Episode 315: From Failed Businesses to Successful Investments with Graeme and Leanne Carling

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To be successful in business, you can’t do it as a side hustle. You have to commit to it and be all in. What would it take for you to devote all of your time and effort to become successful? Graeme and Leanne’s unwavering commitment and willingness to prioritize their business endeavors have been key factors in their success.

Graeme and Leanne Carling share their journey from failed businesses to building a successful business and investment portfolio. They emphasize the importance of committing fully to your goals and surrounding yourself with a strong team and advisors. They also discuss the challenges they faced when transitioning from property investments to investing in businesses. The Carlings highlight the need to cut ties with advisors who are not delivering results and to constantly upgrade your team. They also stress the importance of identifying your strengths and staying in your lane when working with a partner.

Graeme and Leanne Carling are successful entrepreneurs in Scotland, known for their property business and business acquisitions as the Carling Group. They have achieved significant success in the property sector, expanded their investment portfolio, and are respected voices in the industry. They are also involved in various charities and are sought-after investors and non-executive directors. Leanne Carling, in particular, has a track record of sourcing acquisitions and is skilled in deal-making and negotiations.

Show Highlights:

• Commit fully to your goals and be all in
• Build a strong team and seek advice from experienced advisors
• How important is cutting ties with advisors who do not deliver results
• Diversifying investments and focusing on businesses
• Identifying your strengths and staying in your lane when working with a partner
• Differences in deal timelines between the US and UK
• Constantly upgrade your team and seek out the best companies and advisors

Links Mentioned:

Check out Leanne and Graeme’s Compay at https://www.thecarlinggroup.com/

Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172

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Transcript:

Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.

[00:00:00] Graeme Carling: Yeah. Thank you for having us. I don’t, yeah, I’m good. We’re doing good.

[00:00:03] Leanne Carling: Good, good. Thank you again. Thanks for having us.

[00:00:06] Adam Stott: No, brilliant. Can’t wait to hear about the journey. You’re obviously a husband and wife duo, um, which we have lots of, lots of businesses and lots of businesses that we work with, um, have relationships as well and growing the business.

[00:00:19] So maybe we can talk a little bit about that. Maybe you’ve got a tip or two around that. So, so, um, really want to hear about, obviously you’ve got this, um, you live out in Dubai now, uh, you’re investing in businesses, you’ve got different sectors you invest in, including healthcare, building, it businesses, clean energy businesses, property businesses, and we’ve got all these different things happening, but it’d be really good to kind of maybe circle back to the beginning and talk about how did you get into business in the start?

[00:00:47] Um, what was that like? What type of challenges did you have at the beginning and really share? a little bit of the background, um, on the both of you and your journey be awesome.

[00:00:56] Graeme Carling: Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks. I’ll kick off then. Um, we, well, uh, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, I had, uh, three, I started three businesses, three small businesses and three of them failed.

[00:01:11] And it was about 2002 after my third failed business, I was skint ego dented, um, you know, web. And I caught the tail end of, uh, an Oprah Winfrey show where she was, uh, uh, interviewing Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad Poor Dad. He was promoting his book and discussing the book, um, uh, Rich Dad Poor Dad. So I I went and bought the book and, um, it was really like a light bulb moment for me.

[00:01:40] I had to go back to mainstream employment. Uh, you know, I had to recover from where I was financially. I had to, um, you know, really try and get myself in a better place. I know that means the employment, you know, I never wanted to work for somebody else as just I had to go back, get some security and stability, recover financially and haven’t read that book as it started back, you know, in a job, you know, just over broke.

[00:02:08] Um, I took me five years. I just. It was a real lightbulb moment for me, that book and what it taught me about really how much I didn’t know about money and finance and debt and tax and leveraging and all of that stuff. I just had no idea. And that was a big part of my failings in my sort of first three businesses.

[00:02:29] But it wasn’t until 2007. And the mark when the market crash, the financial market crash that we are and I quit our jobs and embark on the property business. And we started buying properties when everybody was getting out of the property business, we were getting in. So we had to tell you how, you know, how we came out.

[00:02:50] Leanne Carling: So as Graeme said, he, he’d started his own businesses before I hadn’t. I had always worked my way up the corporate ladder within distribution, but never ever lasted any longer than 18 months at a job. Always chasing promotion and always moving to bigger and better things, but I just couldn’t. understand why I was, you know, my mom and dad had safe, secure jobs for life, you know, 33 years with one company, 29 years with the other, you know, both, both parents.

[00:03:19] My dad kept saying, you’re going to be unemployable, Leanne, if you keep moving jobs, you know, they’ll be asking why. I just didn’t know what it was, but I was always looking for something better, a, a better opportunity. So when I met Graeme, as Graeme had said he’d read Rich Dad, poor Dad, the first gift that Graeme bought me was Rich Women, which is, uh, written by Kim Zaki, Robert’s wife.

[00:03:43] Um, and I was like, what is this? So I read it, loved it, and then made Rich Dad, her dad, and he is gonna say, so we met in 2005 and in 2007 we both quit our jobs. on the same day to pursue our property business journey. And

[00:03:55] Adam Stott: that’s lovely. So you both came together, both were ambitious. Yeah. And it’s interesting, you’ve got one corporate ladder mentality, which a lot of people, people have that, and perhaps that is a real sign of that entrepreneurial aspect, that you were searching for more and wanted new opportunities.

[00:04:14] And we’ve got the other side of the businesses. Now, even before we get into where that moved from, I’m really interested to hear The three businesses that you started that didn’t quite work for you. Yeah. Now looking back, having built successful businesses, invested in businesses, what do you think, uh, Graeme, was the, the challenge with those?

[00:04:35] Was it a lack of information? Was it you were trying and guessing? What, what were the, the things that held you back in those endeavors?

[00:04:42] Graeme Carling: You know, wrong advice. I was surrounded by the wrong, I was in the wrong environment. I had the wrong advisors, which were my family and friends, you know, who weren’t successful in their own right.

[00:04:53] They were corporate people had never taken the leap of faith or actually, uh, you know, embarked on their own, um, running their own company and, and all that. The, you know, the challenges that go along with that. So it was the wrong environment was the wrong advice. I was undercapitalized. You know, I didn’t have enough knowledge of how money the money system worked leverage, you know, debt leverage, but it all goes back to The environment, you know, I, I always had my, you know, my bum twitching.

[00:05:25] I wanted to do something and work for myself. I just hadn’t worked it out yet how to do it. So there were many lessons during that, that I’ve really served me well. And one of the things that, you know, we stick to this to this day, you know, more than, you know, money or anything like that, everybody thinks is the, is the be all and end all.

[00:05:46] No, it’s the noise, it’s the environment, it’s the, it’s what, it’s what you’re taking in and consuming that for us, you know, we say like, you know, we just, we just cut out the noise as much as we can because it’s everywhere. So, um, That was, that was, that was certainly one of the big lessons, um, for, for me.

[00:06:05] And

[00:06:05] Leanne Carling: today, we, as Graeme says, we still stand by that. You know, if we, if we know that there’s something or someone in our environment that’s, that’s not helping us or, you know, help us achieve our goals, we cut quick. And if, when we didn’t do that previously, it caused, it caused us

[00:06:21] Graeme Carling: more problems. Yeah. But normally it’s family and friends that love you and want the best for you and, you know, are terrified for you and all that stuff.

[00:06:29] But, you know, there’s some of the worst people that, uh, they give you advice if, you know, we, we, we, we early on sought advisors and people that had walked, walked the talk, had done it and were hugely successful, not just moderately successful, very successful. to the position that we want it to be in. We always

[00:06:49] Leanne Carling: say, you know, for the advisors, ask yourself, are they qualified to give you advice?

[00:06:55] You know, are they where you want to be and want to go?

[00:06:59] Graeme Carling: Yes.

[00:07:00] Adam Stott: If you want to swap places and don’t take a rush. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. So we get to this point. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve quit the corporate ladder. We’ve, uh, we’ve quit the job. We’re back. Ready to go. You know, perhaps put some of the scars of the past behind us.

[00:07:17] What, what are the first moves that you make?

[00:07:21] Graeme Carling: Well, first of all, you know, we were, we were shitting ourselves, you know, we were terrible because we’re going back in the game here, you’re right back into it. And, um, but we, we, the time was right. If we, you know, we, we’d watch, we’d waited. Property was on sale at a discount.

[00:07:38] If we were, if we were right in everything that we learned, we had to commit to it. So we had to go all in. Now, Leanne was pregnant at the time. We just bought a new house. We had good jobs, earning decent money. So the outside world thought we were crazy. Because, you know, we were doing, for most people, you know, very well.

[00:08:00] And that aspect. So, but the market, the times that there was an opportunity, and it’s one of the things that we argued at is, is, is spotting opportunity and going after it. So whilst everybody was out, there was a whole fear in the marketplace. We went for it. And the objective at the time was simply. To replace our net income that we get from our jobs.

[00:08:23] There was no grand plan on, you know, millions or billions or anything at that, at that time. It was simply, stage one was to replace it to become financially free, that our investments through the real estate or property would cover our net income on a monthly basis. And that was it. And we thought to ourselves, look, you know.

[00:08:43] We take us two or three years to get there. We managed to do it within a year. We’re actually more ahead of that. We were in a really good place because once we got the momentum going, things really started to work in our favor. So, um, the 2008 sort of period, the financial crash, when everybody was out and, uh, went against them.

[00:09:05] You know, we, we, um, you know, that was a good year for us.

[00:09:10] Leanne Carling: And my corporate role, my corporate role was, um, acquisitions, procurement. So I’m a big believer that you make more when you buy, not when you sell. So when you buy well.

[00:09:24] Adam Stott: Absolutely. And I think it’s actually a really important lesson because like one of my strong beliefs is it really is a, you know, business is a game of percentage gains.

[00:09:33] And I think you have to set those, you know, we’re a point A, we want to be a point B and you identify that point B to not say I’m going to quit my job and be a millionaire. Yeah, is you’re taking the point B outside, but if you’re like, you know, going to replace my income and then when we get there, we’ll reassess, we’ll reevaluate and then we’ll build again, right?

[00:09:53] And then get there, then we’ll do the same. And I think it’s actually a really good bit of advice for business owners that, uh, that are watching is, is to set those, those goals that they’re achievable, that they can work towards and build from. So, so awesome. So we did that within a year and you often see that’s the case, right?

[00:10:10] There’s a lot of people do that. They, if they have that exact mentality. So if somebody is listening to this or in a job right now, that is the exact mentality. First step, how to replace my income. So I can actually have some freedom and some control in a year, which is awesome. Um, but, and how do we move them from doing some property deals to, Investing in businesses, what was kind of the next steps on the journey?

[00:10:32] And how did that start to build towards where we are now?

[00:10:35] Graeme Carling: Well, we actually, what happened was we got there, we got there quicker than we thought. So then we said, what do we do the next year? You’re, you’re A to B, your B then becomes the new A and you’ve got a new B. So if it was simply, dead simple. We just wanted to double it.

[00:10:50] So imagine if we doubled it, then the next year, we doubled it again. So within a space of about a five or six year period, we became one of the largest landlords in Scotland, private residential landlords in Scotland, just by continuing to go, the finance market changed. We have to fix it. People were sitting on the fence, um, uh, waiting on, you know, the markets coming back.

[00:11:13] We never really knew. The real halcyon days, we got sort of at the tail end. So we’ve always had to figure out how do we raise more equity or more capital. So we just got to a point where we had, you know, and we diversified and we’re doing some redevelopments and, um, uh, you know, uh, you know, we didn’t do new builds, but we did commercial to residential.

[00:11:39] We got involved in some commercial stuff, some student accommodation, so we kind of diversed a bit. But what I said was, look, you know, the property market was getting tougher, and what we wanted to do, particularly as the rules were changing, we wanted to then get, um, you know, businesses, we were having to upgrade our properties, spend a lot of money on them to stay, you know, to keep, uh, you know, within the regulations and the legislation.

[00:12:02] And we seen that that was That was only going to get tighter going forward. So we wanted to be part of the other side of the fence that would be doing the work and capitalizing on that stuff. So that was kind of, a natural progression for us, Adam, that we went into the business side from. Just only in the real estate side.

[00:12:20] And I think, certainly, so we’ve been doing, we haven’t bought any, any real estate wives for five, six years now, because we just pivoted, uh, out into businesses. And I must admit, I, I enjoy the business side of it way more than the, than the property side,

[00:12:35] Leanne Carling: personally. I think just for your listeners as well, that we always plan and review.

[00:12:39] So, you know, what, what, what we’ve been good at, what, what do we need to improve on? And I think when we were looking, when we first started, we were buying one property at a time and we thought, let’s see if we’re buying six, 10, 50 properties at a time. It’s the same process. It’s just a bigger number. And I think a bit of advice that we always say, we were always told, start small, take baby steps.

[00:13:02] If we could go back, we would start bigger.

[00:13:07] Adam Stott: Absolutely. Interesting. Interesting. And as you moved into the business, what sort of skills did you need to develop that you obviously got good at the property game. You moved into the business game. Did you have new challenges? Did you feel like you had a skill?

[00:13:22] Did you get around new people? What was your kind of next moves to start working in that environment? Yes,

[00:13:26] Graeme Carling: great question. And I’m dead clear on this. It went from I or us to we, when you’re running a business, it’s a team of people that you need, particularly if you want to run big business, most people get stuck on small business and they’re doing everything, you know that they are every, they are the business.

[00:13:46] We want, we didn’t want that. We didn’t want to buy a job or, or, or how we wanted to make sure that we were building companies, building businesses. So to do that, we needed to go from us to we. And one of the first things that we done was we, we went and got other people that were better, more experienced than us.

[00:14:04] So we create a board of directors, some non execs and I’m just part time, but we brought on a team of people that were able to give us advice. And better advisors, external advisors, because the plan was to go and do things we’d never done before. So we, we wanted to go and, and it was, well, the stakes were bigger, you know, the challenges were bigger, so we needed more people.

[00:14:29] And I think that that’s probably what some of the things that is the difference between a small business owner on big business is they get stuck in the eye. You know, we didn’t want to get there. We wanted to get to the wee as soon as possible because we don’t want most people get stuck there, small business, you know, two, three, four staff, and maybe earning a decent living.

[00:14:48] But, but, you know, we want it to be big business. That was, that was our plans.

[00:14:53] Adam Stott: So as you, as you went and brought that board of directors in, what was some of the. advice and guidance that that board of directors, those non execs gave you, that stuck with you. There’s some certain things that really helped you.

[00:15:05] Graeme Carling: Well, I think, I think certainly on, um, the profile and their experience helped. Um, you know, we were property guys. How do you, how do you go from being a property guy in Scotland to buying businesses? all over the world. You need to have a team of people that are credible, that have the experience, that are qualified in their own right.

[00:15:25] Let’s say a whole legal, you know, uh, or that chairman, you know, or chairman of the OBE, um, you know, 60 years of, you know, he’s an older guy now, but, um, wise old fox, you know, that just keeps things right. And I think if you want to play the bigger game, you You’ve got to, you’ve got to start off with the right intentions and certainly from a corporate compliance point of view, you know, we, we had a board of directors before we had a single customer or we had a single, uh, you know, a single bit of income job, but

[00:15:58] Adam Stott: it’s actually pretty unusual,

[00:15:59] Graeme Carling: right?

[00:15:59] Yeah. Yeah. We were pretty good, right? Yeah. We had to, we had to we were committed and it’s one of the things. Just, you know, talking when we are in something we are all in, you know, so it’s,

[00:16:17] Leanne Carling: yeah, I think a lot of our boards, you know, we’re very emotional and passionate people about what we do, but sometimes they just take the, not the sting, but the emotion out of it and, you know,

[00:16:30] Adam Stott: There’s a big action takers, you need someone around you that is prepared to say, well, consider this aspect or this aspect.

[00:16:39] And usually you end up taking the same action, but sometimes the action you don’t take that makes all the difference. Right. So when you’re a big action taker, the big, uh, which it sounds like you both are right.

[00:16:53] Graeme Carling: Because what we say is, and it’s, it’s so true. Some of the best deals we’ve done are the deals we have, we didn’t do.

[00:17:00] Really, you know, we’ve dodged some bullets because of, you know, we’ve had conversations or meetings or somebody’s just said, have a look at this. And

[00:17:10] Leanne Carling: this is where we get quite emotional and maybe disagree on things because I always say we’ve got a criteria that we’re looking for in a business. Don’t make, don’t, don’t bend the rules and try and make the business fit into your criteria if it doesn’t because that’s when you end up with problems.

[00:17:28] So, um, we’re quite good at sticking to the criteria now, Graeme.

[00:17:36] Adam Stott: So now you, now you invest in businesses, so you’ve gone on this journey. Had the right advice, the right guidance. You now live in Dubai, you’re investing in businesses. When you invest in a business, what does that look like? What’s your kind of the moves that you make?

[00:17:48] Do you have a process, a system that you work through? How does that look?

[00:17:53] Graeme Carling: Well, we have a number of, uh, uh, avenues, if you like, of how we, um, We very rarely buy businesses that are on the open market for sale. We generally go out looking for, we go searching for businesses that fit our criteria, or we’re approached, or our outward marketing, or um, just even being on podcasts like this, you know, where people are interested, you know, they maybe have a business they want to scale up, you know, they would want to talk to us about that.

[00:18:19] So that’s how they, they come into us, they come in various. So ways and shapes and sizes, we’re pretty clear on our criteria when they come into us. And the more we know, there’s a lot of most of the deals we don’t do, but most of the opportunities that come in, but it’s a numbers game. So we just, we’re just continually every day, um, looking, looking, uh, or discussing, uh, deals that get presented to us.

[00:18:42] And I think. Once you get a track record of, you know, somebody that does deals and can do deals and, you know, does what they say, you know, we say we’re going to do it, we’ll do it. Um, it kind of attracts, you know, we attract a lot more now than the early days where we really had to go out sort of hunting.

[00:19:01] Yeah. Absolutely. I think

[00:19:02] Leanne Carling: when you’ve got a strict criteria, even when we go back, go back to the properties, I didn’t even, if the numbers worked within our criteria, I didn’t even need to go and view the properties and waste my time. It was just a numbers game. Does this property, does this portfolio fit?

[00:19:19] Yes, no. And if it worked, then you do more due diligence. So many people are just going about. You know, looking at things when, when it doesn’t fit to start with. Yeah,

[00:19:30] Adam Stott: absolutely. So much opportunity out there, right? So you, you, you get a business owner come to you and let’s say they do fit the criteria and you do business with them and you made this decision that you want to be a part of this.

[00:19:42] What are some of the challenges that you typically encounter and some of the things that you do to mitigate those challenges? Do you have, is there, uh, is it very bespoke or do you see the same sort of challenges time and time again?

[00:19:55] Graeme Carling: It depends on the size of the business. Now, it’s an owner operator that’s had it for 30 years.

[00:19:59] The biggest challenge to that is seller’s remorse. You know, when you get to the end, they’re choking and changing their mind all the way through it. There’s, you know, they’re nearly there then, oh, what are they doing? And all that stuff. So we like to get those deals done quickly because what we’ve found is the longer they Or, or, or, you know, you’re in this diligence period, the more issues that can come up during that.

[00:20:24] So we like to get the ones on owner operators that have been going for a while. The larger ones take a bit longer. Um, you’re dealing with, um, you know, maybe more shareholders. Um, there’s gonna be less emotion in that, but there’s more complications because there’s so many different, uh, decision makers. So, so again, you know, it really depends on the size of the deal and, um, I suppose as well where it is, you know, deals can get done in the U. S. far quicker, for example, than what you can get done in the U. K.

[00:20:57] Adam Stott: Right. And why would that be? Why are the deals in the U. S. far quicker?

[00:21:01] Graeme Carling: You know, there’s just, you know, if you’re going even less, if you’re going to sell a finance deal, you know, if you’re, if you’re trying to defer, if you’re buying a, we’re buying a business in the UK from somebody who’s never sold the business before, and maybe want to want, you know, a brokerage or, or an advisor, you know, they may be bringing an advisor in at the end because, you know, they’ve been spooked or they don’t understand the process.

[00:21:27] It, it slows it down. It complicates it. Then there’s, you know, there’s this, there’s less. It’s normal for the fair considerations. For example, earnouts and, um, seller fund, seller finance in the us. I mean, it’s part of the vocabulary when you’re talking to them over there. Whereas in the uk, It’s like you’re trying to teach them or, or, or, you know, it’s, it’s a bit more tricky.

[00:21:53] Leanne Carling: Even see in the U. S. they advertise. Yeah. Finance welcome. Yeah. Available. Available. Yeah. So they’re more open.

[00:22:03] Adam Stott: So more open to the types of deals. So, you know, through the through this journey, then if you had to sort of sum up, and there’s quite a few, there’s been loads of lessons as you’ve been talking that I’m certainly taking notice of and can see, you kind of had to sum it up in terms of going from being in a place where You weren’t in business, you’ve had businesses that didn’t work, you were stuck in jobs you didn’t like, to actually being able to go and build a portfolio of businesses, a portfolio of properties, you know, get that to the point where you’re doing big deals regularly and in place.

[00:22:35] What would, say, the five lessons be, if you could sum it up to five lessons of the changes that you made to go on that journey?

[00:22:44] Graeme Carling: Well, you need to commit to it first. You absolutely need to commit. To get to where we are, or what we do, you can’t do it, it’s not a side hustle, it’s not something you do at weekends, or at nights, you have to commit to it and be all in, and, you know, it’s…

[00:22:59] Adam Stott: What does all in look like to you? I don’t want to, I know we’ve said five, let’s go with this one a bit deeper, what does all in look like to you?

[00:23:05] Graeme Carling: All in is, people ask us, does it interfere with your personal life, your work life? And we get asked this question all the time, particularly because we’re husband and wife.

[00:23:14] So, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I have no idea what you mean by that. We have one life, it is, our kids have been brought up, they have, since they were, well, forever. They have only known us to be the way that we are. We can travel the world, but we’re working. We can be anywhere and do anything, but we’re working.

[00:23:36] You know, and it’s not something we think about. And we, you know, we, we, we love what we’re doing. So all that means. All in. If we’ve, we can go on holiday tomorrow if we want, but if, if there’s something comes up, we’re not going on holiday. We’re, we’re, we’re away, we’re doing it. And we, we don’t think anything of that.

[00:23:56] Leanne Carling: We, we don’t have, we don’t have a work life balance. And people say, you know, oh, do you have a work life balance? No, we don’t. We have balance, but we balance it to what we want. So, you know. And I’ll give the example, you know, sports day at the school, you know, I’ll prepare to go, but if something comes up, I’ve got to deal with it within our business.

[00:24:14] But it’s not, it’s not a big deal for me because, and it’s not a big deal for the kids because they understand the way we it’s not, there’s not tears. Oh, you didn’t make it. You know, oh, you never came or no, we’re there for things that are really important to them and vice versa. But they understand that they’ve got their life.

[00:24:34] They live because we work so hard. Mm-hmm. .

[00:24:37] Adam Stott: Yeah. And it, and, and it, it is really si quite simple actually. If you want it badly, you are gonna do the work to get it right. And, uh, there’s a lot of people that want it badly, but they don’t wanna do the work.

[00:24:50] Graeme Carling: They wanna the price for it and yeah. I mean, we want, I, I think it, the, the life is, well, we love the, the life that we,

[00:24:59] Adam Stott: important thing you said. Is if you enjoy it, because I love what I do. Yeah. Never feels like work for me. Because I love what I do. And I think it comes to that mode of loving what you do. That really helps. Right.

[00:25:12] So commit is one. What else we, what we say?

[00:25:16] Graeme Carling: A team. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you need to, I think that it depends on the size you want to get. You need a team of people. You need great advisors. And by the way, I think it’s not just great advisors and it stops there. You’re always upgrading your advisors. We want to pay the most fees we can.

[00:25:32] It’s the opposite because we’re going to get the best advice from the best company. So we need to earn more in order to be able to get that because that’s just how it works. Most, you know, we’ve, we’ve learned the lesson of having your, you know, your cousin’s granny do your books for you. You know what I mean?

[00:25:47] That’s disaster, you know, all of that stuff. So we actively seek out. The best companies with the best reputation that you can. Again, difficult when you’ve just started out and you’ve not got the money, but that should be the aspiration. And for us, That was one of the

[00:26:05] Leanne Carling: lessons. We had a, you know, a bookkeeper at the start that gave us loads of wrong advice and it ended up costing us money.

[00:26:13] So it was a huge, huge lesson. So, you know, we did okay, we didn’t pay the money at the time, but we paid it

[00:26:18] Graeme Carling: and got on with it.

[00:26:20] Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. So get great advice, build the team and a couple, a couple more nuggets. What else did you say?

[00:26:28] Graeme Carling: No, I think, I think, well, I mean, we keep, uh, same advisors, people cut quick.

[00:26:36] You need to cut quick. Where, where we’ve made errors has been where we’ve been too loyal to the person and not loyal to their output or what we’re getting from them on results. And that has hurt us. Uh, over, over the years, we’ve had some real ones because we’re very loyal people. People are very loyal to us, and that’s the hardest ones.

[00:26:57] You know, they’re genuinely good people. But as the business grows, as we’ve grown, and the team grows, and they haven’t been able to adapt to that growth. Unfortunately, the results that we’re getting from them, and it hinders the progress for everybody else. We’ve been liable in the past. Or being too loyal to the, to the person rather than the result.

[00:27:18] So we, we don’t do that now. We cut quick and we just, you know, we just got to move on. So that’s, I think that’s one of the key ones for me.

[00:27:27] Adam Stott: Absolutely. And I love the fact you said the output. Yeah, you got to measure it coldly, right? And that’s really important. I think actually anyone that’s been in business for a long time could definitely resonate with that.

[00:27:40] I certainly resonate with that because, you know, you want to bring people on your journey with you. If you bring them on the journey and they’re not meant to be in that place, It’s no good for you. All right. And so it can cause you big. And, uh, and I must ask, I think obviously being a husband, wife team, have you got any tips for the husband, wife, business owners?

[00:27:59] The, you know, what would you say? How do we, how do, how do people build a great business or property portfolio while I was working with the other half? Do you have any secrets? Is there any, uh, any special source or as?

[00:28:11] Graeme Carling: I’m asking. I knew, I knew Leanne

[00:28:18] Leanne Carling: was going to answer this first. I would say, So do what you’re good at. You know, I know, um, Graeme’s strengths, he knows mine. Um, and that’s what we do in the business. So, you know, I’m good at identifying, negotiating deals and then I get them to a certain point that Graeme then works with the finance, getting the, you know, the investment and he, and the legals.

[00:28:42] And then it comes back to me for the management side. So, so we know what we’re good at. And the minute that we start putting our foot in each other’s lanes, there’s a

[00:28:52] Adam Stott: clash. Absolutely. So identify your strengths.

[00:29:01] Alright, brilliant. Look, I think it’s been, uh, and where can people find you if they want to see a bit more about, uh, your business investment portfolio? Do you have a specific, I know it’s Carlin Group. Do you

[00:29:10] Graeme Carling: have a website? Yeah, yeah. The accounting group uk uh, or on LinkedIn greening, uh, or Lean Ann Kaling on, on LinkedIn’s, the main areas where people can get in touch with us.

[00:29:21] So,

[00:29:22] Adam Stott: Brilliant. And are you looking for deals and investments in businesses right now? Is that something?

[00:29:26] Graeme Carling: Absolutely. That’s, that’s all we do. Um, it’s what we do. It’s, let’s say it’s a numbers game. We spend, you know, three quarters of our life looking and looking for, um, new opportunities.

[00:29:37] Adam Stott: Brilliant. We’ll go and go and check them out at the carlinggroup.

[00:29:40] co. uk. Graeme, Leanne, it’s been a been an absolute pleasure. I love talking to you. I think there’s lots of wise lessons there that people can really pick up on and it’s an incredible journey. So congratulations to you both on on your results and I’m looking forward to seeing how you develop and grow even more.

[00:29:56] Thanks again for coming on.

[00:29:58] Graeme Carling: Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thank you. Pleasure.