In a careers interview with entrepreneur Samuel Leach, we charted his journey from financial hardship in his teens to huge success as head of Samuel & Co Trading – a firm that not only surfs the ebb and flow of the FX and equity markets, but trains people from all walks of life to do the same.
One of the interview’s biggest themes was how Sam tirelessly trained himself to master the trader’s art, and harnessed the power of algorithms to boost his glittering career – a path that led him to deliver a TED talk and write the career-advice book The Formula for Success: How to Win at Life Using Your Own Personal Algorithm.
Here, Sam explains how he gained a further edge by harnessing algorithms he spotted in life and human behaviour. He also provides compelling advice on self-belief, and how to build a powerful personal brand that will signal your professional authority…
My interest in this stems partly from my dad who, as well as working as a cartographer [as mentioned in last month’s interview], is also a hypnotherapist.
It all comes down to a very simple pattern in human nature: if I said to you now, “Don’t think of a red balloon,” you’re instantly thinking of a red balloon. If I said, “Don’t think of a red balloon with white dots on,” you’re thinking of a red balloon with white dots on.
So then you think, OK – how far can this actually go? And the next step is that if someone were to just prospectively put out their hand, as if to shake someone else’s, it would be your natural reflex to then shake that person’s hand. Neither of you says anything. There’s no verbal communication going on between you.
If we take that even further, the next step is to ask which characteristics and/or traits actually make someone successful. And that doesn’t have to mean monetarily successful. I essentially thought, well – there was no one in my circle when I first started out in business that was successful. So I designed an algorithm where you write down all the positive traits of the five people you most admire.
What do they do well? What do they preach? What do they say they do every single day of their lives to keep themselves sharp? And then you find the links between those individuals.
It’s a simple algorithm that breaks down each individual, then kind of aggregates them, so you can work out your own vision of a perfect person. And then you have to apply those characteristics to yourself. And that, in short, is what I’ve done with my career, and it’s worked fantastically well for me – especially for understanding how people work, what people are looking for, and which traits you need to get where you need to go. Of course, there’s no such thing as a real perfect person, because everyone has their flaws. You just ensure that you’re focusing on the points you value.
If you took any handful of people who you’re a huge fan of – I’d say with me it would be Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Richard Branson and a few others – and ask them the one thing that made them successful, or the top three things, you would find that there are some serious crossovers between those individuals. It’s not just fate that got them where they are. It’s because of those traits. So you can then turn those traits into tools to implement in your own life.
One of the main ones that crops up in a lot of successful people’s backgrounds is time management. Denzel Washington preaches that just because you’re doing a lot doesn’t mean that you’re doing a lot more – which means that, if you don’t use your time wisely, you’re going to end up wasting time doing things that aren’t adding value.
It’s about personalising what you learn from the people you admire to your own goals. As you’re passionate about the five people that you look up to, you tend to implement their characteristics quite easily, because you want to be like them.
Elon Musk is a real rarity among entrepreneurs, in that he owns three different companies that are each valued at over $1bn. He’s someone I look up to because I find that impressive. OK, he’s got negatives against him, which we all see in the press. But the bottom line is, he still managed to get that valuation on each of his three businesses.
In one interview, he was asked: “On the launch of Spacex (the third of those businesses), you were risking everything you’d ever made before. Why did you take that risk?” And his answer was, “I believe in everything that I’m doing. And I will go to the fullest extent to be able to achieve those sorts of goals.”
I reflect on that whenever I’m in stressful situations. When I took the leap to acquire my company’s first offices, I didn’t even think about a bank loan – I wasn’t that sort of person. I thought, economically, how am I going to do this? First of all, I had to make a two-month down payment. But I also had staff on payroll and had to get 15 trading computers, each with two screens, and ensure I had enough money in the tank to hit the ground running with the trading. I knew that if I didn’t make money within the first three months, I’d be gone.
So I looked at the tenacious characteristics of six people on my radar, and dug in.
It’s easy to quit – to be put off and walk away. You know: “I tried, and that’s what counts.” But it’s not like that. People who perform well under pressure look at those moments in a different way, and stress – that time when you feel extremely uncomfortable – often leads to growth. So that’s how I see stress now. If I’m stressing to the point where I’m thinking about giving up, I sit there and think, just around the corner is growth.
I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t analysed all of my idols’ key characteristics.
Businesses are increasingly having to use social media, and they don’t know how to do it. Technology has advanced so quickly that the older generation doesn’t see the same value in social that younger generations do.
But consider these stats: we look at billboards for about half a second to a second. We look at TV adverts for about three seconds. But we check through Instagram posts for about 20 minutes a day. When you think about the differences between those time allocations, there’s so much more scope for audiences to plug into your business via social.
People now watch YouTube as TV. They don’t watch actual TV so much – or, if they do, they’re more likely to watch streaming services. Everything’s moving online. So, people who invest in Facebook and Instagram now will be thanking those platforms in the next 10 years, because they’ll have accumulated audiences that are much larger than what they could have gathered through any other medium. And those audiences will be more engaged.
The lesson is that if you can master social – if not for a business, then as a skill set for yourself, to grow your own personal brand – the gains will be massive. In my company, I urge all of our traders to have their own social profiles. So the company’s got 116,000 Instagram followers, I’ve got 25,000, a couple of the other guys have got 10,000–15,000 each – and they don’t even talk about the company! It’s just great for audiences to see the people behind a business, so they can look those individuals up and follow them.
Personal branding through social can have incredible legacy effects. A strong example of that is the two-year-old son of DJ Khaled, Asahd Tuck Khaled, who already has 1.8 million followers on Instagram – thanks to his dad setting up the account for him.
Let’s say that sometime down the line – worst-case scenario – DJ Khaled dies and leaves no money to his son. Asahd now has ready-made reach to almost two million people on Instagram, who could be interested in working with him or buying his products. That’s like walking into Wembley Stadium and filling it out 18 times over.
It wouldn’t matter which business he created. Imagine he formed a key ring business, and got every single one of his followers interested in it, and each key ring cost a dollar. Straight away he’s made $1.8m, just from having a social presence. Now, of course, that’s hypothetical – but it’s crazy that people don’t leverage that power.
There are some superb examples of artists who have found ways to get themselves out there on social. One of the biggest – who I’m a huge fan of – is Alec Monopoly, who’s now a multimillionaire, all because he started sharing his output in a funny way on social media.
Another one I like is Timmy Sneaks. No one had ever heard of him until someone took the risk of letting him spray-paint their Lamborghini, and the video went viral. Then people like Jay-Z and other big-name stars came to him to get their cars spray-painted and buy his paintings, and now he makes millions.
This is a new era where social media is enabling people to be paid for doing what they love to do. The Bucket List Family travel the world, upload all their videos and pictures to YouTube and have all sorts of different holiday resorts lining up to sponsor them to stay at their facilities so those businesses can reach the family’s large, online audience. It’s extraordinary.
My YouTube following is now at 105,000 followers, and I’m earning between £1,000 and £3,000 per month, just from uploading videos.
If you invest in your own, personal brand at an early stage, you could end up being admired by the public, or your industry, for your drive and expertise. So mastering social media is one of the biggest things that any professional should do.
For further information on Sam’s book, click here.
Matt Packer is a freelance business, finance and leadership journalist