Failing forward with mentor, multiple business owner, & property entrepreneur Henri Ghijben!

This week we are joined by Henri Ghijben who has experienced every entrepreneur's worst nightmare - a business failing.

We hear the lowest point of Henri's experience and then the incredible story of how he came back with resilience and new knowledge to become a highly successful mentor in the property and tree surgery industries with multiple businesses and eventually his own podcast Fail Forward on how to learn from failure.

We hear about how Henri has battled addiction and how his new perspective empowers him to use his success to help others who are still struggling. 

Mark your calendars! Join us on Saturday, December 7, 2024, for the Girls in Property Christmas Gala Ball. Want early access to tickets and updates on future events? Just send a DM with "COMMUNITY" and we’ll add you to our mailing list.

Additionally, if you're interested in taking your property journey to the next level, click here to book a FREE 30-minute consultation with Athena. We'll discuss how the Property Lifestyle Accelerator Programme can help accelerate your success.

ABOUT THE HOST

With more than 5 years of experience as a landlord, Athena Dobson departed her secure corporate job two years ago to chase her passion as a full-time property investor.
Now, she successfully manages multiple businesses handling HMOs, SAs, & BTLs, all while sharing her expertise to guide &teach others on their own journey to success.

Athena's mission is to be able share as many tips as possible from her own experience, to empower others to navigate the complex realms of business & property with confidence! 🌟

Girls in Property is recorded at Absolute Music Studios in Poole.

CONNECT & CONTACT

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Transcript

Julia: 0:00

You.

Sophie: 0:05

You're listening to the Girls in Property podcast, where we explore the world of property, meet amazing guests to hear their stories and support you in your property journey. Hi, everyone. I'm Sophie, and today I'm here with Julia.

Julia: 0:22

Hi.

Sophie: 0:22

And Henry.

Henri: 0:23

Hi.

Sophie: 0:24

Who is our special guest for today. Henry, how do I say your surname? Because I never say it right.

Henri: 0:29

It's quite simple when you know how. Ben, so guybin.

Sophie: 0:33

Henry. Guybin. Okay. Why don't you spell it like that?

Henri: 0:35

I don't know. After Dutch.

Sophie: 0:37

Henry. Guybin. Got it. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We always chat about our week and what we're celebrating. So, Julia, any positive things from the week?

Julia: 0:47

Yeah, I'm celebrating the fact that I'm going on holiday and I'm looking forward to it.

Sophie: 0:53

Where are you going?

Julia: 0:54

We're getting skiing to Sacropana.

Sophie: 0:56

Oh, my goodness. Okay. Are you going to come back in one piece?

Julia: 0:59

Hopefully.

Sophie: 0:59

Hopefully. Amazing. Send us pictures, please.

Julia: 1:03

A postcard.

Sophie: 1:04

And Henry, what are we celebrating?

Henri: 1:06

I am celebrating literally smashing all my goals of this year and went to a Christmas ball on Friday night for one of the masterminds I'm part of. I won completely unbeknownst to me, I was even nominated, but I won masterminder of the Year.

Sophie: 1:22

That's amazing. Congratulations.

Henri: 1:24

Thank you. Well, you know what? It's a very special award, because the last award I got was when I left school, at the school prom, and it was Most Likely to Go to Jail award. It's a complete flip on its head from being most likely to go to a jail to now being masterminder of the Year.

Sophie: 1:38

What a journey. Right into that. In a minute, Henry, we're going to hear a whole story. For me, I'm in the middle of quite a big deal with a landlord, and he's probably one of the most cynical people I've ever met, but he's been burned. He's had some terrible experiences. When you come across people like that. He's on our first phone call, he gave me a proper grilling. How do you do this? What about this? What fallback have you got about this? What if you what if we're incapacitated? How are you going to deal with this and this? At the end of that phone call, he said, okay. They were quite good answers. I'll meet you. I'll meet you for a viewing. Went to the pub because it was close by. I don't normally have meetings in pubs, but we're really getting there now and we're really close. It shows that you really need to find out what people need and work with them. This one's going to be really trust based and building it really slowly, but celebrating that. Yeah.

Henri: 2:33

I love that.

Sophie: 2:34

Yeah. So, Henry, thank you for joining us today. We've all known each other for a little while, haven't we? Tell us about your background, tell us where you started and how you got to where you are now and what's been happening in between.

Henri: 2:49

Wow. How long we got? Okay, so my first intro into property was my dad. He always ran one man band, but they did property on the side, but they did it the really difficult way. Going back to they bought houses that were like wrecks in East Anglia is where I grew up. I was born in Ipswich on the East Coast, and they bought wrecks. We generally live in caravans or in rented accommodation, but generally caravans on site. My dad, when he wasn't working, was doing up the house. My younger years and teenage years were pushing wheelbarrows around sights and just hating life as a grumpy teenager, thinking, why am I doing this when all my mates are going out? He used to pay me, so he taught me the value of money quite early, but one thing that did is give me a desire to not want to be in property. In a roundabout way, which we'll get to later, I'm now in property, but I watched him do it the really hard way. He didn't do any education, self development, didn't have mentors, and he did okay out of it like they now are retired. And they were never cash rich. They were always asset rich in the sense they always lived in a house that didn't have a mortgage on it. When they retired, they sold their house, bought two houses, one to retire in, one as an investment property that they get a monthly wage from, which is their pension. So, yeah, that was kind of my first insight into property then, as I met alluded to earlier, because we moved around a lot, I was quite a disruptive child. I got expelled from school and I was quite naughty. Again, I think that was generally I had a good upbringing, but I was just generally craving attention. Because I was moving around a lot, that led me down the path of being disruptive and failed on my GCSEs. Left school and went out to the world to work. Went out, worked, did different jobs, mainly office space, worked for a bank, worked in sales, worked in car sales, recruitment, but forever just spent my days looking out the window, thinking I want to do something else. I ended up trying to be a carpenter with the builder, then telling me that I didn't have attention to detail and that maybe carpentry is not right for me. Randomly then my best friend phoned me and said, oh, my brother, who I happen to go to school with his company's looking for tree surgeons. Do you want to go and be a tree surgeon? I was like, what? You get plate to climb trees? Okay, well, let's do that. I trained to be a tree surgeon. My dad always taught me. I left school, he said, don't worry, Sony, you fell GCSEs. Make sure you're committed, determined and hardworking and everything will be all right. Plus, one last thing, make sure you start a business when you're young, because I didn't start till I was in my 30s. Start one as young as you can. One thing, great advice. Yeah, it was. I mean, it was that the hard work bit. It was all great advice until we grew a massive business. I didn't do the education part, which we'll get into in a minute, but I trained to be a tree surgeon, and I made sure I told every single person that whatever job I went to, I always was like, right, I want to be there. I want his job, or I want to go up the ladder this way. Generally, when you tell people where you want to go, then stuff happens. You get the law of attraction. I didn't know any of this stuff at the time, but when I was a tree surgeon, I was going around telling everybody, I want to start my own business. Everyone met, and the company I went for work for in 2008 went under and I had a summer of not trying to find work. It was just at a time were going into recession. I had a phone call from one of the previous clients of the company that went under, and he said, Henry, I remember you telling me you want to start your own business. Do you want to come and have a meeting with me and we'll chat about you starting your own business. Went and met in the Checkers Pub in Four Marks, which unfortunately no longer exists.

Sophie: 6:41

Pubs.

Henri: 6:41

Pubs is where all the pubs yeah, again in a pub. We did a deal where he said, look, start your own business, you need to get a van and shipper. We got a loan for 15 grand to buy a van and shipper, and he would subcontract me a load of work. That's where the tree surgery business started. I was 24, bumbled around for a few years, still quite young, got married at 27, and then everything changes. When you get married, you start thinking about life, future, everything like that. We started growing the business and it went from five to ten to 20 to 30 to 40 to 47 staff. It was a seven figure business. When you get to a business of that size, you need a little more than hard work, because you are working really hard. If you don't understand management numbers, sales and marketing systems, culture, all these things that you need, all the pillars of a business, then you end up just being a busy fall. I had 47 staff, and I was doing 1012 hours days.

Sophie: 7:40

How long did it take you to get from start to 47 staff?

Henri: 7:44

This was over ten years, but it was probably for the first five years, were just kind of what you'd call off one man band. It was really like a five year rise. Then the whole thing started falling apart. We lost a contract, and one thing I did well was always look after my team. I'm a people person, always looking after my team. We had 47 guys that I all knew their kids names, gerbil's names. Like, we'd all go out for beers on a Friday, we'd do lots of stuff together. What I should have done is really at the point of losing the contract, lay all my guys off or gone down to a smaller business. But instead we made a bad decision. Lots of bad decisions. Lots of bad decisions were compounded. It wasn't one big thing, the reason why it all went wrong, but it was lots of small decisions. One of them was the fact that we kept all our guys on. We should have laid them off. I didn't know my numbers, but about so the business went under in May 2019. In October December 2018, my son was born. This was all happening as my son was being born. I had a three year old daughter, Esme at the time, and it was pretty tough. About a year before the business went under, we had a business coach come in. This was kind of the changing part of my life, really, because up to that point, leaving school fell in my GCSEs, had a very fixed mindset. I said, I don't do learning like I'm going to do what my dad said, I'm going to work hard. We determined I'm going to start my own business, I'm going to be committed. Which is all very well, like you said earlier, it's great advice, but without any self development, education, mentoring mastermind, anything of that type, then it's very difficult to do and learn all about business. About a year before, I met a business coach, and this guy Jeff said to me, henry, you need to read this book. I'm thinking, But I'm paying two grand a month to coach me, and you want me to read a book? What I didn't realize at this point is that I had this very fixed mindset, and Jeff was unlocking my desire to learn. The book was called 1 Minute Manager by Kevin Blanchard. At this point I said to Jeff, but I don't want to read the book. You're coaching me. He said, no, Henry, your business is in a lot of difficulty. I can coach you, which I can do, but you need to level up yourself and your self development. Like the business had skyrocketed. Imagine like a line going on a graph going up diagonally, up 45 degrees, and then that's the business skyrocketing. Me and my self development staying very low along that chart, and I hadn't caught up with the business, so the business was bigger than my own knowledge of understanding business. He was explaining that to me, and I was like, okay, right. I'll read the book, and I remember reading this book, and it was like light bulb going off. I'd spent my childhood reading books and not been interested. I'd gone to school, failed my GCSEs, basically been told that I was a dunce, told that I would at school, they say that if your GCSE is the most important thing, basically, if you don't pass GCSEs, you're going to be an absolute failure in life. I'd created this mindset that I didn't need to do learning. I'm going to do what my dad said. I'm going to be committed. I'm going to be hard work, and I'm going to be driven. I'm going to go out and start my own business. I don't need to learn because I'm just going to do it, and I'm just going to work really hard. I'd see my dad have some success from working hard, but as I say, when you've got a business of 47 staff and you're working hard for everybody, and the reason why Jeff picked this particular book, his 1 Minute Manager, is it taught me about managing people. I realized that I was the guy with the cape who was solving everyone's problems. Human beings are, in a way, we want to get from A to B the quickest. What staff members were doing were going, hey, Henry, can you do this for me? And I go, yeah, I'll do that. Can you reverse this trailer into the yard? Yes, I'll do that. Can you fix my laptop? Yes, I'll do that. What I didn't realize that all the time that I was saying, yes, I'll do something, is I was completely disempowering my team. I remember the guy saying to me, as well, oh, yeah, Henry, there's a reason why you're the boss. That would just inflate my ego even more, and I'd be like, Great, yeah, I'm doing really well. I read this book, and I just realized that I was the guy with the cape. I was disempowering my team. Basically what happened is that every time I went on holiday, the whole company would fall apart for two weeks. We'd have some of the most catastrophic failures in the business while I was away, but that's because I was the center point of the business, and I was the guy that everyone went to. As soon as I took myself out of it, I mean, I could write a book with the things that used to go wrong when I was on holiday. It's too long for this podcast. The point of the story is that it really started to open my self development up and unfortunately, the coaching was too late for me to save that particular business. We still went under with half a million pounds worth of debt. £200,000 worth of that was personal debt.

Sophie: 13:12

Ouch. That's terrifying, isn't it?

Henri: 13:14

It was. I mean, it was the best, worst year of my life at the time. It was horrific. My wife very fortunately stayed by my side. She's very patient or whether she will listen to this podcast or not, I call her stubborn as well because she was definitely determined to not let me give up. She's been a massive help in my life. You could imagine that I spent a lot of time sleeping on friends sofas in the hotels because we had a newborn baby and a three year old and me and my wife arguing wasn't good for the atmosphere in the household. Instead of us arguing all the time, I took myself out of the room. Out of the room. We had a house that we'd done up ourselves. Bit like how my dad had done it in our own time and we had about £200,000 worth of equity in it. The crunch point was, is when we realized that the quickest way for us to get out of the debt was to sell our family home. We sold the family home and we restarted the business and started growing a business the right way. I joined Mastermind, I got a different business coach. I then went full into self development, going on courses, learning to read books. We rebuilt the business to where it is now, which is again a seven figure business with 20 staff in it. We've done it a completely different way this time. I now do no hours in that business at all, apart from one management meeting a month. That business has got managers running it because I realized that a business is only a business if it is a business that can run without you. And I see this now. I've got into property with a lot of people in property to hook this back to property where people don't see property as a business. I actually saw somebody yesterday on a because I do service accommodation like Julia, and I saw someone put one of the Facebook groups. Do I quit my job and go full time into service accommodation? My question back to that was like, why would you go want to go full time into service accommodation? Because it's not that I don't think you can just go and do one strategy. It's the fact that it's the language of saying, I'm going from my full time job into a full time job. A lot of people make the mistake in what I believe in property is to leave a job, go into property and then create another job. It's a business, and every business should be set up without the main person being the center point of it being the breakpoint of that business. And that's a business to explain. I don't know what it says in thesauru US, but it's a business that reoccurs income without you having to be in it every single day. If I wrote theosaurusaurus, that's what I put in as that. So, yeah. Moving on from losing it all, we've now built up multiple businesses and a service accommodation business and a mentoring and training business as well.

Sophie: 16:09

That is amazing. You lost your business, you lost your house, you were financially in a really tough place. You could have just gone, I'm going to get a job. I'm just going to get my head down and get a job and get paid every month. Did that ever occur to you?

Henri: 16:25

No, never. I think, firstly, I'm far too disruptive to work for somebody. I'm probably unemployable, but I was a wounded bear. My ego had been battered. I was really down in the dumps for it was funny, actually, because the business went under and over the time of the business went under, I didn't drink anything for about three months. Sort of a couple of months before. A couple of months after. I was razor sharp focus. I think when you're massively out of your comfort zone, I see a lot. There's a lot of people if you're in your comfort zone, you're not as driven. I was massively out of my comfort zone and we managed to get the business restarted again. I kept a couple of key members of staff. We went down to, I think, eight staff in total. I kept one of my surveyors and an office manager. About six weeks, eight weeks after we restarted, it was like a lag happened of the mental battering that I'd had. I went and started I was over drinking overeating. This was all the time when me and my wife were arguing a lot and I was staying on friends sofas and hotels. I spent about two or three months just being I was still kind of running the business, but my team were helping me a lot, and I was just depressed and kind of reworking out what happened. Looking back, I wrote a document, what went wrong? Just trying to lick my wounds and work out all the things that had gone wrong. I don't think there was any point where I thought, I want to go and work for someone again. I wanted to prove that I could run a business and that I knew what I was doing. Now I'd found, like it was almost like I'm not that spiritual. You see people saying, I've seen the light. I've had the epiphany. I've had the moment kind of finding self development and starting to read was the kind of moment that I started seeing. Okay, so if I add the hard work and the drive, the determination because I kind of had this Winger attitude. The people say fake it before you make it kind of thing, I had that, but it was too loaded. Fake it, t make it too loaded, winging it. There was no self development. I thought, okay, if I can add the self development part of this, then I can rego again.

Sophie: 18:40

It's the knowledge. You've built it up hugely, haven't you? You're now passing it on to other people, which is amazing.

Henri: 18:46

Definitely.

Julia: 18:47

If there was one thing that you could go back, say, and tell yourself, say that I gave you a time machine and you could go back to see you in that moment, what's the one thing you would tell yourself at that time?

Henri: 18:58

It was failing. What I tell myself in that moment, I'd just say, well, don't worry, Henry. At the time, I was still very fearful about the future. I was very determined. If I was going to tell myself anything, it would just be just keep doing what you're doing and be, I think, consistency and turning up. I think one of the biggest things is people think to be successful, to be a multimillionaire, to be a successful business owner, to be good at anything, you need to be really talented. I don't think that talent is what you need. I think it's consistency and determination to turn up and have the discipline to turn up every single day. I think that's the key is being present and turning up every single day will outbeat someone that's talented every single time.

Sophie: 19:53

Have you read Bounce?

Henri: 19:54

Yes, I have.

Sophie: 19:55

I love that. That just completely flipped everything I ever thought.

Henri: 19:59

Yeah.

Sophie: 20:00

What skills you need versus determination and just practice. Just go out every day and do something and you will improve. Yeah, you can improve and build skills and knowledge and it just takes limits away, doesn't it?

Henri: 20:13

100%. When I'm trying to I've learned how to play golf or learning how to play golf in the last year and a half. After reading Bounce, I tell myself that every time when I'm getting frustrated on the driving range that I can't hit the golf ball properly. But you're all part of a process. I call myself a millionaire in training. I'm not quite there yet, but it's getting there. Everything I do, I now do a lot of keynotes on stage. Well, if I go and completely balls that keynote out, that's one step further to the mastery of doing it. You're one step closer because you're just in a process. They say 10,000 hours or 10,000 strikes of a golf club or 10,000 kicks of a football will get you to mastery level. The only way you're going to do that is by turning up consistently. That is what I tell myself and go back to. I still have to tell myself that now it's the consistently, so slow and steady, we're in the race. I put so much pressure on myself that I'm not multimillionaire already, but I believe that I'm in the process of getting to that place by consistently turning up.

Sophie: 21:12

Love it. Absolutely love it. You talked about the pillars of business which you touched upon, which I know you train other people on. Tell us, what do we need to know for a successful business? What are those pillars?

Henri: 21:25

I think depending on what self development books you read, there are lots of different people out there who are talking about different pillars and different things you need in your business. What I've tried to do is simplify it and generalize it as much as possible. So this fits into any business structure. At the moment, I'm mainly actually mentoring tree surgery business owners, but I plan to go into other businesses in the future. The four pillars that I talk about, it doesn't go into operations of a business, it doesn't even go into customer service, because a lot of this will bounce off of that. There's no point in me going into someone else's business if I was going to say, mentor an electrician and tell them how to operate their electrical business. The main four pillars are in what I think important order are numbers. This is one of the biggest things I didn't know my business, like knowing your profit and loss, your cash flow, knowing your balance sheet in property, if we talk about service accommodation, your Occupancy levels, your capacity levels, your different KPIs when it comes to where your bookings are coming from, but really knowing your numbers. Because we've got two parts. If you've ever read the book, I think it's Dan and Chip Heath, which is called switch or change, I can't quite remember. They talk about your brain having two parts, and you've got one part, which is your emotional part, and then you've got your thinking part. If you imagine your emotional part being an elephant and your thinking part being the rider, when we make decisions on emotion, generally, our emotion will always win. So the elephant will always win. If the elephant wants to go left, he's going to go left. The rider is not going to be able to do anything about it. The rider's job is to try and guide the elephant the best he can. That's what we need to do our thinking part. If you imagine you're emotional, or you're feeling upset or angry or anxious, your decision making on your emotion, you might want to then go and buy that brand new coat that costs lots of money. You might want to go and spend loads of money, go on a shopping spree. If you're not going to look at your bank balance to say, can I afford that? That's not going to give you the right decision. Your rider is not going to be able to tell your emotional part. I think when you have look into your numbers in any business, that is there to guide you to make the right decisions, the right financial decisions, so you can make the decision, do I take on another unit? Can I go and buy this? Do I need to go and get some investor finance? Or can I do this myself? Knowing your numbers is the absolute key in business. The next one sales and marketing, because you can have a really terrible product. Not that I advise that. If you sell and market it well, you're going to make a lot of money. Sales and marketing is an absolute must in any business. My advice would be to have a really great product and have great sales and marketing. That just shows there's some terrible products out there that get sold and marketed really well. Systems. Because that's the glue of the business. That's what helps. It's why McDonald's works so well, because it's a fully systemized business that can be sold. And then culture. Culture is my favorite one, because culture is how you look after your staff. It's how things are done round here and you have a vision, a mission and your values. And to me, I'm a people's person. Businesses, people building relationships and looking after your team. Not everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and start their own business. I believe those people that don't and want to go and work for someone should be treated with the utmost respect and should be treated really well. And that's where culture really works. It's numbers, sales and marketing systems and culture. I think if you put those four into a business, then you're going to have a really good shot of not. There's a stat in business, like where 80% of businesses fail in the first ten years. I believe if you put those four pillars into any business, then you're going to have a really good chance of having, one, surviving that stat, and two, having a business that works for you. You're not like we talked about earlier, in another full time job. You're not replacing your full time job with another full time job.

Sophie: 25:12

I completely agree. Why don't we get these skills in school? Why don't we? Because there's so many people who might not be academic or might not get the GCSE grades and then have that limited belief. You talked a bit about fixed mindset versus a growth mindset, and you get that fixed mindset of, I'm not a learner. Okay, I'm not going to do that anymore. Actually, we can all learn, we can all grow, we can do whatever we want. But I really think. Schools need to get some kind of finance, budgeting, all that stuff. Important, isn't it?

Henri: 25:46

I think it might be. It's just like what happens at exit stage. I know I could go on a whole rant about the schooling system. I don't know, at the age of Henry, at 1314, 1516, whether I would have given two cent about anything like that still, because I was just in disrupt, full disrupt mode. It was like the exit of school. It was kind of the talk in school of, if you don't do this, you're not going to be good enough. That was, I think, the thing that let down. I think from seeing from a schooling system, and I've got with two of our best friends now, school teachers, so I see it from their point of view completely, and they are targeted on numbers. They get their funding through what people get in grades. They've got all their pressure is about people getting grades. That is what they do. That's how they get their budgets, that's how they get money. That needs to change to start off with. So, again, it's the, well, actually, this guy's not doing so well. So what can we see? What can we try and work them into? What mindset can we work on him with? Can we show him that actually, if you don't fail, pass your GCSE, you can go on and do an apprenticeship. You can go and learn something. You can learn business. I went and see the schools of careers advisor as I was leaving school, and they said to me, So what do you enjoy? I said, Well, I really enjoy socializing with my mates, and I love water sports. Okay. The computer says you should be a customer service advisor. I'm like, okay. The government obviously wanted to shuffle people into customer services at that point because they needed people in customer services. At that point, that's trying to catch the guys at that point to say, look, there are different options for you out there.

Sophie: 27:28

Yes, totally. I've got this vision in my head where businesses go into school and do a bigger kind of work experience, where you get a full spectrum of jobs tree surgery, property investment, all the things that aren't just the careers offered to you at school. There's such a huge, wide variety. Let's go in and tell all the 15 1617 year olds about it and then get them into our workplaces and do that. Should we start that business opportunity?

Henri: 27:55

Definitely. I think it's got to be 1616 years old. Plus I went into school to talk to 513 year olds a few months ago, and they were people like me being disruptive, but they were not interested in talking to me. It was a very interesting hour of my life. Lots have been sworn at and different things like that.

Sophie: 28:15

Really?

Henri: 28:16

Yeah. It was pretty rough. It was pretty rough experience. I had to get my potty mouth on to just to bring it to their level. They started listening to me . But, yeah, I think definitely from 1616 years old on, because I think that's when you're looking up, starting to look up and go, okay, yeah, what else is next? School. I'm now not in the comfort zone of school. What do I do next?

Sophie: 28:36

Yeah, there's a really good initiative for our listeners in the UK called the Girls Network that I've been part of, and you get paired with a 1516 year old girl. They do this really cool thing. I want to say matchmaking. It's not it's like speed dating, where you go in at the start of the year and there's 15 women and 15 girls, and you sit down in front of a 16 year old and you go, Right, what do you want to do? She's like, Orthodontist I'm like, okay, why do you want to do that? That's what my parents do. Okay, what else are you interested in? Can we get you some work experience? We meet every month at the school and talk about different things and opportunities and CV building and interviews and what are your values and what do you want your life to be like? And it's really interesting. So the girls network love that. So, Henry, what does your life look like now? What are your businesses? What's your life balance like? I know family is really important to you.

Henri: 29:28

Yeah. So my highest value is my family. I've got Esme and Ned. Esme is seven in January. Ned's just four this last week. My life now is very much non negotiable. Up with the kids in the morning, doing the school run, doing all the dad stuff, which I absolutely love. I've got three main businesses, which is the tree surgery business, which is completely systemized and run without me, the service accommodation business, which, again, is completely systemized and run without me, and then the mentoring mastermind business for the tree surgeons. I also now train people in service accommodation for Progressive Property. I'm also a mentor for them. I go up to Progressive Property in Peterborough every month and train people on property, which I absolutely love. My most fun comes being on a stage. As a child, I always wanted to be center of attention. Through my life, I've generally wanted to be center attention, but when you're center of attention and you give no value, it's actually quite an empty feeling because you're just wanting to be center attention with no value get given. Now being able to go on stage and share my story, like, even sharing this now, and also, which I never thought I'd be told, people say I'm an inspiration. I'm like, wow, okay. I thought I'd have to be, like, 60 years old with multimillionaire by the time someone says, you're an inspiration. But people say that to me now. Being on stage and sharing and helping and serving is that's the thing that makes me tick. My life generally is I kind of choose when I want to work, even though I don't like the word work. People said to me, so I've got an award, the ward we're talking about, and people message me saying, oh, you've worked so hard. I don't like the hard work bit. Because when you choose your life and you design it how you want it to be, it doesn't feel like work every single day. I don't feel like I'm going to work, I'm just going to go and I don't even know. I've been thinking about this a lot. I don't know how to reword it. I'm going to go and do my projects now.

Sophie: 31:32

You have?

Henri: 31:33

Yeah. I don't see it as work, though. I see it as just I'm not going on a mission just to get stuff done.

Sophie: 31:39

That shows that you love what you do.

Henri: 31:41

Yeah, I do. I love the fact that in the summer now, I could which I never thought I'd ever be able to do. A few years ago, before the business went under, I was fully in the business all the time, but I took two months off this summer and just went and did loads of dad stuff and family stuff with my wife and my kids and went and traveled a bit. I think if you're going to go and do the hard yards and you are going to work hard because business is hard, I call it like a rocket taking off, the analogy. Like when you start a business, you are going to have to work evenings, weekends, you're going to use 80% of your fuel, like 80% of that is going to be really front loading the business. If you set out properly, then that's where you can have it reoccurring. If you're going to do that, then you need to design your business and you're going to go through the hard yards of getting a business off the ground to how you want to live your life. You design it to where you want to be doing. If you're currently doing something that you don't enjoy, then change it. Literally, change it.

Sophie: 32:38

What you're saying is quite terrifying for a lot of people. If you're used to being in full time employment and then you want to start something or change something, like for you now, it's so natural, isn't it?

Henri: 32:51

Yeah, it is.

Sophie: 32:52

I think, what's the worst that could happen, right?

Henri: 32:55

What is the worst could happen? I've experienced the worst that happened. It was tragic, it was terrible. It was the best worst year of my life.

Sophie: 33:00

Because you've come through it.

Henri: 33:01

I've come through it. In life, you have so many chances. You have so many chances to keep trying something different and changing and literally the worst. If you're in a job right now and you're thinking, I want to go and get into property, but I'm a bit nervous, literally, what's the worst could happen? You could try it out. Always look at worst case scenario. Worst case scenario, you try it out, it doesn't work out, and then you go back and get that same job again. If you've been in a job and you've got all that experience, you'll get a job back again in the future. So it might be terrifying. If you have a growth mindset and that's the key if you're a fixed mindset, if you don't know the difference between a growth and fixed mindset, won't go into it. Read books about the difference, because I believe that even Matthew Sayd bounce that book and Blackpox Thinking, another book by Matthew Sayad. If you realize that you could literally do anything you want in life, apart from maybe be the President of America or something crazy like that, then you can do what you want. You can literally in 90 days, you could change your life by if you set a 90 day plan of like, trying to lose weight, you could lose weight in 90 days. You could learn a new skill, you could read a book, you could learn lots of different things, and you could literally change your life in 90 days.

Julia: 34:17

The human mind is such a powerful tool. Like whatever you tell yourself is whatever you put out there. It just happens as well, because you take the consistent actions, it gels everything all into one, which is consistency, getting over fear and just the whole process of enjoying it.

Henri: 34:35

Yeah, the fear of failure is massive. That's why and sorry to plug it, but that's why I started my podcast, Failed Forward, because so many people fear failure, and it holds us back, it grips us from going and doing our things. When you look in the dictionary of what failure means, if you look up anyone listens to this now go to the English dictionary, look up failure. And it's just so negative. Actually, failure is a really positive thing. Failure is part of learning. I wish going back to your question earlier, what would you done differently? When it was the business going under? What I'd have done differently from the beginning of the business, I would have failed quicker. It took me ten years to fail. If I'd have failed after a couple of years, then I would have had these learnings from earlier. So I'd have failed quicker. Because failure is learning. The only time failure is a negative is if you don't learn from it.

Julia: 35:27

Also, I think you never fail until you stop. You technically have never failed because you technically have never stopped. Even though you got yourself out of it. I'm very much my always mindset is when I have a bad day and things just go absolutely wrong, which you're going to have, I just say, well I'm not given up now, so I haven't failed, let's find a solution, what's plan ABCDEFG? I just think that's the way forward.

Henri: 35:52

It's so powerful 100% and when it do fail or things don't go quite right, one of my biggest things is I just take a day off and I know that sounds some people go back and just try and grind out and that's what I used to do. I think I come from a very creative family. My mum's fashion designer, my sister was my dad, my grandpa used to paint my whole mum's side of the family are artists but that didn't come across to me at all. I believe as entrepreneurs and business owners we are very creative people, it just doesn't show in the form of art. I didn't realize when people talk about being creative that has to be art. I believe it's other ways and when my creative brain is flowing the most, problem solving, working out challenges, having new ideas for new business products, it's when I'm having my off time. I go on holiday, if I have a day off, if I'm on the golf course, if I'm taking some time out, my mind starts to release. Because quite often all your challenges are right in front of your face and you can't see it. You take yourself out of that equation and you start getting all these creative ideas, and it starts flowing. Going back to your point as well, Julia, about your mind and mindset. My favorite saying of all time is Henry Ford saying if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. I literally tell myself that to every day because now I run multiple businesses and lots of people say, oh, you can't run lots of multiple businesses successfully. Who are these people? You've got to do one at a time and then you systemize that and move on. I just keep telling myself, oh, you see it, I can do it. Yeah, I can do it, I think I can, so I'm going to do it.

Sophie: 37:27

Yeah, I don't like these negative people, I don't have time for them. I'm like, well no, you haven't done it, you're not here, you're not living it. Positive vibes only. Thank you. Henry guybin, what is the future now for you? What's the next twelve months?

Henri: 37:42

Okay, so we're looking to scale everything, basically. The service, accommodation business, we're looking to buy guest houses, old guest houses and BnBs and turn them to part hotels. So we just offered them one. Fingers crossed, hear back from that soon. We're looking to do that multiple times and basically build a portfolio of hotels up literally playing Monopoly is what I missed. My favorite game as a kid growing other units. We manage service accommodation for people, so that's going well with the tree surgery mastermind. We've currently got 23 people in that. From a standing start of none in January, that's already a six figure business. We're looking to scale that to 100 members in the next couple of years and then offer lots of other products, like training courses, online training courses, lots of mentoring. So, yeah, it's just really pushing on. I've got a mega ambition of being very successful, but my key is that I want to create wealth to be able to help other people. I hit bad times, I relapsed on a drug addiction ad from a child, also a child from teenage late teenage early twenty s. I met a lot of people in that time that were literally on the streets of Southampton who were just like normal people, like me and you, who didn't maybe have the family support that I had. A lot of people walk past those people and say quite derogatory comments to them when actually they are just normal people, human beings, and they've just made some bad decisions or had stuff that happened to me, losing it all, but never quite picked themselves back up again, spiraled too much and not had the support. My whole creation is creating wealth to be able to help homeless people.

Sophie: 39:25

I love that.

Henri: 39:26

Help homeless people in recovering from any addictions, from finding homes, finding jobs. I believe that a lot of people with addiction have the same traits as somebody who is an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurs never give up. They're driven, they're determined, they have that constant worrying where they're working on their laptop at ten in the evening when people are watching Netflix. That kind of continuous worrying is what happens with addicts as well. They get very much addicted to one feeling or one something. I believe that there's definitely the ability in the future to help more addicts become less addictive to substances and more addicted to creating success and goals in their lives. So that's the whole future plan.

Sophie: 40:08

That's really interesting. I really look forward to seeing what you do with that vision. Amazing.

Henri: 40:12

Thank you.

Sophie: 40:13

Thank you. Well, thank you for coming and chatting to us today.

Henri: 40:16

No worries.

Sophie: 40:16

It's been amazing. We would also like to talk about property disasters because we're real it happens. People like the juicy bits. So, Julia, have you got any property disaster to share?

Julia: 40:29

Yes, my one actually happened yesterday and I was meant to go to a networking event in London because we obviously expanded out to London, wanted to get more contacts, and as I was about to set off, because it's about a two hour drive, I get a message from my guests saying that there is no electricity. I'm like, okay, thinking it's just one switch. I was like, It's on the way I'll do it. It didn't bother getting anyone out. I thought I'll just pop in. Little did I know that the whole street doesn't have electricity and we've got a whole power car and the lamps outside didn't have any light. I'm like, trying to explain to them and we do guest stays, as in holiday lets, some of them are from China and all of those. The only way we can communicate is through Google Translate.

Sophie: 41:15

Massive power cut.

Julia: 41:16

There's a massive power cut. When they've replied to you, well, what are you going to do about it? It's almost like, let me put my helmet on, let me start digging underground.

Sophie: 41:25

Like, I don't know, just investigate the grid for you.

Julia: 41:28

I've learned something useful which maybe other people who are in properties one day might have. A similar problem is that if you type up 105 and dial it goes straight to the emergency electrical center of Southampton region, which basically if there's any power cuts or if there's any dangling cables or any unsafety with electrics, you'll get put through straight away and they'll tell you the processes and you'll get updates of messaging and stuff. So it's been good. By the time I arrived to London and started my networking event, the power was back on. It was all good, but it's a property disaster that was out of my control and it's like, what do you do?

Sophie: 42:04

Yeah, I mean, you were communicating with them, you're giving them good service, you didn't leave them in the dark.

Julia: 42:10

They had the emergency lights on and it was a whole block of flats. So it wasn't just one guest. It just so had to be my luck that it was all the far. Yeah, my whole block. It was the best accommodation to pick out of all of them.

Sophie: 42:27

Really glad that's resolved for you. How about you, Henry?

Henri: 42:30

Do what one's something very similar with electricity and guests. Last Christmas we had a what sounds like a song last Christmas, very apt. We had a lady getting married in one of our houses in Southampton. She wasn't getting married in the house, but she was getting married and she was staying in one of our houses. And I got a phone call. We were actually it was a Friday night, were just out for my Christmas work due, just finished go carting. I don't drink, so it's all good. I gave up a few years ago and I got a call saying, I've just got back to get dressed from my wedding day to go to the reception and there's no electricity on. And were like, okay. Have you tried turning the fuse board on? Yes, it keeps flicking off. Luckily I had my friend who's quite handy with me, and we jumped in the car. We got there within half an hour. The bride was stood there. So half the house was on. Half the house was off on electricity. The bride was stood there . Tipsy extremely rude to us, but understandably so on her wedding day and she's trying to get dressed and were trying to turn it on, it wouldn't turn off. I'm on the phone to my brother in law, who's an electrician, and my friend went into the downstairs bathroom and it was one of those kind of bowl lights. He went, Henry, the light is full of water. We'd had a water leak, it filled up and it tripped everything. We just dried it all off, took all the water out, turned it on. It was on. Fortunately, because we give our clients every year like a small little hamper of goodies, I had one of those in the car, so I just said to the bride, here you are, have a little hamper. It was wine, chocolate, everything in it. And you know what? The next day she phoned up and said, I'm sorry about being rude to you today. It was just very shuffled. Don't worry. She left us the best review ever, so we managed to deal with it very quickly. These things kind of happen when you're in that stage of growing a growing yeah.

Julia: 44:27

Tips 101 is always have a hamper in your car.

Henri: 44:30

Yeah. Always have a hamper in your car because you never know when you're going to need it.

Sophie: 44:34

Nice. Well, mine's kind of customer service related as well. Obviously, it's been winter and honestly, the heating issues, and it's mainly people don't know how to use a radiator. It's like, well, you just tap that and then you turn that and then you bleed it here. I've just learned I need to give better information to my tenants. It needs to be in the welcome pack, it needs to be in my tenant pack, which we provide. I need to add a thing about radiators.

Henri: 44:58

YouTube video.

Sophie: 45:00

Could be a video. Yeah, but I just need to add that in and that'll solve several calls.

Julia: 45:05

Step by step instructions with photos and everything.

Sophie: 45:08

Yeah, exactly. Cool. So now it's time for listeners questions. We've got a listeners question from Jen for you, Henry, and it's a bit of a general. How do we overcome failure?

Henri: 45:19

How do we overcome failure? So how do we overcome failure? Or the fear of failure? That's a good question. To try and overcome failure as much as possible. Whatever you're doing, surround yourself with people that have done it before in front of you. So, for example, I am an absolute, like, I love Masterminds. I think I'm currently part of five Masterminds. I've got a speaker one, I've got a property one, I've got my tree surgery one that I run. I'm part of the SA one, part of Nick James's expert empires, part of Lisa John, one of Lisa Johnson's, making money online. Because I see it as if I want to do something, I want to see what other people are doing. I think if you want to get over failure or not fail, then learn from people that are in front of you. The caveat to that is to not fear failure. If failure happens, I think my failure was compounded by lots of little failures. If you've ever read The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, the compound effect can work in two ways. It can either work in a really positive way or it can work in a really negative way. Mine was lots and lots of small failures that I wasn't holding myself accountable for, that I was blaming. Accountability is a huge thing if you hold yourself accountable. Like when the business failed, for example, it was really difficult. The reason why I think I was depressed for a good couple of months is because I didn't blame anyone else. I could have blamed my business coach. I could have blamed my school. I could have blamed my parents for not telling me that I should do self development as well as being driven and committed. I could have blamed the economy, the clients, the staff, but I didn't. I had to go, look, I'm running this ship. I'm the one that has created this. So it's down to me. I think if you can learn from lots of every time you have a little failure not to blame, oh, that was the plumber's fault. Oh, that was that fault. That was so and so's fault. That was so and so's fault. You go, okay, so what could I have done differently in this situation? You're going to compound lots of good results and not one big failure because all the time that you're not seeing the small failures, you're going to lead up to a big one. So I think accountability is everything.

Julia: 47:30

Also. I think it's just part of the process. Rather than having the mentality of how can I avoid failure, it's actually how many times can I fail until I make it perfect?

Sophie: 47:39

Almost.

Julia: 47:40

That's the way to go.

Henri: 47:42

Learn, adapt and prove. In black box thinking, there's a great analogy or great thing that they talk about. It's not analogy. They did a test. They had two groups, test groups who? One test group got asked to make one perfect pot. The other test group got asked to make as many pots as you can. They both had an hour. Who do you think made the best pot?

Julia: 48:05

The bad group.

Henri: 48:06

Wasn't it the group to make multiple ones? Yeah, because they were making the group that wanted to make one perfect one were just trying to perfectionize one pot. The group that were making as many as they could in that hour were making multiple pots. They were, like, failing every time, so they were just, like, improving, improving. So, like you said, it's about just looking and learning, adapting, improving, going for it, going for it and learning from every little thing that you do.

Julia: 48:33

Yeah, every no is closer to a yes and that whole aspect of it all.

Sophie: 48:37

Yeah, definitely. Don't be scared and get amazing support.

Henri: 48:39

Yeah, 100%.

Sophie: 48:41

Love it.

Julia: 48:42

That's been amazing. Thank you.

Sophie: 48:43

Yeah, thank you so much, Henry. It's been really good. I always love chatting to you. Where can our listeners find you if they want to get in touch or see what you're doing?

Henri: 48:53

So my podcast is Fell forward. That's on YouTube and all of the major podcast platforms on social media. I am 38 years old, so Instagram and TikTok are that's like my VA does that stuff. I'm old school and it sounds weird saying old school. I'm Facebook. If someone really wants to get a quick answer for me, find me on Facebook, request me, send me a DM on Facebook. That's the easiest place. I am on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram, but the quickest way to get hold of me would be through Facebook.

Sophie: 49:25

Thank you, Julia.

Julia: 49:26

I'm on Instagram. I have Facebook, but the quickest way to access me is through Instagram. It's just my name and surname, which.

Sophie: 49:35

Really fun when you spell it out every time. Go on, we're going to do a jingle for it. Goleb.

Julia: 49:40

Oh, I even mistaken. It G-O-L-E-B-I-E-W-S-K-A.

Sophie: 49:47

She's only just started her coffee, people. I'm Sophie Foot with an E on the end. Instagram. Is Sophie underscore rubes? I'm on LinkedIn and thank you for listening. Thank you again, Henry.

Henri: 49:58

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Sophie: 49:59

We'll see you all soon. Bye. Oh, before you go, here's a message from a future girl in property.

Julia: 50:18

Listening to the podcast, please subscribe. If you feeling really fancy versus private sexy.