it’s the most beautiful time in the world because 500 pounds is a lot of money and that 500 pounds takes you a long way. So, you know, our expectations of what we were trying to achieve, you know, I remember was getting 2000 pounds in a, in a deal, which was like a a month deal, and we literally bought our flights to Thailand that day cause it was like unsurmountable amount of funds. We’re like, this is incredible. We can go travel and you know, we’d never seen that amount of money. So I think our expectations were really, really low and our cost base was really, really low. So anything for like an upside, you know, anything, five hundred quid felt like a significant amount of money and we were just working for our last
Adam Stott: Sounds more like an adventure at that stage of building this.
Dominic McGregor: Exactly. You’ve got nothing but time, energy. You’re 19 years old, you’re doing something different. There was literally, in my mind, there was no way we could fail because we were already at the bottom. And I think that’s an important thing is like a beautiful time about being a student. Being young is you’re at the bottom already. You’re at the bottom, you’re at the start. You cannot go backwards. There is no way to go backwards, you know? So whatever we did was always gonna be moving us forward, which I think was very, very comforting. And I think, you know, when your living cost is so low and you don’t have any expenditure, life’s easy.
Adam Stott: And it’s really interesting that when it didn’t go right, you actually realized what kind of leverage it did have and you had media leverage, right, in order to go and use that.
Dominic McGregor: Oh, I love, I love, no, I love to say that was a conscious, it was, again, it, this wasn’t a. Know, let’s, let’s, you know, let’s, unfortunately, let’s not call it what it is.
You know, we didn’t sit there and say that, you know, oh, we’ve got a huge media leverage. You know, let’s, let’s, let’s build so much disrupt media industry. It was a lot of the times it was necessity rather than actually a grand archetype.
Adam Stott: So, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So the product needed to change by the sound of it.
So how did you change the products up to start getting your first success in social chain? What was the moves you made to kind of, what was the first product that you launched where we went, oh my God, this is making us money. This works. Yeah. Did you come across products?
Dominic McGregor: It, it sounds obvious now, but I mean, millions of followers on, on Facebook then wasn’t, wasn’t value, you know, big brands weren’t on Facebook then. So like, you know, we say, we could sit here and say, oh, that’s incredible, incredible. And you guys quite a gap. But really it was blue water. There was no one was using it as, as it’s huge now. Yeah. Influencers didn’t, influencers didn’t exist. So it was completely new. and I think our first success came when, you know, we were, again, we had tons of people with email, but one of the, one of the people we were speaking to was this guy who built an app called Tppy Tap, and he had no money to, market it.
You know, I remember asking him for 800 quid, he said, no, 500 quid. He said, no. He said, I’ve got no money. He said both my parents had died. I spent all my inheritance on building the app. I have nothing left. We okay. Well, and I said to Steve, I said, Steve, look, this guy, I got my money. I like the app. We’ve been playing it for the last couple of days.
We’ve been sat there and you, you know, do not talk to me for an hour. Cause we’ve been on the game. Let’s just do a rev share and see where we get to. So we took a rev share on it and I had to, to negotiate hard with Steves, try and get him to do that cuz you know, we, 500 pound for us, again, there was a lot of money we, we wanted, that we needed to live. And, then it came to actually launching it. And I said to Steve, said, Steve, look, let’s do something different. You know, let’s tell people not to download it. Let’s tell people not to go on it. Let’s tell ’em it’s gonna ruin their degree, their life if they go on it again.
Steve said, no. And I was like, trust me. Trust me. This is what’s gonna work. This is how you can build. Conversation around it and try people to, to, to download it. And that was off the back of Flappy Birds. You know, I’d seen a couple of tweet around people saying how flay birds is ruined my life. And I was like, this is actually the way people speak about these products. Let’s integrate into how people speak and actually let’s not tell ’em to download it. Let’s not tell it. Tell them it’s an ad. Let’s integrate into conversation and see how it goes. So we did that and all our pages started talking at once about this game called Tippy Tap, and it blew up. It got 2 million downloads, went to number one on the app store, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram was featured on BBC the next morning as this viral sensation.
And most importantly generated hundreds and thousands of revenue. Which for us was basically our seed funding to go and, make this, make this something. So we kind of realize now we’ve got a case study, we can get $2 million on an app.
We’ve got money coming in, you know, we couldn’t see it in 90 days cause of our payment. So we’ve got money coming in so we can kind of live, we can kind of think a little bit more what we’re gonna do and yeah, we’ve proven we can do something. So this, let’s, let’s see this as a start. And that was it.
April 20 13. So, yeah, 10 years ago, when we kind of said, yeah, no, sorry, April, 2014. It was a year after dropping at the university. So yeah, it was, it was, yeah, nine years ago we realized we could make, turn into something.
Adam Stott: That’s awesome. Right? So, so now you’ve got this rev share model. Is this something that you did frequently in the future?
Was it’s still something that was just a case was a one off?
Dominic McGregor: It was a one off. Cause we realized that, we realized that now we can actually demand a fee because we know what our work does. So it’s a case of saying, look, you know, that moved us from getting 500 quit and actually now charging five, 10,000 pounds because it, it was in 2014 when there was an app for everything. You know, everyone was launching up, money was going into apps, you know, literally was an app for everything. People were spending the most offer at and center. So we said, look, you know, we’re gonna be the people that can market people’s apps. So we started to go around looking at people who were trying to reach students from an app perspective and said, look, we can help you get downloads.
And that was kind of where we, where we kind of were born from with that really early 2014 app market where people were trying to get their apps in students’ hands. And that’s what we could do.
Adam Stott: So you re really knew the target market you had, or the audience you had, and then you went out and found a product that was gonna suit them.
Brilliant. Yeah. So how did, how did that evolve? That was your first success and, and obviously you went on to taking this company public. What other kind of, what other ups and downs did you have along the journey of that particular company?
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, I think you got it right there. You know, we knew our audience, we knew how to choose people trying to reach them.
So we, all we had to do was replicate the audiences and replicate the brands. So we built our audiences in gaming, beauty, fitness, food, fashion, as well as students. And then continue to find brands that would fit into those audiences. So that was the kind of the model, you know, if we had the world’s biggest food page, we can work with the world’s biggest food brands. Simple as that. And that’s what we did. So we went on acquisition, bought a number of assets into the company, across gaming, as I said, gain those sectors and then went to go and find clients that were looking to reach them. And then you kind of built us this kind of network of communities that we owned and operated as well as the validation that actually when social media evolved and it became about influencers and content strategies and paid social, we could sit and say, well actually, you know, we are the experts when it comes to social media cause of what we built.
So, you know, we built assets and we built communities before anyone else. So when, when it came to brands wanting to navigate social media, they came to us and our phone rang they had no idea how to operate it. So, yeah, what we kind of built there was, you know, two arms of business. We built a media arm and an agency arm, so we were helping brands access social media, and we were then building our own community with the back of it. And, that’s when we kept, started to raise, raise our next round of investment, which took us in, from a private individual in Germany that kind of took us on that trajectory of like, hey, where is this business going?
And we had this idea that, you know, look, if we were to go public, we’d be the first kind of social media based business to go public. So for us, actually, that was quite an attractive opportunity to actually accelerate our growth through M and A, through personalization, through new products, new services, and try and, you know, use that as a bit of a target to try and get ourselves on the, on the public trade market for anyone else in the sector.
Adam Stott: So what did you know at that stage about M and A? What did you know about going public? You know, did you have mentors? Did you have guidance from other people?
Dominic McGregor: Our chairman, had done two IPOs before, so he kind of led us down that road. What I kind of knew was very limited. And I think most people 2022 were very limited in their experience. What I understood with social media, and that’s what we came back to, is that look, you know, if we believe social media’s gonna be the next big of thing, then there’s gonna be companies which play in that space. And, you know, that’s gonna come across all sectors. And as long as we can kind of stay at the forefront of what social media businesses are in terms of marketing and how to grow them, then we’re always gonna be valuable.
So that was kind of the thesis, of what we were trying to do. So our M and A was, you know, we knew about buying companies, we bought the assets before from people, we got people in the assets, but we never kind of completed a kind of large scale structure and a deal over a couple hundred grand. You know, our first year after we did over that size of 5 million from business in Germany, business in America, which we completed. So, yeah, you know, that was a learning curve. Some went wrong, some worked amazing. And Yeah. You know, you learn a lot from those experiences.
Adam Stott: Absolutely. And when did you get a chairman in? How early did that happen? Cause it sounds like he was obviously instrumental in guiding some of this.
Dominic McGregor: He was an investor chairman. Whatever you wanna call it. And nothing ever kind of was formalized, but he was kind of our lead investor. You know, I remember us raising 5 million for acquisition over dinner because we, he bought our, his arm runs, said, I trust you.
So he really was bound as really back. So, that was kind of 2015 when we kind of got him involved from an investment standpoint and then it became him and genuine partnership.
Adam Stott: Awesome. And, and how did you know that you needed investors? Because this is something that entrepreneurs and business owners, often struggle with, and they don’t actually go and make it happen, right?
So some people might understand that they need that, but they don’t make it happen. So it’s quite unique. Yeah. You know, it’s very unique in terms of.
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, I think how we knew needed investors, look, we wanted to a quick, you know, we wanted, you know, investment is a, is an exchange equity for cash. That’s what you’re doing. You’re selling some of your equity, diluting yourself in, in return for cash. You know, a lot of people need investment if they’re, if they’re cash dependencies are greater than their cash generative abilities. So they need cash to, to manage the surplus. You know, tech businesses, for example, which have long term revenue, we didn’t necessarily need a cash surplus cause we are profitable from day one. So we’d do a deal and money would come in. As we started to work with bigger clients, you know, we started to work with Coca-Cola, Amazon, those big boys contract values started to go up into the millions and parent terms data to go to 90 days. So if you operate from a margin of, of 40, 50%, you’ve gotta pay out half a million before you see a million pound come in.
So we had a lag, you know, we have cash flow issues. But also from that, you know, we, we had ambition to go to the US which would require some level of investment. We have ambitions to go to, to Europe. So, we made decision to sacrifice equity at the time. And then that led us to raising capital to go quicker, to expand have that theory that looking for first and we’re market leader. Then, you know, we will win some capacity. And that was the thesis we went with. We could’ve done it organically, we could’ve done it naturally, but we’d done it a lot slower.
Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. And was there ever a moment when this journey, I mean it’s a phenomenal, phenomenal story, phenomenal journey and it is very unique. You know, it is very unique, especially at your age, you know, to be able to come and do that and make the right decisions, cuz a lot of people don’t make the right decisions. Right. But was there, was there some times where you feel like you. That’s what I was gonna ask. Was there some times where you made the wrong decisions?
Were there some times where you feel like, was there a time where you thought, oh my God, this ain’t gonna work? Or what were your kind of squeaky bad moments?
Dominic McGregor: It’s so, it’s so hard. You look back on now and say, look, I’m a happy year. I’m happy how things played out. You know, there was opportunities to go left and right at a couple of points and, you know, maybe we chose left and we could have gone, right.
God knows where that would’ve ended up and what the business would’ve looked like, but we were there. Those options were definitely on the table and I think we explored some of those and we, there’s probably one where I think maybe we could have explored a bit further. But again, you know, that was just before the chairman put his arm around and said, I’ll, I’ll do your 5 million to crack on.
So, you know we never had to worry. Cash flow was never a problem. We had support, we felt valued, and then we got an exit. So, the, the probably wasn’t eruption in the world when we went left and life are very different. So, I got no regret.
Adam Stott: Yeah, no, absolutely. So eventually you take this company. And you go out and you, you get a, what was it? A nine-figure valuation. Alright. What did that feel like?
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, I think we valued about 300 million when we went in the public. Didn’t feel any different, you know, it was a different, different day. The day before, it’s every day’s the same and it’s just 1%. It’s not even 1% different. So yeah, they feel like they really didn’t anything.
Adam Stott: Oh, that’s cool. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, because a lot of people feel like there’s some pinnacle moment, but what you actually see with most entrepreneurs is it’s more the progressiveness of just keep moving forward. You know? In terms of, you, when did you, have you personally completely exited that, that company now? Are you still involved?
Dominic McGregor: Completely gone.
Adam Stott: Completely gone. Okay. And, you’ve started your new venture now. Yeah. So if you wanna tell us a little bit about how that helps, it’ll be, you know, be really interesting to, to hear, you know, what your, your model is and, and how you help people with this.
Dominic McGregor: So you can imagine life and agencies. Now, I know test agencies don’t like marketing agencies. That’s all I think, I think they’re fundamentally on in industry. So yeah, we, we had, a great success working with big clients like , Amazon, as I mentioned before, but we never managed to work with genuine wide or fast credit companies.
You know, like in Gym Shack actually called Cures Businesses allowed to like scale in rapidly. and I’m much more focused on roi, much more focused on in housing, much more focused on actually, you know, they want to be at the forefront of what’s possible, not, not work with an agency who can sometimes start applicable down.
So I asked myself a question is how do you work with those fast growth companies? And ultimately, you know, they are raising capital, they need capital all over capital requirements where they could do things quicker if they add that. So I wanted to combine that with that opportunity of deploying capital and giving services based on the world of investment. Everyone in the VC world talked about value add, but really don’t actually do anything. You know, they just give a couple of chairman introduction and you know, it’s value add. So for me it was about actually, you know, mirroring up that cash with the capability scale to execute against it. So what we do is we invest in businesses that actually then help them provide services.
So it’s like having an agency of clients that never leave you and businesses that you own. So, yeah, you get a great alignment with the founders. You know, you get actually what long-term ability to look at the thing you get to actually genuine understanding on margining of product and how to be profitable and how to scale and get involved in all the international conversations and new product ranges, the M and A opportunities, even those entities. And what we do is, we advise and help them, every single day our missions to wake up and help them, be better.
Adam Stott: Which is, strange when you talk about value add and people not adding value because I suppose what this also does by giving a value add is protects your investment basically. So if you make investment and then you , you know, so it made complete 10, right?
Dominic McGregor: So we know what are some of the wrong with the other businesses.
Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like a really smart move. And also it’s an attractive, choice, isn’t it? It’s gonna help you to get the better deals, presumably, because you’re gonna bring something that somebody else won’t bring. So in terms of the companies that you are helping now, have there been some companies that you’re excited about, some things that you’ve, you know, you’ve seen
Dominic McGregor: Yeah. Yeah. By the time this goes live, we’ll, Investment, which is a company called Aldi’s, which is a female football retailer. Got a contract with Nike Adidas Puma. So ahead of the World Cup this year it’s gonna be, you know, one of our big assets, which is gonna fly. We’ve got a company called Pets Purs, which is doing over a million pound , which is looking for, opportunities to exit in the next 12 months. And we’ve got a really, really super fast growth company called Minimal based to just get, get and leads, which is home cleaning products is, based on our closed group system, which again is fly.
So yeah, we’ve got really great company in the portfolio. Exciting opportunities and yeah, loads of good stuff happening.
Adam Stott: So how many companies have you now invested in since you’ve been going, have you?
Dominic McGregor: Seven.
Adam Stott: Seven. Already made seven investments, which is awesome. Right. Okay. Amazing. And, and you see how many do you, how many do you turn down? How many do you look to actually, what is it, one in 20, one in 50 that you actually do a deal with?
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, I think we’ve had about 1400 inquiries, so, you know, not point, not 5% rate or whatever. That works out as not many, you know, a lot of businesses need. What we have, and this is one of the problems, is that we try to build something which is more open to every business, however we realize it’s more limiting.
Adam Stott: So I kind of scale now. It’s how we actually support eight outta 10 businesses that, that we speak to, in a meaningful way.
What, what makes you the 1%? So in terms of you investing, what do you wanna see?
Dominic McGregor: Look, it is definitely not the, we’ve not picked the best seven, you know, the best, we haven’t the best businesses because the best businesses need more cash.
(22:16), they’ve got diverse investor base. They’re not right for us. So it’s not been a case that, you know, we are working with the the best. So there’s businesses which fit our model, and that’s what we’re looking for. You know, though necessarily the rejections aren’t based on anything, then of them not being right for us, you know, these things can be marriage and we could have invested in half those companies. And I’ve been like, yeah, that’s actually a good business that’s gonna work. But we’re very specific in what we look for. You know, we, we don’t wanna be around other shareholders because they, they can get a little bit techy with our terms and our operational involvement.
So we wanna be the first people in, which then limits the numbers straight away. We are looking for business which cashflow positive, which limits the businesses. Again, we’re looking for businesses which are northern based, given the fact that our actual team is based here. So actually that allows for better integration because we’ve got people in the office from each of companies who sit there and work with our teams, which also limits the opportunity.
So, yeah, it’s, it’s not a case about people being in that top percentile and ultimately high performers. It’s about a relationship and that’s gotta work for both parties. So that’s what we’re looking for rather than, you know, the best of the best because the best of the best. We, we’ve seen some of the best of the best. And look, we’d love to invest in it, but the relationship wouldn’t be right for them, is not right for us.
Adam Stott: No, which is really, really good to, from an investment standpoint, you only want the clients and the companies that are gonna be the right fit and that you can serve, which is awesome. From a client perspective and the people watching the podcasts, if they were to come to you for an investment, or anyone for an investment, let’s say, cuz many of them would be the right fit, many of them wouldn’t be cashflow positive, perhaps many of them wouldn’t be Northern Base, you know, perhaps. But what do you think from being somebody that is now a professional investor, what do they need to prepare? What do you like to see? Just to try and help some of the people that are listening, if they were looking to raise investment.
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, I think the last question, the last question kind of answered that a little bit is that, you know, these things are two way. So you’ve got investors who invest in certain areas, you’ve got investors who don’t invest in areas.
You know what you wanna do, you wanna speak to people who are relevant for you. You know, if someone came to me with a property business, it’s not right for me cause I want an A property tech. So, you know, I think that’s the key thing is, you know, these things. Yes. Someone told me like, look, there’s, there’s, you know, I remember I was 22 people.
It’s actually from those jobs to find companies to invest in. So like the people are out there looking for them and you’ve got to do a little bit of research, obviously, to find those people. But you know, having an alignment with people who are from your industry, who are looking to redeploy into areas they know. It’s the smartest thing to do. So that’s what I’d say is that, you know, if you, if you think you’re the right fit for someone, and they’ve, and they’re the right fit for you, then you’ve got a much more likely chance of, of doing it. You know, great. The great, again, I know it’s property, but property investors invest in property cause they understand it and it’s easy for them.
So make it impossible for investors to invest in their areas that they’ll understand. Don’t try and make them, teach them something new. Necessarily new is scary and unknown. Yeah, we’re not, we’re not, we’re not all sat there, you know, reading web free crypto blogs every single day. You know, we’re trying to understand the details of defi and that kind of stuff. You gotta make sure you’re speaking to relevant people and make sure that, that, yeah, they’re interested in what you, you’ve got to say.
Adam Stott: Which is really important. Cause I think a lot of people are just so desperate for investment they can go and get in the wrong bed. All right. Yeah. Really they should. For the right people. Hundred percent.
Dominic McGregor: Our German chairman on his background with media companies, you know, he understood what we did. He’s a media, media guy. Made sense.
Adam Stott: Yeah. So, so a good fit. So now looking back, Dominic having had social chain, what was your, how many founders were there? Was you Steven, was there other founders involved as well? And what’s your relationship like now? Good. You have a good relationship?
Dominic McGregor: Yeah, he’s, coming best, best man on my wedding,
Adam Stott: so come through that journey. Still have a great, you know, fantastic relationship as well, which is awesome. Isn’t it Really good? So what would you say in terms of partnerships, what’s important for you in terms of picking a partnership for somebody?
Dominic McGregor: Relationships. You know, you’ve got to be, you’ve got to have each other’s backs. You’ve got to be complimentary to each other. You’ve got to have, you know, your own opinions and understand how to communicate with each other. You know, relationships are communication based. You know, friendships, parents, fiances, whatever you wanna say, they’re all based on communication.
And if you don’t have, you know, transparent, safe communication in situations, then you’re not gonna thrive. So, that comes down to everything in terms of what is your ambition today and what is your ambition for tomorrow, and what is your ambition for the future? And if you can align with someone on those, what the plans are then you will, you will be in a much better position. Yes, during those periods there’s, there’s growth where people experience growth faster than others, and people have periods where they are absolutely on fire or flying, and people have problems with having struggling. And that’s like any relationship that you’ve got to be there to be able to support them, and not get, you know, turn on them.
So I think that’s a really important thing to, to understand is that any business founder or business partner, it is a relationship and those relationships do require work. They require honest communication and they are, and they require, you know, alignment in terms of where you are heading.
Adam Stott: Brilliant. Well look, you know, it’s been a fantastic podcast, so much interesting, concepts that you shared. Where can people get in touch with you, Dominic, if somebody wanted to reach out to you?
Dominic McGregor: LinkedIn, LinkedIn’s probably usually someone every single day, like most people. So yeah, I’m my LinkedIn. I’ll get back to you.
Adam Stott: Absolutely. So go and communicate with Dominic. Tell him you enjoyed the podcast. And of course, if you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, which you should have, it’s been really, really interesting. Some, you know, great concepts have been shared there. Make sure that you subscribe and if you can take just a moment to move your finger and lift, leave us a five star review. That’d be much appreciated. Thank you again, Dominic, for coming on. They can go and reach you on LinkedIn and what’s also the website for your, investment firm. Just,
Dominic McGregor: Fearlessadventures.co.uk.
Fearless adventures.co uk. Thanks again, Dominic. You’ve been an amazing guest about these companies growing, right and and his next assist coming.
Thanks again.