What's Your Dream?: Find Your Passion. Love Your Work. Build a Richer Life.

by Simon Squibb

Overview

#1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • Kickstart your dream business and see it through to success with actionable advice and inspirational stories from entrepreneur, investor, YouTuber, and founder of HelpBnk Simon Squibb

From early on, we are taught that there's only one path to getting ahead: do well at school, get a certain kind of job, and avoid failure at all costs. We're so busy trying to follow these rules that we never stop and ask ourselves: What's my purpose? Is my 9-5 really what I want to do? What kind of job or business do I really want to pursue? Do I have the power to make it happen? With Simon Squibb’s incisive new book, you can make it happen.

Simon Squibb is on a mission to help young entrepreneurs discover their passion and start their business. Drawing on the hard-won life lessons from Squibb’s years in the business world and his own personal life—from facing homelessness as a teenager to selling a multi-million pound business—What’s Your Dream? is the step-by-step guide to turn your dream venture into a reality. Squibb begins by providing a definition of a dream and continues on to introduce readers to a set of tools to build confidence and persevere through the barriers that stand in the way. Squibb will dissect the common pitfalls that block the way—being trapped by aspirations that aren’t true dreams, falling prey to popular myths that stop us from achieving our goals, giving into the fear that prevents us from taking action—and share the secrets to overcome them. Young entreprenuers will glean useful business insight, such as:

• how to assess risk level, understanding not to take risks indiscriminately but to take them well
• knowing how and when to quit so you can pivot and start again
• how to create a community of super fans who will purchase and advocate for all of your products
• how to grow your customers, and more

Achieving wealth shouldn’t mean sacrificing your dreams and passions. This book can show you how.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798217086443
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/21/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Simon Squibb, founder of HelpBnk, is all about helping people help people. Not your typical entrepreneur, Simon started his first business while homeless at just fifteen and later sold his agency, Fluid, to PwC for more money than he’ll ever need. Known for his viral move of buying a staircase in London and slapping a doorbell on it where folks can pitch their dreams, Simon is on a mission to help ten million people kickstart their businesses. With over ten million followers on social media, he's spreading the word through his GiveWithoutTake movement and inspirational street interviews.

Read an Excerpt

1.

The Myths About Life

For most of my life, I never thought about having a dream. I didn’t know I needed one. In fact, I was past forty and had built and sold a company before the vital importance of it dawned on me.

Since I left home at fifteen and started my first business, doing basic gardening work, I had been on a treadmill: working all the hours each day brought, chasing every lead, coming up with new ideas. Now, after selling my business for millions, I could do anything I wanted. I had total freedom in my life for the first time. It didn’t take long to realize that I hated it.

At first you don’t notice what’s missing. You spend some of the money you have made: a nice house, the car you’ve always wanted, the big vacations that had always been put off because of the business. You play golf, sit in a hot tub, and tell yourself that this is the life. For a while you believe it.

Then it hits you. Every person who ever said that money doesn’t buy happiness: they were right. I’d always thought that sounded trite. Having started with nothing, I had worked and worked to the point where I had both plenty of money and the freedom it brings. I’d told myself that being financially secure and retiring at forty were what I wanted. Now I saw the truth: making money had fulfilled me but having it didn’t. I was no longer building something but instead holding on to what I had.

Now that I had all the freedom in the world, and enough money never to work again, what did I want? Thinking about that made me realize that nobody had ever asked me this question. Even worse, I’d never asked myself. At school, the assumption had been that we would get a manual job and aspire to nothing more. Then, after I left home, I had no choice: I needed to find work and make money to survive. In different ways, I’ve been doing that ever since.

I had thought endlessly about how to make the businesses I ran successful. But I’d never once thought about what it meant for me to be successful. What a good life was. What would lead to happiness and fulfillment. My eyes had been trained on a single spot, and I’d been missing the rest of the picture.

The nudge came when I was fulfilling my one steady commitment: taking my son to and from nursery school. In search of a community, I had been experimenting with social media and posted a video after dropping him off one morning. I said what was on my mind—that it was the best part of my day and that, right now, I felt like the luckiest man alive. I was living a dream, no longer needing to work, and able to spend as much time as I wanted with my son. It felt like success.

At that point, I had a tiny audience of a few thousand followers. For whatever reason, the video went viral, the first of mine that had. Soon the comments started rolling in, something I wasn’t then used to. Some were humorous (“I’m broke and I get to do that”) but others were critical. One in particular caught my eye.

“Stop posting this shit. Not everyone gets to have a dream.”

First the comment annoyed me, but soon it intrigued me. Why not? Why shouldn’t anyone have a dream? In fact, shouldn’t everyone?

Then it started gnawing away at me. Did I have a dream? Had I ever? And was this it? Much as I loved looking after Aidan and helping to raise him, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. Before too long he would be grown up and have a life of his own. He’d no longer need me. So, what was my dream, something I could spend the rest of my life pursuing?

I couldn’t let the comment rest and, back at home, I tapped out a response. “Have you got a dream? What’s your dream?”

What’s your dream?

It’s a deceptive question, one that seems simple but is actually difficult to answer, which appears innocent but is also deeply provocative. It can sound naive when asked, but your response will be incredibly revealing about where you stand in life.

That morning and that reply was the first time I ever asked the question. Some people get to say their parents inspired them, others a sibling, a teacher, or mentor. For me it was an internet troll. So thanks, random TikTok person. If you don’t like what you are about to read, blame them.

I never did get a reply from that unhappy commenter. But their words stuck around in my mind. If I hadn’t had a dream all this time, what had I been doing? How had I built my company to a successful exit, and had I done it in the right way?

It made me think, for the first time, about what success really is and how we can achieve it.

I thought about the companies I had built, the successes and the failures, the stories I had told myself then, and how I looked back on them now. In the process, I realized something. We have some weird ideas about what success is and how to achieve it. Myths and misconceptions that mean we often target the wrong things and pursue them in the wrong way. Stuff that gets in the way of a real dream.

When I reflected on my life with the benefit of hindsight, I saw that while I had succeeded by any objective measure, I had also gotten a huge amount wrong. I’d not just made mistakes, but had also misunderstood things. I’d been dazzled by myths and blinded to some more fundamental truths.

My journey towards understanding the importance of having a dream began with identifying these myths and the role they had played in my life. I believe yours should too. Just as a gardener prepares the soil before laying turf or a painter sands a wall before picking up their brush, you will need a clean surface to which your dream can stick: one free of the ideas most likely to undermine it.

This is important because these myths are everywhere and they are powerful. They begin with what we are often taught at school and they continue to be reinforced throughout our lives. The myths are so prevalent that it’s easy to live a whole life according to them.

Before we properly engage with the idea of the dream, first we have to get all this baggage out of the way. We need to deprogram ourselves of some of the most common—and often most harmful—ideas that have been handed down to us. The ones we were told never to question (which explains why one of my mantras in life is that you should question everything—and that includes what I am telling you here). These myths will kill your dream unless you learn to identify, reject, and overcome them.

Myth #1: The harder I work, the luckier I get

The first myth is one I only figured out when looking back on my career. For fifteen years, I had told myself that the business was doing well because I and everyone else worked hard. Because of long days, late nights, and the willingness to always make another phone call rather than giving up for the day. We’ve all heard it—the harder you work, the luckier you get. It makes sense, right?

And I had worked hard. Compared to the brilliant creative talents of my wife, Helen, who I’d built the business alongside, working hard was the only real skill I had. That had been the deal way back when we had the idea to launch a creative agency called Fluid soon after we had first met. She would do the design work and I would do the selling. In all the years that followed, as we built teams around us, it never really changed.

The hard work had been necessary, but it wasn’t the reason we succeeded. On its own it didn’t explain anything. I had been around long enough to know lots of people who had put their hearts and souls into projects that hit the rocks. I’d seen entrepreneurs burn out trying to make their businesses work, having not stopped or taken a vacation in years. When I really stopped to think about it, I knew that hard work has as much in common with failure as it does success.

But all that time we were building the business, I hadn’t thought about it. I’d taken for granted that success came because we worked hard. That our growth was the product of elbow grease above all else. This view was reinforced by what people would tell me when we had successes. “Well done, you worked hard for that.” As if effort was the only reason for what we had just achieved—not skill, judgment, creativity, or luck.

Why do we all get so seduced by this idea of hard work, and insist on using it to explain our achievements? Why is this myth so pervasive?

One reason is modesty. When people are asked what made them successful, many will credit it to others: they had good parents, good teachers, a great team. And if they are really pushed, they will cite hard work. Most of us find it a lot easier to say “I worked hard” and “I got lucky” than to say “yes, I did well” or “we were smarter than our competition.” Hard work is a palatable explanation for success that means you don’t have to admit to your own ability or make a big deal about what you did right. We say it, and hear it said, so often that we have come to believe it. That’s what makes it such a common lie: people don’t even realize they are telling one.

Still, false modesty alone doesn’t explain this myth. We actively venerate hard work in its own right. It’s one of the fundamental beliefs we are taught right from the beginning.

Editorial Reviews

The book I recommend if you want to start or grow a business.”—Ali Abdaal, bestselling author of Feel-Good Productivity

“Simon loves dreams and he wants you to live yours. This book will stop you from giving up on your goals and start building the life you want”—Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author and host of the On Purpose podcast

“Inspiring stuff . . . Simon empowers you to follow your dreams without fear.”—Jamie Oliver, celebrity chef

“If you have a dream to start a business then make this book your first step!”—Lewis Howes, New York Times bestselling author of The Greatness Mindset

“Simon is making a real impact. If you’re serious about becoming an entrepreneur, this book is a must read.”—Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group

From the Publisher

British entrepreneur Simon Squibb uses the concept of a dream to mean a cherished vision that is more deeply felt than a goal, ambition, or wish. We all have a dream--as he learned interviewing thousands of strangers. And too many people dismiss it, discourage it, or put up obstacles like wasting their time and resources on meaningless gratifications. Squibb has a professional speaking tone and conversational phrasing that is perfect for this moving invitation. As the audiobook begins, and even before any of its persuasive content unfolds, Squibb's vocal energy sounds so full of altruistic fervor that many will be persuaded to let his common-sense suggestions into their hearts. His winning ideas make this a must-hear for anyone blocking themselves from the life they desire. T.W. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2025 - AudioFile