The Midas Curse and the Golden Nuggets
I've just got back from the Entrepreneurs Circle National Convention at the ICC Birmingham. Fourth year in a row I've been. This year's theme: golden nuggets from the Wild West.
Not the kind of golden nugget you pour your milk over. Not the kind you find hidden underneath mountains, either.
Ideas.
That's what I was there for. In fact, I think that's what everybody was there for — a stage full of ideas, things you could actually go away and use.
Welcome to the Wild West
First morning, first day.
I send the escalator up to the floor, and it's like going into the Wild West — the American Wild West. Felt just like the Gold Rush, or one of those land rushes, all the covered wagons staking out their territory.
Into the reception area, and I'm met by a bald eagle in the corner, wings outstretched. A pair of cowboy boots at least five foot high. And I clocked the size of the six-shooter they'd got in the exhibition hall — you wouldn't believe it.
Then I saw the EC staff. Many of them I know well. But today they're all dressed as cowboys — cowboy hats, leather waistcoats, boots.
A full-size covered wagon, a model horse hitched to it, cacti and western paraphernalia dotted about.
The works.
It was just like something out of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — a spaghetti western landed in Birmingham.
Then I went off to find the Wolverhampton crew, so when the doors opened we could all get in and sit together.
Every Choice Has a Consequence
Nigel Botterill's up first, day one.
Built Entrepreneurs Circle from nothing, seventeen-odd million-pound businesses under his belt before this one — when Nigel talks, people listen.
At one point he asks us to look inside our goodie bags and pull out a red stick.
Very easy to find, he says.
One end says CHOICE.
Other end says CONSEQUENCES.
Where's mine?
Nothing in my bag.
I asked later — all gone. Most disappointed.
There's a man stood up there telling fourteen hundred people that every choice has a consequence, and the one choice I never got to make was whether I wanted a stick.
Every choice has a consequence. Unless you don't get the stick.
Across the two days there's more good stuff than any one person needs — I'll give you a couple of the ones that stuck.
You're Not Always Solving the Problem You Think You're Solving
Rory Sutherland's one of them.
I love Rory — follow him, watch his clips, knew roughly what was coming before he opened his mouth. He's got this casual delivery, gives you the impression he's bumbling through it.
He isn't.
He's just thinking a different way to everyone else in the room.
He took us through the maths on speed and time — five miles an hour to ten, then a hundred and twenty up to two hundred and forty.
Happy to walk you through the numbers yourself if you fancy it.
But take it from me — it works.
Doubling your speed early on saves you a fortune in time. Doubling it again once you're already fast barely saves you anything at all, for a mountain more engineering to get there.
He brought up the example of HS2.
A bit close to home, that one — everybody in the room could see the construction going on all round the city, and how long it's taking.
But as he pointed out, nobody in their right mind ever thinks "I wish I could get from Birmingham to London seventeen minutes faster."
You might as well serve Dom Pérignon and have supermodels doing the serving — save yourself a fortune in the process, because people would rather stay on the train longer, not get off it sooner.
You're not always solving the problem you think you're solving.
Just Be Human
Helena Langdon's another.
Ran Innocent Drinks' social media for years.
Her whole thing — make your responses as human as possible.
I couldn't tell you much more of what she actually said, because I couldn't take notes.
Laughing too hard.
Looked her up on LinkedIn afterwards, just to see.
Her profile says: "I write words in exchange for money."
And underneath that: "I come up with ideas for brands. I talk about how to be funny and creative on the internet. I used to be in charge of all things social and customer service for Innocent Smoothies. But essentially, I piss about for a living."
I don't know how long that session was.
I was crying with laughter, my sides were aching.
Could have been twenty minutes, could have been an hour.
Good grief.
Still laughing now, just thinking about it.
The lesson from Helen: just be human.
Celebrity Service
Session eleven was billed as The Five Star Sheriff.
Turned out to be a bloke called Geoff Ramm.
Never heard of him before that morning — turns out he's about to make a big impact on the way I deliver stuff through Magnitude.
He opens by talking about turning ordinary service into something customers can't stop talking about.
Then he stands us all in the middle of it.
Rate yourself, one to ten — how good are you doing on customer service, where one's absolutely abysmal and ten's out of this world?
I felt a bit glum with myself.
Wrote five.
Middle number.
Didn't want to commit to anything better and didn't want to admit anything worse.
He counts the room up.
Under two — "you might as well leave now."
Threes and fours, a few hands.
Fives and sixes, plenty of us.
One brave soul on a ten.
Average always lands on seven, he says — every room, every country, doesn't matter.
Seven, always.
Then he plays it straight for a minute.
Same old, same old.
You know what everybody tells you the secret to good customer service is, don't you?
Two rules.
Room chimes in — go the extra mile. Exceed expectations.
Then he stops.
What does that actually mean?
Because it means nothing on its own.
Just words on a poster in the staff room.
So he builds it into something with teeth — Celebrity Service, he calls it.
Engagement
Find one real thing about your customer, and hand it back to them in a way that lands.
Response
Instant, personal, no waiting.
Somebody enquires about a wedding venue, don't send them a brochure.
Get your phone out there and then, film a video, rough as you like.
"Thanks for getting in touch — thought I'd show you round. This is the room, this is the view out that window."
Do it with love — actually care, and get your team caring too, because Celebrity Service doesn't survive one person doing it on their own.
Then he asks for celebrities.
Names flying.
He picks George Clooney out of the pile.
Clooney walks into your business tomorrow.
Wants something slightly out of the ordinary.
Do you tell him to come back tomorrow?
Sorry, we haven't got that?
Room goes quiet.
Everybody knows the answer, and everybody knows what it means.
And then he shows you what it looks like when it works.
Ellen's Stardust Diner in New York — waitstaff who burst into full Broadway numbers between taking your order.
He found out about it the way most people do now, through TikTok.
His daughter saw a clip and said, if we could go anywhere, let's go there.
So they went.
Engagement, response, love — all of it, in one diner, good enough that a teenager built a holiday around it.
Information Isn't Rare Anymore
Michelle's penultimate, day two, talking values — wrong person pulling the wrong way and your stagecoach doesn't move.
And this is where I lost it.
Two days in, I'm an outdoors man who hadn't walked a kilometre since Monday.
Knees aching, nowhere to stretch them out, sat indoors wanting to be somewhere with weather in it.
Head properly aching by now, too much going in over two days, nowhere left to put it.
And my first thought, every time, is the same one:
I've got this big back.
I reckon I could do anything if you gave me enough time to do it.
So what do I actually do with all this?
Where do I even start?
Here's what I was slow to see, and this convention proved it to me twice over.
Information isn't rare any more.
Anyone with a laptop can find out almost anything in twenty minutes flat.
What's rare is understanding what you've found.
Rarer still — understanding it isn't the same as doing something with it.
I don't know any more if I thought of that myself or picked it up somewhere along the way.
It's been rattling round long enough now that it just feels like mine.
The Midas Curse
Midas was a king, given a wish by the gods as a reward.
He chose this: everything he touched would turn to gold.
Brilliant, he thought.
Right up until the next morning, when he reached for his goblet of wine.
Goblet turned to gold instantly — fine, that's the whole point.
But so did the wine inside it.
Then the flowers in the garden, turning solid and gold under his fingers as he walked past.
He worked out fairly quickly that a life made entirely of gold wasn't a life he could actually live in.
So he went back to the gods and asked them to take the gift away.
Turned out touching everything wasn't worth it, even if everything you touched was treasure.
Touch every nugget in that room and you'll starve the same as he nearly did.
Not because the gold isn't real.
Because you can't eat it, wear it, or live inside it.
So how do you sift through all those golden nuggets to find the twenty-four carat idea?
Find the Twenty-Four Carat Idea
Botterill closes it out, and this is the bit that matters.
Write down your best ten ideas from the whole event — at least then you've captured them, you can come back to them later.
Then cut that ten down to your best five.
Then cut the five down to three.
And then, most important bit:
Put a date against each of the three.
Because an idea without a deadline is just a wish.
And wishes don't always come true.
That is the twenty-four carat gold idea I picked up from the convention.
Not any single idea from the stage.
The tool for knowing which ones to pick and use.
Knowing and not doing, he says, is the same as not knowing.
Same stick he opened with.
Choice. Consequence.
Doing nothing is still a choice — I found that out myself, standing there with no stick in my hand.
As soon as I've finished writing this blog post, I'm off to finish sorting out my own actions from the convention.
Twenty of them so far.
Got to get that down to three.
What's Your Golden Nugget?
If you've been to a few of these yourself, read the books, binged the podcasts, and you're sat on a pile of good ideas with no idea which one to pick up first — that's exactly what a diagnostic session is for.
Not another idea.
Help working out which of the ones you've already got is actually yours to pick up, and when.
If you're ready to sift through your own pile and find the one that's actually yours to run with, book a session:
Or, if you'd rather talk first, get in touch with Magnitude and we'll have a conversation about where your business is right now and what you're trying to achieve.
Call Patrick: 01902 214323
Email: patrick@magnitude.biz
Visit: https://www.magnitude.biz/
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