Gareth Wax & Désiré Roberts

Listen to Désiré and Gareth talk about his company, Many Purple Hats, and delve into this story of entrepreneurship!

Gareth’s Contact Details:

Company Name: Many Purple Hats

Website: www.mphats.com

Email: gareth @ mphats.com

 

Podcast Transcript (Automated)

Désiré Roberts: [00:00:00] TILT Creative with Desire Roberts, 

Gareth Wax: helping people to make sure their ideal client avatars sit up and take notice of their brand, their service. Their product and themselves online. Now

Désiré Roberts: you’re listening to The Entrepreneur Spotlight, but before we get into it, I just wanted to thank you for following me into this tilted rabbit hole where we learn about the entrepreneur journey and all the magnificent and terrifying things that come with. If you’re an entrepreneur and you want to increase your brand exposure network internationally and gain insights from our team of industry leaders and follow the breadcrumbs in the show notes to the LinkedIn SME shoutout hour group.

Désiré Roberts: That will give you instant access to a bunch of resources and to the incredibly knowledgeable [00:01:00] team, many of whom are guests on this podcast. But it will also give you access to our weekly live show, the SME shouts at hour when you can jump in and shout out your business to the hundreds of weekly listeners, and you’re welcome to come along every single week.

Désiré Roberts: It’s free brand awareness and exposure, and you get to meet some really cool people on the. And if you have a branding question or you just want to have your business idea, website or branding evaluated by the consultants who are live, just join the conversation. It’s such incredible value and you don’t have to pay a penny for it.

Désiré Roberts: Now it’s time. Let’s jump straight into the rabbit hole. Gareth, thank you for coming on the show. How are you feeling today? 

Gareth Wax: Hello, welcome. I feel very welcome. I’m glad to be here. It, it, I was actually bowled over when you actually asked me to be a part of it, [00:02:00] and uh, I’m only too pleased to share what little knowledge I have with anyone who wants to listen.

Gareth Wax: It’s, uh, some of it’s relevant. Occasionally it’ll be irrelevant, but I hope to be able to make a difference. . 

Désiré Roberts: Okay. Just to start us off, tell us about your company and what you guys. 

Gareth Wax: Right. Well, my company’s called Many Purple Hats. This is just one of them. Um, what we are about is helping people to make sure their ideal client avatars sit up and take notice of their brand, their service, their product, and themselves.

Gareth Wax: Online, specifically on LinkedIn. Now, not in five months time, not in two years time, but as quickly as we can. And it’s not, there are no real shortcuts on LinkedIn, but it’s about preparing the way and revealing some of that which is hidden, not just about your company, but about yourself. It’s an old adage, I think, um, people [00:03:00] buy from people and unless they understand where the value is in you.

Gareth Wax: They won’t see you as a safe pair of has to do business with. So even if you’re a multinational, uh, million millionaire, uh, bringing in quadrillions of business on a daily basis, they still need to know what drives you and why it is you continue to push forward. I think that’s very important. So therefore, my adage always is, um, personal content, but business intent.

Gareth Wax: Does that make sense? I like that because you can, you can take any personal post on LinkedIn. I’m gonna dive in now. We’re gonna dive in. We’re diving in . I’ve got Hang how

Gareth Wax: you’ve in business for four months. 

Désiré Roberts: You are doing it a lot longer than that though. [00:04:00] 

Gareth Wax: Well kind of look, the story is. And I use this story, this is gonna sound partially negative, but it’s got a real, I, I know it’s early on to get, get, get negative, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna 

Désiré Roberts: positives in the entrepreneur journey, 

Gareth Wax: so, right.

Gareth Wax: So what we’re gonna do, Is we’re gonna talk about the four years, which I create, co-created a company called Purple Fedora. Now this is a purple fedora, so it was always, always about the hat. By the way, purple is not my favorite color. Blue is my favorite color. Or yellow. It’s they’re interchange, um, as far as, cuz the opposite end of the same color wheel.

Gareth Wax: Um, but my wife’s favorite color is purple and I pretty much do everything in her honor. So that’s my, oh, that’s my. Well, you know, that’s so sweet. Well, something’s precious. You’ve gotta hang onto it, you know. Oh, that’s, that’s 

Désiré Roberts: adorable. 

Gareth Wax: Well, you know, uh, every time she says, I’ve done well, this [00:05:00] is how I feel.

Gareth Wax: Thank you. Um, so the important thing is to note that. Everything that is negative can actually have some secret positives to it. So when I tell you this, when I tell you this, this little story, you’ll, you may think, oh, the poor man. He was so beleaguered. No one, no, I learned a lot. And also it’s given me the, the, the boost upwards.

Gareth Wax: So I. Set up the company after 10 years friendship with a gentleman. I set up this company with him to fill a hole that I saw. That is to say if anybody’s ever been on LinkedIn for more than five minutes. And if you ever bother reading the terms of service, most people don’t. Um, in the terms of service in section eight.

Gareth Wax: In fact, it says they’ll shout not under pain of death. Use any form of LinkedIn automation. Don’t use any automation cuz if we catch you doing. [00:06:00] We’ll cut you off at the knees. And what I mean by that is I’ll sanction you and the sanction may be for a day or week, or might be forever. Remember, LinkedIn is a virtual monopoly.

Gareth Wax: I know. I’m making you shaking your boots. No, look, what I’m saying is that’s 

Désiré Roberts: crazy. I don’t, yes. I don’t know. Every social media expert out there uses social media scheduling tool. 

Gareth Wax: Yeah, I, I wouldn’t do that on LinkedIn. Especially not now that they’re rolling out their own scheduling. LinkedIn. Wow. The whole deal has always been keep them on the site for as long as possible, right?

Gareth Wax: And yes. So they, so I mean, let’s, let’s jump in there with bits of knowledge. If you use a link that takes you out of site within your post. It will downgrade the aperture by anything up to 40%, between 20 and 40% just by having the external link in it. Don’t worry, all hope is not [00:07:00] lost. I have a trick away around it.

Gareth Wax: So guess what? It only tests for that for the first 10 minutes. So what you do is you put the post in there, you wait 10 minutes, and then you put the link within the post. So you go and edit the post. So they 

Désiré Roberts: don’t just go back and double check 

Gareth Wax: it? No, it’s only checked for the first 10 minutes. I mean, they might, they might change that.

Gareth Wax: So watch this space. I, I do keep testing this, uh, but it’s no disable. So, so that’s the first thing. But secondly, if you’ve put a post up on LinkedIn, I know we’re jumping straight into the knowledge. I haven’t finished my screen. No, that’s got, that’s I’ll get, I will get to the story I promise. So, um, if you put a post up there, I notice there’s a spelling mistake in.

Gareth Wax: What’s the first thing you do? You edit it? No, not for the first 10 minutes. . All right. Garbage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Otherwise, there you go. [00:08:00] You failed. So what you’ve gotta do instead is after 10 minutes you edit it and then you change this funny mistake. Now here’s another one, another little trick before I get back to my story.

Gareth Wax: Um, you know when you made your post and you’ve put the post out? And you realize that you shouldn’t put the link in the post. Where do you put the link in the comments? 

Désiré Roberts: No, 

Gareth Wax: because if you can’t be the first person to a, to comments, comment on your post, it needs to be somebody else. So one of the things I did is I developed a, a, a relationship with my clients.

Gareth Wax: So if I post so. They post the first comment and then I can write anything I want in there. But then again, you don’t need to put links in into the comment cause it’ll be in the post anyway. Here’s another thing is remember, 

Désiré Roberts: you just have to remember to jump in and edit it. 

Gareth Wax: Yeah, that’s right. So, so all I would say is this.

Gareth Wax: Most [00:09:00] people love the old YouTube. All the YouTube is lovely. Does all the subtitling for you. Amazing. Problem is LinkedIn hates YouTube. They loathe it. Now we need to remember who LinkedIn is owned by. Microwatt Micro Soft. Hang on. We need that

Gareth Wax: So what we need to do is realize that because Microsoft, uh, own it, they. They don’t like it. So if you put a link to it, even if it’s after the 10 minutes and it’s to YouTube, they downgrade 12% your aperture. That’s the number of people that your postal spread to, right? Guess what? Who? They love Vimeo.

Gareth Wax: They love Vimeo. Okay. The sort of relationship, so it’ll still downgrade your post, but only by like one or 2%. So if you really have a, a video series and you want it to be [00:10:00] hosted somewhere el other than yourself or use Vimeo, okay. There you go. Now go back to the story. So I, I built this company, um, sorry.

Gareth Wax: This never gets any better than this. Uh, I built this company, uh, some foreign a bit years ago with my, my friend. And, uh, we were running it. Uh, and unfortunately things became difficult between us and i, I, uh, was subject to what can only be described as workplace bullying, and I decided I would not put up with this.

Gareth Wax: It took a long, long while for me to get there cuz you keep wanting your friend to see the way themselves. Yeah. It was happened to other people, but when it spread towards me and it started happening to me. That’s when I realized writing was not just on the wall, but the door was firmly open. I needed to get walking through it.

Gareth Wax: So I created a new company called Many Purple Hats. Um, and I did that in [00:11:00] November, well, October last year, but November la November is when it really came alive. Um, and of course I started again from scratch with zero clients and uh, I still have my credibility, but that was it. Luckily, we’ve just hit the 24th client as.

Gareth Wax: This morning. So I’m very proud to say we are not just a going concern. But yeah, I think, you know, I, I, I get myself, why aren’t we, why aren’t we at 40? Why aren’t we at 50 clients? And I think that, yeah. Actually it’s only been four months. Come on, give yourself a break. Yeah, yeah. You know, tell you what though.

Gareth Wax: When we hit uh, 50, I will be celebrating. I will 

Désiré Roberts: be so, well, no, we’ll, we’ll do an episode, we’ll definitely be doing an episode and talking about your journey from, from zero to 50. 

Gareth Wax: Definitely. But let me, lemme take, lemme take the positive out that, because that was a negative, toxic situation. 

Désiré Roberts: It was, but you, but you took the strength, it took strength for you to be able to walk away from that, [00:12:00] especially cause you took time and you to build it.

Désiré Roberts: It 

Gareth Wax: was my wife that, that, that gave me the extra impetus cuz part of me wanted to try and sit it through it and make it better and work on it from the inside out and the rest of it. But she said it’s actually ruining you slow. You are, you are being eaten up by it and it’s actually creating, turning you into a person you don’t want to be.

Gareth Wax: So you need to take this and make the decision and leave this thing and move on and, and create something better. So I did. So I did, and I’m very proud of that. But, you know, I did something extra. I thought if I could turn it into a teaching exercise so that other people could learn from this. That would be cool.

Gareth Wax: So if anybody who wants to finds me on LinkedIn, you know, it goes to my featured section. There’s a section of, and I’ll talk to you about the feature section in a minute. Um, and we’ll talk a little bit about creator mode, which I’m sure you know about [00:13:00] the zero. But I want to talk to you about what it, what it can be used for and how to make a difference using it.

Gareth Wax: Uh, but in creator mode, once you’ve switched it on, um, yeah. If everybody wants to know how to switch it on, go to resources in their profile, there’s a toggle button there and you told it to one. Then it asks you about which hashtags best describe your purpose. So put five, put them in there. Let’s say you’re now in creative mode.

Gareth Wax: Um, you’ve got now full control over the featured section. And in the featured section are posts that you think are representative. Now I always recommended the first three cause it shows the first three. Three is the magic number on LinkedIn. Loves threes, loves threes, uh uh, shows three recommendations.

Gareth Wax: You know, it, it only shows the first three. Three is important. I think. 

Désiré Roberts: I think three is a magic number everywhere. I mean, even in my own services I’ve got, well, I know that three points, 

Gareth Wax: if you, if you, if you ask someone to repeat you a whole bunch of [00:14:00] numbers and it’s like, let’s say a 20 or 30 thing, they’ll tend to repeat them to you in groups of three or groups of four.

Gareth Wax: It’s, it’s kinda like, it, it’s, it’s sort of magical that way. So, so going back to it, so the first three should be ones that are representative of who you, what you stand. And I, I recommend one should be about a business. Another one should be something about ethics. Maybe another one should be like a, like a, a purpose driven one.

Gareth Wax: So if you scroll along there, you’ll find one of them has the big graphic that says bully and inside the word bully, it’s got all different words that describe what a bully can be. Now, I wrote this post and posted it at two o’clock on a Sunday, in two o’clock in the morning. The most, the most unpopular time on LinkedIn to put out a post.

Gareth Wax: And I did it to prove a point. Cuz often people talk about engagement pods and we’ll cover that at a bit later as well. Uh, about the benefits of them and why [00:15:00] people use them. And they do have a purpose, but some people overuse them so they’re use them all the time so they’re no longer understand what reality is cuz they’re already always being artificially pushed along.

Gareth Wax: And I said, I bet. Uh, I can get a post to have many comments on it. And as you know, anything above about 30 comments is almost considered to be viral on on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. On LinkedIn. Yeah, absolutely. And I got to 60 comments in one day on this post. Wow. Now one of the things of making a post that’s gonna grab that kind of attention is to pick a topic that is in the public eye.

Gareth Wax: So workplace bullying, always a popular one. Okay? So we always knew we were gonna get some level of of connection. The next thing is you need to find a copyright free graphic, and it needs to be copyright free because LinkedIn. Copyrighted objects and downgrade your post if it finds them. So it needs to be copyright free.

Gareth Wax: So I spent a long time [00:16:00] hunting for a copyright free graphic, which I did. Then you need to make sure that the way in which you structure your post, especially if you’re gonna have a lot of information in it, is a series of short paragraph. Humans tend to not read more. And this is, I think this is not, I wouldn’t say it’s a golden rule, but I think you people should make peace with this no matter how beautiful it’s constructed.

Gareth Wax: Your pros is, no matter how well thought out or well-intentioned, it may be, yeah. People don’t tend to read more than one paragraph of anything. At least not in the first stray. So what you have to do, if you want them to read multiple paragraph, Is make sure that the last line of each paragraph has push words in it.

Gareth Wax: That’s words which are dynamic eye, eye grabbing, attention grabbing, and also ones, it almost created a, uh, a mini cliff hanger. So they’re thinking, yeah, 

Désiré Roberts: but it’s the same, it’s the same journalism as well. They tell you when you’re writing news, you put all of the information in your first paragraph. Well, everything you need to know needs to be in that 

Gareth Wax: first paragraph.

Gareth Wax: No, I don’t do [00:17:00] that. That’s that’s a new, I do the thing that’s gonna grab you by the what it, the lead and then lead you down to next one. And then what I do is, the last paragraph is the resolver. This is the one that makes you think, oh wow, you’ve put me through the mill, but this is the one that’s gonna make, it’s like a, a balm on your forehead.

Gareth Wax: It’s gonna make you feel, ah, okay. It, it all turned out nice again, which if you read mine, it does. And then yeah, you tag in only people who are gonna react within a fairly short period of time and don’t tag more than say 10 or so. If you feel that you need to tag load more, tag them in in a comment further down once somebody else, 

Désiré Roberts: oh, that was a mistake I’ve made recently.

Désiré Roberts: I tagged about 15 or 20 odd people in a particular post, but I wanted those people to kind of be tagged anyway, 

Gareth Wax: but yeah. Well first of all, first rule of etiquette on LinkedIn is people who are gonna be tagged in post should know they’re gonna be tagged in on. You tag them in without any, I just 

Désiré Roberts: randomly, [00:18:00] randomly tagg in.

Désiré Roberts: You wouldn’t 

Gareth Wax: believe how many people do that to, sir. 

Désiré Roberts: I know. That’s why I’m, I do it. I do it . 

Gareth Wax: It’s not a good practice. Not a good practice, but, but once you’ve done that, okay, once you’ve done that underneath it, ask two questions. Okay. One closed question. One open question. Why a closed question? Gareth? I know everybody says ask open questions, and that’s really cool, but people often find it quite difficult to produce something from nothing.

Gareth Wax: And asking open question is like presenting an artist with a blank piece of paper and saying, draw. So with a closed question, which is a binary thing with a yes or no, people find it so easy to answer. So ask him an easy to answer, buy a new question, and then once they’re now in a mode, well, I can answer a question.

Gareth Wax: They’re far more likely to answer the second question, which is the open question. Underneath it put hashtags no more than 10. I always go for about five or six [00:19:00] and make sure you’ve identified which hashtags get a larger response, and when I mean by that, are well attended. So for instance, I tend to use hashtag support almost all the time.

Gareth Wax: Hashtag Blessed. That’s a good one. Hashtag sales. Very well attended, but also put in a hashtag of your own. Now, not many people will be under that, but if, if you put it on everything and gradually encourage people to, to start following that hashtag, that’s how you build your tribe. Uh, and then what I would, I would say is, is your reaction to other people’s comment.

Gareth Wax: Sorry 

Désiré Roberts: for that. That last hashtag your personal one, right. Should it be like your, like your brand name? So for instance, mine would probably be Tilt Creative. 

Gareth Wax: It could. It could be, or it could be your personal hashtag, uh, Desi Speaks or something. Desi is awesome. Well, this that’s true as well. . Yeah. Well, you know, uh, [00:20:00] all I would say, you know, even if she is at the behest of a parrot, let’s not go there.

Gareth Wax: Uh, but , we know who’s boss. Uh, so the pirate, yeah, it’s the pirate, of course. No, no. All I would say. You’ve got to make it so that when they finish this ordeal of reading through these, this tumult, this, this series of males, that it’s all finishes up tied with a bow, that they feel that they’re energized.

Gareth Wax: You’ve gotta get them, you’ve gotta tee them up to want to make a comment because there’s no point in doing this just for likes. You need the comments, you need the dialogue starters, and then this is next. When people are saying a comment, you need to respond to that comment in good time. Within 90 minutes, the comment being put and you need to write, tag them into your response to literally go at, sign their name even though it’s your responding.

Gareth Wax: Put it in there cuz they’ll get a pulse through and it’ll [00:21:00] help the algorithm too, and then respond to it without the same, far more than just nice post. It needs to be somewhat descriptive of why you’re saying what you’re saying. So if one, if any, everyone wanted to go look there. It’s literally on there.

Gareth Wax: It’s there as a teaching. It was cathartic for me cuz it describes some pitfalls. Without going into detail, I’m not getting gruesome details, but all I was trying to do is give people hope that even if you are feel like you are pushed into a corner, there is a way forward. And the positive thing that’s come out of it is I’ve built something new, it’s working well.

Gareth Wax: And more importantly, I ended up with a good teaching. That’s amazing. 

Désiré Roberts: That’s amazing. No, honestly, like this is, this is the, the, the true essence of the entrepreneur journey that I’m always talking about. I mean, it’s never like straightforward. It’s never something that’s just all positive, all roses that you see.

Désiré Roberts: I mean, my own journey has a lot of. [00:22:00] Parts and dark bits to it, and it’s in the, in that darkness that I found that my light and it’s pushed me beyond kind of what, like it pushed, it’s pushed me beyond my own boundaries. And it’s pushed me to grow. And I think that’s really, really important as well. And we need to, we do need to kind of talk about these kind of experiences because there are people out there who are going through this and they think that they’re the only one going through it.

Désiré Roberts: And that’s not true because we’re all going through it. We’re all in the same boats. 

Gareth Wax: So you asked me originally what. Many Purple Hats provides. So I, yes. I sort of took some notes. I’m, I’m, I’m not gonna read them to you directly, but I That’s fine. The, my team have five parallel processes, really? Right. Um, it’s a three to six month engagement strategy that includes post articles, graphics, videos, animations, copyright through music, carousels a whole lot.

Gareth Wax: Yeah. [00:23:00] That runs in parallel with data mining. And the data mining we do is bound, uh, by searches, not just purely looking for a company that fits a certain schema, but also looking at their content. So we search to the content looking for times they’ve mentioned the topic, you want them to be interested.

Gareth Wax: So I’ve got hiccups. Oh, hang on, I’m gonna take a drink. And the point is that they’re talking. The fact they’re finding it difficult to use a CRM or that if only they could find a way forward, that’s almost a a point to try and include them in a group where they talk about CRMs, to tag them into a post where Where’re talking about how you can survive the, the, the deadly crm.

Gareth Wax: You know? Do you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Um, so that’s the data mining. We don’t just data mine from LinkedIn. We’re data mine from company’s. From their own company, the company website, and from Google. So we end up [00:24:00] with an overall, effectively a spreadsheet full of parallel publicly, uh, facing information, uh, which helps us later on.

Gareth Wax: Obviously we’ve got, i, I run monthly LinkedIn effectiveness masterclass. Yes. Um, uh, I also do LinkedIn live podcasting. Anybody who, who, uh, follows me at all knows I do about five or six those a week and they tend to be cover, they’re all my clients, but we also help. Shine a spotlight on certain elements of what those clients are doing.

Gareth Wax: Yeah. Um, and also run My Mad Haters lounge with, which is a, a kind of like get together group, uh, on a Friday afternoon with a no pitch guarantee. Uh, what we do is we run a q a, which is all questions answered, so we get some specialists in, and I say to people, right, I’ll create you some rooms if you fancy, I don’t care.

Gareth Wax: You could do it here if you. But what I want you to is ask the questions that you always wanted to ask, but never had either the balls, the [00:25:00] time or the money to ask it. They’re right in front of you. They’re waiting to answer them. And, and that’s what we do and we’re doing that monthly. Um, but there was one other thing you asked, which I thought was really interesting, um, which was, The hardest thing about entrepreneurship that really struck me.

Désiré Roberts: I just wanted to take a moment to shout out my business here. Tilt Creative, which has enabled me to do amazing work and gives my career a platform that enriches me. Tilt Creative is a strategic brand development consultancy, providing consulting and coaching to entrepreneurs who are just getting started, small businesses who want to grow to the medium.

Désiré Roberts: And large corporations that need to deepen the connection with their customers to strengthen their competitive edge. And with our framework, you can increase your revenue by 20% in 12 months. Check out the website and book a free, no obligation, [00:26:00] 15 minute consultation, and we can guide you to the service that best suits your needs.

Désiré Roberts: Linkers in the show notes.

Gareth Wax: The show the hardest thing about entrepreneurship. That really struck me. Cause what do you think is the hardest thing about entrepreneurship? I’m gonna throw the ball back at you to zero . 

Désiré Roberts: Um, I think it’s the loneliness of entrepreneurship. That’s the hardest for me. Um, I mean, I’ve got a lot of people around me, but, and I’ve got a lot of friends, but a lot, most of them don’t, they don’t get it.

Désiré Roberts: They don’t understand because none of them are entrepreneurs as well. And 

Gareth Wax: do you not have any entrepreneur 

Désiré Roberts: friends? No, I do. Yeah. , I have got a few. I’ve literally, what I have done is, um, I’ve created a small, a small network and we all kind of talk to each other and it’s amazing because we’re able to kind of support each other in that way.

Désiré Roberts: But I do hear a lot of people talking about it, a lot of people [00:27:00] talking about the loneliness of being a CEO o of being an entrepreneur, because other people just don’t, don’t get it. Unless you are there and you are doing it yourself, then that’s, that’s probably, I think, the hardest part of it. 

Gareth Wax: It’s, it’s, so has that been the hardest part for you?

Gareth Wax: That’s definitely the fitting that you couldn’t, you couldn’t torture your family and your friends, cuz they just didn’t, wouldn’t. Well, I can 

Désiré Roberts: talk to them, but they just listen and they just kind of nod. Yeah, yeah, 

Gareth Wax: yeah. But it’s like when I, 

Désiré Roberts: it’s just like, they just little glassy eye and it’s just like, 

Gareth Wax: well, I talk to my wife about, about, about marketing issues and how frustrated I am with this or that, and, and she just, she just nods her head like that.

Gareth Wax: And I know that, that she doesn’t really latch on. And why should she? Yeah, she’s in the, she’s in the medical space. She doesn’t really get this, uh, for me. Is and is is to people. Most people that know me know that I’m autistic. Um, I’m on the spectrum and I’ve, I’m a mess of coping strategies. I’ve, I’ve learned how to talk to other humans.

Gareth Wax: It, it is [00:28:00] taken a long time. My first. My first career was as a, as a musician, and I’ve always retained that I’m a drummer and I was in a touring rock band, but when I came back from, I used to hide behind walls of drums and symbols. You see, that was my way of hiding in a way. Um, and when I came back, I became, uh, Uh, well, I became a Cisco engineer over a, a period of time and I used to hide in computer rooms, server rooms.

Gareth Wax: Yeah, absolutely. Sitting there with my duffle coat on and my laptop and my beanie hat on and, and you know, I’d see the security in the morning and, and perhaps my manager in mid-afternoon and maybe one, one of the people I was working with. And then I’d go home and that would be my lot. And so I know people think that I’m a natural.

Gareth Wax: And mix and match with people. But truthfully, I, uh, originally it couldn’t be further away from that. So, to answer the question, what’s been the hardest thing about entrepreneurship? For me, it’s [00:29:00] how do, how do use my autistic traits to facilitate better communication? One of the benefits, one of the things that used to be a.

Gareth Wax: Nightmare for me is I don’t understand facial expressions. I find I find body language confusing. Um, I find, uh, uses of English confusing, you know, with the double meanings and, and, and I can be a literalist and I, you say, well go jump off a bridge. You know, part of my mind, why did you want me to jump off a bridge ball?

Gareth Wax: You know, uh, it, it’s, I take things literally. How can I turn this to my best advantage? Well, the first thing I do in any business relationship is I, I say, look, I am autistic. I don’t understand all these things. And rather than driving myself mad, I’ve taken the executive decision to ignore the whole bloody lot.

Désiré Roberts: That’s best way 

Gareth Wax: though. Well, yeah, but if I tell, [00:30:00] I say I’m actually gonna, if I hear something like that, rather than. Going nuts. Well, I will in instead will say I ignore it and it’s gonna plow through. Now, this means I sometimes comes off, come off as over talkative, uh, not respecting people’s verbal boundaries, you know, uh, butting in, occasionally narcissistic.

Gareth Wax: But what I do permanently believe that this enables me to do is always join the, the, the, the distance between two dots with a straight. You see what I mean? It, it, it, yeah. I, I cut straight through cause I, it’s not, I’m ignoring the bullshit most of the time I re recognize it’s there. I’ve just literally just gone, yeah.

Gareth Wax: Um, let’s do this now. 

Désiré Roberts: Yeah. But that, that efficient, it can be very efficient. It’s efficient. [00:31:00] I’m, I mean, I’m not autistic, but I do exactly the same. I’m incredibly direct and a lot of people do not like it. Um, but it’s just because I just can’t be bothered with all of it. It’s just get place A to B now, let’s go.

Désiré Roberts: You know, I, I’m incredibly impatient as an individual though, because I’m like, right, cool, let’s go. I’m, I’m very action based. I don’t like spending a lot of time talking about stuff. It just frustrates. So I’m like, right, cool. Let’s actually get your hands really sleeves, get your hands dirty. Let’s see how this goes.

Désiré Roberts: Um, so yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s me. But it, honestly, it’s a lot more efficient and effective if you just kind of not have to deal with all the extra, you know, BS in it. 

Gareth Wax: No, I just go sort that I’m. Push forward and we’re gonna communicate and get things done. Otherwise you get, yeah, you get mired down. I don’t do small talk in the same way.

Gareth Wax: No, I, I get [00:32:00] extremely bored very quickly and I need stimulation and the only way I can get stimulation I think is if I’m doing something to help. Yeah. So I recently had this very frank conversation with one of my clients, which went something along the lines of, you’re not helping me to help. I need more ideas towards content.

Gareth Wax: I need you to want, explain to me what it is you wanna affect these people with. What emotion do you need them to feel when they read your stuff, when they see your videos, when they read, when they flick through your carousels, what is it you wanna do? And he went, oh, Gareth, I, okay, let’s do this. Then I want to en energize people.

Gareth Wax: Yeah, I know I can do it. 

Désiré Roberts: We’re doing it, we’re doing it. We do it every week on the show, so, you know, it’s too high. It . That’s what we do. That’s what we do. We do it and we use our superpowers so, you know, help people. Oh, I’ve [00:33:00] just realized that the light’s coming in there. It’s very bright. 

Gareth Wax: Well, you 

Désiré Roberts: look great, right?

Désiré Roberts: The sun, the, the, the sun’s just decided to come out and just do the most. That’s alright. 

Gareth Wax: Cool. I I, I, you did ask me a bunch of questions up front. Yes, I did. There was a couple of things that, that, that got me. Things you don’t know about me. I have a number of other businesses as well, so, okay. So the, the ones I don’t really talk much about, um, when I do voiceover work for people on occasion, I do, I’ve been doing a couple of books, Samanthas of poetry and even a whole bunch of adverts.

Gareth Wax: Uh, The other areas are, of course, my music, my band, encrypted Love has just released its first album, uh, which was only four weeks ago. So it’s still in the early stages. Uh, the album’s called Red. If anybody looks up encrypted, love on as encrypted, the way you’ve spelled encrypted, [00:34:00] um, encrypted as in I’ll, I’ll, 

Désiré Roberts: I’ll add it into the show notes.

Désiré Roberts: Just send me the link. 

Gareth Wax: Um, if you look on any way you’ve fancy to getting your music from the Spotify or Apple, Musical iTunes. It’s all there. Um, uh, awesome. It’d be lovely if you could, uh, have a listen to that e each track recorded in one take. Uh, live in a live studio, so we didn’t re-edit it anything, but, uh, we’ve all been musicians for an awful long period of time.

Gareth Wax: There’s three of us. Um, but the other thing is I, uh, another business I run is called Purple Bot. Our strap line is let us show you our shiny purple bot. Um, and uh, purple bot is chatbot. For websites or for WhatsApp, I dunno what you are laughing at, but WhatsApp or for or for Messenger it’s shiny Purple Bot.

Gareth Wax: Oh, everybody needs to have a purple bot. So if you, if you fancy learning more about, it’s purple hyphen bot.com, you can learn more about it That, um, and another company, uh, I formed, and this is [00:35:00] only five months ago. Smart Mycelium Limited. Now. Okay. What do you guys do? My, yes. Well, mushrooms. Do mushrooms mean anything?

Gareth Wax: Not those kind of mushrooms. Mushrooms, mushroom. Well, exactly. Um, mycelium is the stuff that comes before mushrooms. The precursor. It, it, you have to treat it a little bit more like an animal than a, than a plant. It actually will learn by its mistakes. It will seek out, test and then redrawn and seek out elsewhere.

Gareth Wax: But one of it’s, it has a number of marvelous proper. One is it’ll grow around almost any shape. And once grown, if you cook it in a certain, in a certain way, which is part of our ip, I’m not gonna give full details, you can turn it into solid objects and cause, uh, the process of growing mycelium, it acts as a carbon sink.

Gareth Wax: So literally it takes carbon outta the atmosphere in a permanent way and then, And then later on down the [00:36:00] line, let’s say once it’s, it’s broken or not used, uh, useful anymore, you can literally break it up and plow it into the soil. It’s literally bec it’s organic n Next, uh, purpose is we are using it to create sound deadening so we can create sheets of it.

Gareth Wax: Yeah. Which acts sound deadening. Naturally formed, again baked. And then finally, my, this is pop. Perhaps the most exciting mycelium. Likes eating carbohydrates or hydrocarbons. And you can train it to eat oil to eat, plastic to eat wrapping. Why aren’t 

Désiré Roberts: the billion pound companies doing this already? 

Gareth Wax: Well, I, there are quite quadrillion reasons why that might not be case, but we are, me and my, my teammates are produ, uh, are producing a process which we hope to lighten that.

Gareth Wax: And, and we’re gonna go for a patent on this as well, on [00:37:00] the process rather than it Absolutely people, we’ve been talking about this since the late seven. So, but what we’ve gotta do is isolate it into, um, and my, if you can imagine a distant future when you’ve got those tugs floating around the North Atlantic sw, gathering up all the plastic that’s out there, shoving it into huge bins, which are out there, spraying it with mycelium, and then a month later releasing it back into the ocean cause it’s now turned into a bio grade.

Gareth Wax: Uh, uh, uh, material, which at the very, at the very worst, uh, uh, marine animals can use as part of their, uh, uh, uh, as a, uh, a host like Coral and so on, and at the best they can actually consume it.

Gareth Wax: Wow. So that’s, they, so what I’m doing is you see whatever I do on LinkedIn and however, I wanted people to speak better in their own voice and, and get heard. Yeah. And, and, and. [00:38:00] It’s, it’s, it’s transient. It’s, it’s not a hundred years after I’ve passed on. Nobody will care. Yeah. I wanted, I wanted to leave a legacy where I’d actually improved the world for everyone.

Gareth Wax: And that’s what I’m doing with Smart Mycelium. So at the moment, what we’re trying to do is approach oil companies. Of course we’re not getting a lot of headway there, but I think we will do, uh, approaching mps to try and get ’em to help champion the cause. Uh, also in America, would you believe it? There’s an edict out from, uh, sweet Mr.

Gareth Wax: Biden, which says, by a certain date, people who are using single use plastics in their packaging must have replaced him with the nearest non, uh, sorry, nearest biodegradable product that they know. Um, and if we can show that they’ve seen our product by, for instance, promoting it to them on LinkedIn, then uh, then we can turn around to them and say, you need to buy [00:39:00] a, we can prove that, you know, we exist and so on.

Gareth Wax: Yeah. So that’s where we’re going with that as well. But yes, it’s this, this is gonna be my effort at trying to clean up the place. That is incredible. 

Désiré Roberts: Honestly, that is so cool. I mean, I got, Trinidad is a oil and gas based country, um Oh yes. Economy. So, and I have quite a few contacts in that arena, so I can probably just pass them on to you and hopefully, you know, you can probably do something with that.

Gareth Wax: Well, the worst thing of all, would you believe it is the worst pollutant into the oceans is partially spent diesel. Um, the. Cruises that everybody loves going on are huge pollutants. Huge pollutants, and that’s why in my vision where we are getting rid of all that plastic, the pontoon, where it all sits, will be in the ocean.

Gareth Wax: It doesn’t have to go anywhere. So [00:40:00] they have to keep chunking the material buttons and forwards and polluting the ocean even. I just think there’s, there’s so many ways we can slice this. The only worry is that there’s still a focus on the use of oil and and gas. There’s still a, a focus on the production of plastics and, yeah.

Gareth Wax: So, you know, I, I, it’s, we’re 

Désiré Roberts: gonna, it’s, it’s gonna be really difficult as well. Cause our entire world, even the technology that we’re using now is built with plastic materials. It’s built with plastic, it’s built with rubber, it’s built with all of the things, even the machinery. So, you know, we can, we can go, you know, all eco-friendly.

Désiré Roberts: The manufacturing process, it needs to start from there, but, well, it’s near impossible to get to 

Gareth Wax: that point. Well, our first client is a, a, a, a company called Eco Forge, who are producing living walls, uh, in pots, which at the moment are single use plastic. So we are growing [00:41:00] pots for them to plant in those single, to hang off those walls made of mycelium.

Gareth Wax: So, uh, that’s. Yeah, it, it’s a starting point. You’ve gotta do something to prove Yes. No, you’ve 

Désiré Roberts: gotta, yeah, absolutely. And I think if we have a lot of people who are gonna have small starting points, I think eventually we’ll probably crack it. But as for right now, it’s, it is just when you look at the whole system, cuz.

Désiré Roberts: It’s absolutely mind boggling for me, and I think this is probably gonna end up in a very other episode, like in another episode between you and I talking about this. Um, but you know, it is, it is just one of those things when you look at the system as a whole, there’s just so many moving parts in it, and I think that’s where, that’s where, as much as big companies want to make a change, so say for instance, A big supermarket wants to make a change.

Désiré Roberts: Sure, sure. Um, a [00:42:00] supermarket that’s known for wrapping every single thing in plastic. But unfortunately, they don’t control where the company that sources their stuff from, they don’t control that. They could only buy from the companies that they, you know, can you buy from and it’s onto that company then.

Désiré Roberts: But then they’re sourcing it from somewhere else, probably from China. So where is that source coming from? And when you, when you go back, it’s, it’s very, very, very easy for, for the average person to just sit and go, oh, we need to do this and we need to do that. Yes, absolutely we do. But the process of doing it, It’s not as simple as people think it is.

Désiré Roberts: It’s not just as simple as, you know, you just flick your fingers and then all cars just become, 

Gareth Wax: you know, it’s a process. It’s a process. I’ve got an idea for you, process. I’ve got an idea for you because I, I, since we’re coming to the end of this, this, this cast , but I thought I’ve got an idea. I wanna flip the switch.

Gareth Wax: I wanna [00:43:00] flip the tables on you, dere. Okay. I’m gonna ask you questions and then we’re gonna both answer the question. How about. Okay, let’s go for it. What’s the one thing that fuels your passion, des? Ooh, 

Désiré Roberts: I love helping people. Um, it’s the one thing that just gets me completely fired up and gets me out of bed, and that’s one of the reasons why I spend so much time helping other entrepreneurs because it is really just about helping people.

Désiré Roberts: I mean, this podcast is one of those things that I’m using one of those channels to help other people, so, 

Gareth Wax: Okay. So what I would say is I too, I love helping people. I like, I like giving people tiny course. Correct. Tiny little change direction that can open up huge opportunities. The things that I can see that, I suppose cuz they’re so close to the coal face, they can’t.

Gareth Wax: Yeah. Okay. If you had unlimited resources, , what problem would you [00:44:00] solve? Unlimited resources, unlimit. Literally you don’t. It’s there for you. Go crazy. I 

Désiré Roberts: would probably fix poverty. Okay. That would be the one thing that I would fix. And I know that it’s a very complicated situation to fix, and it’s not as simple as just throwing money at it, but said unlimited resources.

Désiré Roberts: And it wasn’t, that Resources isn’t limited to 

Gareth Wax: money. No, no. Frank. Cause I, I’m, I’m, I’m mushroom mad and I know mushrooms can be a food stuff. I know mushrooms can also provide health benefits. Uh, we are taking powdered, uh, lines main at the moment, which helps with mood and anxiety. Um, yep. So I wanna use mushrooms and mycelium to, to fix the world, and I think we can do it.

Gareth Wax: There are these guys in Japan that are currently making, yeah. Uh, making leather out of, out of mushroom. That’s cool. [00:45:00] We’re trying to get, cause one of my partners is a a A A exs tailor. So he’s trying to get hold of some of the material and he is gonna make me a waste coat out of it. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna see what we can do with that.

Gareth Wax: That’s very cool. No. Okay, so now here’s another one, which is kind of similar but different. If you could do anything at all. Anything, yeah. What would you do right now? If you could do the driver. Driver, you would 

Désiré Roberts: do. I would, I would be an F1 driver. You do? I could do anything. If I could do anything, that’s what I would do.

Désiré Roberts: I’d drive 

Gareth Wax: F1 cars. They’re way too stressful for me, man. The stress is, have you ever seen one, their steering wheels, have you ever seen their steering wheels? Yeah. They, they just blows my mind. They’re having to, it’s like they’re having to rub their tummy, uh, pat their stomach and also dance at the same time.

Gareth Wax: Yeah. Yep. With me, with me, I would lower the polar temperatures by three.[00:46:00] 

Gareth Wax: You’d lower the power temperatures by three degrees. Suddenly the world’s problems diminish. DRA dramatically well, 

Désiré Roberts: throws a lot of our ecosystem out because our, our planet has a cycle, doesn’t it? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Get, and then it goes cold, and then it gets cold, and then it gets colder. We’ve, 

Gareth Wax: we’ve artificially, um, the cycle.

Gareth Wax: We’ll 

Désiré Roberts: cause it a little bit Yeah. We’re just making it happen 

Gareth Wax: faster. Yes, exactly. What is the hardest thing that you find about the entrepreneur’s journey? That was one that we had 

Désiré Roberts: earlier that would’ve been the loneliness. 

Gareth Wax: The hardest thing is the loneliness. Is that it, 

Désiré Roberts: it’s lone. For me that is because I don’t have like, I don’t have the like typical pressures.

Désiré Roberts: I don’t have a team, so I don’t need to worry about. You know, bottom line, top line. I am incredibly, so. I, 

Gareth Wax: I have a team of, I have a team of six and one very three and another, and four and another, so, yeah. [00:47:00] Yeah. , I have different set of wordss. All right. So for me, uh, it’s understanding how to use my autistic traits to facilitate better communication.

Gareth Wax: Cause I know that having those, those traits can be brilliant, but only if I, if I use them, right? Yes. You know, with power, with great doubt. That’s definitely your superpower. With great power comes great. Responsibility. Responsibility. All right. Now this one you actually asked me, I’m gonna ask it back.

Gareth Wax: What if, before we sign off, what parting gift of wisdom could you have for our beautiful audience? For our audience, for our beautiful audience? 

Désiré Roberts: I think everybody needs to like take a good long look at their. Um, I’m so tired of seeing people out there who are just hardcore selling and not actually building their brand.

Désiré Roberts: They’re not giving value. All you’re doing is telling me to buy your shit, and yeah, that’s not the way to do it. You have to build a [00:48:00] relationship with people. I think we’ve lost that. Social media and, you know, it’s, 

Gareth Wax: I’m trying to clear it back. I’m trying to clear it back to zero. I know 

Désiré Roberts: we’re both, we’re both trying to do it.

Désiré Roberts: People are just not quite reaching us yet. So I have round audit that fixes 

Gareth Wax: that. Some people aren’t ready for that messaging yet. They don’t realize that they, that, I mean, I get it all the time. I, the funniest ones is that I get, there are a few competitors. There are, there aren’t hundreds of competitors.

Gareth Wax: What I do, funny enough, cuz most people are training and I. I’m not really training. Yeah. I’m, I’m about for facilitation, but I get hit up by a competitor saying, I’ve looked long and hard at your profile. They say, and, uh, and, and, uh, I think we could really help you get more business in. And I, and I just write them back, read the profile.

Gareth Wax: Yep. All 

Désiré Roberts: right. I have, I, I’ve got a new trick actually for that. When I get hit up, I actually send them a link to the sme, shout [00:49:00] out our group. I’m like, well, I pro, its probably not a right fit for me, but I’m pretty sure somebody here might like it. And that’s how I grew the 

Gareth Wax: following. It’s know that’s turning.

Gareth Wax: That’s turning every negative or positive. Absolutely. Yep. 

Désiré Roberts: Point them. Point them. 

Gareth Wax: Sme. When you sent me that, you sent me over a question asking exactly what my parting gift of wisdom would be, and I thought, and I wrote this, see if you like it to. Every crisis naturally blinkers you to the possibility of success.

Gareth Wax: I want you to do this, and this is anybody listening. Have a couple. Try and find your happy place. Then allow yourself the luxury of thinking you might succeed after.

Gareth Wax: That 

Désiré Roberts: is really 

Gareth Wax: powerful. Take a bloody moment. Ugh. 

Désiré Roberts: I think, do you know what? A lot of people just don’t stop. They don’t. They don’t. 

Gareth Wax: You know, and as soon as something negative happens that some of them just st spiraling, it’s all gonna fall to shit. It’s [00:50:00] spiral, it’s falling to shit. It’s going, it’s going, it’s taking me with it.

Gareth Wax: It’s sucking in everything. I know it’s a have a cup. Take a break. I promise you. You get a little bit of inspiration, you read a couple of other things, maybe you sleep on it, you’ll find a way through Tomorrow, quite literally is another day. Yeah, 

Désiré Roberts: yeah. Absolutely. I agree with that. Like a bazillion percent.

Désiré Roberts: I’m always telling people, right. Relax. It’s done now. Like there’s nothing you can do. Just take a breather and just chill. Yeah, take a chill pill. That’s like mine. Absolutely. Like my little slogan now. 

Gareth Wax: No, but sometimes you just got to stop for a moment because the inspiration comes in the moments between you panicking and you and you thinking about something else in that stillness, in that space that you’ve allowed yourself.

Gareth Wax: Yeah. That’s where, do you know what? I could actually turn this to my advantage, you know? Yep. 

Désiré Roberts: Yeah, I think a lot [00:51:00] of people are just kind of, we’re just kind of stuck in that kind of hamster wheel, aren’t we? And people tend to not really think about, you know, how can they turn it around? They just go, oh my God, oh my God.

Désiré Roberts: Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s just 

Gareth Wax: constantly a panic. And also the assumption that cause the tug has always been going that way so far. That is the way we must go. No. 

Désiré Roberts: Just spin it around. 

Gareth Wax: Be open. Be open to a course. Correct. Be open to taking on a new idea. Don’t be so wed to the, to, to the one concept. Cause that’s the way it’s always been.

Gareth Wax: Here’s a story, um, a psychiatrist, uh, that I read about and I’ve forgotten. I think his surname, sax, he was relaying some stories back from psychiatry days. He once went to interview. Three, uh, uh, family were three generations were in the same room. Yeah. And they were eating together [00:52:00] and as they sat down, they presented a, uh, a meatloaf and then she put it at the table.

Gareth Wax: She then chopped off either end and discarded them. And he said, right, what’d you do that for? That’s valuable. Bits of meat. She said, no, no, that’s the best way. Why is that? Well, that’s what my mother used to do. And her mother said, yeah, that’s the way I’ve always. And the grandmother said, yeah, that’s because my oven was only this wide.

Gareth Wax: The point I’m trying to say is you can often do things again and again and again. Just purely because that’s the way it’s always been done. Not cause that’s the way always has to be. Yeah. 

Désiré Roberts: I mean, you know, I always rethink ways of everything. Nothing is ever set 

Gareth Wax: in. I think you need to be open to the possibility of change.

Désiré Roberts: Pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot. That’s my thing. Tilt it. 

Gareth Wax: Literally. So when, when, whenever you say pivot, of course all I’m thinking about is [00:53:00] friends pivot.

Désiré Roberts: All right. Well, that now concludes the Entrepreneur Spotlight. Gareth. Amazing stuff as always. Thank you so much for coming on the show and being such an inspiration for all of us. 

Gareth Wax: It was an honor. Thank you very much for having me.

Désiré Roberts: Thank you for listening and joining us on this journey of strength, patience, determination, compassion, ambition, and drive That is core of the entrepreneur’s journey. And what’s a journey it is as? No two stories are the same. If you liked what you heard today and want to connect our guest, I’ve put their contact inputs in the show notes.

Désiré Roberts: Just a quick reminder, we have a daily podcast segment called The Daily Tilt and two weekly segments called The Entrepreneur Spotlight and the Alpha Woman Show. If you want to be a guest in the podcast [00:54:00] or want to speak on the live show on Sundays, all of the details are on the Tilt website and the link for that is in the show notes.

Désiré Roberts: Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast, share my content, and if you haven’t already, please leave a five star review as it really helps podcast reach more people. Have an awesome week and remember to. Full tilt.