I had the pleasure of interviewing Roger James Hamilton. Roger James Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of Genius Group, GeniusU, and Entrepreneur Resorts. He is a futurist and social entrepreneur, and the creator of Wealth Dynamics and Talent Dynamics, used by over 1.4 million entrepreneurs to find their flow.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Istarted my first business when I was in Cambridge University 33 years ago, I was studying Architecture and loved to draw I saw there were many businesses looking to get to students and tourists, and many students and tourists trying to find the businesses, so I drew a map of the city and charged the businesses to list their logo and location on the map. I built this into a map company called Cityscapes with maps of 40 cities around the UK and then sold the business after graduating. That started the path of being both an entrepreneur and an educator supporting other entrepreneurs.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

In that first business the hardest part was having to persevere with no money before we had a workable model. In Cambridge I had a model where we would visit every retailer in town, get their commitment and have confidence to then spend the next month going to print and then collecting the money. I remember our first map we then tried in London, which was in Covent Garden. We visited over 1,000 retailers and after six weeks none of them had confirmed their place. We had no idea why but guessed our product wasn’t compelling enough. I remember it was February 1991. Tourists weren’t traveling because of the Pan Am bombing and terrorist attacks. There was a massive snow storm and the Prime Minister’s house had just been struck with an IRA mortar bomb.

We were broke and had run out of money. My business partner, Mike, and I decided we’d close our startup down but not before going out one last time to revisit the retailers. It was a Saturday morning, and the snow was so bad, even the retailers hadn’t shown up for work. I remember going back down to catch the London Underground at Covent Garden station, and even the trains had practically stopped. That’s when I noticed the huge ad posters and wondered how expensive it would be to buy them up and post our map on them. On Monday I called and it turned out it was cheap enough for us to include it in our plan. We revisited all the retailers the week after with our revised plan of their logos and locations being in the Covent Garden underground at a fraction of the price they could get themselves, and one in five immediately signed up. A year later we had a million pound business.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

From that early experience, I learned the lesson that whenever things get dark you need to look for the light. And there’s always light.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

The first piece of office furniture Mike and I invested in was a pool table that converted into a boardroom and dining table. We tracked our daily revenues against the number of pool games we played. We noticed whenever revenues went up, so did the amount of pool we played and so we joked we should just play more pool. We eventually got to a point in the business where we thought we were ready to outsource the hardest part of the business — having to go out and make sales calls each day. We hired two salespeople and I remember clearly the day we sent them out for the first time. We were ecstatic. Instead of making sales calls ourselves, we played pool all day. We broke out record for the number of pool games we played in a day. Then we got snacks and drinks ready for our end of day sales meeting when they returned. They never came back. We never saw them again.

It wasn’t funny at the time, but from what I’ve learned about leadership and team building since, it’s now hilarious.

If you could go back in time and talk to your younger self regarding life lessons, things you would like him to know what would they be and why?

To not rely on the lessons I learned at school and university to try and grow a business, but to do the opposite. Instead of thinking learning from others is cheating, I would say all your learning comes from the mentors, team and customers you surround yourself with. Instead of thinking success was a plan that was worth an A grade, realising you get no points for passing an exam or submitting a report in business — it’s not about your success but the success of your customers, partners and team. And to know that academics and entrepreneurship really are the opposite of each other. The academic path is needing to know in order to do. The entrepreneurial path is needing to do in order to know.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

My company today, Genius Group, is a global group of education companies leading the entrepreneur movement. We have 1.4 million students and our edtech platform GeniusU, connects entrepreneurs to a global network of knowledge, connections and opportunities, each following their own personalized path.

My children went to a world-renowned school in Bali called the Green School. It taught them to be global citizens, with a belief they could make a difference in the world and could always create their own job without needing to get a job. The school was so good, it was highlighted in the recent World Economic Forum report on 21st Century Education. I set up the Board at the Green School and we wanted to grow that education system around the world. The problem was, as a traditional school it wasn’t easy to scale and didn’t link easily to the traditional university system and job market beyond. With Genius Group, we’ve solved that problem by having our own university and lifelong, global entrepreneur community.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

Pace yourself. Problems and stress arise from going too fast or too slow. You don’t want to stall from going too slow or burn out from going too fast so tune in to the right pace. Its like in nature, nothing is rushed yet all is accomplished.

Mastering this is by remembering that there is always someone who has experienced the same problems as you, and discovered solutions. So reach out to others. Find a trusted circle of colleagues and connections who can benefit you and find out how you can help them. Other people give you clarity and perspective and they will support you in return.

Also, focus on your passions and purpose. Within Genius Group we use the Japanese concept of Ikigai, which basically means ‘a reason for being’. It’s about connecting with what you’re good at (your talents), what you enjoy (your passions), how you make money (your vocation), and what the world needs (your purpose). It’s easier to manage stress when you know that all your hard work is for a great purpose. When you are driven by purpose, every day becomes meaningful. You don’t need to push yourself when you’re being pulled.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

My main mentor who has always inspired me over the years is the late Buckminster Fuller (Bucky), who was renowned globally for his focus on solving the world’s problems. When I was a student at Cambridge, I learned about his concept of ‘The Final Exam’. He said all the world’s greatest challenges are distribution challenges. For example, poverty isn’t because there isn’t enough money and hunger isn’t because there isn’t enough food. It’s just not distributed effectively. He said technology already lets us solve all these challenges. The reason we haven’t isn’t because of technology, but human consciousness. He said we are now in a period he called ‘The Final Exam’ where we were being tested as to whether we could accelerate human consciousness. We would pass if we grew our consciousness to the level where it would harness our technology and we would solve these challenges. We would fail it we didn’t and technology continues to accelerate until it destroys us. Failure means annihilation so this isn’t just another exam. It’s the final one. That’s motivation enough for me to do what I do on our mission each day.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

We’ve aligned all our efforts in Genius Group to passing the Final Exam, and we’ve connected to others out there doing the same. For example, our free Purpose Test has enabled hundreds of thousands around the world to discover their purpose and link it to the 17 United Nations Global Goals, and then connect with others on our platform to collaborate and work together towards a common purpose. Entrepreneurs and changemakers committed to improving education, the environment, equality, ending hunger, poverty, injustice — they all find each other on GeniusU and then educate others in these causes.

I believe we can’t impact the world until we’re in tune with our own personal world. We’ve seen a transformation in education within our group from the traditional “Three R’s” of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic to the “Three S’s” of Self-Awareness, Self-Mastery and Self-Expression. Our company name is about igniting the genius in each person so we can impact the world by inspiring each person’s personal world. As the saying goes “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started my company” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

These are on the same lines as what my future self would tell my younger self:

1. Surround yourself with others who have become what you want to become
2. Judge success by the success you create in others
3. Be guided not by opinions but through testing and measuring
4. Remember that success is in every moment, and always comes from a change in pace
5. Make flow your guide and when you’re in flow, everything flows

On those last two points, the analogy I like best is how flowers grow. Water it too much and it will die. Water it too little and it will also die. Life comes at just the right pace. The trouble with most humans is we’re so impatient for our businesses to grow or teams to perform, we either pull them like pulling a flower until the roots come out. Or we are so fearful of getting it wrong we demand the flower proves it can grow before we water it. Either way, the flower dies. In my experience, whether you’re in a startup, a complex multi-million dollar business or frankly in any relationship or activity, everything has a sweet spot where it will grow on its own. The key to leadership is to find that spot and change the pace of everything from expectations to conditions in order to match it.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

It would be exactly what we are doing right now. The Coronavirus Crisis has accelerated the jobs crisis and the education crisis. Having a solution to both is more important now than ever. I believe our mission to educate people on how to create a job instead of get a job, and to find fulfillment and meaning while harnessing change is more important now than ever. This is the final exam.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Best to connect with me on youtube and twitter. You can also connect with our companies and brands here www.geniusu.com and www.geniusgroup.net. My personal page is www.rogerjameshamilton.com

Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/rogerhamiltontv

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rogerhamilton

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!