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E200 Rich Stockdale: How We Built a Conservation Empire From an Impossible Idea · Second Nature

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: In 2021, Dr.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Rich Stockdale started something that most people deemed the impossible.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: He decided to bring together the absolute best of the best.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Five years later, for our 200th episode of Second Nature Podcast, we're sitting in the woodlands of Invergeldi, surrounded by a team of 50 across 50,000 acres, proving that it absolutely can.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: You are joining me, Al Steers, head of storytelling, to host the incredible CEO and co-founder Rich Dockdale.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Rich, thanks for joining.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, El.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna jump straight into it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone should know who you are, what you do, and a little bit of a hook, jump back to the hundredth episode to find out more about your personal life.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: If episode 100 was about how you got here, what's happened since then that has really changed what you think oxygen conservation could become?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: What what year was episode?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was 25?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: January 25.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wow my answer is gonna be everything's changed.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, and Andrew might correct me, we were in the teens of people still, I think, like 15 to 20, something like that.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're now 50.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we'd added Dorbak or Kinrari yet as estates, um, which just absolutely transformed what we were doing.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um the world itself was different, you know.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: AI's everything right now, it was barely a thing back then.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um my life's changed dramatically.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've now got a business that spans three pillars run by incredible managing directors, Fee on the conservation side, George on Capital, and Chris on Intelligence.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it means my role is completely different.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I get to spend a lot more time internationally and externally talking about this amazing group of people and the business we've built.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So everything.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Talking about the people, when does a slightly ridiculous idea pursued by a bunch of quite literally crazy people uh become a serious institution?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, never if we can avoid it.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You you want to keep the chaos and the crazy.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Chris made me promise if we got too big and too structural, he'd leave.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to keep the the creativity and the flup fun and the innovation and the playfulness.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I think what this journey has proven though is you put enough talent on the field, you can do impossible things over and over again.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's a lot of things we were to start with, one of which was a data and a tech company.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing was a talent attraction and development company.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Andrew and I must have done a thousand recruitments together over the years, and the ability to bring incredible people together is all a business and a company is.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a CEO and a founder and you don't think recruitment's your number one role, you won't be in that job very long.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: What is there anything that you're worried about that could go wrong in the next two years?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm aware of lots of things and think about lots of things and look at the risk of lots of things, but I'm not worried about anything because every challenge we've had, every problem we've had, we've figured out a solution.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Always and um keeps it fun.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Audience participation.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, show of hands, if you've solved a problem or a situation you at one point thought was too difficult or impossible.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Every single hand in the room is raised.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Every week.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So Dave often gets asked, you know, have we thought about?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is always yes, because we've thought about everything, we've debated everything, we've discussed it, and we've thought about options of how to deal with it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we're doing that constantly, especially as a leadership team.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, at every level of the business, if you think about the estate managers, the job is dynamic risk assessment every minute of every day.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you should never be blasé about risk, but you should recognize it, enjoy it, and use it to find opportunities.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: You constantly bring it back to the team and a back to each and every one of us.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to focus on that part because we've got togetherness as a key part of our values.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I really want to address in this section can 50 people still feel like one team?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're a remote team.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why are we here?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we still prioritize team events and those moments of being together?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Purpose first, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to be able to connect to the thing you're doing, why you're doing it.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I work with Karis and Lucy, I think Lucy worked on it too, uh, to put together a survey of why people joined OC.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And without a shadow of a doubt, the vast majority were for impact-driven purposes to have a positive impact for people and wildlife.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are just as beautiful as a spreadsheet can be, if you are only looking at a landscape behind a spreadsheet or an incredible data model, it's not the same as touching it, feeling it, smelling it, being out in it, and being able to see the impact of what you do.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: You look at Google or any of the Frontier Labs, they bring people in who have used their product to try and connect people to the outcome of what they do.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to do that.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: We literally, we're going to be planting trees tomorrow.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be walking, running, cycling the hills that literally are the estate that we've bought, restored, and managed.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: We had to walk through a former conifer plantation that has been felled to create space for nature and improve biodiversity to literally get here into this clearing.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that as an opportunity, we'd be mad not to take it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: You, I mean, kudos to you guys and the people team.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but you're you've grown the team to 50 and still built this culture to continue on.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: What do you hire for now?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Surely that must have changed as the business.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Can I tell a story on culture first?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course you can.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um, for those of you who've worked in a corporate or any form of big environment, you get a lot of nodding and generic agreement.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we were at uh a it was either a board meeting or a people in culture board meeting.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a quick, well, obviously the culture will get get worse as we get bigger, and there was like, oh yeah, no, no, it will, it will.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then Andrew went, Why does it need to?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't it get better?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the most amazing mic drop moment because in far too many years of of work, no one had ever said, Why wouldn't it get better?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is it has got better.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we were driving in today, and I asked Fee and Andrew, what's got worse since we've gone from five to fifty?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing's got worse.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a few more forms, thank you, Lucy, and a few more policies, but nothing's got worse.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and and the reason that's okay is because we are so careful about recruiting.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Fee has a very specific rule, which is uh adopted from the New Zealand All Blacks um playbook, and it's absolutely true.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if you keep that bar of high performance, what one of my things about recruitment is if anyone says, but they're nice, I tend to leave the room and they're not being hired.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: What I have realized is and they're nice is fine.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they're great at this and they're great at this and they're great at this, and they're really lovely human beings.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we do hire nice people, but only and nice people.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: You just spoke then about that high performance bar.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: What does that actually mean to you?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna hate this, sorry, mate.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Constant dissatisfaction.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's never enough.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: You need the next thing, you need to be pushing for the next achievement, the next learning, reaching for the next bar.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday wasn't good enough.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: The bars moved today, and that can be expressed in loads of different ways.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be exceptional at something, your specialism.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have got world-leading data scientists, we we have got incredible estate managers, we have got beautiful communicators, we've got economists, we've got people with PhD, we've got more PhDs and master's degrees than DeepMind had when it sold to Google.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the start, not the end of the conversation.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: These people are multifaceted, they're curious, they are constantly striving to improve themselves and elevate other people.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where the no dickheads bit comes in.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not only here do you have to be brilliant, you also have to elevate other people.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we just would not tolerate someone who pushed other people back.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that culture.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any behavior that you think or makes you think actually we're becoming the company I don't want us to become?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you have to stop one of those regularly because Interesting.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: We had a great discussion about we we manage budget to the penny.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like we we run this program called Capology, which is where we look at and we project every individual's salary, remuneration, and impact on budget years out.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So by the quarter, we're projecting how that will work.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's borrowed from professional American sport where they manage to a salary cap.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, every business manages to a salary cap because you've got a budget.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we manage that so incredibly carefully.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have a shared working space in London, and there was a conversation that happened at our senior leadership team meeting about people billing for food and coffee, and was that incurring too much cost?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I sat there and let it play out, and I was like, if we are not prepared to be generous and kind with these people, we shouldn't have them, we don't deserve them.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Feed them, water them, thank them, and create an amazing place where people want to be.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: The easy decision would have been to say, you cannot build tea, you cannot build coffee, let's make it cheaper.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: The cost of that wouldn't have been the saving of the tea and coffee, it would have been every discretionary minute, hour sacrifice a person's prepared to make because we're not being generous and kind to them.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to do that every day and you have to protect a culture and nurture it, or you'll lose it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: What's been the hardest part about protecting that culture?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Teaching people how to fire people.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Take take us into that a little bit.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um I don't speak to my family, as you know.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and through life, I've realized that you have to, if you want to progress and move on, you have to climb the ladder, you have to climb relationships and experience people, and you need to be with people who are better than you for you to learn and improve.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that unfortunately means you have to leave people behind as you move along.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can't carry everyone with you and stack your debt with loads of new people.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I got pretty good.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and also from a sporting background, when we played American football uh internationally, every morning a list of names went up on a board.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: If your name wasn't on it, you were packing your bag and you're going home.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So daily the team was changing.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm used to a selection that says the best people play, the other people, thank you for coming, you you you go away.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was always fine with that.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, to protect a performance bar, you have to invite people who aren't quite at the standard, sometimes good people, but not great, to be successful elsewhere.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really hard for people who haven't lived and done that.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So me saying, look, that person isn't at the standard, we've tried everything we can.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we have a test for this.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Do they know they're not performing?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Have we communicated with them clearly on it?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Have we given them an opportunity to improve?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything outside of their control?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is it your fault as a line manager?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you've passed all those tests, you're in a good spot to say, I'm sorry, this isn't the role for you.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: But someone giving that news and telling that story, and of course, Andrew's like been there every step of the way to do it, but teaching the line manager and the person to protect the culture, to hold it, and to invite someone to be successful elsewhere, that's hard.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think people realise the coaching that you give to us as a team.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've been through that process, and you know, this is the first time I've ever line managed, really, really, truly, um, and been brought along that journey.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think people realize the coaching isn't just, okay, we're gonna get rid of this person because of X, and you've given us enough reasons and we can see the damage on the culture.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying, okay, this is the way we should do it.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is what you need to learn from this.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you allow that person.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've grown tenfold as a result of that, of allowing me to understand.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're pretty good anyway.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I appreciate that.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: If if you have the misfortune to work in a business where your line manager or the leadership doesn't want to coach you, leave.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing there?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like the world is too small right now, it's moving at such a pace.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: You should be working with people who you genuinely are inspired by and think will make you better.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we spend a lot of time thinking about the composition of who should report into who and why.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be enough of a gap with a line manager that the person reporting aspires to be like an aspect of them, can learn something from them, can improve as a result of that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the senior person, so we talk about master and apprentice.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We expect the more junior person to work harder, to do some fetching, some carrying, some of the grunt work in exchange for the education they get.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not getting an education, go work for somebody else.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: The I talked about how my role had changed.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I used to have 11 direct reports, I've now got five or six.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I wish I had 11 still in some ways because coaching people is is my favorite thing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: The only bit I miss about working in the public sector was QA's with like 500 people every month.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I get better QA's with smaller groups, but yeah.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's a beautiful part to touch on.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um what are you most proud of?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's something everyday.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like um most recently, Fee, George, and Chris.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, don't look at Fee, I'll cry.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is oh, Fee.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that's been a step change.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I can talk about George because he's not here.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, no, talk about Fee.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: When I w I'll go, I'll just go.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: The same is true of all of them.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't think you can teach leadership.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I think there's something about you that you can ramp up the skills and you can give you a set of skills and responsibilities that relate to management and helping people and coaching them and key review processes and cultural touch points and guides.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: But there's an essence in someone that makes them a leader.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's an ability to communicate.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a warmth, there's a kindness, there's a speed of thought, there's a service that you put other people ahead of you and you genuinely want to elevate them.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw that in in Fee and Chris and George, especially in different ways before they did.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like George is George is the worst because he actively did not want to line manage anyone and wanted nothing to do with people.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we we used to do a performance process because Andrew's built incredible processes where we'd evaluate everybody in terms of key reviews.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I made George sit through that for the best part of two years every quarter with no direct reports because I knew when we had the opportunity to bring Hannah in.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is Hannah here?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, not yet.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: When we had the opportunity to bring Hannah in and then build a team and a structure, George would be the most incredible leader because he set the highest standards, had amazing work ethic, put other people first, was just that incredible human being.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he hated every minute of sitting through that process and tried not to do it.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew A, the rest of the team valued his opinion so highly, and he needed to pick up the systems, the processes, the ways of working to do it, that one day we'd be able to deliver a platform to allow him to be MD.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the same is true of Fee and Chris and George.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I A couldn't agree more, but B stepping as someone that has leaned on each and every one of those.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not gonna cry now.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Don't know why, why am I all emotional?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: But there have been times where like I've I've had to call Fee and the uh approach that she brings and the leadership that she will give all someone is incredible.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be fair, Fee, you're just class, aren't you?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: In in every You're just incredible.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um it comes back to talent again.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: There are certain hirings that just transform the business in a way that it couldn't possibly have been what it is today without that.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And walking around Leon with you and meeting fee as opposed to Feona and persuading you to change.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being Fee with us.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I feel privileged.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're privileged.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Could we get a round of applause for Fee, please?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um That that bit's hard too, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like giving away the bits you love about your job to go do the bits you need to do.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like I every year of OC, I've traveled more.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we did the graph, and year two was more like every year we've traveled more.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: The first eight months of this year were more than any other year, and I will travel more in the next four months than I did in the first eight.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't like doing that, but it's the job you need me to do, yeah.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and you can't choose.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to lead, you can't choose.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I like the World Cup analogy.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: You might have an opportunity of playing in a World Cup final one day.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get to choose when it is or where it is, you just get to decide if you want to take that opportunity.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is our opportunity to do something no one's ever done before.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when we pull this off, change lots of your lives and lots of other people's lives forever.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Let's stay on that travel piece because for us, adventure's another key pillar to our values, but that means almost something different to each and every one of us.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And for you, right now, you're spending a huge amount of time.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: We've just got literally just got back from New York.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've been in London, you've been in boardrooms, investor meetings, pictures, all sorts.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: How do we make sure, or how do you make sure you don't become a company that talks about nature from the cities?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't have to be here.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in a really fortunate position now that uh there's lots of stuff I can do and get invited to do, which is wonderful, but I get the choice.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I could have chosen not to come, I could have sat at home, I could have gone to five other things, I could have gone to events.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um there is literally nowhere I would rather be than with you lot.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: So has there been a time where you've made the wrong choice with that at OC?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've been to some pretty shocking events, haven't we?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're not that interesting.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um we don't know why we're there.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Think thinking in bets time here, people.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: That would be revisionist resulting logic, wouldn't it?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we we we don't do anything rash, we try and make the best choice possible, and when we're there, we make the most of it as we do.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So in the mo like with hindsight, probably, but they were the right decisions at the time and we ran towards it.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Also, you say we've been into some shocking events.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's a gazillion out there to choose what we should and shouldn't be in is actually really challenging.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have to work out New York week this week, thousand events, we're in some really good rooms.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Bravo for putting on some great events.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Martin Team.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that team.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we probably missed some great ones because you just didn't know.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, and also you can't be in three places at what you can't be in three places at once.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's why you do some and feed us some, and loads of other people do them now as well.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you leave a little bit of room to be a little bit chaotic and bring the chaos in the margins?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Sof runs a very accurate calendar, so um, there's not much spare space.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, can we just do a round of applause for Soph?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because holy moly.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, let's let's do a let's do a little story on that.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've spent again, too many years, 20 plus, watching every uh Andrew and I have been massive productivity geeks for years in terms of there isn't a calendar tool technique approach, time management technique that we haven't watched and learned and read and tried to put into practice.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing left to be gained.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like our calendars are multicoloured, organized, like work home life, like we're as time efficient as we can possibly be.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I was pretty broken from a lot of American football and a lot of weightlifting and a huge amount of traveling.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Physically, I was broken.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had a wrecked knee, wrecked Achilles.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: The actual art of going anywhere was was physically difficult and I ended up with tons of migraines because of weird neck and things.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then fortunately, we connected me with this amazing physiotherapist who fixed everything that allowed me to run faster, to attend more events, to do more, to literally find 10 to 20% more performance than I thought I had before.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because we looked for those benefits in a place we hadn't found them.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when you meet someone that amazing and talented, you kind of have to hire them, don't you?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: So could we get a round of pause for Sophie, please?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And note to anyone out there don't introduce me to talented people.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I will hire them.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't people believe that?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of people like, yeah, sure, sure.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, I'm gonna.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's stay on the team for one final part.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, get ready, everyone, in the audience.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what's the favorite is?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: In order.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's do that again.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Let's rank.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um even here, is he?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's not here.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: The favourite's coming.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: What's the next genuinely ridiculous thing you want this team to attempt?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: We had an approach in New York about scaling up the US side of the business.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just think we are going to be scaling and acquiring in Europe and the US at the same time in 27.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're going to go from one geography in the UK to doing both of those at exactly the same time.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it will be with a partnership with some form of frontier model because I honestly believe the AI companies are going to be the biggest investors in nature we've ever seen because they have no choice but to be that.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've had a few incredibly exciting opportunities that have come through, and they've not been the right for us for the right reason.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm I feel really proud to work for a business that I feel I can trust you and the leadership team to make those right decisions.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite a choice to turn down a quarter of a billion, wasn't it?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was incredible.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't right, and it wasn't the right decision for us.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was the example of you know when did the company become something we didn't want it to?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been too much.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we we had an approach from an investment fund who wanted us to manage a huge amount of money for them into the billions.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: The down payment would have been 250 million if we'd have done that deal.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but they wanted committees and systems and processes that meant we couldn't have been us.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we bought this estate within four weeks of seeing it, which when the lawyers said, we might be able to do that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Have you ever done that?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: They went, No, no, we've never done that.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh shout out to Ross Simpson, great job.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And George, who obviously buys all the land.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: All of it.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: All of it.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um the beauty of that ironic joke is he actually does buy.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: But with if we'd have been tied in knots of those investment committees, we couldn't be us, we couldn't be fast and agile.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the ability to say to a seller, I am doing a deal with you, I've shaken hands with you, we are doing this.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you lose that, we lose a point of differentiation that makes us so different.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you is that the main reason like how do you decide when to say no?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have lots of conversations.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't there's I'm really comfortable to make a decision with whatever information I have available, but given the opportunity of time, I will make the decision as late as possible and seek as many views as possible.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: So um that will come to like every aspect of what I do, whether it's writing, whether it's if we if we're doing a presentation somewhere, if we're thinking about changing something, there'll be at least one, two, three people around this virtual room that I want the opinion of because it'll make the decision better.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's been a really um wonderful thing to watch and quite challenging to adopt.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because in most corporate businesses, the way you succeed is by doing your part of your job best.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's how you get your promotion is by being like the best in the team, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: They'll say to you, like, okay, yes, L stood out.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And actually it can become quite competitive.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what you often see is managers saying, actually, I just did that project, even though you're the one behind the scene being like, You're kidding me.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we just don't do that here.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And to flip a whole mindset of what you've previously been taught to actually say help is the best thing you can do, and bringing other people into a decision process is the best.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a I've personally been like, hang on a minute, that doesn't mean you're weak.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: That is actually an incredible strength.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you do that through every decision.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's so there's so much there.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'll tell one story.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: So so when I worked in the public sector, uh, it was terrible.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I once walked into a boardroom and I received a a message from my then senior manager saying, I'm instructing you to tell them whatever they're happy with was my idea.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Literally direct by messages that came in.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: My rule on leadership is if something goes well, the person did it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: If something goes wrong, it's my fault.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: We we just went and saw the incredible renovation job that's been done of the farmhouse in Vigeldi.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Round of applause, please.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: That was incredible.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Get your booking in now.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: There is there have been certain things we've done in this business that have been a transcendent step change.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, breaking the world record for carbon credits by like 25% was was an absolute step change.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, getting the first AA rated carbon credit was a step change dramatically.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: The quality of the job on that house was the best thing I've ever seen in terms of a property development.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go around and pause again?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just astonishing.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're walking away from there, and I say to Fee, great job.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Fee says, I didn't do anything, they did.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think other people would potentially look at that project.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take that project for a second and go, why did you invest all of that money into doing that?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's surely the wrong thing to do.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think where are we putting money, people, or attention into now that others perhaps would question?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere we see a return and investment.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the amount you're spending, right?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's where you'll see the return and the value.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, third hire we ever made was a photographer.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: First response I got was that's ridiculous.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why on earth do you need to do that?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, a massive shout out to Mark and the rest of the board who asked one question and went, Oh, of course I see that.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, that's the right thing to do.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, without the backing of Mark, Lil, the auction house group, and blue and white, I'd be a guy with some talented friends and an idea.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, in fact, can we give them all a round of applause?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because without them, we're not doing this.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for giving us the drink.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere IT equipment, vehicles, you you pay for quality.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's also more of a long-term sustainable mindset as well.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Buy the thing that will elevate and invest in people and properties and make things better than you found them.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we've been able to put together, you know, a project in the environment sector is still 10 or 20,000 pounds and we're just shy of half a billion in terms of asset under management, and we've only just started.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: You just touched on the board, and I think we are all feeling incredibly fortunate to have the board that we do, but your conversations are shifting.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking to incredible institutional investors.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, are any of those conversations starting to change the relationship that you have with our mission?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Even a little.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a secret that no one tells you the conversations get easier the more senior they are.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to explain the basics or the fundamentals.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can get to the point.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: They have a level of awareness and sophistication that it's simpler.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: A conversation with a local community about what we do on an estate is 50 times harder than one with a multi-billionaire investor about what you want to do with the landscape.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: What's changed dramatically is the language with which I'm communicating both verbally and in writing, and what I need to communicate.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this kind of follows the chronology of the books.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So number one was about scaling conservation.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Bravo.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Could we get a round applause for Abby for that one?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Abby.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the next one.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do that again in a second.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so scaling conservation was the diary, the story of bringing this into being.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then there was a transition through to rewarding wealth, which was very much the capital side of it, and my journey of discovering how the institutional investment classes and different types of money worked to allow us to do what we're doing, and then through to natural intelligence, which is going to be the data and tech side of things.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, round of applause for Abby for all three of those.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the reality was, you know, you go back five years, the the positioning we agreed with the board is we wouldn't talk about data and technology because it was too precious.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: We must have done and not released three podcasts with Lara.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lara uh superstar architect of everything we've got.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we weren't even allowed to tell people you existed for the first few years, just had to like hide you.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lara's too special.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then the last couple of years being invited to talk more about the data and the tech side of things.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, every so often I still get a LinkedIn message going, oh, how your team adapting to suddenly being focused on tech and data.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, no, we're just allowed to talk about it now.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's just different.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the language I use has changed, and and my awareness of that is something I've tried to be really conscious of.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we start every week with our all-staff Blackstone meeting, and I'm acutely aware I am talking about multi-hundred million pound deals, the next step, the next raise, the next event.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's why, if um, spoiler alert, it's why we go conservation intelligence capital, because I want the impact, I want the estate stories to be the first thing we talk about collectively.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because every business I've seen before that had a financial function, a central function, and a delivery arm, they hated each other.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: The delivery arm went, well, you lot just sit in an office and don't do anything.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: The the fundraising arm went, Well, we do the real work and bring the money, and you guys are out on site, you get all the freedom.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna let we talk about that a lot about Minutes Whylight yesterday when we recapped on New York Climate Week.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, look, do you guys want to hear this?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or am I some prick turning up saying, Do you want to hear about the jolly I had in New York last week?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna make me not say prick.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Am I some guy turning up talking about the jolly we had?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you you know this is yours podcast.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Fine.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can't.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Am I some guy turning up talking about the jolly he had in New York last week?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you actually I'm I'm doing it for you, but I don't want it to be like, yeah, I did that.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: You got to go out and work in the wet and cold.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I I always try and make sure we recognise the impacts appreciated.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but hang on a minute.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: We did a show of hands of how many people hadn't watched episode 100 and it was literally more than 50% sat here right now.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's I think you forget, and they might not realize you were doing that at the beginning.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Calluses as well on the handle.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: You were doing every part.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: You've just hired to write the environment statement, Dan wrote that and did a lot of driving.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's stay on that environment section for a bit because I think we're scaling at pace, and I want to know if getting bigger actually means we're having more impact.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: So let's start off with for a moment.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Where have we really underestimated just how difficult ecological restoration is?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think the only bit we might have underestimated, and I think it was optimism as opposed to underestimating it, was the speed of regulatory approval.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think we hoped if we did the right thing, we followed all the processes, the systems, and the permissions that they asked for.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: We hoped that might be enough at pace.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is it's not because the public sector and the private sector are culturally unable to work.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've got about as good as a relationship as it's possible to have, based on incredible work, especially from the estate managers and the marketing team and the environment team, in terms of getting those approvals, but it's still slower than it should be.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other bit, and actually, this is where I agree with Sam Altman at OpenAI.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he said he was wrong about how fast AI had changed the world.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've been wrong about how fast natural capital has, not because of the models' ability or because of natural capitals, but because how fast people are willing to change.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there are people that for whatever reason just don't want things to change, however much better it would get.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are people in local communities like, no, no, no, I just want it to be like this.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lovely reflection moment.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sticking with that, has there been anything else that the estates or the team has or the estate team have taught you that's challenged something you previously believed in?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think I know the answer to this.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um Let's see.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: I knew nothing about landed estates.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think the first journey was private water supply, not later treat day.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for those of you out there who don't know, uh, in rural communities, lots of water supplies pass through other landowners' property and are the responsibility of others.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: That can leave you with very, very expensive bills to provide water to people.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even more bizarrely, it can lead you with a situation whereby people don't want you to make their water safe to drink.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: I still can't get my head around that one.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: We've literally had that.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, that's a lesson learned.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: You get the weird and the wonderful.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then a whole learning curve on everything through land management practices to sporting to herbivore management.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I mentioned Charles, uh, the most incredible teacher and coach.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've never ever told me an opinion was wrong.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've asked me questions, and when I've asked you the reality of things, you've told me the absolute truth.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been on a whole journey about uh what the reality of a um a pheasant shoe, a grouse maw, deer stalking, herbivore management, what all those things are required and what it takes in reality.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I have the utmost respect for all of you who do that, so thank you.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we could say hold strong opinions loosely.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have been known to say that, yeah.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: I just think anything else is mad, isn't it?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you are so fixed on a view that if someone presents you with new information or a new idea that you refuse to change it, that's just mad.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and the ability to be curious and agile and open to new perspectives is it's why I love our intern programme.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't mentioned the intern programme.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, show of hands, if you came here or if we met you with anything to do with the intern programme.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone listening in, there is currently a good third of the group.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's 11 or maybe 13 now actually people in the business who came through the intern process.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um which is a harder application process than applying to Harvard.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: We uh we had the last two so two years ago, we had nearly 2,000 applicants in four or five weeks, and we went, God, we cannot screen that many this year, so we'll cut it in two weeks.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we had virtually the exact same number in two weeks as we did the four before.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, Andrew and Karis have sold it for this year, so we're gonna have 5,000 applicants.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: No one's doing anything different for a month.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be great.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we're just looking at multiple.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, oh sorry, you go on that part.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm 43 years old, unfortunately.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: You look 28?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Was that?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a fucking lie, isn't it?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: You look 35.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take 38, but thank you, Well.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate that.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: No worries.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so where was I'm just baffled by that for a second.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm acutely aware I'm getting older.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And um, there's an American football coach that I love called Pete Carroll.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's in his 70s, but he's always described as the person who stayed in touch the most with the next generation of talent that's coming through.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: So my rule is if we keep hiring incredibly talented young people, they'll keep me young and informed and current.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I love working with all of you.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can we give our young people around applause, please?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I really want to ask this one, and I know that um we're going back to environment here, but if we were recording episode 300, which might be in another year or two, what would you need to see on the landscape, but not on a spreadsheet, perhaps, to know that those two years really mattered?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there'll be a lot more landscapes.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: We will add estates here, 60% here, 20% in the US, 20% in Europe.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those those numbers will blur a little bit, but broadly in that structure.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Of the estates we own, I think with with the sort of earliest projects, you will actually start seeing some of our interventions pull away.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see woodlands that we'll have planted become more naturalized, become rougher, become scrubber.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because like the landscape recovers so incredibly quickly.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: You go to Swineley and see the impact we've had there in terms of pulling away with traditional heavy agricultural methodologies.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: The landscape is busier and noisier and more dynamic.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: You you go to the um the tree planting area, Esgarath, it is every different height and texture and colour, and it's incredible.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: We will legitimately see millions of trees in the landscape.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: We will see hundreds of thousands of gallons of water held in peatlands and river corridors and wetlands that we've created.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: The number of pollinators will be massively increased.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: We will have beavers back in a number of places.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have reintroduced Burbert for the first time in um and get some nods from the back of the room.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: We'll they'll also have come up with three or four fish species that I swear they're inventing, but we'll be like reintroducing those as well.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um it'll all feel different in terms of textures.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and also, um, I'm super excited about the intersection and the margin of the capital paying for it, the impact and delivery on the ground, and also jobs.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: The the the teams on the ground will be bigger, more people will be living and working on the estates that we manage.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we'll have you know, fees over there, but we'll have we'll have built a load more houses, we'll have renovated properties, we'll be providing homes for people and opportunities.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um all of it will be different.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: You spoke about the environmental piece that needs to change.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Let's bring it back to you.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: What have you had to change about yourself to scale this business?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Literally everything multiple times.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Give a flavor.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: So every year I've been like a different person, had to find a different skill set.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's why I'm constantly reading, watching, learning, picking up things.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've had to become calmer, more patient.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've had to be willing to trust more and accept things are delegated more.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've had to be willing to like people say they like feedback.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: I fucking hate feedback.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: We were just talking about this in the car on the way here, weren't we?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be perfect to everything and then you don't need to get feedback, which isn't a healthy thing to do.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I've had to embrace that more and um be willing to accept it.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um as a founder and a leader as well, you sometimes have to eat a lot of shit.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to do things you don't want to do, you have to take the blame for things you didn't do, you have to accept when things don't go well, and you have to do the thing that's the right thing for the business.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so they're the kind of personal things that I've had to change.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of sacrifices have been made, but they've mainly been by Helen, Emma, and George for me not being there.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and then Did they do they feel it as a sacrifice, or is that your own guilt feeling it as a sacrifice?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think most of the time it's me, and then 20% of the time Helen's like, yeah, you haven't been here that much.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the kids are like, they start asking now, so they're 10 and 7, and they're like, Are you gonna be here tomorrow?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um So that gets harder.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: But and that's why I think if I was doing something that I didn't think was having a massive impact and was gonna deliver positive change for people, for wildlife, and all of you, then I'd be like, Well, then it's not worth it, is it?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: But because I'm super proud of what we've built and what we're doing, it's it's worth it to do that.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that comes back to role modelling as well.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I um shitty relationship with family, etc.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can see that on episode 100, I think.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, I cry.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't I didn't spend much time with my family, which was probably a good thing.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I spend more time with my kids than my parents did, and hopefully I'm a better role model and showing them what's possible more than I was taught.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um that without doubt makes you the best boss I've ever had because the leadership that you give, you know, I can come to you with a personal problem, which I often do, uh, or relationship problems, or the time where my hair Saturday, midday, my came back from the hairdressers, it was terrible.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I rang rich.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, be honest with me.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do I look like a zebra?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And now my late two days later he sends me a picture of a zebra whilst in Disney.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: From Disney World.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: It took ages to get that picture.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: You had to wait for the giraffe to move.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: But on a serious note, um from me and I think from all of us, like, thank you for being that leader.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sorry that you had a really troubled upbringing, and I'm sorry that it was the way it was.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also incredibly thankful in a way because it's made you be the person that you are for all of us.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty weird that, isn't it?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a horrible sentence in some way.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I get asked, would I change anything?
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, How can I?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am so blessed to do what I do with you lot all the time.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't change anything because it wouldn't have turned out this way.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know, um, Danan, we had a podcast recording in New York.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we had the incredible Danan joined as guest.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he turned to the camera and he said, No, I don't have any concerns or worries.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Remind yourself that I we are so lucky to get to do this.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you've said it before, but it it you do have these moments where we come together as a team.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, it's not we have to do this, it's it's I mean, there's a part of have to because the environmental push, but we get to do it.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dave says that to me every week.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: There'll be something that's like, we get to do this, and you you do have, you know, the only the only thing.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like Charlie, like I I some of the things I've had and and I love that I love that that's the case, but some of the things that quite rightly you take for granted Dave was asked to do a business case because he wanted an eight-pound book in a job.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what the fuck?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have someone that works for you who wants to read beyond their sorts.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I would like to do some extra work to improve myself, please.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can I have a book?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: We need a business.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's um but in the moment that's your version of normal.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember if I knew everything I knew now in my last job, God, I'd be so rich from suing them.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: But genuinely, I wouldn't be here.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be so rich.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: But you don't know that in that moment until you get good, you're like, hang on a minute, this is what work can be.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the worry though, I don't know how many of you have realized this, but so um our wonderful estate manager at Sibley Bat Will, who's moving on to his next adventure after doing a great job there, sat on an old staff call yesterday and when the hardest bit is the realization I'm never gonna work with a team this good again.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's a really good chance all of us will work somewhere else at some point in the future, hopefully not anytime soon.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you're gonna have to work really hard to build a better team than this one.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for being an incredible leader.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I met you at 19 and 20, but I'm privileged to have met you in my mid-20s.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you for being supportive to each and every one of us.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for caring, and thank you for allowing us to all be here and getting to be here.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: Love you all.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: You're incredible.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome work team.