Anshu Bahanda: Welcome to another episode of Wellness Curated. This is your host, Anshu Bahanda, and as you know, the aim of this podcast is to help you lead a healthier, happier, more hopeful life, in every sphere of your life. This season, we're focusing on financial wellness and the subject of today's discussion is literally about starting off really young; starting off in your twenties and thirties. And in this episode, we're going to discuss the beginning of your journey towards financial and entrepreneurial independence and how that can be beneficial for you. And we have two incredible people with us to help us do that. We have Kevin Ross, who's the founder of KLJ, a leading social media management firm, and they've expanded to include talent management and development. And their clients are all kinds of celebrities, entertainment, fashion, travel, nonprofit, you name it, it's there. And Kevin has lived on three continents. He's lived in the US, he's lived in Europe and he's lived in the MENA. So, a lot of interesting things to talk about there. And then we have a really interesting gentleman here as well, who is a pioneer of the British recruitment industry, Tristan Ramus. He founded and developed one of UK's most successful recruitment platforms. It's called Human Capital Investment Group, or HCIG. He went on to sell it to private equity and then he co-founded a private equity firm and he also started off really young. We have two very interesting young entrepreneurs amongst us. Welcome to the Chat and thank you for taking the time to join us.
Tristan Ramus: Thank you for having us.
Kevin Ross: Thank you.
AB: So, Tristan, I'm going to start with you and your entrepreneurial journey that started when you were 16. So can you talk us through what pushed you, at such a young age, to start what you did and some of the challenges that you might have faced financially? How did you manage getting capital at that young age?
TR: So I was a product of great enthusiasm from my parents and my grandparents for schooling me, but a lot less enthusiasm in terms of my ability to be at school. So the cards fell quite quickly for me as I was expelled from four different schools before I got to the age of 17. So it was quite clear to me that doing more of the same and expecting a different result was actually probably not going to be viable. And the world to me was like a really big sweetie jar of opportunity. I felt so enthusiastic about travelling, I felt enthusiastic about experiencing, seeing things, tasting foods, speaking languages, meeting different cultures— that the best thing I did was actually get out of the academic system and get amongst life. But for that, obviously, there was a downside of that explosion into the world at a young age. And at which point I went to live in Cyprus, and I lived between Beirut and Cyprus for about five years. I managed to get involved with seeing the first Gulf War unfold, I managed to see the Yugoslavian refugees coming across to Cyprus. Most wonderful bunch of people I met. I had such a diverse cultural experience before I got to my early 20s. But again, what I had to do is— I had to work, and I couldn't be too choosy. I just had to get my head down, and I really had to do whatever was put in front of me. And I had to have a good work ethic. So there were no sick days, there were no holidays, there were no weekends.
If you want to get what you need economically, you put one foot in front of the other and you keep pushing. And what I may have lacked in a good degree or an MBA, or even O levels and A levels or GCSEs at that time, I had an absolute will and determination and work ethic and I think that's what got me off the blocks, so to speak.
AB: Lovely. And Kevin, so you also started really young and I think you were quite a visionary that you had started selling luxury vintage online, before luxury vintage was a thing, and before online was a thing. And you also lived on three different continents. So tell me, what financial lessons or investment strategies do you feel you would like to advise young professionals about and what would you tell them to avoid?
KR: I think, yeah, starting young is fun and I think if you've got an idea… that's the great thing with entrepreneurship— is that you can get involved really young, there is no gatekeeping for you needing this degree or you need to have this experience or this sort of thing. If you've got a great idea, you can start it. So at 16, it wasn't vintage, actually, it was new products. We think the internet is going to be a fad. And I was like, I don't think that's true. And so at 16, I started this ebay business when I was in high school that I just resold literally like retail goods, but to people that lived in places where they couldn't access this. And it was years before. If only I'd been able to sell it to LVMH or something as an idea, though. But, yeah, I think getting started early, not waiting, I mean, it's not really a financial lesson, but I guess it is. I'm not saying jump on an idea. Like if you want to open a restaurant and it's a bad time— in the summer say in a ski resort, maybe wait till winter when people are there. I don't mean jump on it like that, but I mean get started. There's no one holding you back than you.
So I would say the financial lesson is, yeah, get started and save way more than you think you're going to. I would say save a lot and get started and just get started. Because I think especially in anything entrepreneurial, there's no great time like just kind of right now. You just kind of got to jump in the pool and sort of get trying. Because you're going to fail at a bunch of things and there's a bunch of things that aren't going to work, and you're going to continue to fail at a bunch of things all through. And it's sort of— the faster you can kind of close that cycle, I think, and you can pick yourself back up, helps because it keeps it moving and the ideas keep coming. And I think eventually, with enough of that, with enough grit and everything, I think especially starting young, the money things will come in. It won't be there at the beginning, but the pieces will help you get better, as you sort of do it. You fail faster and you figure out more. So I would say, yeah, just get started and save.
AB: And what would you have them avoid, especially nowadays?
KR: Honestly avoid getting caught in the social media trap. I had it when I was in like the final stages of high school. But I think now what we're seeing, especially with younger and younger people, you're just so under this comparison game of what you see on your stream, on what the algorithm is showing you, and it's such like this crazy confirmation-bias thing— social media. So it's only showing you things that sort of reinforces this thing. So whatever sort of sector you're in, you'll see a bunch of stuff. And I think it's difficult to not compare yourself if you're constantly doing that, and it's hard if your business is on social media to sort of limit that. But I think not getting too stuck to what you're doing, whatever that is; stick to your plan, stick with it, stay with it. Don't get distracted by, ‘Oh, this person seems to have this or this.’ Don't believe anything on social media. I will also say that don't look externally and don't get fascinated with social media, or taken up by it. Yeah, because I think even though it is a method that myself and many people have made lots of money on, I think it's important to not get consumed by it. And I think that applies to any sort of vertical, whatever you're in, it's important to remember that the important stuff of life is outside of that also. And so I think to sort of keep your sight on the shoreline.
AB: Thank you. So, Tristan, you know when there's people in their twenties and thirties thinking of career paths, and I don't know if you're going through this with your kids, but [they’re looking] for a career path, which has a stable income. You get a job, you get that money in your account every month. And then there are all these dreams that everyone has about achieving what they want to do. How would you advise people to follow one or the other?
TR: I don't think they're mutually exclusive to each other. My oldest son, now, he's just stepping into his second year of law in London. And I can feel that the idea of practising law as a long term play out for him, is losing its interest. And he comes and looks at the investment firm, he meets some of the CEOs, and he sits around and hears what we're up to and he sort of starts to take an interest in what I'm doing and my counsel to him is— it's really good to create a foundation and stepping stones. You don't need to do what I've done, because the way I went about it was sort of like clawing yourself up a muddy bank and you keep pushing and you're striving and you're hustling and you're doing whatever you do.
I think if you've got a really good foundation of A levels, a degree, and you've had a training course with an accounting firm, a law firm, or an investment firm, or social media firm, or a marketing firm, whatever your interests are, I think it gives you a slightly better position to be more informed. And I think when I look at young entrepreneurs, I love an idea, and an idea is wonderful, but without execution, it is nothing more than an idea. So somebody who has got some basis to which they move their ideas forward, and that is usually experience in a firm, in a business, in any capacity, gives them, I think, a far higher level of pre-qualification of how they're going to make it work. So my younger son, who is 15 at the moment, and he is very atypical, doesn't really want to do the university route. He keeps saying, ‘Well, it was all right for you, dad.’ It's the hardest one for me because I have to keep playing him back into the system, because I absolutely believe that if you can put those foundations… Like I'm a learning junkie at the moment, I'm always on Google. Whichever country I go to, I'm interested in all the stats and all the history. So I say to young people, don't lose out on that. I know you want to get on and run, but don't lose out on what is in front of you today. And that learning is really awesome.
AB: And that's a very important message that if you get the opportunity to learn and to go to university, take it. Because later in life you may or may not have the time to take time out of what you're doing.
KR: Can I say something else off of that? Because I thought that was a great answer. I also think, if you've got the opportunity to have a job, say you get out of university and you get a job and whatever, and you still have this business idea in the back of your head and if it's in the same thing, having a stable job mean you're also learning, and getting paid for what you're doing. And so if you look at it as like, okay, I'm going to do this for five years, I'm going to really figure this out, I have this idea, it's a lot easier if you've got a paycheck coming in. Just sort of work on your idea and flush it out and take meetings and figure stuff out as you're doing that. So it can be a really good opportunity to help you figure out what you want to do to launch something.
AB: That is true, Kevin, but some jobs consume you and you don't have the time to do anything. I mean, when I was in the banking world, that was my whole space. I couldn't even think beyond that. So I would not have been able to think of anything, unless I left it.
KR: Well, that may not be the right space for that, but you know what I mean, I think it's that balance. I mean it is obviously a difficult life lesson, when to do what, when. But I think if you've got an idea and it's in the thing, if you can, you can learn and get paid to learn with a job.
AB: So Kevin, tell me another thing. One, tell us a little bit about KLJ. And I also want to ask you, for someone in their young teens, twenties, or thirties, how important is it to build your own personal brand? What about if someone's not inclined towards entertainment?
KR: Is personal brand important in every business? Sure. I think firstly, the agency, I started a couple of years ago because I have another business that's been in social media management for like ten years, or a little more, like eleven years, and that does a lot of content production, a lot of that sort of stuff, for big, Fortune 100 clients. And I was meeting a bunch of influencers and people that were sort of in this space and a lot of people weren't really taking them seriously in a sense that it's like, ‘Oh, that's not a real job.’ And I was like, ‘But they're making six figures just from their Instagram accounts in their bedroom.’ I started that as a way to be like, I think I can help you all to figure out how to make more money as well— with people that were sort of being issued by traditional agencies and so forth. So anyway, that's sort of how that one started. So I have them both now and they're great. They sort of feed into each other and it's fun, I would say.
As far as your personal brand, I think a personal brand is important, definitely. Sort of in whatever industry you're in, honestly. Even if you're in something not entrepreneurial, if you work in a company, in banking, or if you were in academia or something, we bring this in because they can always help do that. I think it's important to have things that you do well, and things that you have figured out, and succinctly be able to communicate those to other people. If you're sort of saying nothing, it's like no one knows what to do, no one knows how to fit you in to solve a problem and to be like I have the perfect person for you. So I do think personal branding is important. But I think that if you've got an idea with a brand and you've got something to say, it can be a great way to sort of cut through the noise and be like— I'm the person that does this. I think it is important. I think it really hinges on what you can come up with. It's got to be something that you believe in, it's got to be something sort of authentic. Because I think increasingly and increasingly younger and younger generations, can absolutely see when stuff is not real, it's like you can cut through the chatter like that, it looks fake. And so I think sort of sticking to the brand, but it really needs to be something that resonates with you and that you believe in and that you're passionate about, whatever it is.
AB: Kevin, give me one quick tip on how to build a personal brand, very quick.
KR: I would say make sure that there's passion behind the thing that you're saying that is part of your brand. Because I think without passion you'll lose steam and you'll be like I was trying this thing because I saw other people doing it and I thought that would be a good thing for me, but I didn't really believe it. I think I’ll suggest that.
AB: Tristan coming to you now. You've had an experience in multiple sectors, you've worked through lots of things in your life. If you were to advise the next generation on where you see the financial trends or the financial opportunities for them, what would that be, what areas would that be? And also what lessons did you learn in your early days that you think are still relevant? Financial lessons?
TR: I think if I go on financial lessons: I think [I would say] a level of cautiousness on your savings, which again was mentioned earlier. I'm a great believer of trying to stay grounded with what you earn, try and be a little bit frugal with what you need to spend. Try not to get washed up into what the guy next door has got what you don't have. Try and find appreciation in what you do have and not what you don't have. It's really hard when you're young, though, because you're running and you're aspiring, and that's a really tough bit. But I always found choice was much better when you had a couple of quid in your pocket. When you have nothing in your pocket, it reduces your choice. I think when it comes to where would I go to make money? I think it starts with understanding an economically viable product, service business. Because I think there's a lot of fear at the moment of the demarginalisation of the workforce because of the fact that AI is growing so fast and people are fearful. They're fearful that there won't be any currency.
Currency goes, everything will be a digitised currency. What will it mean for my job? And we've seen this before with the millennium in 2000. We've seen it again with the advancement of technology and the Internet. That many jobs that exist today, well, as many as 40% of the jobs that we recruit for today did not exist ten years ago. So I think you've got to have a glass half full approach to this. And don't worry about there not going to be no jobs because computers are going to do it all for you. It's always been something that’s sat behind us for the last two, three decades. Understand how something works economically, because trying to sell a promise, a theory, fresh air, I think is hard. So know why you exist in a marketplace or why your idea or your service exists in a marketplace. And I think the final thing is to find some people in your peer group to hang out with. It's a very lonely journey to be on your own. And the greatest sort of element to happiness outside of business and work is your human interactions and how you communicate and who's around you. And I think from a wellness perspective, having some guys
and girls that you can hang out with, you can talk openly with, you can share a level of vulnerability and what you think you may want to do. Your anxieties around that too will help in getting these steps made, these new steps made for their future.
AB: Wonderful. Thank you, Kevin. So you are in your 30s, right?
KR: Those were great answers, Tristan, I have to say. Really good answer. I love that answer.
TR: Thank you!
AB: Kevin, what I want to ask you is just to elaborate on this. We talked about saving, you talked about saving. Tristan talked about saving. So for someone starting out, would you advise them to save? Would you advise them to spend their money on building their own skills or building their personal brand? All of this costs money. What would you advise?
KR: Yeah, but you can do it without spending a lot of money. There is so much free information on the internet. Do not waste your money on things that you don't need to. And I think a lot of people get into business entrepreneurship and maybe they get some money, whether it's from their family or they get some investment or something and they're like, ‘Oh, I want to be keeping up sort of with the Joneses.’ And I think the less costs you can have early on, that’s really good. So if that's running it from your house for longer than you need to, great.
You're not paying rent. If you can do without the staffing costs and work more yourself or find AI solutions or doing something remotely. I think the less money you've got going out… As Tristan was saying, that having more money in your pocket ultimately is like a freedom. It gives you freedom to make decisions. And so I think the less you're obligated to things, it’s good. I do think that, yes, investing in your brand and courses, all this sort of stuff are great, but I think you can do a lot of that quite economically. I don't think you have to spend a lot of money to do that sort of stuff. And I do think that saving is really good and definitely it sort of depends on what country you’re in as well. Like in the US, I tell all the talents as well, you should be saving 30% to 40% of all of these checks because it's going to come like, your tax bill is going to come at some point. It just is. There's no way around it. I wish it could be, and especially because a lot of them I work with are younger. They’re at a time of age where you're like, taxes aren't real and this sort of stuff isn't real. And I'm like, no, it's all real, it all catches up with you, it's all there and if you can't pay that bill, this whole circus shuts down. And so you've got to have that kind of a thing. Yeah, so that's probably what I would do. I agree with Tristan and I would say— save, be spry with it, be good with the money. And then there will be times later, if you can do that and put in the time, there are times later where you can spend and go wild and go crazy, but you can't do that all the time because you won't have any money left.
AB: Tristan, anything you want to add to that, given you've got kids?
TR: Yeah, well, I think we call it the forced saving plan, which is if you're fortunate enough to buy a property and you've got a mortgage, then you have no choice. You've got to pay that mortgage every month, which is arguably a forced way to keep cash going into an asset or something that you could sell that would pay you back or give you some cash back. So I bought my first property, I think when I was 23 and it was a bungalow, it was horrible. But it got me started. And again, I remember when I set up my first business, I couldn't pay myself for the first twelve months. So I kind of played around with the credit cards. I brought in a lodger and we had all the fun and games. He came out of the military, he would put fairy liquid in the washing machine and the whole place would be full of bubbles. All the fun of the fair. But this is all through life's learning. So a fourth savings plan where it's not sitting in your bank account, sort of reminding you that you could go and spend it on a trip to Hawaii is not a bad way to help manage yourself.
AB: Wonderful. And Tristan. Another thing. So you went from being in the recruitment space to the private equity space. Can you explain private equity for the young people, actually for people of all ages? Explain how private equity would work and how if a young person is thinking of getting into it, what should they be considering?
TR: So you've got three areas that sort of roughly cover the broad word of private equity.
So one is the family office, and I'll come back to them all in a moment. The next one is institutional private equity and then you have non-institutional private equity. And for clarity, I sit in the non-institutional private equity pot. So family office [private equity] is where there are a lot of underlying assets or cash or investments that need to be maintained to ensure that the next 200 years the family's wealth is optimised. It might just be inflationary beating, it might not be giving two, three times its money performance, but it's a solid way to ensure that the historic wealth that the family has built is not declining, it's maintained or inclining. Where you have the mid one is private equity. So a lot of the money that comes into institutional private equity could be, for example, the large pension funds of the US universities. It can be other institutional investors who want to spread their risk from their own activities. And these private equity firms can be broad and multi-faceted in terms of where they'll deploy. Most of them will have set their stall out to deploy at certain levels, certain levels of money. They'll want to deploy certain geographies, certain sub sectors of industry, service or product. And that environment will typically give a greater return than for example, sticking your money in a bank. Well, today you might get 5%, but these firms are typically providing returns at sort of 2.8 to five ‘x’ on your money. And they're non institutional, which is where I chose to be after looking at going down the institutional route and I decided not to take the institutional money. At the 11th hour, 59th minute, I thought, if I back myself, why don't I go as far as I can on my own balance sheet?
And the irony of that is it's caused me to also have a family office linked to my own non-institutional money because the business has just built and built and built and grown and grown and grown. And the thing with that is you can kind of make your own rules up. That is, there is no third party institutional money. You don't need to be regulated. You live and die by your own performance. And so I put my own business rules in, as would the other two styles of investment. And I've stuck very closely to anything with a large workforce that's deployed to deliver a service, whether that be a healthcare service, whether that be a recruitment service, whether it be an engineering service, whether it be an outsourcing service. For that reason, I understand my risk and I can qualify my risk. I think the other thing that we are able to do is we're able to move very fluidly and quickly. Whereas when you are deploying other people's money, you do need a certain level of diligence that would probably need to be even more available to be scrutinised. Where if I lose my own money, it's only me having a word with myself.
AB: Wonderful. That was great. Kevin, coming to you. I want to ask you about what you touched upon earlier about the influencer being a legitimate career now, so we know that this is a fickle world, right? Especially the world of social media. Things change very fast as well. So what do you think are the financial prospects of someone who's an influencer? Just to give you an idea, I was talking to someone the other day who's making great money, like you said, six figures from working between living their life, but they don't know where they're going, they don't know what their skill is and they don't know how long they're going to be able to sustain it. So would you recommend this as a career for young people?
KR: I think [what] I would recommend as a career for young people, is whatever you're passionate about and can seem to make money at, firstly. But I think if you're doing this, I mean, exactly as Tristan said, right, 40% of the jobs didn't exist ten years ago. We're in the moment of that now. Will that exist in ten years? I have no clue. But what could you be doing with some of that money? Maybe stuff that we do know, like buying property, or doing you know, diversifying where you're putting your money. It's definitely a legitimate career and I would say it is evolving. But a lot of social media influencing is marketing. And marketing has been around for years. It's just a new way that we're doing marketing. Now, the marketing line items are always in the budgets for centuries. Well, a century at least. So I think it's just kind of like figuring it out. It may not exist in ten years. Who knows what the future will hold for that? So I would say, what is it? Make hay while the sun shines. Cash in as much as you can because you don't know what's going to happen in the future, but it's real now. I mean, there's a lot of marketing dollars for it and I think marketing will just continue to change and get more nuanced and more everywhere. I'm constantly amazed at sort of where we are just from a marketing perspective now with how things are done in this sort of new way. It's all super integrated, really interesting with social, I mean, all the way up through cinema and TV and streaming and everything. And so I don't think the marketing dollars will go anywhere. I think the way that they're spending, all social has done is democratised basically the marketing budgets for huge companies because previously you would not be able to just be your neighbour [who’s] in their bedroom getting a job from whatever like Pepsi or some huge place, to be in that. So I think it's democratised marketing dollars. I don't know that it'll exist forever, but make a lot of money while you can and figure out, as I said, figure out what your next move is going to be because nothing stays the same forever. So I would say get ready to pivot. That's what it keeps coming back to.
AB: Change is the only constant.
KR: Change is the only constant. 100%
AB: Change and death. At least as of now
TR: And taxes!
KR: Well, taxes, I guess. But not if you're in like the UAE or something, I guess. But for most of us.
AB: Tristan, looking back, tell me one piece of advice that you received when you were young that you would like to give people or just a piece of advice you want to give people.
Last bit to people before we go to rapid fire.
TR: The piece of advice that I would probably share is the reminder to a young person. It's a simple thing, it's so simple, but it sticks in my head all the time. Put one foot in front of the other. And [sometimes] people go, what does that mean? If you are always moving forward, you will come out of the mire, you will come out of the quagmire that you feel you are in today. But if you are stationary wondering what to do, by its very nature you're not moving. So just keep putting one foot in front of the other and do believe. Because it will happen, something better will be on the horizon.
AB: That is fabulous. Kevin, your piece of advice.
KR: It's going to be pretty similar, I'm going to say. Yeah, it's just going to be to try things. I was encouraged to try things, but I wish I was more encouraged to try things, just keep trying stuff, eventually something sticks. And to not be downtrodden because you're like, ‘Oh, I tried this, I'm 19, I tried this for you, it didn't work. I'm 21, I tried this, it just didn't work.’ Keep going. Eventually you just kind of look up and you poke your head out of the water and you're like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I've swam so far. Like, who knew?’ But as Tristan said, it's sort of impossible to see when you're in the sludge and everything. And I think, yeah, I like how you put that. I'm probably going to adapt to that and just keep one foot in front of the other. So no, that's what I was going to say, though. I was like, no. Oh, no. My answer! But you just keep going, just keep swimming. As Dory would say from Finding Nemo.
AB: Fantastic. So, to summarise our chats, we always do a rapid fire at the end of the chat. So, Tristan, I'll start with you. One financial habit that you currently practise and wish you'd adopted in your 20s.
TR: Crikey. I think I've been overly prudent throughout my life and I think I'm probably less prudent now. The quick fire answer would be, be accountable for the choices you make, good, bad or indifferent, and learn from them. And I'd take that into finance.
AB: Fabulous. What would you recommend as a first avenue of investment for someone who's just starting out in their twenties and thirties?
TR: Basically, track 15 equity stocks over two primary markets and have monopoly money for the first three months. Read about the stocks, understand what drives price earning ratios.
Equities typically perform quite well. They're fun to review and you can do it from a safe place.
No more than 15. Otherwise you become a bit of a junkie on the phone trying to keep up with too much. Take half in the US, half in the UK or Europe, stuff that you're interested in. Understand how the metrics work, run it for three months, then put in 100 pounds per stock.
AB: Fabulous. Kevin, One digital platform every 20 something should invest their time and resources in?
KR: The common answer is obviously TikTok, which is the thing of the moment, but I honestly think it's whatever you're good at. It's sort of that thing that we were saying— is cutting through the noise. I think what you do is, I would say, pick one and do it really well, which is better than trying to chase a new thing, because people will want to. People are looking to spend money across all sorts of platforms. Like we’re in the epic of video now, but if you're audio only, I don't know, maybe you just have stuff that only goes on X, formerly known as Twitter, or on SoundCloud or some other sort of a thing. I would say do one thing and do just that. Focus on building one thing first and getting really good at it before worrying about other things.
I think whichever one sort of makes sense, mostly for your industry, basically.
AB: And financial advice you like anyone aiming to work as an influencer or entertainer to keep in mind?
KR: Save! Influencing and entertainment is not consistent work. It comes in waves and goes. And so you may work all summer, be super busy, you may have three months and there's just no jobs coming in. So I think the more you've got saved, the more it helps you to not make bad decisions out of necessity later. So I would say that.
AB: That was amazing. Thank you, Tristan. And thank you, Kevin. What a fantastic chat.
TR & KR: Thank you for having us. Really enjoyed it.
AB: Thank you for taking the time to be here with us today. Thank you for listening to this amazing chat. We hope you learned something new and we hope we got you a little closer to leading a healthier, happier, more hopeful life and to doing something that you really, really passionately want to do. If you enjoyed this show, please press like and please encourage your friends and family to subscribe to this channel so that we can get more and more speakers and get you this show for free. I would love to hear from you, so please send me any questions you might have or even any topic suggestions. My email is Anshu@WellnessCurated.Life. See you next week and thank you for being here.