My secret weapon to building a global business from scratch

We recently had our Hoxton award night where we honoured 35 of our employees from across the business for their hard work, dedication and incredible success.?

There, in the amazing Billionaire restaurant/club in Dubai, I thought about how far Hoxton has come in the last 7 years.?

And how proud I am of how far we’ve come.?

But it hasn’t come without one hugely underrated quality in business…

Patience.?

What I’ve realised is that most people don’t fail because they lack talent.

They fail because they lack patience.

• Patience to see it through when nothing appears to be working.
• Patience to stick with a strategy when things aren’t going well.
• Patience to stay the course when every instinct tells you to give up!

Patience has been the ultimate secret weapon in my arsenal to building a business that manages billions, has offices across 6 countries, and employs hundreds of people.?

Let me show you what I mean:?

Time in the market is everything

If you’d fallen asleep on 1 January 2004 and woken up on 31 December 2023, you’d have missed wars, a global financial crisis, a pandemic, sky-high inflation, etc.?

You’d think all of your investments had plummeted.?

But really, the opposite’s true.?

The market delivered an annual return of 9.7% over those 20 years.

• If you had missed the 10 best days in those 20 years, your returns would have dropped to 5.5% annually.?
• Missed the 30 best days, you’re looking at a return of 0.7% annually.?
• Missed the 60 best days, now you’re at -4.3% annually.

Think about how gutted you’d feel realising you pulled out right before the good days.?

The problem normally is that the best days happen after the worst.

But we see this happen all the time.

When we see things on sale in a shop - we are conditioned to buy more, see the market on a massive sale - we are conditioned to run a mile!

Because people let fear and impatience run the show.

Patience is the single most underrated skill in investing and in business.?

Warren Buffett puts it best: “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”

The best returns don’t go to the cleverest person in the room—they go to the person who has the ability and long term mindset to sit tight when everyone else is panicking.

And the exact same thing applies to success within business.

The Work Nobody Sees

Now let me clarify something: patience is a very hard quality to acquire.

It means showing up every day, even when you’re not seeing results.?

It means doing the unsexy, monotonous work while everyone else is chasing shortcuts.

When I started Hoxton, my days were far from glamorous:

?? I’d drive 6 hours round trip just to meet one potential client.

?? I’d work 9-8 taking meetings, then 6am-9am doing admin, prospecting, and handling the paperwork nobody else wanted to do.

There were no guarantees those long drives or late nights would pay off.?

And, truthfully, many didn’t.

But every meeting, every call, every spreadsheet was a seed planted.?

So you better learn to love the hard work at the start that is required to really lift your dreams off.?

And don’t stop until you reach the summit of the mountain right in front of you.?

I may have "made it" by some people's standards but the truth is that the best business people are never fully satisfied.

They live for the journey and the constant pushing forward each day.?

Next, I want Hoxton to hit ￡3 billion AUM.?

I want us to open offices in more countries.?

I want Hoxton to be the top financial planning business in the world.

The work never stops.?

And neither should your ability to stay patient while you hit that next milestone.?

Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid

I want to address something.?

You’ve seen the crypto bros on Instagram, selling you “freedom” from the first-class cabin.

When you see it, don’t let it deter you from your vision.

Nobody worth their weight in gold built an incredible business overnight.

Case in point:

Jeff Bezos once said, “Amazon’s success was built on a willingness to invest in things that wouldn’t pay off for 5, 7, or even 10 years.”

When Amazon started, it wasn’t the behemoth it is today. It was an online bookstore.?

Bezos spent years operating at a loss, investing every penny into infrastructure, logistics, and customer experience.

He ignored the doubters who said his business model would never work.?

He bet on the long-term, even as Wall Street analysts ripped him apart for sacrificing short-term profits.

And it worked.

Bezos’ willingness to stay the course turned Amazon into a trillion-dollar empire.

In business, just like investing, the only way to win is to play the long game.?

Stick to your plan.?

Trust the process.?

Ignore the bottom-feeders peddling get-rich-quick schemes.

And get to work.?

Takeaway

Before I wrap up, let me leave you with something:?

If you think you’re going to time the market and make money quickly, you’re going to end up broke and feeling like a fool.?

In the words of Peter Mallouk:

“Only idiots and liars profess to timing the market!”

Be patient.

That’s what we built our entire service on.?

That’s what 99% of ultra-successful business owners built their business on.?

That’s the principle I live my life by.?

So get your head down and get to work.?

What’s your take? Drop your thoughts below—I’d love to hear them.