I was connected with Alex back in April via Samantha Kelly (thanks again Samantha) and we recorded this episode. As you’ll hear, he’s a very focused, driven, and ambitious entrepreneur that has a clear vision for the future.

Here’s a breakdown of the conversation with high-level topics discussed:

1min – All about Content Cal – Strategy & Offerings and what’s it’s all about
2min – Licensing of the tool to other businesses across the globe – they can use this internally. 31/2 years in business. A whirlwind journey. Investment and the journey.
3min – Types of companies that are slow to adopt? 500k companies created every year in the UK
•Social media is a very cheap way to enter the market
•Property businesses are a laggard
•Surprised what type of companies are still not onboard
•Consumer businesses jumped on it quickly
7min – Gary Vaynerchuck – Tackling Real Estate
•Sharing an office space with Vaynerchuck Media – online mentor
•So much money in property business – people managing these budgets – less flexible
9mins – How did he get into this world? What is his earliest memory?
•Growing up in Gloucester – country area – outside and being outdoors
•Deep thinker and why things happen from a very young age
12mins – Introvert v Extrovert?
•Now extrovert but younger – introverted
•From age of 15 – more social
13mins – What was the focus – An Entrepreneur from a young age?
•Around 14/15 – O2 Sim cards – from internet – sell them in the playground for £10 each
•Getting into Selling and working to find a way to make money
•Knew from Business at GCSE level that this is what he wanted to do – excited here
•Started his own business at 19 years in Uni – Connect, Design, Social Media Consultancy – managing local business
•Started CardiffBanter website
•21 years old – did some corporate experience for a few years
•Started social media agency at 23
18mins – Where did this come from?
•Exposed to this at a young age – did work experience with his uncle at 16 – small business
•His parents did have a big influence here too – focused him on hard work will get you there
•People have different risk appetites
•Easier now than ever before to start the company
•Starting young was low risk and wanted to go for it.
21mins – Fear and has it held you back?
•Was scared at the time of 23
•It was a real uphill battle in these years due to his age!
•It was hard to get credibility from that young age – clients had faith
•De-risked the position from a young age – brought in a partner in early one – to minimize the risk – he knows about sales
•Position the business to grow and sell it on --- that’s always the end goal.
24mins – Lessons and Mistakes:
•Early days, grew well.
•Didn’t bring Finance in early
•Write down what you know well and what you don’t well
•Business is a whole team effort – so many skills sets needed
•Not being afraid or nervous or have any ego attached – build management team
•Get the right experts in – things go faster!
•The owner or founder doesn’t listen to the advice – this is the main reason for failure
•Business should run without its founder – what you can own v can’t
29mins – Personal SWOT
•Most people never ever analyse themselves – take a pause!!
•Where are you goals at?
30mins – Self-awareness, EQ & Feedback
•Don’t avoid feedback
•It’s an alien concept – you can’t know it all
•You don’t always have to agree with it – it’s
32mins – Productivity & Time management
•Get up early – 6am
•Compartmentalize To Do lists – into 4 lists
•Email Rule – First thing in the AM and once in the Afternoon and then at end of day
•Educate yourself on how you work best – cut out distractions
•No magic – crack on!
•The Rule of 3
•Every January, do a reset for the year – takes a month to do it!
•Focus on the 3 things you don’t want to do first and get it done!
•Tough ones first
•Get up EARLY
39mins – Intuition
•Constantly using this – look at data but not as much as some!
•Go with the gut
•Be optimistic but impatient
•Being right with some big calls from the business and using intuition
•Often writing off a deal because it took too long but was wrong
42mins – ContentCal – Untapped Market & how it’s developed
•Lots of social media tools out there – automating the tools is an obvious thing that you can do
•So many businesses not yet tapped into these tools
•How Contentcal started – as there was not something that could merge a spreadsheet and scheduling – why can’t this be done in one place
•FTSE100 companies still spend a lot on traditional media
•Growth of social media marketing is still enormous
•Sky £200m a year on advertising – tiny % of that on social media
48mins – Emerging Trends in Social
•VR & AR, Experience Advertising will be big in the future
50mins – Getting started in Social Media:
•Google best channels for your industry – infinite blogs
•Don’t commit of being on every channel – just focus on one
•Use Hashtags all the time & research on the ones best to use
•It takes time & requires a little bit of budget – research it
54mins – Do not do!
•Don’t buy fake followers
•Don’t use tools to get followers and unfollow
•Find the right people you’re willing to work with!
•Don’t dive in without knowing a bit about it – just ask people!
•People want to help!

Book Recommendations
•Motivation focus – Arnolds Schwarzenegger – Total Recall
•Practical – Lean Start-up
•4-hour work week – Tim Ferriss
•The Daily Stoic – Ryan Holiday
•The Sales Acceleration Formulae
•Sapiens – Non business related book

Get in touch
•www.contentcal.io
•AlexPackham on all socials