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Turning Ideas into Businesses – a conversation with Anthony Lindsay Astor Business Centre
14 Plays11 days ago
Systems and data are the catalysts of entrepreneurial success
Anthony Lindsay is the Wall Street banker who founded the Astor Business Centre in East London UK to help entrepreneurs create successful businesses.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Anthony explains to host Michael Millward what makes a successful entrepreneur and the data driven system that he uses to help them create scalable, sustainable, repeatable, franchiseable businesses.
Their conversation covers
- Anthony’s history in entrepreneur support
- The importance of understanding the fundamentals of business.
- Balancing passion with logic in running a business
- What successful entrepreneurship looks like
- Different types of entrepreneurship
- The four pillars of the Astor Centre approach
- The importance of strong systems
- The mistakes entrepreneurs make
This is the podcast for anyone who wants to be a successful entrepreneur
Discover more about Anthony and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. The all in one podcasting platform. Zencastr really does make making content so easy. All the details are in the description. Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysida and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysida.
Guest Introduction: Anthony Lindsay
00:00:35
Speaker
Today, I'm going to be learning about how to turn a business idea into a robust business with Anthony Lindsay from the Astor Business Centre in East London.
00:00:45
Speaker
London is one of those big international capital cities, an expensive place to visit. When I visit, I always make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club. because that is where I get trade prices on hotels, flights, trains, and so many other types of travel purchases.
00:01:03
Speaker
You can as well if you are a member. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description. Now that I've paid a few of my bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to.
00:01:19
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Anthony's Background in Finance
00:01:26
Speaker
Hello, Anthony. hi good to be here. Thank you for having me, Michael.
00:01:31
Speaker
It's a pleasure. I'm really looking forward to finding out what I should have done when I set apple the up theatre all those years ago. Please could we start by you giving us a little bit of your history and where your accent comes from, because it's not from East London, is it? That's true, yeah. And I've been in finance and business for over 30 years. I was born in the UK, but I grew up in New York.
00:01:55
Speaker
Before coming back to the UK, I was in Texas. So I started working on Wall Street when I was about 19, 18. nineteen eighteen We had a program at school where if we had a certain grade point average and we were able to handle our academics well enough, we could actually work one week and then go to school one week. So I did that in my senior year, started working at a bank, also on the side doing something in the music industry.
00:02:25
Speaker
But that early start just gave me a love and understanding of business that I've taken on for this additional 30 years after I started on Wall Street. It's a good job I'm sitting down when you tell me that you could go to school for one week at the age of 18, 19 and go to work on Wall Street.
00:02:45
Speaker
for one week and then alternate it. That is super, it's like special work experience really, isn't it? That's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. wish we'd had that. It was a great program, but as I said, you had to have a certain grade point average because the week that you weren't,
00:03:00
Speaker
in school, you still had to do the work. So you'd go to work during the day and then you'd go home and we didn't have the internet and all of that stuff there um at that time. So we would, I'd still have assignments that I'd need to complete. And then when I was back at school the next week, I'd hand them in and- Well, there's always a downside to everything, twice as much work rather than different type of work. You still have to keep up with the schoolwork, but you're getting a valuable work experience.
Mission of Aster Business Centre
00:03:28
Speaker
It's brilliant. So you return to the UK country that you're born in, and do you set up the Aster Business Centre. What what sort of motivated that decision? Well, there are a couple of things. but My I come from a very entrepreneurial family. So having a business is something that is a second nature to us. But working in finance and working at the top banks for pretty much my entire life, just gave me an insight into how things are done.
00:03:55
Speaker
But it also gave me an insight into the fact that if your business is up and running and you know your turnover is a million plus, there are so many options for you. Because not only in most cases do you have the finances to be able to do things, but everybody wants to sell something to you. I think that's even more the case now with all of these online gurus and everybody has a course and sign up for this, sign up for that.
00:04:22
Speaker
So what Aster Business Centers was and is, it's a resource for people where you Information is free. They can get the information for free and get access to things for free. However, if they need support, there's also that next level where we will help them from negative six months. So from the moment someone seriously is thinking about starting a business, negative six months, all the way up to a year in business. So that's our sweet spot.
00:04:52
Speaker
And what we would do within that time is show people all of the fundamentals of running a business anywhere on the planet. Because since the beginning of time, i would say the fundamentals have remained the same.
00:05:06
Speaker
I agree with you. The fundamentals of running a business are are universal, regardless of what scale you're doing.
Mastering Business Fundamentals
00:05:13
Speaker
You are buying in raw materials, converting them into something else, and then selling them on.
00:05:19
Speaker
But you're working with people before they've started their business. I looked at it and and when you're online now, and I'm sure Michael, you see the same thing, everybody is selling you something. So you have the person saying, you know, i can 10X your business by increasing your leads. um You have the person that's selling branding packages. You have the person that's selling systems. And before you know it, any of these individual things, which are all good and are all valid, and I'm not in any way demeaning any of the individual aspects,
00:05:52
Speaker
The analogy I use is if you were to go to, you know, let's just say Michael Jordan, because I figure most people know who Michael Jordan is and say, listen, I have the skills, the talents, everything that I need to be a basketball player. And I'm going to come to you, who's arguably the GOAT, one of the best players or the best player of all times. But all I want to learn how to do is a layup.
00:06:15
Speaker
That's all I want you to teach me. Everything else I've got covered. I've got it. Michael Jordan's going to say to you, probably, he's going to say, listen. I'm going to interrupt you for a moment there, Anthony, because I know what basketball is.
00:06:28
Speaker
And I know who Michael Jordan is, but what is a layup? Okay, so a layup is one of the simple, most fundamental parts of basketball. It's essentially when you run to the goal and you kind of just put the ball in. It's not a slam dunk.
00:06:44
Speaker
It's not a free throw where you're throwing from far. It's it's it's the one of the easiest shots. And it's also a a way that in the vernacular that we've described something really simple, something basic. So um it's a simple shot.
00:07:00
Speaker
Right. OK. And so Michael Jordan would say, well, I can show you that, but I also have to teach you everything else. right You can't be a well-rounded player without doing everything. Now, when we get to the layup part of it, the easy part, the part that you're already good at, then we don't need to spend as much time on it.
00:07:20
Speaker
But we're going to need to go through all the fundamentals. We're going to need to go through dribbling, free throws, defending, You know, we're going to need to go through everything. And it's the same thing
Entrepreneurial Challenges
00:07:30
Speaker
with business. You can go to someone and they may do an amazing job with your branding, but then you don't have the right mindset. Potentially, you don't have a CRM. You don't have all the other things. So you need to know and understand what you don't know, because when you're starting a business, you don't know what you don't know.
00:07:49
Speaker
So the way that we approach it is we would go through the the various pillars of starting a business. And we want to make sure that people are building a business that is scalable, sustainable, repeatable, and franchisable.
00:08:04
Speaker
And that's data-driven because I see it and I hear it all the time. People are passionate about a thing quite often after they've been made unemployed. So they're like, yeah, I don't ever want to work for anyone again.
00:08:17
Speaker
And they they have a skill set, they're a technician, and they figure they can do it better than their employer did it for them without having to have someone tell them what to do.
00:08:29
Speaker
You know, so they're really passionate about it, but they don't necessarily have all of the fundamentals or all of the understanding in building a viable and sustainable business.
00:08:40
Speaker
you know Listening to you, I'm reminded of something that lots of people have said to me when they've set a business up and sort of six months to a year afterwards. They've said, yep, I was doing this job, being paid every month to do it, really loved the job.
00:08:55
Speaker
It's made redundant. As you said, lots of people start businesses after they've been made redundant. And I wanted to just do what I wanted to do. And then selling business, it's hit me like a brick that there's all of these other things that I need to do in order to be able to do the thing that I love to do.
00:09:13
Speaker
You forget that when you are an employee, there is someone else doing those things within the organization to enable you to do the thing that you really enjoy and love doing.
00:09:24
Speaker
yeah And it's a big learning curve. for entrepreneurs to get to the point where they can say okay i didn't know about that and i didn't know about that and nobody told me about it and know talking from experience you go through these huge leaps of of knowledge gaining where yeah i can i now understand marketing i now understand finance i now understand all the technology that I've got to use. And it it is a huge mountain of stuff to learn, though, in order to build a business. And that's what you do at the Aster Business Centre.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yes. And it's an exciting time now, you know, because there's so many different tools that can be used. I think the the barrier to entry is a lot lower in starting a business. So if I even reflect back on, as I said, when I was getting started at age 19, I was also doing stuff in the music industry.
00:10:18
Speaker
Right. And in in those days, if you wanted to be a recording artist, you'd have to create what they call the demo tape. Right. You'd have to go into a recording studio to do that. yeah Then you'd have to duplicate that cassette tape at that time. yes um Then you'd have to do what they call shopping it. You'd have to send it out to different record labels. And you'd have to get someone who'd want to sign you to a record deal that they could then distribute it.
00:10:47
Speaker
This was again, just when video, the whole video technology thing was was becoming more um more dominant. But now I talk to young artists now, like you can literally do that whole process from your phone for free. So you could record a video and a song in your phone. You can upload it to YouTube, which is the equivalent of national international distribution, global distribution. You can monetize it.
00:11:16
Speaker
You can do all of those things from your phone. And it's the same thing with starting a business now. But...
Commitment in Entrepreneurship
00:11:23
Speaker
As you know, Michael, the lower the barrier to entry that something has, the more people are going to be doing it. The more people that are doing it, the less of a commodity it is.
00:11:33
Speaker
But the upside is most people give up. So at that point, Michael, when you were saying when you were getting up and running that you realized that there were other things you had to do, a lot of people just give up or coincidentally, and maybe fortunately for them, they found that new job. So this this I want to start a business thing was really a way of creating a love a little bit of hope in a moment of despair. Yes.
00:12:01
Speaker
You know, they get up and running, or they hit that block or whatever, and then they get a job and they, they put it to the side. This is why i talk most people out of starting a business.
00:12:11
Speaker
I try to talk them out of it because I know that the person I can talk out of it was someone one that would have failed anyway. And if I'm trying to talk someone out of it and they're just sticking in there, then that at least shows a level of resilience, that same resilience that they're going to need to be successful in whatever business they're trying to start. Yes, I think there is when you start, it can all seem very straightforward, very simple, because you're selling to people that you know, and they know you, and they're wanting to be supportive. It's when they've had what they need from you, it's then finding the people that you don't know, who are willing to buy from you, who you've identified as potential customers, you've found out what it is that they need, and then you can provide it.
00:12:55
Speaker
Well, that's the difference, I suppose, from between doing a bit of work for people and actually running a business and converting yourself and what you do into something that is tradable rather than just shareable.
00:13:11
Speaker
Precisely. Yeah. And that's
Supporting Side-Hustlers
00:13:13
Speaker
also the part of my concept. So I work with what I consider startups. So the negative six months to 12 months in business and side hustlers. And I would rather someone say, you know what, I'm going to find that new job.
00:13:27
Speaker
I'm going to dedicate myself to my job because I believe if you're being paid a check, you you provide the value that you're being paid for. yes However, you should also try to fulfill whatever your purpose on this planet is. And sometimes it's not through your nine to five employment. Sometimes it is through baking cakes or it's through, you know, doing something as a side hustle, which I know is a triggering word for some people.
00:13:53
Speaker
But I help people run their side hustle constantly. better than some people run their full-time business whilst honoring their employer, not stealing time from from their employer, not using resources from their employer to support their side hustle. But because of the systems and the the pragmatic approach that we have, you're able to do both to a really high standard.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yes. You're working with people who are, whether it's a side hustle or a full-time business, you're being entrepreneurial. What sort of businesses are you working with? Give some examples of of the businesses that you've helped be successful. Because I'm at that startup stage, negative six months to 12 months in business, I find that I do work with a lot of people who have a skill in an area and they want to be able to hone down and niche. But funnily enough, one of my...
00:14:46
Speaker
first really successful clients was a gentleman who was teaching DWI courses or DUI courses, he needed a way to systematize what he was doing. And what I was able to help him do is build some online um presence that he could get more clients within six months, he went to being a master trainer, where he trained the trainers to actually showing people how to go through the process that I took him through. So You know, for me, it's all about data. You know, facts don't care about your feelings.
00:15:20
Speaker
It's all about data. It's all about being pragmatic. And it's all about having things written down in a business plan that you can go back to them and you can test what you thought would work versus what is happening. And you can iterate and change when the data is telling you that what you thought was going to work or what you're passionate about isn't actually working.
00:15:43
Speaker
Yes, you throw you throw that in at the end, but actually it's really important not get too emotionally attached to what you believe the world needs from you, your purpose in the world.
00:15:53
Speaker
If it isn't working commercially, then the time probably isn't right for the world to know what you you've got to offer. You should be thinking about some other type way of earning a living. Talk about somebody there who's taking something that they've done and is turning it themselves and the training that they deliver into a commodity, which they can then get other trainers to deliver and earn income from other people's work.
00:16:18
Speaker
That's business growth, isn't it? yeah Because if you're just one individual, you are limited by the number of hours in a day.
Building Scalable Business Systems
00:16:25
Speaker
and And that's why the the four pillars within our system are scalable, sustainable, repeatable, and franchisable. So the scalable part is what you've just said, Michael. The scalable part is saying, all right, well, what if I am successful? So what if I'm baking these cakes and I put something on instant on Instagram and Sir Alan Sugar reposts my tweet and everybody's ordering my cake?
00:16:50
Speaker
am I going to be a victim of my own success? Right? So what do you have in place that if you got a huge order, you know, do you have access to premises to be able to make a thousand cakes? Right? So that's the scalable part. The sustainable part is about saying, well, yes, I do have access to the premises, but I'd have to be doing it myself, which means I'd be working, going from working 35 hours a week to 80 hours a week, which might be,
00:17:20
Speaker
It might be something you can do and your family's okay with for a month or two months, but is it sustainable in the long term? So that's number two. And repeatable. All right, so now that you've built this business, that it can scale up, it is now sustainable because you have staff, you have premises. How can you now go from just doing cakes to now maybe branching out into cookies?
00:17:45
Speaker
So that's the repeatable part part. So have you written down a process? that can be tested and duplicated and put in someone else's hand, which is the um the franchisable part. So I'm not always necessarily talking about a formal franchise like a McDonald's or you know Subways, but I'm saying, do you have a system that is written down, can be tested, an accountant could come in and value that because all the data is contained in a CRM, customer lifetime value, how long it takes to convert a lead into a customer, how, you know, the whole process.
00:18:25
Speaker
Because if you can go through that whole process, scalable, sustainable, repeatable, get to that point of being franchisable, as you were saying, Michael, it then becomes something that is beyond you. It's not about your time being traded for money. It's about a system that the system is generating the money and you're managing the system.
00:18:45
Speaker
It makes an awful lot of sense. There is this moment from when when you're talking, and it says you're moving from being just an entrepreneur
Transition to Business Ownership
00:18:53
Speaker
to being a business owner, to being a business manager, and having the whole infrastructure that goes with creating a business that is bigger than yourself.
00:19:04
Speaker
That's then when you start to see the income coming. Actually, you're getting more money from the work of other people than the than your own work. What would you say from the various different people that you've worked with?
00:19:17
Speaker
What are the things that people get wrong and the signs that they're about to get it wrong? That's a great question.
Data vs Emotions in Business Decisions
00:19:23
Speaker
And most common thing that I see is people that don't want to rely on the data.
00:19:29
Speaker
They figure they're going to be the unicorn. So let me just stress that. There are people who, for whatever reason, are able to defy the odds. Those are the unicorns. And we do have, to a degree, a success bias because we want to hear about that person who went to Anthony at Aster Business Centers. And Anthony said, it will never work. And they did it anyway. And now they bought at Aster Business Centers, right? Like everybody wants to be that person.
00:19:58
Speaker
But that is the exception. That does not happen most of the time. So when I'm working with someone and we put a plan together and we're saying these are the KPIs, the key performance indicators. This is how many people you need to talk to, to get X amount of appointments, to get X amount of customers. When we see it's not working and we've tweaked each part of that process and they still say, no, this will work.
00:20:25
Speaker
it troubles me. The other one is the person that has done the the TikTok research, or the the social media research and is coming to you, and is essentially telling you what the solution is, but asking you to find the solution.
00:20:41
Speaker
You know, so they already have all the answers. And no matter what you tell them, or what data you show them, they're convinced that you're wrong, but yet they've come to you to give them guidance.
00:20:52
Speaker
When you say, you know, trust the data, find the right data and trust it. Totally agree with you. It's a bit like me. One of my sayings is like, know if you don't know it, find yourself an expert and trust them.
00:21:05
Speaker
Find the right data, trust the data, be guided by the data. yes But the other one that you mentioned, isn't but it makes me think that people aren't looking and they aren't listening. they're The only thing that they hear and see is what they've decided they want to hear and see. And they've surrounded themselves with people who agree with them, perhaps not from a commercial business sense, but just because, well, keep them happy.
00:21:32
Speaker
You must um also have to do a lot of emotional support for entrepreneurs as well when things that aren't going quite as well as they as they expected or as quickly as they expected. Well, we we try to tackle that from the beginning just by talking about mindsets. So one of the modules that we go through is just the understanding that as human beings, we are driven by our emotions and we then use facts to support what we already believe. So the example that I give people is cars. Like a car is usually the second most expensive thing that you'll ever buy. Agreed. So advertisers who are trying to sell cars are going to use the most effective method.
00:22:17
Speaker
Now, if we were fact driven as human beings, then car commercials would look very different. It would just give you the data. It would give you the information. Well, this is the the the mileage you'll get per gallon or per charge. They would just give you data and show you a picture of the car.
00:22:33
Speaker
Right. But that's not what they do at all. Nope. They do the opposite. They show you emotional things. They show you the really good-looking guy with the beautiful family driving through the mountains. It's all emotion because they know that that's what is going to drive people. Then at the end, there's like a flash with a thousand words in a two-point font that you can't read at all, and that's giving you that information. So if people can just accept at the beginning,
00:23:05
Speaker
that they are emotionally driven, they can understand their emotion and their true why. Because quite often, you know, people say they want a business, but that's not what they want.
00:23:16
Speaker
They want to look like they have a business, or they want to be able to say, I'm an entrepreneur. And there's other ways of accomplishing that. So I i talk to people about affiliate programs.
00:23:27
Speaker
So, for example, you know, if you are someone that is interested in travel, like you you speak you were speaking about travel earlier, Michael, if you're interested in travel, it doesn't mean you have to start your own travel agency.
00:23:41
Speaker
There's opportunities where you can sell travel and travel experiences as an affiliate of a thing as opposed to having all the infrastructure yourself. So you have the best of both worlds.
00:23:52
Speaker
Very much so. And on that thing about the cars and how people are sold cars, I totally agree with you. As you were saying it, I was remembering the rebranding of Jaguar cars and the commercials that went with that, which did not show a car at all. right And then also thinking about what is probably the most successful car-related television program in the world, the BBC's Top Gear program, where they never seem to talk about or emphasize anything to do with fuel consumption or the size of the boot or how many people the vehicle will carry. It's all about the emotion of the car, what it feels like to drive, what you feel like when you look at your car, all these sorts of things. It is so right. We we we purchase things with our emotions rather than logically.
00:24:48
Speaker
So many examples of that. It's a fascinating topic. But if somebody is thinking about setting up a business, they've got this gem of an idea, it's still sort of just ah an idea, somebody should do this and they want to be the person that that should do it.
Writing a Comprehensive Business Plan
00:25:05
Speaker
How can they contact you? if The things that they need to do before they contact you, what would the ideal user of the Astor Business Centre look like? So the ideal user is pretty much what you described as someone who's thinking about starting the business, someone who wants to be able to access information and do their research and understand, as you said, some of the things that you're going to have to deal with. Because when you were in employment, to echo what you said earlier in the conversation, there was somebody doing all the stuff you don't want to do. Yeah.
00:25:40
Speaker
right? So what we want to do is open people up to all of the things that go into running a business. And it's going to sound really antiquated. But the way that you do that is by writing a comprehensive business plan.
00:25:54
Speaker
the So you ask yourself the questions that you know, you need to ask yourself, but you also end up finding out things that you weren't going to ask yourself. So we use a platform called live plan. There's lots of different business planning platforms out there, but write a comprehensive business plan and do not leave anything blank. So understand your marketing, understand who your ideal client is, understand all of those things, understand that you're going to need a marketing budget and you're going to need operating money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So my ideal client is just someone who's curious.
00:26:31
Speaker
committed and open to being challenged about the real thing that they're trying to accomplish. Because maybe, as I said, I can show you how to accomplish what you actually want to accomplish, but not go through all of the headache and pain of starting a business when there's a quicker way of getting to that emotional point that you're trying to get to.
Contacting Anthony Lindsay for Mentoring
00:26:53
Speaker
I can be found on LinkedIn. i used to have a web design company and have all these websites. But you know what? I realized, you know, I am me. And the best way that people can engage in our process is by understanding who we are, what we do, by seeing what we do daily and seeing that we are congruent. And we are actually applying the methodology that we're teaching because we say we'll help people make their first work.
00:27:24
Speaker
So, you know, once someone has found the system and found the process, they might still be doing it wrong. But then they quite often are so emotionally bought into what they're doing. Even when you tell them that it can be tweaked, they don't want to do it because it's making money.
00:27:41
Speaker
right? yes So um what we do is we post a lot on our LinkedIn. We have conversations um through that. You could book an appointment to have a conversation and just have access to all of our resources. So LinkedIn would be the best way. And it's Anthony Lindsay. Lindsay is L I N D S a y um Anthony Lindsay.
00:28:02
Speaker
And I'm on LinkedIn and I'm sure Michael will be able to share the details in the description. i certainly will. I certainly will. Thank you very much. Anthony, it's been really interesting sort of like set the foundation for lots of thinking.
00:28:18
Speaker
I do appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Anthony Lindsay, from the Aster Business Centre in East London.
00:28:34
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. If you are listening to the independent minds on your smartphone, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
00:28:52
Speaker
There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code. The description also includes links to all of the websites and services which have been mentioned in this episode of The Independent Minds, which means that the description is well worth reading.
00:29:12
Speaker
If you've liked this episode of The Independent Minds, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:29:25
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abesida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.