Navigating the Entrepreneurial Waters From Idea to Reality

Ever wondered what it's like to jump headfirst into the entrepreneurial pool, with all its waves of triumph and undercurrents of trepidation? That's precisely the plunge Valeria Tomasso and I, Mark Jason, took, and we're peeling back the curtain on our journey—from the eureka moments at university that propelled us into creating a simulation service for career assessments, to the teething troubles of our professional lives post-graduation. Reminisce with us about the thrills and spills of our early days, the uncharted waters of career progression, and the essential wisdom of impactful actions over obsessive attention to detail. 

This season, we're stitching together a patchwork of entrepreneurship tales, featuring the highs, lows, and the outright hilarious. Kicking off with a Reddit thread that perfectly encapsulates entrepreneurial misadventures in a mere four words, we're opening the gateway to a series of candid confessions and rich insights. Join us for a candid examination of what it really means to start a business, the infectious excitement of initial ventures, and a sneak peek into the backstory of our very own creation—Charles Young Recruitment Consultants. It's a tapestry of entrepreneurial endeavors you won't want to miss.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Hello and welcome to the Needle Movers podcast season four. We're back and we're back in a big way. We took a small hiatus which extended into an extended holiday. I'd say, if you haven't heard our podcast before you're joined by myself, mark Jason and my co-host, valeria Tomasso.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Hello everyone and welcome back, and if it's your first time, welcome.

Speaker 1: 0:35

Yeah. So if it's your first time, this is a new season, which means you get a breath of fresh air. You don't have to listen to the previous audio to figure out what we're talking about in this season, but we still welcome you too. Get yourself up to scratch on what we've been talking about in our past three seasons, but this one we decided to go. Let's go on a history tour of what brought us here today, basically, and this is all going to be focused on entrepreneurship. Actually.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Yeah, I would say probably not even a history lesson. I think we draw from our history in terms of, like, where we screwed up. I think there's some funny stories in there, but also we'd like to look into the future and also look into the present. With what are people doing, what's the story, what are the barriers and figuring out the journey along the way. So hopefully we'll inspire some people that are looking to make that jump or trying to figure out where to go to next.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Yeah, and one thing I'd say is that we're really going to take you along a journey. So what you can look forward to in these episodes coming up in the season is one a few more interviews with some interesting entrepreneurs of their own right or people who are just trying to make it through their own journey alongside or not even alongside their work and careers. On top of that, we're going to take you on the story of how we started and no spoilers, but culminated in one of our entrepreneurial adventures in our lives as well.

Speaker 2: 2:01

That miserably failed.

Speaker 1: 2:04

I said no spoilers, no spoilers. But to kick it off, val, I am, as usual, looked up a Reddit thread and the one I have today is tell me an entrepreneurial horror story with just four words. So you're saying miserably failed. Here's some. Well, I think of some. Well, I tell you some of that. What they? What was written? This was a thread from two years ago.

Speaker 2: 2:27

Yeah, I can answer the question though. Yeah go ahead, pretentious engineers go recruit.

Speaker 1: 2:37

So you're telling us story and pull. Yeah, let's start. Yeah, don't listen to the rest of the season. That's enough. Basically, okay, the first one I have is get everything in writing. You can tell when I ended up. I'm guessing. Second, I don't need marketing. Oh, if only, if only we just couldn't need any marketing to life would be easier. Hey, it's the IRS guessing the tax evasion. Who was it, jimmy Carl, who got screwed out of tax evasion? There's a comment to that, one which is my spirit. Briefly left my body. Oh, taxes we won't pay upfront. Partners fucked it up, which I like. Those for. China stole my IP. China did it again. China did it again. This will be easy. Also, wear out of cash. I'd love to start with cash to be out of it.

Speaker 2: 3:38

but okay, can I comment that? No, no, there's a four words, there are five words and above.

Speaker 1: 3:42

No, no, no, no, no. I'm telling you now, it's the syllable. It's where we're. There's ways to spell it, man. There's ways to spell it. It's like aren't it's a word rather than are not. But I see you paying attention. We pay in equity. Best friend equals. My partner had a whole list of comments, which is funny enough. The first comment was a four word response, which is why is it bad? And they're just saying their personal story had a terrible ending. Another one which is kind of worrying Amazon noticed my success and I know why that's. Oh, fuck this. I quit Always good. Did the yeah, did the check clear? Your secretary is pregnant. One did one word. The one word was payroll, just payroll, and it got a double up. Oh, used our home's equity. That's a wall inside. I can trade crypto. Ran out of money. I partnered with friend. People really don't like that. Finished updating.

Speaker 2: 4:54

I like crypto and I run other money. It comes one after the other.

Speaker 1: 4:58

It's not the same person, but it could be a two accounts or something. Don't need internal controls. Help flatten the curve. Oh look a pandemic. Oh God, yeah, I haven't validated anything, Never risked it all. Buying a rental property Hell, God, bought too much stock. Looking for co-founder CTO who needs an account? All right, and it ends with the IRS. There's more of them, but I think it'll be a nice way to kick us in no non-disclosure agreement. We should take these all as warning signs. How many I banged my partner? Wow, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2: 5:41

Are you looking at Reddit? Are you looking at Craigslist?

Speaker 1: 5:45

Why would I personally? You chose Craigslist. We are in the UK. Do we use Craigslist? I don't think so. I don't personally. And also, it said we don't need customers. As one of them, I'm gonna I'm gonna just close it because I it's very distracting. But yeah, I like your rendition of ours, professional engineers. I don't think we're professionally yet, though graduate engineers.

Speaker 2: 6:12

I had to stick to the four words, otherwise I would have thrown a few more in there.

Speaker 1: 6:16

Oh, we're gonna throw a few more in. I think so to to kick off the reason why I decided to go with Horrible entrepreneur stories. I wouldn't say ours is horrible, but it fits the theme.

Speaker 2: 6:28

I Think it's one of those things, right, like you know, we were a familiar university, so that was what 2013, and we were all kind of really inspired because we had Done really well in one unexpected module, which was the business module. Like, somehow, we aced it and you know, we really enjoy the topics. So we start thinking, you know, we seem to be pretty good at this shit. Um, it's anything that we can do alongside maybe having a graduate jobs. You know, we all had jobs lined up with pretty decent companies. I mean, I did. I'm not sure about your mark.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Give me 23 days.

Speaker 2: 7:13

But. But at that point we had this greater deal right, like we all had decent jobs. We all had done quite well in passenger assessment centers. You know, if you're tuning in from America, before you get a job in the UK, you have to go through hopes. I'm sure there is some equivalent crop in that in America. Basically, you get interviewed, you get math test, you get, you know, written verbal test. There's a bunch of pipes that you have to run through. Yes, you're super Mario in his occasion, but essentially you have to go through those hurdles and we've done well in it and we're thinking is there a way to capitalize on it?

Speaker 1: 7:53

And we found there is, which is the good news. But that's only one part of the story, I should say, and one part of the many ingredients that seemed to go into it. And the reason, I think, which is Super key, that we get to reflect on this now, is we've had a lot of learning. So, to Show our age a bit, this happened. What ten years ago, eleven years ago, than now, right, eleven years ago, eleven years ago. So we just got over it and it went on for a couple years, maybe three, four time flies when you're having entrepreneurship, and so what we're gonna start from, of course, is the beginning, and when you're feeling, notice how we still have jobs, just saying that was a great back burner. So, um, where this kicked off from, like vile says, and to go to the beginning of a story, it's actually vile story to kick off because he, he had the inception of the idea, so all the failures that come from it are a hundred percent his fault. But so we met, me and Val. We've been on the same course for four years, five, four years. At this point this was our fifth year. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:09

I had never met you before and like I knew this guy that used to sit in front of me that had Never really spoke to him, only really spoke to you in our final year or uni yes, in our final year, because when it came to that year, for People who might not be aware, in the UK we have the M end, which is a master's course.

Speaker 1: 9:28

There's the bachelor's if you do three years, m end just four years. But we both had done work placements, I believe, during our university term. So we did a year out where we actually went and worked somewhere and, like he said, we went into Business course. That was on that final year and there was dissertations where we had groups. Well, myself and Bolario Found that we kept working or studying together even though we weren't in the same course. He was doing aerospace, I was doing mechanical. He had a totally different dissertation group, I had a different one. We did work out together, but besides that we just were like, hey, we're on the same page when it comes to like studying, we really like business. And I remember clearly we would come up with anagrams for the exams together and they would like our brainchild, or this is how the best way to remember all this information will be. And then one day Valeria comes up to myself and my Co-friend but J, yeah, we both own this branch. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:29

Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we've been through the hurdle with, with ace, those tests. We got in some pretty decent companies and we thought surely there must be a good opportunity here to make money, because we, I think we realized that there wasn't really a recipe to it, but there was certainly stuff that you could do and stuff that you could advise, looking retrospectively. So, you know, I put my good old consultants hat on. How can you make money by just telling people what to do? I think that's how I was approaching the matter. Or maybe, like you know, how do you make money by showing people what to do? And what came to mind was what if we create a simulation of those assessment centers? And what if we target university students that perhaps come from the same kind of universities we've been to, you know, the Brunel, the Queen Mary, you know like perhaps not the top ranks, perhaps like the ones that are struggling a little bit, perhaps the ones that need it, and we get them to pay for our services and we'll show them how they can pass and how they can lend those jobs, because from the outside sometimes it looks like it's a mission impossible or a very much a, you know hidden misactivity. You either make it because you're lucky or you miss it just because you're unlucky, and that was kind of like the inception. Like you know, that was the seed of the idea.

Speaker 1: 11:54

And it drove into a pain point because, as well as we went through it where we had to go for and to me, I remember the visceral feeling of why, after doing all these studies, doing a masters in engineering, at the very end am I learning that there's like a wall of tests and assessments you have to go through before you can get a job and none of those are taught to you during the entire time. You learn maths, you learn engineering, but no point are they like oh, there's a verbal reasoning test, a numerical test, there's a logistic test, like there's all these different types of logic tests. Sorry, there's all these different types of tests. And it really was a frustrating thing. So when Val came up and said, hey, how about we give people this knowledge? Because that's clearly a gap, now I understand those who scream like I knew about it. Good for you. But also, if it was publicized to you, you had a different university experience than the joint one I had with many, many people. And so once we saw that, we identified it's definitely niche in the market. Someone should be helping people to understand what's expected. And then, once you got that, we got into these great roles. But then you're in a graduate position and there's all this. How do you go from a graduate to a professional in the fast lane In the? You know the how do you skip levels to make sure that you're not just another cognitive system but you're actually progressing at a pace that suits your well, your growth plan? Let's say, if you had one at that time.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Yeah, and I mean, without getting ahead. I think it's bad to say like the whole experience is exciting, right, because you know you got an idea. You think like you got to mix up serious dough and then you start thinking, ok, how are we going to execute this? I think like, looking back now, it's very easy to look at what we did and think, ah shit, we got really stuck on the details of things. We really got stuck on trying to make the perfect product or trying to make the perfect website, or making yourself appear as if we you know, we were this professional company which wasn't needed, like it really wasn't needed at all whatsoever. I mean, I remember I don't know if you do as well, Mark, but I remember that we were looking at various websites and we're trying to make like a website look professional. We must have spent like two, three weeks perfect in that we spent like an awful lot of time thinking about how we're going to call ourselves and, you know, in the moment those things are really, really exciting. But the question I think that I would challenge us with is, you know, was it moving the needle or was it actually getting us anywhere?

Speaker 1: 14:30

I like that you brought it back to the name of our podcast, because that is part of why it's called what it is. There's some things that makes it feel like you're moving the needle, but you're just staying still. You are a needle, you're just waiting to patiently be pushed in no direction, and a lot of what we did in hindsight is planning. We planned the fuck out of that company. We were planning.

Speaker 2: 14:52

We were bloody good. We should have been wanting partners at that point.

Speaker 1: 14:56

We planned the shit out, we were very in the detail, we are getting ahead and you'll hear it on future episodes where we went into a business case, the reason behind the name, the people inside the team, the oh, let's go and talk to it. And of course now, once you've read anything, and of course, there's so much more than information available. But I won't give us that excuse, because there was still a lot of information available, even if it's not as easily at your fingertips as YouTube is now. But we I think we stayed in that stage and didn't move the needle, which is one thing to add on is great because part of it and part of that whole journey was to learn, and if that didn't provide us learnings, I don't know what did, because we went in with the mindset of one by young. We know what we're trying to achieve and even if we felt it's a great thing purely because from that we will get a number of learning lessons and have done so much progress in a path, we'd only move forwards, and I do believe we did achieve that at a minimum.

Speaker 2: 16:05

That's a great way to justify one year of life. However, having said that, I think I think that's the last step in the tour. Very, very nice little example, right? So one of the things that we were definitely guilty of looking back is the whole element of putting this amazing product together. And what does an amazing team of engineers do? We engineer something to the end degree, to the point where we think about the flow of the assessment center they want to simulate. So we think about what happens when people come in. What kind of exercises are we going to give them? What kind of instructions are we going to give them? What is that going to look like? Where is it that we're going to hold it? How much do we want to pay, charge them and then taking that, which is kind of a high-level picture view of the process, we then started diving into each one of those elements. So we started looking at HHL questions, for example, the numerical questions. We started putting some together. We started putting together some of the group activities and exercising, of course, stealing and borrowing material from everyone online. At the same time, we spent probably the give power of two months doing all of this detailed work.

Speaker 1: 17:21

It felt a little From my side. It felt like if you didn't have the product which already first flag not minimum viable product, just the product available to sell then we were not capable of doing anything. It was like being a prisoner of by design and I'm pretty sure we didn't see that anywhere, which is going to be a lovely ongoing theme where the feeling kind of drove the journey. I feel we need a business plan. I feel we need to make sure we have a product at hand. I feel we need to make sure we've got this and don't get it twisted. We did have diligence in terms of once you said oh, I think we need a business plan. We would go in, we'd get thousands of examples, we'd see how they're structured and this is before AI, so you can't just type it in and then as a question and get it popped out and then we'd write them. We'd write different portions per person and make it look like a full functional disc business plan. If we presented to who don't ask that question? But we had it in the bag and I think a lot of it was just yeah, like I said, it was led by the fort's, feelings, premises and time of vision, but also group vision. Right, we had it wasn't just me and that there was a third person and we all came from different backgrounds, but yet had the same cohesive agreement when it came to the mismanagement of the start up.

Speaker 2: 18:45

But before we get into the any details, what and continue with this, let's go back to like one fundamental stamp. Why were you even interested in this in his venture in the first place? What entrepreneurship? What attracted you about it?

Speaker 1: 18:59

I like to work for me. Please don't tell me what the fuck do? I do it myself, honestly, I think, like we mentioned so, there was the course that gave us the insights into business in a more formalized way, rather than anything. I looked up, we were being taught about copious of things to do a business and, throughout five years of engineering, my favorite course was the one on business. Well, this time spent being an engineer and I was like, oh, business is where it comes to me. I had a history of doing things that were like, say, many entrepreneurial or something you know where you just sell things in school and that, coupled with the fact that I liked the risk and reward perks that would be coming with it. Like, you risk time, energy, effort, but the reward is financial freedom. In a sense, you know what I mean, and this is, pre me, even known about passive income. It was active income, but I was really game to be like. I'm very focused right now and this is something a great outlet, because solving problems is key. One more thing that I have mentioned in previous episodes was as a kid I was so keen to be an inventor. I don't know why I build random stuff as a kid, in my house with my brother or by myself, dangerous stuff let's not talk about what they were, car batteries were involved but that's what brought me to engineering. And then, during engineering, I realized that inventing doesn't necessarily have to be physical things. It could be companies, it could be ideas, it could be anything. And that really had me intrigued color me intrigued, let's say and with that, the opportunity to invent said company that fulfills said void was super exciting, and it still is. To be very honest, it's always a if you want to get the most out of me, give me the opportunity to invent something that doesn't exist. And I'm like, yeah, I'm here for that, that's for me. What about yourself?

Speaker 2: 20:59

That is so interesting. I did not know that I was just in for a morning. What?

Speaker 1: 21:05

money Exactly. That's why it's funny. I thought it was a great idea.

Speaker 2: 21:12

I still think it's a great idea.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Actually, we just didn't execute it properly.

Speaker 2: 21:21

I thought it was a great idea. I thought I had an opportunity to make some real nice cash on the side, because as a graduate engineer, you get paid peanuts and cashew nuts Actually, not cashew nuts- Cashew nuts cost quite a lot of money now, that's what I was going to say, definitely salted peanuts, disco quality kind of type. But yeah, I saw as an opportunity to do something different that would lead to some sort of a financial reward. And I guess I was quite excited because I had, I had thought of it and I thought I had legs and I wanted to try and test and see how far it could go and that was kind of like my motivation as to why I wanted to be, I wanted to be part of it.

Speaker 1: 22:06

I can understand that, but with both reasons. What made you choose the people? You wanted to jump on it, I guess.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Inspiration, desperation.

Speaker 1: 22:17

Yeah, that's a question I never asked you. Why didn't you go about it by yourself? It was your idea. What made you desperate for people in the first place?

Speaker 2: 22:25

No, it was an inspiration. I think that I've always come from a background where being employed was the option of choice. It was the privilege of being employed and getting into a good job. I felt that I lacked in some of the abilities around sales the networking element. I felt that partnering up with someone to share the burden and share the load would have made more sense at the time. That's why I shared the idea with yourself. We talked about the restaurant, but that's the reason why I've done that.

Speaker 1: 23:06

I think. One thing I'd like to, for myself, observe, though if we're going to take the good and the bad of us, the reasons why we started entrepreneurship with both those reasons and that time frame, from my perspective it was still a great idea to start. You see, I wouldn't go back and I'd never change that, because just because we don't know as much as we do now doesn't mean you can't start. If we'd gone about a different way, I think we both agree there could have been successes from it. It's just a matter of how we went about it. I think, when it comes to it, we might not have been knowledgeable and we'll talk it through the season as we get to it in many things but we could have still taken it somewhere, even as early as just fresh graduates, even probably during university. I'm sure it has potential there. I think it's really a key to acknowledge that fact. I will go into the bad, okay, and I don't think there's any bad reason to want to be an entrepreneur. I think one thing I'll mention here is we wanted to. There's a twist somewhere where there's people who may not want to be entrepreneurs, and it's learning that At that point in time, I was ignorant or unaware of. There's a difference between entrepreneurship and being wealthy or just being like someone who just works for a living in their own shop company versus a full-fledged entrepreneur. By that I mean the difference between a startup and owning your own shop is a chasm, but both of them can get you to the lifestyle you want, and you get to choose between those. I didn't know that. I was just like I want to start something. Therefore, when it came to considering the hours, time dedication required, it just seemed like one option, one route, one rule. I was carefree. With that knowledge, I also knew I didn't have the work experience at that time to I don't know a level or anything near what I have now, but still to a super level. I had more than anyone who was coming from university, though. That's why we could offer that service to most of those people, to our niche, let's say.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Anyway, we come to the end of the episode and pretty much we're going to be discussing the story of Charles Young recruitment consultants. In the next episode, we're going to give you some insight on how we came up with this stupid name.

Speaker 1: 25:23

So please keep up. If you're not subscribed or followed, please keep on. We're on podcasts Anywhere you find your social media, where or about there. If we're consistent there, that's not your business. We'll be consistent, as always, when it comes to the podcast episodes, and they will be weekly, on whatever day this one came in. But, with that being said, I've been one of your hosts, mark Jason's.

Speaker 2: 25:44

And your other host, valerio Tomasa, and I love the fact that you're so known specific with our finance social media. We're everywhere, however not very frequent, but we're going to release an episode on a particular day of the week, but I'm not sure which day of the week we don't need all dot movers.

Speaker 1: 25:59

That's all you need to know. We've been doing it consistently every single Wednesday until we take breaks, which we do decide on in advance and they're usually around holiday seasons. However, we'll see. We keep it on Wednesdays. If it comes out on a Wednesday, by the next episode I'll tell you the frequency. Listen to the next one to find out.

Speaker 2: 26:16

In any case, I keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1: 26:20

All right, until next time, people Adios.