008: Richard Maguire and Jack Porter-Smith
On this week’s Trailblazer Podcast, I am delighted to be joined today by Richard Maguire, and Jack Porter-Smith.
Richard, originally from the Cotswolds and now lives in Birmingham, with the primary focus being of expanding and developing his property business.
Just over 2 years ago, Richard received the terrible news that his father had developed heart failure. He was unable to spend time with his father and tend to the care of his family due to the restrictions of his work at the time (store manager for Tesco). So he decided to resign from his 15 year career with Tesco to head off and make new memories with his Mother and Father.
After Richards dad sadly passed at the age of 63. He knew that he take to new direction in live and decided to invest in serviced accommodation training. After attending other training courses, around the UK, he decided to join the Touchstone Masterclass… To ‘learn what he didn’t know‘ and ended up being blown away by the information given from the trainers. Following the masterclass Richard attended our Serviced Accommodation Mastermind Programme, and then eventually progressed on to our Monaco Mastermind Grand Prix retreat. Richard’s business now stands at 115 serviced accommodation units.
Jack Porter-Smith:
Out of school, Jack’s ambition was to join the police service, however as he was only 15. He had to join the special constable police service, and continued to do this on an off for 6 years whilst forging another career path elsewhere,
However doing the police work, he discovered it wasn’t for him. He says that the biggest struggle for him, was being a very small part of a very big machine.
Whilst working part time as a special constable, Jack worked with us in the family business. At 16, he was introduced into SEO, PPC, online advertising, and internet marketing in general. From there, he gained qualifications with google, then moved into work with an agency in Glasgow as a PPC executive. He learned huge amounts of career sculpting information at this job.
In 2009, when he was 19. Google approached him, to offer him the opportunity of becoming a top contributor. In order to offer Jack this role, Google had to see that he demonstrated good use of their product, and was using it to benefit others. They provide top contributors with special insights and up to date information, as well as inviting Jack out regularly to their Worldwide headquarters in San Jose.
After providing several talks and training sessions with google, and presenting to hundreds of people he is now at the top end of googles infrastructure.
He then went on to work as part of the web team of a large clothes retailer in the UK: M&CO. Here, he helped the company quadruple their website revenue within just 2 years. This was the biggest eye opener for him, as to what his skillset was capable of achieving.
He then outgrew this position, at the age of 21. He moved on to be head of marketing for a Glasgow based company called Peach digital, he stayed here for 3 years. Working with clients as big as the NHS.
Eventually Jack made the leap from employment to entrepreneurship. Now with 5 years under his belt, running his own business, he has an office in Toronto, with 10 staff. Achieving a turnover in 2017 0f 4.3 Million Dollars
Richard and Jack now mentor with Touchstone, and have joined forces to develop an advanced serviced accommodation systems and growth course.
Listen now to Learn:
– How creating passive income can be life changing for you and your family
– How monstrously quick scaling of your business is possible.
– How having good marketing skills can significantly sculpt to path of your business
