Latest / Second Nature / E178 OC Round Table: Building A Dynasty

Transcript

E178 OC Round Table: Building A Dynasty · Second Nature

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to start by asking each of you when you first heard about OC and what you thought, and then when the point was where you're like, oh, I need to be part of this.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: So who was I think you were probably well, no, you'll have known about it first.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: So let's go with you.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: When did you when did you first hear about this?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: And what did you think?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: And when did you decide you wanted to be involved?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think when we first started talking about it, it was in loads of little conversations.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember you taking a lot of time to explain it to me.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then at one point, me just being like, Is this legal?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because it sounds so good.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like the business model and everything that was needed.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was, I mean, it took a long time to get there because it's complex, but it sounded amazing.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then it just built for us from there in terms of like the little conversation.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: Because you you'd have heard about it in concept phase, like from the rapport through to, and then how long were we a year in?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: How long was OC going when you did join?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it was July 2023, it wasn't it?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Go on.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: When and what was your first we had a different first first experience.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I remember it really vividly.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: We first well, actually, the first first conversation, you didn't turn up.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because you apparently had a knee surgery or something.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I did no, I did have a knee surgery.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Allegedly.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't turn up.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: But I remember being like really impressed by when we did speak.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: You were so apologetic and like genuinely like nice about it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Why do people not?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: I had one of those the other day.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: We had when we did the IT change at the start of the year.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember the the teams links had still appeared, but they weren't connected?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: So you'd sit in a room and the other person was in the room, but they weren't.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I had one of those that and I and I didn't realise it'd been missed and was just like, I'm so, so sorry, this is on me.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think I came on the call and went, Oh, I don't know, what happened last time?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, yeah, you do.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: I fucked up.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really sorry.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: He was like, Oh, yeah, that's right.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: No one ever apologizes for that.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, what an easy thing to just say, no, I'm so sorry, I messed it up.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: So after I offended you, no, I wasn't offended, I was just I was like the other way, I was just really impressed by how like nice you were.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then we started talking, and now we called you a snake oil salesman.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And now you're actually snake-off.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And now I sell snake-hole.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thanks.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean that's not making the editing.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, my my context to it, I've been working in Nature Capital at the time for probably like 10 years.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing a natural capital project in Scotland.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'd done a lot of like policy stuff and pilot projects and all that kind of thing.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd started being saying more and more, we're kind of getting to the point where we actually need to just put money into it and make it work rather than having endless kind of talking sessions and plans.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and then I met you, and you were like, Yep, right, we're gonna do it.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: A billion pound company, unicorn, 250,000 acres of land.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was just like, no one's doing this.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what what land have we got?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: What money have we got?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, nothing, but we're gonna do it, and it's gonna be brilliant.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just like, This this guy's just not real.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then we kept talking, and after a while, I was like, he's gonna do it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually gonna happen.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: How many people were here when you arrived?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Laura, Josh, Katie.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was it, so Dave.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, so you were like six?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Might be missing something.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And Dan.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Dan's part of the furniture, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Dan's part of, yeah, who was just gone fee.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much in that I recognise, but I think when I was introduced to RC, it was, to all intents and purposes, a fully fledged thing.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you were doing it by then, but those were.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Or we've never said that about this before.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, you we met at Leon, you know, and I met on my birthday.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you just were, you know, walking the walk.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and, you know, you had these great ambitions, but you were so clear about how you were doing it.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I've spoken about this before, but the way you were talking about your approach to land acquisition, the way that you dealt with landowners, the data, which I know we'll talk about later, and um, you know, sort of sparked my interest in it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then subsequently, we had a conversation about you were looking for somebody on the property side of things.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so much of what I saw that day is just still central to how we operate today and the culture and the enthusiasm and the ambition.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, that was my first intro to to AC.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think, yeah, there's there is definitely something you can't spend that much time with rich without coming away with this feeling of like, this is gonna happen.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's got just make me busy.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's got nearly 20 years in this, having to deal with it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's rare.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: So, um, over that time, so coming up on five-year anniversary, which is just that's gone so fast, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it's just unbelievable.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: And Andrew, as we sit here now, um, give us a feel for how many people and the sort of range of skills we've got across the business right now.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's we're gonna come up soon to hire our 50th person across the entire business.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: I I believe on several occasions I said we'd never break 30, and we definitely won't break 50.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So when people talk about are we ever gonna get to 100 and you say no?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think I believe it in this.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: But working across so many different specialisms across all four corners of the UK, you know, from the Kerngorns, Wales, over to Norfolk, and then obviously down to the wonderful Cornwall and everywhere in between.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the really fascinating thing over time, over that five years, is the growing specialisms and the fact that we're bringing in more and more talented people who were just flying and doing all this amazing work.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's just incredible.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: 50,000 acres, 12 estates, somewhere north of 425 million pounds um portfolio value at the last count, I think, Chris.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: Somewhere like that.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, for the first time this year as well, we've started to articulate the growth and the the sort of pillars of the business.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, it is one oxygen conservation, but there's the distinct intelligence side of it and the capital side of it and the conservation side of it.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I think the first thing we need to do is is reflect on the capital side of things.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: So if it wasn't for Oxygen House and Blue and White Capital and Mark and Tony, we would be another startup with just an idea.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, firstly, huge shout out, thank you for the support we've had and the incredible, incredible backing that's given us the capital to accelerate because you can't scale conservation without the capital to do that.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Andrew, how important do you think it was for us to recognise the capital arm of the business alongside the conservation and intelligence when it comes to finding talent and being competitive in the marketplace for people?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's gonna be massive for the future.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: When I do interviews with people, it's really fascinating.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: They've seen the amazing branding, but I always go back to the mission to scale conservation, and I love the symmetry of those two words.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the scaling part is just critically important because we want to do more, we want to have more impact, we want to be able to deliver more restoration, more so that has to have capital behind it, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like we just can't do it without it, right?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: Do you do you still get it where early on we'd get people confusing the fact that because it's oxygen conservation, that we're a charity rather than a commercial business?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like fee, do you do you hear that still?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think increasingly less.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know particularly during sort of intern programmes, people would come and they wouldn't be quite sure what sort of business we were.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people sort of think that a commercial enterprise and conservation don't sit well together.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: But as you know, Andrew says, how how can you do one without the other?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and historically we've only ever been able to do not we, but you know, in the UK, we've seen conservation at a kind of micro scale, you know, very, very local scale, local, local nature reserves.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And as now the government's kind of intention moves towards landscape scale restoration, you've got to have a different model to do it.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what we're trying to prove.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked about making the market, and I think that's exactly what we're doing.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Chris, you've you've broke two world records for the highest price received for carbon credits: 125 at Woodland and 100 at Peatland.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: How important is the commercial side of what we do to scaling this market?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean basically, it's not gonna work.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: If this is not a viable business, we're not gonna scale conservation.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: We're just gonna do some nice pilot projects and then Yeah, they're gonna be little and not like local nature reserves, which are which are lovely, but they're not changing anything.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: We're not, yeah, we're not gonna get to 250,000 acres of land being restored for nature without being able to make money and make it profitable.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was at a round table at Parliament yesterday where everyone was sort of sat around the table trying to figure out how the government can support nature markets and get stuff off scale.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of investors there and a lot of pension funds.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody wants to invest in nature, particularly UK nature.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's exciting, it's impactful, it delivers.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is where money wants to be.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, a pension fund with a£500 million remit can't invest in a pilot project that's sort of, you know, 20 acres, 100 acres.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: It can only invest in things at scale and have the sort of capital management systems that allow them to invest millions of pounds of money.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is someone's money, and it can't just be allocated without really serious, you know, procedures in place to make sure it's managed properly.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that sort of like professionalization and being able to create a system which can handle proper capital and deliver it and manage it effectively.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we've never had before.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And like without that, we can't scale and we can't grow what we're trying to do.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, the capital side of it is as important as the conservation side of it because they can't exist without each other.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: Sophie, um I I imagine we'll have announced this by this point that you are the managing director of auction conservation, leading the entire delivery side of the business.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um what's changed the most for you in your time coming in conservation?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh OC and tiny.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think now just the scale of the business and the number of people involved in the mission.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm coming up to three years, and as I say, the kind of um the essence of OC and what you want to achieve has been consistent throughout, but the number of people now involved, we've got, you know, brilliant estate managers, we've got estate rangers working alongside them.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've got proudly that you've got to recruitment, Andrew.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm saying.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: Andrew is great at high okay.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, everybody jokes about well, what was their number when they came into OC?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I think we sort of rapidly lost, you know, lost count after you and I came in, and because there's just been this incredible sort of um swell of talent.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't buy it out.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and now it's you know it's it's incredible to see that in action, both in terms of um, you know, the estate teams who are, you know, well-hefted to place, but also the central team who are so excited to get out to each of those estates and to support all of the projects.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, even before that, you know, the acquisition process, you know, because so many of the team are involved in assessing the opportunities that come in that you know everybody just wants to to get involved in in everything, really.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: There has been a really marked shift, I feel like, at the beginning.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone did everything and everyone was doing basically the same job and just working together as this team, and now we've just got incredible specialists who are brilliant at every sort of specific aspect of the business, which is cool to see.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: How um I'm gonna ask you about culture in a minute, but how how do we find this time?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: So we've um we can't convey it to people how like because you sound mad when you start talking about it, but everyone's incredible.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, look at the estate managers.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: You think about who manages our estates, we've got like a BMX rider, a model, a pilot, a um biologist.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's just and two of those people also have PhDs.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's just this ridiculous ensemble of people who are just incredibly brilliant across a range of different yeah, and these people have never before been managing that an entry-level person in finance with a PhD in data analytics and brings.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Which is that's the bar now if you haven't, you know.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: Adam Art, one of our incredible board members, came in uh yesterday to our senior management team meeting and said to Alice, Am I reading this CV What have we done?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, that's amazing.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: How do you do it, Andrew?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_03: How do you find this these transcendent talents?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's very much a we.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it starts with the mission that we've talked about.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: People can see our material, which is massive.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I say to Elle, our head of marketing, all the time, if it's not for the brand and for the awesome work that they do, it's just me shouting into the void with nobody listening when I put a job ad up.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, but people see the authenticity and it connects when they meet us.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, like they love the website, they love all the visuals that we put out, and then they see it like that's a cool company.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: They see the mission, they connect with it, and then they always match with one of the MOUs, and we ask questions about that, and then they meet us and they're like, Oh, this is for real, and there's an authenticity to it.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then just ask-I sometimes ask that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: I some so I I still get to meet the final candidates once they've all passed through the process, which we keep asking, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: Is that still the right thing to do?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: Should I do it?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: Does it look decadent and unnecessary?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: And we keep coming back to no, for the person, they need to look me in the eye and go, No, this guy's not full of shit.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: He actually he actually means it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I asked that question.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, So you've seen our marketing stuff.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe we're just really good at marketing.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to Penny, L and the team, they are.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, how do you know it's it's true?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: And the thing I get back more than anything is there's just so much.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: The writing and the podcasts and the vlogs and and all of it, you couldn't fake that.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's just too much to make it insincere.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: Penny going, maybe could with AI though.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, on the on the culture side end, oh actually, no, let's um let's not leave recruitment full stop.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um Chris mentioned it earlier, so many people are involved in in that process.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: How important is that to what we do?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's critical.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you talked about the growing teams that we have.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things that I don't want to lose.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you interview with auction conservation, if you make it through the entire process, we think you'll meet at least seven people across the team.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's so important for the candidate experience.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like you've gone to an interview, done an hour in a room with somebody left, and then been offered a job, you're like, Well, who are these people and what are they really about?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's great for the candidate, it's great for us because the decision making is so much better.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like the nuance that you would pick up would be different from mine, for example.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it also for the team helps bring them together because when that person's onboarded, even if you've not met them in the process, you know somebody that has, and they're vouching for them.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there's like to get deep on the psychology, there's a bit of in-group behaviour there, which is us saying, We want this person to come into our team, to our tribe, and to do this awesome stuff.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you like you might not have met them directly if they work in a different part of the business, but you know, Rich has, I have, for example.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you're like, Oh, I want to meet this person, which again reinforces the point about it's best for the person when they join, and ultimately we're trying to set them up to for high performance, so it starts when they first meet us, or actually when we first see the brand.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: A pattern we've seen lately is where we've had people that have moved on for the business either because they haven't performed at a level and we've asked them to move on, or they've gone for different chapters of life.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: Every single time we've replaced, we've made a step change at a more valuable price point.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: How on earth are you doing that?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not intentional, it's always let's do our absolute best to articulate what we want from this in a really engaging way, and let's put it out and then let's meet some people.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there could be a number of factors, it could be that the brand resonates with people who I think there's a coalescence between our company and what we're putting out into the world and this generation of people who want to change the world, and I think we're seeing that, and it is moving away from the social scale.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: If you'd have said that five years ago, we'd have been laughed at or criticised for being like um braggadocious about the phrasing, but it's not that it that phrase is they want what they do to matter, they they want to come to work knowing that it has gonna have a positive impact if all goes well, and it it's not a pointless thing, they're not getting out of bed in the morning for something that doesn't matter.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: How important do you think the the sort of scale and conservation mission that is core is to the business still?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think it's absolutely essential, and I think you speak to any of the estate managers, they're still driven by that.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that that point on recruitment, I think, is is absolutely right.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: All of us feel that it's such a timely mission with a nature crisis and and um the climate crisis.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you see, you know, the work on the ground or you see the approvals and you go through the iterations of a scheme design and you know that each one of those is a bit painful, but it's going to make something better.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know the thing, the thing for me about OC is is the pace and the momentum, you know, and you've driven that since since day one by giving people autonomy to go and do the right thing.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we are all we're all on the same page with that.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: We know what the common goal is, we know what good looks like, and we want to get after it's functional.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's the thing.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, like we've had some meetings lately where people come, look, we're scaling now.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Should we put this process in and this system and this?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I just I keep fighting so hard that I want the least infrastructure necessary because I think every bit of bureaucracy you put in doesn't slow one person down, it slows everybody down, and that compounds and manifests.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, you you've been such a a great ally in terms of that of like, no, I don't want more structure.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: I want to work in a place where there's a lot of structure.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, me too.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Don't want to repeat that again.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: It just depresses everything, it stifles innovation and creativity, and it just you just get a homogenous, you know.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: One of mine is no one crosses the road for vanilla ice cream.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you just get pasteurized like milk powder eventually.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't work in like in the AI age where everything's happening so fast and there's so much innovation and so much creativity.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't work to get loads of super talented young people and say do exactly as you're told to have any innovation.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody wants to just leave.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's it's even more impressive, I think, given how much is going on, like companies like Enthropic and OpenI are growing so fast and paying people so much.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that we can still bring people into this sector into conservation and get them really excited to be here, like the best people in the country wanted to come here.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's really yeah, that's amazing.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we've got an amazing guy on our team, Matt.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: And um come from the top first at Cambridge.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: How on earth you got him, geez.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um well, shout out to Triados actually, because uh Matt's dad, director at Triados, knows our work really well, mentioned the company to Matt.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: All of a sudden, we've got a talent there that just that five years ago the sector could not get a Matt, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, not a thing, not not a chance whatsoever.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um what what I adore about Matt is so we're having a conversation going, look, we need to make sure we are continuing to invest and push so hard on AI and stuff, or a tech company will come along and steal Matt away from us.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: She looked at me and went, I work for a tech company.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Yeah, you do, yeah, you do.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: I was so I was so proud of that.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh so spot stories, what are your I'll go to Andrew first and come around this way.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: What is your favourite recruitment story?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there are so many.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the one that just jumps into my mind is Ben Bidmead from Rigaudi.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: The the story is fantastic from him applying for an ecologist, which was one of the first jobs that I posted.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't quite the right fit then, but we kept in touch, and his passion just like jumped out of the screen.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then when we're thinking about estate managers, this was at the time where we didn't know what an estate manager looked like.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: And we really struggle with estate manager because we're trying to create a role that didn't exist in remote locations where you pull up so we'll get a thousand candidates for a role, but not on an estate because you have to physically be in a place, so you're cutting down the country to a tiny geography.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: So it took us a year to get good at finding estate managers.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I reached out to to Ben, it went to his junk folder.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: He only caught it because, like, he never checks his job, but just so happened to do it.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Came through that interview process, absolutely smashed it.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Dave, who is the hiring manager, head of operations, loved him.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I got to phone him, and he was literally sat in going traveling home around a bunch of people, just like in tears, because he was like, I love this.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is and like just a wonderful moment because you get the opportunity to bring somebody to and not only do you get the opportunity to make that offer, Ben lives it every day.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like he can feel it, loves it.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: And since you go to Invergaldi, since Ben's been there, you can feel like what he brings to it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's like tangible, it's incredible.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the estate management impact, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like he has been like, this landscape, this is yeah, I am going to be the custodian of this place.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: So we were able to also fast forward a year, we got to promote him when the whole team was up at his estate.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: Oh god, I cried so much.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: It was the worst bit.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, in fact, uh, Penny, thank you for producing that better than it looked.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I I was sobbing so much I couldn't get the speech because I was just so proud of him, but I couldn't look at him as I was doing the because I knew I was gonna go as soon as I looked at him because he didn't know this was coming.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: And we had like 40 of the team up there on his estate, this beautiful dinner in a barn, and and his face when we promoted oh, that was one of my favourite moments.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, awesome.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yours?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm prone to sometimes being a little bit over the top and exaggerating.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm aware of that.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: I've occasionally had to roll back on things I've said at various points in my career.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: One of them in particular, which gets brought up a lot, is around interns and the internship programme.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well I said something along the lines of there's nothing an intern could do that would impress me.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: You did say that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not fucking interested in this because there's nothing getting everybody that'll ever.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: In much nicer terminology than that.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, in that.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: You weren't even there.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's legendary.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Probably said we went, yeah, fair enough questions.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: But then within what, two or three weeks, I had to eat my words and completely do a 360 on it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because one of the people who came through that was Esme Evans, who's just the most incredible.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: She was the most incredible internet I've ever seen.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, within a few weeks we were sort of talking, we need to get her a job, which needs to be her full-time.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: So we were we were sat in Wales, weren't we?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh at an estate there, Mia and Simon Stainer.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to Simon, our kind of daily job.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: And Esme doing a monologue about blue carbon for about 20 minutes and like held court.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: And we just went, right, do you want a public job?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: Slam dunk job.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: Andrew, when we when you have something like that and you just know, what is it that you just know?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, you get those feelings where because every so often you'll ring and go, I've got it, job done.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like Ed at doorback was another one, you're like, it's done.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like absolute slam dung.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: What is it we're reading there?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: What are we picking and going, that's a hell yes?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a mix of like other of deep thought and an emotion.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: The deep thought is like, what do we need for this job?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: The characteristics of credentials, and you screen it and you read the CV, and then you get to do the virtual interview, and then they just start playing the right notes throughout that, and that's what it feels like.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: It just feels like someone's absolutely nailing it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I think about interviews, the more I think they're about building trust or that somebody is doing an exceptional job of saying, I have got these this ability or this knowledge or this passion where I think I can, you know, I can do this job with you really well.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And when somebody does that and articulates it really clearly, you you just know and you just feel this connection to the person.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: There was a moment as well where I got a call from Lara who was managing Esme at the time, and she was like, Esme's been here for a few weeks.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: She's done all the work I set uh, she's actually found my to-do list and started ticking stuff off from for me.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really know what to do with this.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Say thank you.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I mean she still does it to this day.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: She just basically runs the Natchez Capital team now, and I just do what she says.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: And what was exciting though is she's now doing her intern and internship process, and she's got the next Esme Evans who's already pushing her and being more unreasonable than she was.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's been an incredibly exciting.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Come on then, Fee.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think um, you know, I've been lucky, as lots of us have to be, to be involved in lots of lots of recruitment over the last 12, 18 months.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, an example of how somebody comes in and then moves through the business for me is is the brilliant Archie Barnes at Mornacot.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um two years ago we were recruiting for an ecotourism coordinator um at Mornacotte and um interviewed a number of candidates, but you know, Archie came in, just incredible attitude, really, good understanding of the business, you know, good attention to detail, just a lovely way of articulating what he was about.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we offered him the job, and actually in in the intervening period, you know, he's gone from ecotourism coordinator to Mornacott Estate custodian to now being Mornacott Estate Manager.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, he's um he's now managing Laura, who's our new eco-tourism coordinator, he's also managing the Leon Estate, which is in reasonable proximity, and you know, just just elevating everything that we do in that part of the world and really.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: The estate feels different because Archie's there, he brings it to life.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: It is the engagement of people.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: The other massive thing I think that helped do is so Charles had got 18 years of his life committed into that estate, and I never thought there was any chance he'd be willing to step away from it, even though he needed to step up to be our head of estates.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: Because he trusted Archie to do it, he stepped away seamlessly, like and actually focused on a bigger thing.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I suppose there's a point there about um lots of businesses try and get someone in and say, Okay, you've fit solved the problem for us, stay there, don't move.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: Why are we so happy to push people on and and push them through the system, Andrew?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think we are genuinely thinking in to put it in a sporting context, we're thinking about building a dynasty.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: So a dynasty is no, you know, you get a team that wins a championship.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think we're thinking about multiple championships over the prolonged period of time.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Then you start to think, well, how do you do that with these super talented people who are coming into the sector?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is you help the development.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's why we have to scale.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have if we stayed small, I'm not saying we're small, well, yeah, if we stay small like we are now, um there's not enough room for the talent.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: There's not enough, like we will not be able to, and we've mentioned a few here, but every time you're telling a story, you know, I I cry a lot, evidently, when I do recruitment.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like I cried when I offered you your job.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: I cried in Elle's interview.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Why didn't I get any tears?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because you didn't believe me.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: I've done lots of tears for you since you've arrived, if that helps.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: You're my favourite, you know that.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um I just think about the the young talent.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: We've mentioned some of them, but Caris was an amazing recruitment story, who's who's changed the business.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: Ellie Millington, who's just an astonishing person.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we've just we've got 10 or 12 people.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: Penny sat behind the screen, like just the most incredible talent.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: And um, outside of Exco, the average age of this business is 28 years old.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's a ston if you even if you throw us into the mix, it's like 32.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean Dan dragged that up.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but that means we're not gonna peak for 10 or 20 years, and that's why we need to create the room for that talent.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you definitely definitely you can feel it.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're gonna talk about oxygen intelligence later, but that's kind of come from hiring people, really good people who are really good at data, and they basically built a business and pushed it to us, and like they're growing it.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like we have to sort of match their ambition, otherwise they won't be working here, they'll be working, you know, in a sex somewhere else.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't want to call it attention because it's it's a it's more of a positive force.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but when you work with somebody and they're like, I did it with Karis the other day, and it literally said, Oh, well, we you know, we did this thing in SharePoint, and she literally just turned around to me.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, Andrew, we can do something much better.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: I I in fact, your interview, right?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: I remember interviewing you, and it was the first time in my life that I went, Oh shit, this guy's cleverer than me.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I went, this guy's cleverer than me.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: This is amazing! Like, let's get him in.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was three hours of us yelling concepts at each other.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'd loved it too.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Elaine, who was the former head of HR at Auction House, who was helping us at the time, she was pretty frightened.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think she enjoyed it.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: She was like, she was like, that was um, yes.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly knows his stuff.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I think all of us have probably worked in organizations where there's been a bit of competitive tension and that there isn't enough room for everybody.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think that isn't an enjoyable place to be.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's career flourishes there.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas here, you know, we have we've got the pace and the momentum that actually somebody comes up with something brilliant or sees somebody else do something who wants to be involved or they want to do the equivalent in that part of the business.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think it's such a joyous place to be.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I'd ever forgive myself if someone left the business going, I was bored, I wasn't challenged, I didn't have enough to do.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: If someone leaves and goes, look, too much for me, too fast, too challenging, that total respect, you will help you find the next thing, no problem.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's a choice.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: If if if someone leaves because they haven't been challenged, then I've fucked up and failed.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: We haven't built the business that I promised we were doing.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I think you also coach Exco not to kind of be um, what's the word, like selfish in terms of being like, oh, I'm gonna do this.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, no, no, you should be sharing that and giving somebody else the opportunity to learn to do it, which is you know, good, good for everybody.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to a wonderful lady called Crystal Moore who worked in the Environment Agency and about 20 years ago, when I used to go on leave, I would I would say, Oh, I've done all my work, it's great, wonderful.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: She just looked at me and went, I didn't realise you were a selfish person.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, What?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: She's like, Why would you take the opportunity away from somebody else to learn something can grow?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: And that fundament Isn't it funny the people in your career that offer a soundbite or a coaching point that fundamentally change what you're doing there?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: It is amazing to see how much responsibility and autonomy people get at an early stage in their career.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like they can come in and you just give them as much as they can handle.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: You say, Yeah, great, do it, do it, do it.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: And like you give people that and they just they you know it's incredible to see how fast.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing we give that's super important is though, when you fuck up, because you will, yeah, that's our fault.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: And explicitly mine.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: So and it just it just takes the worry away.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you are never going to be criticized here for making a mistake or dropping something.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: You will be criticized if you're have bad values or you don't help other people or you don't take a chance.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's a such an important part of our culture.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's an underrated part of our culture.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think from the outside you'll hear the high performance and you'll hear the wonderful mission, we're so driven.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: We don't actually talk about the fact that we're quite accepting of mistakes.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: We recognize that we need to push the boundaries and get things wrong in order to learn and to move forward.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't feel, I guess sometimes you get people who the perception of how it must feel to work here is very different to the reality of it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: People think it must be this like super intense kind of 80s bank culture where everyone's really cutthroat and competitive.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: But it feels really like secure and safe, and you've got this platform to just kind of push on and do stuff, and people around you have got you.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: We had it last week whereby someone made a mistake that meant I had to pick up a load of stuff later and I was away with my family, had to deal with it.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um I noted how the system had broken, but me, Andrew, and the line manager went, look, I don't want the person to know they messed this up because they were in a difficult spot at home, they're under a load of stuff.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: It it wasn't the compassionate thing to do for them to know it was a problem.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I was like, I'll just solve it, not a problem, we move on.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then, but in the future, we make sure the systems don't allow that to happen again.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um but it's difficult to communicate that because you sound too self-congrating.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: High five, we're not idiots or like we're not monsters, but it is you you give the feedback as soon as possible when the person can receive it and accept it.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: But also I feel like we're doing so many things for the first time, and I look particularly at Chris because your team are just constantly pushing the boundaries or doing something of a scale that hasn't been done before.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like we you've got to you've got to test the waters, and you're not always gonna be able to get the outcome you want or within the time scale you want because nobody's made that ask before.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I think just the act of like going through that process and going, oh well, actually, now we've done it here, we can do it elsewhere is so motivating.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: Just the people and the value.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I love the fact that you always quote no dickheads.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: No dickheads.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: If there are no other sound bites from this podcast means you need no dickheads.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: But it's but that means we don't have to berate anyone or tell them off when they get something wrong.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: We have to pick them up.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's hard.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, people are devil.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: You're the fucking worst.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like if if you make half a mistake, I have to put you back together.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't like the mistake.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: No, of course you don't.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're not alone in that.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Getting a fair amount of coaching across the team.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: And other people at other companies might be coaching, like, how do you motivate this person?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have to be like, how do you teach people to give themselves a break when you make a little mistake?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: We've just hired an amazing new PA.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember having the conversation with her recently going, look, every single person, however amazingly talented in OC, has fallen over because you're pushing yourselves to new limits, new standards.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's going to happen.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: And for people who haven't worked in a high performance environment anymore, they've not done it.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like Matt Matt was the same example when I spoke to him, like, you have a CV that's not believable.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: Have you ever failed anything?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, maybe once everyone.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, okay, right.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: You're going to fail because we won't stop.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: And when you are the cleverest person in the room, which lots of people who come to us have been, all of a sudden, it we same narrative.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: We get down like, wow, it's really overwhelming here because everyone's good.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't stop.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: Every meeting you go to, you're like, bloody hell, they're great, and they're great, and they're great.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: How on earth do you put the support in for that, Andrew?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think one of the key things that I go back to because we have these people who are aligned with our values and they're awesome people, but they also see all the best characteristics in the people that we're they're working with, which is partly by design, because we're looking for these people who want to see that wonderfulness in other people.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: But then you have to also kind of explain that actually what you're seeing when you look at the rest of the team is all of their highlights, but that doesn't diminish what you're doing, and you have to remember that you're probably looking at your like the two percent that you get wrong.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell you the exact question that I asked to do that, which is like, have you got a to-do list?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone's like, Yes, I have a to-do list.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do you ever look at what you've done?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then everyone goes, Nope, don't look at that.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, which is like you do so much great work, sometimes just pause and look back and think, This is that I've done well, and that's because we want to build confidence.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you build confidence by looking at what you've done and generating some success, so that when you inevitably drop the ball, make a mistake, do the thing, you're like, no, this is okay.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like this can all the um all the young people have existential crises when they meet Chris.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they all come back and go, Oh god, I've just met Chris.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not as clever as Chris, mate.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Don't worry about it, no one is.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't think so.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't run as fast as you say, oh, don't worry about it.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, it's like it can't function in society.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's not deficient.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can't open it at door, don't you think then?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, on that congratulatory thing though, celebration of success, we had it like our team, you know what our the NATCAP and data team and Oxygen Intelligence achieved over the last six, twelve months.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's ridiculous, you know.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: World record prices, starting up a whole new business, spinning off these new products and services with a tiny team in a ridiculous short amount of time.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: And at no point had we ever like talked about it or celebrated it.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: We'd just be like, right, what's the next thing?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: What's the next thing?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: What's the next thing?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: So one thing we did at our peer review um day this year was to sit down.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: We had a bottle of champagne and we toasted all the things we'd achieved.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: None of the people in our team are like do that.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: They just go on for the next thing, and we don't like we we celebrate the moment, so like all our meetings are loud and congratulatory, but we don't stop and go, yeah.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: And when you put them all together, you do it's it's incredible.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like what what these guys have done in this period of time.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, let's let's go back five years ago.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there was one company that had one estate doing conservation.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the highest price for a carbon credit at that point would have been sub 20 pounds, probably.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, BNG didn't exist.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there was no portfolio.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: There was all the companies in the sector now were not there.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: There was no podcast, there was no books, there was no like it nothing existed.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: We've built everything from scratch over the last five years.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: That's just mad.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be faster, right?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Andrew, you you want stop to meeting mid-flow.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a general discussion about how um culture's got to get how you cannot keep your culture as you as you scale, it's gonna get worse as a business.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: How do you protect your culture?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: And this is one of the best interjections I've ever heard, almost as good as George suggesting we should hire a head of space.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: You stopped and went, where's the assumption the culture won't get better as we get bigger?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it was amazing.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: Talk to that point.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: Why, how did you come from that unique perspective?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: And how have we made the culture?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because I honestly think the culture has got better as we've got bigger.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: How have we done that?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is something that I saw a long time ago, and I kept asking people about it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I would go to HR events or anybody that I would be involved in.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever seen a company that's grown and their culture hasn't got worse when they were like, no, it just like it just does.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to lower your talent bar and you have to like you get more people, you don't know each other.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: And a bit like how we like how we do things that we've never already done before, you just have to flip it and say, Well, hang on a minute, why can't we just take the complete opposite perspective?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I dived into the detail of how we do that, we had this we have the amazing mission that is a guiding North Star.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: You've got values that you want people to aspire to that genuinely reflect who we actually are, not something we just wrote on the wall with the people or the company we hope.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Or the CEO rocks around with t-shirts written on the side.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, subtle reminder to the values that we have.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that, and then we don't we don't like look to maintain the um the kind of like standard that we operate in.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: We always look to get better, we're always looking for ways to improve, and we always look to people who can come in and like add to the team and do something incredible that makes us better in a meaningful way.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when you do that, it's only going to make us better, which is wonderful because the business just keeps getting more complex, which I don't understand.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because Chris keeps going to do things that have never been done before, and we get more and more states.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the one doubt the one thing that we want to watch for is like the teams are becoming more formed.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: You notice that, uh and we've got these wonderful teams of people, and like I would love that you and your team are celebrating, that's great.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: We in though as a business are gonna continue to message that collaboration people, like continuing to like encourage us all to work together.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: I think the thing that we I mean, recruitment, you're my baby, right?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Talent identification, and we've been doing it.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: I I I tallied it up, but I think we must have been involved in almost a thousand recruitments together over 20 years, going back to like the intern programs and the public sector stuff.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: I think because we will never drop that bar.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we how many times have we said we're just not recruiting?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: We're not recruiting.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: If we don't get the bar, we'll just wait.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: We won't fill it, we'll change a role or whatever.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: Because of that, I think that's the single biggest protection for the culture part.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: But then the infrastructure that we've we've built around that, so like team events.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: Fee, can you talk to your views about how important the team events are in terms of how we do them?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we um get together quarterly um on an estate and we bring the whole team together.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we I won't say we we don't work for those two or three days.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: But sorry, George.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we we do work because we're all together, but we try not to do external meetings, we try to really immerse ourselves in the landscape and outing that into every key review, George.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, couldn't we just put a working section and have a laptop title guy?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, George, we can go and enjoy the estate.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it is it is a great opportunity for collaboration, but generally people are encouraged to go and take part in different estate activities.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: Think stanties.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ding Stee Shanties is a forthcoming one.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to see that picked up in June.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I just looked at Elena and she's like, what on earth is a stick shanty?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: Who's like, what?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to do a follow-up episode on this moment.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, it brings everyone together.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the point about everybody's working on a, you know, a huge range of different things across very big geographies, but then to all come together in one place for that very sort of, you know, um intense amount, you know, it's a lot of face time, it's a lot of time sort of walking, biking, running, you know, whatever we might be doing on those estates.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's so important then to see the transition that's occurred probably since some of those people were there last.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and actually, if we now did one a quarter, you wouldn't get around all the estates, you know, on a on a three-year cycle for some people.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the changes now on the ground that we're into delivery and implementation stages are just going to be more and more motivating, I think, every time people go to be connected back to the mission and to see those changes on the ground.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and culturally, it's wonderful because whoever is in the team has has had something, some involvement in in that project.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've spoken to the finance team before who have said, oh, well, I now understand, you know, what that supply has been doing, and I've been talking to them about, you know, this or like everybody has an emotional touch point to to the work that's being done.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: Is there a favourite team event that stands out?
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for me it's um it's I didn't make it to to Dorback this year, but it's doorback 2025 because I'd been lucky enough to go to Dorback probably four times the year before pre-acquisition.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of people in the team had been involved in in the acquisition process, but not everybody had seen it on the ground.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then to have probably at that time 30 of us there um and lots of people seeing it for the first time.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I it was there was just something about that one.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was it's the beauty of it, it was the scale of it, it was the potential of it.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's gorgeous.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we did so much, didn't we?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think we did sort of 25k um biking.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: We ran, we walked, we were in the snow, we were in the rivers.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was magic.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: Favourite team event?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not the one where I drifted off to America and I drowned in a ocean environment.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: I think that was your first thing, wasn't it?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: My first day.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_02: The person who was there to rescue me was Elle.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, not particularly helpful.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um busy explained to you that you were gonna hit Ireland first.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: We were co-steering off the Welsh coast.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it was very cold.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was very cold, and the current was quite strong.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: We were quite close to the shore.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, uh one that really stands.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, wait, wait.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: You were the only person in the yellow point, CA does well.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know how the instructors read it on you, like that day beast is dugged out.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it was Yeah, it's always been like that.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Alright.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I really vividly remember the snow day at Invergeldie.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was just this sort of like picture perfect Scottish Highlands day covered in storm.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: We had like coffee and donuts outside and a snowball fight.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that morning, I just remember opening the curtains and seeing Invergeldie blanketed in snow.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it just felt like this is this is Narnia.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: It just felt ridiculous that I was at work and this is what I do now.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: I love doing that.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Still want to go to Invergeld, I still get that feeling of like.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: I can't believe this is my job.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: I I love doing that to people.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: So we'll be e-biking across somewhere or walking across the set.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: I go, by the way, guess what?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: You're at work.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, Yeah.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I think people have a tough time remembering that.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've spoken to people in my team who say, Oh, I haven't got much work done.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, This is work.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, connecting with it and being with the team is because we don't have a single physical place, effectively, all those touch points, the water cooler moments, the time you'd have together, we have to pack them into those special events.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the beauty of it is they are more special, so they do mean more, so they're more impactful, so they do sustain that culture.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: What about you?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: Favourite team event?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was all back 2025.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: I went to Alvy Moore with my dad on holiday when I was a kid, and it just took me back.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and for those that know me, like my parents divorced when I was five, so that time with my dad was really special.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: So when you go back to Alvy Moore, there was the emotional connection and the landscape is incredible.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now the activities did nearly break me.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a picture of me just like lying in the fetal position in the heather because e-biking after a morning of hiking was just too much.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: But the uh, so yeah, this wonderful kind of juxtaposition between my wonderful emotional connection with the place and be completely exhausted by the entire experience.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's a good encapsulation of what it's like to work here.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it is, yeah.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Q zero this year.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Monaco coaching people on decision making, and um, the team, amazing shout out to the Monaco team, turned one of the barns into a beautiful red carpeted casino.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: And we, you know, we spend all our time well more often than not in outdoor clothes and gear and on a hillside.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: So it was the first black tie thing we'd done, and it was just seeing the interaction and and the fact we had Peter Harker, who's like the leading senior accountant in the sector, turn up and guess Delt and coach.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: But you like fleeced every single possible base of that.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, both of you just have a poker and like rinsed everybody.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: I love the way we connect stuff.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: So so so that's another reason why we won't lose the culture because how you do anything is how you do everything.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: We don't just do something.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: If we're gonna do a team event, it's got to be connected and authentic.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: So we're we're recording this ahead of our summer team event, which will be in in Cornwall.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: We'll hosting for the first time.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Another incredible hire.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um but it's so cornish, like he's got pasties there and she and sea shanties, and and it's playful, but it's authentic and real and connecting things.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's a real celebration of it.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, it's really cool.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: So what we talk about a lot is a say do gap.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: So we've picked a man in the culture.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: How how important is the fact that we're consistent about our values and the standards we hold to people and that we we don't deviate from that?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think the daily interventions are absolutely critical.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I sometimes think so.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes we kind of think, is this worth talking about?
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a small, like, oh, how are we gonna like we ended up?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: I love our conversations, and you're like, is it worth talking?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're masquerading your closet, just watching the clock, yeah.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Probably could be sitting down right now.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, but we talk we talk in an in a leadership team meeting about the way that we implement an expenses policy.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I think it had a cultural impact.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we are always looking out for those things that have a positive or a potentially negative impact on the culture, and then we'll challenge ourselves on them.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times we'll we'll back those things around and say, no, this is good, good to explore it, this is great.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: But then sometimes we will catch a very specific um, you know, it's the point about maintaining the standard.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you'll just say, Yeah, that looks okay.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll think it's okay because mostly I'm just a little bit more laid back than you are.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: You might not have got that from interacting with us, but you'll think, well, no, because if we say if that invite goes or that team event happens and it's not connected a connected, unauthentic, then it can it has a knock-on impact to two or three things, and then if those things happen, we could end up in a worse situation from a cultural perspective.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that I do think that's important, and I think that's overlooked.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's it's not difficult, but I think it's tough to prioritize because there are so many other things that you could do that that would, on the face of it, appear more important with your time.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I think sometimes knowing when to zero in on the detail is important, you know, knowing when I forget the podcast, it was at IRCEO one where we were talking about design.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the idea of like getting the design good enough and then shooting right into the details of something as you're getting close to finishing it.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think culture's a bit like that as well.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like get the big picture right and then let people be free, but then watch for those things that if you let that go by, or if you say to somebody, do more of that, like give us more of that, can really ignite and propel us forward.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: Has there been any examples you guys can remember where our culture has been testing, we've had a yes, no decision or something where we've had to go actually no, this is who we are, and we need to do it that way.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've got I think I've got two.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a general point around prioritization.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because although Andrew does all this excellent recruitment, you need to do more because we're still very lean.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what Chris is brilliant at doing is saying that's distraction, we're not doing that.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think you have that in enough businesses because there are so many things we could be going after, and everybody's so passionate about it.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Occasionally you're really good at just kind of correcting that where we spend it.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, I love I I love it.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: I love the line you've got to have yeah, we that needs to be better.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's such well, you do it too, but it's such a healthy challenge for someone to say, hang on, that's that's great and that's nice, and in an ideal world, of course we'd be doing that.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: But we've got limited time and limited resources, and that's where the impact happens, and that's so good.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think um my other point was gonna be around recruitment, where we've had some quite robust discussions around keeping the bar.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, I've I've learned a lot from that, and we've we've had this discussion about, you know, I've said to you, I want somebody to come in and hit the ground running.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you've said to me, There's nobody out there that's basically that's ever run as fast as we need them to.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not about that, it's about their potential.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a real mindset change, I think, for me.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because early on, you struggle to hold people to your standards.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: So your standards are astonishing for you, which is why you are leaving everything in conservation, but you wouldn't demand it of others, why not?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think um basic character flaw.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I don't I don't really know.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I should probably do some unpacking of that with Andrew in a coaching session.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because actually I see that you know, everybody else hold a standard across the business a lot, and it's been really useful for me to see that and to now understand that you can say to somebody, oh, actually, as you just said, I loved what you did there, but actually that wasn't what I was expecting.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: That that isn't a difficult conversation if you do that um, you know, feedback in the right.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well look at your recruitment now, like Hannah and Laura and Brian is just amazing.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, incredible people and so additive to the business.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at the things that Hannah produces with, you know, no instruction, she just sees the opportunity and goes, Well, I can I can't.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: That proactivity is so many people bash young people now for their work ethic enough.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_03: They're not the people we work with, they're just picking the wrong ones.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: The people we work with, how how often do you hear Exco go, I wouldn't get in now?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I wouldn't get in.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure I'd get an interview now in the intention.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so glad I'm in.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: So glad I'm in.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_03: They'd think I was a bit much.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a bit much.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_03: Go on, what's your rant around?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a positive rant, but I think I I love the how you do we've got Richard's bullshit bingo.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of my favourite phrases.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's brilliant.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's completely fundamental to what we're doing as business.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: When we were first talking early on, we were talking about we need to do carbon credits, that's a key part of natural capital.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: The carbon market at the time was seen as being, you know, distrustful, full of fraud, and people didn't believe in the carbon market.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_03: We don't do fraud, Hannah.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: We are vehemently against fraud.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_03: From a leadership perspective, we're anti-fraud.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, got a policy for that.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was in a really, a really bad situation and the market was pulling back, people were saying it was going to collapse.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we sat down and we were like, how do we make how do we make genuinely the best quality carbon credit that's ever been in existence?
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: How do we create that product that people can trust and buy?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: Why did we want that?
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_03: Why did why do we want I I don't know why I wanted it.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: I just thought it was the right thing to do.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it it's what it needed, right?
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when Tesla launched, and you know, when they started electric vehicles, they were pretty they weren't even milk floats.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, milk floats.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then they launched something that was aspirational, quality, impactful, and it changed the whole sector.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that was a conversation we had.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: We needed to change the perception of the carbon.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: You couldn't have our culture if we were trying to produce the cheapest possible carbon credit.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: You can't have a high-performance culture to try and produce.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: We do something that's a bit shit.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bit shit.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: But that I mean, so that and that that like philosophy just filtered through everything we did with our carbon projects and woodland projects.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: It was not about um doing something quick or doing something cheap.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was about how do we do this the best way possible and how do we build these schemes and get the partnerships in place, work with the right partners, and deliver the best schemes that can possibly be delivered.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we've now got to the point where our carbon credits, they're the highest-rated credits in the world, they're getting the highest prices that's ever been seen.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it comes from that single philosophy of like every single time we make a decision, how you do anything is how you do everything, and that commitment each stage to doing the right thing and having impact and having quality.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we've got a business, and that's why you know this is really taking off.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: Without it, I think, you know, it's just another business.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think hats off to you, though, for the your ability to anticipate that and plan for it.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, I came into the business and you had already kind of you had this plan for the natural capital reports for each estate.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is exactly what we've done every year, super transparent about the reports we've done, about the impact you were having.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that we you might have thought of, you know, later down the line and gone, oh, we need to put that in place.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: You've just been you've you've just wanted to be totally transparent about it since day one, which I think goes to the core of of what we were about in terms of the integrity.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's your it's your point about you defend it every day and you protect it every day because some people people loads people approach us, don't they, and say, Oh, I want a high performance culture.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: Can you tell and more often than not, you and I go, No, you don't.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: But because you can't choose a bit of it.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's everything, isn't it?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's why we're all protecting it all the time.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: So it'll be eight o'clock at night, there'll be a decision about something.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: Do we do the cheap, easy thing, or do we stop it and do the thing that no, you stop it and you do the thing that protects your culture is to the right standard.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: But that's tiring, and it is 24-7, 365 for five years.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: And unless you want to play at that level, it's not easy at all.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_02: Also, like we talk about the nature crisis and climate crisis and all things.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: If we're not ready and willing to actually put the time and effort into it, we're not gonna, it's not gonna be fixed.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's not gonna be fixed by like, you know, not trying hard.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_02: We have to try it.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we've got one chance to like try and make an impact.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's why I'm okay that the external presentation is that this is a really hard place to work and it's really um challenging.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because then you come in and it's like, oh wow, there's a lot more support as well.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas actually, if someone arrived and was like, wow, I didn't expect it to be difficult.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: What are you doing?
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'd be like, Well, we've missed sold to you then, haven't you?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, overselling the challenge and underselling the support, I think is a feature of the recruitment that we do, not a challenge.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: From the early days, I've always described that we're a data and a tech company.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_03: Is that true?
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we are in what's probably the most exciting time in the world, in all of human history, to be involved in data and tech of any kind.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're on the cusp of this AI revolution.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: Every week everything's changing.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's just it's astonishing to look at what we can do now compared to what we could do five years ago, compared to what was happening five years ago in the environmental sector.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: The leaps that are happening technologically and data-wise, like week on week, it's just transforming the ability of what's possible.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't possible to have a 50,000-acre portfolio where we could measure every single centimeter and quantify exactly what's happening to water quality, to biodiversity, to carbon, and report on it instantaneously to anyone anywhere in the world.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: It just there's been step change after step change.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: And this is this is why I think the auction intelligence stuff is really exciting.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: We've been building everything from a very focused, you know, when we're doing talking about how you do anything, we need really good data systems in place.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: We can't ever be not seen to be actually delivering what we're doing on the ground.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we've built it sort of meticulously from the ground up.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: But we're now hitting this sort of exponential curve of like all this data we've gathered over five years is now being linked together with like agents and dashboards, and it's it's feels like we're on this cusp of this explosive moment.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it it's incredible.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's just like this time and place at the moment is really exciting.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we had Claudia before Claude, right?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: Who's Claudia, Chris?
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_02: Claudia is our supermodel.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: She is she's basically every single data point we've ever collected across every estate in the entire UK.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: It basically covers every land holding in the UK and has our complete understanding of the soil conditions, the atmospheric conditions, the carbon potential of the colour.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: Hundred different data layers.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hundred different data layers.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's got property, it's got renewables, it's got food production, and it looks at all these complex trade-offs.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: You think about that, you know, previously how you would manage an estate 10, 20, 30 years ago, it was very on the ground, um, desk-based, uh, you know, paper-led.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now, and that simplified what was possible.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now we can do designs, we can design schemes with such precision where we're integrating wind alongside natural capital, alongside food, alongside property, and that that like complexity.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's yeah, that's where something really special happens.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_03: I love the I love the way you can run different simulations and scenarios and and project because we're working in a realm whereby things take decades and generations to change, but using the machine learning and the data approach we've got to stuff, we're able to simulate that for the first time, which is just astonishing.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because the answer is not simple.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: The answer to how do we best manage the landscape or you know, take a 10,000-acre estate, it's not a simple answer.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not plant loads of trees and get loads of carbon.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you can see the schemes, you know, previously that have been delivered on that basis.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: They're not holding up and they don't, they don't last.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_02: The answer is something really complicated, which is you know, this interplay of loads of different land uses into one coherent master plan.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's only possible when you can use data, run simulations, and pull things together and look at the various uh opportunities.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_03: From like we had Claudia literally before Claude, which I I love that anecdote.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: But for years we didn't talk about that because it's it's such a key part of what we do and data and IP security.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: Why now?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: Why do we now feel able to talk about it?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think now we're at this point now where the data and what we're doing is so fundamental how we're operating as a business.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_02: It is a key part of our offer.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think people ask us how we're how we're managing the portfolio and how we're Yeah, they always ask how you buy sites and how you find land, right?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it's it's no longer sort of possible just to sort of say, oh, we can't talk about it.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we have this commitment around radical transparency, like we have to tell people.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we've previously been very careful about that.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: But we are at this point where we've made this decision, we're going to talk about it, we're gonna be more open and share what we've been doing.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's been really interesting to see how that's received and how it's sparking new conversations and setting up new you know connections and pushing forward what we can do.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I think the those fundamental principles that we took from, I mean, our investors, they're wonderful pioneers around data, what they've done.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_03: Literally the D of our DNA, like Mark Dixon, the Alan Turing of this generation, like the inventor of sports statistics, through to Tony Bloom, who is like one of the world's leading decision experts.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, every aspect of this business is underpinned by exceptional data quality and technology.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and transferring that idea.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, moneyball, that was this revolutionary idea that changed football forever and took, I mean, there's a wonderful book, How to Win the Premier League, talks about how Liverpool became you know quick.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: Economics is already also available.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: Lot of tables.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so this idea of like using data to make, you know, transform the way you do something typically in a market, you know, taking that idea and doing it in the land environment sector, it was it was transformational at the time.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah, it's it's shaped how we do things.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: So the thank you I need to do is to uh Greg Jackson and the team at Octopus.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we've known Simon, Jonathan Diggs, Greg for a while now.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_03: It was New York Climate Week last week, uh last year, sorry, was talking to Greg at length about what they were planning to do with Kraken.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: So for those of you who don't know, Octopus Energy, amazing British company, a real inspiration for those of us who want to build British unicorns, them and um DeepMind are like the coolest companies out there that are showing what's possible, what you can do in the UK without moving to the West Coast.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_03: Hold that thought.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what Greg was able to share is their their Kraken, their data platform, kraken in some ways the spirit animal of what we're doing in natural capital.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_03: For ages, people have told us, well, you've got the version of Kraken for natural capital.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: It was Greg saying, you need to talk about this.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're gonna want to raise more capital soon, and we'll we'll come on to that.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_03: Get it out there and talk about it.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a thank you to Greg for the inspiration and thank you to the board for backing us for talking about intelligence for the first time.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the key thing to remember about that is though we haven't built software products and tools with the intention of selling these.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_03: These are what we need to run the business right.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I mean Fee's running the business, she needs a lot of data to run 50,000 acres and do it to the kind of professional quality level that we've been talking about.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: That takes a lot of data, a lot of analytics, a lot of processing.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: So basically, what we've been doing for the past five years is developing the systems and processor to give people the information they need to make better decisions and to be able to actually do their job.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um how is it used on the ground fee?
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: How will the estate teams actually use the data that comes from intelligence?
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I I mean in in so many ways, but you know, when you're saying that, and people who don't love data might be thinking, oh, it sounds like a lot of spreadsheets.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like from my perspective, it's so spatial.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, Lara in particular, you want something, she's like, I've got give you incredible GIS math for that.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what what data do you want?
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see it on the ground and you can feel it spatially, and that really helps with that that mosaic of of land uses that we've got, and how you plan for what goes where and what can sit comfortably together, and what can you overlap and how can we drive the most change from the landscapes that we're in and what's appropriate where and what's the sequencing of things that are going to happen?
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: When's the fencing going in?
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where's it going in?
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean we can take out?
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: When's the planting starting?
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just fundamental to that whole spatial picture of an estate.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I was thinking about what do I think about when I think of an estate, and I sort of immediately just go to the bird's eye view of okay, well, like what's what's happening?
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's only because of that kind of rich data that you can visualize it so well and you do know what's going on around.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: I love the app side of stuff as well.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_03: So, like we've got thousands of gates across the estate.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_03: I love the fact that Lara and the team have built an app that recognizes your phone as you walk up to a gate and provide you with the code.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's a problem that every estate has faced for generations, and all of a sudden we've used a simple text that it's not simple, Lara's fixed it, to solve that problem.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: That and the Deer app and the suite of dashboards that run the compliance side of this thing.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: Because they weren't available before, right?
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, you know, and from my perspective with my old hat on, you know, the property compliance thing to now be able to go in and say, right, well, I know where all the certificates are, I know where all the compliance is for each individual property, I know when it expires, you know, the estate managers can go in and say, right, that's coming up in three months, and they schedule it.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because they've got, you know, they've got the most incredible jobs, but they've got such diverse jobs that are being, you know, pulled in all sorts of different directions by, you know, us as a central team, by our ambitions, but also by, you know, regulatory requirements, by, you know, what the communities might want.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: And for us to have all of that data in live time to always be able to say, okay, well, what is happening or what's what's the next step?
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it just enables us to do everything better and quicker.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, we have we haven't really planned we're going to create all these tools and products and sell them.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's been very much a, you know, fees come be like, we need this, this, and this, and this to do our jobs.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've had this culture of like, right, let's find a solution.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: Is it available?
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, well, can we build it better ourselves and then just build all these apps and piece them together?
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's been so much more efficient as well, because every time you've looked for uh an automated software solution from the people side of things, it's been insanely expensive.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_03: So we've just set about and and built the tools and techniques ourselves.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_03: Can you can you talk about some of the ways we use data and analytics in the people side of the business?
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's really what you're talking about, which is finding the need.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I was really listening and engaged with what you're saying because you're you can't plan this, you just have to wait until the need presents itself and then react to it.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the needs that we had the big thing that we use data on is the daily survey.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we were getting to the stage where remote workforce, if you work in an office and you know somebody, you can watch them walk in the door and think, How are they?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you can have a pretty good guess of do I need to go and speak to them?
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: Are they having a great day?
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do they run into the office?
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: You don't see that when you work virtually.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: When you talk to them, you do get a bit of a sense of it.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the daily survey is literally four questions.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: It takes what 15 seconds to complete it.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: It comes direct to your inbox.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, really simple.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: But what that's allowed us to do is understand exactly how people are feeling on a day to day basis, what's their energy.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Energy like, and how do they feel about their workload?
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: And how many times has that allowed us to have an intervention to check in with somebody and just say, Look, I noticed this score, how are you doing?
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: on the side where their energy is a little bit low, and then so much we get big positive scores from when we've been on a team event or when somebody's celebrating something and we're able to be like, Oh, what caused that?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, Oh, I had this great meeting, or like four tens when the team went to Elena's book launch and stuff like that.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just wonderful things to see, and then so you get to just on that, Andrew.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_03: So people listening to this will be going, Well, that's all well and good, but no one's gonna be honest about themselves having a bad day, they're just gonna lie and say it's fine.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: How do you respond to that challenge?
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you don't trust people, you probably wouldn't be honest.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if you had a bad experience and that information was used against you, I can totally understand what you would think.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, that's not the the world that we live in that we work in.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: When you have a problem, this team rallies around you and supports you.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um my dog passed away like three weeks ago, and I told you about it, I told other people about it, and Karis, who's the wonderful people coordinator to work with me, she just like just came in and just started taking work from me really gently, which is exactly what I needed.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's my personal experience, but I think we've probably all had that.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, maybe it's been a heck of a lot of a workload and a low energy, and somebody's just said, Do you really need to do that thing?
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do you need to be there?
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it just takes somebody sometimes to say it's okay today to not do that.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we we are not good at doing that to ourselves, and I'm not good at doing that.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so sometimes it takes somebody else, but to me, that support, that's like somebody just saying to you, This is okay, we've got you.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's something really nice about that.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_02: You think about data and tech and AI and automation, it feels very impersonal and like non-human, but the way it's being used there, it does make human connection and it makes things much more personal than otherwise would be possible.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: Karis talks about that.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: She talks about if we're going to automate something, we need to create space to then engage with a person.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so we're not trying to automate the daily survey or Karis has just done an amazing onboard hub.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not so that she doesn't speak to them when they're onboard, it's so that they've got everything that they need, a bit like the estate manager dashboard.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_01: Give me all the basic things that I need that free up my brain so we can engage as people.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's critical.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_03: I am one of my favorite people data solutions is so Blash year's interim programme.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: We the year before we get 2,000 applicants in five weeks.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_03: So me and Andrew go, right, we don't want 5,000 applicants because we cannot cope and process it.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: And this is before AI could allow us to help us screen candidates.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, like, right, we'll cut it down to two weeks, it's fine, won't be a problem at that point.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_03: And we get 2,000 applicants in two weeks.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, right, okay, we're going to meet these incredible people, but and we we move the decision-making process.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_03: So, former interns were now doing the first pass on screening and then virtual interviews.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_03: So, the senior management team weren't involved until later in the process.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_03: How do we capture all those data points?
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_03: So there's feedback from the CV and the video interview, and then when we get them in person on each of the different aspects of so much data, so much information.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_03: At the minute, we're just trying to do that in a conversation.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_03: So we say to Lara, what can we do here, Lara?
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_03: And within the space of a week and a half, she's like, Leave it with me.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_03: And spins up this interactive app that allows people to score the various elements of the process.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then we had the entire team with like a visual dashboard.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_03: It was almost like um championship manager or FIFA of all these intern candidates with their photos up there and stuff, and we could have a brilliant what an amazing conversation it was.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_03: And you can see that on the vlog that Penny can link to of us actually being able to give the candidates a way better experience, involve everyone in the decision-making process.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: I spoke to Lara last week and said, Where are we on next year?
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_03: Don't worry, Q3 got it.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_03: We'll have the next iteration version of that.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just amazing that we can build those tools and techniques.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember that conversation with Lara?
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: We would have we had we had a meeting, and Rich was like, you know, the championship manager background was coming out, and he was like, This is what I want, and he's kind of painting the vision.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then you paused and you said, Do you have time to do this, Lara?
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And she just went, No, but I want to.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_03: She did say, No, no, but I want to.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then that evening, she sent me, she said, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_03: So sent me to a skeleton of it.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_03: How about this?
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, Yes, please.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, please.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_03: Just a little bit.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna take us on to AI.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Andrew, you are kind of um de facto becoming one of our leads for the AI side of the business because of your perspective of how digital and human resources sit together.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Can you talk a little bit about your thinking on that?
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've been testing out AI.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: We're fortunate enough to use it.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to a friend who's not allowed to use AI.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got to remember that's for the first thing.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how fortunate do we get to do this?
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_03: You and I have just written a piece on this, and it's it's exploring the question: if you're a young person working in a business right now and you're not allowed to use AI, should you quit?
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I think depends on the person.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't, within a few months to a year, you will be so far behind you won't have the choice to go somewhere else because there is this divide happening now because it's changing by the minute.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_03: But we we it's probably on camera, we were looking at tools and techniques that we've built this week before we started rolling, that is effectively automating most of a PA role.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we've just hired a new PA.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_03: The role is a hundred percent different than what it would have been because all the inbox, the calendar, the automatic done automatically now.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, completely transcendent.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you will you set that against what impact is that gonna have on people?
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't explain this, but the only thing I can say is that it just I was not prepared to accept the idea that somebody was gonna come in and tell, well, this is the AI thing, this is how it's gonna affect the culture, Andrew.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think because we spent the last five years talking about it and gently curating it and guiding it and nurturing it.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was a bit like if you're this gardener and you've just taken this pride of your garden and somebody's just gonna walk in with a lawnmower and just cut all your bushes and chain so everything down.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, that's not happening.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_03: To give people context of that, we we will have spoken for at least an hour every day for five years about culture, right?
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's the degree to which we are nuanced and challenging and discussing and debating this.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's pretty precious.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and actually, so beyond my pig-headedness or whatever was inside me that sort of rallied against this and said, no, no, this should sit with us.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: When you think about it, it is going to be fundamental to how we're working to work in the future.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to take away and I don't want to say that everything to do with AI is there are some there are redundancies happening, there is a negative and a downside to AI.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_01: But we are fortunate to work in a growing company with everybody who has too much to do based on the time they have to invest.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_01: AI is a wonderful opportunity for us to work better.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we stopped doing analysis of everybody's Q review notes.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: So for context, everybody meets their line manager once a quarter and they write a note to summarize and fruit in the quarter.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: A year ago, we stopped doing the analysis of that because it took too long and it wasn't giving us the benefit.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_01: This week I did it in 30 minutes with AI, and at that point, it was more notes.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_01: That is beneficial for us.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_01: We can look at it.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's twice as many notes that we would have been doing before.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just like 40 notes, and that would have taken me a week.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_01: So when you hit on something like that, that's really gonna be a lever, I think that's critically important because it allows us to have a personal interaction and make a connection with people.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_03: Chris, were you immediately uh straight on the adoption of AI?
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was the one pushing it from the very start last year.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_02: I I had some stuff going on at home, didn't have like mental capacity to be like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna bin everything I've learned for the last 15 years and start again.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just didn't I basically said I'm gonna outsource this to my team and they can do it and keep me up to speed with it.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you made me do it.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it turned out pretty well.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think when you you can kind of adapt or not adapt, and if you don't adapt, you're just kind of missing on this huge technical revolution.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um when you realize how you can use it to make your life better, it just makes your life better.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_02: And we're seeing it now, like I think when you go to this mind shift of like, can what can we how can we use AI to improve this task?
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are the opportunities?
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna be good at some things and shit at other things, and part of the process is finding out what it can be good at.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_02: But we've been doing it through all the stuff we're doing at Oxygen Intelligence.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we've got some incredible, really sophisticated data systems set up, and now we're kind of dismantling each one and saying, is this still relevant?
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how can we do this now that we have AI?
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's you know, some of the stuff we're keeping the same, but other stuff we're just putting in the bin and starting again from scratch, and it allows us to do things faster, better.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_03: It yeah, it's I kind of um so um another spoiler alert.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I think this gentleman is the single best person on the planet at natural capital and conceptual economics.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I, over my dead body, was anyone gonna come past you in terms of that?
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I could just I saw the potential.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_03: I I remember it's when I first used co-work from Claude and I sat there and I saw it operate my laptop.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_03: And because I've I've loved every aspect and iteration I've been on uh Chat GTP from the early days from version like two point something or whatever, and loved it and built it and used it for the last couple of years.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_03: But the cowork thing was like, oh, the machines are coming.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like this is this is this is operating my this is next level.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I am not leaving anyone behind.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I've got to give you these tools and techniques because if not, someone half as good as you is gonna go past you as a result of it, and I just wasn't gonna let that happen, which is why I just repeatedly bashed you in the head until you agreed to do it.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's great ladieship, right?
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like sometimes you need to force something through.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's kind of happening with the wide team, right?
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_02: We had a big internal discussion about how we had a big internal discussion about how we use AI and what the best approach to it is.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you you pitched it as you can either have a top-down approach where you're told what to do, or you figure it out for yourselves and like it's very innovation bottom-up, and that's what you've pushed through, and you know, that's that's why we've got this team of people who are experimenting with like developing new techniques, and it's really it just feels we're in this really exciting moment of like everything's changing.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of think about the the two ways we use AI in the business.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_03: So there is the pure intelligence side of it, which I'll come to you in a sec to articulate around our machine learning algorithms and that side of it.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then there is the day-to-day stuff of how we're making stuff more efficient.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: I think the beauty of it is you have to think about things systematically in terms of what are the information blocks we have.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_03: How do you ask the question in the right way to communicate with the AI side of stuff?
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where I've been really excited about Matt and Karis and Abby and you know, the amount of stuff Penny uses from the podcast and the video editing perspective.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_03: We're slotting it into every different aspect of the business now.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_03: And yes, we've got 50 people.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_03: We've probably got 70 when you think about the elements and the bits and pieces.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Matt yesterday was offered an intern who's like, no, thanks, I've got four.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_03: Because he has got agents running at the same time.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Matt has a team of people, the amount of stuff he's putting out, because he's really pushing beyond there.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you showed them the uh the process you'd built to automate your essentially your exec office of inbox and calendar and everything.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that is so sophisticated.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_03: And it and it won't work for everyone yet, but it is inspirational for what is achievable and is possible.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_03: Chris, talk to us about the MRV side of things and what the intelligence team have built.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think the most exciting part of intelligence is what we're doing on MLV.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_02: We were talking earlier about you know one of the things we set out of the business of how do we make the best carbon credit in the world.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the big issue they had with carbon at the time in the carbon markets was trust, transparency, and traceability.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So what we decided was well, if that's what we need to tackle, we need to have a system where anybody who's buying a carbon credit can see at an individual tree level where their carbon is and how it's changing year on year.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, you know, it's not going to be acceptable to just be like, we've done some carbon trust.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's over there.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what we had was this system where people would buy a carbon credit and there'd be very little, if any, accountability of what was actually happening on the ground or where it was or what it meant.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it became this very abstract theoretical thing, which started to fall apart when there was fraud and issues in the system.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_02: So what we wanted to build was like something super traceable, super transparent, where you know, you buy one of our OC carbon credits and you can see it.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_02: You can see a 3D representation of the tree, you can take a drone around there, you can go and see it in person.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_02: But that link between the carbon and the physical asset was critical to what we wanted to do.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then we realized it was impossible.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_02: There just wasn't the data or processes in place to be able to do that over 50,000 acres and give people instantaneous access to that kind of data.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Five years later, we're now at the point where it is possible and we're building it.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's just so incredible to see how far it's moved within five years.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what we can do now is do these centimeter-level drone surveys.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_02: So we're collecting data across the entire 50,000 acres at centimetre-level precision, then using the kind of machine learning and AI techniques that have been developed by our data lead Phil, who he's the cleverest person I've ever met.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_02: He's absolutely brilliant.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_02: I feel stupid talking to him.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but like what him and Doris and Laura have been doing, they're you know, they're writing academic papers as they go because they're pushing forward what anyone's ever done before.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_02: And how they've built it now, we take this centimeter level resolution, you then build up a 3D image of that individual tree, and you can monitor it year on year and measure volumetrically how your carbon's changing and report that data back pretty much instantaneously.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just that revolution in accuracy, transparency, and trust.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's what's building the kind of you know, carbon markets 2.0 where people can actually believe what they're doing matters and is delivering impact on the ground.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_03: What I think is astonishing about that piece of work is a brilliant company in the US, Peshauma, raised nearly a hundred million dollars to build that tech.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_03: And we've built it within the day job of what we're doing, and we've had it independently confirmed from some of the leading strategy consultants in the world that this is the bar, this is the leading tech.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel so unbelievably proud that we get to talk about this now.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_03: So can we get a round of applause, Dorothy Intelligence for that?
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_03: You guys are amazing.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, okay, I'm gonna take us off data.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so we're reflecting on five years now.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, huge amount of effort, huge amount of sacrifices.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_03: What what is the cost of performing at this level, Fee?
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_03: What has it taken personally to do it?
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think if you do something that you love, it takes a lot of headspace.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reality.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think for me, and don't get me wrong, the the balance that we find around flexible working and autonomy to manage your calendar and traveling is is a lifesaver for me.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it you I are always thinking about it, you're or you're always on, particularly from the opside, because you know something's being implemented and you're kind of thinking about this sequencing of things.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's kind of a privilege to be juggling that many things, isn't it?
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, for example, for example, yesterday I left um left my daughters at the airport.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: We just got back from holiday to to be at Exco.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so excited to get to Exco, but I have got the tensor.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_00: With their dad.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_03: With their dad.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's the trouble, isn't it?
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you can see something in your mind and you don't hear what you're saying, they're absolutely fine.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: The dad drove them home.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, they were they were aghast that after being with me for two weeks that I would just I would skip off to work.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't, they couldn't comprehend that.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, but I want I want the logistics work, but I wanted to be there.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to hear what you guys had done in in the two weeks that I'd I'd been away.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I and for me it's an incredible balance.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a balance that I haven't been able to find in my working life before.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_00: But you are you are always on, I think, when you work in a business like this.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_03: We don't tend to talk about this because I I don't think it matters, but so we might cut this bit.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um you are one of a very small number of incredible senior women in the sector.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_03: Is that is that something that you think about?
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_03: Is it is it a conscious thing?
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_03: Is it something that even resonates with you?
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, not really.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think we talk about it sometimes, and I think, oh, that's very kind of you to say so.
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the reality is I look around the team and I see the whole team juggling lots of things in life.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're actually really good at modelling to younger people in the team that you do make space for time and time for things that are important and you manage your diary accordingly, you know, whether that's outside commitments, whether it's caring commitments, whatever it is, that you you you make it work.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk about the funny time space continuum at OC where you just make make time for things and time moves differently.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it is the reality of the number of things we're doing and that the pace we're doing, the matter.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was yeah, I was I was really touched that everybody said, God, that's great to see.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, well, of course, and gosh, if I had a fraction of the talent that I see in them, you know, when I was their age, I think they're gonna go on and do incredible things too.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it is it is it is a juggle, but everybody's juggling different things, aren't they?
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_03: What does it take, Chris?
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_03: What does it take to be Chris at this level all the time?
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that headspace comment is very apt.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like this job takes up quite a large proportion of my mental energy, which can sometimes not leave as much for all the aspects of my life.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I mean I find it very difficult.
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_02: We had our first child, and it's just been a very difficult process.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_03: You've been ill for a year.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's difficult putting it all together and keeping on top of everything when everything's moving so fast and balancing things, you have to make trade-offs.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's hard.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there isn't really an easy way of saying it.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_03: Why is it worth it?
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, personally for me, I have to you know, I have to have a reason to get out of bed.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like I need something to like motivate me to occupy my mind and give me a reason to like do things.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and if I don't, you know, if I get stuck in apathy and boredom, it's just terrible for me.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like what this gives me is just purpose and as much intellectual stimulation as I can handle, which is like that's that's the first time that's happened, right?
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I've always needed, and now I have.
• 1:25:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that's for me, that's wonderful, possibly less wonderful for my family.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a funny thing though, isn't it?
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because um, you know, I think our our families and our loved ones see us see us working hard and they can see when we've mentally drifted off at the dinner table because we're thinking about something else.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hi, and you know, and they see the hours and they see the travel.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then my family have been lucky enough to come with me now to to wonderful estates at Mornacotton tourback, and they're like, This is your office.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, you must be really stressed.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_00: They sort of, you know, it's it's such a wonderful place to be, and it's such a such a wonderful mission, but you you do you do worry about it because you want to fulfill what we know is is possible and we want to push on.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's that's one of the things you're forcing me into AI.
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, one of the upsides of that has been I kind of see it now as like AI is something that will be able to probably give me the life I want that I couldn't have had previously, which is to be able to have the kind of family relationships I want to have and the job I want to have.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_02: And previously, you know, it was just too difficult to fit it all together.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas when I can like automate things, take stuff out of my mind and put it somewhere else and like sort a lot of that stuff out, it can give me back the time, you know, that I can use for the stuff I wanted to have.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Which I just don't think it was possible to live that before.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_03: You have an even more unique perspective, Andrew, because I I remember the start of OC when you before you joined the business and you were observing how I was working, and you said to me, if this is not life-changing for you, it is not worth it because you are working all the time.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Is it worth it?
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_01: For me, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's worth it for in a number of ways for me.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_01: But like I've phoned my career now.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's taken me 15 years.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is it.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because you weren't you weren't in HR prior to this, right?
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_03: You were like an amazing performance psychologist trying to find what that role was.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_02: That feels like you speak to pretty much everyone on the team, and they all kind of have a variant of that story of like, I finally found the role that I always kind of felt like I wanted to have, and like this is it.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, because we make it for the person.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it doesn't exist before that.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like that that's not a normal thing to feel in your job.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like, it yeah, it's incredible.
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_03: This will be one of those moments where Andrew goes, no fucking shit, but is that because I never fit?
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_03: So that's why I was so open to like, let's find the fit for the person, because it I never had that.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's because I mean you've never been big on like fitting a mold, have you?
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Literally.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean you don't fit in an airplane suit, you know, for the shoulders.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a fat joke, to be clear.
• 1:27:43
  unknown: Thank you.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it's all it's also not one role, is it?
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you sent me the job description for the property role, and I came back to you and I said, Yeah, that that's great, but you want five jobs there and I can do two of them.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you said, Great, come and come and do two of them.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I had Terrible imposter syndrome back the other three and did them anyway.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_00: But um but I think that's the reality of it, John.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we're not asking people to get in to get in a box and do that thing, are we?
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're saying come and be brilliant and push on.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_03: How often do we recruit for something can hire someone that's just is astonishing in a different way as it comes along and take the role around them?
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's never been negative.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think anybody's ever come to me and be like, oh, by the way, this is the job description that I wrote, and I'm missing this.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_01: You never do because you hire a talented person and then you mould the job around them and they go and do amazing things and they drive the company forward.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like Esme, she came in as what, a GAS specialist?
• 1:28:35
  SPEAKER_02: GIS.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Then she was a collegist, then she was an estate manager, and now she's running the NatchCap team.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um then she'll be running the business.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:28:43
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, but yeah.
• 1:28:44
  SPEAKER_03: Same thing with Ellen Millington.
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_03: Same thing with James.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think early in their career, the experience across that spectrum thing is we we met Karis through a PA advertisement, and now she's essentially a HR business partner.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_02: And Doris drone surveyor now leading all of the Yeah, it's incredible.
• 1:28:57
  SPEAKER_03: If you could go back to before you made the decision to join OC and tell yourself one thing that you know now, what would you tell yourself?
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a good drone for that.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um can't help everyone and maximise the joy for the people that you do help.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's my big that's my overplayed trend is that I want to help everyone because that's the sole core to who I am.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is you give you give away parts of yourself and you guys are talking about what you sacrifice, but you you have to put yourself first in that.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you then you have to also look behind you and think how many people you have helped or what you have done.
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Probably don't be too wedded by what you think you know.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never worked in a startup before and I came in and rapidly had to get off the fence on a number of things.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was a fun chapter, wasn't it?
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I'd been in PLC world and I was sort of like, well, it's this or it's this, and you're like, so which one is it?
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, well, I'd like to give you this range of options.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So there was that.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_03: But I thought Well and every time I tried to say anything, you're like, you can't say that.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Say that's controversial.
• 1:30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, so so culturally it's been it's been amazing for me.
• 1:30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think also, you know, I came in to do to do a role and felt that I'd got a skill set here.
• 1:30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'd say to you, Well, you want a valuer for that, or you want a surveyor for that?
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you were like, crack on, and actually eventually you're you know, you're or you or you go and you find those skills, but suddenly you go, actually, you know, we're doing we're doing this, you know.
• 1:30:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that sort of I've said it before, it's kind of pioneering, and you just just get on and do it, and amazing things happen.
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_03: How much yesterday, every topic was like, Oh, should we do this, this, and could work with this partner?
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_03: And every realm was like, Yeah, they're not gonna be fast enough, we're not gonna be happy, so we just need to do it ourselves.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_03: Because we will work to get it done, whether it's IT or external advice on something, we're like, no, no, no, we just need to get on with it and do it and build it.
• 1:30:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if we'd have tried to buy any of the software tools that Lara and Doris have built, well, in fact, Hannah said it, didn't she?
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you outsource this, I'll be negotiating your contract with the provider for like a year for you.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, let's just not do that.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, man.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_03: What would what would you tell yourself?
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's it's real.
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Buy the snake oil.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Buy the snake oil.
• 1:31:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think invest in NVIDIA.
• 1:31:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'd just say some kind of variant of like hold on to like this is gonna be a really intense, exciting experience, and it's gonna be one of those like formative moments of your life.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy it and just like appreciate it because it's gonna go by so fast, and you're gonna there is this like whirlwind moment that's gonna change your life and your career.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_02: And just yeah, savour it.
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like, don't be I've got that we've talked about it, tendency just to move on to the next thing, but like you know, savour it because you know it's been like the last five years have been something really special.
• 1:31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Think about the next five years when that's gonna be like Yeah, and they're gonna be incredible and wonderful, but like that moment from starting something where when you're starting from like this is impossible, it can't be done, to then where we are now, and you look back at the last five years and you just sort of like, you know, we've just done the impossible like a billion times a day.
• 1:32:03
  SPEAKER_03: How happy does it make you when someone tells us something can't be done?
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's such a thrill, isn't it?
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we had it X First day, that can't be done.
• 1:32:09
  SPEAKER_03: We're just like, great, we'll do it then.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think what what people don't realise is so Chris and I come from very different parts of the country, opposite sides, but from pretty shit places.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it sitting here has been respectively for us solving hundreds of impossibles.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_03: So when someone says that's impossible, it's like, yeah, okay, great.
• 1:32:32
  SPEAKER_03: Just sure.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_03: Show me another one.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm supposed to be in a fucking factory.
• 1:32:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm not supposed to be here doing this, and I'm so, so privileged to be able to.
• 1:32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and there's there's something about the word impossible now, it just it feels really exciting because that's that's the next opportunity.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_02: If people saying it's impossible, it's a business opportunity, that's where we're gonna like be better than everyone else.
• 1:32:51
  SPEAKER_02: Because everything else is fine, yeah.
• 1:32:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like we we know how to do it then.
• 1:32:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's just like, and the amount, the amount of times we've done that, and it's so much easier now because we've got this cast of characters that the skill set that you need, or the inspiration, or the idea is there.
• 1:33:07
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't know, like how many times have you wanted to punch me in the last two weeks where you've moaned at me about something and I've gone, but what's the opportunity?
• 1:33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Fucking hell.
• 1:33:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then there was the one that I that I went away and sent you a list, and you're like, Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:33:19
  SPEAKER_03: There are some opportunities because I honestly think there is.
• 1:33:22
  SPEAKER_03: We just haven't it might be really hard, and you have to, it's like a chessboard.
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_03: You lose a piece, you're looking at the game like I am fucked.
• 1:33:27
  SPEAKER_03: You have to rotate the board and you have to think and think and think.
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_03: There'll be a move, there will be because there has to be a move.
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_03: So what's the best one we can make?
• 1:33:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's not always easy to find it, but eventually we do, and it is easier with the cast of characters we have around us.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:33:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm gonna do my quick answers on that as well.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I I should, I wouldn't have listened to the bloody advice anyway, but I should have told myself, don't worry about what people think and say.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_03: I I we know why, therapist in the corner here.
• 1:33:59
  SPEAKER_03: I had an abusive childhood, it was shit.
• 1:34:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh go.
• 1:34:02
  SPEAKER_03: People don't think this about me, but when people say critical things about team members and when we get negative pushback, that bothers me, and I want to protect the team because I don't want them to feel bad about stuff.
• 1:34:13
  SPEAKER_03: But it bothers me too much.
• 1:34:14
  SPEAKER_03: We are changing things at such a scale and such a pace.
• 1:34:17
  SPEAKER_03: We can't not offend people.
• 1:34:18
  SPEAKER_03: So that's the thing I need to work on.
• 1:34:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, what was the other side of it?
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_03: What would I tell myself on day one?
• 1:34:23
  SPEAKER_03: Enjoy every day.
• 1:34:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I keep and I'm really trying to do that because some at some point this is gonna be over, like this chapter, whatever that looks like, whether we IPO as a business or whether it goes up in thin air, whatever it looks like, it will be over.
• 1:34:37
  SPEAKER_03: What an incredible adventure and journey we get to have every day.
• 1:34:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is just spectacular.
• 1:34:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:34:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um, five years from now, let's have some predictions, people.
• 1:34:47
  SPEAKER_03: So we've done five years.
• 1:34:48
  SPEAKER_03: Another five will take us to 2031.
• 1:34:52
  SPEAKER_03: Give us your thoughts on the world and OC.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_00: From an Ox perspective, I'm incredibly excited to see the changes on the ground that we can achieve within that period.
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our tenure on some of these estates.
• 1:35:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Ken Rara, we bought last year, you know, the opportunity to go through the watching, the baselining, the learning stage to then be planning the projects, but then to then see them come off the ground.
• 1:35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that we've really focused on.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oops, this year we've said 26 is going to be this incredible year of delivery where there are trees going in, there's peel and restoration being done, there's fantastic work being done in my parent environments.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's wonderful, but that's going to take time to mature and settle.
• 1:35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the idea of going and walking around them in in five years and seeing what we've achieved and seeing the impact that that's had.
• 1:35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we said earlier we don't we don't want to be a pilot project, but I think the inspiration that hopefully that can give other landowners or other stakeholders is is I wanna I want to do the build out of the door, but after seeing those designs for the ecotourism side of it, it is astonishing.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_03: Stunning.
• 1:35:58
  SPEAKER_03: And the ability to connect people to these places is um so there was an article published this week celebrating a private estate that's opening up its estate for one day to people to look at it.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, what the fuck are you doing?
• 1:36:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like we have ecotourism opportunities across multiple estates.
• 1:36:14
  SPEAKER_03: You're very welcome.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_03: 365 days a year, that's what it should look like.
• 1:36:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was gonna say, I I took a photo of Joel when we were at Orback, I picked somebody up and I took a photo outside one of the cottages and said, Me, you and Bosco would love to go here.
• 1:36:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's exactly that, it's connecting with that landscape, and being able to do that would be wonderful.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of what I think in five years, like think of the growth of all the people in the organization that they're gonna just achieve so much amazing things.
• 1:36:44
  SPEAKER_01: I would love it to be in different geographies.
• 1:36:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when we've talked about how do we curate this wonderful culture, well, what does that look like when it's Europe and when it's America and when it's other places?
• 1:36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do we do that?
• 1:36:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do we how does the culture evolve bringing in all those wonderful parts of those other geographies and all of the impact that then is gonna come as a result of doing that?
• 1:37:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's really interesting.
• 1:37:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm keen to hear your view of the world because what I'm thinking is like, what does 2030 mean and what does that mean for the world and what does that mean for us as a company?
• 1:37:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think I mean I'm really excited about it.
• 1:37:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in five years' time, so carbon markets-wise, we'll have been through this whole process of like boom and bust and like actually developing a market that works.
• 1:37:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna be into like the nitty-gritty of getting towards 2030, 2040, 2050 carbon targets.
• 1:37:35
  SPEAKER_02: There'll be a properly functioning, sophisticated marketplace, and we'll be, you know, generating and selling hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon and critically involved in net zero strategies across the world.
• 1:37:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's gonna be really transformative compared to where we are now, which is still very early days.
• 1:37:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think the business will be reflecting that in that we'll be running carbon projects around the world at scale, like what we're doing now, will look small in comparison, and it will be much more developed, more sophisticated, and de-risked, and it'll be a standard, normal investment that everybody's making.
• 1:38:07
  SPEAKER_02: It won't be seen as fringe or you know, weird and unusual and early.
• 1:38:12
  SPEAKER_02: It will be what every pension fund's putting their money into because it'll be what the world needs.
• 1:38:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then at the same time, I think the biodiversity market, which at this stage is super nascent, will be where the carbon market is today.
• 1:38:22
  SPEAKER_02: It will have gone through its like super hype cycle, it will probably have like had teething issues, and then it'll be starting to get to the point where it's scaling into a mature sector where people can properly invest at scale.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that's gonna be a whole other transformative market for you know nature restoration that will probably over time eclipse what carbon can do.
• 1:38:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then at the same time, there's gonna be this AI revolution.
• 1:38:45
  SPEAKER_02: What we're doing on intelligence now is just gonna look you know completely out of date and ridiculous, like the level of sophistication in terms of monitoring, reporting, verification, trust, transparency, it's gonna be another level again.
• 1:38:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think we're gonna be in this position where people doubt or worry about the market anymore.
• 1:39:02
  SPEAKER_02: I think it will be so sophisticated that you know that will debate will be assault.
• 1:39:06
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, it's gonna be great.
• 1:39:07
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna be, we'll have raised our 500 million, we'll be running this global portfolio of projects, we'll be on the cusp of an IPO, which will be spinning off the intelligence division, um, the capital division, conservation globally.
• 1:39:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be, you know, it will be a very different future.
• 1:39:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um five years' time.
• 1:39:31
  SPEAKER_03: Multiple national geographies, Europe, UK, US.
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, Helen, but we will be living on the West Coast.
• 1:39:38
  SPEAKER_03: We will probably either be very closely partnered or will have been acquired by DeepMind, NVIDIA, one of the biggest AI and tech companies in the world, because we are the only solution to their social license, their environmental footprint, their need for space, energy, water, and we can deliver those commitments in a way no one else can.
• 1:40:00
  SPEAKER_03: And there is such a uh co-beneficial way of working because we have pushed the hardware, we have pushed NVIDIA's CUDA chip, shout out Jensen, uh, as far as they can go in terms of the visualization.
• 1:40:10
  SPEAKER_03: So we now need better cloud uh computing solutions to this.
• 1:40:14
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I I've written this a lot recently, but the more digital the world becomes, the more reliant it is on nature, and we're the solution to that problem.
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_03: I finish every podcast with the same question.
• 1:40:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna ask each of you in turn.
• 1:40:29
  SPEAKER_03: What is the one question you wish I'd asked you that I haven't?
• 1:40:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe on the upside, just to shine a spotlight on one of the estates, it's you know, where where are we gonna see the greatest changes this year?
• 1:40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think my money is on is on Invergaldi.
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_00: We've um just had an incredible announcement about your woodland um approval.
• 1:40:50
  SPEAKER_00: 1.3 million trees over the next couple of years, is that the right number?
• 1:40:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's a lot of trees.
• 1:40:54
  SPEAKER_02: When you when you say it out loud, it's just a lot of trees.
• 1:40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Single-handedly.
• 1:41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, all of the other things that are happening in terms of natural capital on the estate, um, but also property transformation, you know, we're going to launch the first ecotourism at Infocality, you know, the people working so hard.
• 1:41:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's just such a special place.
• 1:41:15
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, we're sort of saying, right, you know, how do we support the existing tenants that we've got on the estate?
• 1:41:20
  SPEAKER_00: How can we potentially deliver more housing in that community?
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much going on, and it's such a brilliant example of you know, the multiple benefits that you can make in one place if you plan them well and you execute them at the you know the right point in time to deliver something that's much more than the sum of its parts.
• 1:41:42
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 1:41:43
  SPEAKER_02: Next, I mean, I'm kind of glad you didn't, but it would be interesting to say what are you most worried about or what do you think the biggest risks or chances of failure are for the business?
• 1:41:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think it is, you know, I think we're gonna be super successful.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is the most exciting business in the world.
• 1:42:01
  SPEAKER_02: But from other people's perspective, we're in a really risky sector, it's super nascent and everything's emerging.
• 1:42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think for me, what what does worry me politically, if we move away from Paris and nature and environment and focus on other things, it's gonna be a real there are still real challenges to making this successful.
• 1:42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think building the like will to actually tackle climate change, you know, that's key to the whole business.
• 1:42:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah that's what keeps me up at night.
• 1:42:37
  SPEAKER_02: That and a crying child.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_02: He sleeps now.
• 1:42:40
  SPEAKER_02: No, it doesn't I just lie awake worrying about the impending climate crisis.
• 1:42:44
  SPEAKER_03: I um we're gonna see the most incredible backlash to the political turmoil, the negativity.
• 1:42:53
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna go through a winter where there's gonna be incredible floods and incredibly chaotic climatic events.
• 1:43:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I we have not seen the Greta Thumbo generation impact the business world yet.
• 1:43:05
  SPEAKER_03: Some of them are starting to come out of uni.
• 1:43:07
  SPEAKER_03: We haven't seen them in the C-suite yet making those decisions.
• 1:43:11
  SPEAKER_03: You wait until you get a CFO and a and a CEO that are from that generation that are currently sat in a in a bank or an insurer just goes, No, this is wrong.
• 1:43:22
  SPEAKER_03: And when we get a critical mass of those, post-Trump era, so three, five years, we are gonna get a massive pivot.
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, this is just this little pause for a moment until it accelerates out the back end of it.
• 1:43:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, is my view anyway.
• 1:43:37
  SPEAKER_03: The eternal optimist.
• 1:43:38
  SPEAKER_03: Andrew?
• 1:43:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really struggling.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really struggling for a question that doesn't that doesn't make me feel self-centered.
• 1:43:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the here's the real raw, honest, self-centered one.
• 1:43:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, when does the business overtake me?
• 1:43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's the deep dark thing that's it's not driving behavior, but it's there in my mind.
• 1:44:01
  SPEAKER_01: So there we go.
• 1:44:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to be fair, that would have been a harsh question to ask me an apologist.
• 1:44:09
  SPEAKER_03: So so uh full disclosure here, uh I was best man at this man's wedding, he's godfathers my children, and he's worried about when the business goes past him.
• 1:44:16
  SPEAKER_03: What am I getting fired?
• 1:44:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm not a reasonable fucking human being.
• 1:44:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I think that's why I dose so much into AI as well, though.
• 1:44:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like because of the sporting background we come from, you know, we see professional NFL players, which America Football's Andrew and I's background, their pro career was four years on average.
• 1:44:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the best quarterback who's ever lived played to 45.
• 1:44:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm 42.
• 1:44:43
  SPEAKER_03: So uh you very kindly mentioned how uh lean I am at the moment.
• 1:44:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's a conscious choice.
• 1:44:48
  SPEAKER_03: I want to get better for as long as I can.
• 1:44:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I lift weights every day.
• 1:44:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's why I'm so conscious about uh what I eat and and how I live.
• 1:44:57
  SPEAKER_03: And like I haven't drank in years, and because I want to do this for as long as possible, but it takes a lot.
• 1:45:03
  SPEAKER_03: It takes all that commitment of the learning and the reading and the time and the energy and the commitment to being able and well to do it.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_03: When you were saying about what the biggest worry is, we've been really fortunate.
• 1:45:14
  SPEAKER_03: We've had a very healthy team now because we've got lots of young people who look after themselves.
• 1:45:19
  SPEAKER_03: We haven't had a lot of serious illnesses to worry about, we haven't lost one of the senior team for an extended period of time.
• 1:45:24
  SPEAKER_03: And when we have, it's been wonderful news and it's been a maternity or something like that.
• 1:45:28
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my biggest worry.
• 1:45:29
  SPEAKER_03: If we, because we have some, you know, the people sat around this room are incredible.
• 1:45:33
  SPEAKER_03: So there isn't another one of you in the sector.
• 1:45:35
  SPEAKER_03: You are not replaceable.
• 1:45:36
  SPEAKER_03: You've got amazing teams, but they're not you.
• 1:45:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we we need to hold that out for another three, four years so that we can continue to grow that resource base so the second and third person in line in terms of resourcing is is ready to step up and help us.
• 1:45:49
  SPEAKER_03: So we need a bit of luck and a bit of good fortune.
• 1:45:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the opportunity, and that's the growth, and the fact that everybody around us is gonna like push us and encourage us and give us these they're gonna just do amazing things and we're gonna celebrate it.
• 1:46:04
  SPEAKER_01: But it's gonna create space for everybody to be inspired and to think where can I step into?
• 1:46:09
  SPEAKER_01: Where's my space for growth and what am I gonna do?
• 1:46:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's incredibly exciting.
• 1:46:14
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome, guys.
• 1:46:15
  SPEAKER_03: I've loved every minute of that reflection on five years.
• 1:46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, just before we wrap up, um, some thank yous from me.
• 1:46:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, thank you for the entire team for everything you do all the time for what we're doing.
• 1:46:24
  SPEAKER_03: Give a round applause for the team, please.
• 1:46:26
  SPEAKER_03: And a huge thank you to Auction House, Blue White Capital for your support and everything you do.
• 1:46:30
  SPEAKER_03: Round applause, please.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_03: And specifically, Mark, Lil, Adam, Roy, David, Tony, Matt, Chris, and Benny.
• 1:46:41
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for the support, the guidance, and giving us the opportunity of a lifetime, which we promise we're all gonna take for everything it's worth.
• 1:46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Round of applause, please.
• 1:46:52
  SPEAKER_03: What a podcast.
• 1:46:53
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, guys.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_03: We're done.