"Everybody has unique abilities, and you must hone in on what you're really good at." - Guy Remond.
Guy Remond is an experienced individual with over 20 years in tech, software and consulting, advisory industries, founder, director, investor, and advis...
"Everybody has unique abilities, and you must hone in on what you're really good at." - Guy Remond.
Guy Remond is an experienced individual with over 20 years in tech, software and consulting, advisory industries, founder, director, investor, and advisor. Guy's working career began in retail where he enjoyed an 11-year stint in various managerial positions. Following this, he followed his passion for anything technical and branched out on his own, into the technical world.
In 2001, he was a founding member and CEO of Cake Solutions Limited, and over the next 16 years, he directly oversaw the development of the business from a small startup to that of an international multi-million-pound company respected as a cutting edge of engineering and process in the open-source software development world.
After being recognized in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, and being viewed as one of the most unique, forward-thinking, and fast-growth companies in the industry, Cake Solutions Limited was acquired by a multinational corporation. And the business was subsequently rebranded as Disney Streaming Services, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a company owned by The Walt Disney Corporation. As a creative and widely experienced individual with a keen focus on personal development, company culture, and process. improvement, Guy has invested in a number of companies and is actively working with these companies in a non-executive director or chairman role, helping them to fulfill the leadership's drive to a successful outcome. Guy is building two new organizations with his business partners, Gary Fletcher and Dave Zupano.
EHE Capital Limited is a highly efficient, tech-led private equity organization with a genuine focus on supporting entrepreneurs through their companies’ high growth stage through to be a successful conclusion. EHE capital also provides qualified, high-quality deal flow for investors, private equity, and venture capital organizations.
Guidr LLC is a legal document platform whose moonshot is to be the largest legal entity in the world that does not employ any lawyers. Guidr LLC is digitizing, democratizing, and demonetizing legal services, helping smaller law firms compete in the digital era.
In addition to his working commitments, Guy dedicates time to charitable activities. For well over a decade, he has worked with Variety, the children's charity in a number of voluntary roles, currently acting as the Chairman for the Northwest Region in the UK and more recently as a trustee for the organization.
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[00:00] Introduction Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.
This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience.
Your liquidity event is the largest and most important financial transaction of your life.
But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time, money and effort wasted. Of the "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave anywhere from 50% to over 100% of their deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.
I should know. I said no to a seven-figure offer and yes, to mastering the art and science of a liquidity event. Two years later, I said yes to a different buyer with a nine-figure offer.
Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event?
If you believe that you either don't have the time or you'll prepare closer to your liquidity event, think again.
Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing that the skills that built your business are the same ones for your liquidity event.
After all, how can you master something you've never done before?
Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and our nine-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the maximum value for your liquidity event.
At the end of this episode, take a moment to hear from business owners, just like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience.
[00:01:44] Jeffrey Feldberg: Guy Remond is an experienced individual with over 20 years in tech, software and consulting, advisory industries, founder, director, investor, and advisor. Guy's working career began in retail where he enjoyed an 11-year stint in various managerial positions. Following this, he followed his passion for anything technical and branched out on his own, into the technical world.
In 2001, he was a founding member and CEO of Cake Solutions Limited, and over the next 16 years, he directly oversaw the development of the business from a small startup to that of an international multi-million-pound company respected as a cutting edge of engineering and process in the open-source software development world.
After being recognized in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, and being viewed as one of the most unique, forward-thinking, and fast-growth companies in the industry, Cake Solutions Limited was acquired by a multinational corporation. And the business was subsequently rebranded as Disney Streaming Services, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a company owned by The Walt Disney Corporation. As a creative and widely experienced individual with a keen focus on personal development, company culture, and process. improvement, Guy has invested in a number of companies and is actively working with these companies in a non-executive director or chairman role, helping them to fulfill the leadership's drive to a successful outcome. Guy is building two new organizations with his business partners, Gary Fletcher and Dave Zupano.
EHE Capital Limited is a highly efficient, tech-led private equity organization with a genuine focus on supporting entrepreneurs through their companies’ high growth stage through to be a successful conclusion. EHE capital also provides qualified, high-quality deal flow for investors, private equity, and venture capital organizations.
Guidr LLC is a legal document platform whose moonshot is to be the largest legal entity in the world that does not employ any lawyers. Guidr LLC is digitizing, democratizing, and demonetizing legal services, helping smaller law firms compete in the digital era.
In addition to his working commitments, Guy dedicates time to charitable activities. For well over a decade, he has worked with Variety, the children's charity in a number of voluntary roles, currently acting as the Chairman for the Northwest Region in the UK and more recently as a trustee for the organization.
Welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. And wow, do we have an episode for you. We have with us today, a market disruptor in the person, and we're going to be talking all about that, but then we're going to go all over the map of creating new market disruptions and the whole entrepreneurial journey.
But let me not get ahead of myself, Guy welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. Absolutely delighted and excited to have you with us. And Guy, there's always a story behind the story and we would love to hear what's your story, Guy? What got you to where you are today?
[00:04:58] Guy Remond: Well, Jeffrey, first of all, thank you very much for inviting me on the podcast. Very excited to talk to you today.
I'm talking to you from Manchester in the North of England. And that's really where my entrepreneurial journey started and I think I was probably quite late into the entrepreneurial world, really. So, you know, I wasn't, particularly in academic school. Kind of since found out it wasn't a thing back in the day, but I'm pretty dyslexic and my son was dyslexic, and so on and so forth. So, kind of explains why I was hopeless at English and that kind of thing.
And you know, I left school at 17 and went to work for a supermarket. I got on a training manager scheme and really enjoyed it. I did that for 11 years of my life. So, nothing remarkable about that and nothing entrepreneurial about it really then there's no indication at that point.
And this is where it starts to change really. So, an advert in a newspaper for an electrical Superstore. And I discovered that I've got a bit of an inner geek and decided to explore that. And I wasn't unhappy in my role, but I also felt that I was ready for change. I'd been doing this role for 11 years.
I'd moved around many stores, but it was 11 years and I wanted to change. So, I moved into this area, and ultimately It took me down the technical track because this company was a computer retail in the UK. People who were interested in computers or the geek's fellow geeks.
And we got talking and I actually ended up leaving that organization after only 18 months and setting up a business with a guy that was 10 years my junior but had aspirations to establish actually a car trader and had several dealerships. But he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps.
He wanted to do something modern and on the Internet. And I knew a little bit more than he did about the Internet. And on that basis, we started working together and set up an online car database effectively where dealers could advertise their cars. And this is back in, I don't know when was that 1998, something like that. So, relatively early days of databases online and all that kind of cool stuff. And then I did that for 18 months, learned an awful lot. Because we were effectively running the business. When you're working for a big corporate, as I was before, you've sheltered from certain things.
And I think the entrepreneurial spirit was coming out at this point. And I was learning and I was enjoying myself. But he got to a point for various reasons where after 18 months of doing that, I decided to set my own business up. And one of the guys that I hired I took with me and this guy turned out to be and this is with any successful career it's part strategy and part luck or is this, and this guy turns out to be a technical genius.
I mean, literally even to this day, the smartest technical person I've ever worked with. And we set up this company back in 2001 called Cake Solutions, and we wanted to call it Cake Catchy, but the cake is back in the kind of dot com boom and they wanted a million dollars or something ridiculous for the domain.
So, we settled for Cake Solutions, which is like 399 or something like that instead. And we set this business up and we started really with pretty basic websites, data-driven websites. And it quickly became apparent that my business partner was technically capable of a lot more. So, we moved into sort of more technical backend type systems that run businesses, as opposed to the front end stuff, which promotes businesses. And he left actually in 2006 to explore really what was for him and the opportunity of a lifetime, which worked out very nicely for him.
So, it was myself and then my CTO, a guy called Jan Machacek again, another technically very capable guy. And we carried on and we got to sort of 2009 and we only had, you know, it was a lifestyle business we were doing well but we weren't breaking any records, we weren't trying to change the world in any great way.
But we got to that point, he said, should we have a look at what's coming around the corner from a technical viewpoint? I'm like. yeah, definitely. So, he spent six months doing some research and development in the technical space in the programming space of software development space. And came back to me and all this time, actually it was in the early days of blogging, he was blogging about this stuff, right?
So, we've started to get a following and I could see that people were really interested in what he was saying. And he came to me and said, look, we should go down this route. This is where I think computing's going. So, we did, and we start to build a business around that. The traditional stuff paid the bills, and then we start to work with one or two startups who were willing to take a risk in using this new technology because it gave them an advantage over the big boys. The big boys hadn't been around long enough for them. They weren't willing to take that risk. Over a couple of years, people start to see the value in this technology, and essentially it allowed us to build systems that didn't crash when there were spikes.
So, you know, I think this translates over into the US, so when a singer called Robbie Williams went online to sell one of his concerts at Knebworth in the UK where a hundred thousand tickets were available. Literally, the second open the site crashed it couldn't handle that kind of throughput, the demand, it couldn't handle it.
So, the problem we were solving was we were able to build systems that may slow down when you get a spike, but would not crash. And that was our competitive edge. And we could see that. And the other kind of really smart thing I think we did, but we fell into it.
I was saying, about the blogs and Jan used to blog about the exciting stuff he was doing and he was getting a following. We'd also actually written five published books on software development and in the software development world, one of those books, in particular, became quite a big book, selling tens of thousands of copies, which for software is a reasonable number.
It's not like Harry Potter, I know. And they were demonstrations of expertise and that allowed us to go hang on a second. There's something in this, the blogs and the books really helps our credibility. So, we started to make it part of the company culture.
And we did make a real effort with culture. We tried to do things properly within the office and look after our people and give them reasons to stay. And we also, when we're doing job interviews and we were growing quickly at this point we, we're talking to people about building their own personal brand.
Now in our space, that was unheard of because corporates, in particular, were really scared of people leaving. If they put their head above the parapet and started saying some smart stuff, then their expectation was that recruiters would call those people. And then they'd lose them. And actually, with corporates, that was often the case because they didn't have the culture that made them sticky.
So, there was no reason for them to stay if they got a better offer. Whereas I think we had a decent culture and consequently, even if they were offered $10,000 more than they were being paid at the moment, it wasn't enough to make them leave. And so our staff retention was very high. We gave all our people, those that wanted it.
And it's probably only about a third of the company, but that was a significant amount of content every month. We gave them a platform to write blogs, to go to user groups, to do talks. To do lunch and learn internally, to go to conferences. As people grew in confidence, they stepped up and they'd speak at a user group, maybe 30, maybe a hundred people, then the step up to a conference and they speak to 300, 600 people, thousand people And, they built their own personal brand in their technical communities, which they loved, they love that kind of thing.
And the byproducts that was twofold one is that it promoted our company by default. And we generated some significant sales. We were generating sales, a company of our size had no right to, you know, the kind of companies we're working with. We have no right to work with under normal circumstances.
But people could see our expertise. And the other thing it did was that people wanted to work for us because we were doing cool stuff and they could see our people writing about cool stuff and that kind of thing. So, it was a self-perpetuating kind of scenario really. And, actually, the end of this story really from that company perspective is that our acquirer unbeknownst to us had been following us for four years.
And then when they received significant investment they approached us and that's really what happened. And even though I wasn't looking to sell, I'd just written a three-year growth plan. We just secured investment ourselves to grow non-equity-based investment funding. And yeah, we were ready to go, the offer was such that the shareholders decided that now was the time.
[00:13:22] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, Guy there is so much there to unpack. So, let's start with that. And I just love how modest you are for starters. And we'll talk a little bit more about that, but you said.
[00:13:34] Guy Remond: We're all modest.
[00:13:37] Jeffrey Feldberg: Speaking of which I love your accent, although I'm sure I have the accent to you, but it sounds lovely. There's the saying that it's something along the lines. I would rather be lucky than smart. And to be lucky you have to be open. And so despite what you doing and despite how smart you are and the different directions that you were going, you're open to being open, that something is just going to come along.
And it sounds like a lot of the instincts were in there that you're not going to learn in a business course. You're not going to read about it in a book. It's a gut feeling that some people call it that you were going along with those things. And so you're being open to being open, to bring the luck in, and then I loved how you shared your culture because culture, it's more the art side of the business and in the Deep Wealth Experience, culture, it's our step number two is what we call an X-Factor. It's something that you're world-class in. Your competitors with all their money, they can buy your employees. They can buy the same technology that they're using, but they cannot buy your culture.
Culture is so unique. It's a fingerprint and it's a unique DNA to you and your business. And it sounds like your culture of allowing people to self promote themselves and just getting out there and building up their own following, benefited your team and it also benefited the company, but you're modest Guy on your acquirer.
So, can you tell our audience a little bit more about who that acquirer was and where they ended up taking this wonderful technology that you had created?
[00:15:00] Guy Remond: Yeah, of course. It was a customer of ours actually. So, we were working with a company called BAMTech LLC. So, BAMTech they were the, I believe the largest sports streaming service in the US. It'd be one of those companies that most people have never heard of that they just consume the stuff from them.
So, if you wanted to watch baseball over the Internet, basketball over the Internet, and I know, soccer, MLS soccer, whatever it is, ice hockey, I think, BAMTech streams most of the large American sports and you paid a subscription to be able to watch that. They were actually the first company in the world, I believe to stream a live sporting event.
And that was back in the days of the telephone modems and the 33.3 board data speeds, which, you know, wouldn't lend itself very well to high-quality streaming. If you really wanted to watch a game, it was a step up from listening to it on the radio, so BAMTech were actually at that point, a third owned by Disney. So, Disney come in I think in 2016, don't hold me to these days, but roughly and bought a third of the organization and had an intention to come in and buy the rest and which actually the story behind that is that two weeks after our acquisition happened, I believe in July, 2017 the acquisition of BAMTech by Disney, the full acquisition then happened. And I was on holiday with my wife and I got a phone call from the CTO of BAMTech just to say, you're going to read this in the next half hour, you're basically owned by Disney now. And then what happened after that was that Disney did actually acquired another company called The Capitals in Amsterdam.
And I think the three organizations were brought together under the Disney streaming service banner and Disney streaming services is obviously responsible for the highly successful Disney+ platform. And it uses all the technology that BAMtech built and then my company Cake Solutions contributed to, and help them build as the in Amsterdam as well.
[00:17:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. Talk about the story behind the story, into what we now would call Disney+ and all of these incredible things that are going on out there that you were there right at the beginning. And obviously, you had impressed your acquirer over the past four years. Was it a case Guy where the acquirer was saying, if you can't beat them, we might as well buy them?
What was their backstory of why they came to you and said, hey, here's a ridiculous offer you can't say no to.
[00:17:25] Guy Remond: Well Yeah, I don't think it was a ridiculous offer. I think it was a fair offer to be, so it was a fair offer and as good as we had in our heads. So, we're well for us. Why did they come for us? They had a highly successful platform, but they also knew what was happening in the background.
At this point, obviously I didn't know when they came to us as a client, that they had Disney in the background and the plan was Disney would come in and utilize that platform to build a basis of Disney+. And they needed additional engineers. They needed the ability to build stuff when America was asleep.
And you're provided that other additional time zone and they needed our expertise in building these highly distributed systems that could cope with massive throughput. And they all did that really well, but we specialized in a different technology that added to what they had.
So, I think we added something to them that they didn't have, not just in engineers, not just in culture, as you quite rightly pointed out culture was certainly one of the reasons why they looked at us as well. And to be fair, they did acquire us. They made every effort to work with us and allowed me to work with them on the culture.
And they try to integrate that into that team as well. Culture definitely, but actually our expertise in this particular technology, which added to their expertise and complimented it really well.
[00:18:46] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Guy, I am wondering because you found yourself in a situation that as business owners, particularly today, we have such a robust market, despite the craziness that's going on out there in the world. You found yourself in a situation where, in your words, you had what would be a fair offer, and you, and it sounds like the board had to make some decisions of, okay.
Do we accept or do we continue on our way? And perhaps we have more opportunities on our way, or perhaps we have less opportunities. What was personally going through your mind and how did you get to the point of, okay, we have this offer on the table, let's move forward with it and see where we can take it.
[00:19:25] Guy Remond: It helps so that was a very fair offer because in reality, we could have worked for another couple of years and probably not achieved that offer. Or maybe we could, but who knows, but, you know, so it was a very fair offer. So, that was definitely a consideration. The other big one for me was they're a terrific company to work for. They're well-known for looking after people. And I think most of my team will probably not work on such a major project in the rest of their careers. If we'd carried on going down the route, we were going down, it's a huge project.
There are not many Disney+’es in this world, so I felt it was a huge opportunity for my team to do something really meaningful and be part of something really big. And actually, obviously, we didn't know this at the time, but then clearly the pandemic come along and entertainment became even more important at that point.
And probably, it doesn't take a genius to work out that Disney+ timed it really well, didn't it let's face it, subscriptions went through the roof partly because, there was a lot of people that weren't doing the jobs that they normally do, and they had to spend the time, but Disney+ provided that kind of entertainment and it's great to see. I worked for them for 21 months, great company.
But not an entrepreneurial environment that I thrive in, you know, I'd lost the commercial aspect. We became an internal resource. It was almost always my plan to leave after a period of time and to then, look at what I was going to do next, that, you know, stuff that suited my mindset because I think it's different to the corporate mindset.
[00:20:52] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely, and this is actually a really terrific segue into what you are doing, but before we talk about what you are doing, let's talk for a moment about the what I call the post-exit life. So, you've now officially sold the company. You had a behemoth of a company that was behind it, who now took your technology and integrated it into Disney+.
And it sounds like your time at Disney had ended. And so now you have this next little period of time in your life, the post-exit period. Guy, what was that like for you? What was your day-to-day and what was going through your mind and how did you feel at that point in time?
[00:21:30] Guy Remond: Yeah, it's a strange time because you do have time to think, you know, it's coming, the day's going to come that you'll probably not going to work for that organization for any length of time because that's the way it works and I wanted that.
So, the first thing I did, and I think this is a really smart move In hindsight, when you look back, you go, actually that was the right thing to do. I took a year out and don't get wrong. I can't help myself. I do get involved in various things and there was helping people and working with people and stuff, but in between that, and there was a lot of in-between that I went traveling with my wife and sometimes my whole family. And we've probably went to seven different places throughout the course of the year, that year. So, we did some extensive traveling and saw bits of the world that we'd never seen. And just had a complete decompress from what had been a busy couple of decades really overall. So, yeah, and I definitely recommend that because that gives you the thinking time you need to start to consider what you want to do. The other thing you have to say is that when these things happen I'm still surprised by the number of people that contact me now.
On the back of that, that wants a bit of advice or, you know, want you to go and work with them or whatever when word gets out, about those kinds of acquisitions, then people need not fair that they will be made redundant all of a sudden they won't have anything to do because they'll have more options than they know what to do with, I think in most cases.
[00:22:58] Jeffrey Feldberg: I think it's such a powerful strategy, whether you knowingly or unknowingly did that of really taking a year to do nothing. And you're really one of the fortunate few I'll share that on my post-exit wasn't quite that way. And I made a lot of the classic mistakes. I didn't know any better at the time.
And the fact that you took some time out just to really travel the world and just think, and have a lot of white space in your life to really, as I like to say, optimize your next chapter of life for happiness. And what really resonates with you and has your passionate. So, let's talk about that now. So, you came out of that period of about a year or so of the post-exit. What are you been up to now? What's been keeping you busy?
[00:23:39] Guy Remond: So, when I got back, there was various people that reached out to me and some of them were, in fact, all of them are people that are kind of knew for my past. And some wanted help and they wanted to grow their company and take it through high growth. They were offering opportunities and stuff like that.
So, you know, the first thing that happened really was that I invested in a number of companies and operate as a non-exec or chairman on those companies. And again, that gave me a little bit of breathing space. I didn't take too much on, at that point, I took enough on to keep me busy. Whilst I started to think about, what I wanted to do next then, and again in probably follows the story of my life really.
You recognize this from before, I was on a program called the Strategic Coach Program, which I've been doing for 15 years. Really enjoy it. It's in my top five things that I believe has really helped me and give me the confidence and tools to do some of the things that I do now. And I got introduced to a guy called Dave Zumpano actually by a British guy called Ash Foer and he said you need to speak today because he needs some help and I think you can help him.
So, we sat down and Dave was an entrepreneur and a lawyer and he had a law practice and so on. And they don't want to say too much because I think we were perhaps going to talk about this on a future podcast. But you know, that conversation led into an opportunity. And it wasn't planned, it wasn't strategic, it just happened. And I thought it was a terrific opportunity and I like the sound of it. And when that happens, then you explore these things further and, that's a story for another day, and actually literally probably three months later in the next Strategic Coach Course cause it's quarterly. I met a guy that I'd known for years actually, and we were having a drink as you do before the program, the night before and got chatting and it's a guy called Gary Fletcher and ultimately we set up a private equity organization called EHE Capital and we wanted to do things differently in the private equity world, we wanted to make entrepreneurs front and center. We felt that entrepreneurs in a lot of cases, when they go for funding have very little choice and sometimes it's taken advantage of and don't make the right choices or ask the right questions.
So, we wanted to change that. And so we set up this private equity organization that focuses on the entrepreneur and so we're currently doing that. And helping companies by investing ourselves, but also sourcing additional investment from other investors.
So, we're trying to build entrepreneurial investor communities, how I describe it. And as well as that, we're now building a platform with some pretty clever tech actually that will match entrepreneurs with investors. There is a human touchpoint in this because computers aren't that smart.
They can do the leg work, but there has to be some human touch in there. So, we've had a couple of people that worked with us very closely that help us determine which of the pitch decks that we put in front of investors and which ones that we feel aren't quite there yet.
[00:26:43] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, Guy that's really fascinating and feeling what I feel is a void out there because let's face it as entrepreneurs, as business owners. Hey, we are the change-makers. We make the world go round. We find these problems. We solve it, we make life better, but for so many founders and startups, how do you get funds?
Where do you go? Where do you start? And oftentimes looking to get funded the time and energy that it takes. It takes time away from the business. It sounds like this is going to be a more efficient and quicker way to be the matchmaker. If you will, between investor and startup.
[00:27:16] Guy Remond: Yeah. And educate actually. We aim to educate entrepreneurs as to the questions they should be asking. And we also aim to put more than one investing firm to them. So, they hopefully can't always promise this and it will build over time I'm sure. But we aim to put more than one investor in front of them so that they have a choice. And create a bit of competition. I feel that a lot of entrepreneurs really don't have that choice and consequently, are not in a position to negotiate in the right way, or they sometimes don't know some of the pitfalls or some of the tricks of the trade should we call them that they should know about so they can make informed decisions.
So, we aim to educate and we aim to try and put the ball back in the entrepreneur's court a little bit more than it, perhaps is in the moment.
[00:28:03] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, That's terrific. I mean, education just so powerful in terms of what you can do with that. And you're directing that into what really will make a difference for the startups of the founders. So, Guy, I'm wondering when you look back over your journey, very humble beginnings. And it took you a little bit of time to build up your speed and get that focus and get that going.
But when you look back, I'm going to call it Guy's secret sauce. Is there a theme that you're seeing or certain kinds of strategies as you look back and think about this that served you very well, time and time again, on the business side that you can share with our audience?
[00:28:42] Guy Remond: Yeah. I mean, you touched on that before actually, when you summed up when I explained about the journey of the acquisition. You mentioned gut and I actually trust my gut probably more than they should do and on the whole, it's right. And it makes good decisions.
How I don't know. Occasionally you get them wrong, but Hey, we all make bad decisions anyway, so there's nothing wrong with making a bad decision as long as you've taken all the precautions you can not to make that bad decision. Then if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.
You move on. And so, yeah, gut feel is the thing that I've followed throughout my career. And as you've seen from the chat we've had, there's been no plan about my career. But what would say is that when they have been opportunities. I've embraced those opportunities and am not worried about them not working.
I've given them a go and if they don't work, you move on. And on the whole 90% of them have worked. There's been a few that haven't, but that's fine. You learn from those.
[00:29:39] Jeffrey Feldberg: And, you know, Guy what's interesting. I know there are some listeners who are saying, okay. yeah, gut feel instinct. Are you guys nuts? That's just crazy. The science is finally catching up and the science is starting to show that there's an intelligence and what we call a gut there's actually intelligence there.
And that before our brain registers yes or no with a decision intrinsically, we know slightly ahead of time before that. And so I'm wondering when you have a gut feel, hey Guy, this is the way to go. You should be taking a right, but logically, everything is screaming to take a left.
But how do you deal with that on a day in day out basis where it's just so off the wall, but it actually, when you look back is the right thing to do.
[00:30:22] Guy Remond: Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think in the early days it was just me and I made those decisions there were times during the journey when I could have lost everything literally and had to start again. Only two or three of those times, but all the same two or three, three of those times where had a young family actually, a wife and kids to support.
But first of all, my wife always backed me really important and trusted me to try and get it right. Which fortunately on the whole have done. I think now. I still rely on my gut, but I have people around me that I trust intrinsically that I've worked with for a long time, who understand me, who question me sometimes and make me think about things are a little bit more than I have done when I was younger and I was on my own.
So, I think a lot of the time, within Strategic Coach, they have this concept, which is called who not how so I don't worry about how. I'm going to get something done or how I'm going to make a decision I worry about who is going to get something done or who's going to help me make that decision.
So, I've got a really capable group of people around me who will question stuff that I do and make me think. And ultimately it's my decision, but at least I'm making a more informed decision than purely gut feel alone.
[00:31:37] Jeffrey Feldberg: Fascinating really this is your own I'll call it business DNA that over the years, you've fine-tuned. But at the same time, you're not the emperor with no clothes because you've surrounded yourself with people just to give you maybe a little bit of a fact check or hey Guy, that sounds really good. But have you thought about this and it sounds like perhaps new information can be introduced into a situation that maybe you don't change your decision, but maybe you do in light of that new information.
[00:32:04] Guy Remond: Yeah. And the thing, you know, on the whole. They agree with my gut feel, but there are occasions when they don't and then it is, I either live by my sword or die by my sword. So, it's up to me to make that final decision. And the great thing is they do not take offense when I don't take their advice.
And I do say, look, I understand what you're saying, and I know why you're saying it. And you're right in what you're saying. However, I'm still going to do this. But that doesn't happen that often. I do try and listen to them most of the time.
[00:32:34] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's terrific. And I suspect that it's been your instincts that have helped you pick the right people, the right advisors to surround yourself. Because there's that old saying you are the average of the five people actually that you spend the most time with. And so you want to make sure that you're not necessarily the smartest guy in the room and that you have the right people around you to bring out the best in you.
And so Guy we're at the point in the interview, it's one of my favorite questions. And here's the question for you? When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have this magical DeLorean car and the DeLorean car, it can take you to any point in time. So, I want you to imagine now it's tomorrow morning, you look out your window, the DeLorean car is there and the door is open.
And Guy, it's asking you to come into the car, you'll hop into the car. And now you can go back to any point in your life Guy. Maybe it's Guy as a young child or an adolescent, a young adult, whatever that point in time would be. What would you be telling your younger self in terms of, hey, do this or don't do that, or here are some lessons learned? What would that be for you?
[00:33:38] Guy Remond: I think there's probably the same conversations I have with my children now, knowing what I've learned over the years, which is you know, my daughter was pretty academic, did well at school, did well at university. My son is very much like me that the academic side, he wasn't great at school and I wasn't great at school.
My lesson from that was and no one ever told me this because it did matter in those days, but nowadays it doesn't matter. Do the best you can. What I want for my children is for them to work hard and do the best they can and try and work out what their unique ability is.
Everybody has unique abilities, and if you can hone in on what you're really good at. My unique ability, I believe I've had this done with me is that I'm able to create uniquely talented teams that support my endeavors. And I'm trying to help my kids figure out what their unique abilities are and for them to just do whatever they feel they can do in that particular area.
And just go with the flow and don't worry about getting it right the first time. I started in food retail and ended up in software development. Selling apples and oranges, and then it's ones and zeros, you know, very different. Yeah, go for it. And don't worry about changing your career.
In fact, I actively encourage people to change careers. The days of people having a job for life. And just waiting for their retirement, not particularly enjoying the job. I hope diminishing. I think it's very healthy for people to move careers until finding the career that their unique abilities allow them to thrive in and they'll be happier. Their employees will be happier and they'll be successful.
[00:35:19] Jeffrey Feldberg: Guy, you are so spot on and for our listeners, I really hope you were listening carefully because what Guy has shared of his philosophy, his thesis in life if you will, I think is probably one of the most valuable lessons that are out there because Guy like yourself, I'll use a little bit of different terminology or words, but like you, I believe that every single person is born with a superpower, but we don't know what that superpower is.
And our mission in life is really twofold. Number one, to identify what that superpower is. And then number two, take it to the world and leverage that superpower, share it for the gift that it is, and just really make that difference and change the world. Change society, make the world a better place, and Guy, you really nailed it in sharing that.
I'm going to put this in the show notes for our listeners. It'll be an easy point and click for you. Guy, if someone wanted to find you online and reach out where would be the best place?
[00:36:17] Guy Remond: You know, go to ehe.capital for the private equity organization, or if you want to go to guidr.legal which is actually an online legal document platform, or if you want to reach out to me personally, it's my name, which is guyremond[at]gmail[dot]com and I will answer any queries people have.
[00:36:38] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And I love your transparency and just putting your email out there and for our listeners, if you don't take Guy up on his offer, you're nuts, we have a market disruptor here who has made such a difference and an entrepreneur through and through. So, Guy, on that note, we're going to close out this episode and I really want to thank you so much for taking part of your day and spending it with us on The Sell My Business Podcast.
And as always, as you say, thank you, we also say, please stay healthy and safe.
[00:37:03] Guy Remond: Brilliant. I've really we here and thanks for inviting me. Thank you.
[00:37:06] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.
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Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?
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