The Recipe for Success, Combine Your Passion, Your Talent, and Helping Others with Ezra Chapman
We’re really at such an early age with children for us to really educate them and distinguish between them, how they feel. Actually being able to separate those feelings and recognizing that, you know, anxiety or the feelings of anxiety, and actually, if they’re feeling that way.
About Ezra
Ezra Chapman is a UK based entrepreneur/executive with a long history of building companies across industries. He has been a chief executive and an investor. Also became incredibly skilled with people management and all of the aspects of building a successful business. He can speak extensively on things like how those in charge of hiring can make good decisions about applicants. Tips and tricks he has used over the years. What makes a business successful, what investors look for and more.
He has an impressive history in business leadership. He founded and built the largest niche (single technology) recruitment company in the world, his first company was in the Top 100 Fastest growing companies in the UK for 5 consecutive years, 3 different companies he founded were in Top 100 employers in the UK.
Chapman is also a partner in the UKs leading Fintech business that won Her Majesty the Queens award for Entrepreneurship. He ran the Number 1 rated recruitment company on Trust pilot, and many of his companies were the high profile winners of multiple technology and innovation awards.
Additionally, he speaks on entrepreneurship and building companies, value and Principle driven leadership. And what he has learned about sales and hiring, with a focus on Education / Recruitment and Technology.
Recently, as a new father to a one year old, he has turned his thoughts to education. How we teach our children and how we can do better – his recent endeavor, Lifewise.
Ezra says : “ Offering free courses during lockdown, to primary schools across the nation to support teachers, parents, and children in these difficult times we work directly with schools, giving them all the resources they need to prepare lessons with our 4 programs: Mental Wellbeing, Lifestyle, Life Prep and Survival Programs and provide 4 years’ worth of PSHE delivery targeted at specific age ranges, lessons covering topics such as mental health, healthy lifestyles, first aid, cyber safety and finance, pre-planned lessons with easy step-by-step guides to save time for teachers and coaches. Interactive, offline materials to teach pupils and encourage engagement.
Program Benefits For Schools: We use interactive tools, the power of activity and sport to better prepare children for their futures.” Ezra can speak on all aspects of business, as well as on children/education. And mental health and how teachers, kids and families are being affected by the last year.
Listen to more great episodes of The Business of Business Podcast here
Full Transcript Below
The Recipe for Success, Combine Your Passion, Your Talent and Helping Others with Ezra Chapman
Sat, 8/14 10:30PM • 43:14
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, uk, build, coaches, absolutely, business, children, curriculum, realize, learning, talk, sport, platform, school, perspective, world, principle, club, answers, life
SPEAKERS
Ezra, Roy Barker
Roy Barker 00:00
I’m your host Roy. Of course, we are the podcast that brings you a wide variety of guests that talk about a lot of diverse topics and today is no different. Recipe For Success. We are pleased to have Ezra Chapman. He is a UK based entrepreneur, and executive with a long history of building companies across a lot of different industries. He has been a chief executive officer and an investor. Also became incredibly skilled with people management and all the aspects of building a successful business. His first company was a top 100 fastest growing company in the UK for five consecutive years. Three different companies he founded, were in the top 100 employers within the UK.
Chapman is also a partner in the UK is a leading FinTech business that won His Majesty The Queen’s award for entrepreneurship. He ran the number one rated recruitment company on Trustpilot. And many of his companies were the high profile winners of multiple technology and innovative rewards, awards, excuse me. But today, what we want to talk about, he’s created a new company, that’s basically it’s an education platform life was, and this is for primary school children in the UK, that focuses on the PSHE . And I’ll let you explain those Ezra, as we get on here, but that it’s a theme that prepares them for life. As well as for, you know, business and just, I guess, a higher plane. If I explained that correctly. I’ll let you weigh in. Ezra, thanks so much for being with us.
And looking forward to excited to learn and, you know, I feel we don’t prepare kids for life anymore. Barely, when I went to school, at least they taught us how to balance a checkbook. But you know, now I don’t even think we do that anymore. It’s just can we how fast can we get them out? So anyway, thanks for being with us. And looking forward to talking to you about this.
Ezra 01:58
Great. Thank you for the the invite. And it’s, I’m really looking forward to talking to you, as well, Roy. And so PSHE with Lifewise. I don’t think that you guys over in the US have a similar subject. But in the UK, back in September 2020, which is the start of our school year, just last year gone. It became part of the British curriculum, okay. Their pre primary school in the country needs to include a subject called PSHE. PSHE is personal, social health and economy. Basically, it’s Recipe For Success all the stuff that you and I wish we’ve been taught at school Exactly.
Which we didn’t get all the practical advice as to, you know, what’s the government? Or why do we pay taxes or things about mental well being? All those things that were never really, really covered? Great to say it’s become part of the UK curriculum.
Roy Barker 02:57
That’s awesome. And you were able to take advantages of this? You have developed and are rolling out a platform to help with this specific portion of that primary school education. Correct?
Ezra 03:11
Absolutely. So yeah, we we’ve got a very specific PSHE platform. And our vision lifewise is to become the best platform in the world. But positively preparing children for life. And, and, and in the UK, that’s primarily focused on PSHE. But we see that that’s, you know, whoever I talked to. Even on the international stage, right, talks about the same need for these types of the same preparation. And the same learnings anywhere around the world. Because, you know, our world is so fast changing that we need to be better preparing our children for it.
Roy Barker 03:51
Yeah, that’s for sure. Recipe For Success. Not a doubt that this is a problem that’s not limited to the UK. I’m sure that you know it, because we talk about it. Here, not even to that depth of the government and things like that. But we also talk about paying rent that you know. When you get out of school, you live on your own, you pay rent. You might have a car payment, you got insurance. And then lo and behold, there’s groceries. And there’s all these other things that go along with life that, you know, we’re just not taught about.
Ezra 04:22
Absolutely. I mean, it’s really funny, because, I mean, I think the most incredible part of it for me was that. I mean, I can go into the background and why this was really, really passionate. I’m very passionate about it. But even from a practical perspective on the things you just spoke about there. You know, over here in the UK, we’ve got a tax haven called HMRC. You know, which, which collects all of the tax across the UK. And the government has thousands and thousands of workers chasing people all around the country to pay their taxes. Yet, at school, they don’t, you know, educate children to let them know that they need to pay them.
Roy Barker 05:04
Right.
Ezra 05:06
And it’s, it’s, you know, it’s just incredible. I always thought that growing up, I was like, wow, we have to babysat. Now I mentioned this last school. I’m wondering how many people aren’t doing it? Well, yeah,
Roy Barker 05:18
Well, in, you know, here in here in the US, if you go to work for somebody,. Of course, you know, they drag those out, right out your paycheck. So you really don’t have a choice. But as we encourage people to be entrepreneurs. And as our economy is made up of more and more smaller businesses, you know. That is a key point. That people go out in, have a product or service,. They make a lot of money. Recipe For Success. Then at the end of the year, they’re like, Oh, I was supposed to hold back some money, you know, for taxes. And for growth. For all this other stuff that, you know, nobody ever really talks to him about until it’s usually too late.
Ezra 05:56
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s it. So so that that was a an early sign for me. That there was probably more that we could do from a from an educational perspective. But like you were saying earlier, you know, it’s much broader than that. It’s, I think it’s an international thing. Probably the thing that we see most and having the biggest impact on children’s life right now is social media. I think that we all recognize that that’s a global, it has a global impact. And probably over the period of the pandemic, actually having the Yeah, the impact of that on a mental well, being perspective, being huge across children, I think it’s brought to life, you know, the need, and the importance of these PSHE program in the UK and similar internationally. Really,
Roy Barker 06:45
You know, social media. You gotta love it. Because it can be such an awesome tool, but such a detrimental tool as well, you know, I think this is a great thing to, you know, teach kids that whatever you do today lives lives forever, number one. But then that mental health aspect is I think that people don’t take pictures of themself when they stubbed their toe. And they’re crying and holding their toe. Or you know, when the times are really bad. Or they don’t come on some people are very transparent, honest about their failures. A lot of times, it’s more of this is my fancy car. My fancy yacht. It’s a fantasy world that kids growing up.
I don’t think that they have a handle on that, that that’s not sometimes it’s not even reality. Number one, Recipe For Success but it’s, it’s not everybody, it’s not. It’s hard to achieve, you have to put a lot of work, you don’t come right out of college or high school, you know, start a business and all of a sudden, you’re just rolling in all this money.
Ezra 07:50
Absolutely, yeah. For sure. And that’s the, that’s very much the the sort of the impact it has, as you mentioned. But even for a broader perspective, that, you know, we’re dealing with children. Yeah, I think in in the US in the elementary school, sort of 5 to 11 years of age. And in the UK, you know, it’s the primary school. At that point, you know, we’re really at such an early age with children. But it’s an opportunity for them to, for us to really educate them and distinguish between them how they feel. Actually being able to separate those feelings and recognizing that, you know, anxiety or the feelings of anxiety, and actually, if they’re feeling that way, that there’s, there’s a need to share it.
And, you know, it coming back to the social media piece. It’s a powerful tool, you know. Nelson Mandela said that, that there’s no greater weapon in the world to influence the world than education. And right now, really, you know, what would you say is the most influential. You know, tool out there in the world that’s influencing and educating people? It’s social media. Exactly. What we’re saying there is we’ve ended up putting, yeah, including to Nelson Mandela, right. I agree with him. Which is we put the most powerful weapon to influence the way that people think into the power of the people. What that means is that which is great in many respects, is incredible to democracy in many ways.
But from, from a child’s perspective, that means that they’re elicits they’re experiencing different emotions at a much earlier age. And, and we have a responsibility really to ensure that they’re as best prepared as possible for that.
Roy Barker 09:36
So now was the the PSHE Is this an effort that the government came up with? Recipe For Success, Or is this kind of like, was the business community and the community at large? Were they kind of forced in this issue to push into this or how did this come about?
Ezra 09:55
Yes, it’s come it’s come from different angles. So PSHE has actually been been running schools as, as an additional topic. As it were, for a whole series, for a whole period of time. There have been loads of people lobbying for it to become part of the curriculum. And we’re delighted to say that, you know, as of September last year, it’s become part of the British curriculum. And, yeah, and I think that it’s, I think the pandemic has really only heightened the importance of it.
Roy Barker 10:25
So is this something, just for my clarification. Is this something that’s taught during the day that the actual school administers? Or is this something that they kind of are expected to do on their own and complete. And just, you know, maybe test out of it?
Ezra 10:42
Now? Absolutely, there’s a. Yeah, when it becomes part of the curriculum in the school. There are a series of outcomes that our schools regulator offset here. Expect each school to deliver for each child. Okay, so, so off. PSHE has a very specific set of outcomes that the offset our regulator expects each school to deliver for children. We’ve, Lifewise our platform, what we’ve done is created a completely unique platform that has over 200 lessons on it. And every each one of those an end to end lesson that the, the the teachers are responsible for then delivering to the, to the children, okay.
Roy Barker 11:32
So, you know, I can speak from the US experience that dealing with being an entrepreneur. And in the business world, it’s a totally different game than dealing with government. Obviously, I’ve had to get very deep into that to, you know, get this as part of the curriculum. And then having to deal with the different schools and things like that. Talk to me about what were some of the hurdles that you’ve encountered. You know, going on this path versus as an entrepreneur?
12:02
Yeah, that’s nice. That’s really?
Ezra 12:03
That’s a great question, Roy. So I’ve been, I’ve been running businesses. My first business, my first business actually, earning money was when I was 16 years old. And it started to pay a few bills at that point and help fund from my university. Then I entered the corporate world, building my first corporate business, in in when I was 23 years old. And, and since then, I’ve been we’ve been growing businesses. Then what’s really interesting about this. Is that I’ve always been very lucky. You know, to have been blessed with a high really high level of self motivation, and a certain level of resourcefulness. I think that comes from, from, from, from, from my upbringing.
And, and that’s pretty well for as an entrepreneur. But what was great was that back in a couple years ago, we launched Lifewise. And it actually launched as a public Academy. We launched the philanthropic football academy to get a particular area. An area in the UK that doesn’t have any professional soccer clubs. And what that means is that there’s a lack of experienced soccer coaches in the county. It means that those, the standards of coaching are really poor, which means that children come into the sport. And obviously, soccer is probably the most popular sport in the UK, children come into it.
Then because they’re not being coached properly, or there’s no professionalism. They just follow our sport and then they end up doing all the wrong things. So we launched this football academy to help, help address that need. Then the coaches themselves weren’t, weren’t coaching during the day. Because this kid children were in the in school in the day. So we built a little proposition and got them coaching from schools. And that led, you know, it from one or two lessons from a sports perspective . A couple of years later into, into an education platform.
What I found was that is the best. This completely new level of self motivation, which went from self motivation to this much greater purpose. And I think the fact that when you wake up every day, and you realize that actually, you can make a 10 or 20% improvement to your proposition. Is in a business, that it’s going to positively impact hundreds of 1000s of children’s lives, right, then you really get out of bed up making sure you’re on your A game and making sure that you squeeze every little bit out of that 10 percent. interestingly, you know, for me, and what that meant is that I actually have now sort of left that larger corporate world. And I’m now much more focused in this startup Lifewise where we’re super focused on it.
This, this purpose really, really, really got me going. And so for me, from a personal perspective, I’ve left a much larger corporate organization that we’ve built. My day to day is become very much on a start up again. I think that poses a new set of a new set of challenges. And I think coming back to your original point, so that gives a bit of history to getting there. The biggest challenge, I think, with any business is, you know, when you really start out understanding your audience. And teachers are very, very different.
My background is, is recruiting into Corp, recruitment and technology. Providing services to corporations all around the world, b2b, sort of dealing with fortune 500 businesses. And then all of a sudden, I’m making and then I’m having to communicate. And think about how we address the teaching community. Yeah, so that was probably the biggest challenge.
Roy Barker 16:01
Well, you know, that’s one thing I think is interesting is this is basically what the advice people give to entrepreneurs. It’s really find something that you’re passionate about. You have to, I mean, if for those that are listening, you have a big smile on your face. I mean, it’s obvious that this is very deep passion, but then you get to combine it with that entrepreneurial spirit to, you know, develop and roll something out. So I mean, congratulations on finding the sweet spot in life.
Ezra 16:33
Yeah, thanks. You know, I sort of being from that perspective, I totally agree, Roy. That and I think Steve Jobs does a really fantastic speech when I think he might have been addressing, not sure it might have been even the Harvard graduation process. But talking about the number one thing that that he recommends is, you know, searching for something that you’re really passionate for. And I think that, you know, I have a newborn son, he’s just turned Well, he’s actually now 16 months. And my advice to him as a father is definitely going to be, you know, an early age, take your time to find something you’re super passionate about.
Because the moment that you can turn work into in the what, what is a normal work into, into enjoyment? Yeah, you know, it’s great. And then, as you say, from my perspective, turning that into something, which I enjoy, but also has an incredibly passionate, strong purpose. Definitely is is super helpful.
Roy Barker 17:34
So what set you up for this, let’s let’s kind of step back to the to the soccer coaching modules in that day. Did you just realize that there was just a need, you know, for I guess, probably more in the outlying areas where there just weren’t the available of talented the soccer coaches were, you know, like, cuz same here in the US is like, you know, we have soccer, baseball, football, all these sports, but at the youth level, at the very beginning level, you know, they draft the heads out of the bleachers, to, you know, whoever has the time to coach and, you know, some of us even though we’ve played we don’t have the the ability to coach somebody else.
And then like you said, kids get discouraged. So they leave the sport altogether. So is that just something that you recognize? Did somebody come to you and say, Hey, this is a problem that we’ve got, can you help me solve it?
Ezra 18:26
This is interesting story, actually. So my hometown, a very small village, in the down in Cornwall in the southwest of the UK. I moved back there for six months to spend some time my father and the local football team, which probably had about 20, or 30, spectators, had all of my old friends, which I hadn’t seen since I’ve moved to London. Whilst I was down there, I helped them restructure that committee. And, and a couple of years later, I’ve sort of watched what they’re doing. From that restructure, they got some success. And the next time I moved back down, I went back down that, they said, Well, you know, we got this committee, and we’ve done this thing, these things done this. We’ve done really well.
But we’d like to kick on and go a bit further, we’d love to get your thoughts on that. So then I said, No problem, come and meet me for a cup of tea tomorrow morning. I turned up and walked out. And there was the next morning, as committee of about eight or 10 people, or sat wanting to have a cup of tea. People I’ve known since as at the age of three or four years old, and people as old as 75 whole mix of people that run the club. And they said they really wanted to drive the club forward. And so so the first thing that I wanted to help them do was I wanted to help them to think about what’s the greatest vision of building a club, what’s the greatest purpose that we can put into the club.
So I looked at that and said, Well, you know, where’s the opportunity. And where’s the greater purpose to build a cup of coffee with a vision. If you want that vision to be emotionally attached to its supporters, its committee members, everyone needs to have a vision, which is has emotional attachment, great purpose. So what I recognized was that there was no other clubs across the county, which were really focused on their youth. And actually is that is there anything going to be more people are going to be more passionate about a football club, or a soccer club or a sports club, if it’s incredibly passionate about developing its local players and its local community.
So when we looked, when we thought about that there happened to be no, we then realized that the fact that no one was focused on that is because there are no professional clubs. If you think about it, people went to, if you went to a county, I’m sure so many you at the last, but if you went to Yorkshire, in the UK, there might be 20, 30, 40 clubs, which are from sort of semi professional through to professional levels, maybe more. And each one of those every year has players, coaches, and managers that have all experienced incredibly high standards, but then they retire from the game, or they don’t quite make it, they might have gone through the whole system. And all those people filter out into grassroots football, grassroots soccer.
What that means is that they’re naturally replenishing and offering these great experiences and high standards. You go to a county like Cornwall with no professional clubs, and those, you know, those nutrients which are driving the game up in, in these other counties just don’t exist. So we recognize that, and we decided that every other club in the county invests money in players. We were the first to invest money in coaches. And we invested all of the available resources into coaches, which attracted all of the younger talent. And we started to build a club with a greater purpose. So it was really looking at the environment and looking at what was the had the greatest purpose? And that’s, that’s, that’s where we got to really yeah. Yeah, that’s,
Roy Barker 22:02
I mean, that’s a perfect blueprint for anybody that wants to be an entrepreneur, you seek out, listen to people find the problem, you know, and develop the path in which to solve that sub. That’s awesome. That’s a great lesson, you know, not only in life, but in business as well. So one thing I wanted to ask, too, is, so what is the delivery system? Is it well, and we can talk about the the coaching side versus the educational component for the schools, but is this? Is it electronic? Do you have some in person combination?
Ezra 22:36
Absolutely. So, so if I, if I continue that story to get to that point. We, so the coaches then went into the schools and on we started off with a bag of balls and some cones. Then we realized that, that there was more we could do in those couple of hours. And it turned into a presentation. Then a few weeks later into a flip chart, and then into 40 lessons. Then into 200 and then into a technology platform. And, and like you say, we we started very much at the grass roots, but just asking questions and understanding what the opportunities were to build a tech platform. And that tech platform is the delivery mechanism. For an end to 200 lessons, it’s an end to end lesson.
But the objective is that it’s really, it’s really just the skeleton of the lesson. And the objective is that we take the children offline. So that we’re doing exercises, activities, we’ve got videos of activities, and we deliver the message through sport, through playing through challenges through activities. And then also there are some videos and other online resources as well. But we tried to get almost two thirds to three quarters of the lesson offline out away from the screen. Yeah, that’s
Roy Barker 23:55
awesome. It’s engaging, you know, I wasn’t the as a youngster, I probably wasn’t the best student because I was bored and read rather be out. But if you could take my lesson and put it out on the ball field, you know, I would be much more amenable to learning that for sure. So
Ezra 24:12
Absolutely. Different learning types. That’s right. You’re right. And that’s what we realized. So So actually, you’re right, you know that we incorporate storytelling for those those that really audio or audio based listeners, and then we’ve got very much sort of gamified learning and then there’s a whole play section as well, so that all of the learnings are incorporated into physical physical activities. So the objective is that within an hour, we will have touched all of the different learning types to try and deliver the most effective message we can now
Roy Barker 24:53
You know, here in the US, our schools are controlled by local agencies. So I mean, you cross one air to another, there can be some significant difference did did you find that there were challenges to roll this out to the different entities that you had to? or Are y’all different maybe a little bit more control since it was dictated curriculum i get i know that they had to have it. But you know, sometimes, there’s a kind of a different interpretation of how we want to deliver this.
Ezra 25:24
Yeah, now we have our competitors like everyone else, right. And we’re so we’re out there, you know, the curriculum was was slightly say, it became part of the British curriculum, and in 20, which meant that there’s been a significant focus on it. But what we’ve had to do, you know, as any small business needs to do, you know, we’ve got to continually pivot and, and evolve and ensure that, you know, where, as many steps ahead of our competition as possible, and then that’s what’s led us to be able to, to, to really get ahead of the competition, and to, and to build market share quickly.
Roy Barker 26:06
So, and this applies both to coaches, and to the, you know, the Psh II, part two, but so where did you go to get experts? Did you actually find retired coaches and players that could, I guess, maybe do videos of different things, or at least write some stuff? And then on the other side, professors are real people in real life? How did that look like developing it?
Ezra 26:34
Yeah, so that was quite fun, actually. It sort of served its purpose, because we evolved from the sports field, you know, from a bag of balls and cones into this tech platform is quite gradual process. But what we’ve done this and, and there’s a, there’s a is we we built it, we say with, you know, it’s built by teachers, for teachers, okay. What that means is that we decided to build a community of teachers and coaches, which were specialists in all of their fields. And we started to work with them. And there was a great opportunity you. The first one was, we were talking to our audience, right? So we really understood what made them tick, whilst also building out the resources that we needed on the platform. And the thing that is interesting, I’m, I’m a massive believer in principles and values based leadership.
Well, I’m super lucky that I have an entrepreneurial father. And he told me at an early age, he said, you know, Mark, he said, he said, not so clever person is someone who doesn’t learn from their mistakes. A smart person is a person who, who learns from their mistakes. A really smart person, someone who learns from other people’s mistakes. And that was stuck with me a long way. That’s where my values and principles based leadership came from, which was not just based on my own learnings, but building a set of principles and values, which really guide my decision making, or our decision making as a business. And, and it’s funny, because in the US, I’m not sure if you’ve seen Have you seen the TV series? Making a Murderer?
Roy Barker 28:15
Yes, yes, actually, I have.
Ezra 28:17
Yes. Absolutely. Now, the second series of that, I don’t know if you remember, but there’s an amazing lady lawyer that gets involved with the case. And she does a really great job of sort of unwinding the case. And she says that the best way to understand a case is to completely experience the case. Right? And what she does, she actually goes through herself every step of the process, as if she was actually committing the crime or, or whatever it might be. And so when are you coming back my values and principles based leadership? Yeah, that was a significant sort of value or principle. But I develop bizarrely, from that that show, which was that whatever I do, I try to get into the footsteps as closely as I can, as my audience.
We want to live and breathe it and experience it, because there’s nothing you know. One of the greatest mistakes that I’ve made, and I’m sure that loads of other people have made, people listen to that. I’m not sure you’ve done this as well, really, whereas you’re convinced that your idea, right, is the right idea. You get so passionate about it. And you can lose sight of, of your audience. And yeah, I think if you can bring any idea you’ve got if you can bring it back to that principle of experience it to understand it, right? detach yourself from the emotion of the idea or the concept. Get in the shoes of your audience. Work with your audience.
And really test it and with lifewise that was just a really valuable principle, which meant that the first thing we done was build a community of teachers. We just dropped ourselves into that and we started talking about it and understanding what was important and wasn’t important. I think that that’s expected. And again, it comes back to that, that principle that my father gave me around, you know, learning from other people’s mistakes, whereas all those teachers can tell us all the things that our competition have done that they don’t like. Yeah, yeah. Right. And it’s incredibly valuable process for us.
Roy Barker 30:27
And I think that also translates into something is we we don’t always have to have the answers that, you know, I kind of look at that as a second part of that what you were saying what your dad told you is that the smartest man in the room doesn’t always have the answers, but he knows where to go find them. That’s the important part.
Ezra 30:47
Amazing. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And that’s, that’s also, bizarrely that comes back to back to that that’s an incredibly powerful principle. You talk about that, really. And I’ll ask you a second where you’ve got that from, because I’m sure there’s someone or some way you’ve learned, but but there’s not lifewise, we trying to teach people skills, as well as knowledge, because we recognize and from my experience, I don’t know about your work. But skills and tools are far more powerful than knowledge. I want to teach people and help people to find the answers to the questions they need, rather than trying to teach them some of the answers to some of the questions they might get asked one thread, right.
Roy Barker 31:34
Yeah, and I just, you know, I guess I picked that up from being around sales for so long is that, you know, you see people that struggle, because if you ask me a question about my product or service, and I don’t know the answer, you know, I may feed you a line of BS just to get you make you be quiet or make you think that I know what I’m talking about. But if you look at really successful ones, they are not scared to say, you know what, I don’t have this answer,. But I can definitely get it for you. And I have so much more respect for that.
You know, and especially also, as I can relate to, you know, the hiring process as well, that’s what I’m more interested in. Is if somebody is resourceful enough to say, if I say I need you to learn, you know how to build a nuclear reactor.
I don’t expect them to say, Great, I got the plans in my back pocket, I expect that, you know, hey, I can research it, and I can lay you out some best practices. And, you know, that’s just really all we can expect. And, you know, that’s another great thing about the internet is it makes it easier. You know, back in my day, it’s like you had to go to the encyclopedia and follow the, you know, hope that yours was up to date. And I think we had when I was growing up, we had to set from World War Two, like the 1940s. You know, you had to hope your encyclopedia set was up to date, and somebody didn’t borrow the S section, and it was gone.
Ezra 32:53
Absolutely. Yeah. Coming back to your point that I wrote another point, which was around hiring. What you’ve just said there. I’m also a huge believer, and I don’t know about your experiences in this. But from a hiring perspective. When you’re maybe you’re asking that question, you know, how do you build a nuclear reactor? Right? And what you’re looking for is someone who is going to tell you, for me, it’s about how they deal with that question, as opposed to the answers they give the knowledge they share. And I think that’s a really important part from from a hiring perspective, that what you should be looking about is how people go about is learning.
From how people demonstrate what skills or tools they have to achieve the objectives that you’re giving them, rather than do they have the answers to the questions you’re asking. Yeah. And it comes back to that same thing you’re talking about, which is, you know, having the ability to get the answers rather than just have them.
Roy Barker 33:53
And in this fast changing world that, you know, I may have had the answer, a week ago, or a year ago, but things have changed. And there could be something even better. So it never hurts to do a little research to just, you know, find out what is the latest and the greatest. So I don’t think you can go wrong. You know, a lot of times people look at resumes, and they look at education, and it really stops there. But then if they don’t have, you know, I guess what I like to call that grit factor. If you don’t have that grit factor. Some of that can be lost as well.
Ezra 34:26
One hundred percent. And, and what’s, what’s interesting there is that all over the years, we’ve built a whole series of different you refer to the malaria recruitment and services, businesses, and those businesses. They were global businesses across from all the way from the Philippines, right the way through the UK, Europe into the US. But they’re all sales lead businesses. And I don’t know about yourself, but but one of the most difficult people to hire is salespeople. Yes, right. So really You refer to it. It’s a real, real challenge. And, and what I don’t know about you, but on our list of set of criteria for hiring most salespeople, were looking for self motivated people. Was that, was that part of what you’d look for?
Roy Barker 35:15
Yeeah. somebody that’s self motivated that, you know, and I’m a little different in that sales aspect, because typically, I’ve sold, you know, higher end services. So I want somebody that’s, that knows how to educate. I don’t want to just say, Ezra, you know, we spoke last week, and I know you’re thinking about it, are you ready to sign up today, you know, I want somebody that’s going to be pulsing you like, Hey, this is something that I just read this article that I think it might help you and your business or your struggle to make these decisions. You know, it’s not a it’s not a quick, you know, if you’re selling $5 widgets, then yeah, it’s like, Hey, you want to buy or not. I gotta move on to the next guy.
But when you’re selling high priced services or equipment, you got to take the time, and we we in this instant gratification society, you know, I like the agrarian model of we plant we, well, we take care anyway, we plant we take care of the seed, and then we harvest. And you know, we’ve kind of gotten to this point of, we throw a seed out there, and then we’re trying to harvest it, you know, without the cultivation. That’s what I was trying to think of, you know, we leave the cultivation part out. And I think that’s an important step in this process. Like I said, the higher you get up the dollar chain is that it takes time, we have to build a relationship.
And I have to know, am I solving your problem? What is your problem? Listen, like you were talking earlier? It’s the same thing. I have to listen to what you’re saying. So I can decide first off, can I even solve it and then pitch you on these benefits? Oh, yeah.
Ezra 36:53
Absolutely. Curiosity has got to be one of the greatest, great, greatest character traits than I think most successful people have. Really. Yeah, and that curiosity around to continually questioning. But coming back to your point earlier about grit, you know. When you’re hiring people, you’re looking for that grit. You have the same thing with that sort of high levels of self motivation. And this actually, is what made me realize, we’ve been hired, we’ve hired literally thousands of sales people over the last 20 years. And as I got older, I realized that actually, the difference between most people that say, and then every sales guy in every interview, are you self motivate, yes, I’m actually being self motivated. We’ve all been there. Right?
But how do you scratch beyond the surface, right, because salespeople then learn to took they’ve learned to communicate, and the nine out of 10 can effectively communicate. So you have to really scratch beyond the surface to really understand it. And what I found that I don’t know if you’ve been through this, but I ended up then we ended up as looking at people’s childhoods, right. And I would, I absolutely got to a place where we recognize that self motivation normally came from experience. You know, how that that comes from, you know, their, their learnings and how they were brought up as a, as a child. They might be their environment, it might have been, their teaching their learning their parents, it could be could be anything.
But, and nine times out of 10, there’s a reason there’s a reason that people got that grit that you’re looking for.And that and it’s and what we realize is that, you know, super self motivated people. Yeah, we have amazing stories where you know, you come across when you go, I just know this person is 100% committed. They are so determined. Yeah, tell me about your childhood. Then I’ll be well, you know, we, my father was really successful, then he lost everything. And then we had to, at the age of 11 years old, I was in my garage, and I was rebuilding these, he was going to sell these widgets me and my brother and my mom.
We had when we got back from school for four hours every night, build the widget. And we’ve done that. And then eventually he got back on his feet, you know, and you go, right, there you go. You really knew what it didn’t know what it takes, what it’s like to fail, and also what and what it takes to succeed. And that it’s that experience, which made us realize the huge opportunity that we have with lifewise now to positively prepare children for life, and actually, there’s so much more. There’s so much more we can do to positively influence the outcomes and prepare children for life. But it’s at that age, you know that the developmental broke brain, you know, the process is 90% done by the time they’re five years old. Yeah,
Roy Barker 39:43
yeah. Right. No, and that’s an interesting interesting thought on the recruitment about asking about childhood. I’m gonna remember that for future But yeah, you’re right. I think that’s the great thing about this plan for life wise is you know, reaching these children at such a young age because Like you said, so many times, habits, thoughts, things are already formed. You know, by the time you can reach out in, you know, like in the business world by the time we can reach them when they’re in their 20s. It’s easily sometimes it’s too late by then.
Ezra 40:15
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, come back to Nelson Mandela speaks you, you’ll hear you’ll hear me continually referring back to these principles from other people. But what he says is that there’s no great, great, great way to affect the way of the world and through education. And for sure, when my eight, my 16 year old son is framed. Oh,
Roy Barker 41:26
yeah, looks like we zoomed out there for a minute as I finish your thought, for me, you’re saying your 16 year old 16 month old son? And that’s where we kind of Recipe For Success
Ezra 41:35
Yeah, not saying that. Yeah, we were talking about inverse input positively influencing children, young age, and I said, When, when your 16 year old child or you know, 16 month old child literally frowns at you for your behavior. And you realize that they’re smarter than you think.
Roy Barker 41:56
Exactly, exactly. Well, I guess that little bleep means we’re running, probably running late on time. I know. I appreciate you giving me so much extra time. This is so not only interesting about life wise and that concept and how it developed but also just your thoughts on you know, the entrepreneurial business and recruiting world. So I certainly do appreciate that Recipe For Success. Problem. Thank you. It’s been a real pleasure to talk to you. And so if you don’t mind tell everybody if you know, number one, how can they reach out if they want to talk to you but if they want to check out life wise, how can they do that as well?
Ezra 42:33
Yeah, not from so when. So you can find me on on LinkedIn as Ezra Chapman. You can also email me and ezra@lifewise.co.uk Okay,
Roy Barker 42:46
great. Well, thanks so much. that’s gonna do it for another episode of the business of business podcast. Of course I am Roy, your host and you can find us at thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We are on all the major social media networks as well as all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Spotify, we’re not on one that you listen to please reach out I’d be glad to add Till next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business Recipe For Success.
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