This is why networking stopped working

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really excited to have a conversation and see where it leads. I know we've had a little chat just before talking about some fun stuff. So I'm excited to get in.

Well, I describe myself as a business architect. Now for anyone listening, you might be thinking what on earth is a business architect? Well, here's the thing. Most businesses are built in a hurry. And what that means is you end up with shaky structures and sloppy systems. Now, if you were going to build a house or a housing development, You wouldn't start laying the foundations or the bricks before you'd consulted an architect. And what I do is I work with businesses across a range of different sectors. And I help make sure that there's a clear blueprint, or if you've got a big renovation you're doing in your business, you want to change it, you want to improve it, you want it to grow bigger. You need to make sure that things are organized and systemized. need the right systems for your. you know, operations for your tech, for your people, for your sales and marketing. So I'm, don't actually draw buildings. I'm not, I'm not actually working. I work with a few construction companies, but not in a, a kind of, a physical sense. I work on designing built designing businesses, not designing buildings.

Absolutely. Yes. So inside the world of LERNX, we have many different things. We help people with personal development, professional development and organizational development. can't quite explain it as well as I can show it to people, but behind me, you'll see different characters and we we've built a virtual world inside LERNX. Now, one of the areas that you'll find inside the world of Linux is called the exchange. It's essentially the business district is where the deals get done. So what we've done is we've built a platform where people can come and join and it's a place to manage business relationships, referrals and help you to drive revenue. we've had people describe it in many different ways. Now it's brand new. It's been open a couple of weeks. So we're in soft launch phase now. we've had people describe it as, this could become like a mini LinkedIn. We've had people say. It's like, you know, networking on steroids. We've had people say it's like a group of, you know, WhatsApp groups, but it's organized. We've had people describe it as a CRM for relationships. So there's, there's all kinds of ways that you can use the platform, but at the heart of it, we've built a range of tools to help people build relationships. referrals and revenue. So we're just getting this started. We've got 300 businesses have said they'd like to get involved. So we're currently onboarding businesses at the moment. But the exciting thing is you can bring a friend or you can bring five friends or we've got a guy in there. He's actually made 30 introductions to me in the past month of people in his network. So it's a really nice way to bring your trusted relationships into a really focused ecosystem. Cause a lot of people are quite, quite It's quite busy, quite chaotic when it comes to platforms like LinkedIn or, you know, nobody wants to join another hundred WhatsApp groups where it's ping, ping, ping, and you don't know what really is coming your way. So we wanted to create something that helps you to focus on the relationships that matter most within your business ecosystem.

Absolutely. Well, I think when it comes to networking for a lot of people, networking is not working. They're trying to do it online through LinkedIn, sending cold messages to people. And generally it's silence. You get nothing back. A lot of people go out to networking events or join networking groups. And of course, these can be really valuable. But most people we speak to have also had bad experiences. They've been to events and then there's no one follows up. You collect business cards, but nothing happens or people have burned themselves out trying to get to know everyone within a big group and they've given lots, but they've not received much back in return. So we've heard, we've heard all of the horror stories and complaints and it's not to be negative about any particular groups or any particular methods. Of course, if you don't. reach out to anyone on LinkedIn, you're not going to get anything back. If you don't go to a networking group, you'll never make any friends or relationships. But we've seen some of the inefficiencies when it comes to networking. And we wanted to take a practical and pragmatic approach to building an efficient system. But at the same time, it's inside a gamified learning world as well. So it's also got that function. And the fun side, as well, meet characters like Archie, the astronaut and inside our platform, you know, we have an arcade and every time you take an action inside the platform, you earn points and then you can spend them with Archie inside the arcade to get access to different resources, to help you with your business, to help you move things forward. But I when it comes to networking, there's many ways to do it, but we've, we've created something quite fresh with. the exchange, there's an opportunity to build your own trusted circles. We call these circles of exchange. And the idea is that you can be part of a group who, you know, people serve the same customer as you. could be location based. could be small medium enterprises in Prague where you are. could be small medium enterprises down the road from me in Bristol. It could be sector focused. So it could be. UK manufacturing companies. could be a specialism like businesses who work with startups or high growth companies. So the idea is to really surround yourself with people who would be natural referral partners because you're serving the same end customer. So people could come into our platform and be part of a couple of circles, or they could set up literally dozens of circles to help them explore different markets. to grow market share where they're already active and to build relationships through a sense of belonging and belonging and interconnectivity in groups help to build trust. And that's the challenge we have with social media. People send you a cold DM. You're skeptical and for good reason, because there's lots of bad actors out there. You see a video on Instagram promoting a revolutionary business product. You don't trust it. because it's probably being made by AI or whatever it might be. And what we want us to do with the exchange is bring it back to, you know, that real currency and the real currency isn't pounds or dollars, it's trust. And when you have trust at the center of what you do with your business, then you will get people sending people your way. You will get more business. And that's something that we're really keen to do. because I think for a lot of people, they spend so much time behind screens and It's not good. It's not human.

I didn't answer your question, did I? I slightly kind of tiptoed around.

Okay. I'll, I'll explain why we've built the exchange. So at the start of this year, we made a decision that we wanted to scale, offshore hiring companies. over the past 12 years, I've been hiring people overseas. So I have a UK based company and I've got people work with me in the UK. But when I went remote from my own business 12 years ago, I went from Sheffield in the North of England to Gloucestershire in the Southwest of England. And having put my business into the cloud and systemized everything, I was able to just pop into the office for a day every two or three weeks. And then I was able to work remotely now going back 12 years ago, this wasn't very common for kind of micro companies to do this. you know, of course, multi-site businesses have been around for many years, but they tend to be, you know, kind of much bigger. And the infrastructure is very expensive. Now I put everything into Asana. I put into practice everything I'd learned from the E-Myth and from the four hour work week, although I'm still doing a few more than four hours every week. But I was able to liberate myself from having to be in a physical location. And what I learned through that was I was able to really tap into the global talent pool. And so I started hiring overseas. Now, 12 years ago, it wasn't that easy to do because there weren't as many job sites and There was all sorts of technological challenges. didn't have zoom. didn't, we didn't have teams, you know, the infrastructure wasn't really there in many ways. But having learned that I just, I love doing it because we're able to find incredible talent. We're able to give people opportunities in parts of the world where there aren't as many opportunities work-wise. So it's a really good model. I really believe in it. I really advocate for this. So the start of this year, we decided we want to grow this, we want to scale it. We've got a really good team in Egypt. We've got, eight people now who work for us based in and around Cairo. And there's just so much talent. And we thought we want to help more businesses in the UK and Europe, in the US and further afield, to tap into the talent pool in Egypt. So we have a new brand called Offsura. And it's really about helping reduce the cost and chaos of hiring. When we looked at how to launch offshore, we thought, okay, how do, how are we going to do this? How are we going to advertise a new brand? And we've always taught our clients three things, build, buy, borrow, build a brand. You've got to deliver a great service. You've got to tell a story. You've got to, you know, be in it. You've got to get those testimonials out there. Building takes time and we're in it. We're in it to win it. We'll build a brand. The other way is, is buy. you can put your adverts in front of people, can get eyes and ears through pay-per-click, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not an advocate for paid media. Of course, paid media works really well. But I also don't want to be reliant on Mark Zuckerberg being a good guy, because I'm not sure if he is, or I've never met the guy. probably never will meet the guy, but I don't know if I can really trust him because if you look at how these platforms work, you you put some money in the slot machine and they know how much you'll keep paying to keep getting a result out the bottom because they're tracking everything. And I just thought, you know, I'm not sure that I want to be fully reliant on paid media to get leads in. And it's a very saturated market. get a lot of messages from people saying, you know, we've got workers in. India or the Philippines or wherever it might be. I thought we need to stand out. So we went to the third B, we went to borrow and we thought, how do we build a referral engine that's built around trusted relationships that will enable us to get more business in? And so that's what sparked the idea for the exchange. Really, we, sought to solve our own problem. We want more referrals. We don't want to be. guessing where they're going to come in. We also don't want to create a system where referrals are forced because that's not fun. That's not, that's not nice. That's not what we've done with the exchange. We wanted to make a platform where referrals became very natural, very easy, and that we could do this at scale. And as we start to show businesses this concept, people resonated with it because people were telling us that they're a bit tired of getting lost in LinkedIn, they're overwhelmed with a gazillion WhatsApp groups. They have so many leads in their CRM that are so cold. And as I said before, a lot of people have found networking's not quite working. So we want to solve our own problem, but as we shared our thoughts and our vision, we found that a lot of people are having the same challenges. And that's what the exchange is. It's an opportunity to build relationships, referrals. and revenue in a way that's nice. It works. We call it a nice way to do business, network, introductions, collaboration, exchange.

Well, it's a new platform. It's a couple of weeks old. So we have short-term goals to get people into the platform to help them achieve revenue, to help people get deals in. And that requires referrals, that requires relationships before that can happen. So we're looking to get our first thousand users in by the end of this year. We're not trying to get a million users in in the first six months. We don't want to be overrun with the wrong people. We want to have a thousand quality connections in the platform by the end of the year. So we've got about 300 or so on our list already from two months of doing a lot of presenting, a lot of market research. And beyond that, we want to see the platform grow to maybe 10,000. members would be, would be great to do if we can, if we could do that next year. It's obviously very early at the moment. The aim is to grow our business and show people that this works, not just sell a SaaS product to people. It's showing them that this has helped our consulting business. This has helped our offshore hiring business. This has helped our tech business. And then showing people that it could work for them as well. So the idea is to give people an alternative to. being fully reliant on maybe something they don't have much control over. And a lot of people say, know, can't control when referrals come in, but you can influence it. And that's what we're trying to do with the exchanges, give people that opportunity to, to give more to their network, but also get more from their network as well.

Ooh, think it's, it might be investing, invest in Bitcoin. Okay. So, let me, let me substantiate here. So back in 2014, we started a crowdfunding platform called rocket fuel in the music industry. So it's helping music artists to raise money for new projects, a bit like Kickstarter, Patreon, Indiegogo, that kind of model. But our initial idea was.

to enable artists to sell a share, essentially like a fractional ownership of the intellectual property that they were creating. So we looked into this idea, but because it was essentially selling investments, we would need to be regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority. So we had a meeting with a company that would offer their FCA approval under under a kind of partnership model. And we had a meeting with them. They traveled up to my office in Sheffield from London. We looked at the options and the cost and the cost was quite high. And we kind of thought, is this the right model? we sure? But in that meeting came up an interesting topic and they said, Andy, if we do this, we'd like to make a recommendation. And that recommendation is that you also facilitate people to invest in Bitcoin. This is 2014. Okay. And I was like, what is Bitcoin? I'd never heard of it at the time as most people had never heard of it. And, we didn't go through with, you know, this business model. didn't go through with allowing people to invest in Bitcoin. but if we had dabbled in Bitcoin back in 2014, I would probably be on a yacht in the Bahamas somewhere right about now and not speaking to you, Nicholas, but Perhaps that's something I could have got involved with and missed out on, but you you never quite know with these things. think the advice I would typically give myself is, you know, just keep going, keep refining, don't get distracted. I think that's one of the things I've done a lot of different things over the years. And occasionally distraction has been, you know, It's been damaging in some ways. I'm very curious. I like to do new things, but you know, I'm pleased. I'm pleased with what I've done. I'm pleased with the experience I've gained over the past 20 plus years of running, running businesses. and yeah, just keep, keep going. Don't be discouraged. There's always a reason to be discouraged, but if you remember to be grateful for what you have, what you've learned, then you're going to live a more happy. fulfilled and purposeful existence.

Yeah. So if they head to the learn X website, L U R N E X.net, learn X.net. And if you head there, you'll be able to find a link to the exchange. So the exchange is part of the world of learn X is look out for a link there. We have events that take place. So we have an event called pitch X that we're, we're launching. And pitch X is an opportunity for 10 businesses to come together and everyone gets five minutes uninterrupted to share who they are, what they do to highlight their first step. You know, the offer they have, it might be a resource, it might be a course, it could be, an exploration call. could be any, anything, but the idea is to sell your first step to people in the room. And also explain to people how they, you know, how they could or should introduce you to other people. So if you have an affiliate offer or incentive for referrals. And we teach people how to package this into five minutes. Now I've been really fortunate to have some really good advisors work with me. I've got a mentor who started and sold the business for nine figures. I've got a. someone in our team who was part of a, now the biggest educational resource platform in the world. She was there for 13 years. I've been awarded funding from innovate UK, through the UK government. And we got to go through their kind of top investment training program. And they taught us just basically how to get inside the mind of an investor, how to get inside the mind of customers through how you, how you pitch. So we share a lot of lived experience, but also a lot of theory from people who've done things I, you know, I've not done, you know, some incredibly sharp minds who've succeeded commercially. So we teach people these tools to help them sharpen their pitch, but the aim of the PitchX events is to, you know, perfect your pitch. Yes. But then pitch to prospects in the room and then pitch to potential partners. So you can share. your idea, your solution, your service with 10 networks, 10 people who could share that with people that they know. So PitchX events are open to anyone. So we go from coaching events, through to community events that we curate. And then we have more commercial events for more established partners as well. People we know, trust and already work with. So this, there's a place for everyone to, to get stuck in. So if you If you run a business, you know, if you've got an offer that you're running, even if it's a local business, you can still apply for pitch X and we'll put you into one of our, you know, kind of coaching or catalyst events to, to give you an opportunity to make connections. But it's really cool. We we've spent a lot of time, working on this, this model. It will evolve. Of course, it may look different in some ways, even before you've published this podcast, cause it's so new and fresh. But if you're interested, do head to learnx.net, L-U-R-N-E-X.net and join the waiting list or come to one of our networking events or apply to join one of the PitchX events.

Thanks for the invitation, it's been really fun.