Insight with Chris Van Vliet - How To Build A Successful Business And The Power Of Giving Back with Reece Mennie

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Reece Mennie (@reecemennie) is an entrepreneur, podcaster, investor and B2B expert. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hunter Jones, HJ Collection and Bigas Marketing. He joins Chris Van Vliet to chat about how he got started as an entrepreneur, tips on how you can start a business, the best advice he's ever received, what he's learned from working with Grant Cardone, why it's important to have great mentors, we also discuss his boxing gym called Dennis & Dyer Boxing Academy, his podcast called "Mennie Talks", the importance of giving back and much more! For more info on Reece visit: https://www.reece-mennie.com/ If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. For more information about CVV and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blele. Oh, yeah, welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I'm CVV, Chris Van Fleet. Hope your week's going great. Hope your year is going great so far. Thank you so much for being with us as we dive into the mindset of what it takes to start and run your own business. I started my fishing brand, my outdoors brand.

Yeah, it's called Wu Tungsten. I like to pronounce it, Woo! Tungsten, W-O-O-Xclamation, Mark Tungsten. Started it with my best friend, Aaron, five years ago, and I've been fortunate to be able to say that between that and the podcast and the YouTube

and everything else, I worked for myself, and I got to say, my boss, my boss is pretty cool. Reese Many joins us today. His boss is pretty cool, too. He is crushing it. He doesn't just have one business. He has three,

businesses. And we dive into exactly how you take that leap yourself, how you start your own business, and then once you do, how you balance everything with that and your life. He also talks about the importance of mentorship and of giving back. You can find Reese on social media. It's just his name at Reese Many. That's M-E-N-N-N-I-E. You can find me at Chris Van Leap. He also has a podcast called Many Talks. You can find that wherever you're listening to this right now, so go there and give him a follow. And if it's your first time listening to this episode,

first time listening to the show, make sure you follow or subscribe to Insight wherever you're listening right now. Our fan of the week is FCA Weble, who says, Top Pod for the Road. Being an indie wrestler, I love how CVV gets to have a normal conversation

with his guests and have them open up and feel at ease telling their stories for his show. I find it most enjoyable while I'm traveling and I always got a CVV pod on. Keep them coming. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate that. We read one review from Apple Podcasts on every single episode. So if you're listening on your iPhone, take a second right now to just go in, leave a few words, and we'll shout you out here for free, of course. And if you're listening on Spotify, they've got a rating system on there. It's fairly new, but it's been so awesome seeing all the support from everybody who listens on Spotify. So

So thank you, thank you, thank you for being on this journey with us. All right, let's dive into this one. Please welcome. Reese, many. Reese, thank you so much for joining us. No problem. It's a pleasure. I think there's a lot of people that listen to my podcast who maybe they're in a job

that they don't necessarily love. And I think the great thing about you is you've kind of just always created this for yourself. And I'm curious, was that something that started for you? early on? Yeah, at a very young age. I was always looking to, you know, do something that I wanted to do and not what other people wanted me to do, quite frankly. So from a young age, you know, I started working with my dad from a very young age.

And I learned that you had, but before that, before that, going back to when I was at school, you know, over here in the UK, you know, you're at school for for a long time. So I was paper round, you know, working through, we get six weeks holiday over here in the summer. And even through the six weeks holidays, my pals would be out playing, football, blah, blah. And I had a part-time job just for the six weeks. So working in different companies, just finding out and getting a fill for the working environment. You know, because academically, I didn't enjoy school. It didn't motivate me.

It was pretty boring, to be honest, with yourself. I wasn't inspired by it. I enjoyed going to see my friends and play and mess about. But when it comes down to it, I was more interested in getting out there and experiencing the well and making money, quite frankly. At that young age, what motivated me was thinking about how to make money. Were you looking to buy something specific? Because I also had paper rounds growing up. The idea for me was like, I got to buy this.

new baseball glove or I got to buy this new video game or something like that. Is that what motivated you? Yeah, just different things. When when you're younger, you know, you've got different drivers and it was, you know, the next best football boots, you know, the Predators or whatever was coming out. I used to playing goal when I was younger. So it was, you know, I always wanted new goalie gloves. So always when you're in a sports team, you always want the new stuff. So, you know, when you used to go, oh, mom, dad, can I have, can I have this? And it was like, well, actually, I don't want you to pay for it. Oh, I've got some money to put towards it as well.

You sort of get your way a little bit easier than just saying, can I have all the time? So that's what motivated me to start off with. I mean, you know, 14, 15 years of age, I was doing jobs in, in and around factory work and stuff like that, just on any days off from school. So any, like, insect day or any six weeks holiday, any holiday we had, I was always like,

just bring up, bring some, bring some companies out of the paper and try and, you know, can I come down even if, you know, you weren't working for a lot of money, but you get money and you don't get that at school. So that's, that's where I started. And then it just snowballed from there, really, left school early and got into a role with my father in his business, which I was very thankful for because that taught me a lot of basics in business, a lot of stuff that I didn't know. but I learned very quickly, you know, that having a business looks good and it sounds good to everybody

and everybody sees the glory sides of a business owner, but they don't see what else goes into it, quite frankly. And I was watching actually something called Instagram yesterday. There was a lady standing there and saying, this is a business owner, a lady standing there, and a big wave come in and hit her behind it, and she said, that's the reality. and it made me laugh. And that's the fact. So it's from a young age of always pushed myself to do other things.

But yeah, working in that business taught me hell of a lot. I think there's a lot of people who want to start a business and they see what you're talking about on Instagram, how glorious it can often look. Where do you start? What's the first step that you need to take, Rhys? You need to want to do it. Not for, you know, you need.

need to have a plan and you need to realize what it takes. You can't go into business just thinking, you know, looking at all the glory, looking at, you know, it's going to be easy because somebody else is successful. You're going to be successful. In my opinion, if you're going to go into business, you've got to go all in. You've got to give it everything. You need to make sure it's the right time. I listen to many entrepreneurs or many people that give advice to various different people. It's all like, you know, just start, just start, just start. And it is about just starting, but it's got to be not the right time, but the right time for you. You know, the right time is always to start. But more importantly, you need to be and understand what's in it. Because if you don't

go all in, you're not going to succeed. Yeah. How did you know what kind of business that you wanted to start? I didn't. I didn't to start off with. So how'd you find it then? I had a few different businesses. So, you know, I worked with my dad in the printing company and we grew that. And that's where I got a good feel for business and understood what went into it. And, you know, realized that, you know, the darker side, so to speak, instead of it just being going to work and getting paid. You know, when you're a young kid, you think of business, you go to work, you get paid.

You're the owner of the company. so you get paid more. That's what everybody thinks, right? Yeah. They don't realize other people need to be paid. You're responsible for them people that you employ it. You're responsible for collecting money from people that you've supplied your product to to be able to pay these people.

And a lot goes into it. And I learned that, thankfully, from working in my father's business at a very young age. The ups, the downs. And, you know, that's what really give me that insight to it. So when I started a business, I really went into it knowing. yeah, that if you don't give it, you're all, it's not going to work. Don't get me wrong. There's stories out there where somebody started a part-time something on social media

and it's blown up and they've made millions. You know, that does happen. But let's be realistic. Most of us need to put in 100% every single day to be at the top of your game. And it's, you know, there's such a difference between putting in those eight hours and working for somebody else and putting it. 12 or 16 or 18 plus when you're doing it for yourself. Correct.

Yeah. You've got to, if, you know, the people that are at the top of their game, enjoy what they do, it's not, you know, it's not just a job. It's not just work. It's not just a company. You know, they eat, sleep and breathe it every single day. And that's what motivates them. That's why they put the hours in.

It's a lifestyle. You know, entrepreneurship, in my opinion, is a lifestyle. Where did real estate come into this for you? Because that's where you've been most successful. Correct. Yeah. So that come in a funny place, really. I was working at a company, quite frankly, that was introducing these opportunities,

property opportunities to high net worth and sophisticated investors. And the company I worked for was successful at what they done. And I built the team. And we've been really well. The business was growing. But I was always looking at it and just thought, there's just so many things that I could do differently myself that would make this a much more enjoyable place to work,

better for the clientele, better for the people that are investing, better for the developers that we're raising money for. And I spoke to the people that I worked with, and they just had no interest in doing them things. They was just stuck in their way, happy with what they was doing. So, you know, I just thought, you know what, it's my time now. I put the business together, started it from scratch, me and two other people,

and just grown it organically. So we started off raising money for other property developers. And then I rolled into, you know, instead of raising money for other property developers, I learned so much about the property market and what they was doing with the money we was raising for them. that it made sense for me to team up with one of my business partners and, you know, make our own development company that now, you know, is running very successfully. So both businesses in the property sector work in sync. And yeah, that's really how I got into it.

I see a gap in the market. Yeah, and congratulations on all the success that you've had. The real estate market has changed and shifted a ton over the last two years. Is there any broad or generalized advice you'd have to someone who's maybe looking to get into the market for the first time right now? Yeah, I mean, it depends what they're looking for. You know, when you get into a property deal, you need to know what you're looking for, whether it's yield, whether you want to hold the asset, whether you want to flip the asset. So there's a lot of different advice.

But, you know, we could sit here and talk about it all day. But if people are real and really interested in getting in the property market, especially in the UK, I'm more than happy to have a conversation and let them tell me what they're looking for and point them in the right direction. But, you know, there's certain areas that you target if you're looking, if you're looking for capital appreciation. But if you're just looking for pure income, there's other areas. So it's just about doing your research, really.

So has real estate, like it sounds like it maybe wasn't your passion to begin with? Sounds like it's definitely your passion now. Yeah, correct. It wasn't. No, I mean, to start off with. When I started with my father, as I said, it was just, I don't know what my passion was. My passion was just to make money and be better than where I was. And then my passion grew.

You know, I got the role in the city from leaving his business, which my mother got me, which was very bizarre. But I got that role. And I worked my way up in that company. And as I said, just things weren't clicking and they didn't seem right. So I started working with different developers and the more I was looking into it, you know, it was more a passion at the start of starting Hunter Jones. While I moved away from the company that I was working with was to service the investors that was making the investment better.

I didn't feel like they was getting the best service. And that was what my motivator was to start Hunter Jones. And then from starting Hunter Jones, I put in place everything. that I believe makes an investor happy. And then that's when my passion come and I thought, you know what? I'm making a hell of a lot of other developers very successful by introducing them and matching them with serial investors.

Why not match myself with these investors and keep pushing on? And that's what we've done. What drives you every day, both personally and professionally? What is your main driver? Well, my main driver is my kids right now, quite frankly, leaving a legacy and making sure that, you know, they've got everything that they need to go through school, college, university, whatever it is. You know, I've got a five-year-old daughter and I've just had twins. Congrats. They was born the first of December.

Oh, they're barely a month old. Wow. Yeah, a month old. So a little boy and a little girl. So, yeah, that's my main motivator there, to be honest. with you is my family, you know, I'm very family. I'm a family man. I enjoy spending time with my family when I'm not, you know, when I'm switching off and relaxing. And that's where I am. Where does the balance come in? I'm not a father yet. I'm sure one day I will be, but where does

the balance come in when you can give your kids anything that they ask for? But maybe you shouldn't be giving it to them all the time. Correct. You have to be careful. You know, You can't, you don't want to be just making them spoil a spoil, you know, just I want, I want, I want, I want. It's about educating them and letting them grow up in the real world and experiencing things that I've experienced. It's not about giving them. The best thing that I can give my kids, obviously, is legacy is what I'm looking to give them. But every day right now, as they're growing up, it's giving them information, giving them information that I've learned. and not that I've learned, but what I've executed as well, which I know work. How much would you say mentors have helped you throughout your career?

Massive, massive. If I could have had a mentor a lot sooner, then, you know, I would have. I recommend anybody. But again, this is a great subject, and I love talking about mentors, because it's easy to say get a mentor and it will help you be successful. but I think you, I strip it back. You need a mentor that you can aspire to and you can, has done what you want to do.

What's the point of having, I know that some people say that it's not correct, but I don't see having a mentor in the aerospace business would be good for me. Grant Cardone's been a mentor for me. He's in the real estate market. Yeah. And he's doing exactly what I'm doing on a large level. where I'm going to be in the few years coming.

So, you know, it's about working and getting yourself around the right people that have done what you want to do because they can give you the answers that you need. Yeah, how do you find a mentor? If someone's at step one in the process, where do you begin? Do you recommend paying someone to be your mentor? Yeah, if you can, why not? If you, you know, you've got to pay to play, quite frankly. you know, you've got to be in with them people

that are going to give you the information you want. You've got to be careful who you pay. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of mentors out there that want to charge money for stuff that, you know, have, you know, trip it back. Make sure they've done what you're looking for. They don't have to be in your sector.

If you're looking for a mentor, the best bit of advice I could give is make sure that that mentor has actually done what you want to do or what you're looking for. There's no point me giving you information. on something that I've never done. Yeah. Look, for you to be able to say that Grant Cardone is your mentor's, it's pretty big.

Where did that relationship begin? That relationship begun with, you know, me, me getting in touch with Grant Cardone's office, number one. And my sales team, all being on Cardone University. So bought into his products, used his product, myself, been on his masterminds, read all of his books, been on his webinars, been on, you know, been on seeing his YouTube channels, watched him, been to the growth cons. And then, you know, from the growth con, connecting with different people, connecting with Gerard, connecting with Dave and people in his team.

And, you know, then getting access to him. It's not like you can just go and get access to Grant. It's not as easy as that. But, you know, once you've been around and they've seen you around a long time and you're working and your team's on there. A couple of my good colleagues over here in the UK helped bring Grant Hoverer to do the 10X UK tour, which he'd done a couple of years ago.

I was part of that. So, you know, he'd come on my podcast, I had him on my podcast then, and it's just escalated from there. So, yeah. But, you know, get in front of people. You know, Grant's hard to get in front of. But if you keep pushing,

you get in front of whoever you want to get in front of. Yeah. Look, Grant's also been on my podcast as well. And you bring it up. You're a fellow podcaster. What was the idea behind starting your podcast? The idea of starting my podcast was just to, you know, I put myself in a situation.

I look at myself, you know, 10 years ago, 14 years ago. And if there was a podcast that I could have listened to and that might have sparked that answer to that question in my head that I was sitting there thinking about. So I interview high profile entrepreneurs, people that have run multiple companies, been successful, and find out about their mindset and what it takes. Because, again, it's the same as everyone says, I'll read.

You've got to read loads of books. You know, how many books have you read this month? It's right, reading them. You've got to do what you read. If you don't do, if you're not a doer, you know, you can do all, you can have a mentor, you can read all the books, You can watch all the YouTube channels. You can be told till you can be the master at reading and taking all the information in.

But how do you execute that information? That's huge. People always say knowledge is power. Well, no, knowledge isn't power. Applied knowledge is power. It's what you do with it. We all have access to every bit of information that's ever been created because of this thing right here that lives in our pocket. It's what are you going to do with that information?

How do you, Reese, take the stuff that you love? learn and then start applying it. You just got to implement it. You know, trial and error. You've got to make mistakes to learn. The only people that don't make mistakes are people that don't do nothing. So don't beat yourself up if you've made a mistake. You know, these things happen.

You don't make the same mistake over and over again because that's very silly. But, you know, you've got to allow people to grow an organisation. You've got to allow people to make mistakes because, you know, if not, how are they ever going to, you know, get the confidence to make them decisions. And, you know, you're only as good as your team at the end of the day. So if you're running a business, you've got to have a good team. What would you say is the biggest mistake that you've made? And what's the biggest thing that you learned from that?

Very, very good question. The biggest mistake I've made when I started Hunter Jones was having a business partner at 50-50. You know, I think that's a lesson well learned. I always think now if I'm going into business, I would rather, even if I couldn't be the majority stakeholder, I'd rather be slightly less. Because what I've learned from if you are 50, 50 with somebody, you can come to lock aheads and you've become in a deadlock situation where one can't make a decision without the other and you're just wasting time. So even if they're 51 and you're 49, at least if they don't agree with you, you can still move on. we just couldn't move past a stage where we was, and we was at that stage for months and wasted months,

just because we were both 50-50. So that's the biggest lesson I've learned. When you have the businesses that you have now, do you now look at other things or look at other products and go, I might be able to do that better, because you're thinking always like an entrepreneur now. Always. I mean, a lot of successful businesses are businesses

that just do things better than the person that was doing it originally. Yeah. You know, so it's about looking at things and getting an angle and thinking, how can I do it better or not how can I do it? How can our team make it better? I think what's also so great about what you do is you give back so much. So can we talk a little bit about some of the things that you're doing to give back? Yeah, I mean, we've got the podcast.

We give back in that way in terms of, you know, back to, to our community in that sense. We give to charities every year over here in the UK. So every year our businesses will pick certain charities to work with. So we always make sure that Christmas there's certain amount of presents delivered to wherever we're working with. We will always run. So what we would do is at the beginning of the year, we'd pick two or three charities to work with.

And then we will do a few events throughout the year to raise money for them and then do something at the end of the year to give back a bigger level, really. So I'm on your Instagram here, and I see boxing. And I'm very intrigued. What is your tie-in to this? Into what, sorry, boxing. Boxing, yeah. Yeah.

So the local community, I was training with my PT, who now is my business partner in the boxing academy. and he wanted to start a boxing academy. And he was like, look, you know, I'm a great P.T. As you can see, he's been an amateur, a professional boxer. He understands how it works. He can give back to, you know, we now work with schools and things like that. But more importantly, when he come to me, he knew what he was doing in running the academy. But he didn't have, you know, the business side of it.

of how to run the business. And he was open about that. So it was like, yeah, I'll come in, I'll help you with that. We put the academy together. It's now been running just under a year. We work with all local schools around the area with the young kids, you know, to get their discipline right and things like that. We go into schools.

And we've got the academy where we now take young kids from amateurs right the way through to professionals. You know, we had a meeting today regarding looking at new venues. looking at opening more of these facilities across the UK. But yeah, the way that I got into that is he approached me and said, look, I've seen what you're doing. I like your staff. You train with me.

Would you be willing to help, quite frankly? And that's how that come about. Maybe you should have a match now. No, no, no, no, no. No, that's not getting in the rings, not a bit of me. Reese, what would you say is the best advice? that you've ever been given throughout your life? So very good question.

And it's probably a lot of people are going to be looking for a real in-depth answer, but it's a real boring answer, if I'm honest with yourself. And it's an old, it's, you know, it's the piece of advice that my father's always give me from a young age. And it's a piece of advice that, you know, Grant Cardone always talks about. And that's about taking action. If you're going to say you're going to do something, do it. Even if it's wrong, if you're going to say you're going to do it, make sure you do it.

Even if people think it's wrong, you know, don't say you're going to do something, cannot do it. I love that so much. It's also the idea of being accountable for the things. Instead of just talking about things, you're actually the guy who talks about it and also does it. I mean, in my office, you know, we've got multiple offices and even the gym. And as you just said, why don't you have a match? if push come to shove and I said that I was going to, I would have to do it. And I don't ask anybody that works with me to do anything that I wouldn't do myself.

Wow. Where did this mindset happen for you? Or was there a shift along the way where you started to get this growth mindset? No, I've always, obviously, as I've grown older and been successful, I've realized that the mindset has changed slightly. but even as a young kid playing football you know I've always and any sport I've always been competitive I've always wanted people to say

oh you know you're not going to win today your team's not as good no and I've always been that person in in that team and come on guys these people don't think we can beat them you know that's always I don't know maybe I was just born with that I've always had that way about me

from whatever I've done I've always wanted you know I hate losing you know what do I prefer doing winning or do I hate losing more I hate losing more than I love winning so many people that are successful in business were also like they played sports growing up and I feel like that competitive nature is like bred into you early and really helps you later on in life yeah what would you say is the one book that you gift to people or recommend to people most often um there's a there's a there's a lot of good books out there um so you know the 10x rules fantastic.

If you're not first, you'll last. You know, there's all of Grant's books are fantastic. But then there's Rich Dad, Poor Dad as well, which is, you know, that's a fantastic book. It's hard to pencil down just one, if I'm honest. But yeah, you can pick any of them I've just said. And they're fantastic reads and you'll pick some great things up out of them. I think people might be familiar with Grand Cardone or, familiar with the 10x rule, but can you like kind of tell people that might not be familiar?

What is the 10x rule? Great question. So basically the 10x rule in a nutshell is, you know, whatever you're doing times it by 10. You know, if you're if you're in sales and, you know, you're doing 100 grand and that's your target. Your target's 100 grand. Stop shooting for 100 grand and start 10x in your target. And then you will hit that 100 grand that you've always.

wanted to hit. Whatever you're doing, do more of. And that's it. And he breaks it down into so many steps. But to keep it very simple, it's a book that just basically tells you, whatever you're doing, do more. Do more of what you're doing. And you will get what you want. Since it's the start of the year right now, Reese, and congratulations again on the twins. That's amazing. They're just over a month old as we're sitting right now. What are the goals for you as we look ahead into 2022? Yeah, so we look to grow the Academy, the Boxing Academy. We're going to look to grow the property development side of the business. So we look to do probably another thousand units this year. And, you know, we'll be looking to raise more money through and help more people around the

world get better in the Hunter Jones business, the introducing business, get a better rate of return than they're seeing on their mainstream investment. You know, we're about to launch in the US as well. So H.J. Collection, my property development company is now going to be open to qualified investors in the US from the end of, well, beginning of February. So I'm really looking forward to that. Well, you're going to have to come out here to Los Angeles. and we'll have a drink together.

Yeah, definitely. I'm really looking forward to to come into the American market and working with some American investors that want to get involved in the UK. Ries, where's the best place that people can find you? You know, Instagram, as you said, very straightforward to be able to get hold of me

on all of my socials, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or my office, my personal website is a contact form you know, my podcast, put a message into the office and you'll always get something back. Yeah, wherever people are listening to this right now, they can listen to your podcast as well. And this has been a pleasure. It's been so nice, like, hopping across the pond and spending some time with you in the UK. I used to go there like six times a year, you know, when the world was a little bit more normal. Well, I think that's going to come back to it. It's not going to get more normal, but I think we live, we learn to live with it. And I think travel will start open.

up again. So hopefully we can welcome you over here. And when I come out there, it'd be great to meet you and introduce, you know, you can introduce me to some people and I can introduce you to some people over here. I love it. I end every conversation with the same question because I'm all about gratitude. I start and end every day saying out loud three things that I'm grateful for. What are three things in your life, Reese, that you're grateful for right now? Family, being here, you know, every day, waking up. And more importantly, my businesses and what I've created and the team and the culture that I've got around me.

Grateful for you, Reese. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. And as I said, if there's anybody that is listening that wants to get in touch, feel free to get messages, contact us or respond. If I don't respond immediately, you will get a response back from me.

100%. I can give you that commitment. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, there we go. Big thank you to Reese for joining us on this episode. Big thank you to you for being with us as well.

Take a screenshot. Let us know you're listening. Tag us on social media so we can share it. Reese is at Reese Many. It's just his name. I'm at Chris Van Vleet. Also just my name. And I'll leave you with the very wise words from Nelson Mandela,

who famously said, it always seems impossible until it is done. Be great, be grateful. We will see you on the next one for some more insight. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley.

Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of them? To Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987.

I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.