On Encountering an Emperor and a King in Rural England

About one hour from London there is a place called Farnborough. It is pretty nondescript. I have been there often, but not for the pleasures of this small town, having exhausted those after a brief walk through its center. No, for me the attraction is on a hill overlooking it. Sitting like some medieval gargoyle, all but hidden from view, there is a monastery. Such places often have interesting histories, this one has a story all its own, and it starts at the Battle of Waterloo.

Napoleon may have gone into exile after that final defeat, but this was not to be the end of what is still known as the Bonapartist Dynasty. It resurfaced in what was to become the Second Empire. But, like the “First Empire”, this was to be destroyed by a Prussian, only this time not by Blücher but by Bismark.

It is at this point that Farnborough comes into the story. Improbably, it was there that the remnant of that famous family sought refuge in the exile that came in the defeated aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. It was at Farnborough that the exiled Empress Eugenie set about building what would become her own “St. Helena” – one that was to have a monastery within which to intern the body of her now dead husband. And then, unexpectedly, and tragically, the broken body of her son, the Prince Imperial, was buried there too.

By any measure, St. Michael’s Monastery is an extraordinary building. In its darkened crypt there are three tombs: the Emperor Napoleon III, the Empress Eugenie and their doomed son, the Prince Imperial. What is still left of the Bonaparte family gather annually for a Requiem Mass. To this piece of Neo-Gothic French architecture planted in the English Countryside they come to pray, to remember, and, for just a few hours, the ghosts of French history are loosed once more to roam abroad…

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My trip to Farnborough was not historical though. I was interested in the here and now and a man who, for me, explains the here and now of business better than anyone.

Perry Marshall will be a name known to many of you for his 80/20 Rule. On that concept let’s just quote the man himself, here speaking last year to Nathan Issacs for the Rethink Marketing Podcast:

“80/20 is absolutely everywhere. And most people have heard about 80/20. Most sales people have some notion that 20% of your customers are going to give you 80% of your orders. And the other 80% of your customers are only going to give you 20% of your orders.

“Probably lots of salespeople know that. But people don’t know that it goes way, way, way farther than that. There’s an 80/20 inside every 80/20. So, it’s not only true that 20% of your customers spend 80% of the money; 20% of the 20% spend 80% of the 80%. If you do the math, that means 4% of your customers spend 64% of the money. But you can do it again, which means 1% of your customers spend half the money. And it means 0.2% of the customers spend more than a third of the money.

“The other thing is [80/20] is absolutely everywhere. It’s not just customers. And it’s not just sales. It’s products defects. It’s internet bandwidth. It’s the size of files on your hard drive. It’s traffic on the streets in your town.

“It’s the size of cities in the United States.

“It’s the size of cities in any country.

“It’s income distributions in any country. It’s Nobel Prizes. It’s the size of craters on the moon.

“It’s absolutely everywhere.

“But hardly anybody teaches this. And if you understand 80/20, you will suddenly see levers that are invisible to everyone else. And you’ll be able to make more money faster with less effort. You’ll be able to eliminate waste.

“And it’s by thinking counter-intuitively.”

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I was staying at a hotel a mere ten minutes drive from the abbey.

It was there a different – and much more modern – sort of battle was being engaged in. I am part of Perry’s European Mastermind group and Farnborough was where the first 2019 European Roundtable  meet-up was taking place. Over three days about a dozen or so entrepreneurs – successful entrepreneurs – listened and talked with Perry, and with each other. The challenges of being an entrepreneur were faced, dissected, and, then, solutions were found – I am a witness to this.

Perry is the type of world class thought leader I like. There are no imperial speeches, no sending “troops over the top” while he sits behind the lines and counts his money. No, Perry’s touch is light but there is definitely a “touch”: a subtle shift in the right direction, a gentle push forwards – all done with humour and warmth.

His style is deceptive, but trust me, Perry isn’t. You can tell the leader by the people whom he gathers around him. If you don’t believe me just take a look at Don Coreleone and his mob.  Without exception the people on this three day course were not just good men and women striving to produce the best products and services for their clients, but they had something else: courage.

It takes guts to be an entrepreneur; it takes moral courage to do the best by your clients and customers rather than just making a quick buck; it takes pluck to set out on a path no one else has considered as viable, bravery to continue on that path when everything – and everyone – tells you to get off it; and, perhaps above all, the daring to slay the biggest dragon of all. That’s the one that haunts the imagination with fear and sadness, the shadow that mocks our every step – and which emanates from inside the head of the person staring back at them in a mirror.

At times I looked around the room in wonder at the people talking so casually about the real heroism in their lives. I felt proud to be counted among them. And you know none of them will be buried in huge mausoleums, no flags will fly at half mast for them, no drum roll will be heard in their memory and, I bet money, no 21– gun salute will be sounded. But, for me, these entrepreneurs are the true heroes of today, and the tomorrows they are creating for their businesses and their families.

I can’t tell you what we discussed; the Roundtable is confidential.

However, what I can tell you is this.

As I was driven away from the hotel, I glanced at the large slightly forlorn abbey gates and then thought back to the laughter and the insights, the kindness and the acumen, the encouragement and the perceptiveness on display in the hotel conference suite that I had just left.

While visiting Farnborough I had visited and prayed at the tomb of a long dead Emperor. But, better still, I had been initiated into the court of a marketing king whose mission was to join in making all things new. Because that is exactly what Perry is doing in the lives of the men and women taking part in a masterclass that comprises not just lessons in business but that is as well a lesson in life itself.