Transcript
When we sold Fortero to Partners Group for a billion euros, so there aren’t many black CEOs running companies of this scale in the UK or Europe. Like, I’m still pinching myself going, how is this my life, or how do I have this thing on? All the sales that you’ve done so far for these businesses, how much would you say it equates to?
Just over two billion euros. People were pointing and laughing, and I was a bit of a joke in the place. So I said, the only way I’m leaving is once I’ve proven that I’m better than everybody else. We always invest in a business, try and turn it around, improve it, grow it to the point that it becomes worth a lot more money and then sell it on.
And I’m fortunate to do that four times in my career. Times weren’t always like this for you. I now realise as an adult, we were very poor. My dad wasn’t really around too much.
How’d you get into the debt, if you don’t mind me asking? I borrowed money. So I was borrowing money to maintain the lifestyle, and I ended up in like, you know, 88 grand worth. 88 grand?
That one encounter where you said, could put it down to racism, is that something we can speak on? A kid who grew up on a South London estate, I never feel threatened by these people. I’ve spent time around people that you need to be afraid of. Why is it that you decided to pursue for more?
If this is the number when I’m not very good, what does the number look like when I actually know some stuff? What was the first ever company that you walked into where you had equity at the same time? When I was killing my sales targets, I’d go back and talk about equity.
Annual review time, I was talking about equity. And then once we sold for 550 million and it changed mine and my family’s life, me and my mum had been homeless in our past. For the rest of my career, it’s been the number one thing for me when I negotiate my way into a company.
I can only order one bottle of wine and it’s 15,000 and no fuss is made of it. And then you go to a club, somebody’s spending 2000 pounds and there’s fireworks, special music. The flex is most often the opposite to what you think is the flex. One of the things I think people get wrong is.
What is going on, people? Welcome back to the CEO Class, the number one podcast for showcasing business and entrepreneurship. Now, today we have an absolute banger of an episode, a special guest, Dean Forbes. How are you doing?
I’m good, I’m good. How are you? I’m not too bad. I want to say the first time, or one of the first times I’ve come across you.
was my good friend posted a video of yourself doing a billion dollar deal, right? And I think the whole internet was thinking, who is this guy? What’s the deal he’s doing? What is this about?
So, Justin, tell us bro, what is it that you do? What was that billion dollar deal? Well, I’ve been involved in running investor backed software companies for a long time now. So we always invest in a business, try and turn it around, improve it, grow it to the point that it becomes worth a lot more money and then sell it on.
And I’ve been fortunate to do that four times in my career and that video that went viral was the largest one I ever did back in 2022 when we sold Fortero to Partners Group for a billion euros. So really, really big career moment for me. Yeah, that’s crazy. That’s crazy.
And what did it take to get that deal done? Oh, a lot of hard work. I always say that that deal is the culmination of all of my different experiences being CEO, four different times, everything I learned. So it’s taken a long time in terms of my own journey.
Getting that deal done was probably three months of 22 hour days round the clock negotiations, making that moment happen. It was a massive, massive moment for me personally. So when you say three months, was that from the point of interest and partnership or just starting the talk of sale?
No, when I got to Fortero in 2020, we always knew that we would have to sell the company to a new investor. That was part of the plan to get the original investor, get them a return on their money and move the company into the hands of a new owner.
So we knew in 2020 that that would happen. So the first few years were about the plan, getting the team together, getting the strategy together. And then the last nine months spent talking to potential buyers, talking to potential investors, getting them ready. And then that three months was pretty much purely the deal-making.
That’s the negotiation, that’s the pitch, the presentation.
tracks, yeah it takes about 12 weeks. So I think to set the tone of this podcast if we had to do a rough calculation of all the sales that you’ve done so far for these businesses how much would you say it equates to? I know the number, the numbers are just just over two billion euros so between the four it’s two billion euros of exits and you know I’ve been fortunate to be a shareholder in each of those companies it’s always been part of the the deal that I’ve got ownership and equity stake in each of the companies so it’s two billion in shareholder returns for various investors.
Yeah we need to get into this later on in this podcast but I want to dive it back right because times weren’t always like this for you right I want to talk about your upbringing how it all went school life education the whole lot so talk to me if we had to talk about Dean from say 13 years old what was it like for Dean?
I’m just you know another kid who grew up on a South London estate where I grew up everybody wanted to play football so I wanted to play football as well and I wasn’t I wasn’t too bad at it so by being kind of good at football it meant I didn’t pay so much attention in school but I was quite naturally academic so I was able to get through school I did quite well at my GCSEs despite being I guess a bit of a bit of a class clown but also because I thought I was gonna play football anyway so I was one of those typical cases of don’t try too hard don’t invest too much into school because I’m gonna go be a pro anyway and it’s interesting like you know where we grew up footballers got a right of passage in the area right there’s a lot of kids getting involved in a lot of different bad stuff but all of the footballers seemed to be able to just move a little bit more freely so that was another thing that kind of kept me out of trouble when I was when I was growing up even though there was like trouble all around all around me so I think between football keeping me out of trouble between being a bit of a class clown in school I was able to you know get through school in terms of home life well that was a bit of a different situation you know we were I now realize as an adult we were
Very poor, even though my mum did a great job of kind of disguising that from us. My dad wasn’t really around too much. It was just me and my mum and my two brothers. And like I said, we didn’t have much, but at the time I didn’t even realise that.
I didn’t really register. Because your mum was to provide for everything anyway. Yeah, my mum was an absolute warrior. I always talk about how she’s disabled, she’s small, she’s an immigrant, she’s a black lady, so she kind of had everything going against her.
But I never ever heard her talk about herself as a victim. You know, I never ever heard her talk about herself as being unlucky or that somebody did something to her. She was always like on the front foot, like trying to make things happen and just totally positive and totally hustling.
And that was just a brilliant, brilliant thing to see growing up. Where are you ethnically from? My parents are West Indian. Okay, so there’s a lot of common traits between, you know, West Indians, Asians, right?
For example, in my experience, if I told my mum or dad when I was in school that, look, I want to pursue my dreams of being a podcaster, right, they would literally slap me around the head and say like, look, you’re going to be a doctor, you’re going to be an engineer, et cetera, and stuff like that.
Education’s pushed a lot upon us. For you, what was it like when you told your mum that, you know, you wanted to go and play football and school was like a secondary thing? What was it like in terms of that conversation? My mum’s whole demeanour and the demeanour of our house was you have to be the best.
So whatever you’re doing and wherever you’re at, it’s not good enough. What is the tier or level above that? So that was always her thing. So when I came home with Cs, she was like, what nonsense is this, where you should be at least getting B pluses or As.
When I got B pluses and As, she was like, A stars. When it was five out of 10 A stars, she was like, well, why isn’t it 10 out of 10, you know, A stars, right? That was just her thing. When I was playing for Crystal Palace at 15, I remember saying to my mum, I’m playing on Saturday, I’m in the team, you should come and watch.
And she came, she watched.
And afterwards, she was really annoyed. I said to her, what’s wrong with you? She said, I’m annoyed because you told me you was playing for Crystal Palace on Saturday. I said, yeah, I did.
And she said, no, I expected you to be in the stadium playing for the first team. Like that was her mentality was that at 15, there was no reason why I shouldn’t be in the first team. And we had this big argument about why that was an unreasonable expectation.
And then, I don’t know, like 15 years later when Wayne Rooney played for Everton at 16, she called me and she was like, see, I told you. If you’re good enough, then you could have done this. So her whole thing was, whatever you’re doing, just don’t bring back anything in second or third place.
You do it and you’d be the best at it. Do you think that puts that kind of pressure on you, especially from a parent, to make sure that you’re constantly improving and making sure that you’re bettering yourself each time? Yeah, for sure. But that burden and that, not even burden, that drive that she put into me and my brothers, that constant pursuit of being a bit better wasn’t ever burdensome.
Like I never felt heavy because I had to do this for my mum. I felt aggressive, positively aggressive and motivated. And like, I could do anything. That’s what it did to me.
It didn’t make me nervous or shy or concerned. I was always like, what else is there to get? Like, what else can we have? So it’s been a good trait to have.
So you mentioned that you played for Crystal Palace at 15 years old. So then your football career did go down the direction that you wanted it to go down. So how did it continue? Did you end up playing for first team?
No, no, I didn’t quite play for the first team or really get that close to it. I kind of fell out of the game not too long after coming out of school. And in hindsight, it was like a big lesson for me because when I came out of the game, I was injured and I blamed the injury for coming out.
Was it the typical ACL? No, no, it was shin splints at the time. Okay, yeah. And I blamed…
I was injured and I blame the injury for how I came out of football. You know, years later and maturing as an adult and as a business person, I look back now and I’m just like, I was nowhere near it. I wasn’t prepared enough. I wasn’t committed enough.
I wasn’t doing any extras. I was like busy wandering around Croydon in my Crystal Palace tracksuit or whatever football club tracksuit I had at the time, talking to people and girls about the fact I was going to be a big footballer. I was much better and focused on that than I actually was trying to become a footballer.
And I learned a lot from that in later life, that you have to be committed and prepared and disciplined and all those good lessons. So even that failure was super helpful. So what was it, kind of like the lifestyle that you were attracted to within the football thing?
I actually did love football. I actually did love football. And of course I had friends who were doing much better at football than I was and I could see the lifestyle that it was giving them access to. So there was a little bit of that, but actually it was like for us, there weren’t many other clear and attainable paths for us to make a good life for ourselves.
It was a classic, you know, doing the unsavoury things, entertaining or football. And all of my friends were playing football. So it was more, this just seemed like the most natural, obvious, touchable, relatable opportunity to make a good living for ourselves. So interesting question and interesting upbringing.
Did you have any taste of entrepreneurship at a younger age or business at a younger age? You know, I did, but I don’t look back on it now and go, oh, this was the beginning of the entrepreneurial career. But somehow, so I am, when I was in school, I used to go to Ridley Road Market and buy these belts.
And on the stand you could buy gold letters, I think like a pound each. And at the time there was the Moschino belts with the gold, you know.
gold metal Moschino across the front, so we just went to the market, we bought the leather and then we bought the letters to spell Moschino and I remember the guy on the stall saying, look you can’t do that because it’s counterfeit, you can’t do it, so he got to a point of not wanting to sell us the letters so we had to buy other letters like not just the letters to spell Moschino, other letters so that he would let us buy the belts and I remember those belts and the letters would cost seven pounds and we would sell them at school or I would sell them at school for 15 pounds, that was one of my earliest like ventures and I did I did like really well out of that for a 15 year old.
100% profit margin in that. Pretty much. And then after that, anything? I was a barber, I was also like the school barber so I would have like tons of kids come through the house, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, four pound a haircut so I made good money.
What year is this, four pound a haircut? This is like £94, £95, it’s a long time ago. I need to get Dean Forbes to cut my hair. As you were transpiring into the journey of football, was business not on your mind at all?
No, not at all, like I had you know really really good friends, you know Rio’s one of my good friends and I was watching his just journey taking off at an amazing pace and everything that came with it so I was just really locked in to that and it wasn’t, I fell out of football with a real FUD, like with a lot of debt, you know no clubs, no professional clubs interested in me so it was a very very cold shower moment when I had to pivot and find something else to do.
How did you get into the debt if you don’t mind me asking? I borrowed money, like you know in our little friendship group there was a good set of boys who were making good money, Rio was doing great, Jason Ewell was doing great, Clinton Morrison was doing great and they were making real money from football and then I was borrowing money and taking out overdrafts and you know taking out any credit cards I could get my hands on because I wanted to buy
the same clothes as them and I wanted to buy my round in the nightclubs with them, I wanted to get my tables in the nightclub with them as well. So I was borrowing money to maintain the lifestyle of a footballer, despite not being a footballer and I ended up in like, you know, 88 grand worth of- 88 grand?
Yeah. At how old? Yeah, 18. 18.
I don’t wanna swear, but yeah, damn. And how did you come out of that? Well, it took a while, you know, I had to fight, well, my agent at the time helped me find a job and over time and years and work, you know, I just, I had to pay it down.
But it was, and I always have such an important thing because a lot of people who fail at football fail slowly over a long period of time because you keep, you know, you fall further and further down the leagues and you take less and less money and then over six or seven years, maybe it dawns on you that you’re actually never gonna make it as a pro, you’re unlikely to make it as a pro.
Because I had the debt, I couldn’t start trialing up and down the country or take a bad deal at a good club just to be in that club. I had to go and work. So I came out of football very, very quickly and started to build my career.
So in hindsight, it was actually one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Blessing in disguise when you look back at it. Absolutely. Yeah, it happens a lot in life.
So to service that debt, how did you come out of it? Yeah, like Harry, my agent at the time, just sat me down and said, if you do not service this debt, it cripples you. Ability to get a mortgage, ability to borrow money in the future. And he lined me up to get a job doing telesales at Motorola in this windowless room where you had to make a certain number of outgoing calls every day.
So I kind of went from training as a aspiring footballer on Friday to doing telesales on a Monday. It was like heartbreaking. Okay, so you’re still doing football at the same time then? No, we kind of just said, you know, the football thing is over.
And just jumped straight into telesales. And what was that like? Because I’m assuming that’s a whole lot of cold calling. Yeah, you had to make.
45 outgoing calls a day and set a certain number of appointments and it was just all monotony and the same thing all the time. It was horrible and compared to football it was soul-destroying. That was your football agent that got you the job? Yeah, he called a friend of his at Motorola and said, I’ve got this kid and he needs some help.
That’s very nice and sweet of him to be fair. The fact that he’s trying to look after you outside of football as well. Because we live in a world nowadays where not many people want to look after you if it doesn’t benefit them. And credit to Harry because what he’s done there, I suppose, was the start of your journey to put you in positions where you are in now.
100%. How was it like doing cold calls, tele-call sales, everything like that? I’m assuming that was brand new to you. It was absolutely soul-destroying because I found it very difficult to actually perform the job.
But also in performing the job I was reminding myself that I wasn’t becoming a footballer. So it was hard. And then you’d leave work at six o’clock and go and spend time with your friends who were talking about training that day or their game at the weekend or the life that you really wanted to have.
So it was soul-destroying. Mental battle you must have to face for that. Were you constantly surrounding yourself with friends who were playing football or did you find yourself thinking you need to not distance yourself from them but distract yourself? Because if you keep getting reminded about football, it might put you in a darker hole, if that makes sense.
Yeah. To be honest, I kind of came out of that social circle a little bit. I was finding it very difficult mentally. I wouldn’t say it was a mental health issue, but I was definitely finding it from a personal perspective really, really hard to keep putting myself back in that social environment.
So I had to step out of it a little bit for a few years and then reintegrate when I was happy with myself again. Talk me through how Soul Squad got to that point then.
Our sales course, we were selling mobile phone fleet management. So big companies had thousands of phones for their staff. And we were trying to get them to let us manage that fleet, repairs, replacement, tariffs. So you’re calling a big corporate, trying to find somebody in facilities management who looked after the fleet of phones, and trying to get them to describe to you what they paid and how much they paid on an annual basis.
So you could say, well, we could probably improve on that. And my job was just to set an appointment for a salesperson to go in and do the pitch. I had to get the company sufficiently interested that they would take a meeting. And if they took the appointment, I get 12 pounds.
OK. So how much money did you make there, if you don’t mind me asking? I was probably making like 20 grand a year by the time. Like with bonuses and everything, I was probably making like 20.
OK, so it was base salary plus commission. It was 60% commission. OK. I mean, I say that’s not bad.
You don’t mean, because if you’re making 45 calls a day, 12 pound per booking, how many calls on average would you say you set appointments for daily? This is a long time ago. I can’t remember how many I was hitting. But I can definitely tell you that at 20 grand, I was by far the top performer in that.
Oh, really? Yeah, by a long way. Because I hated it so much. And I hated it for so long, I just hit a point where I said, I’m actually going to be good at this.
So I can walk out of here with my head held high. Like, it was so embarrassing to be there. I said, the only way you can leave, Dean, like, you can’t just quit and walk out. The only way you can leave is when you’ve proven to everyone in this room that you’re the best at this.
Because people were laughing at me. Like, people were pointing and laughing. And there was a bit of a joke in the place. So I said, the only way I’m leaving is once I’ve proven that I’m better than everybody at doing this.
And that’s how I made, like, that much money, which was a lot of money.
money for doing that job. So rumor has it you work in Domino’s as well, right? Right. Where does that fit into all of this?
Yeah, so you start at Domino’s at 7 p.m. doing delivery, like three or four nights a week. I had debt, like it was a serious thing that had to be dealt with. So you’ll be finishing your sales job at 6 p.m.?
Five. Five, and then going to Domino’s at seven? Yep. Till what time?
Midnight. Midnight. And then what time does your sales job start? Nine?
Nine. So literally you’ve just got time for sleep in your life. Yeah, I was doing that maybe three or four nights a week, not every night. How long for the whole process did it take you to actually come out of that debt, pay it off?
Pay it off, probably five years, because not too long after leaving the tele-sales job, I got into quite a good software sales job where I was making probably 60, 70k a year at 22, 23. So that helped deal with that a lot. So that was off the back of you doing extremely well at Motorola, and then you had applied for this new job, or was it someone that recommended you the job?
I did well at Motorola, and I went to one of the partners of Motorola. And when I was working at that partner of Motorola, that was a much smaller company. And I think I was like the fourth or fifth employee at that company. So I was there in sales, like sales management, and the company was growing really, really quickly.
It was like a telco startup above a sandwich shop in Chiswick. So it was growing, it was growing really, really quickly. And then the owners started to talk to Vodafone about selling the company. And as soon as that conversation started, I was like, oh, brilliant.
I was like the fifth employee here. So we’ve got 20% of the company each. This is gonna be amazing. I started to hear the numbers, 30, 40 million potential sale.
And I was thinking, oh, I’m gonna get my share of that. And then obviously they explained to me that they owned the company and I was an employee. So I fell out with them about that, because I was like, no, I was here from the beginning. I’ve helped you build it.
company, I got all of these deals, all of these customers we got in, we got because of me and they were like yeah that’s your job and we paid you a salary and a bonus for that. But you just said they gave you 20% and all? No no they didn’t, they didn’t, I thought that I had 20% Oh okay.
Because there was five of us. Yeah you just thought you were all starting this company together? We’ve all started together, like we’re all in this together and that’s how we talk about it, like you know we’re all doing it together. We, our culture, our company sort of thing.
We, exact language I now use as a CEO but the me in that situation was hearing oh well we’re all part owners. We’re all going to be multi-millionaires. We’re all going to be multi-millionaires and of course they explained to me that that absolutely wasn’t the case and I had no, I had no ownership and I had no rights to it but at the time I was so ignorant I left because I felt I’d been treated unfairly and then I went to you know I went to Primavera.
In the time with Motorola did you transition from just an appointment setter to into sales? Well that was like 20 sales. I transitioned for like three or four weeks into like a team lead so I started to manage the pod but as soon as I did that I was like yeah so I’ve clocked this game.
Okay so it actually got to a point then where you’d gone, you joined this company, you’d become an appointment setter but you’d actually brought yourself up quite high in the ranks. Right. So I can imagine you know when it comes to selling the company you’re thinking I’ve done all of this.
Ah no no no so at Motorola I was setting appointments and then I became a team lead for other appointment setters. Yeah. And then at that point I was like good I’ve done this I hate this place I’m leaving and I went to ISIS Telecom which was a small startup and there I was a sales manager so I had like one or two people reporting to me.
Well when I got there I was the first there and then I hired like one or two people and we were doing the sales and driving the growth of the company a lot of it and that’s why I thought well that guy looks after finance, that guy looks after like hardware, I’m the sales lead, we’re all in this together so I must own part of it and then yeah I had the explanation.
Oh so that’s separate from being a… Yeah different company.
So then what was the next company after that where you had, because you mentioned in the beginning that you know, you build businesses and you’ve been acquiring percentages, equity, but then also salary as well. So what was the first ever company that you walked into where you had equity at the same time?
So that’s why that experience at Isis is like so, so important because I became disappointed that I didn’t get equity. And then I educated myself a little bit on equity. So when I went to Primavera, and we negotiated my starting salary, I was already talking about equity. And then as the years progressed, and I grew inside of that company, I ended up running, you know, the whole of the company outside of the Americas.
Whenever we got into compensation conversations, I was always like, you know, yeah, okay, that base salary is fine, a bit more bonus is fine. But what about, what about equity? And the CEO of that company had a really, really good relationship with him. And he was really open to me saying, well, instead of 20k more fixed salary, instead of 20k more fixed salary, why don’t we do 10k and I have a little bit more equity.
So over time, I was there for nine years, over time, I was able to, you know, build up more and more of an equity position. And then we sold that to Oracle for 550 million in 2008. 550 million in 2008. So okay, that’s interesting, because that’s basically when recession happened as well.
Right. That deal was that deal was much bigger. I think the original proposed price was $700 million. And then over the next 72 hours after that price got proposed, the stock market started to dial back pretty quickly because of the recession.
So Oracle came back and said the number’s 550 and you’ve got like 24 hours to accept it. Hadn’t you accepted, or the whole company hadn’t accepted, I can imagine that the money, that value would have kept going down as the recession, you know, stock market’s crashing as well, right? So the decision amongst, was you part of the decision when it comes to selling it too?
Kind of, because it was…
Mostly owned by the founder and private equity. And then a group of us as managers had minority stakes, but I was very close to Joel. So I watched him deal with the, you know, the turmoil of trying to make that decision. But in the end, it was absolutely the right decision to take a lower.
I can imagine it being the right decision, yeah. That job there, you know, getting the job in the beginning and asking for equity, to me seems blasé, because I haven’t heard of it before, you know. So was it a job where they approached you or you applied for it?
Did they see what you were doing in other companies and built your reputation like that? Or how did you even get that in the first place? That was an American company with, you know, it’s London office, which was trying to deal with everywhere outside of the Americas. So there was only a small number of us in the London office when I started.
So as part of the means to attract people to what was like a 20 person office, you’re a long way away from headquarters, they were offering very, very small amounts of equity as part of the, you know, the deal to attract employees. And I was already sensitive to equity because I just thought I’d lost out on my share of 40 million.
So that gave us the beginning of that conversation. But because my sensitivity was heightened, anytime I did something good, when I was killing my sales targets, I’d go back and talk about equity. Annual review time, I was talking about equity. When I was building a team, talking about equity.
When I was on the road for three or four months at a time and I’d speak to the CEO, I’d say, you know, when the time comes, we’re going to need to talk about equity again. So I was so conditioned to it, but I was only that conditioned because of the experience I had at Isis.
Like if that hadn’t have gone the way it went, I would never have gone to Primavera. So hungry to have an equity position. And then once we sold for 550 million and it changed mine and my family’s life, you know, me and my mom had been homeless in our past.
I was able to buy her a house. I was able to clear our mortgage because it had such a profound financial impact on me and at that moment, for the rest of my career, it’s been the number one thing for me.
negotiate my way into a company. So you mentioned there you know you’re homeless and your mum was homeless as well right. Now getting into this from that sale there I won’t ask you too much about figures unless you’re open to talk about it but did you walk away with life-changing money to a point where you could semi-retire 550 millions a lot?
Yeah at that point I walked away with like you know strong seven figure amount. I learned a lot about tax in that deal as well. I learned about a lot about tax and the exchange rate because I had equity so that equity translated into dollars because the company was sold in dollars so I had to deal first with the exchange rate into pounds at that time and then I had to deal with tax because the equity scheme wasn’t well set up for tax efficiency which is something a lot of small companies, a mistake a lot of small companies make.
So I paid a lot in tax but I still was left with like for where I came from and how I grew up and how I was educated just an incredible incredible amount of money. And how old were you at the time then? 27. So then my question off the back of that is as you just said there you know from where you’ve grown up how you grew up the environment you were in someone could have easily taken that chunk of money and thought you know what this is enough for me to live life to retire my mum to take care of my family and I can kind of stop here or I can live back you know as we were talking about off camera you put it in the bank you make your money on interest etc why is it that you decided to pursue for more?
What was it within you? Because I made that amount of money and I knew I wasn’t very good and I’d worked really hard and I think I contributed a lot to the value creation of that company with a lot of other people who did who did amazing work but I knew I wasn’t very good like I knew I I learned a lot of things and there was still a lot more to learn so at that point in my head I was going well if this if this is the number when I’m not very good what does the number look like?
when I actually know some stuff. And I actually… I’m excellent. If I could do all of this, if I could do this whole nine years again, now I would do it much better.
And if I did it much better, I would probably make more money. So that was my drive. I was like, this has to be the start because I’m not very good. And I was curious how much money I could make if I got good.
What was after that period? So then the nice thing about that was, and this is common in our industry, if you are leading or a leader inside of a private equity backed technology company that sells or exits in a good valuation, a lot of other private equity companies and venture capital companies just become attracted to you because they know that you know what it takes to scale a company and deliver returns for investors.
So at that point, my phone was pretty active and I was getting a lot of opportunities from different VCs and different private equity companies. Not only the money I made in equity, I had a seven figure retention package at Oracle as well. So I had to stay for a year in order to earn another seven figures.
So I was on the phone saying, not yet, call me back in 12 months, call me back in 11 months, call me back in 10 months. And after the retention period ended, I kind of had a good choice of a good handful of opportunities. And I chose to go and be CEO of a French Paris headquartered software company, different sector, different geography, different customer base, because I wanted to kind of test myself again.
Do you think it’s a test of new self because someone who can do it once, right? And then when that one time is done or even at the top of their journey, they might think, was this luck? Was it a fluke sort of thing? Was this so this was just a test for you to say, right, this isn’t luck, let me see how I can do it again.
I think, you know, entrepreneurs who create a company, scale it and exit it from.
value. I think that’s an unbelievable skill to have and to some degree who cares if you got lucky or you were actually good right if you could if you can do that and be part of that I think that’s that’s amazing. I was very deliberate coming out of Primavera saying there were some things at Primavera that really helped me that the company brought to the table and some things I brought to the table so when I went to KDS I was very deliberately saying this will work if you’re if you’re any good I really wanted to to test myself because they couldn’t have been further apart the two companies so was that company failing or what was it exactly and why did they select you to come on board to you know help them out in building it and eventually I’m assuming they knew that obviously because you sold the previous company they wanted to come on board right help build it and sell it eventually right yeah so what I did at Primavera was American company I was responsible for growing the company internationally so I set up the company a lot of international countries Germany France you know Japan Australia I set the entity up hide the team I’ve got the business going in those different countries the similarity with KDS was it was a French company with limited footprint outside of France so the big driver there was can we grow this company in Europe but outside of France so it’s kind of taking the international expansion experience of Primavera and applying it to a very different a different company so that’s that’s why they were interested in me in me going there within your whole business journey this far what was the most important thing you had learned for someone who’s watching this podcast right now to take away the importance of two things the quality of the team and development of the plan right so through both good and bad experience I learned how much faster we could move the business if we got high quality high quality highly motivated people into the ship and sometimes that may play in them at rates and in ways that made
It’s a little bit uncomfortable, but the progress, the acceleration that can be made when you’ve got the right competition of team is super important. It brings different challenges with it, but that’s super important. Then the second thing is the plan, because what I see a lot of entrepreneurs do that I don’t agree with is redefine success in the moment.
You say you’re supposed to be at 10 million in revenue, you finish the year at eight, and then you go, well, it’s okay because this went wrong and we want some customers who are gonna start paying next year, you always redefine success, or you cannot redefine success. I like to have very, very structured, detailed plans that are objective, and I hold myself accountable to those plans.
Because if nothing else, it lets you know when you’re off track and then you can decide to do something about it. So I would say those two things were really clear and important at that stage, and they’ve continued to be important throughout my career. So talk to me about a situation where you’ve planned for something, it didn’t go your way, and what did you do about it?
Well, at KDS, KDS when I joined was a company doing 13 million in revenue and losing six. Right, so it was registering really significant losses, especially for the size of the company. And part of the strategy I had there was to rebuild the product. So I convinced investors and the board to spend 24 million euros redeveloping the product.
So for a company that size, losing that amount of money, that commitment to investing in the product is a huge and life-threatening, life-threatening for the company investment to make. And I remember the day we were launching the product internally, walking into the meeting room to have the presentation of the product for the launch, and it just wasn’t working.
What was the product? It’s a corporate travel and expense management system. So for people who work in big corporates, you would book your business trips in this system. You would put your expenses.
for those trips in the system, and the system would make sure you were reimbursed. And we had a pretty clever way. So that was the new system that you wanted to implement? Correct, yeah.
The team, you know, when I was CEO, rebuilt it in a very, very new and different way. But then I’m sat in the internal launch meeting and the guys are trying to fire it up on screen and it’s just not working. The system itself ain’t working. The software itself will not work and then when we got it to work, it would not do any of the basic things that it was supposed to do.
And it dawned on me at that moment that, you know, we’d spent 24 million and we weren’t where we needed to be, and we had planned that the product would launch and we would get into sales mode to generate the cash to start offsetting the cash burn and the losses.
So, no product means no sales, means no cash, means continued losses. And I would have to go and raise money. I’d have to go and raise money again. What was the 24 million on?
Because surely software, I’ve spoken to, you know, software developers, people who have built their own companies and systems. Surely it doesn’t cost 24 million, no? It definitely did cost 24 million in the best part of two years because we had a team that was working on the original product that the company was, you know, trading on and built on.
And we decided to leave that team doing that because that’s where we had existing customers who were paying bills and there were bugs and there were improvements that need to be delivered there. So we would invest in a new team that would do the, you know, do the re-architecture of the new product.
So we built a whole new team that did that shift over 18 months. That’s insane. So then, from that point there, when you realised that this isn’t going to plan, what did you do? I learned two things.
So one was, and this is why I say the plan is important, I didn’t pay attention to the plan on the way to that moment because I for sure should have known that this launch moment was at risk.
by checking thoroughly much earlier in the plan so that’s why I say now the plan to mean that we need to be here in a year’s time has to be broken down into you know quarterly, monthly and even weekly steps so we can check that we’re that we’re going to be there.
So that was a massive learning for me. Yeah and the second thing was we went and raised money in the worst situation because we needed money and we were running out of money so that’s the worst situation to raise money and so we raised money on not very good not very good terms in a rush because we needed it as well to kind of fund a bit more of the development to correct the issues but it was a it was a horrible horrible six-month period.
This podcast is actually for me very very very interesting right because it’s like you know for the whole time I’ve been doing this podcast I’ve had founders on the whole time you know they’ve built their businesses, scaled their businesses but they are the core founder of that business right.
So far in this journey it’s not been businesses that you’ve founded and reinvented the wheel and made your own company and stuff like that it’s ones you’ve joined as actual CEOs to come on board, build, scale, sell. Yeah. All right is there any been any other company side quests that you’ve done where you’ve built your own brand sold it etc?
No never and and. Have you never thought to because obviously you got all the experience there you’ve got all the expertise and resources needed. One of the one of the things I think people get wrong is I think there’s a lot of power in knowing what you are and applying yourself relentlessly like to that thing right like if you’re if you’re a striker sure it sounds great to go and learn to playing goal or go and be you know left-back whatever time you spend trying to become an effect for most strikers what the time you spend trying to become a left-back it’s time you’re not spending becoming a better a better striker so I just think there’s a lot of power in knowing that this is what you are
this is what you’re good at and applying that relentlessly. My thing is, companies in trouble, companies that are having problems, companies that need transformation, I like those situations, I like those environments, I’m comfortable in harsh circumstances. So I just apply myself relentlessly there. I’ve had calls over the years from some of the greatest tech companies on earth that are doing brilliantly.
And I just know it’s not my environment, I’m not gonna enjoy it and I’m not gonna be as effective. So I just kind of stay doing what I think I’ve… In your lane and digging deep in what your expertise is in. Yeah, exactly.
That’s interesting. And plus, I actually don’t think I could start and scale my own company. I mean, maybe now because I’ve learned so much and my network is so vast, but I don’t think I would be a good founding entrepreneur at all. Why not?
What differs? Do you know why? I know what’s wrong when I see it. So whenever I do a speech or a presentation, I’m not very good at starting that from scratch.
Somebody, I explain roughly what I need doing, somebody delivers me something and then once I’ve got it, I go, oh my God, this is totally wrong. And then I can fix it. That’s just the way my brain works. If I had to do it from scratch and perfect it from scratch, I couldn’t do that.
That’s why I’m better in these circumstances because you give me a company, I spend time looking at it, I go, okay, that’s wrong. That needs to be improved. I wouldn’t do that that way. That’s never gonna work.
And then I can quickly figure out like how to get it in the right direction. But starting it from scratch, I don’t think that’s my bag. I like that though. I like that to be fair.
So where do we go from here then, Dean? In business sense? Yeah, in business sense, in your journey. You was at KDS, sorry.
Yeah, so you was at KDS, that’s where we left off at. You built this software and system, didn’t work at the time. And how did you revitalize that?
Raised cash, fixed the problems in the product, we won a major deal with Orange. Orange is in like T-Mobile? Yeah, the mobile phone company. We won a major deal with Nationwide Business Society and we won a few landmark deals and then we built a partnership with American Express who later bought the company for 125 million euros so we got an amazing outcome from that very low moment and then I did the same thing by going to Core HR, another Irish company that time, different technology, again trying to prove myself and that company was on what we call on-premise and we moved the company into cloud software as a service and we sold that company to Access for a quarter of a billion euros and then after that I kind of came here shortly afterwards.
So by the time we did the deal with Access I’d done a billion euros, roughly a billion euros in exits and then I wanted to do one for one billion in one go and that’s what I was able to do. So all those moments led up to this right?
There’s one main thing I want to ask, we are in the UK, you had a company, did you go through France? Like actually lived there in the jury? Yeah, I lived there, well I would stay there Sunday through Thursday every week. So I’ve been to France, I’ve been to Paris and from my experience, it involved with me because I was in a group of my Asian friends, a lot of racism from that.
What was it like in your whole experience of these different industries, different businesses that you’re working on, primarily white dominated areas or even business, you know a lot of these founders are of these backgrounds should we say, trying to articulate in the best way possible but yeah what’s that experience been like for you then?
I get this question a lot man and like in my career there’s been one moment where I’m
Categorically certain it was negative and racially motivated, like one moment, and it was a pretty bad moment. For the rest, I’ve had a lot of brilliant white business people support me, give me advice, help me, connect me to other people, and good black business people too. And I’ve had a lot of moments that felt uncomfortable, people behaved poorly, but I’m not certain it’s race-oriented.
And I’m very reluctant to put the card of race on somebody without being certain that that’s what’s happening. Because it’s such an abhorrent thing, it’s such a horrible, horrible thing, that I don’t think you flow it around without some degree of certainty. Lots of situations where people were idiots in meetings, unprofessional, made comments.
But my mentality was always, okay, how do I get around this person? This person’s an idiot, I’ve just got to get over them. I’ll show this person in six months’ time we’ll be back, and they’ll be out of the team or out of the company. Like, I’ll just win, right?
So if you want to behave like an idiot, it might be because you’re racist, it might not be. What I’m sure of is you’re an idiot, and at some point, you’re going to be irrelevant to my progress. That’s just how my mind works. You’re just going to literally stick to your plan, overtake them.
Yeah, yeah. Success for sure, and what’s what, basically. Because again, time… And I’m not saying if people experience racism in the workplace, or racism anywhere, that they shouldn’t pause to address it, because they should.
And also, my experience and my career is not the same as everybody’s. A lot of people have had real race-related issues to deal with. But losing time speculating on why this person is an idiot, and trying to prove that it’s for that reason or that reason, is time I’m not spending getting around you, neutralizing you, getting you out of my way for the deal.
And I’d just rather spend my time on that. Now I’m a little bit different, because I don’t want people who behave poorly to affect less experience.
people than me, right? A younger version of me shouldn’t have to deal with that person so I may address them now more so they don’t behave that way towards other people but for me I just, I don’t really… That one encounter where you said you could put it down to racism, is that something we could speak on?
Yeah, that was in Eastern Europe, probably, I say it’s a funny situation, it actually isn’t funny so we traveled, it’s a huge, huge globally recognized brand, it was the CIO of the company who we were meeting with and back then people didn’t do as much online research to know what people look like, now when we meet somebody we kind of know what they look like before they arrive, so we show up for the meeting, me and three people who work for me who are all white and they’re all older than me, like at that point they’re all probably 15 years plus older than me, so the guy comes out of his office to greet us and he kind of shakes the first person, he’s like, oh Dean, nice to meet you, the guy’s like, no I’m not Dean, so he moves down the line and he gradually realizes by elimination that I’m Dean, so he gets to me, he shakes my hand and then he goes back in his office and then his PA comes out and says, look I’m really sorry to inform you, so-and-so will only take the meeting as long as Dean isn’t present in the meeting, so we were all like, what do you mean, what is he talking about, how is that even, like Dean is the most senior person here, and she’s like, look I’m really sorry but that’s what he said, so we had a five minute meeting about whether or not we should take the meeting or not, in that situation it was pretty clear that that was the only motivation for taking that position and we did, we had the meeting in the end and we did get the deal done, it’s probably the one moment in my career that I’ve never quite come to, like never come to full ease with that, with that moment.
What was your initial reaction at that point?
I went through all of the emotions in a really short window, like outrage, anger, parts of the old me thinking to go in there and confront him and how dare he. And then I was embarrassed. And then I was like, well, I’m the senior person, I have to set an example.
And my colleagues, to be fair, were saying, look, if you don’t want us, we won’t. We can all… So I was just spinning through the different emotions and kind of thought processes. There’s loads of times within business and entrepreneurship where things can get heated, right?
So I want to know, in your experience, what’s been the most heated time that you’ve felt? Because you’re dealing with transactions, you’re dealing with business sales, you’re dealing with people buying you out and stuff. And I’m sure, you know, of months of negotiations, there can be times where you’re thinking, I just want to grab, like, literally go down the, I suppose, the hood, grab someone by the throat, punch him and just say, get this done or whatever, like, obviously, you can’t do that being a professional man.
So what has been it like for you? I’ve had moments. I’ve told that story so many times. I had one negotiation with America Express where the guy tore up the contract in the middle of the negotiation, threw it in the air, was screaming at me, you know, you’re a moron, you’re never going to work in this industry again, you don’t know anything, calling different people into the room saying, I thought you told me this guy was smart, you know, he’s an idiot, and just trying to stay even toned through that.
I’ve had negotiations where there have been hundreds of millions on the line. And the person we were doing that deal with had told me time and time again, we’re committed to the deal, we’re going to do the deal, we can’t wait to work with you, we can’t wait to own the company.
And I was going on holiday on Christmas Eve and the morning of Christmas Eve, he called me to tell me actually they’re pulling out of the deal suddenly, just, you know, from nowhere. So I’ve had lots of those moments.
I think that’s where like my upbringing is helpful because one I never feel threatened by these people no matter how poorly they behave I can never feel threatened because I’ve actually spent time around people that you need to be afraid of and these aren’t people to be scared of so that’s helpful and also growing up with nothing like I always say like I don’t fear having nothing again like I was happy when we had nothing but I ate every day I enjoyed my life when I had nothing so if the worst that can happen to me is I go back to that then I’m fine with it okay that’s my advantage like I’m dealing with a lot of people who have never lived in that situation so they have to be faithful of that they have to make sure they never test themselves in that environment I don’t because I know what it’s like.
You’re cool with it. So coming to Frotero now you’ve come on here you’ve done the billion-dollar deal with Partners Group now that the deal is done you know in usual cases as you’ve said before you build the companies they sell and then you move to the next company that I want to say that deal was maybe done a year ago two years ago roughly?
22. 22 okay so two years ago now so what is your role here now and why has it not been the usual pattern of you know going to the next company building that up and selling that? So here I’m still I’m still CEO here I’m the fourth largest investor in the company so you know I’ve got a meaningful portion of my own net worth invested into the company because now I’m like doubling down and really really backing myself and I think we’ve got an amazing opportunity to create a four billion euro exit in the next two to three years so with everything I’ve learned everything I’ve seen all the mistakes I’ve made I’m probably at my most able now to to architect you know the next meaningful outcome and doing it in the environment I know and with some of my own money in the company is a really good feeling.
So that billion dollar deal was a partnership not a buyout? Well they bought the majority
of the company I still own a small percentage of the company and there are one or two others who own a percentage of the company as well okay and the plan is always that we all go together to that four billion moment and then we’ll all decide what we want to do from that point there.
And then as for yourself Dean where do you put your money I mean you know I’ve seen your Instagram and stuff like that well firstly you haven’t even got a personal Instagram and I suppose it’s almost like the personal side of Dean Forbes you know you’re a man that’s very capable of showing off lifestyle I’m sure you’ve got you know you’ve got a very nice suit on right now very nice day-to-day on as well I’m sure you’ve probably got a collection of watches cars etc why don’t you do the usual entrepreneurship route and you know people show lifestyle you know they just want to live life and you know put it up upload a few pictures on Instagram YouTube videos what’s the reason why you don’t do that I know it sounds blase to ask but you know it’s all usual point entrepreneurs now just to do that that when we see someone who doesn’t do that they are the ones that stand out if you know I mean I just I never really I was never really comfortable like you know showing my lifestyle in that way I think there’s a lot of things that I do know that I can share that are hopefully interesting or helpful to people and I just always found it more consistent with my personality to you know to share but nothing against people who choose to share those lifestyle elements and those luxury elements and I know they’re inspirational for some people but as we know there’s also a lot of people online you know showing that lifestyle and it’s not actually their lifestyle so that then has a negative effect on people who are trying to you know keep up with those individuals you haven’t got a personal Instagram but for those who know know that you can out flex every single person on the ground who’s showing off with their Lamborghinis and you know a quick flight on a private jet one hour to Paris or something like that so if we had to imagine Dean Forbes had his own Instagram and one
If you wanted to flex, what would be the biggest flex that you could put on there? Things that you’ve actually lived? I would say, I’ve had to say, some of our holidays have been pretty breathtaking. My wife booked a private island for my 40th birthday and we renewed our vows on a private island.
One house, it was me, her and our three kids and the people who looked after the island lived on a separate, close island, so down in Belize it was… Where is this island? It’s called Gladden Island in Belize, it was unbelievable, probably the best holiday experience. But again, two years ago, or last year, I took my whole family to Kenya.
We rented Princess Diana’s family’s home in Kenya, it’s right on the beach in Kenya. There was 15 of us, we kind of all flew down in first class and there’s probably 25 staff at that island, at that house, 24 hours a day, so we’d get up in the middle of the night and have a burger or a steak or a lobster, it was…
Whatever you want. It was whatever you want. And it was a beautiful thing to do with our whole family as well, my nieces and nephews are three and four and they’re just running around the place, and none of that is on public Instagram. So you’ve got kids, right?
So this is interesting, because how old are they if you don’t mind me asking? 17 and 16. 17 and 16, so around the same, if you’d have to look at it, when you were 17, 16 years old, you were still in South London, borderline broke, in debt, homeless, and I know a lot of people want their own children, once they’ve lived through that, they’ve come out of that, they’ve got the wealth, they want their children to somehow experience the struggle too.
Because I believe, I think a lot of people do as well, is that when you have the…
a struggle, it develops that hunger and that thriving just the way you did. So how do you want your children’s upbringing to be? Yeah, do you want them to have everything that you can provide for them or would you want them to go out of their way, work for it, stuff like that?
It’s a balance, the point of working this hard and travelling these distances and doing these hours and weeks and doing these deals is to provide a different life for my family than the one I had, that’s the whole purpose. So you don’t do that and then not provide the things that the work is enabling you to provide for them.
But like you say, you still have to, as a parent, instil the values and the character in them that’s gonna make them successful in life. And I don’t believe, I know other people have different points of view, I don’t believe it’s my job as a parent to remove every obstacle and struggle that my kids are gonna deal with.
I think they have to deal with adversity, they have to learn how to deal with struggles, they have to hear, know, they have to know what it means to work for something in order to attain it. So me and Danielle spend a lot of time trying to make sure that they have that environment to deal with those different things.
You know, case in point, my son passed his test, he wanted a car, we can buy him any car he can imagine. Bugatti for the first car. And he had like a lot of ideas about what that first car might be. And we said to him, you can have whatever car you want, but you have to be able to put up 50% of the money.
We’ve been telling him that since he was 15. So, you know, he came with near enough 50% of the money and we matched it. And then there’s insurance. Yeah, because I don’t think it would be helpful to him to buy him, you know, a brand new convertible car for his first car.
Now he knows, he looks after that car. He said at dinner, it’s my prized possession. I saw him cleaning that car on Sunday. I said to him, you’re cleaning the car before you’ve cleaned yourself or your room.
That’s how much he values the car. Cause he’s put- The money in there as well. He’s put sweat into it. Yeah.
You don’t want to make sure that they grow up just having everything and all that, so they’ve got to work for it as well. They have to, man, because when they go into the real world, if they’re conditioned to be given everything, then they will expect everything in their lives, and they will learn at some point that the real world doesn’t give them everything.
So I have to teach them that before they go out into the real world. But of course, it’s hard to teach a kid, you know, the values of hard work when they’re hosting their three best friends in the swimming pool in their house. Like, it’s difficult to teach them that over the reality that they see in every single day.
That’s what I’m saying, you know, as much as I want to live the life that you’re living, you know, I take my family abroad to Kenya, I rent out biggest mansions, 24-7 staff there already, and all that sort of stuff, having that life and providing for my kids, I’m just trying, I’m trying to picture how I would still, I haven’t got kids, so I don’t know the answer to this, still be able to install the values I’ve had growing up into them, and making sure that they work hard for things, and they understand struggle, they understand adversity, they understand all these different things of life.
But I suppose if you’re doing that, then it’s a great thing. You do have to engineer it into them a little bit, right? So the car is an example to do that, motivating them for their grades, you know, with the things that they like or that they want to do is another way to do that.
You know, my daughter loves Adele, so I said, well, you get good grades at school, we’re going to Vegas to Front Road to see the, you know, see the Adele show. But you’ve got to be prepared on the other side of that, that when the grades don’t come, you can’t soften that for them, like you have to say to them, we didn’t get the grades, you didn’t work hard enough.
No, you didn’t, you didn’t do well enough. When they’re trying to explain, it was the teacher, it was the school, you never helped them with the homework, you have to do the other side of the parenting, which is go, well, not only are we not going to Adele, you need to do better.
And look, time will tell if we’ve got this right, but that has been our chosen style of parenting. And with career, when it comes to them, how do you imagine that going? Would you want them in the office with you, working with you or have them do whatever they want?
They’ve got to stand on their own two feet, like we’re, you know, my kids are all like homeowners already but even in moving them from our home into their first homes they will have to put some money up for that. When they go into that first home they will have to pay some degree of rent because that is how life works.
So if they would like to study for the next 10 years they can but they’re also gonna have to figure out how to pay their rent, how to pay their bills. I’m not going to cover that for them. And just coming back to the lifestyle point of things, just to put it in perspective, what is like a personal car that you drive or the best car that you’ve owned?
I’ve had periods, I had periods where I had like five, six, seven cars at one time. Like every variation of car, like a two-seater Lamborghini, I had a Rolls-Royce Dawn, had a Range Rover, had a Ford Mustang, had a TVR, like I had periods where I just wanted to have like every variation of car.
But now I’m at a different point in my life. I’ve got a Bentley GT now, which I think is the best car ever, and I’ve got a Maybach which I don’t drive, like I have a driver that drives that. But that’s a productivity hack, that’s not about flexing, that means I get in that car at 6.15 in the morning, the car’s got Wi-Fi, it’s got a desk, I can have a meeting, I have meetings at 6.30.
And drives you here to the office? Drives me to the office, yeah. So for you, that’s just basically buying your time back? Productivity, yeah, yeah, because it’s a two-hour trip into the office, there’s two hours I can work.
If I’m driving, I can’t be on Teams or on Zoom. Have you ever done a deal with that car? Yeah, I do actual work on that car. Okay, so I’m just trying to put it in numbers here, right?
So just to explain it, so that car roughly costs maybe about 100, 200-ish, I don’t know.
280. Okay. Okay. Okay.
But then in terms of deals done in the car or, you know, from the car, would you say that there’s more than that? I can’t actually remember a specific deal that got done in the car, but I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. So I work two hours on the commute here and two hours on the way home.
Okay. It’s a two-hour journey. Two-hour journey each way, right? So if I come into the office, you know, five days a week, that’s eight times five of productivity hours that I just got.
So it’s almost, it’s nearly half a working, it’s over half a working week. I’ve extended my week by half a working week by being in that car. So the productivity gain is huge. And a lot of people say the same for private jet.
You fly private jet? Yeah, from, yeah, not all of the time, like not, you know, not all of the time, but there are certain situations or circumstances where that might make more sense. I have a lot of moments sometimes where I look at things that I’m doing or things that I have and I think, this is unbelievable.
Like I’m still often like pinching myself going, how is this my life? Or how do I have this thing? Or how did I buy that thing? I still have those moments, but it never comes into my head.
It rarely comes into my head to think, oh, let’s take a picture so 100,000 people can see that. It’s just not me. Give me an example of that pinch me moment. What was the last experience you’ve had or last thing you’ve purchased where you thought, how have I got this?
How have I lived this? I have a, so I’ve got something meaningful happening next week and every time something meaningful happens in my life, I buy a watch to commemorate it. And I saw Jay-Z had a.
Rose gold skeleton Cartier crash watch. And then I see LeBron with it. And I see Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter with it. And it’s such a beautiful watch to me.
So I said to Kieran at Broadwater, who does all my, gets all my watches, we got to get this watch. So he spent 14 months finding this watch because there’s only 67 in the world. And I just, I just got it last week. In fact, my wife bought it for me last week.
So that was one of those moments where you’re going, there’s only 67 of these in the world. I think the, remember the Royal Saudi family has one. There’s a, that’s, you know, that’s a moment. Yeah, like we took, we had our whole family in Mykonos for pretty much two months in the summer.
And you just, like your family’s just living and experiencing stuff and nobody’s watching the bills or what we’re paying for stuff. It’s just, everyone’s just living. A good life. To the maximum.
And yeah, those are my pinch me moments. And it would devalue it to like show it to the world. Yeah, you keep it more intimate then. Yeah, and plus I think there’s like a, me and my friends have like a little saying of like, the flex is most often the opposite to what you think is the flex.
And some of the people I see who are super successful with money, the things that they do in the most muted ways, like I’ve been to restaurants with guys and order one bottle of wine for like 15,000 pounds. And they know that wine and they know that’s a special wine.
And we just sit there and drink it over, you know, sea bass and no fuss is made of it. And then you go to a club and somebody’s spending 2000 pounds and there’s fireworks and special music and people dress the special way. Cause there’s 2000 pound thing. But I was just sat with somebody and we did.
Spent 15 Gs on a bottle. We just did, you know, 20 grand on dinner for two of us. And not a word has been.
Broken bill comes, gets paid, everybody goes home, no one. So I, so we, me and my friends have started to kind of focus on what is the opposite to Netflix. I’m interested to know what your friendship circle looks like because, you know, they always say, you know, show me your, or Warren Buffett has a saying, you know, show me your friends and I’ll show you your success.
I think that’s something like that quote. But, you know, I want to know what the friendship circle’s like because is it everyone in your circle’s doing well and you all keep yourself, you know, accountable for targets and goals? Or is it more of the side of you need friends and you have friends around you to, you know, just chill out and just relax, keep it normal within all that sort of stuff?
I’m very, very blessed, but it’s taken a long time to get my friendship circle correct. I would say I’ve got like a lot of friends from a business perspective. And those business friends are important to me because most of them are well ahead of me. They’re not just ahead of me, like they’re well ahead of me.
So like I was saying, you go and sit with them and I’m having a very different conversation about how they manage their money, how they manage their family office, how they manage their family. And those conversations are important because I think you need people who know what life looks like at the next level or the level above where you’re at.
And I think sometimes people like being the top of the tree because they’re always the big guy in the room. I like being the little guy in the room as often as possible because I find it, I just find it- You can learn from everyone above you basically.
Yeah, like the conversation is just different. I’ve got a good friend. He’s got like a 20 million pound apartment in near Hyde Park. And when you go, he’ll invite you over for dinner and you go to his house for dinner and you’ll see the CEOs, two or three CEOs of the largest companies in the UK, like the largest household name companies in the UK.
You’ll see some of the best known politicians in the UK and me, and then you’re at that table.
listening to that conversation where people are talking about changing laws and policy that affect the country. That’s the conversation I want to go and be part of. I don’t want to be part of a conversation about who’s dating who and who’s cheating on. Yeah, that’s all gossip.
It’s not enriching to me so I have those friends who pull me in that direction which are important and then I’ve got a very small group of friends I’ve had for a very very long period of time. That group was bigger and it became smaller over time as my life changed and relationships got tense because of how we were all changing.
I’ve got two in particular very good friends and a small group of very very good friends who are very progressive, probably not in the same economic situation as as I’m in, but very positive, very progressive and most importantly can check you. You know like those moments where you might make a bad decision or you might get a little bit too big for your boots or you might think maybe we should post this on social media.
We’re not those guys but relax. And they’re super super super important to me as well. Well fairs man, makes sense, makes sense. And what’s been the most you in life right now?
I’m still challenging myself. I’m still trying to find out what can I do, like what is my full potential? Because I think that is a life well lived when you go I achieved above my capability. Just to put in perspective, if you had to put you on a scale of like percentage level right now right, you’re still chasing your full potential.
Where would you say you’re at right now? Would it be a 9 out of 10? Would it be a 7? 6.
Really? Okay so 6 has managed you to 2 billion euros. Yeah. So that’s substantially quite some more.
Here’s my thing, if you’re good and you can make an impact, what can you move the needle on? Where can you actually make a meaningful impact? And this is coming back to the social media conversation. I think it’s all good and well, large numbers of followers, big audiences, big brands, big status, being well known, but how do you put it to use for you and others?
That to me is a flex, that to me is showing that you’ve got substance. Can you move the needle on something? Because otherwise, I say to myself, I don’t really understand what the point of it is. What is the point of doing a 1 billion euro deal and tapping out there?
Fail at doing the 4 billion euro deal, that makes more sense. Failing at doing 4 billion makes more sense to me than doing 1 billion and riding off into the sunset with stuffing money into your pockets. But you might not fail, you might do 4 billion, then if you do that, you’ve got to say, what does 12 look like?
And then fail doing 12 as opposed to ducking out at 4, that’s just always been my mentality because we’ve got this opportunity, we’ve got this platform, we’ve got this network, we’ve got this reputation now, how do we put it to good use for me, my family and everybody in the community, especially through FFG as well?
So 6 out of 10, what’s it going to take for you to get to the 10 out of 10? What do you anticipate happening in the future? What sort of struggles and hardship have you got to put yourself through to make sure you get there? I don’t know, I think if we do, if I’m 6 now, I think I’ll get another couple of points if we do the 4, maybe at 4 we’re kind of at 8, but I don’t just measure myself in the business world, I don’t measure myself there.
Like I say, there aren’t many black CEOs running companies of this scale in the UK or Europe.
And I’ve got, you know, I always joke like I’m one phone call away from like most people. So now we’ve got to put that to good use for the community and for the culture as well. And that’s where FFG becomes very, very important to me because that’s my vehicle through which to put all of this stuff that I’m being given and rooms I’m allowed to walk in and investors I’m able to call and politicians I’m able to talk to, it’s FFG where we want to put that to good use, not just for pictures on Instagram, like it has to be put to good use.
Has there ever been any celebrity slash CEO or business person where you’ve met them and you thought to yourself, I didn’t think I’ll ever be in a position where I’d be able to meet you? Yeah, yeah, like tons of people, you know, I met Rishi Sanak and we had a chat and he was like, you know, we should follow up and then we actually did follow up.
You know, that was, that was, that was kind of cool. I’m not really that like phased by celebrities, unless I’m a fan of theirs, like if I’m a fan of theirs. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Someone like you’re a fan of.
Yeah, but I don’t know if it’s like a question of never imagining that I could meet them because a lot of the people I’m a fan of, our social circles kind of connect, you know, at some point. I met Satya Nadella who’s the CEO of Microsoft. That was an amazing, you know, amazing conversation.
I met Jamie Dimon who’s CEO of JP Morgan, it’s an amazing, amazing conversation. Sundar, CEO of Google, I met him a few times. So people who are kind of in my space at the top of the tree, it’s always nice to meet. So these are like crazy, crazy links, right?
The reason why I ask this is because at your Met Gala that just happened a few weeks ago, you had a lot of familiar faces there and I just want to know how you’re able to reach out to these people, acquire these people, get them in the room, fill this room with brilliant…
There’s culture, everything we’d all want to see. You know, it’s almost like a dream networking event. You’ve got people from all categories there. How do you even reach out to these people and get them in the room?
You know, people really did gravitate towards the cause. We had a really, really important cause in ACLT that people felt something for, right? You know, it would be remiss of me to kind of pretend, you know, I just called Kano and said, oh, you need to be here.
And he was like, oh yeah, fine. If you, it doesn’t work like that. Like, of course, I know a lot of these people. Of course, I’ve got a friendship with a lot of these people.
So they’re going to take the call. But then when you explain the cause to them, they go, okay, this is worth giving up my Saturday night for. Because of course they’re busy. They’re celebrities, they’re entertainers, they’re business people, they’re busy.
So it needs to be. It’s often worthwhile. It needs to be, yeah, it needs to be a good cause. Like nobody’s giving up their Saturday night.
Or that room isn’t, at mass, isn’t just giving up it’s Saturday night. As Dean says, to do it. There’s probably an element where they know, not only is it a worthy cause, we are going to put on a proper event where they can come, feel safe and have a good time.
There’s probably that element of it. But I think it’s more, it’s more the cause. Where was it? What was the venue?
The Royal Lancaster Hotel. It was, it was a brilliant night. You know, we on the night reported that we raised, you know, 360K, which was amazing. But actually we underplayed that number because we were still counting certain things and we didn’t want to say a number and then have to go back.
That’s a terrible thing to do with charity. But in the end we raised, you know, 430,000 pounds, not 360. So it was well worth everybody’s time who came out and supported us and me. And what is it you’re raising the money for?
I know you just said charity, but where does the money actually get distributed? Yeah, it’s the, it’s the ACLT. So it goes into a lot of infrastructure that they, that they need to create these blood drives up and down the country because we know there’s a shortage of blood donors who come from ethnic minorities.
And that’s the work that they do primarily.
to drive up ownership among ethnic minorities because there are certain diseases that affect us more than our white counterparts, like sickle cell, for example, which is much higher in the black community than it is among white people. And that’s part of the reason we’re able to get the Supercell cast to come and be part of it and call my friend Getz to come and show up as well.
So yeah, brilliant charity, good night and a lot of good money raised. So that’s massive. We’re building a community as well, because what we’ve seen is a lot of people kind of look to us for networking, for investment, so we’re trying to build that community and I think at some point we’ll have a product for that community and maybe even a kind of physical premises like a co-working space as well.
Do you do any sort of, I don’t know, it might be something on FFG, but almost like an advisory service, so you’ll have someone who comes to you, a founder, I’ve got this company, look Dean, I’m struggling to grow here, here, here, don’t know how to maximise my revenue.
As part of FFG, is that something you’ll have where you can give your valuable input, because you’ve got the strategies to do so? We do it in two ways. We do it a lot. We do it a lot at the moment.
We do it in two ways. So we’ve got a series of networking events that we have where young entrepreneurs and professionals come to those networking events and I load those networking events with my network. So my financial advisor is there giving people financial advice, other financial advisors are there, investors are there, career coaches are there.
So when those people come with those questions, it’s not just falling on my shoulders to answer. The room is flooded with top tier people, because I’m making the call to say, you know, you’ve got to be here. So that’s been quite effective. And then there’s the cap table pitch competition that we do every year, where at Corn Capital where I’m a partner, and I bring one or two other investors into the room, and we invest in at least three businesses.
a year but we probably look at 20 to come to the free. So that’s 20 businesses that are getting advice from me, Joe, Corton, Zach, a battery like top tier investors are giving people that kind of advice. So Corton Capital you said it was yeah? As you’re earning money for yourself you know different investments, whether it be investing into companies and watches and all that sort of stuff, what do you do to make sure that your your value is always increasing without you even touching it?
Yeah that’s that’s one of the most important things like how you know how you manage your money. And I realized a little while ago that I have to be in a position where my money grows passively and the growth of the money has to outpace my lifestyle costs.
Like just using your money to service your lifestyle I don’t think is smart. So I’ve worked with my financial team to build my portfolio in such a way that my money grows faster than my lifestyle and depletes it. So that’s having an investment strategy across three categories. We’ve got low risk investments like property, like you know guaranteed bank products where you get four or five percent you know interest bonds etc.
So that’s low risk, we put a bit of money there. Then I’ve got kind of high risk where you put money in startups, you know you’re spreading money across maybe 20 different ventures and startups. We know 15 of them probably aren’t going to do very well, three will do okay and two will do great and that will pay for the whole portfolio.
And then I’ve got kind of mega investments so that’s you know the tens of millions into Fortero and what I’ve invested into you know Corton Capital where I’m a partner and one of the kind of leads on value creation there. And how do you decide what’s so good for investment?
Obviously I know you’ve got a team around you but as gut instinct from yourself putting your own capital in there, how do you decide that this is the right thing to do? Well meaningful capital,
investments I only make in two categories, tech and property, because I understand tech and me and my best friend, well my two best friends, they are heavily into property. So we know what those businesses look like, we know the rhythms, we’re well connected, so we can protect ourselves.
So if it’s meaningful money, seven figures and above, it’s only going to be in those two sectors. Elsewhere it’s more speculative, so it might be 100k, 150k and when I’m doing that kind of stuff, it’s all about the founder really. It’s all about the quality and conviction of the founder and the idea or the business itself is secondary.
So here’s an interesting point right, because you invest and you invest into property, into tech, what’s your take on crypto and are you invested in that? I’m not going to turn this into a full-on crypto podcast, but seen as that is a fundamental tech, technological thing that’s coming out, you know, they say it’s speculated to be one of the fastest growing things, what’s your take on that as an investor side of things?
I don’t understand it, so I’ve never put a penny into crypto. Interesting, I thought you were going to say that other thing. That I’m invested in a lot? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought it would, because you know, because it goes along, you’ve been involved in tech your whole life, I thought you know that it would be there.
I never, I never understood it and still like, actually don’t, I understand blockchain. Is there something that you want to understand, if it is deemed to be the future and stuff? I mean to be educated on it, because it’s very likely to have a meaningful role in the way we pay for and procure goods and services in the future, so to be educated on it for that reason, yes, to be educated on it for it to become a dominant investment theme for me, probably not, because the other things I’ve got going on are meaningful enough, are doing great, so why go back on that, and I don’t really know what’s happening.
Yeah, there was a question that come to my mind earlier, right, because you mentioned Twitter. As a CEO who comes up with strategies and building climate
and all that sort of stuff. We had, this is kind of, I suppose, old news now, but Elon Musk come in, step in by Twitter, made it X. And instantly, the first lot of news that we heard is that he fired pretty much half of the team or majority of the team, right?
Looking at it from an outside perspective and outside point of view, what do you think about his strategy that he’s done there? What, firing a bunch of people? Yeah, I suppose, yeah. And the way he’s taken the platform so far?
It would be far removed for me to question Elon’s strategy. Coming into a business that was making huge losses before he went there, right? Twitter was losing billions a year. So coming into that company, which was economically was not doing well, it needed drastic changes.
There was no incremental way to get the company out of that position over a long period of time. So I’m not surprised he took very, very drastic measures, very, very quickly. It’s sad and disappointing that that affected lots of people’s livelihoods. It’s never good as a leader when you have to take those kinds of decisions.
Whether it was the right decision, right people, is Twitter gonna thrive in the long term? I don’t know, but we shouldn’t lose track of the fact it was losing billions, making billions in losses. The question comes here, is there ever a point where you’re only stepping into a company to acquire it?
Is there a point where, nah, the company’s too far gone, there’s no point even purchasing? Oh yeah, yeah, all of the time. But that’s where in acquisition, you have to be very, very objective because you can meet a founder and really like the founder. You can meet his team and you really like the team.
You can see the product and you really like the product. And then the numbers aren’t stacking up to tell a strong story as the people are telling. And that’s quite an important moment because what’s my skill, what have I done the most over the last 20 years is take difficult situations and improve them.
So often I find myself in those conversations going, well, actually, I think I can do this. I think I can.
this, I think I can turn this around, I think if I just build a team there, I think if I sort out the tech there, this will be okay. But you have to have the discipline to objectively assess the business and not use your, try to overlay too much of your superpower on top of it to say you can fix it all.
So often we walk away from deals and often I walk away from deals. Dean, I want to thank you very, very much for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge. Where can people find you? Well, you haven’t got your own personal Instagram, so what do they follow?
You can find me hiding or popping up on Full Family Group Instagram and stories every now and then or on LinkedIn. No, wicked. I know you don’t do many podcasts, so once again I do want to actually truly thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming down, sharing this knowledge on the platform and hopefully a lot of people can take what you said, apply it to their businesses or even go out trying to have the hopes and visions of acquiring businesses.
It’s funny because I was thinking about this on the way, right, I follow a woman in America called Cody Sanchez, have you heard of her at all? And she just preaches boring businesses, buying boring businesses, laundromats or car washers and all that sort of stuff. And I’m just thinking in my head nowadays, I just want to buy a business.
So this podcast couldn’t have come at a better time because it’s all about emerging acquisitions and stuff like that, building and selling it. So I want to appreciate it as well because I’m sat here intrigued too. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a like, drop a comment, follow Dean on every single platform, all going to be listed in the description below and I’ll catch you lot on the next episode of CEO podcast next Sunday.
Peace.