Dec. 25, 2025
Unleashing Potential: Antony Baker's Vision for Trust, Talent, and Transformation
Send us a text In this dynamic episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we are excited to feature Antony Baker, founder and CEO of 15 Group. With a rich background that spans elite athletics and various business sectors, Antony shares his remarkable journey from world champion windsurfer and mixed martial artist to a leader in the consulting industry. He candidly discusses how his upbringing and experiences shaped his understanding of talent, trust, and transparency in business. Antony emp...
In this dynamic episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we are excited to feature Antony Baker, founder and CEO of 15 Group. With a rich background that spans elite athletics and various business sectors, Antony shares his remarkable journey from world champion windsurfer and mixed martial artist to a leader in the consulting industry. He candidly discusses how his upbringing and experiences shaped his understanding of talent, trust, and transparency in business. Antony emphasizes the importance of people over strategy, revealing how he built his company on the principles of community-driven solutions and high performance. Listeners will gain valuable insights into the challenges of hiring and the pitfalls businesses often encounter, as well as the transformative power of AI in optimizing operations. Antony also opens up about his ADHD diagnosis and how it has become a superpower in his leadership style. Join us for an engaging conversation that inspires you to rethink your approach to business and personal growth. Discover more about Antony and his work at www.15group.com.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. if you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by the founder and CEO of fifteen Group, Anthony Baker.
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> Anthony Baker>How you doing Curtis? Thank you kindly for taking the time out of your day. you're in the US I'm here in the uk. So yeah, really appreciate it.
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> Anthony Baker>Thank you very much.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely. I appreciate you for joining. A little bit about Anthony. Anthony has spent his career questioning how business works when talent, trust and transparency is used as more than just buzzwords. He has led several high performance teams through different industries and he has discovered again and again that organizations don't have problems with strategy, they have more of a problem with people. So we're going to be talking to him about his group and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to. And Anthony is also an elite athlete.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So Anthony, start off by telling us a little bit about yourself.
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> Anthony Baker>Curtis, thank you very much for that kind introduction and you know, I look forward to getting to know you a little bit better as well.
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> Anthony Baker>And I think if we go back to the beginning, you know, I was a, very fortunate person at a young age to live in a prominent place here on the south coast of the uk. my parents were pretty motivated, they were very hard workers. My dad had a recruitment company and sporting shops and my mum worked in these facilities and she was a very smart, very good businesswoman as well. So they taught us from a young age to know, to understand hard work. It doesn't just come at you. And I think the pivotal point for me when I was a young, a young kid was at 9 years old with going and winning my first world title in windsurfing and understanding that, what it took to do that at such a young age, I think I only really appreciate now as a 50 year old man. So I think as a young man windsurfing and as you said as a professional athlete, my, my early years were done sort of a little bit the other way around to normally. So I spent most of my life living in Hawaii. I went to university in Hawaii. I sat on a beach in many places around the world doing the world tour and I had very good sponsors and you know, we did all the things that a young man would do in that environment and I enjoyed it and I think I've learned a few languages and I went to these places around the world and Took it as an opportunity rather than as a a gift. And I think that as a young man going and doing m well, being successful, but also being unsuccessful and learning from that, when you get older you start to look back at that time and go right, well I was a windsurfer. I did very, very well. I was, won several world titles. I was top five in the world for many years. Had quite a few injuries and then I went into professional fighting and I did know things like the UFC and stuff like that, mixed martial arts and did very well at that. I was world freestyle martial arts champion. But at the same token I had a pension or a punch for, for business and, and economics and understanding how things work. And I'm, I believe now at my age and you know, maybe you, you'll agree Curtis, there's two type of people in this world. There's people that either want to just get after it, go do it, are happy just chucking on doing one thing.
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> Anthony Baker>They'll go and work in industry, institutional businesses, get paid by somebo a great job, do very well, get themselves up to a high level. And then there's a different type of people that needs to go and try everything. I want to try everything. I want to know why they do that that way. Meeting people like yourself Curtis, is unbelievably important for me because it becomes a part of who I am. You know, just listening to you and how cool that you sound and how you, you speak to people is encouraging me and it will make slight changes for me moving forward. And I've always been about, be able to be, to take pieces from people, the best pieces from people and, and put the bad to the side and that form a part of myself. So you know, like I said, I did my life the wrong way around. I spent my life on a beach till I was 30 and then from 30, you know, or in the gym. And when I was 30 I was like, right now I've got to go and use what I've built, use the experiences I've got and go and figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life and what's going to make me my family, you know, what's going to make a life changing environment.
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> Anthony Baker>So you know, 15, 17 years ago now, I should say I moved back to the UK and I just started doing jobs for like 20, 30 grand a year. You know, door to door sales people, you know, selling sales jobs predominantly because I was pretty good at talking and you know, through that process, I, I found something. I always took a step up. The next role that I took was a step up. It was something different, it was something different, it was something new. And I took the experiences that I had and I moved them forward. And because of my relatively interesting career as a young man, I was pretty, Responsible is probably not the right word, but I was relatively confident in just going, right, I'm just going to go and see how it gets on. If it didn't work, I wouldn't be on the floor crying or anything like that. I would just pick myself up and go, right, Anthony, you learned how not to do it this time. Let's add that to, the pyramid and let's keep like, trying to get ourselves to the top.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely. And I definitely appreciate the comp.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>The compliments.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Talk about how, what, what first made you question how the traditional consulting model worked.
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> Anthony Baker>Yeah, so I, when I came back to the uk, I wanted to do a lot of different things here on the south coast. And south coast UK is, we're about two hours away from London. But, I obviously lived in America and Australia and all different places and I've got friends all over the world. And so I then started working, as a, as a financial advisor and I was advising a recruitment owner, business owner, and she was making loads of money and then she went, look, you seem really good, come and work for me. So I went and worked for her in a, just a traditional recruitment company and we, you know, making loads of phone calls, going on, talking to people, doing loads of deals. And I sort of found that I had a pretty good knack for understanding whether, you know, as recruiters you're pretty, you believe everyone's lying to you until they've proven that they're right. and you'll, if you're looking at that mentality, you're pretty much not going to be wrong. And so I did that for a bit and I worked into London and I managed to speak to, I managed to be able to single out people who were, I thought that could help myself and my family progress to the next stages and I wasn't afraid to go and ask the question. And in banking in London, it's obviously massive and I wasn't a banker, I didn't come from a banking background, so. So me going into a banking environment, into a consulting environment was a very complicated thing. And if I didn't have a thick skin, I don't think I would have lasted.
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> Anthony Baker>And it was very Tough to start off with because people thought a recruiter is just a recruiter, they're just somebody that calls everyone. They're not good business people. And I wanted to sort of go in and help these consultancy firms, these big firms doing multi million pound projects and lots of them during the year, help them sustain their business, bringing a cost model solution that would actually have people start these projects and finish these projects so you didn't lose money on failing traction. And that, that was done from the first time you met a candidate or a consultant you were going to put onto your project and to start off with it got sort of put down and these companies were like, we know what we're doing, we're better than you are doing this. We're going to truck on. And I persevered and you know I really started to about seven, eight years ago, build something in my brain that was very person related, and I mean person, not candidate or consultant. Because I wanted to understand the people that I was working with because I needed to build a bit of an understanding of why people were successful and why they weren't. Not just by themselves or not just for me, but how it would work in a team environment, on a consulting piece, working at a bank, doing remediation or however it worked. And I wanted to understand the complexities of why it wasn't working in many environments. And I'll just give you an example that PwC, makes millions and millions of pounds a day. What they do is they send fantastic consultants and they, they're fantastic consultants, go in and sell a project and then when they win that project they put consultants that are very, very low rate but they make a massive margin out of it. That to me is not transparency. There's no trust, that's transformation. But a lot of the times in a negative way. But because they're PwC, they were always one of the three that gets to come and sell to whatever party it is. So I really tried to get my head around how that worked. And while I was in the us working for a big consultancy firm and we won a large project in the US and then the lockdown was coming and it's imminent and they were talking about this, what was happening. I was in New York and we were like right, well we can leave or we going to stay. and we were on United.
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> Anthony Baker>United rang us actually and said look, if you don't leave now, you're not going to leave for at least three weeks. And I was like, well I could stay here for three weeks but we ended up leaving.
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> Anthony Baker>And when we came back the world was a very different place. Curtis. And you know, some one day maybe we'll sit down and have a conversation about how it sort of fared for yourself. But for me I went from, you know, not earned a load of money and I've done, I've made a load of money in the past and I've lost loads of money. Money is not necessarily my driver, but it is the thing that keep world turning. And I had this great job now. we had a young child at that point and we've got three kids now, my wife and I and we, you know it was a big bit of a challenge and these, these institutional companies couldn't figure out how to stop what's called the consultancy cliff. So how do we make the US continue to earn money further down the road in this uncertain lockdown environment? So I kind of come up with a bit of an idea of what we could do and how we could do and it was very people focused and in those days, you know, it's actually not long ago but it seems like you know, 20 years ago now. And you know, people in lockdown were like, oh, I'm not going into work, I'm going to stay at home, I'm going to get paid money from the government, I'm not going to do it. Well these banks were, didn't have cloud based solutions so they needed people to go into work. So actually I was like, I don't know if you've seen the movie Vanilla Sky, Curtis. Have you seen that?
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>no I have not.
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> Anthony Baker>So in Vanilla sky you've got Tom Cruise, and a lady in it and they kind of walk out and they're in New York and there is not a person there and they're just walking down the road. It was very much like that at that time. And you know I started to get to know some people well and I got to know some hard working people and they kind of formed the nucleus of what now is the understanding of what it takes to be a high performing individual. Because a high performing individual Curtis, as I know because I've seen all the things that these people that you've spoken to. It can be CEO of a business and I would class myself as a high performing individual. But I have people that I pay £120 a day, 150 a day that are just analysts who are unbelievably high performing people. You don't need to Just be a CEO, to be high performing, I think you've got a, you either have it or you have it. And I think, you know, if we tie that back to when I was windsurfing, you know, my brother was a world champion as well, and he had a very different ethos to me. He was going to bed at 9 o' clock and getting up at 7 and going to the beach, early. I was getting in it, 7 o' clock in the morning and going to the beach at 9 o' clock and being hungover all day. But I had the talent, he had the work ethic. I had to learn.
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> Anthony Baker>Work ethic. It wasn't something that I had as a young man. so when I see people that work for me now who, when I met them during lockdown, these people are still people I catch up with now. I was very interested in what their families were like, why they were high performing. And four things really stood out, Curtis. And those four things, from doing brain measuring and scanning and all this sort of stuff, were talent, enterprise training solutions. Those are the four things we needed. But the four things that those people had to go into that process were time management, attention to detail, communication and motivation.
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> Anthony Baker>It was nothing to do with whether they could actually do the job. It was, did they have the capacity to perform at a high level at whatever role they did? Because I'm sure you know this, Curtis, and, and this is probably a good question for you, but, you know, I see people who are very talented all day long fail, you know, and I'm sure you do as well. And I'm sure the people that you talk to, they have, you know, they, they, they've got there in some way, in some capacity. But failure was probably something they did a lot, but it's how they pick themselves up afterwards. So once we got those four things down, we could measure that relatively easy. So if somebody comes to me and they want to talk to me and they want to, they want to go through the process, I will 100% given the time. But I want to know that they have the motivation, the communication, the time management, and and attention to detail. If they do not have those four things, it doesn't matter what they do. They don't become a part of what we do moving forward and that, that formed the basis of what we do now. So hopefully that answers that question, Curtis.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>And I know that trust, transparency and transformation is the mantra of 15 groups. So talk about how those principles show up in everyday decision Making.
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> Anthony Baker>I think I've got two dogs, right? I've got a German pointer, and a, Ah, pug. I've got a wife, who, I've been married for 17 years. She's the love of my life. She has been for many, many years. Before that, I've got a 21 year old, a 19 year old and a 15 year old, two pugs, two cats, two dog, two horses. and, every day when I walk in my front door, without fail, the first thing to greet me is my pug. She looks at me like the world has just come alive again and she can carry on her day. And I think when we look at what with, you know, and to sort of tie it into the last point, but if we look at actually whether you know somebody over time and as you get older, the people that you know get less and less or the people you hang out with get less and less because you do different things, you move away or however it is, but the nucleus of your friendship with some people stays true. My pug, if I tell her off, she's still coming back and wants to give me a cuddle. You know, my wife and my kids and stuff like that, they obviously excited to see me, but it is, it is different. And I think when you've got a candidate that you're putting on a project and you are telling the client that that person that's £1,000 a day or $1,000 a day or wherever it works is going to do the job, you shouldn't just say it and hope. You should be able to say it and back it up. People are going to let people down.
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> Anthony Baker>It is the way that is. Things happen. It's just life, right? But you need to be able to say what that that person can do that job and basic and be successful. In fact, funny just to, just to chuck in a story here, Curtis, and I hope you don't mind, but I was on Necker island with, Richard Branson and he has an island. And I was kite surfing there and I was doing a bit kite surfing with him. We taught him a bit kite surfing, did some stuff, for him, doing a channel across here.
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> Anthony Baker>And I had a little bit of time with him, which is he, me and him on the beach and we had a coconut in our hand and we were drinking some tropical drink out of that coconut. And I was just standing there with him and I said to him, look, you know, Mr. Branson, would, you mind if I ask you a Question. And I literally said it like that. I was like, a little bit sort of, you know, tripping over myself because I'd met this guy a couple of times, but he didn't really know who I was. I mean, he kind of did, but, And I said, look, what if you was to send me one thing that you think that would benefit my life? Not just my business life, but my family life, my actual personal life, and I close my eyes at night and I go to bed, I.
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> Anthony Baker>My life will improve from. And he said, actually, the one thing that I've lived by all my life. And, he goes, if somebody asks you whether you can do it, just say yes. Yep. If someone says, can you fly a space rocket? It's a little bit of different question, but if somebody says, can you, can you go and do that for me? And so you say yes and go learn how to do it. He says, if you're good enough to be in the room talking to people that are going to make a difference, then you should be able to go and do it and figure it out. And, you know, there are times that I've said no to people, and I'm sure you have as well, Curtis, But I've done it in a respectful way of a reason why, and I've got to learn how to do that. So that's become a part of my repertoire. So when people ask me something now, I can definitively say whether yes, I can or no, I can't do it, or how long it's going to take me to do it. And that wasn't something that was easy. And having the confidence to be able to do that is important. But it also comes if. This is not just me. I have a team of exceptional people around me. In fact, I'm probably the dumbest person in our business. But I'm very good at putting a good team together.
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> Anthony Baker>I've got people that have built banks. I've got people that were senior at JP Morgan, operations directors for, Barclays Investment Bank Global.
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> Anthony Baker>And I'm in the room and I'm telling these guys what to do. And I love it, because why? You shouldn't be surrounded by people that you're better than. And you definitely shouldn't talk down to them. I think the trust, transparency and transformation, that's key. Trust. People that you work with, trust they're going to go and do a good job. And if they don't, help them and find out why, figure out what happened, what broke down, and try and fix that solution at the Same time, I would never ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn't do myself or I haven't done myself. So when we talk about transparency, it's costing, you know, I've got a candidate, it's $500 a day. I'm not selling them for 2,000 pounds a day. I'm telling them our business is called 15. We charge a 15% margin. So it's a $400 a day. It's $470 a day for that person. So our margin, $70. We are transparent transformation. We can help companies transform. I'm very good at building, scaling and operating businesses. I'm m very good at growing something from nothing. you know, I'm Curtis, I'm a professional athlete and I run a, what will be a half a billion dollar business in two years that builds AI systems. Like, who would have thought that I would be sitting here having this conversation with somebody as cool as yourself, about me being in position. I mean, I pinch myself every day.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, you describe 15 as community led, so. So talk about what that approach looks like for both clients and talent.
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> Anthony Baker>So I wanted talent. Everything starts with talent.
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> Anthony Baker>I don't care what you do. Everything you do. If you, if you want a, you know, a Taco Bell, it starts with talent. Yeah, you need the product, but you can't. The product doesn't sell itself.
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> Anthony Baker>You need someone to do it. Everyone's in sales. So you got to learn sales. You got to have some sort of element of you being able to talk about yourself in a way that is endearing to you, your team and et cetera. I think when we started doing this, I wanted four pillars. a few years ago now, and I went, right, I want four pillars. It needs to be talent, people, starts with people. Then it needs to be delivery companies who can go deliver this for us. And then it needs to be training. You need to train and educate these people. You need to house them in somewhere. We've created our own community. But building the community, Curtis was so hot. I mean, you'll know this from doing your podcast. How hard it is to go and get people to continue to come back and listen. That is key.
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> Anthony Baker>That is why I get so excited about coming, talking to people like yourself, because you built a community. You've got people that are going to come back and continue watching this. So then when somebody sends somebody for you to talk to, you've got to go, right, is this the right person? Is this the right person for my community? Because if it's not. And you just chuck some guy on here that waffles on about himself, maybe a little bit like me, but for, for a long time, then you're going to lose customer base. And at, the end of the day, this is a commercial entity. You want it to improve. You want more people to be able to listen to your message. So when we started doing, you know, those three pillars, we then write, we need a solution. I want my clients to be able to come to me and say, anthony, we have a problem. It happens all day long. My wife comes to me ten times a day and says, ansley, I've got a problem.
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> Anthony Baker>I say, okay, darling, what is the problem? She tells me what it is and I say, how do you think we're going to fix this? She goes, this is how we're going to do it. I say, great, fantastic. I will support you go and do it. If it fails, I don't go, oh my God, you were wrong. I say, great, let's figure out how to do it. If you need me to be supportive, we move forward from there. Great.
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> Anthony Baker>Same with my kids. So I wanted to have that same hand on the shoulder approach to my clients. So if they've got a marketing problem, I've got a marketing team that can, provide that solution. If they've got a technology problem, I've got a technology team that can provide that solution. So then I said, right, we've got these four pillars.
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> Anthony Baker>We work in 15 different industries. Financial services, marketing, web 3, legal, concierge, et cetera. 15 different industries. These four pillars work. I said, right, how can we make 12 people? That's my nucleus team. How can we make 12 people run and operate all these businesses? Well, it was simple AI. So I started a year ago building an AI system. We now have, a hundred million dollar AI system, which is our own. it works across all, all industries, multiple industries.
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> Anthony Baker>You can ask it just to upgrade an industry or create a new industry almost straight away. And it does talent, it onboards, it does screening, it does process management, it does count management, it does RFP management. In our, construction industry, for example, it does a bill of quants in 30 seconds, what would take a quantitative surveyor two weeks to do and cost 20 grand. It costs $99 and it can be done in 30 seconds. So I wanted to then go right, in every industry that we work in, I want to create solutions and tools that are going to be affordable so our products are the maximum cost for our services. Not to sound like this is me selling My products. But just to give you an understanding of my ethos, my maximum price is $750 a month for full access to our AI.
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> Anthony Baker>Obviously if you buy consulting and recruitment is more, it's extra cost. But that is a multi million pound AI system you can use for 750. No contract, rolling contract. Because I want people to be able to use it. I want the smaller company to be able to see how it can build and benefit them. So when we talk about all of the infrastructure that we've got that was built over 50 years of my life, understanding what it takes to be successful, so I can imprint that on companies whether they're small, medium or large, whatever they do across any industry comfortably. But for me to be able to do that ethically without me going, yeah, I'm going to come back to you tomorrow and not doing it, I needed AI. So we're effectively an AI business that has a marketplace. So when people say to me, what do you do, Anthony? I said, I run talent enterprise training solutions across an AI platform that we have built. And every day we're developing it to grow and to help all of our companies that work with us improve their turnover, for a smaller cost than what they would get anywhere else. Because I want everybody to have the opportunity to be able to use it. I don't need to be making millions of dollars myself. I want everybody to have the opportunity for their business to grow and them to be improved their current circumstances. So hopefully that was I get a bit excited about this, Curtis. I apologize if I waffle on.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>No, no problem.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So in your opinion, talk about what do you feel like businesses get wrong about speed and risk when they're hiring external expertise?
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> Anthony Baker>You know I've been doing this a long time, right?
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> Anthony Baker>Well not a long time. 10 years, 10, 12 years, in that 1012 year years time, as you can probably tell, I'm a bit of a workaholic. I work seven days a week. I work from 5 o' clock in the morning to 11 o' clock at night. Today for example, I started at five. I went to play golf football for two hours and then I went kite surfing outside my house for two hours. And I'm here now, it's half past ten. I will work till one o' clock and on a Saturday evening and I will move forward. And I think you know when, if we look at what businesses get wrong, I would say they hiring somebody. It'd be like if you said, Anthony, can you, can you change the grass in our front garden. And I said, yeah, I could probably go on YouTube and figure out how to do it. But, yeah, it's not something there would be somebody that would be better at doing it than me. and I would be better off at paying someone to do that. Companies now think they can go do their recruitment because there's things like Reed and, you know, LinkedIn, recruiter and all these stuff. So these companies are going, wow, we had 6,000 applications for this job. We don't need to pay a recruiter, to do our, to find these people. And you say, well, that's fine, but do you know what you're looking for?
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> Anthony Baker>Well, we've got Jane. We pay Jane $30,000 a year.
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> Anthony Baker>you know, I pay my recruiters 100 grand a year.
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> Anthony Baker>And they're exceptional because they are. they.
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> Anthony Baker>Their job is not to find the reason why that person would be good for this role. Their job is to find the reason why they wouldn't be. And the second they find that, they go, thank you very much. You're not great for this job. And they find the person that suits. That takes time, energy, money, efficiency and understanding. And so many companies hire for the wrong reasons, but sometimes they don't even know why that reason is.
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> Anthony Baker>They need to hire where they're hiring someone and putting them into a job. He doesn't know what they're doing. That creates turbulence. And again, just to bring another great quote from my father, who's an absolute legend. His name's Herbert, Herbert Valentine Baker. Curtis, if you don't mind. And he said to me at a young age, he said, son, do you think if you've got 10 people working in your business and the last person you hire is below the average of quality of the people you've got in the business, what happens? My naive answer was, they will educate them and they will improve and get better. He said, no, the company realizes where their new low is, and they all dropped to that. And that is so key. And I see it so much of the time. I was at a company on Friday that has a hundred people in their sales team. Their sales director, does not know any of them, hardly any of them. Doesn't know what their turnover is, doesn't know what, systems they use. They don't use HubSpot, which they should be using. And he went, oh, no, but we're still doing well. Anyway, can you imagine what these people, they're all in London, they're all getting paid about $100,000 a year. Imagine what the cost of just that, that affects everything through the business when you come and budget in. So one mistake on hiring, one mistake of the wrong consultancy, one mistake of trusting somebody without doing your due diligence can lead to company demise. And I'm the CEO of my business, but the person that sits next to me in my business, this is far smarter than me. He has my shoulder or I have his shoulder. And we work as a team, and we all do, and if any of us are making a mistake, we put our hand up and go, this is what, this is how it needs to be done. Or we continue doing it. If it doesn't work, then we, we pull our pants up and we, we, we carry on, you know, and I think, I see so many mistakes. I have started, I have funded my business myself and I'm 3/4 of a million dollars into the, to the funding.
00:28:38.821 --> 00:29:07.990
> Anthony Baker>and I see businesses that get funded hundreds of millions of dollars that go and buy offices for, you know, 80 million and they've got these flash offices with pool tables, they're all driving Range Rovers. And then in two years time they got no money and they go bankrupt. You know, just because somebody's got a good idea doesn't mean to say that actually they should be doing it. The amount of people in my team, if you look at my team, my team's mixed of people that are consultants and people that are institutional people. And they all come from the banking space.
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> Anthony Baker>So the difference between somebody that's a, CEO of a business that was institutional means they got paid a salary by a company, let's say Barclays for example, and they went from an analyst all the way up and now they're the CEO of that bank. They are not consultant, because I've got somebody like that. He's very good at infrastructure, he's very good at framework development. He will do what you tell him to do to a T. But if there's along that road, there needs to be a slight bit of ingenuity and a little bit of creativity doesn't happen. So the difference between a consultant and somebody that can do consulting, someone that's institutional, is huge. And you know, I listen to a lot your, some quite a few of your podcasts and they're absolutely fantastic by the way. And you know, I appreciate how gracious you are in just letting me speak as well. And I think, you know, there are different types, of CEOs I wouldn't class myself, you know, CEO. I mean, I mean I am and I run this business and we operate it, but I'm just part of the team that goes out there. I do recruitment for jobs that make US $5,000 and I'm working on multi million pound projects for AI development that we do as well. And I love it. I get involved. If someone comes into my business and says I don't want to do that because I think I'm better than it and I say great, that's fantastic. This is not the company for you. Keep on walking.
00:30:26.151 --> 00:30:33.511
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, let's talk about your ADHD diagnosis. Talk about how that shifted your mindset and how it affected your leadership.
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> Anthony Baker>So I was I relatively high iq, I'm actually quite high iq, but I was very good at starting things and a little bit of destructive personality when I was younger. but I wasn't great at finishing a lot of things. The only reason why I won the titles I did and things I did is because I had great teams around me to deliver that. as an early adult I realized that if I didn't have those people around me I would struggle to deliver on it. So I started doing things with people and it turned out that partnerships and things like that with people you haven't properly done your DD on, due diligence on are not great. So it was, I am 50 now, Curtis, a young man at 50 and loving every day. And I was 47 years old when I walked into my business consultant and bearing in mind at this time I'd sold several million m million pound businesses, walked into our business consultant who I'd never met. She lived from the U.S. she was a brain surgeon then turned into a business consultant.
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> Anthony Baker>And I was introduced to her by somebody and I walked in the room and I sat in the room with her.
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> Anthony Baker>When we'd known each other for quite a while, she went two seconds later when you realize you've got adhd, don't you? And I was like no, I did not know that. And I went and got, I went privately and got diagnosed and I went through the whole process which by the way is fantastic. If you've got anybody on here that thinks they're ADHD or anybody should just go and do it because it's cathartic, it's, it's exceptional. It teaches you a lot about yourself and it gives you, it gives you the opportunity to be honest with yourself.
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> Anthony Baker>And I think that's a great thing to have as you become a man, as you become an adult, as you have grows a family I think being accountable for yourself is very important. And I, I use a lot of the term that, when you go to bed at night, you close your eyes and you. And you lay on your pillow, whether you've got a partner with you or not, or your dog with you, whatever it is, you are alone. And that person needs to trust and understand that person, which is you. And I was just challenged quite a bit, quite a few things.
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> Anthony Baker>And I saw this. So we went to this lady, I went and got tested and turned out that I was very, very high attention, deficit and off the scale with hyperactivity disorder and all. It just was like. It was like I was a cocoon and I was there and I turned into a butterfly and I just flew.
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> Anthony Baker>And, it was. What I can't explain to you, Curtis, what, what it made me feel inside because I didn't have this. There's two ways I could have looked at this, right? I could have gone, oh, my God, my wife's been wasted. I didn't know about it. I was like, I'm not crazy. I talk a lot. I'm like, the second I wake up in the morning, to the time I go to bed, I'm super motivated, I'm super happy. I love my life. And I'm like this. But I was like, that's probably this. But then my next question was, if I medicate myself, is this going to change Anthony from being Anthony? And I actually like myself. And I know people say that, you know, it can be a bit weird or narcissistic if you do, but I enjoy myself and I'm not fussed about what I look like. I'm a little bit fat now and I've got no hair, but my wife's beautiful. It doesn't bother me. So I went and got the medication. And I'm not sure, whether you're married or what your situation is, Curtis, but you're who, if you have a partner, or if you ever had a partner, at some point they've asked you to do something and you haven't done it. It is a man thing. and I took that pill the first day. Is Lexdexamphetamine just
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00 clock that day, I had fixed 10 things in my house that I told my wife I was gonna do. And there's that funny joke, isn't there? And that says, you know, I heard you the first time. There's no, no, you don't need to keep Repeating it for six months.
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I'll get it done. And I fixed every single thing that I did. It was like all of a sudden I was looking at the ocean and the ocean become a stream. And that stream felt manageable and palatable for me. And since that day, I have built a hundred million dollar business. And it's not by myself. They're everyone around me. And I will get to family in a minute. But, which I think is the key. But you know, that transition when people say to me, now my son's got adhd, he doesn't want to take the medication, I say, get me on a call with him or tell me where he is and I'll go and see him. And I've driven around the country to go and see people I never don't know to talk to their kids about what the opportunities lay ahead of them once they get themselves sorted out on the right medication and the right, you know, because not everyone wants to take medication. So, yeah, ADHD for me, it's my superpower. I can get on a call with somebody and they can tell me what their problem is before they've even finished telling me. I can think of a solution. So ADHD is not a hindrance. It might wind a few people up because I talk a lot and I'm quite active and I do 50,000 things at once. But actually, man, I'm blessed to be the person I am at the time that I am and the opportunity that I had. And I don't know if you know much about the burnt toast, Curtis, but the burnt toast theory is if you burn your toes, you shouldn't have eaten it. If you miss your train, you shouldn't have caught it. And I think over time I've become that person that I used to run after trains and be annoyed if I didn't make it.
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And now I just go, you know what? That's an opportunity for me to spend some time with myself, listen to a book, listen to a, you know, a, Curtis Jackson podcast. And, and you know, I think that I'm, I've got to the point in my life where I am the happiest I've ever been and you know, mentality, and your mental, approach to life is very important. And I spend a lot of time by myself and I think that's taught me a lot about myself. But there have been people in my life that have been very, very influential. And the lady that got me to realize that I'm adhd, literally made, made Me worth a billion dollars. You know, it's a ridiculous, thing to say, but you've got to be open to those opportunities when they arise.
00:36:31.270 --> 00:36:32.710
Does that make sense, Curtis?
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely.
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> Anthony Baker>Well, yeah.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Tell us about any upcoming projects that you and your company are working on that listeners need to be aware of.
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> Anthony Baker>So we build AI solutions. So whether you are a grocery shop or a florist or run a whiteboard school, we can build an AI solution technology that will help you and benefit you. And we can bring you onto our platform and program and show how we can make you scalable at an affordable rate, at a transparent rate. And we have got some exceptional people to help to do it. So we work on a multiple, multi million dollar AI development team builds right now. And I'm not sure how much you or your listeners, Curtis, know about AI, but AI is usually process optimization, automation and then large language models or AI when you need it, not all the way across. So we've got our own AI called 15AI and in, in January, moving forward, you will start to see us everywhere. And we will be servicing over 10,000 clients within the next two years, and have over 250,000 qualified, vetted and tested the top 15% of people across 15 different industries in two years. We will, we will. You know one of the things I say to my guys is that I want to bore the ocean, but what I want to do is help as many people as I can be successful. And, and success has a different opportunity for everybody. And you know, success for me tonight, what was actually coming and talking to you, Curtis, and I know I've talked a lot and I, and I think you're an absolute gentleman for allowing me just to talk, you know, talk at you. But this is something that, whether one person or a million people see it, this has been such an exceptional opportunity for me. And I think if you can see those sort of opportunities and they come up and you look at them and you can go, actually I might not have gained wealth, I might not have gained experience, I might not have gained knowledge, but I had the opportunity to talk to somebody that's amazing, like yourself, then take that opportunity. And I think I love doing that with my clients, I love helping them in ways that they didn't think they could do it. So you know, at the end of the day we work across 50 different industries. We offer the best talent, recruiting, process on the planet and we're a fixed price model with a 15 month free replacement. So you will not beat us on performance, quality or price. I deal with everything myself. and my advisory team, we don't take on companies that we don't feel that we can help and benefit and we're courteous in the way that we do that. and I guess for myself, what do I want to achieve? I want the people that have supported me and helped me up to this point to have the same overview at the end of all this, because I have spent, you know, I've borrowed money off my mum very recently. Curtis and I have very big business because we spend lots of money in lots of different places and we're very good at that. We've got a great finance team. But to get me to the next stage or to help somebody out and, you know, it shouldn't always just be about money, but if it should be how we can help people. We help our clients. We do 15% of the work that we do pro bono. and that is not because I want to be philanthropic or I want to be giving charity away.
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> Anthony Baker>It's because they need it. I have the opportunity to be able to provide that service for them. In what world or what person would I be if I didn't provide that help or service without a cost? You know? so that's. That's where we are. Curtis, I hope you have the opportunity one day to meet you or spend some more time with you, but otherwise, I, You know, I love listening to people. I love listening to experienced people. I love going on panels and talking to exceptionally smart people.
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> Anthony Baker>I think we live in a world where you can come up with an idea and 20 minutes later, everyone in the world can know about it. You know, my idea, I don't mind people knowing about it because the time and effort it took and money and support from my family, who are the number one in my world, is exceptional. And, you know, I hope that other people have the same opportunity.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>I do want to add your website so people can keep up with everything you're up to.
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> Anthony Baker>Yeah. Come have a look at me if you want to reach out for me, have a chat. like I said, I love this sort of thing. And this thing is, I look at this, Curtis, as an opportunity for me to spend some time with you and talk to you. you know, if you.
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> Anthony Baker>If I think if you're good in this world and, you know, that you're happy with what you're doing and you're helping and supporting people and your family's happy, you know, one of the toughest questions in the world, I think, is waking up every morning and saying to your wife, am I doing a good job? and I think, you know, that's a question I ask my wife every day. Sometimes she says no, and sometimes she says yes. So we can only. We can strive to get better. But you can look at our websites. You can go online. I do. I'm very Vocal on, LinkedIn. I get about 200,000 views a week on LinkedIn. I run a thing called the Daily Bake where we just, I just talk about what's going on in the marketplace. And if anyone needs lifting up or understanding more about AI or how we can help them, they can reach out to us. We would love to have a conversation with them. If they recommend the fact that they come from you, Curtis, we'll do a fantastic deal as well.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All, right, ladies and gentlemen. So Definitely check out 15 groups. Check out everything that Anthony's up to. Follow, rate, review, share this episode to as many people as possible. And for more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, please visit www.craveball337.com. Share the website and the show. And to everybody that you know, thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Anthony, thank you for, ah, all that you do. And thank you for joining me.
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> Anthony Baker>Very much appreciated, Curtis. You have a wonderful afternoon.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit www.craveballuh337.com until next time, keep living the dream.
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