My Dragons' Den experiment: when failing is winning

As you can see from the videos from my dusty 2009 archives, I was super nervous. It was a pre-recorded show, but it was all recorded in one go with no retakes. Oh oh.

Thinking it might be a good idea to get free publicity for my meetups, named after my personal brand side hustle 'Connector', I applied to be on the show in season one. I hoped it might be a good experience for some of the people who came to my events to join me for the recording ... hi guys!

My major problem was that I had a job at the time, and it was at a marketing agency. Marketing agency work was a likely revenue stream for Connector, but I decided not to pitch a marketing-type business to the dragons. I felt it would look bad if I were pitching to compete with my current employers, so I left them out and suggested some other revenue models that were not as strong.

I really wanted to get some publicity for the brand, have some fun, but totally knew it was not investible based on my neutered pitch. Bobby Kerr, to his credit, spotted that it was a publicity stunt and dropped out. Sean Gallagher was the last to fold, and the other dragons at the time were Gavin Duffy, Niall O'Farrell, and Sarah Newman.

I was questioned for what seemed like 30 minutes, but bizarrely, they never asked me where I worked, so I didn't mention it. Six months later, I quit my job and went full-time with my side hustle, having won some early social media work with HP and Canon.

Later, I grew the business Connector into an award-winning marketing agency with clients like Huawei, Sony, Volkswagen, and EY. Expecting a cyclical market downturn, I sold the business in February 2020, weeks before my part of the world shut down for two years. Good timing boss.

What I learned from the experience:

* Put yourself out of your comfort zone e.g. pitching on TV
* There is no such thing as bad publicity
* There is such a thing as a bad pitch
* Share cool experiences with others if possible
* Make before-and-after content to showcase the experience
* Take every opportunity to grow your network
* Don't take rejection personally

So every day is a school day, and now I help others with their personal brands, career planning, and career asset building.

You can read some of my recent work on how to multiply your potential from my book on www.theassetsladder .com