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Episode 197: Eleri Cossett - Love Entrepreneurs, the Fellowship You Need in Business
208 Plays1 year ago
Love Entrepreneurs is a community designed to support, mentor and above all inspire entrepreneurs from all walks of life to achieve beyond their wildest dreams. It was founded by two people who have made business building their passion and who have come together to help other entrepreneurs share their experience, strength and hope with each other so that they can be supported and nurtured to become better and more effective entrepreneurs. The only requirement for membership is a desire to be an entrepreneur and to help others become better entrepreneurs.
Eleri’s passion is the creation of something from nothing and the challenges that go along with that. By profession, she is a highly proficient international oil and gas lawyer, is fluent in 5 languages with a diversity of business building skills, legal and negotiating skills and sales & marketing experience spanning 15 years.
Timestamps:
[4:00] How did your bumpy ride into entreneurship happen?
[9:30] The gift of sobriety and the aftermath of incarceration!
[10:30] The realisations that happened being in prison after being a millionaire
[13:00] Passing on the gift of entrepreneurship to the less fortunate
[14:10] All about the Ponzi scheme
[20:00] How did you keep your sanity as these things unfolded?
[22:40] How does the Love Fellowship community work?
[26:00] The AA process and how it helps us have a better apology behaviour
[30:15] Where are you taking Love Entrepreneurs?
[32:00] If your business had a personality or character who would it be?
[32:40] What is your destiny at this moment in time?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elericosslett/
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Transcript
Introduction and Theme Setup
00:00:02
Speaker
The Entrepreneurial Journey podcast.
Engaging the Audience: Fun and Action
00:00:06
Speaker
We're talking business and building a culture that's kick ass. Where we make it happen, grab your seat, let's have a blast. At the Entrepreneurial Journey podcast.
Building Support through Subscriptions and Reviews
00:00:22
Speaker
If you love the entrepreneurial journey, how about subscribing and giving us a five-star review. Wherever you get your podcasts, follow or subscribe and give us a positive review so more entrepreneurs out there don't need to feel alone. Thanks.
Technical Glitches and Guest Introduction
00:00:40
Speaker
um OK, this is your last chance, internet, to get this right because Ellery and I have been messing about for a good 20 minutes now with various packages to get this recording going. Let me introduce you to the Entrepreneurial Journey podcast and Ellery Coslet. Hello, Ellery. How are you today?
Ellery Coslet on Digital Struggles vs. Face-to-Face Interactions
00:01:03
Speaker
I am, judge apart from hating internet hating anything digital, and wondering why we can't all do face to face stuff, but hey, you digital age, what can I say, I'm just like a digital fossil today, because, you know, these things we take them for granted and you know when they don't work we mode so We've both experienced that this morning, haven't we? Yeah. I mean, the excuse this morning, I was interviewing somebody in Melbourne and Australia. Was that perfect? No, it wasn't, but it was like, at least you've got an excuse, damn you internet, but you're only, you're in, are you in Wales? or in Bath so it's not that far really. ah So yes we're in the sort of same sort of you know vicinity one would think it would work but you know as I said who knows about but the internet gremlins these days I think we just got to be grateful for what we've got right you know the majority of time it does work. hey joe It does, it does, it does, it does. Let's just sit in a field in Norfolk or someone. Yeah I know.
Purpose of the Fellowship: Sharing Ideas and Experiences
00:02:02
Speaker
So your business is called Love Entrepreneurs? Yes, it is. Love Entrepreneurs. It's a fellowship. um Some people would call it a networking group, but it is not that. It is a fellowship that's been born out of something I sensed was needed in business, you know, this sort of idea of almost like AA, you know, our autonomous but for business, you know, where where we share our experience, strength and hope with each other so that we can all become better business people, you know, so it's a mix ah of, I mean, the secret sauce or our central tenet is basically this thing we call the big fix.
00:02:40
Speaker
The big fix is where businesses of any size description, small or large, it can be just an idea, an embryonic idea. They come along um and they share that idea and it's free to do. They share that idea with um other like-minded entrepreneurs and they get huge ideas, things that they never even thought about before. um So it's not a mastermind group in the classic sense whereby you've got the same old faces that give high opinions from the chairs, you know, it's very much a fellowship of ideas. And then we do coaching, we do sales training, and we also fund businesses. So um we've tried to sort of make it, we tried to make it as relaxed as possible so that we can attract as many people from as many different vistas as possible.
00:03:26
Speaker
and I joined one the other week and it was really good fun and it was lots of different people. It was lots of different people. So I connected with Barry and Trinidad and Tobago, great guy. yeah and And I'm being interviewed for a podcast with, the I think it's Oliver this afternoon. That's our podcast, the life of a, I would say a life of a love entrepreneur, life as an entrepreneur. Yeah, it's amazing. So yeah, it's a good group, definitely.
From 'Ex-Con to Icon': Ellery's Candid Story
00:03:52
Speaker
Now, i one of the reasons I wanted to get you on the podcast is because your entrepreneurial journey has been ah bumpier than many, shall we say, and you were very gracious in that you said you were really happy to talk about it and it involved ah prison.
00:04:10
Speaker
And nothing like a good ex-con, nothing like a good ex-con to icon story, right, you know. Ex-con to icon, I like that. We'll use that in one of the clips. Ex-con to icon, right. What happened, Ella?
Legal Troubles with Industrial Cannabis Plantations
00:04:30
Speaker
How did you end up in prison? What was that journey? Well basically I got involved in an accused of running a very large industrial scale commercial cannabis plantation um or groups of plantations. Now if anybody has ever seen how I can literally make appetite die,
00:04:54
Speaker
unintentionally I should add to plant lovers. They would have some serious doubts about my ability to grow anything, let alone something that actually probably needs to be industrially harvested and looked after them because it's a product and then therefore if it's corrupted you can't sell it, right? So, but anyway, I um i had a very large property portfolio And I had tenants who were growing cannabis in my properties. um I didn't know the tenants were growing cannabis in my properties. The obvious question, you know, quite rightly asked is should I have known?
00:05:30
Speaker
um Well, you know that that there's there's various laws about trying to, you can't just walk up to one of your properties and barging and announce you've got to give them 48 hours notice in writing and I kept trying to do this but to no avail but anyway, the the long and the short of it is that I got involved in this in the sense that um ah You know, I was accused of committing a crime and I have deferred my innocence throughout and continue to do so. I can hold my head up high and I can do that because this is for me, you know, this is a question for me as a human being.
00:06:06
Speaker
I can totally understand that everybody else may have differing views. Indeed, the jury did too, because they unequivocally convicted me. But um you know, because I did have a relationship with one of the protagonists in this entity.
Jury's Perspective and Cannabis Case Connections
00:06:20
Speaker
And that was because of the time I was dealing a lot with property and the selling of legal property. And that's how I knew this person. And it also introduced this person through my own property manager. So you can sort of see how a jury would go, Yeah, it's a bit too convenient and we'd also lost millions in a hedge fund that had just gone tits up about two years, three years prior to that. So you can sort of see how the rules would have been stacked against us in terms of something um that you would deploy to a jury and it's a shame really because, um and I think this happens a lot, you know, but
Critique of the Legal System
00:06:58
Speaker
yeah had the truth come out, and I think had I been um able to afford a private marriage to not answer a legal aid, I think we could have got to the truth of the matter, because there are a lot of unanswered questions.
Diverse Career and Unintended Path to Russian Studies
00:07:13
Speaker
um But the point is, I am a serial entrepreneur. I'm a lawyer. I started my um life um of as a graduate of Russian studies and international politics with German. which was a mistake because my mother filled g in the wrong acafil. So the rest flowed from there. I was supposed to be doing um Spanish from scratch, not Russian. That's hilarious. I know. I did six weeks in the sixth form of Russian. I got to the word for hairdresser, which is an eight syllable word. but So, parekh makhaskaya.
00:07:44
Speaker
Which actually if anybody knows German it's actually a major word it's not even a Russian word so anyway, so I gave up Russian in the sixth or never to want to see it ever again to find i the next thing I was doing a degree in it from sc scratch so I had no choice but to go off and live in Ukraine, not see any. Westerners and just immerse myself. So, you know, my legal career wasn't straightforward either. I went off to set up a law firm for a city of London law firm. I was trying to get, you know, because I spoke Russian, I was trying to get work there, but I didn't fit their mould either, so I ended up going to
Ponzi Scheme Involvement and Financial Crisis
00:08:20
Speaker
Kazakhstan is a paralegal, set up a law firm there, and on the back of that, I got a training contract. So so everything in my life has been almost, it's a bit like that film Sliding Doors, right? What would have happened if, you know, what would have happened if, but I think we can all ask those questions. So, you know, remember my father who's a newspaper and so, you know, saying to me, God, you know, Larry, one thing you can certainly say about you is your life has not been boring. You know, life isn't boring. So, you know, the fact that I get embroiled in a cannabis plantation somewhere on the line and before that Britain's largest Ponzi scheme, you know, leaving me with 97 clients.
00:08:57
Speaker
thinking I've just rinsed them for the best part of, you know, um nine million pounds, you know, et cetera, and so forth. You put that legacy of um storytelling in front of a jury, let's say, and you can very easily see how they would very readily think, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, that this is not a nice person, you know, this woman speaks fluent Russian, you know, she's Jane Bond to Jimmy Bond, you know. j um and but But, you know, the point is, you know, I made, I made, you know, I'm very lucky. I'm an alcoholic, a recovering alcoholic. I've reached my anonymity and we're coming up to 12 years priority. And well actually, yeah, I mean, 12 years ago, my life was in a mess. I was thinking alcoholically and I didn't want to live.
00:09:49
Speaker
So the biggest gift I've ever been given was the gift of sobriety, you know, because it made me realize that whatever I've got or haven't got, it doesn't matter. As long as I have sobriety and breath in me, I have a chance. And that thankfully happened about a year and a half before I had stand trial and before all this happened and people came barreling through our door at five o'clock in the morning. um so So I went to prison with this vision of, look, you know, this is like an anthropological exercise. It's nothing more, nothing less. It's just ah an opportunity to act in a way, a very humbling one, because, look, I'd had millions. I'd experienced what it was like to live and never have to go to a supermarket and look at what the prices were.
00:10:37
Speaker
you know, I'd experienced, I'd seen poverty on the streets of Bath, on the streets of London, but like the Phil Collins song, I sort of quickly, you know, I would just shell out my 10 quid or 20 quid or whatever, not think anything more of it, think that my conscience would have been absorbed, and that was the end of it.
Teaching in Prison and Entrepreneurial Drive for Inmates
00:10:52
Speaker
So in a way, going to prison was, you know, it enabled me to really experience, you know, firsthand what poverty does to people, what lack of opportunity really does What happens when people have got brilliant ideas but no money to bring these ideas forward?
00:11:15
Speaker
so that they can actually have a chance of blossoming into something. And it was there, really, that I started, and I taught women to read in prison, which is probably one of, again, a really, you know, really satisfying
Impact of Literacy and Socioeconomic Barriers
00:11:29
Speaker
thing to do. And two of those have now done degrees in English at really quite prominent universities, because I didn't realise that people couldn't read in this country. No, they can't. They can't read. Like you, I'd heard it on Radio 4, but I hadn't really viscerally felt it. yeah because it didn'tpoint And understand the barriers yeah to leading a normal life in society. If you can't read or write properly,
00:11:59
Speaker
eight My husband has um a guy that works for him, a job guy. he can't He's barely literate. He is barely literate. And he he just struggles with everything and and often ends up, well, he's he's got a drink problem as well. My husband's very kind in that he still gives him work because that's about the only thing this guy's got going for him. and And I don't think the mainstream society understands that what's open to this guy and his family is nothing. I mean, he he ends up in trouble all the time he because he just ah you just can't cope with the world. Can you imagine trying to navigate a banking app when you can't read?
00:12:46
Speaker
This is it, you know, this is the whole point. so so so so i but But what I realized with a lot of these people was that they were just like you and me, right? It's a lottery out there where you're born, which side of the street you're born on, et cetera and so forth. It's a complete lottery, right? So um I vowed there to sort of do something to really change the perception of entrepreneurship from people who didn't have any money because with expenders, it's often the case that they think of them as stupid. They're not. that that That they are just thick, you know, and therefore, but actually it's, you're a victim of circumstance. These people are far from thick. I'll tell you that right now. They are so resourceful. And I've always thought, you know, if if you're dealing with drug dealing guys, you know, these are brilliant salespeople. Absolutely.
00:13:33
Speaker
see to keep things in them or stocks and shares merchants you know that because they can do figures bang they're usually very numerous if they're just like I mean i this is just you know I'm not an expert but this was just my observation the more dyslexic they were the more really innovative coping mechanisms they were able to deploy to survive And that is really, that is innovation, right? That is thinking around the problem, through the problem and actually not being left to... You have to be creative, yeah. and think Absolutely. So I just thought,
Return to the Ponzi Scheme and Shipping Interests
00:14:07
Speaker
you know... So how i need to I need to go back and ask you about the Ponzi scheme because I didn't know about that. How did you get involved in that?
00:14:14
Speaker
Well, well, basically, obviously I wasn't, you know, so I've got a yeah okay. Typical again by accident. I have a master's in international commercial law right now I my passion was shipping law. um I never qualified as a shipping solicitor, but but but really in my heart parts, that's sort of what I wanted to do. So I was fascinated by international freight, international trade, shipping lanes. I don't know why, you know, there must be something in the rooms on my past life. Maybe I was a master mariner, maybe I was a pirate or something, I don't know, who knows. but um
00:14:51
Speaker
So I met this guy who told me all about, you know, sort of, if you know, he runs a scheme and and it's an investment scheme and he provides forward credit, if you like, to people who offload goods from vessels. The document, the document title with regard to vessels is called the Bill of Lending. So it's an inventory of all the goods. And if the inventory doesn't precisely match ah that which say if you're forgetting finance you'll have a finance document so they all must match right so if there's any discrepancy, nothing happens you can't offload or well, you cannot float, but you have to go into a bonded warehouse and of course they charge money yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
per hour usually um or worse if you can't do the bonded warehouse because it might be a port that doesn't have any bonded warehouses or maybe there's no room you pay this thing called demurrage which is basically a fee for every moment that the ship is actually delayed because the ship is a working vessel and people are go freight and all kinds of things so you pay you pay a fine basically So the idea was that, hey, you know, I'll, um you know, I'll find that sort of stuff. And I thought, well, great, you know, because he knew, in you know, he knew in co-terms, he knew international trade terms. And I thought, God, this can't just be, you know, anyway, so often went three years later, we made loads of money, of course, with our friends and family and business contacts and everybody got involved until one day I had a phone call from the Financial Conduct Authority that said, you are you sitting down? Well, I just come out the shower. so
00:16:24
Speaker
you know, thank God there was no Zoom. But you know, and firstly, when do you ever get a phone call from the FCA, let alone they ask you, are you sitting down? So we think this is a fraud, you know. And I was the guy who did it in the sense I didn't know he'd changed the fraud, obviously, because it was my own money, it was clients' funds, blah, blah, blah. So we were feeding this.
Legal Ramifications of the Ponzi Scheme
00:16:46
Speaker
And it wasn't just us, there were banks involved and there were other biggest people. um So to basically that was all frozen. Back, all frozen. So I was in a situation where I had no warning overnight. I tell you the date was the 15th of November, 2008. Man, everything was frozen. I had £42,000 a month mortgage bill. What? Well, I had 68 might select properties and my house in London. So suddenly my income
00:17:17
Speaker
had stopped overnight. Now, of course, I still have the income from property left. So the story with the police went well, she lost all her money in the fund, therefore she needed so needed to supplement her income through her property portfolio. And that's how she decided to do it. Yeah, it makes sense. You know, you can just see how they would have narrated. Except when it doesn't make sense when you would ask the most obvious question in the world. Well, if that is so, where is the money? Yeah, where where is it now, then? And nobody seemed to think that that was a salient question to ask. I wish to God I'd represented myself in hindsight. I really, really do. Right. Because, um you know, I'm not ah I'm not a criminal lawyer. You know, I don't profess any huge expertise in that area. But, you know, I think I would have given people a good right for their money and ask the most obvious commercial questions. You know, if you're going to do something like this, you just lost a lot of money.
00:18:12
Speaker
Let's assume you're doing it for money. You're going to have to receive some money. you know, what's our long line, you're going to do, you know, you're going to take a broad analysis of the whole thing, aren't you? You're going to say, well, you know, does it, does it, you know, what's, what would happen if, if, if I was caught, how long would I get to prison for? You know, you're going to sort of work it out. Well, there were various figures that have bounded your brand that I'd made 10 million or I'd made millions and I'd squirreled it all off shore. Well, that's all well and good, but now there's me thinking at the time thinking surely they have to actually
00:18:46
Speaker
be able to evidence all of this you can't yeah bishop know then I discovered all about the laws of conspiracy, but apparently all you need to do is, all all that needs to happen is you need to know one person in the conspiracy. You don't actually have to know what they're doing. but I did know one person the conspiracy. Right, okay. Because I didn't know what they were doing. with So it was de facto a circumstantial evidence based prosecution, because our story did not quite fit into the bylines of the ordinary. Right, right. I'm with you. I'm with
00:19:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening, everybody. Did you know at Trichress we've built a kick-ass culture, coach and consultant program? So if you're a business coach or consultant and you're looking for something new, add to your toolbox or even escape the nine to five, join us at our next event. Links in the information on the podcast. See you there. with you. Okay, so so but my question now, Ellery, my microphone keeps messing about, is and with all that going on and you had a drink problem, how how did you keep sane?
Journey to Sobriety and Mental Fortitude
00:20:00
Speaker
How did you maintain
00:20:03
Speaker
in your own resilience because, you know, one of those things would have broken a lot of people, you know, two, three, four in a storm over a fairly short period of time. Yeah. I mean, my recovery date and my sobriety date, as we refer to it, is the 16th of October, 2012. So I was very lucky that I'd entered AA. That's how I did it. There's plenty of people to do it. um and i decided to you know i i i just handed my will in my life over to a power greater than myself i know that sounds a bit weird but for people to say but i literally did i did i made one day i came in you know half a glass of wine that was from 11th block or something and i can remember making but you know seeing seeing two choices literally in front of me
00:20:53
Speaker
live or die and I had to choose one and I can remember it as stark as that and I chose life in the infamous words of Catherine Hamlet you know I chose life and from that moment onwards and you know I'd started to go to AA meetings every single day sometimes twice or three times a day um and staying sober in between. And I just found another purpose in life, you know, and I haven't touched the drop of alcohol.
Recovery and Serving Others
00:21:19
Speaker
since and And that's how I did it. about it and I'd found a purpose, you know, some people say, oh, you need to get religion. But, you know, so so I knew from that moment onwards, whatever trials, tribulations, tribulations, whatever, whatever happens, as long as I don't take that drink, that first drink, I'll be fine.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah. and i will yeah yeah and you Because I took attitude, I took the attitude of gratitude with me, I took the idea of Look, you know, this can happen to anybody. Yeah, absolutely. Because and I didn't feel embittered towards the court, towards the jury or towards the prosecution because I can totally see how taken under one lens, see people would say, yeah, well, it's obvious what she would have done, you know, and I can and I thought, you know, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life trying to seek justice. What is the point? They're not going to believe me anyway.
00:22:12
Speaker
And it'll be very much like the lady doth protest a bit too much scenario. So I thought, you know, better to sort of try and serve other people and take from this experience things that I can actually hand back to people, not because I'm sitting there in judgment on them. But I can just say, look, this is what happened to me.
Fellowship Mission and Visionary Coaching
00:22:30
Speaker
And these are the steps that I took. And if what I've done attracts you,
00:22:39
Speaker
then join in. Yeah, it's a great leveler and you do give back to entrepreneurs. So the the love entrepreneur group fellowship, I like the way you describe it as a fellowship.
00:22:53
Speaker
and How does it well work? How does it run? Because there'll be people on here who perhaps do want to join. Oh, sure. Well, absolutely. The first thing to say is it's not like a forced entry dot com affair. You know, it's got to be right for you and you've got to be right for us. And it's very much, ah you know, are you somebody that gives back spiritually to people? Do you believe in helping others? You know, it's very much um give us game. So we don't force you to sign up or join in. What we say to you come along for about a month or
00:23:24
Speaker
however long it takes for you to make the right decision for you. yeah Because what we're doing is we're curating a bunch of people, entrepreneurs, who gen up from all different sections of the the world, who genuinely want to help other people survive and thrive. And collectively, we're like a ship. We all help each other flow. And we all rise collectively. there's not that you know There's no point being the richest person in the graveyard. That's how we do it. And they can come with an idea, and they can get feedback for free. As I say, it's free to do a big fix. um Anyone interested in doing so, maybe you can give them my phone number. you know I'm very much somebody who's quite hands-on.
00:24:09
Speaker
um And, um you know, we we then take them on a coaching journey, if that's what they want to do, because it has to be their decision. Because like you we spoke about this, I really believe that if you don't have a vision for you, you've got nothing.
The Role of Vision in Entrepreneurial Success
00:24:27
Speaker
Because if you don't have a vision for you, you will be, you will be, you will succumb to the where, you know, to the tailwinds of other people's views and certain roles by everybody else.
00:24:40
Speaker
that yeah so And then then we fund businesses then. So we do so um through the SCIS scheme and a combination of of um ah currency that we use, so silver currency. And that's it. I mean, the other thing to say is that some we in Love Entrepreneurs very heavily promote people using this wonderful currency that the company called Silvertree has come up with, which is a currency that we now use within our network.
Silvertree Currency and Integrating Ex-Offenders
00:25:09
Speaker
um for our members to trade with each other using so they don't have to necessarily use cash because they may not have cash.
00:25:17
Speaker
so um so yeah so so So that's what we do. so and we welcome we you know I deal with ex-offenders, there are some ex-offenders in our midst, nobody knows apart from me. And why should they? They've served their time, that's it? oh That's right, they've served their
Forgiveness and Moving Past Mistakes
00:25:33
Speaker
time. but ah you know Whatever it is, you know let's just get on with it. People are interested in making good business deals, people are interested in helping other people and they quite frankly, they're more interested in what are you doing now And what business are you running now? And how can we help that from moving forward rather than yeah sitting in the past and you know sitting in reverse? Because that doesn't help anybody. Yeah. And there's something about, and I'd be interested to hear your views on this. A lot of people don't understand the AA process, but there's a lot of forgiveness in AA and there's a lot of apologizing for things that you might have done to hurt people in the past so that you can move on.
Value of Mistakes and Hardships
00:26:13
Speaker
and and other people can move on. And and I think ah think we need to have more of that in our society in that we're all human. We make horrific mistakes because we're human. We make really bad decisions from time to time, but that doesn't make us a bad person. And in fact, often it makes us a better person because we understand what it is to hit rock bottom or experience great loss and to feel a bit daft that we've done something that was a bad decision and moved on from it. I actually think that makes you a better human being rather than somebody who's just played it safe all their
Contextual Nature of Decisions and Immigration Analogy
00:26:55
Speaker
life.
00:26:55
Speaker
I mean, it's like this how nonsense that you have when politicians actually have humility to apologize or change their minds. People suddenly go, oh, this is a really bad thing. I'm thinking actually, no, this is a hugely important thing because we are not deities. We are not gods. We are human. we ah will make mistakes and we'll also make decisions you see this is the other thing you know there's a difference between making a decision in one context and making a decision in another context you know decisions need to be framed within the contextual lens that you know in which they're taken when respect absolutely and
00:27:30
Speaker
And, um you know, it's easy for us to say, oh, well, of course, I wouldn't have done that. Well, how do you know? It has to stand in someone's shoes first to know what we've done, because we don't know. It's a bit like immigration, isn't it? You know, it's easy to say, oh, well, what an awful thought. Immigration. Well, you try running away from war. We don't know what that's like, yeah right?
American vs. European War Perspectives
00:27:53
Speaker
No, no, we don't. And I was listening to a podcast the other day and, you know, America has never had ah a global war on American soil. Yeah, it's had civil wars and obviously didn't treat the indigenous population terribly nicely. and But it's never had an invading
00:28:13
Speaker
army on its land. And that I think that does something to a psyche of a nation and so that you understand what it is to be under the rule of law of somebody else's rule and and and understand how that makes you feel, how it affects your daily life, your family life, your business life, whatever educational life. and So I often think I love America and I love Americans, but I often think, well, You're a bit naive sometimes because you've not really had that enormous ah sort of detriment. I've just finished a book called The Liberation by Kate Furnival, a brilliant book, and it talks about the liberation of Italy, you know. Well, firstly, it takes you through Mussolini, then you've got the Gestapo, then you've got the Allied forces, mainly American and British.
National Hardships and Collective Psyche
00:29:08
Speaker
and so You know, the hardship that those people went through, often not spoken about, you know, the same with them with Flanders, the same with, with, you know, I mean, Britain had it. Okay. We were bombed. We never had an invading force. We did not. And I think that is, and it's very easy for us all to say, oh, well, you know, and I think CJ Sansom in Dominion writes a fantastic narrative of what would happen had Hitler invaded Britain. Oh, right. I've not read that. That would would be interesting. but yeah that and And I think, you know, we we just need to remember that we are not, yes, we have nationalities, yes, we have different languages, but that contributes to interest, different ways of doing things. Again, innovation, entrepreneurship.
00:29:56
Speaker
you know So we have more things that unite us than
Unity through Commonalities
00:30:00
Speaker
divide us. And if we could actually just focus on the things that unite us and make us better than the things that divide us, it's just just just a waste of energy. It is. It's a huge waste of energy. Jim, we're just people trying to do the best we can with the resources we have available to us. That is it, really. Yeah, no, I totally agree. So where are you taking love entrepreneurs? where Where's the next phase for it?
00:30:28
Speaker
well where Well, while I'm trying to expand it, so I'm looking for people, whether they have a business or coaches, people who are interested in taking groups, taking this to more people out there, so that more people can get the benefit from just other people's random ideas and thoughts. um So, you know, again, anyone that is curious about what we do, you know, I'm very, very, very interested in hearing from you because I think this is a great opportunity for you as a business owner or a coach to stand um above others in a way and actually create interesting groups of people with like-minded views and actually, you know, um help others to grow. There's a huge amount of satisfaction that you get from when someone turns around
00:31:14
Speaker
and silently says, thank you for that idea. That actually was a great catalyst, you know, it's a bit like the clash, you know, that that so was at the jam, you know, was it what a great catalyst you turned out to be, you know, um I am there was a friend ah in the fellowship, actually, that um ah struggling, really struggling as an entrepreneur and needs to go get a job. And she used to work for the oil industry. And I just said to her about three weeks ago, I said, why didn't you phone the company that you used to work for and see if they'll make a job for you? She did. Now she's got a job. Burning more than her husband. That's the power of sharing an idea with somebody else.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, really important. So if your business had a personality or a character, Ellery, how would you describe it or who who would it be? I don't know. Probably a lion.
Purpose in Life and Supporting Others
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, probably a lion, you know. A lion. Yeah, i was oh um'm I'm a bit like a lion. I don't, or a tiger, I just don't give up. You know, I'm like a stealth weapon, you know, I stealthily continue. Sometimes tortoise, sometimes hair, but I sort of never give up. I'm like the Duracell battery.
00:32:34
Speaker
I love that. I love that you need that. You absolutely need that. And what's your purpose, do you think? What's your purpose or your destiny? God knows. You know, um and and that sounds really quite grandiose, doesn't it? What's your purpose or your destiny? I think, no, on a serious note, you know, my purpose, my only purpose really is to keep things right sized in life and actually just remember every single day that I am there just to help other people, m just as they are there to help me.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. No, that is it. You know, it's not about a competition of, you know, how many people can you help? How many awards can you get? I mean, I've never been given an award in my life. I've never been from winning the solo when I was about 13 and the Estadfudge, you know, in Wales. But that was like, you know, years ago. So it's about doing the work. It's about keeping people through, I suppose, my story, trying to say to them, look, this is just my story. You know, it's no better or worse than anyone else's story. It's not a competition. No, it's just an example of and when I left prison, as you know, Rebecca, when I had 43 quid as a discharge grant, and, you know, I'd gone from 68 properties to nothing. I was homeless. But I had this vision in my brain.
00:34:01
Speaker
And you often hear of entrepreneurs saying that it's not about how more rich you are, it's about that vision for you. And that's what you hang on to. So we wanted to create a fellowship of people that would really encourage others to hang on to that vision. yeah well and you know And we believe in people even when they don't believe in themselves. So important. So, so important. Many people don't believe in themselves. And and you and I think if you're in any kind of coaching role, you
00:34:36
Speaker
can see the potential in people and you can see what they're capable of doing and they just can't see it in themselves yet. Yeah, that's so good. And you know what, that's really frustrating when that happens. Yeah, yeah yeah we we have coaches like that that join our programme and they They often are some of the best ones that I know are going to make it, but they don't think they're good enough and they think somehow that they need to, I don't know, go off and do.
00:35:09
Speaker
more serious qualifications, shall we say? It's got nothing to do with that. No, I know. It's like it's nothing to do with that. You've got the raw material there that you are in me hall and they just don't think they are. It's really interesting. And often it's those people that that actually can bring the message down to a humble, translatable way of the people who make the best coaches, rather than trying to prescribe. Because by prescribing, you're creating that culture of dependency, what you want.
00:35:44
Speaker
is to inspire others to use the tools that you've used and say, hey, you know, now go forth to the next generation, which is really what you want. Definitely. Amazing. eller I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours because you've had such an interesting life. We haven't even covered Ukraine or anything like that, but that's fabulous. I wish you all the luck in the world with your business. We finally got the Internet working. So thank you, Internet gremlins. internet gremlins thank like Yes. And all the links will be on the show notes. So thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.