YouSaid · the spoken record

Luke Massie

lines on the record: 102
first: 2018-06-11
most recent: 2018-06-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I've got a business to focus on. I've got incredible team. I've got an incredible opportunity here with the business. I've got super, super supportive investors that have not just backed me, but they've backed me through this whole process as well. And they're confident that I'm going to come through this as a stronger leader, but also Vibe is going to come through this as a stronger business. And I generally do hope that in two, three years' time, I look back. And when people say, what was the turning point? It was this. I had to shake off that negative toxic cap. The last six months of my life have been managing investors. Not managing the business It became a business itself”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's still raw hope. Because it's still raw. This is actually the first time I spoke about it. I've made comments, I came out, set the record straight, I'm giving my shares back to the crowd. Since then, I've not said anything. I've just cracked on”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think I'd give him a comment, no, because he's betraying me to be something that I'm not. And where was my comment when you asked me what was going on? Because what he could have done, this is a real talking issue here, is what he could have done is taken what's happened, painted a fur picture of what's happened, but then asked what I would have done differently. Because this is an interesting story for the startup scene, which is not just from the founder perspective, but also from the investor perspective, because this could happen if you're too restrictive. This could happen if you force your founder into a corner. We'll find ourselves. We have to. So there's lessons to be learned here from founders, which is make sure you get independent legal advice. And again, I don't want to go over the same points because it is what it is. You can make your own judgments on it. At the end of the day, vibe's now looking forward and it's a positive road for us.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, first of all, I haven't gone under. Second of all, I've acquired the business back and things are actually fine to the consumer, to a vibe customer they would never know what's actually gone. But because Vibe is such a public business in this area and because, you know, as you said, we've rightly raised capital. It was blown up. But for that to be such a personal headline, that was aimed at me. That's me. That's not the vibe limit. Bearing in mind we're separate entities. That was quite hard. But it was a lesson. It was a huge lesson for me. And I can't wait for the day that we get to that stage where that reporter's asking for comment and I can go, no.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“which was my face, the image that was used that went on all the billboards because I was the face of Voom. And the headline was Branson's.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know exactly, and this is the thing, you know, one of the disappointing things was the Sunday Times Wrote a piece not last Sunday the Sunday before, which was the first page of the business section.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially people that are in the local community who are trying to champion entrepreneurship. That's really, really bad. You know, at the end of the day, if this was to happen in the States, I guarantee that people would have been sending me very different messages and the press would have been different.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, I had to take the right tax advice because what I didn't want to do was give shares to people, and then they would all be like. They would all but they would all be landed with a tax bill. So I had to do things correctly And, you know, when I could announce it, I was relieved because I was like, look, guys, this is what I was trying to do. You were all so quick to come out and judge. And they were just so quick to write the headlines. It was just. In that moment I learned a lot. I learned a hell of a lot about how things are set up, how things are perceived, etc.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I appreciate that. And you know, for those listening, you sent me a text just keep your head up, Luke. These things happen, you'll shed off. And to get that from a fellow in brackets entrepreneur, someone who's going through the challenges that you're going through, that helped me through it. But again, it's that you talk about character. I think that Hermit the Moss, which was people are actually questioning your character. People are coming out and saying that you're screwing people over. This is the thing once I'd saved the company, and I know, okay, now I'm back in control things, the first thing I did was pick up the phone to my lawyer and say, I want to give shares back to the crowd out of my own shares, because that's what I was going to do. That was the right thing. But before I could even come out and comment,”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But why and what's going to happen and what's happening next was never never documented. And you know, it shouldn't have been documented at the end of the day. This happens, but because if I was a public company.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“which then all the press got onto it and the announcement to the stock exchange was just factual. The company went into administration. Luke's bought it back. So the all, not one media outlet in the northwest rang me for a comment. The oldest printed that the company's gone into administration, Link Masses bought it back. Was really disappointing for me because not one of them rung me up to ask for comment. Now this is now spreading around Manchester and the headline was true. The fact was true. Luke Massey did by the company. I did.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What can I do? So I sold some more personal assets, I sold some Bitcoin, I'm ringing around friends that I know, people that I can rely on. I said, look, I need to get more cash together to buy this business. I was told that I had two hours to improve my offer. My script gave us some more cash and put my offer in. And my offer was conditional on I took on the going concerns of the business, things like Salesforce that are operational to the success of the business, but also that every single member of the staff was moved over. I didn't make one redundancy because my team was so important to me. The first priority I had to do was to save the company, to get the staff. So that very day the transaction completed, Luke Massey buys the company back, okay? That same very day, because of one of my investors was on the stock market, they had to make an announcement to London Stock Exchange.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the fact that people don't know about. So I've gone in with this offer. My offer's declined. Couldn't believe it. We've had a significantly larger offer, Mr. Massey. At that point, shit was real This is it. No longer in trial my company, someone else is buying it”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not only that this said person actually tried contacting key members of staff prior to it going into that. Now this hasn't come out, this hasn't been demonstrated because I don't want to go over the past but the situation that was portrayed. Was the fact that the headlines”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was frustrated. I was angry. I was so close to coming out and saying, you know, you guys don't know what's happened. I've not even come out and made a public statement yet. But going back to what happened is, you know, my offer was conditional and I went in with an offer. And my offer was declined, my first offer. And I was so surprised that I couldn't understand. Surely I'm the only person that's tried to buy this business. And it became apparent that the one person that tried putting the company into administration had made a bid for my company. Now, people can take that however they want, but it then made me a very, very...”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's absolutely horrible. It's the most vulnerable I've ever been in my life because I'm now not in control of my own company. And it could have easily been taken away from me because of this process. And for people to come out in the press to say that this was forced and this was, no one would want to go down that process. If anyone's been through it, never mind at the age I am, but no one would want to go down this process.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our administration, and I wasn't willing to give up on this. There was no way. So I frantically ran around, put some money together and put a bid together to the independent values of the business to say, look, I'm the founder. I'm willing to take this on. Here's my offer to the business. And my offer was conditional. The insolvent practitioners, they put an independent value in, so they say, okay, we think this business is worth X and take everything into consideration. And it's a vigorous process.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it actually got to a point where the rest of the investors said, Well, we're not continuing to invest in this vehicle unless some of these documents are changed. And then forced Vibe into a position where the company ran out of capital. The company ran out of cash, which meant it was insolvent. And for those that don't understand that process, it means that once a company is declared insolvent, it means that as a director, I have a duty by law to think of creditors first, not shareholders. And while that was very, very difficult, considering that I was the biggest shareholder and I was also one of the biggest creditors, having put my directors loan at the beginning, people don't understand that. So I had to take the correct legal advice, I had to take the correct independent insolvency advice, and it was told to me, look, if this company doesn't get capital very, very quickly, the company's going to go under. So I went back to the shareholder base and asked for some short-term capital until I could get this deal over the line. And the money wasn't forthcoming, which meant that I had no other option. So the company was placed in.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, basically, what happened was we had a sort of very difficult structure in the old company. And again, touching on that without going into the sort of specifics of the details, but we had a very, very restrictive shareholders agreement, which meant that I couldn't take on new capital or I couldn't take on new debt without investor director consent, which meant I constantly had to go back to airperson to get their consent to do something. And it got to a stage where, again, we had agreement on the table for more capital to come in. And there was a situation that was engineered, which meant it was favourable to that one person who was holding the cards.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's happened over the course of it, but I think the hardest thing for me has been thinking that something was when it wasn't. And what I mean by that is quite publicly recently there's been a situation with Vibe where I was backed into a corner by someone who was my mentor, someone who did write my first investment check. And I signed my first shareholders agreement age 20, raised this capital, and at the time didn't take independent legal advice. And throughout that period, I've thought that something was, that it wasn't.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you become hardened to it. And I think you then start understanding things from a different perspective. And what you've got to do is you've got to take the emotion out of it. You've got to take these guys are trying to screw me away. You've got to take the emotion out of, I'm really worried about everything else. You've got to go, look, this is the product. This is how we're doing things. This is why we're so successful. And the alternative is turn on monetization and slow growth or turn on monetization and go against everything you've said and force something. Stick true to what you have and it'll come good. And that's the only advice I can sort of give to people that are embarking on it.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, that's a really good question, and Pinswan has ever answered that, and that's probably because you're a fan of yourself. There's 80K about to go away, you know, whatever. And we won't go into details, but the burn rate's chugging on you've got three days of capital left, and it's like you've got investors there and they're riding on their investors. You know, they're waiting to get to a point where it's best to negotiate their position”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As I said, I think you need to accept that this is the strategy and this is what we're playing for and you do it right. The model that Vibe's doing isn't new.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's going to be difficult to demonstrate a model that's going to work. How about looking at this from this position? And that's when the real cash started coming in.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think he just liked Vibe, and it was at that point where Richard Branson said to me, look, Luke, Vibe isn't a ticketing business. Don't think of it as a ticketing business. You're in the business of connecting people, and data is your currency. And that's when things click for me, which is okay, how I've been packaging vibe, how I've been selling vibe, how I've been trying to convince people has to change. Vibe is about removing those barriers and it's about challenging any company that deliberately positions itself to exploit the customer. That's where Vibe can go as a brand. And that really started to excite me, but also the investors that I'd previously visited, which was, look, you've been thinking about vibes of ticketing business. The industry is very, very competitive.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's not the right thing to do. So we're going about it a different way. And the external pressures of that is very, very difficult to stay strong to what you're trying to achieve and what the strategy is. There was three finalists. We all won cash. And then McReba, the plastic rods guy, ended up winning the actual competition. I think he won more cash and some prizes from JC Decor. Some of the partners, etc. That is a fantastic business, by the way. Toby's a brilliant founder, so he was definitely a deserved winner. And he is making a global impact to plastic. So fair play to him. But yeah, the following day, Richard invited him to his house.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, Virgin's pitched to each competition, so I was down in London. Yeah, so well, no, I was actually a finalist. We want one capital, but Richard then singled me out and identified me as someone that he wanted to mentor and been to his house several times, spent time with him on that. And I think he saw what I was trying to do with Vibe as a challenger brand and the world against it. What he did Exactly. We're trying to build something that's right. People all the time question vibe's model. I could tell you right now that if I turned on monetization tomorrow and charge for this service, we would be profitable within six weeks.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you also know that it's part of your strategy to actually make an impact in the industry by going in with this different monetization model. So, you know, for people that don't understand Vibe is that not only is our offering different as a product, but our commercial model is different as well to the industry, which is we're completely separate ourselves from resale. We're offering a different alternative. Yeah, you know, the first year for me was turbulent. It was so hard to get in my head that I'm going to have to keep going out and raising capital here and trying to pivot and trying to understand where we're going to generate revenue. And I sat down and we built a very, very good advisory board. And a huge influence on that was Richard Branson without sort of trying to bring him into the story. He was one that said, you've got to look at this bigger picture. If this is your game plan, you need to make sure that it's part of your strategy and you execute very, very well.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very, very good question, Steve. And no one asked this question because no one knew for asking. Exactly. So, first of all, in the first year, it's terrifying. You think you're on something, you've now brought these people in, they've brought into the vision, you've convinced people who have got families and dependents to come and join this operation and come and join this vision.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes Yes And this is where I think for anyone who's listening who's trying to raise capital really needs to consider this because the amount of people that come to me asking for investment from myself or access to my investors are typically raising between $100,000 and $200,000. And when I actually ask them why, why are you raising this money? Nine times out of ten, it's to prove this idea that I've got in my head when they could actually go and prove the idea that they've got in the head without the $200,000 or without the £100,000. They could create a Facebook group or they could create a Twitter account and just prove the need. And then it's a different scenario, which is, look, I've already demonstrated the need and now just need capital to make this happen.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we carried on raising, but I mean, this is another thing that people ask me about how do I raise capital? Our MVP was the Twitter account We could prove that even though we didn't have a product that thousands of people were using this as a genuine alternative.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was at that time that this guy who was obviously a lot older than me, a lot more savvier than me, sort of presented this idea. And that's when I thought, ah, a marketplace. So it's brilliant that all these people are using Twitter, but AI don't own the customer. I can never monetize this And see if I'm going to build something of value and I want to pivot and change the product, I'm going to have to own it myself. And that's when I went back to him with a business idea and said, Look, listen to what you've said. You've planted this idea in my mind. I can't get it out of my head now. I think I can build a vibe community. And that's when the idea of vibe came about and I wrote my first business plan as such. And on that day, he wrote me a check for £200,000.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, the idea was planted in my head. Completely randomly, but the guy who ended up being my first investor said to me. Matt Newin said to me, This is really cool. Wouldn't it be brilliant if every time someone tweeted you, you made a pound? So at the time, just to give you an idea of figures, it was just me and my bedroom, but we were doing between three and five thousand tweets a day, retweets like connecting people. And just to give you an idea of volume, that's probably between three and five million pounds worth of tickets every single day. So we were causing nuisance in the resale market because the big four resale of spending money on user acquisition, on SEO, on PPC, to try and get people to these sites. And we're just taking it all on social because we remove those barriers to entry. We just wanted to connect on those people.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And within the first six months, we grew to 60,000 followers. We then grew to 100,000 followers. And this was an amazing time for us because we had people from the industry itself, from Ticketmaster, using our hashtag and using our Twitter handle. And it was insane. And that's how I actually met my first investor who basically used Twitter to sell some Formula One tickets and was like, I want to know who this lad is behind this account because he's just saved me a fortune. This is such a good idea.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's when the light bulb moment happened for me, which is if I can replicate what I've done, then I can help thousands of people. So we set up basically the hashtag good vibes. And that's how Vibe was born. Vibe Tickets was a free resource. Anyone who wanted a ticket or had a spur ticket would tweet us and we just retweet it.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was at that time where I questioned, as I always have in life, you know, my why, is there a need here on a buyer and a seller's part, but the current operators in the space weren't fulfilling that need for either of us. So I started questioning, you know, if I've done this, surely there's other people doing it. So I started using things like TweetDeck and checking how many tweets there were. And just on Twitter alone, there was between 15 and 25 million tweets a month with the keywords need tickets, want tickets, spare tickets.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It just wasn't feasible. So I thought, you know, this is shit. Went to Twitter. Anyone at our edge, when they've got a problem, goes and rants about it. I tweeted the fact that I had four tickets to CED sheering, hashtag Manchester, hashtag Edge Sheering. And literally within sort of four or five minutes, there was genuine Edge Shearing. Fans tweeted me. Hi Luke, I'll take the tickets. They could see that was a real person. They could see that I invested in my Twitter profile. So I got chat into one genuine edge shearing fan. I tweeted him, screenshotted him my confirmation of purchase, shared with him my PayPal details so he could send me money as a stranger would be covered and I managed to get my money back within 10 minutes.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was pretty crowded market, you know, they were all offering the same service for the same fees, etc. But the problem I had as a consumer at the time was two major problems. First of all, they all charged me a selling fee So, in order for me to get the £400 back, I had to list them at £500. And knowing at the other end there was a buyer going to pay a fee as well. I just didn't think that was morally right. But if I'm being completely honest with everyone, the biggest issue I had with it was that all these sites would only pay me the money after the event because they wanted to control a process. Now, what 20-year-old lad can afford to give their mates back £100 each and wait for six months?”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Vibe was founded when I was 20 years old, but it wasn't a business. So people talk about Vibe was found in 2013. It's five years old. Yes, it was formed in five years ago. That's because I incorporated the name. I knew it was a very, very good brand at the time, but I didn't know what it was. I had four tickets to see Ed Sheeran that I bought on my card. We bought for me and my friends bought four tickets, £100 each. They gave him the cash, I put it in my bank and I made the purchase for these tickets. Something came up in the social calendar, which meant we couldn't go to the event. And my mates were asking for the cashback, basically. So I went to Google, typed in selling tickets, and there was a number of sites that offered me the option to sell these tickets. There was Get Me In Via Gorgo, Seatwave Stupub.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then, yeah, I also started to invest in other businesses. Friends had come up to me with an idea of a loft converting business, for example. So I invested in Preston Loft conversions. And I thought that if I could invest little bits of capital into three or four businesses, that would generate me 20, 30,000 pounds a year per business and I wouldn't have to work again. And it was that because I'd had one success, I thought that would work for everything else. And that was another huge mistake, which is you can't spread yourself too thin, but at the same time, stick to what you know. Don't go into markets that you don't know about.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Made a few mistakes, went and bought a car that I shouldn't have done. Car S5, a thousand pound a month car insurance. And you're not still then going back to see my mum and a counsellor state. Wasn't the best decision also gets the wrong attention? You know, I think at the end of the day, looking back now, it's a really poor decision. At the time, I always wanted that car. I went into Audi, you know, and for me, it was my money. I've made it, that sort of thing. But that money could have been used a lot better. But those are mistakes that I made at an early stage, which meant I've not had to go and do those now. So yeah.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely agree, and it also sets you up for one of the biggest things in life that people don't like, which is failure, which is that, you know, stepping out of your comfort zone, picking up the phone, speaking to a stranger, that is real life. And, you know, I talk about this a lot, but call centers are the modern day workshops. They are the modern day factories.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I sold the business for £94,000 a week before May 18th birthday, which sort of set the ball in motion, which is, wow, there's ways to make cash here.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They didn't give me a chance Whereas if I was calling from mortgage claims direct, a mortgage is really important to everyone They give me at least 30 seconds on the phone, which allowed me that foot through the door. And we saw that our conversion was much higher than everyone else's. So the three grand I had, I worked out that I had basically six weeks worth of money You know, I was paying these women full time whilst I was still at college doing my A levels. And still to this day, unfortunate enough for it, but we ran out of cash. And for two weeks, I had to say to these women this investor's waiting to send the check to me, etc. The money's coming in. And fortunately enough, some of the claims started to come in, which gave me cash flow. So we managed to scale that business to 12 staff.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And our conversion rate went from 1 to 20 to literally 50%. Every other person I was calling, we got a hit. So I managed to save up £3,000 and thought, I can do this myself. It's an unregulated business. The barriers to entry are so low. We don't have to be a solicitor firm. We can be a lead generation and act on behalf of our clients. We keep 25% of the money that's come back. It was a brilliant model. I created my own script. I convinced two of the top girls to come and work for me. I said, I've just raised this investment. I managed to lie to a landlord in Preston, got an office space. I was meant to be 18 to get a tenancy. Set up this call centre and called it Mortgage Claims Direct. And the reason for that is one of the biggest challenges I had at the law firm was when I was ringing up calling from a PPI company.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it was at a time when the banks hadn't lost, so every person we were calling would convert sort of one in 20. It was really hard. It was really hard work. And then something happened, the banks had lost. It was now legal that the banks had had to repair, people had been miss sole PPI. It was one of the biggest scandals ever.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, probably not. I think my outlook on things would be different. I think my attitude towards challenges would be different. I think you probably get hardened all the time to challenges. And I think that starts at a very young age. I think in an isolation, I think being an entrepreneur, you come across challenges every single day. I think most people would crumble at those challenges. Know the big decisions that you're making have not just happened here and it happens right now this is combined over five years, 10 years, whatever it may be. Going back to the first business, I was working on the phones at a law firm, but there was actually a part of the law firm, which was a lead generation arm to the business. And basically I was the annoying young lad at 17 ringing up, asking if you'd been missed sole PPI.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you need to make money My mum is unemployed, has been ever since I was young. Even when I was at school, I was making money buying and selling sweets. I needed to make some cash to even just go out with my friends at the weekend. I've always been that person. So I've always made money, whether it was a milk round, whether it was a paper round, whether it was buying, selling sweets, etc. So even though I was at college, I didn't see that as an opportunity not to make cash.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was doing economics, finance, and sport actually at the time. And I was working at a law firm part-time in the evenings to make some money. So I used to finish at four and then run around the corner to start work at half eight every night.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my first business was a company called Mortgage Claims Direct, which believe it or not had nothing to do with mortgages. So I was 17 when I founded the company. So the company came about. I was at Cardinal Newman College in my first year of doing my A level. So I was doing my AS. Best in Preston, and that was nine to four every day. I was there five days a week.”
2018-06-11 · The Diary of a CEO · E19: Luke Massie - I Have Nothing To Hide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT