Nick McDonald is the Founder and Head Honcho at Likeable Lab and an Owner Manager Programme 40 Alumni.
This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 15 June 2022, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.
Would love for you to explain a bit about your career journey, what that looks like, and then about your business now?
I grew up in Hamilton and moved to London at 19. It was the boom time 99, early 2000s. I got jobs easily, worked in finance and did well. But during that journey, I started to trade the markets on the side, and I was trading financial markets, trading stocks, foreign exchange commodities. I do not know why but I was good at it, and I use the analogy of 1000 people picking up a set of golf clubs, for the first time there is always one or two people who are annoyingly good. I am terrible at golf, and I am not that person. But trading the markets, which is similarly difficult, I was good at it and that led to me to start to teach people how to trade, which led to me starting a business called Trade with Precision. Trade with Precision is still going 16 years later.
I quit working for anyone else in 2004, trading the markets full time for a few years. By 2006 I was teaching people to trade the markets, and then brokerages and exchanges started saying, "Can you also teach our clients how to trade the industry itself, there's a lot of people selling financial freedom, but the difference is that we told the truth; we said trading is hard. It is like any other profession. But if you put in the effort, then you can get good at it, we will teach you how to do that. So, we had a good reputation and brokerages, and exchanges of big international companies were asking us to teach their clients.
Fast forward 10 years to 2016 and we had a lot more competition, a lot more people were doing it. That is when I ended up completing the Owner Manager Programme. One of the key opportunities I got out of OMP was enhancing our social media services to broaden the service offerings to everyone. We were doing some social media for our finance clients, and long story short, I made some acquisitions along the way to growing and now we have another brand, Likable Lab. This growth from Likeable Lab was even a bigger business than Trade with Precision. We are now more than a social media agency. We are a digital marketing agency. We have clients from all walks of life.
What's one thing you wish you had known when you began your career in business?
It is okay to make mistakes. A lot of people out there are trying so hard to be perfect, especially early on. I learned quickly trading financial markets, you are never going to be right all the time, you just got to be right more than you are wrong to be successful. It's not too dissimilar in business, you just got to be open enough to admit to your mistakes and learn from your mistakes. I find that even with clients, if we make a mistake, we say what we have learned, we say what we will do about it and that is normally fine. If you hide from them then they are not such a good thing. Likewise hiring a lot of ‘A’ players, I have a lot of ‘A’ players on my team and just the impact that they have is brilliant. So as soon as you can afford to hire them, one ‘A’ player is often worth two or three ‘C’ players for example.
When did you first heard of The Icehouse and about the Owner Manager Programme?
I just kept on hearing these good things. A friend of mine did the course. He is more like a trained CEO, I thought, well, if he is a CEO, and if he says it is good, it is going to be good. Then actually, it was Andy Hamilton, the old CEO of The Icehouse. I asked him for a favour one day, and he said, "I'll do that favour for you, but enough beating around the bush, now I've done a favour for you, you have to come and finally commit to doing OMP. So, I enrolled in 2016. I've been involved ever since then.
What changes have you implemented into your business, but also your lifestyle since the Owner Manager Programme?
Probably not enough into my lifestyle, to be honest. That is something I need to focus on now, it is cool having a younger team, they often push me and encourage me, in terms of looking after myself abit better, having a bit more balance. But I also love working, there was a time during OMP that I was kind of semi-retired in terms of Trade with Precision going well. I had a board, and I did not have to work extremely hard. But I was also so bored with so much time. So one of the things I realised after doing that was I love the challenge an I need the challenge.
Who is one person that's been influential in your business journey?
This question is hard, because there have been so many. If I went back to Trade with Precision, compared to if I focus now on Likeable Lab and where our biggest growth opportunity is. But there has been so many, both on the payroll and off the payroll, friends, little snippets of advice, but from an Icehouse perspective, David Irving I doubt he would know who I am, But it was David, just one liner of advice that was worth all the money for me, he first asked the question of why is your business here, if you imagine my hand somewhere in front of me and not up high, and then my hand drived up higher, why is your business up higher? He asked and I had all the excuses in the world. But the main one was just because I am comfortable, I have got a good business, and I make enough money and I do not need to make much more, I do not even have to work that hard. He said, you do not need the money, you need the challenge, that was the gold. So that realisation for me was huge. It was the realisation that it's not all about the money, I need the challenge as well otherwise I get bored.