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Stuart Webb | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #135 | · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:02
  podcast. Today's guest is a scientist, a
• 0:05
  podcaster author and Mentor all the way from the UK its name is
• 0:10
  Stewart web. Welcome to the show Stewart, how
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  he did Christian. Very nice to be with you.
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  Thank you very much for having me on.
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  No, no, the pleasure is always mine.
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  I was thinking about this before I came to do today is show that,
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  you know, it's always a pleasure that I get to interview people
• 0:26
  from lots of different backgrounds and kind of tap into
• 0:29
  the various Things that will be all, you know, the knowledge and
• 0:32
  expertise they have and stuff and like sort of can inform on
• 0:36
  life and different areas things. I don't know, and it's always
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  sort of great and I'm a big fan of the same thing.
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  Christian, because for me, I've been on a, you know, I've been
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  learning my entire life and I accept that, you know, 95 98
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  percent of what I know is what I've learned from other people.
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  And, you know, that, that part of my journey and you said in
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  the beginning, as a Just you know, the one thing that
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  scientists learned from a very early age, when you start your
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  career, is that everything you do is built on somebody else's
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  knowledge first because you don't start from the beginning,
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  you start from what other great people have done.
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  And then you take that and you try and Advance it even a tiny
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  little bit. So my entire life has been
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  taking great ideas, other people have had knowledge in their
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  contribution and then moving it on just a fraction and that's
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  kind of where I've been for the last four years ago.
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  We tried 20 10 years now. So before we connect that to
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  your business Endeavors and such I want to just sort of Talk
• 1:37
  about your journey as a scientist because I understand
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  you kind of began with science and you sort of crossed over to
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  business at one point and it's a bit.
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  Yeah, to be fair, like it's never going to be not present in
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  your life, but obviously is a different industry, different
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  Focus, different excetera. But yeah, you're originally
• 1:56
  trained as a scientist and Before we get into like your
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  final roll like just took us a little bit about how you sort of
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  got initially into that that field like how you trained and
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  why you decided to initially. So I can remember back in my my
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  youth. When I was a child I was always
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  coming up with these theories of why, the world was the way it
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  was. Your can remember the one point
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  my grandmother sort of, you know, I was hoping to do the
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  washing up and I looked at her and said, do you know all
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  liquids contain water? And she looked at me and said,
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  how do you know that? And I went, I don't know, I've
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  been thinking about it for a while, I'm sure that's the way
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  it is. So, even when I was three or
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  four, I had all these theories. Now, I know now that not all
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  liquids contain water, but at the time, that was the way.
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  My brain was sort of thinking about these things.
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  So from a very early age, I was always questioning all these,
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  you know, what is it that does that?
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  That means that that looks like that or that behaves in that
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  way. And as I Advanced through
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  school, and what have you? I just I just became the guy
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  that was absolutely fascinated by things like a particularly
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  chemistry time. And then I started reading about
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  these, the, the DNA, the blueprint of the cell that
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  creates all life, and that became my Fascination.
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  And as I got into the time, when I had to pick a university, I
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  decided I wanted to go to a university that just almost
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  studied how the cell Is controlled by DNA, and that was
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  my first, first choice and I went and did that.
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  And once I finished that degree, I'd already then started to look
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  at the next thing that I was fascinated by and that was when
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  a virus, which is effectively just a piece of nucleic acid,
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  material infects, a cell, it hijacks, the cell and makes the
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  cell's DNA and processes. Do what the Iris wants.
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  So that became my next big Fascination.
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  So, I went off and I studied my started a research degree in
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  order to be able to look at that.
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  And that became the thing, which I was most interested in now,
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  you know, how does that? How does that sort of inform the
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  rest of my life is the rest of the story about, excuse me.
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  I was just fascinated by this, how can one small things such as
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  a virus, completely hijacker cell and make it do what the
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  virus wants rather than what the cell want.
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  And that is a subject all in itself, which I then spent 10
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  years basically studying During the time of those studies, like
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  what were the kind of biggest discoveries you made within that
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  field of research? And it also just in general as
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  your career as a scientist. So I originally was looking at a
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  particular virus, which gets inside the cell, which side,
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  particularly nervous tissue inside Tisha, tintype nerve
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  tissues in nerve cells, and cell and and hides in a monk's.
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  DNA and stays completely dormant until it eventually erupts.
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  As, as a legion it's called the herpes simplex virus.
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  It's one that a lot of people have it produces the cold sore
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  and I was I was trying to find a way of getting it to do what he
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  does in the body. Now, if you have cold sores,
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  you'll know that on occasions, you will get an eruption of a
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  cold sore on your lip or wherever you get them largely
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  because either you get stressed or because you get Into the
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  sunlight or something else and I began to postulate.
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  It was something. I didn't know quite what
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  something to do with the cell reacting to some form of damage
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  to it. Its cellular blueprint, the DNA
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  and I postulated that we could actually recreate that by
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  causing some damage to the DNA and then getting it to do what
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  it does on a 20 bases to be able to do that to my command if you
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  like and I found a way of actually controlling the damage
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  to some DNA in a very minor way and that would cause this this
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  virus to suddenly reappear almost on command and that was
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  something that was being tried and people have been trying to
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  find ways to do and I got do it got it to do that and I can
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  remember the day it happened. I'd been trying out some
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  different different ways and it was one of those as I say.
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  You stood on the shoulders of giants.
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  Somebody made a suggestion of something and I went or what
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  could use that could build on that.
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  And so I took it to the next level and then when it happened
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  when repeatedly, I was able to introduce a substance and such a
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  way that it caused this reactivation of the virus, I
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  wasn't actually in the lab that day.
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  I was off sick and somebody rang me from the lab that the person
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  I I'm working for my supervisor and he rang me up and he said it
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  worked and I can remember the feeling which was one of under
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  second person to know this in the world.
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  And the only other person, in fact, if I hadn't been sick
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  today I'd be the only person in the world such a buzz that you
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  certainly can go. I know something nobody else
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  knows and it's and I know exactly why and I know exactly
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  how to do it again and again and again and that was a big boy.
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  As for me, it was one of those. Wow, I want to be able to repeat
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  things again and again and again in a really sort of repeatable
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  way and and and knowing that I could I could go in and I could
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  effectively control something to the point where I would know
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  exactly what the react put would be became a huge, huge Buzz for
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  me. And actually, that is kind of
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  where I ended up in business because that became the driving
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  force for the net for the second career.
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  If you like afterwards and see the logic in and I, we will
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  delve into the business side of things.
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  It's because I mean, I don't know what when I was looking at
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  this and I'm doing my research on you I was like it's a very
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  logical move to go from this field to the next because you
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  know it's always about results and once you figure out I
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  suppose formulas, you know, then as you say, you can repeat them
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  in business. It's a very similar thing.
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  Although I do, think it can be a bit more unpredictable in terms
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  of the results sometimes, but we'll get to that.
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  One thing I wanted to ask actually, on that subject is
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  obviously, you mentioned that, you know, there's There's
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  collaboration in science but over the course of your career
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  as a scientist, to what extent would you say that science as a
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  career field is collaborative? Like, do you get egotistical
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  people within that field you get people trying to kind of take
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  over things and sell or no. This is mine.
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  Would you say overall everyone's just kind of in it, you know,
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  for the cause or something? Yeah, yeah, we're all human
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  beings. So you will always It's find the
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  egotist who is Keen to sort of, you know dominate.
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  But for the most part every scientist knows that you cannot
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  exist in a scientific field without collaboration because
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  there are too many things for one person to know.
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  There are very few of us who are capable of knowing everything.
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  There is to know you have to use other people's knowledge and and
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  indeed in today's science Scientific Community.
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  It's becoming more and more collaborative than ever.
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  It was in the past because fields of knowledge were quite
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  restricted. You could have one or possibly
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  two people working together but today and you sort of touched on
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  it, you know, for for recent scientific Endeavors, you have
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  to understand not only the biology of the cell, but also
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  chemistry. And how drugs might interact as
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  well as how human psychology might affect that.
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  So you can't have One discipline you have to have many many,
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  many, many inputs into inter most scientific experiments are.
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  So science is becoming much more multidisciplinary as it's
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  called. It's becoming something where
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  lots of people with lots of expertise to have to contribute
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  to make the greatest advances. And so, as a result, you have to
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  know how to work as a team with very many different types of
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  personalities with people who are very introverted with people
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  who are What'd you have to understand how to control those
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  egos want to dominate everything and they'll always be there, but
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  you have to look Beyond it. So most scientists do look at
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  the greater picture, there are always going to be those people
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  who are interested only in themselves and you have to
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  manage that situation. But for a lot of the time I was
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  working, I was working in a highly multidisciplinary tight
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  teams where I was working with because some of my work was
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  involved in the place where they started the research.
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  The Oxford AstraZeneca virus. I was there working with people
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  who understand, not only in the ontology, but viruses and the
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  immune system and also then the technology you need in order to
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  advance all of that. So there was there were a lots
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  of voices everybody. I took to work and collaborate.
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  What do you make of People that kind of claim with the credit,
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  like II know that we sort of touched on that a little bit,
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  but as you were speaking there, I kind of thought of, like, two
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  key people that approach this in a very different way in the
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  business world but maybe it comes down to the way they
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  think. The first one I thought of was
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  Steve Jobs and the second one I thought of was Elon Musk.
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  And one thing in particular, I've always noticed about Elon
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  Musk is he always says, we are doing this, we're doing things,
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  great things with Starling, or we're doing great things with
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  Tesla Etc, Where's Steve Jobs? He would, you know, speakers we,
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  but it was kind of like, it seemed like, every invention was
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  was kind of like his brainchild, you know.
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  Like we we yes, we have created the iPad or the iPhone, but it
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  seemed like he got all the credit for it and maybe that's
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  just presentation. I don't know, but there's been
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  controversy about that over the years.
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  You know, like to what extent did he actually.
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  You or was he just kind of like project leader so to speak and I
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  know that's a controversial thing to say but I mean it does
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  beg. The question you know like it's
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  liable to what extent is that person actually involved in that
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  process and spearheading it or are they just kind of guiding
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  it? Like because you one could argue
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  that, you know, it was, it was not him per se, it was just his
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  idea. And then a lot of people kind of
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  enacted it, so to speak. And I think there's there's
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  Important lesson behind that question.
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  In terms of, if you're leading a business, if you're leading an
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  Endeavor, be a scientific research project.
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  Or if you are leading a business, you have to understand
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  how you get the best from the people around you.
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  Now, with, with some people you get the best B standing up and
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  waving a flag from the front and saying follow me.
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  I know where we're going and and and I think that was a sort of
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  Sort of common between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
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  They have a vision for where they're going.
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  I personally I've always found that business is Advanced
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  quicker. If the leader at the front is is
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  making it seem like it's more than just them leading.
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  If they are a sort of we you know, where all of our strengths
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  life, we you know, how to get the best from everybody and we
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  will acknowledge other everybody's contribution.
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  But it doesn't work exclusively like that, you know, some human.
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  Want to be want to be able to get on and do their job and not
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  have to sort of, you know, be promoted and push the front.
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  So I think that Business Leaders nowadays because of the large
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  number of different forces that have to be marshaled brought
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  together. If you like need to be able to
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  need, to be able to sort of acknowledge their team, I've
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  always actually taken the maxim. If you like the, the rule in my
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  own life in the eye. I know, I know where my
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  straights are, I know where my weaknesses are and I build a
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  team around me that actually starts to address my weakness
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  because I know I can do certain things, I have ideas, but I know
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  that I then need somebody to help me sort of make that into a
• 14:49
  reality and complete it. So I get those people to work
• 14:51
  with me. I would put myself more in the
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  sort of Elon Musk category than the Steve Jobs, but if you look
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  at the job, Steve Jobs did, if you look at the way he led
• 15:00
  people, he had a very clear understanding of the quality.
• 15:03
  T that they needed to be able to reach.
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  He knew exactly what the experience needed to be.
• 15:10
  And he was not prepared to compromise.
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  And that's a really strong ethic that some business really needs.
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  If you have got a quality or if you have got a particular
• 15:22
  experience that, you know, has to be embedded, you have got to
• 15:26
  drive that into everybody. And so, do you have to keep
• 15:28
  repeating and repeating and repeating and that if you look
• 15:32
  at what the Apple experience is all about, is exactly what he
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  did. He knew exactly what the
• 15:37
  experience had to be. And he just gathered the people
• 15:39
  around, that would execute that Vision as a great thing to do.
• 15:45
  It's not the way that everybody wants to work.
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  And so I guess you would have lost a lot of people along the
• 15:50
  way who could have contributed, but he was prepared to sacrifice
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  that to get the experience that he knew was going to be his
• 15:58
  brand Champion. That's the thing I do feel like
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  it's not even summer. It is a work for in the past
• 16:05
  have had that kind of more negative mindset of you know
• 16:09
  like you do all this work and then they're just pretty much
• 16:13
  waiting until you burn out and then you replaced kind of thing
• 16:16
  and I think if nothing else this whole pandemic and the
• 16:20
  subsequent great resignation and everything has kind of taught us
• 16:23
  that a lot of people are beginning to finally realize
• 16:27
  that their skills and knowledge is worth.
• 16:31
  Something is in It's a product that can be sold and negotiated
• 16:37
  on and, and it's worth something, that's the thing.
• 16:39
  Like I think a lot of people are very scared or have been very
• 16:42
  scared with their time. I know, I know I used to be, I
• 16:46
  used to be very worried about the concept of being freelance
• 16:49
  and now I am completely free. Lance, but it's it's, It's
• 16:53
  Tricky one. It's it's still scary, but it's
• 16:55
  like you got to Value yourself. Yes.
• 16:59
  Yes. And I think that's an important
• 17:00
  consideration actually Christian.
• 17:01
  Because, you know what we have? moment, we have got you know,
• 17:06
  employment if you like has become is very one-sided, it's a
• 17:11
  it's a take-it-or-leave-it sort of thing, you know, an employer
• 17:14
  organization can basically say here's the offer and if you
• 17:18
  don't like it and it's where things like something, you know,
• 17:21
  casual labor, or zero hour, contracts, and a bunch of other,
• 17:25
  some fairly one-sided contract have come from too many
• 17:28
  businesses have actually sort of said, you know, this is the way
• 17:32
  we will make sure that we we get what we want and slowly, I think
• 17:36
  that is becoming something that people have recognized is not
• 17:40
  fair to be want to talk to want to put it in a lower.
• 17:44
  It's not what they want. And then you know a business has
• 17:48
  got to respond. How do they start to sort ask
• 17:51
  themselves? How do we make it fair for the
• 17:53
  people who are currently we need their talents for the people we
• 17:57
  need in order to make this thing work.
• 17:59
  And so you got to sort of put your mindset back into a
• 18:02
  collector. How do we know?
• 18:03
  Start that more collaborative approach and I guess that's that
• 18:09
  beginnings of people recognizing the beginnings of organizations
• 18:12
  recognizing that this thing is, it's going to be here for a
• 18:16
  while and we need to make sure that we actually sort of address
• 18:19
  it. I am 110% convinced if that's a
• 18:23
  thing for a scientist to say, but I'm certainly more than more
• 18:26
  than ever convinced Business Leaders today.
• 18:29
  Have to be absolutely sure that they are portraying themselves.
• 18:33
  Elves. It's people who will collaborate
• 18:35
  with their teams rather than give them a series of
• 18:38
  instructions and hope that they will get current out.
• 18:40
  It's just not going to work like that anymore.
• 18:42
  You've got to find ways of working with people who don't
• 18:45
  want to be in the office five days a week who don't want to be
• 18:48
  commuting particularly particularly with it's a waste
• 18:52
  of money and waste of time when they can be just as effective
• 18:54
  working at home. So how does a leader go about
• 18:57
  making sure that they work in those environments and be as
• 19:00
  effective? And, you know, there are ways of
• 19:03
  doing it. It just To rethink.
• 19:05
  Remember when I was at University, there was a
• 19:08
  particular module way they were going on and on, and on, and on
• 19:11
  about scientific management versus human relations Theory
• 19:15
  and obviously, Scientific Management side about the
• 19:18
  outdated kind of concept in. As much as you know, it came
• 19:22
  from fordism, it came from the Industrial Age, Etc, so that
• 19:26
  much makes sense. And sometimes you'll still see
• 19:28
  elements of it and it sometimes it is still necessary.
• 19:32
  But ultimately, We moved over to the human human relations,
• 19:36
  theory of approaching day-to-day business and that's why you know
• 19:40
  every company you see now is trying to act like a start-up
• 19:43
  and be like, oh look we've got table tennis.
• 19:46
  So we've got two day retreat at this place.
• 19:50
  Oh you know, we got coffee and it's like, that's great.
• 19:53
  But you know at the end of the day, I think even that is
• 19:57
  outdated now because and this is, you know, this is the thing,
• 20:01
  that's always blow my mind because I've always At the time,
• 20:04
  a business-minded person, ever since I was at school studying
• 20:08
  business. And, and now, you know,
• 20:10
  obviously being a freelance business person.
• 20:12
  Everything I do has business in it.
• 20:13
  Even this has branding and marketing, Etc.
• 20:17
  And when I started freelancing, I began to realize that This
• 20:22
  whole 40-hour. Workweek thing is just
• 20:25
  inefficient and it does. It's because I mean I think a
• 20:29
  lot of companies are wasting money on that they're wasting
• 20:32
  money on that the wasting money on like unnecessary offices and
• 20:35
  stuff, and you are beginning to see companies reacting to that
• 20:39
  now. And and and adjusting, but
• 20:41
  there's a lot of companies that still seem to be very, you know,
• 20:44
  obsessed with control and you know stubborn and you know, it's
• 20:49
  like you need to adapt to change the Life is all about change.
• 20:53
  If you don't move with the changes, then you get left
• 20:56
  behind. You know, listen, I think
• 20:58
  you've, you think you've sort of hit the nail on the head with
• 21:01
  one thing, you said they're actually question which is
• 21:02
  control the, the lot of the time, you know, the I talk a lot
• 21:11
  about innovation in some of the work I do.
• 21:13
  Obviously, you know, I when I was a scientist, my job was, if
• 21:18
  you like about Innovation, it was about finding new things
• 21:20
  about finding the original ways of doing things.
• 21:24
  Innovation, I think most organizations think that, in a
• 21:28
  basin happens because you know, you've got people who are
• 21:31
  together in an office and they start doing things together and
• 21:35
  that produces Innovation. And therefore, in order to get
• 21:38
  Innovation, you have to have people together doing things.
• 21:42
  And therefore, if you are sitting at home on your own, in
• 21:44
  your own office, Innovation won't happen and that will
• 21:47
  stifle the business growth. And I don't believe for one
• 21:50
  minute. That's true Innovation is And we
• 21:54
  come back to the difference between human relations and
• 21:57
  scientific management, human relation can be a process
• 22:02
  human-human interaction can be can be organized.
• 22:09
  Let me explain what I mean by that Innovation comes from
• 22:13
  people having unexpected conversations which actually
• 22:17
  lead to something new, a lot of the time if you think of a of an
• 22:21
  office which is sort of on one, The floor, the people you will
• 22:25
  interact with either few people that are on the floor with you,
• 22:29
  the office across town of the office across the world.
• 22:33
  You only interact with very much and therefore you won't get
• 22:35
  their input to my Deeds. Now, if you're in a world where
• 22:38
  everybody is connecting on a technology such as what we are
• 22:42
  using at the moment, Zoom, you can certainly connect with
• 22:45
  somebody who's across the world. That's a person you wouldn't
• 22:48
  normally have interacted with, but it needs to be engineered in
• 22:53
  now. I had a wonderful day not too
• 22:55
  many weeks ago during a period when I was and I work mainly
• 23:01
  from home anyway, but during a period, when I met with somebody
• 23:05
  in New Zealand in the morning. Somebody in Seattle, Washington
• 23:09
  in the afternoon, and with somebody from Tennessee in the
• 23:13
  United States. In the, in the later evening, I
• 23:16
  would never have done that. If I had to go and see each one
• 23:19
  of those persons in Perry, him in person, it would just a
• 23:22
  number of happened. But I I organized it.
• 23:24
  So I actually got those interactions now, if you're in
• 23:28
  charge of a company and you're thinking to yourself, how do I
• 23:30
  get interaction between all of my people?
• 23:33
  Let me give you a quick idea. Five minutes at the beginning of
• 23:37
  each meeting you insist on people having a bit of a virtual
• 23:40
  coffee. It used to be the thing where
• 23:42
  you went into a meeting and you would just be arriving and
• 23:45
  saying to people. Hello, nowadays.
• 23:47
  We have this thing which says, because we're online, we have to
• 23:49
  start on time. We have to finish throw the
• 23:52
  Rules book Away. Just give yourself five minutes
• 23:55
  at the beginning of the meeting to just have a bit of a chat and
• 23:57
  then make sure you finish 10 minutes early and you have five
• 24:01
  minutes for a bit of a chat and then you leave the meeting room.
• 24:05
  You'll find those interactions that you're trying to enforce
• 24:08
  will happen just because people are chatting away, but it means
• 24:13
  you actually got to stop trying to have a 60-minute meeting and
• 24:16
  reduce it to 45, which means that you've got the sort of five
• 24:20
  minutes either end in order to have the chat and you still got
• 24:23
  five minutes to get Get to your next meeting.
• 24:25
  So what do you have to do? You have to be much more focused
• 24:28
  about what your meeting about, because otherwise you'll spend
• 24:31
  60 Minutes, attempting to fill the space.
• 24:33
  So let's make each meeting 50 minutes.
• 24:36
  Let's engineer in five minutes, chat at the beginning of the
• 24:38
  end. Let's have a 45-minute really
• 24:41
  focused discussion where you actually find out what you're
• 24:44
  trying to do and agree on it. And let's all get some some life
• 24:48
  back so it can be done. But people have to rethink the
• 24:52
  way they're working rather sort of It will happen sort of
• 24:55
  somehow naturally. It means just rethinking the
• 24:58
  Working Day. Think.
• 25:01
  Because of a couple of things I want to say on that boat just
• 25:04
  keeping it with meetings for a second.
• 25:06
  Remember a company I used to work for was obsessed with
• 25:09
  meetings. Just I mean I'm assuming we move
• 25:13
  to a new office and light suddenly we were having four
• 25:17
  five six meetings a week at one point and it was used to
• 25:21
  frustrate me when I go in there, you know because personally you
• 25:25
  know so what you want. But I think a lot of the time
• 25:28
  meetings can be an email. Let's just be real.
• 25:31
  Not the time. You know, and I get frustrated
• 25:33
  like I even if it's I'm working for someone else I'm like, look
• 25:36
  I've got I got work to do like yeah I got think I got stuff to
• 25:40
  do. That's what I'm here to do like,
• 25:42
  how long we going to sit here? You know and just yeah.
• 25:46
  And then they go through these painful Powerpoints.
• 25:48
  And as you say, I mean, you sometimes they're just wasting
• 25:51
  time, talking at the beginning and I suppose it, it does
• 25:54
  depends. Some meetings are useful.
• 25:56
  Like I always used to prefer the quick ones, where it's like a
• 25:59
  quick full until okay, like 5-10 minutes the It's just, you know,
• 26:02
  and that's the thing. Those spontaneous ones were
• 26:05
  always better when we hadn't planned them, will I?
• 26:07
  Ah, we need to just quickly up this go have a meeting and we'd
• 26:11
  have like a meeting room, you know, sometimes you have to hire
• 26:15
  them as stupid. But anyway, it was better.
• 26:18
  When you could just walk in sit down and go, right?
• 26:20
  And just hash it out for five or ten minutes and then that's when
• 26:23
  those better ideas came as opposed to the Monday morning
• 26:26
  muted at 9 a.m. every week. But one thing that you said that
• 26:30
  I think is on and I've noticed this and now I get it from a
• 26:35
  purely just from a kind of Business standpoint as far as
• 26:39
  day-to-day business, but and especially the higher up.
• 26:42
  You are in the company or whatever.
• 26:44
  If your business owner, it used to kind of annoy me, like, how
• 26:48
  much business execs business owners just seemingly have like
• 26:51
  lunches and meetings all the time and sometimes they are
• 26:55
  wasting time, but a lot of the time.
• 26:56
  It's what you were talking about.
• 26:58
  It's trying to kind of Meet with the people you want to meet with
• 27:05
  and talk. And, and through the
• 27:06
  discussions, you gradually start discussing ideas and then
• 27:10
  something, you know, you taught your start having this sort of
• 27:14
  conversation to whip you like what about if we did this and
• 27:18
  the person's like drinking their tea?
• 27:21
  Hmm. Okay.
• 27:22
  Well, these are my concerns by blah blah blah and then and
• 27:25
  that's how most business ideas work.
• 27:28
  Like, for example, this is a bit left field but the Set up for
• 27:34
  what used to be Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson, Etc.
• 27:37
  That was decided between Jeremy Clarkson and the original
• 27:42
  producer of writer of Top Gear. And they were just sitting up
• 27:45
  Hub, basically, creating the format for what.
• 27:48
  We, now know, as Top Gear that came from just sitting down at a
• 27:51
  pub and working it out and going.
• 27:53
  What if we did this? And I totally agree.
• 27:56
  I think that's the best way to do business.
• 27:57
  A lot of the time, you know, you have these ideas and then you
• 28:01
  present them, it doesn't have to be in a board room or a
• 28:03
  conference room and I think a lot of the time, that's the
• 28:06
  problem because it becomes like a committee thing.
• 28:09
  You know, it's like you got a room full of like, 20 people and
• 28:11
  they're all like, you know, there's too many cooks, it's
• 28:14
  just too much, or is he Germany a couple of people you decide on
• 28:21
  a format, you work on it and you collaborate and then it becomes
• 28:25
  something and I think also, one thing I wanted to just add to
• 28:30
  that as well as I was watching. Is this amazing series on
• 28:34
  YouTube by a guy called ways moniker is ordinary things and
• 28:39
  he does kind of like many documentary-style videos, think,
• 28:43
  Charlie Brooker, that kind of thing.
• 28:45
  And he did one on offices office spaces and it was brilliant
• 28:50
  because I remember seeing there was a particular design that he
• 28:53
  showed from the 1970s that looks like basically the modern office
• 28:58
  plant like what do they call it open plan office because
• 29:01
  obviously all Oh, offices now, open plan like it's just a
• 29:04
  nightmare. This is I work from home by the
• 29:07
  way. So I'm very happy with working
• 29:09
  from home and that scenario, and I'll get into why I hate open
• 29:13
  plan for it in a minute. But this particular 1970s style
• 29:17
  was immediately after that, the cubicles and all of that sort of
• 29:19
  stuff. So it's like anything's better
• 29:22
  than that. Or no, I think it was a bit
• 29:24
  before that. Actually, that will come in the
• 29:25
  90s, my apologies. So it was before that it was
• 29:28
  basically like the first Attempt to open plan.
• 29:33
  But in a very kind of laissez-faire kind of like oh
• 29:37
  we're in this very relaxed environment and you know it's
• 29:39
  free-flowing we can freely walk around and you know there's
• 29:43
  there's no walls. There's no barriers we just
• 29:45
  relax and you know, ideas come and it was it's a very kind of
• 29:49
  hippie. Great idea in theory but in
• 29:52
  actuality practicality it's like I need space to get my work
• 29:56
  done. This is too noisy.
• 29:57
  There's too much going on. This is horrible and then
• 30:00
  obviously it true. It transformed into the cubicle,
• 30:04
  that sort of existed for a couple of decades around the 90s
• 30:08
  80s, that kind of time. And now we've kind of come full
• 30:11
  circle again. Now we've got open plan and I
• 30:17
  know it's controversial to say that I'd I think it's true.
• 30:20
  I look at open plan is just a way for middle management to
• 30:23
  just kind of assess over and no Bees just true, it's true just
• 30:28
  look at everything that's happened with the pandemic.
• 30:30
  The pandemic is Evan and I was so many studies statistics.
• 30:35
  That's that's what you look at facts, you're a scientist that
• 30:37
  this, this is what matters, isn't it?
• 30:38
  Backed, the facts show. People are much more productive
• 30:44
  working from home. Not everyone, not everyone has
• 30:46
  the same. Some people do prefer to be in
• 30:48
  that environment, you know? And I get that, you know, I'm
• 30:50
  the same when it comes to Gym training, you know, I can't get
• 30:53
  anything done at home. I go to the gym, I get something
• 30:55
  done. But yeah, I don't know like I
• 30:59
  work from home and I love it and I get away more done and I'm
• 31:03
  able to plan my time better and this is when I started thinking
• 31:07
  about what I was talking about before with the how our sting
• 31:10
  do. I really need to be doing 40
• 31:11
  hours a week. I can get all this done in like
• 31:13
  10 hours. Yeah.
• 31:16
  Yeah. And I think you've got you've
• 31:18
  sort of hit on a couple of things there, which is the the
• 31:20
  open plan office is now proven to be hugely efficient, but it
• 31:25
  is Found a way of being able to control what people are doing
• 31:34
  and it's because managers don't know the correct way to actually
• 31:37
  measure what is useful work. I've convinced of it.
• 31:40
  You know I go back to what I used to do as a scientist I
• 31:44
  would measure something I would be there to see effectively if I
• 31:47
  could do an experiment. Which said, if I do this thing,
• 31:51
  whatever it was let's take an example.
• 31:53
  You know, if I was trying to sort of grow Oh, a cell in a
• 31:57
  different way. If I changed one of the
• 31:59
  component would it grow better or grow worse and I would make
• 32:03
  some measurements before I did. It change one thing and then see
• 32:07
  what happened? What's most managers don't know
• 32:10
  how to do is to measure what reasonable work and it's because
• 32:13
  they don't know from from from their leaders.
• 32:18
  What the thing is that they're trying to achieve.
• 32:21
  They just been given a small part of the picture which
• 32:25
  basically says Do this thing and they go.
• 32:27
  Well, I don't know what's going to contribute from my little bit
• 32:30
  of the world to the grated Vision in order to be able to
• 32:34
  affect this and make it better. So, what I'll do is I'll make
• 32:38
  sure everybody is 100% occupied because that's a good thing.
• 32:42
  Well, 100% occupied means that they're sitting in front of
• 32:46
  their computer, doing what they think is work.
• 32:49
  Well, you know, I know from having spent many years,
• 32:51
  actually, managing many people that if you put them in front of
• 32:54
  the computer and say fill That day, they'll fill the day.
• 32:58
  As you said, they'll fill the day with a meeting, because,
• 33:00
  what's better than a meeting. It looks like they're achieving
• 33:02
  something. Now that meeting to be a, you
• 33:04
  know, a meeting to agree about having a meeting, and then you
• 33:07
  have a pre-meeting to agree, what you need to agree before
• 33:10
  you go into the meeting? You know, all of that sort of
• 33:12
  thing, looks really productive. If you don't know what you're
• 33:15
  trying to achieve all of that stuff, looks like good work, but
• 33:18
  if you turn it around and say the job that this group has to
• 33:22
  do is to make this thing that much better you Ask you a
• 33:26
  question how much of what they're doing actually
• 33:29
  contributes to that end goal. And 90% of meetings would have
• 33:33
  to be eliminated because they're not contributing that goal.
• 33:36
  I agree with you. I used to sort of often say to
• 33:39
  the people who were working for me and they would say we've had
• 33:41
  a meeting about it and go. Okay, what was the purpose of
• 33:43
  the meeting? Look at me as if to say, why do
• 33:45
  we need a purpose? I don't let me explain.
• 33:58
  What you have is, you've got every meeting.
• 34:00
  I used to say to my managers. Every meeting must have an
• 34:03
  objective and an agenda. And I want you to stick to both
• 34:06
  the objective. Is there to basically act like a
• 34:09
  Rudder, it keeps you going in the right direction, the agenda
• 34:12
  keeps you to the time because as far as I'm concerned the time
• 34:15
  is, but it's precious. Yeah, so don't waste it.
• 34:18
  No meeting should last more than 45 minutes.
• 34:20
  That was the other rule? They'd look at me go.
• 34:22
  Yeah, but but in Outlook it comes up as an hour and okay.
• 34:26
  Change your standard meeting time in Outlook, just because
• 34:30
  somebody set it at 60 Minutes, doesn't mean it has to be 60
• 34:33
  Minute. In fact, if you can put together
• 34:35
  an agenda, and it says that you should have a 35 minute meeting,
• 34:38
  you have a 35-minute m, you do not have 45 minutes, just
• 34:42
  because that's the standard. If you can get it done in 15
• 34:45
  minutes, you do it in 15 minutes.
• 34:47
  I can remember there were some times when I would say to
• 34:49
  people, please take the chairs out of the room to make sure
• 34:53
  that what you do is get people to avoid.
• 34:56
  Of standing up so that they have more happy to leave inside a 15
• 34:59
  minutes because that will keep them from sort of talking
• 35:02
  talking talking to, you know, change the environment to meet
• 35:05
  the actual objectives. Rather, what you're trying to do
• 35:07
  which is change the objectives to meet the environment.
• 35:10
  So you know it would come back to once again always turn around
• 35:13
  say what is this meeting about? Why are we trying?
• 35:16
  What are we trying to achieve? How does that relate to our
• 35:18
  larger goal? Great go in and do that
• 35:21
  communication then became if I need to tell a lot of people, a
• 35:25
  lot of things. Do it by email?
• 35:27
  Yeah, because if I drag all of those people together to talk at
• 35:30
  them, unless what you wanted to do was talk at and perform for a
• 35:33
  few minutes and then say ask me the questions you need to ask us
• 35:38
  so that I can answer them now without having to sort of get a
• 35:40
  going script, it I'll answer questions.
• 35:43
  And if I can't answer the question or if I don't know, I
• 35:45
  will turn around say, I don't know.
• 35:47
  So any meeting then became something which was, let me tell
• 35:50
  you something, ask me questions or I'll put it out to you in an
• 35:53
  email because it's just going to be me.
• 35:56
  Talking at you so save. You time read it when you're
• 35:58
  ready and it's just a much better way of managing that.
• 36:01
  So it just it. I'm always about sort of saying
• 36:06
  use the objectives and use the the the larger goal to really
• 36:10
  sort of control your you're thinking about what you're
• 36:13
  trying to do rather than doing what.
• 36:15
  So many people do which is if environment, how do I make the
• 36:18
  environment somehow meet what I'm doing?
• 36:21
  Yeah, I think like another thing as well as like if you just
• 36:24
  don't like Okay, for example, often you'll have like several
• 36:30
  meetings that are scheduled every week and they happen every
• 36:33
  week, you know, Etc, right. Sometimes they're necessary.
• 36:37
  A lot of assignments that are well, we just do this meeting
• 36:39
  every Monday bubbler. And it's like, do you need to?
• 36:42
  Yes. What if you get one of you
• 36:44
  haven't got anything to discuss, like just don't don't do a
• 36:47
  meeting that week or, you know, absolutely right the fight that
• 36:51
  and, and also like this used to frustrate me as well.
• 36:54
  Where you spoke about like being able to make it easier for
• 36:59
  people to leave. I remember so many times and
• 37:01
  this included me to where you'd have a whole meeting and
• 37:04
  essayist like a, having a sales meeting or something.
• 37:08
  And I'm a marketing guy. And this isn't a company where
• 37:11
  the marketing and sales are separate.
• 37:13
  So we don't know anything, the sales team does and marketing
• 37:16
  doesn't know, vice versa and the very first thing.
• 37:21
  One of the managers said to me is, oh yeah.
• 37:24
  Yeah, don't worry this. This none of this has anything
• 37:26
  to do with you and I'm thinking can I go then?
• 37:30
  Do I need to be here and it's I don't know you need to be here
• 37:33
  because you know, it's important like, you know, it's business
• 37:35
  stuff. Like you need to know and it's
• 37:36
  like, but do I really need to know?
• 37:38
  Do I need to know the quarterly targets for the next quarter?
• 37:43
  When everything I do is involved with content Management in SEO?
• 37:47
  No, I don't, you know, unless there's some crossover like if
• 37:50
  there's crossed over if I'm actually going to have to work
• 37:52
  with the sales team great? Yeah.
• 37:53
  I Should be there. But if there's not going to be
• 37:55
  any crossover or work then why am I included here?
• 37:59
  Why are you wasting my time? Yeah, this is why I think it's a
• 38:02
  very interesting. It's very interesting point and
• 38:04
  I think it's a good one, Chris your because I remember being in
• 38:07
  a meeting with the CEO and they were, they were very new chief
• 38:13
  executive. They just come into the company
• 38:15
  and they sat in in a meeting room and, you know, there are
• 38:20
  about 17 18 people. Round the table.
• 38:25
  And so this CEO basically started.
• 38:28
  She started by saying, look, I've not met anybody here yet.
• 38:32
  Let me just let me just start by sort of saying here's why I
• 38:35
  think I'm in this meeting and then she turned to press on your
• 38:37
  left and she said, and why do you think you're in this
• 38:39
  meeting? And this person sort of
• 38:42
  struggled a little bit. And she took looked at me said,
• 38:44
  I'm not entirely convinced. You need to be here because I
• 38:46
  don't think you're convinced you want to be in this meeting.
• 38:49
  So please don't waste your time or anybody else's go and do.
• 38:53
  Something else and they got up and left and just turn to the
• 38:56
  person to their left and said, and why are you here in this
• 38:59
  meeting? They had a good solid reason and
• 39:00
  then she turned to the next person said, why are you hearing
• 39:03
  this meeting? And they looked a bit sheepish
• 39:07
  and said, I don't think I need to be yet.
• 39:08
  So she simple, please don't waste your time and he got up a
• 39:10
  walk down by this stage. There were people at the far end
• 39:14
  of the table who are already picking up their stuff, a
• 39:16
  walking out because they knew what was going to happen.
• 39:18
  And in the end, those 17 people were reduced to about 26 and
• 39:22
  suddenly it was a productive Focus.
• 39:23
  Teaching about the things, those six people needed to get sorted.
• 39:27
  And she looked at me and she said, that's the way we do
• 39:31
  meetings. And I thought I loved it.
• 39:33
  I'm going to be able to do this. So I'm quite comfortable with
• 39:37
  people now, you know, I go into meetings and I start by saying.
• 39:40
  So what do you think you're here to do?
• 39:42
  And if they don't have a good reason I go please go and do
• 39:44
  something else. Please go and do something
• 39:46
  useful because this is not a useful use of your time and it
• 39:49
  can cut meetings down. Go out to you nothing.
• 39:51
  You know if you're not To achieve something go and do
• 39:55
  something which is actually going to be cheap.
• 39:57
  I can, I can, I can remember when I was doing some work for
• 40:01
  me, T, I went for a to a meeting six weeks in a row before I
• 40:06
  worked out. You had nothing to do with me
• 40:09
  and eventually I worked. I had nothing to do with me and
• 40:12
  I stopped going to the meeting. You know, I was still copied in
• 40:15
  on the actions that I was supposed to do which I hadn't
• 40:18
  bothered to do. Nobody came and asked me whether
• 40:21
  or not it was getting on with them because I suddenly I have
• 40:24
  nothing to do with me, so I stopped going.
• 40:26
  But that meeting was carrying on and on and on, I don't know if
• 40:28
  ever it, it's probably still happening.
• 40:30
  We still good to be still see seeing you in the.
• 40:37
  We have to get back to what you know.
• 40:40
  Work is supposed to be trying to achieve and rejected if you are
• 40:44
  not aligned with the objectives of the overall company and you
• 40:48
  don't know how they fit ask the question, what's the company
• 40:51
  trying to achieve? What's my part in?
• 40:53
  Knit. And then make sure all your
• 40:55
  goals are aligned with that. Yeah, I think it always comes
• 40:59
  down to results at the end of the day.
• 41:01
  That's that's why I think. I think it makes more sense to
• 41:04
  do it by project by project or deadlights you know.
• 41:06
  Like when I started seeing companies, I worked for in the
• 41:09
  past, you know, do time tracking and stuff.
• 41:11
  I was like, this is pointless. This is stupid.
• 41:13
  You know, do it by deadlines, do it by the money?
• 41:16
  We're making from projects, do it by these kind of things.
• 41:18
  You know what you were saying before about?
• 41:21
  You took about science approach and stuff like I think That's
• 41:24
  kind of key in science. It's like you're testing a
• 41:28
  hypothesis and then you have like a control.
• 41:31
  You have maybe several others and you're testing night.
• 41:33
  Several different variables, essentially a/b testing and
• 41:36
  sometimes businesses do this, you know.
• 41:38
  Maybe you do like an email campaign and you try one thing
• 41:41
  with a particular title and one thing without or you try one
• 41:45
  thing with a CTA and one thing without like and that's A/B
• 41:48
  Testing you're going to find out which is more effective.
• 41:51
  But when it comes to The stuff we've been discussing when it
• 41:55
  comes to meetings office plans companies, don't seem to do
• 41:57
  that. They just do this stuff and then
• 41:59
  they're like, huh, that's not working.
• 42:02
  People are not as efficient and it's like well of course not
• 42:05
  because you're not testing the alternative.
• 42:07
  Absolutely. I love it.
• 42:08
  You've hit my hot button Christian.
• 42:10
  Well done testing. You know that you're actually
• 42:13
  right? That was the scientific
• 42:14
  approach. It was test everything and I
• 42:17
  test everything. It isn't just the call-to-action
• 42:21
  color or isn't just the headline.
• 42:23
  Literally test everything I have a, you know, when I work with an
• 42:27
  organization, I spent a lot of my time working with guys who
• 42:30
  are people who are running a business is, you know, they're
• 42:34
  people that have got to a particular standing in there.
• 42:36
  Now, try to grow to the next level, they're people that are
• 42:39
  wanting to go from one space to another and they're looking and
• 42:43
  saying, right? What do I have to do?
• 42:45
  And the first thing you do is right, okay?
• 42:46
  I cook talk about what I call the champion Challenger
• 42:49
  approach. You've already got a way of
• 42:51
  doing something. Let's call that the Ian, let's
• 42:54
  say that's the established Champion.
• 42:57
  Now, you know, in, in medieval times you would you would have
• 43:01
  some chance and things like that, and the champion would be
• 43:03
  the one that was standing and the challenge it would come in.
• 43:06
  And they would try and not the champion of their horse and
• 43:09
  they'd become the new Champion. That's the process I go through
• 43:12
  with organizational leaders. Now, I go again.
• 43:15
  What's the thing you're doing at the moment?
• 43:16
  Okay, let's say that your Champion now, let's challenge
• 43:20
  it. Let's look around and say what
• 43:21
  do we try and change and you change?
• 43:23
  Something and you find out if it works and if it works, you've
• 43:26
  got a new Champion. Now you bring in another
• 43:29
  Challenger. Another new thing, you try now,
• 43:31
  maybe that doesn't work on this occasion and the champion
• 43:33
  remains terrific, bringing another Challenger and see what
• 43:37
  happens. Keep testing every single
• 43:40
  variable you can until you optimize some point where it is
• 43:43
  growing. But of course, what's going to
• 43:44
  happen. As soon as you get that champion
• 43:46
  and it's working perfectly. The outside world changes and
• 43:50
  that means your Challenger has to come back into it to reflect
• 43:53
  Elect the new world, you know, we had a we had a change in the
• 43:57
  environment when we had the pandemic so that certainly
• 44:00
  affected everything but too many organizations, think the
• 44:02
  established way of doing things, the champion is the continued
• 44:06
  way of working. It's not the continued way of
• 44:09
  working is just your current champion.
• 44:11
  The Challenger has to be. Somebody that says, right, we're
• 44:14
  going to try and change this one thing, maybe it's our meeting
• 44:17
  structure. Maybe it's the way we're
• 44:18
  targeting our audience, maybe it's way.
• 44:20
  We are having two currently communicate with our Actual
• 44:24
  customers, maybe we're going to challenge the way which were
• 44:27
  delivering things be. It sales marketing actually
• 44:31
  actually producing our product or service, everything is up for
• 44:34
  challenge. Everything has to be constantly
• 44:37
  tested against the best of the best so you're absolutely bang
• 44:41
  on right. When you say this test test
• 44:44
  test, I love it when people start talking about testing, if
• 44:47
  you're a business leader, not prepared to test, you're not
• 44:49
  prepared to grow. You're not prepared to change
• 44:51
  you prepared to die. Yeah, I totally We agree.
• 44:54
  I mean I feel like it goes back to what I said before about you
• 44:57
  know accepting that life is about change and you know that
• 45:03
  what is the case in this year is going to be different in six
• 45:06
  months from now. And if you're in a Perpetual
• 45:08
  state of testing within your company then you're already
• 45:12
  ready for Change and for the inevitabilities that occur and
• 45:16
  it's not going to be such a hit when things change.
• 45:19
  And also if you're looking purely at results and nothing
• 45:23
  else, if you just Looking at how it's going, you know, okay,
• 45:25
  let's take the meeting sting, for example, right, let's say
• 45:28
  you find your Champion as you said and it's working for you,
• 45:31
  right? And you run with that for a bit
• 45:35
  and then you notice, but you're still testing, you're still
• 45:37
  testing that whole period even know that thing is working for
• 45:40
  you. You still testing it and then
• 45:42
  suddenly it slips. And you know what's that?
• 45:44
  So then you start tricking the variables and everything and
• 45:47
  then you figure out the reason why?
• 45:49
  And then you run with it, but the key is you didn't you never
• 45:51
  stopped, you didn't drop the ball, you can go.
• 45:53
  Oh, well, we figured it out now. So that's it would just keep
• 45:56
  doing it like that. And it's like that's just not
• 46:00
  how you do business because this is it you have to accept that
• 46:03
  you're perpetually going to be tweaking things test on things.
• 46:08
  Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 46:13
  Let's let's let's just bring about for science for a second.
• 46:16
  I just wanted to understand how you made the transition from
• 46:20
  science to business. So obviously You sort of ended
• 46:25
  this career in science obviously is still with you.
• 46:28
  I mean, as we sort of figure out just now, you know, it's clearly
• 46:32
  on your mind all the time. It's just you're using it in a
• 46:35
  different way now. But in terms of the actual
• 46:38
  career progression and the switchover, what led you to
• 46:42
  think, okay, I've done what I need to do in science.
• 46:44
  Now it's time to go into business.
• 46:46
  And how did you make that transition?
• 46:49
  So I was I was I was relatively successful, I made A number of
• 46:54
  discoveries and publish them. As you as a scientist do, does
• 46:58
  they put them into scientific journals and those journals
• 47:02
  those Publications? Add up to sort of, you know, if
• 47:06
  you like certain, you know, points on your points on your CV
• 47:09
  which enable you to sort of progress to the next level.
• 47:12
  So I was doing okay. Publications were coming, I was
• 47:16
  still getting on pretty well and I got to the stage where I was
• 47:23
  thinking about. The next step.
• 47:25
  And at the time I was also working in trying to improve the
• 47:35
  way in which we were reporting result.
• 47:40
  My research was based in a hospital laboratory at the time,
• 47:45
  and I was involved in, try to move to the next level to report
• 47:49
  the way in which we were telling the the hospital.
• 47:53
  How How the results of patience test and I became fascinated by
• 48:00
  this as once again, going back to the fact that it would be.
• 48:03
  You could improve things constantly.
• 48:04
  So I wanted to constantly improve things and I in the
• 48:09
  evenings after doing research. So about to you know, I'd start
• 48:14
  this work about 9:00 in the evening.
• 48:16
  Having spent the day in the lab, doing my research, there was a
• 48:19
  guy that was particularly good at linking machines to
• 48:22
  computers. So these are the machines that
• 48:25
  were getting results of blood that was taken from patients and
• 48:29
  getting results from those patient.
• 48:31
  Patient samples. I asked him whether he could
• 48:35
  find a way of linking, the computer to the machine and
• 48:39
  taking all the results from the machine and dumping on the
• 48:41
  computer. So that we could produce a
• 48:43
  printout much more easily and importing that into a computer
• 48:46
  database, it turned out and he said he thought we could do it
• 48:49
  after many weeks of tinkering, he got the result and I went
• 48:53
  okay this Interesting. And then I extended that so that
• 48:58
  we were actually able to link all of these results up and
• 49:01
  produce a database, which would report all of this out to the to
• 49:05
  the hospital, and it was much more efficient and one of the
• 49:08
  machine manufacturers saw this and said, how are you doing
• 49:13
  this? We'd love to know how you're
• 49:14
  doing it. And Robert told him how he was
• 49:17
  doing, and I told her what he was in and it got known and a
• 49:21
  university asked me to come and help them.
• 49:23
  To link their computers up to the Internet.
• 49:27
  So I sort of made the transition from somebody who was doing
• 49:31
  research eventual the time to somebody who is still associated
• 49:35
  with the university. But was now trying to link
• 49:37
  computers to the internet because it was very new at the
• 49:39
  time. So, I did that for a bit and I
• 49:42
  came across Tim berners-lee who was working on the world wide
• 49:46
  web and I took his ideas and had a couple of conversations with
• 49:51
  him to sort of move it. I didn't understand how I could
• 49:55
  use the World Wide Web to teach medical students and, and I did
• 49:58
  that for a while and then I got to the end of that particular
• 50:03
  period. I was on a short-term contract,
• 50:06
  I thought I've got to go and do something else.
• 50:08
  Now, I've got to either find myself back in research or apply
• 50:12
  to become a lecturer or go and do something with this internet
• 50:15
  e thing. And so I had a choice and I
• 50:20
  didn't particularly want to become a university lecturer.
• 50:23
  I didn't Really want to go and work for a drug company.
• 50:26
  And I thought this internet you thing was fascinating.
• 50:29
  So I wrote with a couple of companies and said, look this is
• 50:32
  my background, this is what I think I'm good at.
• 50:35
  And one of them employed me and the next thing I know is I was I
• 50:38
  was a consultant for something called workflow and I very
• 50:45
  quickly rose rose through the ranks there and I got head
• 50:48
  hunted by another company and I ended up leading their
• 50:52
  E-Business. Which at the time was everything
• 50:54
  to do with the internet and things and that company that
• 51:00
  company we sort of sold that. So I sort of suddenly got
• 51:04
  involved into managing sales and mergers and things like that and
• 51:08
  I thought I'd go. That's interesting.
• 51:09
  And then I was headhunted by British Telecom to go and work
• 51:13
  for them and I became one of their troubleshooters for any
• 51:19
  project across the world where there was problems.
• 51:21
  So I became a corporate troubleshooter side.
• 51:23
  I'm dealing with some fairly big, big project, I dealt with
• 51:27
  people at the European Space Agency for a while and things
• 51:29
  like that. And I was dealing with quite a
• 51:31
  lot of sort of high complexity of project.
• 51:37
  And the one thing I kept coming back to was this, if I can
• 51:40
  control all the variables, if I can put together a series of
• 51:43
  formulas, if I can put together a series of ways to do things,
• 51:48
  none of these problems would happen and that became the
• 51:51
  foundations of the business I run now, which is how do Go by
• 51:54
  putting together. A series of Rock Solid formulas
• 51:58
  that actually enable you to grow a company without it getting
• 52:02
  into any sort of serious trouble without it sort of getting
• 52:05
  getting out of kilter because you have to have each part of
• 52:07
  the formula working properly. And so I left British Telecom
• 52:12
  and started to work for myself and grow companies by using this
• 52:16
  idea. And, you know, you've just
• 52:19
  basically sort of saying they're that scientific thinking stay
• 52:22
  with me because everywhere I went When I was trying to
• 52:25
  implement in still in the people I worked with and the people I
• 52:27
  was working for the same rigorous thinking that I always
• 52:31
  had which is have everything stable.
• 52:33
  Make sure you're changing. One thing in order to discover
• 52:36
  the next thing don't be trying to do too many things at once
• 52:39
  because that leads to too many things that you can't control.
• 52:43
  And so I was always employing that are you actually thought
• 52:47
  that my training if you like as a scientist would actually have
• 52:52
  a mine? Scientific in a hot hand for my
• 52:57
  business career but I discovered actually enhanced it.
• 53:00
  I always thought that having this rigorous formula approach
• 53:03
  would actually hold me back but because you look at people like
• 53:07
  Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and they don't seem to have any
• 53:09
  formulas. They don't seem to have any
• 53:11
  formulas but they do you just don't see them until you start
• 53:14
  looking at it in more detail. They have rock-solid formulas,
• 53:18
  they're just not talking about them, they're talking about
• 53:20
  other things but behind everything that they do.
• 53:22
  I rock solid for Formulas, that they know work again and again
• 53:25
  and again. So that's what I'm trying to do.
• 53:27
  Now is to bring those secrets of those rock-solid formulas, that
• 53:31
  the big businesses used to, to grow year on year to produce
• 53:35
  lead year on year to produce profits year on year and
• 53:38
  actually expose those to the smaller business, people that
• 53:40
  need to know about that but don't get the opportunity to
• 53:43
  hear them. I was at school.
• 53:46
  I remember the name of the The building which housed, economics
• 53:53
  business, and Etc, was called the social sciences Building,
• 53:58
  Life Sciences whether you want to call it.
• 54:00
  And I always used to find that kind of quirk in now, I
• 54:03
  understand especially based on what you're saying as well that
• 54:06
  excuse me, that they are Sciences at their hearts.
• 54:09
  They and they have to be because that's how you make money is
• 54:14
  through. Finding these techniques that
• 54:16
  are often based in formulas or something to that effect.
• 54:20
  The enable you to achieve these goals that you have, you know,
• 54:23
  it always comes down to that the bottom line.
• 54:26
  Yes, it does. And they, you know, I come back
• 54:29
  to again and again we look at people.
• 54:31
  The inspirational leaders that we think don't have any Rock
• 54:35
  Solid formulas that they're operating But they do have a
• 54:40
  rock-solid foreigners. We just don't see them and
• 54:43
  they're hidden. And and even Elon Musk has a
• 54:46
  rock-solid formulas. He is constantly referring back
• 54:50
  to the actually ensure his businesses grow and grow and
• 54:54
  grow and grow. I just want to expose those
• 54:57
  those formulas to people that seem to be looking and saying, I
• 55:02
  don't get it. Why is it things of things
• 55:04
  aren't working for my business? And the answer is you need to
• 55:06
  embed some of these Rock Solid formulas.
• 55:08
  You know will constantly cause your business to grow and don't
• 55:13
  change them until you have a challenger that comes along and
• 55:17
  actually, sort of you proved is the better way and you lock in a
• 55:21
  new formula. And then you say, okay the game
• 55:23
  again it's all about just exposing all of that and getting
• 55:27
  people to understand that and they're not not, they don't get
• 55:31
  they don't get it until somebody helps to understand it.
• 55:36
  In terms of the work that you do building scaling and selling
• 55:39
  businesses and this predominantly consultancy is
• 55:43
  understand this business. Is that right?
• 55:45
  So what the kind of most common challenges you find within this
• 55:51
  field? I what what what the most what
• 55:53
  are most companies getting wrong that you helped sort of oh,
• 55:58
  that's-that's-that's give you the the obvious what most most
• 56:01
  of us in a. We all struggle with getting
• 56:03
  leads and most people are I'll getting, I would I would suggest
• 56:07
  they have several things going on.
• 56:11
  One of which is, I think you need at least six lead
• 56:15
  generation techniques working for you at any one time most
• 56:18
  people have one or two and think that they'll get it all from
• 56:21
  doing social media or doing online ads, you need to have six
• 56:27
  strategies, six tactics. Going for your one time and they
• 56:31
  can't all be online. You have to have some offline.
• 56:33
  You have some online. So whether or not The offline is
• 56:36
  writing a letter and the online is writing an email, you have to
• 56:40
  have both working for you can't expect people to be sort of only
• 56:43
  responding to one. So I think there's that's your
• 56:45
  first and obvious one too many people have too few strategies.
• 56:49
  The other thing is I think too often within their marketing
• 56:53
  strategies. They so often how I'm missing
• 56:57
  and I talked a lot about in mind about to the 9 elements of what
• 57:00
  I believe the marketing DNA too often, they haven't got there.
• 57:05
  This is the big one. They are not talking to their
• 57:08
  ideal client, they haven't identified who their ideal
• 57:11
  client is now, you know, there's there are Reams written about
• 57:15
  this but it is fairly simple. You know, you have got to sort
• 57:19
  of work out. What is the problem that you
• 57:22
  solve find the person with that problem?
• 57:25
  Tell them you have got a solution to their problem if you
• 57:27
  can do those three things, if you come work out, this is the
• 57:31
  problem that I solve And it's not quite as simple as just
• 57:36
  saying, well it's obvious, isn't it?
• 57:37
  But if you can work out the problem, you then find the
• 57:39
  person that has that problem and then and I was talking about
• 57:42
  this to a marketing director only the other day who was
• 57:44
  saying to me, I need to hire a social media manager.
• 57:47
  Know why he said, I need to shout louder so that people can
• 57:51
  hear about me through the noise and I said no no no don't shout
• 57:54
  louder find the person that's got the absolute ideal.
• 57:58
  You know, you're the, the problem that you solve and then
• 58:01
  just lean forward and whisper in their ear.
• 58:03
  You Don't need to sell them anything.
• 58:05
  They will snatch it out of your hand up whatever price you put
• 58:08
  on it because they're desperate for the solution.
• 58:11
  Now. It might be, you know, and this
• 58:13
  comes back to something else. Once again, I think it's too
• 58:16
  many businesses are doing. They're trying to say to
• 58:18
  themselves. We need lots and lots of leads.
• 58:20
  You don't need lots of leads because actually every business
• 58:24
  has got a number. The number of people they can
• 58:27
  actually take on as a customer a one-time.
• 58:29
  Now if you're a chiropractor and you want to deliver a high
• 58:32
  quality service, Yes, you don't need 12,000, people knocking on
• 58:36
  your door and the Monday morning saying, I want my problem solved
• 58:39
  because if if you have 12,000 people you can't deal with
• 58:43
  12,000 people. Anyway, you've got a number and
• 58:46
  it might be you want three new customers a week, terrific?
• 58:50
  So you only need three new customers, if you only need
• 58:52
  three new customers, if you say your conversion rate is 50%, you
• 58:55
  only need six leads a week, then don't you?
• 58:57
  So, stop trying to gain 12,000 L week.
• 59:00
  Get six and get six people with the You've got and then whisper
• 59:05
  in their ear. I've got the solution.
• 59:07
  The problem you have is you might get all six converted,
• 59:09
  which case you suddenly got twice as many problems as you
• 59:12
  need. But that's why I think most
• 59:13
  people go wrong. They're looking for lots and
• 59:15
  lots of things and actually trying to do too many things
• 59:18
  just work out, what your number is and what's the perfect sir
• 59:22
  problem, but a perfect client, the problem and then lean
• 59:26
  forward and tell those people. Yeah, it's funny that you
• 59:31
  mention this because I actually had a similar Thing with with
• 59:35
  podcasting. Because one thing I always
• 59:37
  struggle with is obviously finding regular guests right?
• 59:40
  And sometimes that comes true General Outreach, sometimes that
• 59:43
  comes through just posting everywhere.
• 59:46
  Sometimes people, you know, obviously reach out to me, but
• 59:50
  sometimes when I do reach out, I get nothing.
• 59:53
  Then the next time, get inundated, like, right now, I'm
• 59:58
  playing catch-up. Like, I've got a lot of stuff.
• 1:00:00
  But for the next two and a half weeks, three weeks something
• 1:00:03
  like That and I'm like this is too much but it's good.
• 1:00:08
  I got run with it because you know, it's a period of demand
• 1:00:10
  but then I don't know when that next period is going to be where
• 1:00:13
  there would be. No demand and it's it's a tricky
• 1:00:16
  thing. And and and just back to your
• 1:00:21
  point, like it's we're in business.
• 1:00:22
  I mean, you have to be able to know that you can deal with that
• 1:00:26
  demand and work within those parameters and you know because
• 1:00:30
  the last thing you want to do is turn people away.
• 1:00:33
  Be like I'm too busy for you, you know none of us want to turn
• 1:00:38
  business away but the same signs we all want to be known for the
• 1:00:43
  quality of service that we want to give.
• 1:00:45
  So we have to make sure that what we're doing is delivering
• 1:00:49
  Quality service. So you know every business has
• 1:00:53
  got that number. It's, you know, and if you if
• 1:00:55
  you want to scale, then obviously you need to make sure
• 1:00:58
  that you've got a huge number of things in place before you start
• 1:01:01
  that journey of scaling because otherwise your quality of
• 1:01:03
  service will drop. So, you know, there's a lot of
• 1:01:05
  things to make sure right? And you've got systems in place
• 1:01:08
  that are doing a lot of work with business owners about
• 1:01:11
  making sure their systems are, right?
• 1:01:12
  So so let's just get back to, you know, what's that number?
• 1:01:17
  The other key thing I think, Took too many businesses, get
• 1:01:21
  wrong. And I'm just going to give you
• 1:01:22
  two because I talked about their own either things, but let's not
• 1:01:24
  get it online now. But so there are two other ones.
• 1:01:27
  I think businesses do so wrong. They talk about the features of
• 1:01:32
  their product. Please stop telling me the
• 1:01:34
  features of your product. I don't care if it's the biggest
• 1:01:39
  pounding drill on the Block, I want to know.
• 1:01:42
  Will it put the hole in the wall where I want my shelf?
• 1:01:46
  You know, so go back to the benefit to me.
• 1:01:49
  Many businesses for get the benefit to me.
• 1:01:51
  Tell me what, my what you know my problem you told me, you
• 1:01:56
  know, my problem, now tell me what's your solution and how
• 1:01:59
  will it benefit me to many businesses, forget to tell me,
• 1:02:03
  what is their thing going to do? That makes my problem go away.
• 1:02:07
  Just and the next thing is the call to action.
• 1:02:09
  You'll know this one Christian because, you know, about
• 1:02:11
  marketing and you know culturally you know, the
• 1:02:13
  greatest thing I see too many businesses do with the call to
• 1:02:16
  action. They'll took that button on the
• 1:02:18
  website says Call me and my immediate response is, well why
• 1:02:22
  and what happens next? Because if I call you am, I
• 1:02:25
  going to end up buying it on the phone?
• 1:02:27
  I don't know that. I want that.
• 1:02:28
  So for goodness sake, when you say call me, tell me what's
• 1:02:31
  going to happen. Tell me that.
• 1:02:33
  I'm not going to be committing my entire life to you.
• 1:02:35
  Now, just say, call me for a free introductory offer or call
• 1:02:40
  me for it. Call me in order for me to send
• 1:02:43
  you, my my information pack too many businesses, do this call
• 1:02:48
  me, and you think I'm not going to call you until I know what's
• 1:02:50
  going to happen next. So tell me what's going to
• 1:02:53
  happen next because otherwise I feel like I'm committing my life
• 1:02:57
  and that's the other thing that I would exhort every business to
• 1:03:00
  do, just tell me what's the next step?
• 1:03:03
  So that I can feel safe, you know, that's where we got to
• 1:03:08
  remember to take our customers by the hand and lead them along
• 1:03:11
  a gentle path. We're out.
• 1:03:13
  Otherwise we're not going to leap off a cliff and no good
• 1:03:15
  reason being you you've really touched on something.
• 1:03:18
  I'm brilliant. I was looking up just randomly
• 1:03:23
  just reminded me of this. I was looking up options to get
• 1:03:27
  unlimited that. Basically, I'm looking into
• 1:03:29
  getting unlimited data at the moment.
• 1:03:31
  Just side side note, you know, those random but you'll see why
• 1:03:35
  I'm raising this. So I was looking into it and
• 1:03:38
  there was two different options, one of them was unlimited data
• 1:03:42
  on our cat 24-month contract and I was like, I don't want to get
• 1:03:45
  invested in there like I just, you know, got plenty of things.
• 1:03:48
  Ready. Painful I just you know it soon
• 1:03:51
  as I see that I'm like and like every company does that phone
• 1:03:54
  companies Etc. It's like oh 24 months 36 months
• 1:03:57
  and it's like you got think about that you're tied with them
• 1:04:00
  for like 23 years, and it's very difficult to get out of that.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah. And that was my mindset.
• 1:04:06
  And then I start another deal and it said it was the same
• 1:04:09
  deal. One month contract.
• 1:04:12
  Yeah, those are great, and there's an upfront cost.
• 1:04:15
  Okay, so that's the trade-off, but that's fine.
• 1:04:17
  It's only an extra five quid. Great.
• 1:04:19
  But then I'm looking at the details for the month and I'm
• 1:04:23
  thinking logically oh it's got to be a rollover contract,
• 1:04:25
  right? So I'm looking everywhere,
• 1:04:28
  they're like roll over. Like any information that would
• 1:04:31
  indicate and to go back to what you said, what happens next?
• 1:04:36
  Yeah, okay. Great one month.
• 1:04:38
  But then what nothing, It's not the end.
• 1:04:42
  And again, like if I would call them, it'd be the same thing as
• 1:04:45
  what you outlined it but like, oh, so you want to do this?
• 1:04:47
  Do not want information, oh yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:04:51
  But then you know your we're going to make you sign up and
• 1:04:54
  you can sign up for this and that and it's like no no.
• 1:04:56
  Let's give me the details. I will go away and that will
• 1:04:59
  come back to you and I will tell you what I want, not the other
• 1:05:03
  way around because that's what's changed by a power.
• 1:05:05
  Is a big thing that that's that's the customer knows
• 1:05:09
  everything. Yeah, the old days.
• 1:05:11
  Is where you're informing, the salesman's kind of purpose if
• 1:05:15
  you like is more. More.
• 1:05:20
  Like, A guide person died. It's a good word.
• 1:05:24
  Yeah. Like it's you know and I
• 1:05:27
  actually think it's a little audacious to tell people these
• 1:05:30
  days like unless they truly don't know, then you can.
• 1:05:34
  But you know I do I do work with as I say, I work with a lot of
• 1:05:38
  business owners who are scaling their business of, you know, and
• 1:05:41
  I say to them, you know, do you know, we have to go, we have to
• 1:05:44
  constantly tell the sales team. They have two ears and one mouth
• 1:05:48
  and they use them in that ratio. You know, the sales person
• 1:05:51
  should be - they're talking because the thing about selling
• 1:05:55
  nowadays and I believe this applies to telephones as much
• 1:06:00
  did does to two major consultancy is to be listening
• 1:06:03
  for the problem that the person has.
• 1:06:04
  And then saying, this is how we address your problems.
• 1:06:09
  So we solve your problem, and if you're not listening, you won't
• 1:06:12
  hear the problem because you'll be talking too much.
• 1:06:15
  So just listen and find out and then if you don't know the
• 1:06:20
  answer to arouse a table, Back to you because most customers
• 1:06:23
  will go. That's refreshing.
• 1:06:25
  I like that. I'll say just as on a side note
• 1:06:28
  as well. Listening in general in life and
• 1:06:31
  I've said this before, but I want to reiterate this because I
• 1:06:34
  think it's a very important lesson in life, listening can
• 1:06:37
  get you so far and it sounds like a very basic thing.
• 1:06:40
  Like, what do you mean or you? Listen, do you really listen?
• 1:06:43
  Mmm. Like if someone comes to you
• 1:06:45
  with a problem? And you're able to recount
• 1:06:48
  exactly what they said, that's not listening.
• 1:06:50
  That's just hearing what they're saying.
• 1:06:52
  And we go to take listening is actually understanding the
• 1:06:56
  problem and to bring it to what we do.
• 1:06:59
  For example, with podcasting, I got a lot better at podcasting
• 1:07:04
  when I started listening. Now, you're probably gonna
• 1:07:06
  think, would you mean will you not listening before?
• 1:07:08
  Yes, but look, here's a sheet of questions.
• 1:07:12
  I have Stewart today, right? I barely touched these.
• 1:07:16
  Why? Because I'm listening to steer
• 1:07:20
  it and what he has to say and in my head I'm kind of working at
• 1:07:23
  you know because it's an interesting conversation anyway,
• 1:07:25
  but I'm thinking in my mind or what could asking this I could
• 1:07:29
  ask him this and I'm also just enjoying the conversation and
• 1:07:31
  that makes for a better podcast. Yeah it's a purely just by
• 1:07:35
  listening. I've managed to make this better
• 1:07:37
  and more enjoyable and it makes for a better sale you know in
• 1:07:41
  terms of selling it makes for a better sale because you know,
• 1:07:44
  the one thing that we And the, you know, another one of the
• 1:07:46
  we're talking about sort of, where does where does the word
• 1:07:49
  of where the business is going wrong?
• 1:07:51
  They don't address the buyer's remorse.
• 1:07:54
  They have people who are constantly saying but what if,
• 1:07:58
  but what if boy, if, you know, part of your part of your
• 1:08:01
  marketing has to be to address the buyer's remorse.
• 1:08:04
  You know, how do you address the buyer's remorse?
• 1:08:06
  You do things. Like, you know, here's a
• 1:08:08
  guarantee. If you don't like it, we'll get
• 1:08:10
  you can send it back. Oh, you know, why do we all, why
• 1:08:12
  do you buy from people, like Amazon?
• 1:08:14
  Because we know, there are two, Turns policy.
• 1:08:16
  If you're not happy, send it back.
• 1:08:18
  I mean, that is the biggest that is I'd.
• 1:08:20
  Yeah, you you buy things, you like Amazon or not people will
• 1:08:25
  not be worried about whether or not they bought something wrong
• 1:08:27
  because they know that getting it back.
• 1:08:29
  Not only is most of the time free, but it just is so easy.
• 1:08:33
  I will say actually, ever since companies started advertising
• 1:08:37
  that guarantee thing like II, I don't know, maybe that's just,
• 1:08:42
  they've managed to get me on that but like, See when
• 1:08:45
  companies don't offer that, I trust them less than when
• 1:08:48
  companies offering because I kind of feel like the fact that
• 1:08:51
  they're offering, it means that they're so sure I'm gonna like
• 1:08:55
  this but they don't have any worries so they're easily able
• 1:08:57
  to offer that guarantee. And this is interesting.
• 1:09:00
  Yeah, I tell you, I work with a company recently that they're
• 1:09:05
  guaranteed was so rock-solid. I said you sure you'll make any
• 1:09:09
  money on it and they went were so good at our product.
• 1:09:12
  We're really prepared to back it.
• 1:09:14
  I mean they backed it With this. Not only will we get into.
• 1:09:17
  Not only will we give give you the money back will pay for
• 1:09:20
  somebody else to come in and do what we do because you think
• 1:09:24
  that they're better than us. And we'll give you a hundred
• 1:09:27
  pounds. In addition I went, you'll never
• 1:09:28
  make any money and they went, we've never lost a sale yet and
• 1:09:31
  they were they were that good, they were prepared to turn a.
• 1:09:33
  Say, if you're not happy with our service will pay for
• 1:09:36
  somebody else to come and do it plus 100 pounds and I sort of
• 1:09:39
  said that this this is this is disastrous.
• 1:09:42
  This is not and they went yeah watch I was astounded, know a
• 1:09:46
  single complaint and I tell you what, more people signed up
• 1:09:50
  because they looked at their guarantee.
• 1:09:51
  Well, they must be the best. Then if they honestly will pay
• 1:09:54
  somebody else to come and do it because they're so confident,
• 1:09:56
  they're the best anyway. Well, we're going to trust them
• 1:09:59
  and they were right. They got every single lead
• 1:10:02
  converted because they were teranga.
• 1:10:04
  Where you going to find anybody better than this are we now?
• 1:10:06
  You know? Yes, they were good.
• 1:10:08
  I will, I will back them on because that they were
• 1:10:10
  absolutely right. But they were convinced and I I
• 1:10:13
  just said, well, Let's start thinking about guarantee and
• 1:10:16
  someone came up with that. I went that's a bit too much
• 1:10:18
  know. They said.
• 1:10:18
  Yeah, we're confident and they were right.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah, I reckon it's a two-fold bill in the sense that they are
• 1:10:25
  confident in their product but also I reckon they're probably
• 1:10:29
  very fixated on reputation though.
• 1:10:31
  They were you know because the last thing you want is even just
• 1:10:36
  a casual person to drop you a bad review, if you can sort of
• 1:10:41
  reduce that to a minimum to a very low percentage, then people
• 1:10:44
  are going to trust you because people are always looking at
• 1:10:46
  those reviews now. That's like yeah.
• 1:10:48
  Excited on that. Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  And they were right. Let's move it forward.
• 1:10:53
  So obviously I mentioned at the beginning of this, you're an
• 1:10:55
  author. You are the author of five
• 1:10:57
  simple steps to Growing your business.
• 1:11:00
  The Proven formula for building your business, what can you tell
• 1:11:03
  us about this book? Your process for writing it and
• 1:11:07
  the kind of inspiration for its Inception and the key takeaways
• 1:11:11
  for readers, okay, Gus is an awful lot there.
• 1:11:14
  Okay, so, so what does it say? Well, it basically, it says,
• 1:11:20
  It's out. As I say some of these some of
• 1:11:22
  these formulas there, if there's a there's more, there's more in
• 1:11:26
  my head still to get out or stay that start with Christian.
• 1:11:29
  There's still some more to come, so it's not, it's not the end,
• 1:11:32
  it's the beginning. So the idea is to sort of lay
• 1:11:37
  out some of these formula. So in this book, I'm in
• 1:11:39
  particular, talking about the five things that I think make
• 1:11:42
  your delivery of your product that the thing which which will
• 1:11:47
  make it a top notch. So the five steps Being
• 1:11:51
  transforming your marketing generating leads for your
• 1:11:55
  business converting, those leads to being customers maximizing,
• 1:12:00
  the customer value, and then the system's behind making all of
• 1:12:05
  those for work, even more effectively.
• 1:12:08
  So that's that's the first step. And it, it's mainly posed to
• 1:12:15
  people who have come from having a small business and are now in
• 1:12:19
  the process of growing. That to to the next stage.
• 1:12:22
  If you like the beginnings of the sort of the one or two band
• 1:12:26
  person who are now saying, I want to move my business to
• 1:12:29
  becoming the small organization. And my next book saying this
• 1:12:32
  already. My next book is going to address
• 1:12:34
  that. How do you start to, you know,
• 1:12:37
  get the right people involved around you.
• 1:12:39
  How you do that? That bit where you scale, your
• 1:12:42
  business from the next to the next level to moving it on.
• 1:12:46
  So that's the five steps. It's about transforming your
• 1:12:49
  marketing lead generation. It's about customer conversion
• 1:12:53
  maximizing, customer value, and the system's behind it.
• 1:12:56
  And they'll there's more to come the process.
• 1:12:58
  Then the, my process is interesting.
• 1:13:01
  I get up early and so this this kind of goes go back to the
• 1:13:06
  formulas. Sorry, to have to go back to the
• 1:13:08
  same old subject to. Here we go.
• 1:13:09
  What's the, what's the, what's the process?
• 1:13:11
  The process is get up early. So I get up early.
• 1:13:14
  The first thing I do is I drink a pint of water.
• 1:13:17
  I drink I drink that because I realized Many, many, many years
• 1:13:22
  ago, I did a little bit of competitive, sportsmanship.
• 1:13:28
  I was, I was a I was I was a Competitive Cyclist.
• 1:13:31
  Actually in my early years I used to sort of, you know, focus
• 1:13:34
  on how do I get my body ready to get up and go for a bike ride
• 1:13:38
  early in the morning. So I used to get up and drink in
• 1:13:40
  order to hydrate in order to be ready at top four months.
• 1:13:43
  When I got on my bike for us in the morning, so I get up and
• 1:13:46
  drink something. The nice thing I do is sit down
• 1:13:49
  and I just read for a few minutes and sort of get my head
• 1:13:52
  ready. Then I spent a few minutes sort
• 1:13:55
  of doing affirmations and making sure that I'm I'm in a good
• 1:14:00
  space, right? Take to me up to about 6:30 or
• 1:14:04
  so I then spent two hours writing and then just spend two
• 1:14:08
  hours just battering stuff out on the keyboard.
• 1:14:12
  Now, a lot of this, it's what you would describe us, you know?
• 1:14:16
  I would, I would just put down Flow of Consciousness.
• 1:14:19
  It's I write like I speak. In fact, recently, I've started
• 1:14:26
  to adopt you can get some quite good transcription software now
• 1:14:30
  so I speak and it turns it into words.
• 1:14:32
  So I'd speak for sort of maybe half an hour.
• 1:14:34
  I just talk to you as I'm talking like now and say.
• 1:14:36
  So the books going to be about this other and then I spend
• 1:14:39
  about three quarters of an hour, an hour editing, what I just
• 1:14:44
  spoken and turning into something which is which is,
• 1:14:46
  which is more More like the written word.
• 1:14:49
  So, that takes note about 8:30 and then I will are done
• 1:14:54
  breakfast. I do some exercise, which then
• 1:14:57
  takes me what I know to do the exercise than breakfast.
• 1:14:59
  So that I think's inside takes me up to about 9:30, 9:30.
• 1:15:03
  I'm then ready to start my day. So, that's the first time I
• 1:15:05
  start looking at emails, I have until that stage opened, emailed
• 1:15:09
  have an open, social media, and get any of that sort of thing.
• 1:15:12
  I look at my emails for the first time at 9:30 in the
• 1:15:15
  morning. Because if I don't, if I get
• 1:15:17
  distracted. Today I'll never get around to
• 1:15:19
  do any writing. I will only start looking at
• 1:15:22
  emails and social media and things that would distract me
• 1:15:25
  after I've got that done and I keep that down to about half an
• 1:15:28
  hour. I'll have half an hour of
• 1:15:30
  answering emails, writing emails and then doing any sort of you
• 1:15:34
  know, LinkedIn or Twitter or anything like that.
• 1:15:37
  And then at about 10:00, I then do my next thing.
• 1:15:42
  I like you, I sort of record podcasts, I record video blogs
• 1:15:45
  and things like that and then later on That evening, I look at
• 1:15:48
  what I wrote and find out just how much rubbish was in it and
• 1:15:53
  chop out about three-quarters of it because all of them thought
• 1:15:57
  about during the day and thought, you know, I would get
• 1:15:59
  so about, you know, 4:30 5:00, I'll take away a lot of things.
• 1:16:04
  Okay, so tomorrow, when I get up, this is what I want to focus
• 1:16:07
  on talking about. So it moves it forward but it
• 1:16:12
  moves It Forward lightly by chopping stuff out rather than
• 1:16:14
  adding stuff it because I can talk talk.
• 1:16:16
  If you probably Tell I could talk for hours and hours and
• 1:16:19
  hours, but it doesn't actually sort of, you know, sort of come
• 1:16:22
  out quite the way it was so I will then edit a lot.
• 1:16:24
  Thank so and doing that, you can actually get a book written if
• 1:16:28
  you really focus, if you really sort of set your mind to it, by
• 1:16:31
  making sure you don't get distracted.
• 1:16:33
  And that's the thing that I found to be the key to all of
• 1:16:35
  this, too many people get up in the morning and they out their
• 1:16:38
  emails by the time they actually get around to doing any work.
• 1:16:41
  It's already 11:30 and the days gone because they've been
• 1:16:44
  distracted by email, if you can focus and Keep yourself away
• 1:16:48
  from all those distractions. You know, the pop-ups are all
• 1:16:50
  that sort of thing. I try and keep part from from,
• 1:16:54
  you know, apart from during the, during the weekends I most of
• 1:16:58
  the time my phone is on silent. It does not pop up with any
• 1:17:01
  Tings or beans or whatever. I try to make sure that when I'm
• 1:17:05
  focused on these things I'm doing I don't have distractions.
• 1:17:09
  They are killers, so I turn off email until at least nine thirty
• 1:17:14
  and I only check it three times a day.
• 1:17:16
  I've had to trade. The people that I work with not
• 1:17:19
  to expect an instant email response from it because they
• 1:17:22
  won't get it. I check my this came from a
• 1:17:24
  conversation. I had with my dad, you said to
• 1:17:26
  me, what is it about? Email.
• 1:17:28
  That's different to when I used to do the post with my
• 1:17:30
  secretary, we used to do the post three times a day.
• 1:17:33
  Why can't you do email three times a day?
• 1:17:34
  And I looked in a way because that's not the way the world
• 1:17:36
  Works dad and then I went. Yeah, I could do.
• 1:17:39
  Why not email is not something? You have to respond to
• 1:17:41
  immediately. So I checked with me.
• 1:17:43
  I check my email at 9:30. I check it again about 12:30.
• 1:17:46
  I check it at four. 30 and I don't check it at any other time
• 1:17:50
  and I don't have it distracting you throughout the day, it's
• 1:17:53
  turned off. And I only check in at those
• 1:17:56
  times because otherwise, I'm toast.
• 1:18:01
  I fully agree with that. I think it's difficult because
• 1:18:03
  this world does seem to have this expectation that you are
• 1:18:08
  immediately reachable at all times.
• 1:18:10
  And I completely disagree with that.
• 1:18:12
  Like, I think that you set the times no one else does.
• 1:18:16
  And yeah, I mean it's something that I struggle with and I'm
• 1:18:19
  really trying to do because I'm a massive workaholic and do get
• 1:18:24
  addicted to these things and it's so important to get
• 1:18:27
  yourself out of that head space. And, you know, You dedicate your
• 1:18:30
  time when you need to. and the rest of the time away from
• 1:18:35
  computers away from that stuff, doing whatever work enjoying
• 1:18:40
  your self realization seeing, friends, whatever like you You
• 1:18:45
  limit that time and you and you make it effective and as you say
• 1:18:49
  like it, I think it forces you to be more efficient.
• 1:18:52
  If you've only got half an hour to read the emails and go
• 1:18:56
  through them, then you understand you know.
• 1:18:58
  Okay some of these are have to get back to some of these are
• 1:19:00
  can deal with now and then you know, if you don't if you run
• 1:19:03
  out of time well I'll come back to it.
• 1:19:07
  That's exactly exactly. Exactly.
• 1:19:10
  And in that you mentioned that you do a podcast podcast is
• 1:19:14
  called It's not rocket science, five questions, over coffee.
• 1:19:18
  What can you tell us about it? So I kind of the podcast is, I
• 1:19:24
  get interested people and I know you might get to be a guest on
• 1:19:27
  this one Christian, when, when we've done this.
• 1:19:29
  So I get, I get interesting people to come on and just
• 1:19:32
  answer five questions in a bit cheeky.
• 1:19:34
  I'll be honest with you because these four questions plus plus a
• 1:19:36
  question where I say, what's the question I should have asked you
• 1:19:38
  and get you to do the work. But anyway, so, you know, I came
• 1:19:41
  up with the idea of doing that for two reasons, one of which
• 1:19:44
  is, I'm fairly sure that I've got lots of ideas in my head,
• 1:19:48
  but once again, going back to my scientific roots.
• 1:19:51
  Not every idea I have is great, not every idea everybody else
• 1:19:54
  wants to hear about some people would actually like to hear
• 1:19:56
  about other people's ideas. And you know, as we discussed
• 1:19:59
  earlier I'm a lifelong learning fan.
• 1:20:01
  So if I can get interesting people to come on and talk to my
• 1:20:06
  audience about stuff, I might pick up some interesting ideas
• 1:20:09
  from them. So I just love getting
• 1:20:11
  interesting people to come on and talk about there.
• 1:20:14
  Snakes in their ideas. And the other thing that I hope
• 1:20:18
  to do with the podcast is actually sort of learn and
• 1:20:21
  collaborate. You know we can all help each
• 1:20:23
  other not the you know, not everybody wants to constantly
• 1:20:28
  sort of, you know, work with me. But there might be somebody that
• 1:20:31
  I get to come on to my podcast who wants to work with some of
• 1:20:34
  the other that I introduced to them and they would be a better
• 1:20:37
  fit and I'm be as happy to introduce new and interesting
• 1:20:41
  people to the world as anybody else.
• 1:20:43
  So the idea behind Mind behind it.
• 1:20:46
  Is just those five questions. I asked five, simple questions,
• 1:20:50
  it's done and it's done is it's done Live on YouTube and
• 1:20:53
  Linkedin and Facebook so people can come along and watch and ask
• 1:20:59
  questions of the interesting people that we get on.
• 1:21:01
  I've had some tremendous. Guess, I've had one guy that you
• 1:21:04
  that has worked with Elon. Musk has got some really
• 1:21:09
  interesting ideas. I got some really, I got a guy
• 1:21:12
  who was a top executive of L'Oreal, And he's got some
• 1:21:16
  fantastic yet, some fantastic stuff to talk about, but I guess
• 1:21:19
  people who come in and work with, you know, individual
• 1:21:23
  people to try and help them to grow their business.
• 1:21:26
  So, you know, there is a wide range of people out there.
• 1:21:29
  They're all Fascinating People to talk every single one of them
• 1:21:33
  aside. Keep saying, you know they have
• 1:21:35
  ideas but you know, most of the time our ideas are not rocket
• 1:21:40
  science. They are they are, you know,
• 1:21:43
  easy to And growing your business, which is what I spend
• 1:21:47
  most of my time talking to people about isn't rocket
• 1:21:49
  science. It is seems to be very
• 1:21:53
  complicated until you break it down.
• 1:21:54
  There are some very simple rules.
• 1:21:56
  You have to put in place, that's kind of.
• 1:21:57
  Why me try to expose people to, as I keep saying, you know,
• 1:22:00
  there's so many people out there that think that somehow growing
• 1:22:03
  their business, there is some special magic formula that will
• 1:22:06
  sort of make, it will happen that a lot of the time, there
• 1:22:08
  are no magic formulas. What it is is just very simple
• 1:22:11
  stuff. You have to apply again and
• 1:22:13
  again and be very can Rigorous about doing and that's kind of
• 1:22:17
  the idea is I'm trying to get people to buy into it in stuff.
• 1:22:21
  Yeah, everyone make sure you go check that out.
• 1:22:23
  The, it's not rocket science, five questions, over coffee
• 1:22:27
  podcast. Fantastic, who would you say
• 1:22:32
  have been sort of your favorite Brands to work with so far?
• 1:22:35
  Favorite people to work with anything that in particular
• 1:22:37
  stands out over the course of your business career.
• 1:22:40
  Yeah. Gosh you know I've done some I
• 1:22:44
  have done so I'm really sort of fantastic work.
• 1:22:46
  With some really brilliant people and there are some there
• 1:22:51
  are some their spit some really interesting one to me.
• 1:22:54
  I did I did to work. As I said with the European
• 1:22:57
  Space Agency hugely technical stuff that was that was just
• 1:23:03
  just mind-bogglingly complicated and you know really diving into
• 1:23:10
  some difficult Concepts in order to be able to get some Not time
• 1:23:15
  to talk working on satellite communication stuff so that that
• 1:23:18
  was absolutely mind-boggling stuff.
• 1:23:22
  I did work for a short time for the gas transport for the, for
• 1:23:31
  the UK. I went with the people who move
• 1:23:34
  gasps around, cut, if you want to, if you want to sort of
• 1:23:38
  understand just how critical that the moment getting gas to
• 1:23:43
  be able to power up, The power stations around the UK, and how
• 1:23:48
  interconnected that is to the rest of Europe.
• 1:23:50
  And some of the complications there is there is some really
• 1:23:54
  interesting stuff going on that there is, there is an awful lot
• 1:23:57
  of stuff that we keep thinking. It's so easy to move away from
• 1:24:03
  this at start being more green generating solar and than being
• 1:24:07
  able to Power electric cars that we just have.
• 1:24:10
  Not yet got our heads around and and similarly You know, that
• 1:24:15
  infrastructure is so critical to that.
• 1:24:17
  So I've really enjoyed some of the stuff that I've done with
• 1:24:21
  that, but then, you know, I've also worked with some really
• 1:24:25
  interesting brand. I did some work with a couple of
• 1:24:28
  small pharmaceutical companies that nobody's ever heard of, but
• 1:24:32
  they were inspirational because what was driving them was this
• 1:24:37
  belief, absolute Rock Solid belief that they were going to
• 1:24:41
  change people's lives. They were Working on drug
• 1:24:47
  delivery and drug drug Discovery and then delivering that and and
• 1:24:53
  the belief that that would affect even a small number of
• 1:24:57
  people's lives was was kind of inspiration, speaking on the
• 1:25:02
  topic of, you know, you working as a research, biologist, and
• 1:25:07
  I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about this.
• 1:25:10
  Do you have any sort of insights or particular thoughts?
• 1:25:13
  You could share. On covid-19, obviously you
• 1:25:17
  mentioned before that, you know, you actually worked in the
• 1:25:19
  AstraZeneca lab in the eventual lab that would be then be used
• 1:25:24
  to create the virus that they created.
• 1:25:27
  But I just wanted to get your thoughts as a scientist.
• 1:25:30
  And clearly, you've obviously been you obviously have a unique
• 1:25:35
  insight and perspective on this being a scientist.
• 1:25:37
  I just wanted to wonder if you could share that here.
• 1:25:39
  I think there are two things I'll say on that.
• 1:25:47
  The viruses, viruses are a unique threat that we should not
• 1:25:53
  underestimate. Viruses are ever changing and we
• 1:26:03
  naturally don't have much that we can do in order to stop them.
• 1:26:09
  The reason is that, as I said, a virus takes over your cell in
• 1:26:13
  order to Come and turn it to its own will to start generating you
• 1:26:17
  viruses. So I'm like a bacterium
• 1:26:20
  something, which we can sort of Target and producing antibiotic
• 1:26:24
  to stop it. Replicating in order to stop a
• 1:26:27
  virus replicating. Normally, we have to stop the
• 1:26:29
  cell and that kind of killed you.
• 1:26:30
  So, there are some unique challenges with actually
• 1:26:33
  stopping viruses from from replicating.
• 1:26:36
  The one thing you can do is be alert and ready for them.
• 1:26:40
  And I don't think the world has done in enough to constantly be
• 1:26:45
  on preparedness for those emerging threats.
• 1:26:50
  We've known about this for a while.
• 1:26:51
  I remember having discussions about the potential for
• 1:26:55
  pandemic. Let me just start by saying I'm
• 1:26:57
  not the only one that did this say this sort of thing.
• 1:26:59
  This has been said by many, many others, but back in 2004, I
• 1:27:05
  believe it was. I saw what I thought was going
• 1:27:09
  to become a global pandemic. And I went out and bought a
• 1:27:11
  whole load of masks because I was Absolutely convinced.
• 1:27:15
  We would need masks in order to be able to leave our house and
• 1:27:18
  mix with other people. And I can remember the time
• 1:27:20
  looking at my wife and we just have a son and I said to her, I
• 1:27:25
  said, I bought. I learned about.
• 1:27:26
  She said, do you genuinely think we will leave the house, wearing
• 1:27:29
  a mask? And I said yes in the event of a
• 1:27:32
  global pandemic. You will leave the house wearing
• 1:27:33
  less and she went and do you genuinely think that you will
• 1:27:36
  send Jacob to school and he will wear a mask?
• 1:27:38
  And I said, yes, she said, you're as mad as they come.
• 1:27:41
  Well, 2020, those masks that are Set up site upstairs in my loft
• 1:27:46
  came down and I looked at her and I was just a few years doing
• 1:27:50
  it. So I was I was I was absolutely
• 1:27:53
  convinced that there was going to be a pandemic.
• 1:27:56
  And so you know, viruses are unique in the family took the
• 1:28:00
  only way that we can stop virus is changing is to stop messing
• 1:28:04
  about with some of the environments in which they live
• 1:28:06
  quite happily out of our way. And that is going to need me
• 1:28:10
  that we haven't got to start getting into these sort of The G
• 1:28:14
  and the places where they are, they naturally occur but we're
• 1:28:18
  going to have, they're going to come out.
• 1:28:19
  So we have to start thinking about having protection against
• 1:28:23
  viruses. In the same way, we have
• 1:28:24
  standing armies and it's not a good thing to think about, but
• 1:28:28
  countries need to put in place surveillance, they need to put
• 1:28:31
  in place if you like the people that will practice and be ready
• 1:28:38
  for pandemics in the way that the Army practices and with
• 1:28:40
  ready for Wars. And they are more deadly than
• 1:28:43
  Wars. We will have to be more
• 1:28:45
  prepared. It is not something that most
• 1:28:47
  politicians want to do because it is far too expensive to have
• 1:28:51
  people standing by waiting for a potential virus to emerge that
• 1:28:56
  need to vaccine when people look around.
• 1:28:59
  Our why are you paying millions and millions a year for
• 1:29:01
  something that hasn't happened for 10 years?
• 1:29:04
  Well because one day you will need them to swing into action
• 1:29:07
  in. You need them to be ready and
• 1:29:09
  you need to be happy them to move into action very, very
• 1:29:12
  quickly. The the vaccines that got
• 1:29:16
  produced this time were because they had been years and years of
• 1:29:22
  research that had gone on the test and we need to keep that
• 1:29:25
  years and years of research going on noticed for many more
• 1:29:28
  years so that we can be ready next time.
• 1:29:31
  A lot of what we got from them from the vaccine research was
• 1:29:37
  put in place because we were trying to do things like change
• 1:29:40
  to to produce a vaccine for HIV. We Never produced a vaccine for
• 1:29:44
  HIV AIDS. And yet, it was able to be used
• 1:29:48
  to cut to vaccinate against covid-19 that may or may not
• 1:29:53
  have been possible. We just happen to break lucky on
• 1:29:57
  this occasion, let's not assume. It will be, will be lucky next
• 1:30:00
  time. So I think, I think the two
• 1:30:02
  things I say is coming back to my to point, viruses are going
• 1:30:06
  to happen. Let's not start diving into the
• 1:30:10
  areas where we know these these viruses are and getting man's in
• 1:30:13
  contact with their natural reservoirs.
• 1:30:16
  That means stopping sort of cutting down forests cutting
• 1:30:19
  download, and we need to get prepared.
• 1:30:22
  We need to make sure that we are standing up armies of people who
• 1:30:26
  will counteract those viruses, pretty much constantly.
• 1:30:32
  You mentioned that you had those concerns in like 2004.
• 1:30:36
  Yeah. Just put this to a dateline
• 1:30:38
  timeline. I remember, maybe not in 2004 by
• 1:30:42
  definitely member in the Thousands we had SARS and we had
• 1:30:46
  swine flu, both were these kind of yeah potential pandemics.
• 1:30:54
  And I remember every single time media was always the same.
• 1:30:56
  This could be a stressful because catastrophe this could
• 1:31:00
  be a pandemic probably, it didn't happen.
• 1:31:03
  Now it's happened, are you and one of the things that you said
• 1:31:07
  in that was that we have to sort of be careful of the
• 1:31:11
  environments we're working Within and obviously, as we
• 1:31:14
  know, covid-19 was It came out the lab in Wuhan.
• 1:31:21
  No, we don't know that. No, we don't know that that's
• 1:31:24
  something that it's which I having having spoke lot of
• 1:31:27
  people would that it was thing. Isn't there from what I
• 1:31:29
  understand? They were there is a lab in
• 1:31:31
  Wuhan, which is biology lab. There is a viral if you love but
• 1:31:35
  I'll be on. I worked in a biology lab and I
• 1:31:40
  don't think we can, we can, we can say I mean there's no I
• 1:31:44
  can't cut it on a tee, say didn't happen but you know, If
• 1:31:48
  you look at most fire, ology labs and most scientists working
• 1:31:51
  in virology tabs, we are very, very aware of what we call
• 1:31:55
  biosecurity. And those are the things which
• 1:31:57
  will prevent the virus from escaping from the lab and ending
• 1:32:03
  up in the outside world. So we are really aware of the
• 1:32:07
  wrist. So I don't believe that will can
• 1:32:10
  Lobby any more or less aware of those bio hazards than any other
• 1:32:14
  one. I think there is There is known
• 1:32:19
  to be a lot of the sort of virus that we're talking about living
• 1:32:26
  wild in areas of bits of China and on the, on the in the
• 1:32:31
  forests of Vietnam and places like that, where it doesn't have
• 1:32:36
  much harmful effect within things like that.
• 1:32:40
  But as soon as it gets into a human being because we ventured
• 1:32:44
  into the area where those bats are it, crosses over Over
• 1:32:48
  between those two animals between those two species and
• 1:32:51
  and what is harmless in about becomes harmful than a human.
• 1:32:55
  And so when I'm talking about sort of, not getting into those
• 1:32:58
  areas, if we, if we insist on going in and deforesting areas
• 1:33:03
  where we know there are harmful viruses and and interacting with
• 1:33:08
  animals and with things where the virus is not doing any harm
• 1:33:13
  but it could be harmful to us. We are going to start to sort of
• 1:33:17
  have more and more These problems.
• 1:33:18
  So my exhortation if you like is we know where we shouldn't be.
• 1:33:24
  Let's stay out of it. I don't think there's any
• 1:33:26
  evidence to say that this virus came out of a lab in Wuhan
• 1:33:30
  anymore than it came out of my lab in Oxford.
• 1:33:34
  Yeah. No I wasn't saying for definite.
• 1:33:36
  I mean this is just kind of the official story we've been given
• 1:33:40
  that. It's there's a lab there.
• 1:33:43
  That's obviously for biology. We know that there's a wet
• 1:33:47
  Market. Here and then there's there was
• 1:33:49
  bat and it was a very confusing story to listen, did it?
• 1:33:51
  That is kind of like, but yeah, what you were saying there was
• 1:33:55
  kind of more what I was. I wanted to hint at which is why
• 1:34:00
  do we think this has happened? And it sounds like the kind of
• 1:34:04
  overall perspective there is. It's probably happened because
• 1:34:07
  we're in these areas, as you say where it's kind of more likely
• 1:34:12
  to come Into such a week, we are widespread manner, maybe I did.
• 1:34:18
  I mean because I think they keep the key here is that like
• 1:34:20
  there's lots of viruses, there's always going to be viruses.
• 1:34:23
  Yeah this is one that's taken over the world and I suppose
• 1:34:26
  that leads us to sort of ask the questions.
• 1:34:28
  Well why why is it? Why is it so quick so fast
• 1:34:31
  mutating? So unmanageable compared to say
• 1:34:35
  SARS swine, flu Etc, you know. So you know this is the great.
• 1:34:39
  This is yeah well okay so so that there are Certain
• 1:34:43
  characteristics of, of particular viruses which are
• 1:34:47
  really difficult to to, you know, we have, we have so many
• 1:34:52
  things that we got to worry about the thing, which is, made
• 1:34:55
  this particular virus. So, deadly is because of the
• 1:35:00
  fact that it is infectious before somebody gets any
• 1:35:03
  symptoms. Mmm?
• 1:35:05
  So you don't know, you're spreading it so so you can feel
• 1:35:11
  you can feel well and to be spreading it.
• 1:35:13
  And Two days later you got, oh, I shouldn't be spreading this
• 1:35:16
  around because I feel L now. Well, it's a previous few days
• 1:35:19
  that is actually sort of spreading.
• 1:35:20
  The other thing that's really unpleasant about this one, is
• 1:35:23
  the fact that 30% of people who have got the virus and they're
• 1:35:28
  expressing it as it's expresses. It means that they're chucking
• 1:35:31
  it out when they're expressing it.
• 1:35:34
  They don't know. They've even got it.
• 1:35:37
  Now, that's not the case with most viruses, which are very,
• 1:35:41
  very deadly where, you know, the original size we were able to
• 1:35:45
  stamp down and keep it controlled because you didn't
• 1:35:48
  start spreading it until you got ill.
• 1:35:51
  So as a result, as soon as somebody got ill lock them away,
• 1:35:53
  keep them out of the way of everybody, it didn't spread.
• 1:35:58
  This one unfortunately has a characteristic where it's spread
• 1:36:01
  to be for your ill and some people don't even seem to get
• 1:36:05
  ill. And so, that's why, for me, The
• 1:36:08
  most important thing we can do at the moment is be really clear
• 1:36:13
  on monitoring the the and testing for it.
• 1:36:17
  And I know most governments around the world are now
• 1:36:19
  beginning to ramp down there testing because it's very
• 1:36:22
  expensive. Let's be honest.
• 1:36:23
  It is very expensive to keep doing but because they've got so
• 1:36:27
  much invested in that we have got to start thinking about.
• 1:36:31
  How do we reduce the incidence of it by constantly monitoring
• 1:36:37
  and Putting in place, a protective behaviors.
• 1:36:40
  And those protective behaviors with involve still wearing masks
• 1:36:44
  and still trying to avoid large crowds of people.
• 1:36:46
  Well, this is the thing, I mean, as you mention like different
• 1:36:49
  countries doing it differently, the UK government has seemingly
• 1:36:55
  told us to pretty much go all back to normal.
• 1:36:58
  As far as I can see, I mean people are still wearing masks
• 1:37:02
  in certain situations, it's kind of a choice Factor at this point
• 1:37:05
  but no official measures are being taken.
• 1:37:07
  Taking place anymore, there's no expectation upon you.
• 1:37:12
  You not sort of told that you have to do that anymore, do you?
• 1:37:17
  I don't want to pin you a yes, or no question.
• 1:37:19
  But generally do you think this is a good approach or do you
• 1:37:23
  think maybe we should be doing it, like other countries?
• 1:37:25
  I mean, my personal belief. I'll give you mine.
• 1:37:27
  Is that I think? I don't I recognize that we have
• 1:37:33
  to kind of go to some semblance of normality because things like
• 1:37:37
  the economy and business and they said, you have to you just
• 1:37:41
  have to otherwise you can't continue as a nation.
• 1:37:43
  But at the same sort of thing I felt like it's still a little
• 1:37:49
  bit too soon. I don't know.
• 1:37:51
  I felt like, like I remember one of my housemates that used to
• 1:37:55
  live with is was a doctor is a doctor.
• 1:37:58
  And one of the first questions I asked him a couple of I'm saying
• 1:38:02
  maybe six months into the pandemic.
• 1:38:03
  I was like, how long do you reckon this?
• 1:38:04
  Will realistically last? And he's he immediately said, I
• 1:38:09
  envisioned. At least 23 years, like, 2023
• 1:38:13
  was kind of the estimate he gave in his mind and he was, is not
• 1:38:16
  far off. I mean, you know.
• 1:38:18
  Yeah, we were trialing in 2021 and I feel like now we could
• 1:38:22
  honestly say, we're sort of back to normal here in the UK, but it
• 1:38:25
  still feels very premature. Like I feel like, although, I
• 1:38:30
  feel like I always feel like because of other things like,
• 1:38:33
  you know, for example where the government is, you know, with
• 1:38:37
  all the things they were getting up to they, this is almost like
• 1:38:44
  A way of carrying favorites, always like, okay, well, you
• 1:38:47
  know, we put you through all this stuff, we made these
• 1:38:49
  mistakes there. Now we're going back to normal
• 1:38:51
  and it's like, is this really the best thing for us from a
• 1:38:54
  health perspective? I don't know.
• 1:38:57
  I worry that it is too early. I worry that this is now an
• 1:39:05
  experiment on whether or not you can get back to normal with no
• 1:39:07
  real effects with hearing a lot about new barrier.
• 1:39:11
  To the moment which are much more likely to transmit.
• 1:39:16
  There's no guarantee that the next variant won't be twice as
• 1:39:20
  deadly just absolutely no guarantee that next one won't
• 1:39:24
  kill 10 / 10 times more people. There is.
• 1:39:28
  There's nothing which says a virus has to become less deadly.
• 1:39:33
  As it takes there is a Tendency obviously some type of attack
• 1:39:36
  but there's no guarantee of it. So what has to happen is what we
• 1:39:42
  were just talking about which is which is great surveillance
• 1:39:45
  systems happening in place those great surveillance systems
• 1:39:48
  looking for things. I personally would like to think
• 1:39:54
  that we should have remained more aware of the risks and the
• 1:39:59
  protections that we've been put in place until we get out of
• 1:40:02
  what is normally the risk. Rotavirus Sister season is
• 1:40:07
  ending around to the april-may time, you know?
• 1:40:10
  Because viruses are much less likely to transmit Memorial
• 1:40:15
  outside its nice and warm. What have you?
• 1:40:17
  So we need, we need to continue to be aware of it, until then.
• 1:40:24
  But personally, I think that the great solution that we all need
• 1:40:29
  to put in place is is awareness and surveillance and I'm looking
• 1:40:33
  for that. I'm not See as much evidence of
• 1:40:37
  it yet, but as I say, it costs a lot of money to do surveillance.
• 1:40:41
  Yeah, no, no. I completely agree with you or
• 1:40:45
  not. I mean, when, when people were
• 1:40:47
  saying earlier in this pandemic, like are, you know?
• 1:40:53
  Don't know if this is good for the economy but I will but I
• 1:40:56
  agreed with them. I I kind of I felt like as much
• 1:40:58
  as I don't, always agree with the way Tory's do things, they
• 1:41:01
  are business-minded and that's where their mindset was is like
• 1:41:05
  if we leave this any longer this is going to harm the UK economy
• 1:41:08
  in a big way that might not be recoverable and as crazy as it
• 1:41:13
  sounds you do need to know when you're running a country you do
• 1:41:15
  need to consider that as much as health is obviously of the
• 1:41:18
  utmost importance. You kind of got banned to out
• 1:41:20
  with these other things and I remember what I did.
• 1:41:23
  Very beginning of all of this before we even entered the
• 1:41:26
  pandemic, the initial government response was to go for a kind of
• 1:41:33
  the response we're going for now.
• 1:41:34
  Actually, which is, you know, just kind of, let people get it,
• 1:41:38
  let people, you know, fight it and then build up a natural
• 1:41:42
  immunity. Yeah.
• 1:41:44
  But now. And and, you know, obviously we
• 1:41:46
  quickly sort of realized we couldn't do that.
• 1:41:49
  We needed to respond quickly and the rest is history.
• 1:41:52
  But it seems Like now, you know, we're couple work, the other
• 1:41:54
  side, you know, everyone's had their booster jobs that vaccines
• 1:41:58
  and everything and we're kind of just I feel like we're waiting.
• 1:42:01
  I feel like it's a kind of like a period of like let's just see
• 1:42:05
  what happens and just hope for the best I think.
• 1:42:09
  I think we do. We I mean you look around.
• 1:42:11
  People are tired of pandemics? I mean, sure.
• 1:42:17
  Yeah, eventually, all get pandemic fatigue.
• 1:42:20
  We all need to sort of If you can't live under siege forever,
• 1:42:28
  it becomes it becomes too much. But, you know, the thing which,
• 1:42:35
  which will protect everything is the ability to actually watch
• 1:42:39
  and learn and that is going to be a, it's going to be as much
• 1:42:46
  about politics as it is about, as about science.
• 1:42:49
  Are we prepared to to be a learning Society?
• 1:42:53
  T-thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and I really
• 1:42:56
  appreciate that. Okay, let's mix it up.
• 1:42:59
  Just a final couple of questions for you.
• 1:43:02
  What's the best advice you've ever received?
• 1:43:09
  Gosh, the best advice I ever received?
• 1:43:13
  Was, what's the worst that could happen as a as a young, as a
• 1:43:21
  young person coming? Coming out sort of somebody
• 1:43:25
  focused, its I satin catastrophize about if I made a
• 1:43:29
  decision and it and they looked at me and well what was the
• 1:43:31
  worst going to happen either way?
• 1:43:33
  Probably nothing and he went will stop worrying about it then
• 1:43:36
  so so I kind of a kind of take that forward a lot.
• 1:43:43
  Now, you know, for me if you make a wrong decision if it
• 1:43:52
  isn't going to end up in somebody's somebody's death, you
• 1:43:55
  probably. Okay.
• 1:43:56
  A lot of what I didn't know then is I probably am not going up
• 1:44:00
  killing somebody. You know, I've long gone past
• 1:44:03
  the point of Which embarrassment is something to stop me doing
• 1:44:07
  silly. But yeah, the best advice I ever
• 1:44:10
  got. Was somebody basically stopping
• 1:44:12
  me. So, well, what is the worst?
• 1:44:13
  That could happen and most of the time?
• 1:44:16
  It's not. It's, you're going to learn from
• 1:44:19
  it and I back that up with the other thing, which is, you know,
• 1:44:22
  you never ever fail, you just learn.
• 1:44:26
  So I've we started the conversation.
• 1:44:30
  We're talking to you about being a learning, or being a learning.
• 1:44:33
  Journey. I've never failed at anything.
• 1:44:36
  I wouldn't do some of the stuff I've done again but that doesn't
• 1:44:40
  mean I failed. That means I've learned from it.
• 1:44:42
  How does a baby learned to walk while it falls flat on his back
• 1:44:45
  side and things? When I'm not going to do that
• 1:44:47
  again, I'll try something different.
• 1:44:49
  So get up off your back so I can try something different.
• 1:44:52
  Berlin, thank you for that similar question.
• 1:44:58
  But slightly different focus in your personal life.
• 1:45:02
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learned so far?
• 1:45:07
  Wow, the biggest life lesson I ever learned was I have to be an
• 1:45:13
  example. I in my, in my business, in my
• 1:45:22
  relationship with my, with my son, in my relationship, with
• 1:45:27
  with the people that I work with.
• 1:45:31
  I have to be the example that that says, this is the thing
• 1:45:38
  that I believe in and the things that I want to see being done.
• 1:45:42
  And if I don't live them, if I just speak So it's holler.
• 1:45:47
  So for me, I now live what I want other people to do, not
• 1:45:56
  always easy because sometimes it is a challenge because you think
• 1:45:59
  there's an easy path here and sometimes the easy path is far
• 1:46:03
  too appealing, but it isn't going to end up with the
• 1:46:07
  behaviors that you want others to live.
• 1:46:10
  So I have to live what I want to be my legacy if you want.
• 1:46:18
  So be the example being thank you so much to your as we draw
• 1:46:26
  things to a close for today. Do you have any upcoming
• 1:46:28
  projects or some final thoughts? You'd like to share with our
• 1:46:30
  listeners? So yeah, I've coming projects
• 1:46:33
  are you know, one of the things I mean, obviously, you know, as
• 1:46:37
  I said I'm trying to write another book.
• 1:46:40
  I'm in the process at the moment of pulling together online.
• 1:46:45
  Horses were all of this stuff in my head is available to more
• 1:46:49
  people, rather than me just having to sort of talk about it.
• 1:46:53
  The podcast is going on. I think the thing that I'm most
• 1:46:55
  excited about the thing I'm really excited about is I am
• 1:47:00
  going to be going to be launching a series of talks me
• 1:47:11
  standing on stage actually, talking, which I've not been.
• 1:47:14
  I've been doing it. In a small way.
• 1:47:16
  But I'm now just beginning to sort of end up on stage, has a
• 1:47:19
  bigger and bigger venues. So you know, in the last two
• 1:47:23
  years, we've not been doing a lot of that I'm actually going
• 1:47:25
  back out and speaking to people I just love the reactions you
• 1:47:29
  get when you stand up and talk to a bunch of people and you try
• 1:47:32
  and just sort of put some of this stuff across and and we're
• 1:47:36
  going to see how that goes. It's not something.
• 1:47:38
  I've I've done a lot of before but it's a lot of it's a lot of
• 1:47:41
  fun putting it together and trying to sort of get some of
• 1:47:44
  these thoughts. To the world often often not not
• 1:47:50
  in a way that it's easy to capture, like working with
• 1:47:56
  somebody like you. But I know I'm just learning how
• 1:47:57
  to put it together in a much more concise fashion, instead of
• 1:48:00
  trying to spread it over four and a half hours of boring,
• 1:48:02
  everybody. I don't think it would ever be
• 1:48:05
  boring listening to you. I've had a great time.
• 1:48:08
  I can't speak for anyone else best of luck with with that and
• 1:48:15
  everything else that you're doing and yeah, just a massive,
• 1:48:18
  thank you for being on the show. No problem at all.
• 1:48:20
  Christian Grey fun. And to all my listeners of
• 1:48:24
  Christian read podcast, I hope you've enjoyed this episode.
• 1:48:26
  Be safe be well and I'll see you in the next one.