Latest / Dataministeriet - A data protection and privacy podcast / 80. Champions are made in training. II Guest: Jamal Ahmed. (ENG)

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80. Champions are made in training. II Guest: Jamal Ahmed. (ENG) · Dataministeriet - A data protection and privacy podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to Dota Ministeria.
0:04
Today I have a very interesting guest, Jamal Ahmed from the UK.
0:11
He's the founder of Catch and Privacy Experts and also the
0:16
Private Pros Academy, so a warm welcome.
0:19
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.
0:21
And I invited you because you have a little bit of an another
0:25
background than many other privacy professionals.
0:29
I'm a lawyer, as you know, but you come from a completely
0:33
different background. First of all, it's really
0:37
interesting because you actually come from kind of a rough
0:41
neighborhood in the UK, as I understand it.
0:43
That's right, yeah. How did you even like find this
0:47
area? That's, that's a very
0:49
interesting question. So just to give you a little bit
0:51
of context, I was born just outside of Manchester to my mum
0:56
who was here in the UK by herself.
0:58
And then my dad came over about a year and a half later and then
1:01
he had some family in London. So he moved us to London.
1:04
And so most of my life I spent growing up in an area called the
1:08
Tower Hamlets, which is just next to the city here for anyone
1:12
who's familiar. But it is one of the most
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deprived and poorest boroughs here in the UK.
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And growing up, I grew up in council flats, social housing
1:21
and literally everyone around me was either taking drugs or
1:25
selling drugs or committing some kind of crime.
1:28
And even the kids, they were aspiring to become gangsters,
1:31
right? They would go around graffiti
1:33
STP, which is like Stephanie Thug passion.
1:37
And so when you look around and that's all you have, it isn't
1:41
very inspiring. And you decide that if you want
1:44
to do something positive, then you're gonna have to go down one
1:46
of these paths because that's what all the other kids are
1:48
doing now. Thankfully, my parents knew
1:51
better and they, they did their best to guide me and my entire
1:56
family. But I would say the one thing
1:58
that helped me the most to know that there was a world outside
2:01
of all of that is by reading books.
2:03
And I would read tons and tons and tons of books.
2:06
Like I'm an avid reader and I, I really enjoyed reading at that
2:09
time. And reading books showed me that
2:11
there is a different world, that there is the corporate world and
2:13
there is all of this other stuff available.
2:15
And that really opened my mind. So that that's when I first knew
2:18
there was a life outside of what I was experiencing seeing every
2:21
single day. And then as I got older, I
2:23
became fascinated through my reading.
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I came across this thing about and NLP, how most people might
2:29
think we're talking about natural language programming now
2:32
and neuro linguistic programming.
2:33
And that basically says you can change who you are.
2:36
You can change your performance just by changing the language,
2:40
how you talk to yourself in your head.
2:41
You can influence other people and persuade them based on how
2:44
you use language. You can communicate better when
2:46
you learn other people's thought processes and the predicates and
2:50
language patterns. And I found that fascinating.
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And the more I looked into that, the more I came across people
2:55
like Richard Band. And then I went and did an
2:59
actual master linguistics programming course with the
3:03
American Gentleman called Christopher Howard, and that
3:06
literally changed my life. That literally changed my life.
3:09
I realized I was playing so small.
3:11
I understood values. I understand how to use language
3:13
and how to communicate, how to build rapport and how to set
3:16
goals and actually achieve them. And I strongly believe that that
3:20
is the biggest contributing factor to me going down the path
3:26
that most people I grew up with to where I am now speaking as a
3:30
keynote speaker at the European Commission, ranked number one
3:32
privacy professional, even though I don't come from a
3:34
middle class background. And as you know, Philippe, in
3:37
the UK, the privacy industry was heavily dominated, especially
3:41
when I got in by middle class, middle-aged white lawyers who
3:44
told me I didn't belong. So.
3:45
So when was it? At what age?
3:48
I, so when I was doing my GCS ES, I was also helping out my
3:52
father in Russia at the time. And then I went to college and
3:55
it just didn't work out. So I just like, this isn't for
3:58
me. And then I went back full time
4:00
working in the family business. And then I realized, you know
4:02
what? This isn't for me.
4:03
Like I, I, I, I, I aspire for so many other things.
4:06
This isn't all of the things I've been reading about and this
4:08
is not the lifestyle that I envisage.
4:10
So I went back to university a little bit later than most of
4:13
the people that I was with. And it was during, I think it
4:16
was 2000 and five, 2006, that's when I invested in the Neuro
4:22
linguistic, Master Neuro Linguistic, the Eric Sonian
4:24
hypnosis, the performance coaching and all of that fun
4:27
stuff. And then from there, I started
4:29
doing what you might call life coaching.
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And I was getting some amazing results for people.
4:33
And I stopped that soon after because I was attracting people
4:36
who was coming to me with problems and they just wanted
4:39
somebody to talk about their problems.
4:41
And although I was able to help them, I found it quite heavy and
4:43
quite uninspiring because what I wanted to do was help people go
4:46
from good to great, go from great to excellent.
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And so I kind of stopped doing that.
4:51
And then I got my first role after I graduated, which was in
4:56
compliance. The, the, I think my job title
4:58
was business compliance consultant.
5:00
It was really a glorified sales role selling to B2B.
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But I I really got on within six months.
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I became the best performer there and one of the things I
5:09
was really good at was talking to people about data protection.
5:12
So that's when I first came across data protection in the
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UK. We had the Data Protection Act
5:16
1998, and there was a requirement to understand the
5:18
principles and to register with the Information Commissioners
5:21
Office and have some stuff in place.
5:23
So I found like I was really good at that.
5:25
I was the best performer in the organization at that.
5:27
And then from there I was just like, I don't really want to be
5:30
in a glorified sales role. I want to do something that's a
5:32
little bit more interesting, has a bit more impact.
5:34
And then I pivoted into financial services and I still
5:37
ended up in compliance. I did that for a few years and
5:41
it got to a point where I was feeling very numb.
5:44
Like I realized that you didn't need somebody with the skills
5:48
that I have, the potential I have to do this.
5:50
You could train pretty much a school leaver for about 6 weeks
5:53
and they could pretty much do this.
5:54
And I was doing the same thing day in, day out and like every
5:57
Monday morning, it was a fight between me and the duvet without
6:00
staying in bed or get up and go to work.
6:02
And it was very, very uninspiring.
6:04
And so I was thinking I need to do something better.
6:06
Like I have so much potential. I want to make an impact.
6:09
And also at the time my wife fell pregnant for the first
6:12
time. So I'm thinking about what it
6:14
means to be a father, be a role model.
6:15
And one of the things because about working in financial
6:17
services, what specifically what I was doing was I was
6:21
calculating interest, right? And that is that doesn't that
6:24
doesn't reconcile with my faith as a Muslim.
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And so usually wasn't something that I could do.
6:31
And I was like, you know, I need to get out of this.
6:34
But what is it that I can do that I don't end up here in two
6:37
years, three years, five years down the line in the same
6:40
miserable cycle again, where I hate my life pretty much, right?
6:44
Because we spend so much of our time at work.
6:45
And when you have a job that doesn't energize you, that
6:47
doesn't fulfill you, that doesn't challenge you, you're
6:49
not getting the respect and the recognition and the reward that
6:52
you want, then it starts affecting other areas of your
6:54
life. You start being grumpy.
6:55
You stop showing up with your friends.
6:57
You don't want to hear about other people's good news, and it
6:59
puts you in a really bad cycle. So I was like, I want to break
7:01
out of that. I can see where this is going.
7:03
So I was like, what could I do? Where, what is it?
7:06
What's something I'm passionate about?
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What's something where I can pretty much have a career until
7:10
I retire, where I can make an impact, where I will be
7:13
challenged and I would also get the reward that I want to have
7:17
the kind of lifestyle that I want to create for myself.
7:19
And so I started looking into a few things.
7:21
And then I came across a LinkedIn post.
7:23
Somebody was talking about GDPR and I was like, Oh yeah, I
7:26
remember doing data protection back when I first graduated.
7:28
What's all this about? And the more I looked into it,
7:30
the more I became fascinated with the level of change that
7:37
was being introduced. And I was very sceptical.
7:40
I was like, there is no way big businesses are going to allow
7:43
for this. It's going to completely ruin
7:45
their business models and the way they're operating is never
7:47
going to happen. And I've seen how corporates act
7:50
because I've been working in the corporate environment for about
7:52
5 years. And I was like, there's no way
7:53
this is ever going to see the day of life.
7:55
But I found that I kept looking into it more and more and more.
7:58
And then I was like, you know what if this looks like it is in
8:00
2016, it got published, right? So I was like, Oh my gosh, this
8:03
is actually happening. So what can I do to see if there
8:07
is a career here for me? And then I started looking into
8:10
what this would mean for child businesses.
8:12
I spoke to people in that area and I could see that unless you
8:16
have a big budget for top white consultancy, then other
8:21
businesses are going to suffer because they won't get the kind
8:23
of quality that they need from consultants to be able to
8:26
explain these things and operationalize the requirements
8:29
in a way that works for the business.
8:31
And the other thing they will do is otherwise buy templates that
8:34
is neither fit for purpose, neither aligned with the
8:37
business, and it would just go to waste.
8:39
And so then I started looking a bit deeper because remember, the
8:42
challenge I had was that the user didn't reconcile with my
8:45
faith. So I was like, I need to check
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if this reconciles with my faith.
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And the more I researched into Islamic ethos and values and
8:53
privacy, the more fascinated I became.
8:55
And my research led me to discover that the first time we
8:58
have any kind of formal guidelines or regulations or
9:03
rules around privacy and how we should conduct ourselves was
9:06
actually 1400 years ago in the deserts of Arabia.
9:10
Like, this is blowing my mind. Like, how can you go to people
9:13
living in these remote places in the desert?
9:16
And they have guidelines on privacy because it was revealed
9:19
in Surah, Surah light in the Quran.
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And there were rules about, you know, privacy.
9:25
And even the companions of the prophet were told not to enter
9:29
their houses from the back in case they disturb the privacy of
9:32
their wives. And then there was then talk
9:36
etiquette, like if you knock on somebody's door, stand to the
9:38
side. So when they open the door, you
9:40
don't see inside the house and disturb the privacy until you're
9:42
invited in. And the more I looked into it,
9:44
the more fascinated I became. So I was like, OK, this is good.
9:47
This is good work. I feel good about the work I'm
9:49
gonna do. How does this impact people?
9:51
What are their privacy harms and challenges?
9:53
And then it got to a point where I was like spending 1516 hours a
9:57
day looking into this. Such a deep level.
9:58
I got so passionate about it. I was like, OK, this is what I
10:01
want to do. So I was like, all right, now I
10:02
need to quit this job and start applying for new work.
10:05
So I didn't even actually wait for a new role.
10:08
I just quit that and I was all in and I spent all of my time
10:12
preparing, reading, researching, and I was like, you know what,
10:14
let's go. And I applied for roles.
10:16
I got rejected. I applied for more.
10:18
In fact, I think I applied for about 73 different roles until I
10:21
landed my first role. But what, what really shocked me
10:24
was the racism and, and the elitism that I experienced.
10:31
Now you're, you're probably familiar with a company called
10:33
one Trust, right? And one trust where just, they,
10:36
they were spending all of the money on marketing at the time,
10:38
right? Kabir had so much money.
10:40
Somebody there really understood marketing.
10:42
And they used to hold these events where they would host you
10:44
for breakfast and then they would have speakers and then
10:46
they would talk to you about their solutions.
10:48
So I remember signing up to that because it'd be great to go and
10:50
learn and network with the right people.
10:52
I remember going to one of these events in the city and we we had
10:55
the breakfast and was going through into where they would
10:57
have the speaking. And there was a gentleman.
11:00
He he gave me his coat. And so I was like, oh, maybe I
11:03
need some help. So I took this guy.
11:04
I said, what would you like me to do with this?
11:06
He said, oh, could you put it on the cloakroom please?
11:08
So I was like, yeah, but what can't you do yourself?
11:10
And I said, oh, I beg your pardon?
11:12
Are you not with the catering staff?
11:14
And so that was a real clear indicator that somebody like me,
11:16
somebody of colour, somebody who is a little bit younger than
11:19
most people in the room, clearly didn't belong in rooms like
11:21
this. And he was at that point, I made
11:22
a decision that I want to make sure that one day you see me
11:27
there and then you realize that people like me do belong here.
11:31
In fact, we're leading here. And so that was also another
11:34
motivational pivotal moment for me where in that moment I made a
11:38
big decision that, hey, I need to be the best here.
11:41
And the other thing I realized through applying for these roles
11:44
is the way recruitment works is people are unconsciously biased
11:49
towards people like them, right? And this doesn't mean that
11:51
anyone's a parent rate. It's just the way it is.
11:54
People feel more comfortable with people like them.
11:55
So either you speak like them or you look like them or you have
11:58
certain habits like them. And So what that means for
12:01
minorities in any country in any part of the world is you are
12:05
always going to be finding much tougher to get the same rules
12:09
with the same qualification, same certification, same level
12:11
of experience. It's never going to be you.
12:13
It's always going to be the other person because they just
12:15
connect with them, they're better, and they're trying to
12:18
create that environment in their company so they can work with
12:21
people that they feel comfortable with.
12:22
And there's no challenge with that.
12:24
So I was like, how do I overcome this challenge?
12:27
How do I overcome this? And I realized, you know what,
12:30
the moment you offer exceptional value, you don't even compete
12:33
with anybody else anymore. The competition doesn't matter.
12:35
It doesn't matter if you're black, it doesn't matter if
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you're white, it doesn't matter if you're gay.
12:38
None of those things matter anymore.
12:40
All that matters is the business sees the value that this person
12:43
brings to the table, and it doesn't compare with anyone
12:45
else. And so that's when I realized
12:47
you have to be excellent and you have to be much more valuable
12:51
than anyone else that you're competing with.
12:53
And the moment you do that, nothing else matters.
12:55
That's how you overcome the bias is you just offer more value
12:59
than everybody else. And so I started looking for
13:01
more and more ways of adding value.
13:02
I started making things easy peasy.
13:04
I started simplifying things and I started talking about how to
13:06
make things pragmatic. And then of course that led me
13:09
to clash with people who are maintaining the status quo where
13:12
you have to make things complicated.
13:14
You have always have to answer with it depends.
13:16
You never offer clarity. You have to show people how
13:18
smart you are. You have to regurgitate
13:20
legalese, you have to regurgitate large paragraphs of
13:23
text. And I knew from my experience
13:25
with King in the operations my whole career, pretty much, that
13:29
is not the way we get results in business.
13:32
That is the way to be seen as a blocker.
13:33
That is the way to be seen as someone who's to be feared.
13:36
That is not how you get genuine respect.
13:38
That is not how you get involved in the conversations and often
13:42
times in the Privacy Pros Academy I talk about a thriving
13:44
career and what does that actually mean for me?
13:47
A thriving privacy career isn't about the job title.
13:50
It isn't about a leadership position.
13:52
It isn't about the money you earn.
13:54
It is about being invited to those discussions early.
13:58
It is about being seen as the person who is helpful.
14:01
It is about being seen as the person who is working with you
14:03
to offer pragmatic solutions to achieve the business objectives
14:07
whilst doing that in a way that maintains the reputation of the
14:11
the actual company. So that's what a thriving
14:14
privacy career looks like. And pretty much since 2021, I've
14:18
dedicated most of my time outside of the consultancy to
14:24
helping other privacy professionals to overcome
14:27
imposter syndrome, to understand what it means to have the
14:30
leadership mindset that have the growth mindset so they can have
14:33
the career that they deserve. Because I see so many people
14:36
with so much potential, but they're hiding, they're staying
14:39
invisible. They've maybe studied stuff,
14:41
they understand the theory, but they're just struggling to
14:43
connect the doors. And so at the Privacy Pros
14:45
Academy, I pretty much created everything I wish I had when I
14:49
first started my journey. So when you help those new
14:53
privacy professionals, what did you discover that they needed
14:58
the most to get going? Honestly, to believe in
15:01
themselves like the people I work with.
15:03
Some people are pivoting to privacy.
15:05
Other people have been in privacy 5-10 years.
15:07
I work with Harvard graduates. I work with people with about 30
15:10
years experience. And what they need is they find
15:12
themselves stuck, either because they don't understand how to
15:15
brand themselves or because they've stopped believing in
15:17
themselves because they kept getting pushed back.
15:19
They kept getting rejected. And ultimately what I do is I
15:23
bring in all of my experience from the coaching, from the
15:25
stuff that I was doing earlier on.
15:27
And that is the biggest thing that makes the impact.
15:30
Because if you look through my LinkedIn profile, you will see
15:34
that I have over 200 recommendations from
15:36
professionals. Some of those are Harvard grads,
15:38
some of those are people that work in some of the biggest
15:40
companies in the world, and others are pivoted, right?
15:42
So I have a whole mix of people, but the one thread you'll find
15:46
in common across every single recommendation from people in
15:49
every company and across every part of the world is they all
15:52
talk about mindset, right? And because that is the biggest
15:55
shift, because your identity is the most important thing.
15:58
It doesn't matter how many certifications you have.
16:00
It doesn't matter who you train with, it doesn't matter what you
16:02
do. If you don't have the identity
16:05
of a leader, if you don't have the identity of somebody who is
16:07
capable, if you don't have the identity of somebody who
16:10
believes in themselves, everything else goes to waste.
16:12
Like you have all of that potential, but you end up
16:15
overthinking, you end up hiding, you end up doubting, you end up
16:17
double checking yourself. And all of that means that
16:20
you're playing to fit yourself in a box in which you don't
16:22
belong. The other thing people are
16:24
scared of is they're scared of other insecure people.
16:26
And you saw this happen when I published my book, right?
16:29
So what happens is sometimes people put you in a box and
16:33
they're comfortable there, but when they see you working on
16:35
yourself, they feel insecure that you're moving somewhere
16:39
they're not. And they don't, they can't be
16:42
bothered to do anything to change them, but you're making
16:44
them feel uncomfortable about where they are and where they're
16:46
stuck. And instead of taking that as a
16:48
lesson and say I need to do something better to improve
16:51
myself, they try and stop the other person who is taking
16:54
action. And that often leads in people
16:57
getting bullied on LinkedIn, snide comments, Saki comments.
17:00
And if people don't have the mental resilience to understand
17:03
why that's happening, often times they will just be like go
17:06
back to their old self and shy away.
17:09
And so pretty much, I would say the secret weapon in the Privacy
17:12
Pros Academy is the mindset coaching that we do right at the
17:15
beginning to help every single person develop the the identity
17:19
of the next best version of themselves.
17:21
And then I give them the tools and the support to show up like
17:24
that until they become that person.
17:26
And then the world recognizes them.
17:28
And then they end up doubling their careers.
17:29
They end up working for some of the best companies in the world.
17:32
And literally the life changes. It's because they've changed
17:34
their identity. The stuff I teach in terms of
17:38
the theory, I'm not doing anything ground breaking there.
17:41
It's, it's, it's all written in the regulations.
17:43
I'm not creating anything. Yes, I have a very good knack
17:46
when it comes to operationalizing things,
17:48
breaking things down. That is pretty much my
17:50
superpower. But if he wants to ask me what
17:52
is the thing that makes a difference, I would say it's the
17:55
mindset coaching that we work on and helping people develop the
17:57
identity of the best version of themselves.
17:59
And then helping them to work on their personal brand to show up
18:02
and really live that and adopt it everyday and embrace it
18:05
without apology. So could it have been now it
18:08
obviously that previously is very aligned with your religion,
18:13
but and you work with privacy professionals, but in fact what
18:17
you're saying is that you could have helped another profession
18:20
as well. Knowing what I know now, I can
18:23
see. So what I've been working on
18:25
over the last 3-4 years is saying, OK, what worked and why
18:27
did it work and what didn't work and why didn't it work?
18:30
And working with some of the best mentors around the globe on
18:33
mindset on, you know, career coaching and all of these
18:37
amazing things. What I've realized is I need
18:40
frameworks that work in any organization, that work for any
18:43
person, regardless of where they are.
18:45
And so you'll hear me on LinkedIn talking about my C5
18:47
framework, my P5 framework, all of these different frameworks
18:50
that I have. And so these frameworks, you can
18:53
actually take them and apply them in any professional context
18:55
and non professional context and they work.
18:57
And that's why people get the results they get, because they
18:59
learn these frameworks and then they start applying them not
19:02
just at work but also in their personal lives and everything,
19:05
literally the whole life changes.
19:07
That was actually one of my question.
19:09
What is the C5 framework? Right.
19:11
So the C5 S, I've got a couple of frameworks.
19:13
There's two that's very important that I'm gonna share
19:15
with you. It's very valuable.
19:16
So the first thing before we get into the C5 framework is you
19:18
need to understand the five pillars of success, right?
19:21
So the first thing is you need to adopt the right mindset,
19:23
which is you need to adopt A growth mindset and you need to
19:26
adopt an abundance mindset. So most people will have a fixed
19:30
mindset either from nurture or because just from their
19:33
experience from corporate culture and stuff, and they just
19:35
really shrink. And somebody with a fixed
19:38
mindset doesn't like showing up. They don't like making mistakes.
19:40
They don't like looking like they don't know stuff.
19:43
Whereas somebody with a growth mindset, they don't care about
19:45
that. They don't care about the
19:46
result. They care about the effort and
19:47
the growth. And if you have the attitude,
19:50
then you will ask questions, you will be, you will be happy to
19:54
make mistakes because you know you're going to learn from those
19:56
and you will put in the effort. And that's the most biggest
19:58
thing is a lot of people won't put in the effort.
20:01
And if you don't put in the effort, you can't change
20:02
anything. So the first thing is.
20:04
The mindset, that's the first pillar.
20:05
The next pillar is subject matter expertise.
20:08
Like you have to know your stuff.
20:10
You have to know the subject matter.
20:12
Whether it's privacy, whether it's AI governance, whether it's
20:16
whatever area of life you're working in, you need to
20:19
understand the subject matter. But you need to understand it
20:21
well enough that you can explain it clearly for other people.
20:25
Because if you can't explain it well enough without using
20:27
technical terms, without using jargon, without using legal use,
20:30
and you haven't understood it well enough.
20:31
So that means you need to go and understand the depth as well as
20:34
the breadth of it so you can see the bigger picture and you can
20:37
see how all the dots connect. And this is a challenge I see,
20:40
especially in the privacy industry, if people will go and
20:42
sell, study for a certification, they can regurgitate stuff, but
20:45
they can't see how the dots connect.
20:47
So step #1 mindset, step #2 subject matter expertise.
20:50
So now you have the right mindset, you're showing up the
20:53
right way, you're putting in the effort, you know your stuff, but
20:56
you can talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk here.
20:59
So step #3 is the practical skills.
21:02
You need to understand how to operationalize the theory, and
21:05
you need to develop the practical skills.
21:07
And this is where I get people crying to me on LinkedIn every
21:10
single day saying I can't get this job because I don't have
21:12
the experience. And because I cannot have the
21:14
experience, experience, I can't get the job to get the
21:15
experience. And they're stuck in this loop.
21:18
But if you watch a movie called King Richard, by the way, have
21:20
you seen King Richard Phillip? No.
21:22
OK. It's an amazing movie.
21:23
I recommend you add it to your watch list.
21:26
And everyone who's listening, please also add it.
21:28
It's about Venus and Serena Williams, two of the best women
21:32
tennis players the world has ever known.
21:35
And it shows you their background and it shows you that
21:37
they became the best in the world without the same
21:40
experience as other people who would go and compete when they
21:43
were younger. And what it teaches us is that
21:46
champions are not made in tournaments, they're made in
21:49
training. And So what that means is you
21:50
can develop these practical skills by training.
21:54
So you can find a training Academy like ours and you can
21:56
build and develop the practical skills there through somebody
22:00
who has been there, who's doing it, who's got a good reputation
22:03
for it. And if you just follow that that
22:05
program, then you will have the skills and you will actually
22:08
refine those skills and be better than the people who are
22:11
doing it in the day job because they might just be doing the
22:13
same rubbish thing, mediocre thing over and over again.
22:16
And one of the biggest challenges I see when people
22:18
first join The Academy Is they've got this mindset of tick
22:21
box compliance. I just fill in the template, I
22:23
just do this. I just do that.
22:25
I don't know why, but I'm told to do it.
22:26
And so we do it, whereas a world class privacy professional
22:29
really understands why they're doing what they're doing and
22:30
they challenge the business and help them to achieve the goals
22:33
rather than just ticking the box, right?
22:35
So once you can develop those practical skills, now you have
22:38
the three biggest things. You have the right mindset, you
22:40
know what you're talking about and you know how to do the work.
22:43
The next thing you need is you need to focus on the network
22:47
because you can't do anything alone.
22:50
And networking is about having the right support around you,
22:54
having the right people around you, being around people who
22:57
know more than you. And I'm always looking to put
22:59
myself in circles where I bring the average down.
23:02
Do you see what I'm saying? Because if I'm the smartest
23:04
person in the room, I'm not going to learn anything.
23:06
And if anything, they're going to bring me down to the level.
23:08
So I'm always looking to put myself into rooms where I am the
23:12
least knowledgeable. I am the person with the least
23:15
skills, so I can learn from the people around me.
23:18
So this is what we need to focus on next is networking.
23:21
But also that's where all of the opportunities come from.
23:24
It's not who you know, it's who knows you, but more importantly,
23:28
who knows about the value that you bring to the table.
23:32
Because it will be those people who will be mentioning your
23:34
names for opportunities you don't even know exist.
23:37
And that's exactly what I found. So the next thing we need to
23:39
focus on is networking. And the 5th and final pillar for
23:43
success is personal branding. And so many people underestimate
23:47
how important it is to have a personal brand because they
23:50
don't know how to show up and how to show the value that they
23:53
bring without sounding ignorant, without attracting the wrong
23:58
kind of attention. And So what I teach my M and TS
24:01
is how to show up and the three BS of personal branding, which
24:04
is brand borrow and brag, but how to do that in a professional
24:08
way, how to do that in a way that's adding value so people
24:11
can see the value that you bring and you start attracting
24:12
opportunities. And that's how people go from
24:14
being completely invisible to getting on podcast to getting
24:18
offers from Google through having recruiters hammering them
24:21
for opportunities day in, day out.
24:23
And it this, this is the kind of stuff that's laughing yet
24:25
because that gives them financial security, it gives
24:28
them career security, it gives them opportunities that they
24:31
might otherwise not have had. And it helps with the personal
24:34
branding, it helps with the networking that feeds back into
24:37
their mindset of, hey, this is who I am.
24:39
This is the kind of things I do. And they go on to do some
24:41
amazing things. So those are the five key
24:44
pillars of success, mindset, subject matter expertise,
24:48
practical operation as I skills. So let's talk about the
24:51
practical skills, the networking, your network and
24:54
then your personal brand. So if you just focus on those
24:56
five, then anyone can thrive in any career.
25:00
But the most important thing is you have to do it in that
25:02
specific order because if you try and build a reputation and
25:04
you have the wrong mindset, you don't know what you're talking
25:06
about and you don't have to do the work, you're going to ruin
25:08
your reputation straight away and nobody's going to want to
25:10
know you. So it's very important that you
25:12
do it in that specific order. If you don't do it in that
25:14
order, it doesn't work, it falls apart.
25:17
So those are the five pillars of success.
25:18
Now, the question you asked me is about the C5 methodology.
25:22
So this C5 methodology is what I've found helps me in every
25:25
single situation, whether I'm being, whether I'm asking
25:28
questions or whether I'm delivering.
25:30
And the first C is C for clarity.
25:33
And unless you can satisfy the first C, you cannot move
25:36
forward. So clarity, if you don't
25:38
understand the problem, if you don't understand the context, if
25:41
you don't understand the situation, what right do you
25:43
have to offer any of a guidance or any advice or any
25:47
instructions? And if you don't understand it,
25:50
why should anybody care what you have to say?
25:52
They will challenge you. They will not care about you.
25:54
Imagine this, Philip. Imagine you go to the doctor and
25:56
you say to the doctor, Doctor, I have a pain.
25:58
And the doctor says, OK, OK, and he writes your prescription.
26:01
Or she writes your prescription and she gives it to you.
26:03
How much confidence do you have in that prescription?
26:05
None. None right now, you might say,
26:08
or somebody might say, OK, they're a doctor, so OK, but
26:10
there's a little bit of confidence in that because of
26:12
the credibility. But otherwise there's no,
26:14
because they didn't ask me. Where is the pain?
26:17
How long has the pain been there?
26:18
What makes it worse? Does anything make it better?
26:20
What kind of pain is it? They haven't checked anything,
26:23
so why should you listen to their prescription, right?
26:26
You're not going to take your advice seriously.
26:28
And it's the same for us. When someone comes and asks you
26:30
a question or someone offers you a challenge.
26:33
How dare you just give them a prescription without actually
26:36
understanding what their goals are, what the challenges are,
26:39
what the resources are, what the constraints are, and the whole
26:42
bigger picture about how this fits in with the rest of the
26:44
organization, the mission, the values, and everything else.
26:47
So for me, the first thing I teach my MNT is the first thing
26:50
is you have to get clarity. You have to gain clarity because
26:53
through answering, asking those questions and having the courage
26:56
to ask the right question and getting curious, you're going to
26:59
uncover the bigger picture. And often times just through
27:02
that questioning methodology, people will know that you know
27:06
your stuff. So you're getting credibility,
27:08
but you help them to work out the answer for themselves.
27:10
And the key thing I get them to focus on is the quality of your
27:14
life. The quality of your work comes
27:17
down to the quality of the questions that you ask yourself
27:20
and that you ask others. And if you ask the right
27:22
questions, you will always get the right results.
27:24
So the first thing is the C for clarity.
27:26
Once we have clarity, now we are confident that we've understood
27:30
the situation. And that gives us the right to
27:32
then move forward to give confidence to the person because
27:37
now they believe in you because they're not yet.
27:39
You get me, You understand me. You've understood the situation.
27:42
I have confidence that you understand now whether they like
27:44
your solution or not, whether that's to come.
27:46
But right now, they feel confident this person
27:49
understands my situation, they understand my challenge, so I'm
27:51
open to what they have to say. So for clarity, that provides
27:55
you the confidence and that gives confidence to the
27:56
stakeholder as well. And then you can offer a
27:59
credible solution. And the way we offer credible
28:01
solutions again is we bring that clarity and confidence back in.
28:05
And you say these are the options available to us.
28:08
And then you eliminate the options that don't make sense
28:11
and you explain why they don't make sense.
28:13
And then you're left with the option that makes the most sense
28:16
and you explain why that makes the most sense.
28:18
And once you do that, you have given them a credible solution.
28:22
You've also been accountable and demonstrated your thought
28:25
process, and it makes sense. And once you document that for
28:28
the supervisory authorities, the auditors, senior stakeholders,
28:32
no one can challenge your thought process.
28:34
They might disagree with your outcome, but that's OK.
28:39
But they can see that you've got a credible thought process
28:41
that's LED you to where you are. You've understood the situation
28:44
and you're confident in what you're presenting.
28:47
And now they're gonna start inviting you to other projects.
28:49
You're gonna get involved in other things much earlier than
28:52
when you find out last minute because somebody needs to go
28:55
live and they realize privacy hasn't signed off on it.
28:56
So three CS we've covered so far is first clarity.
29:00
Second is confidence, third is credibility.
29:04
The next one is compliance, right?
29:05
So compliance or competence, it depends.
29:07
So if you're working in AB to B setting, then I say you use
29:10
compliance. If you're just working on
29:13
yourself as an individual, then I talk about competence.
29:15
So we either need to develop the competence or we need to make
29:17
sure that the solution that we're delivering meets
29:21
compliance objectives. And a lot of people get really
29:24
stuck here on what does it mean to be compliant.
29:26
And from every single supervisory authority that I've
29:28
worked with, from every single panel that I've met, all of the
29:31
people from the European Data Protection Board to wherever
29:34
I've been in the world, they just expect you to do what's
29:37
reasonable, right? They're not expecting you to go
29:39
above and beyond, but you just have to show that you've
29:42
understood the requirements and you've done what's reasonable
29:44
with the resources and constraints available to you to
29:48
make reasonable efforts to address the harm and put
29:52
appropriate measures in place or take appropriate steps to do
29:55
that. So we need to get to that.
29:56
And then finally, the C is for community.
29:59
And what the final C for community means is whatever the
30:02
community is, whether it's a department, whether it's a team,
30:05
whether it's the data subjects, whether it's just stakeholders,
30:08
whoever the community is, you need to socialize your work with
30:11
them. So that means making sure that
30:13
whatever you're delivering, you're delivering in a way that
30:16
they can understand it, that they can appreciate it,
30:18
adjusting it and tailoring it for that specific community.
30:22
Sometimes creating different versions and finding different
30:25
ways of engaging with them so that it's adopted by them, it's
30:28
accepted by them, and they feel comfortable to come and ask you
30:31
follow up questions or they know where to go if there's any
30:33
challenges. So there's your frameworks.
30:36
So where have you found that most classical privacy
30:41
professionals has gone wrong in the five CIS?
30:44
Sometimes I feel that lawyers ask myself are very lawyer ish.
30:49
We kind of dive into one word instead of looking at the
30:53
holistic pictures you mentioned. So if I guess I would say it's
30:58
actually we got stuck even at maybe the first step clarity.
31:03
Exactly, 100%. And This is why I say you can't
31:05
move on from that. So what I find is I work with
31:07
some of the most smartest, talented people in the world and
31:10
mainly 80% of my mentees are lawyers, right?
31:13
And what happens with smart people is when you have a
31:16
challenge, you, you just dive straight into that challenge.
31:20
Like you lean in. You understand what I'm saying?
31:22
Like they're so smart and they see this big thing and they lean
31:24
in and they get this tunnel vision and they forget about the
31:28
bigger picture and they forget about some of the basics, right?
31:30
And they try and solve this challenge and they
31:32
overcomplicate it and they get very intricate with it and they
31:35
fight over or they start obsessing over small words and
31:38
small terminologies. Instead, what I say is you have
31:40
to fight that instinct and take a step back first, see the
31:44
bigger picture and then you can zoom in.
31:46
And this, this is what I see smart people do all the time.
31:49
And it's not just in privacy, it's in pretty much every
31:51
industry, right? It's a challenge comes up.
31:53
They're so smart, they lean in when the opposite we should be
31:56
doing is zooming out, seeing the bigger picture.
31:59
And then you can zoom in. And then once you understand the
32:02
context, it changes everything. For example, the other day I had
32:06
I, I, I, so every Wednesday in our community, we do these
32:09
expert insight labs and anyone who's a member of our community,
32:13
pretty much they can come to that.
32:14
They can bring their problems that they're working on at work
32:16
or whatever it is. And I remember one of the
32:18
lawyers, she brought something and she said, hey, I've got the
32:21
situation. Who's the controller and who's
32:23
the processor, OK. So I could see straight away
32:26
that she stopped to see the bigger, she hasn't stopped to
32:29
see the bigger picture because she's narrowed down to and she's
32:32
convinced herself that there is a control and there is a
32:34
processor and she's trying to get the community self identify
32:37
which is which. So I let them have a discussion
32:39
for a minute and then I stepped in and I said, OK, let's let's
32:41
just zoom out for a minute. Let's identify the entities,
32:44
let's identify the roles and let's see who is in charge of
32:47
the determination of any of these things.
32:49
And then it turns out that there is no processor and we're like,
32:51
how did I miss that? This is the basics.
32:53
How did I miss that? I've been stressing about this
32:54
for the last two weeks. How did I miss that?
32:57
Because you did the opposite of what we've been trained to do is
32:59
you zoomed in and you had this assumption that there is a
33:03
controller and a processor, not because of any mistake, but
33:05
probably because you're under pressure.
33:06
But you forgot the basics. Take a step out.
33:09
And then there was somebody else who had a question and there was
33:11
like, OK, what is the role of the referee?
33:13
So they, they was hosting this tennis competition and they was
33:17
bringing in a referee and they was like, what is the role of
33:19
the referee? Or do I do a controller to
33:22
processor the DPA or do I do a data share?
33:25
Like what do I do? And I said, hold on a minute
33:28
before we try and figure out who this referee is and how we need
33:30
to treat this challenge is have we even met the territorial
33:34
scope and the material scope? Territorial scope, OK, you're in
33:37
Europe, you have. But let's look at the material
33:39
scope. Is there any automated
33:41
processing going on? No.
33:43
OK, But is it, and is there any manual?
33:45
Is it filing anything? Is it filling anything out which
33:47
is going to become part of a filing system?
33:50
No. So why are we even concerned
33:52
about it? You haven't even met the
33:53
material scope, so there is nothing to consider here.
33:55
Just document that and then carry on.
33:57
And so this is what I'm saying, like these are super smart,
33:59
highly paid people who are forgetting the basics and
34:02
they're leaning in because they're so smart instead of
34:04
taking a step back and just focusing on the basics.
34:07
And literally, that's what I obsess about in The Academy Is
34:10
taking a step back and making sure we cover the basics, having
34:13
the frameworks that we don't move past the basics and into
34:16
the intricate stuff before we get the full bigger picture.
34:19
So I I completely agree with you and I'm trying to do that
34:22
despite being a lawyer and you mentioned a book and that is
34:27
obviously there is the basic guy to do the PR that you wrote
34:32
several years ago. Yeah.
34:33
And I mean, I must do my work and ask because you got some
34:39
push back and on that book mainly from from lawyers, is it
34:44
possible to oversimplify to the PR that I'm not saying that you
34:51
did it, but. Could you do it?
34:53
Absolutely it is. It is definitely possible to
34:55
oversimplify things. And if you oversimplify, so this
34:58
is the, this is the biggest challenge with what I have.
35:02
It takes so much longer to make something shorter and simpler
35:06
than it does to keep it complicated and long.
35:09
However, you have to balance that against oversimplifying it
35:12
to the detriment of the customer, to the detriment of
35:14
the stakeholder, to the detriment of the outcome.
35:17
And that's the balance that has to be met.
35:19
And so, yes, I did write the easy peasy guide to the GDP.
35:22
I published it in I think 2022. But do you know how that book,
35:27
the origins of that book? No.
35:29
All right, let me share that with you.
35:30
So I used to spend a lot of time answering the same question,
35:35
simple questions with my clients.
35:38
And I found that actually, what can I do so that they can help
35:41
themselves before they try and book a call with me?
35:43
Because they're asking questions that I shouldn't be billing them
35:46
for or that they should already know answers to.
35:49
And So what I did was I took the GDPA and I just wrote a easy
35:54
peasy summary after each one and I left it with my clients.
35:58
What I found one day was the interns in the office, they had
36:01
printed it out and they was using it.
36:03
And so I was like, OK, if this is helping you guys, then good.
36:05
But it was literally to help my clients before they call me.
36:08
Have a look at this. If it answers your question,
36:09
great. If it doesn't, then book a call
36:11
with me, right? So that was the initial purpose
36:13
of it. But then I found these interns
36:15
that was helping them and they were sharing it with some of
36:16
their friends who was also studying for privacy and doing
36:19
certifications. And then so I was like, you know
36:20
what? This is helpful.
36:21
So I offered it as APDF download on LinkedIn.
36:23
Like I was like, hey, I've got this, who wants it?
36:26
And then I think about 4000 people.
36:27
Downloaded it. Yeah, I did, right?
36:29
Yeah. So 4000 people downloaded that
36:31
version. I was one of them.
36:32
And then as I'm talking to more people, as I'm doing
36:35
conferences, people are coming up to me and saying, hey, that
36:37
was a brilliant guy. And I was like, oh, yeah, the
36:39
easy peasy guy. So I was like, oh, you find it
36:41
helpful? And then somebody got on a call
36:43
with me and they like showed me that they printed the PDF out
36:46
and it was on their desk. And they was like, hey, it's on
36:48
all of our desk. I was like, OK, how can I, if
36:50
this is really helpful? How can I get this into the
36:52
hands of more people? And so I decided, you know what
36:55
the best way to do that would be to publish it and make it
36:57
available as a book. So then I went and rewrote the
36:59
whole thing and then I published it as a book.
37:01
And that's when I put it out there in 2022.
37:05
Now, what happened was the book got published on the first day.
37:08
Oh, by the way, when I was doing this, so obviously it wasn't
37:12
published by like Penguin, one of the big publishers, right?
37:15
And so this is what we call self-publishing with another
37:18
publisher. And so when I was doing the
37:20
stats, somebody showed me the stats.
37:23
Somebody, a lot of people said you shouldn't publish the book,
37:25
right? You're not a lawyer, you're not
37:27
middle class background who's going to be interested in buying
37:30
this book. And then someone shares some
37:31
stats with me saying, look, you're spending a lot of time
37:32
and money on this. But look, here is the stats.
37:35
An average book sells between 30 and 300 copies in its lifetime.
37:40
And mostly that's to friends and family.
37:42
So I was like, you know what, you've got a good point.
37:44
Should I do this? Should I not do this?
37:45
And I was like, you know what, actually, I know that it's going
37:47
to help people. And if it does, great.
37:49
If it doesn't, then that's OK. At least I know I tried.
37:51
I tried to do my thing to be as helpful as I can.
37:53
And so I published the book and in the pre sales we get 1028
37:57
dollars, 1028. That's three times more than
38:00
what the average self published book.
38:02
So I was like, OK, this book has legs.
38:04
So it got released on a Thursday, Friday.
38:07
We're sending all of these packages out.
38:10
The four major universities in the UK ask for a copy.
38:13
So if you go to to the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, if
38:18
you go to the Cambridge library, if you go up to Scotland, all of
38:21
the four major law libraries, they asked for a copy of my
38:23
book, so they will have them there send it out.
38:26
And it started getting fraction, not just here in the UK.
38:29
It became a best seller on Amazon in the UK and then it
38:32
became a best seller on Amazon in Canada and then India and I
38:34
think 5 countries in total. In fact, if you go and look on
38:37
Amazon right now in the UK, it's still number one.
38:40
In Canada, it's still number one in this category.
38:42
So for the last 2 1/2 years, this book has been a best seller
38:45
every single month, month in, month out, which is like
38:48
phenomenal. Like I, I could never have
38:50
imagined this in my wildest dreams.
38:52
So I'll praise to go for that. But as soon as it was published,
38:55
because there was a lot of traction behind it on LinkedIn,
38:58
some people in the industry, middle-aged, middle class
39:02
British males got very insecure. There was like, how dare Jamal
39:07
have the audacity to write a book.
39:09
He's only been in the industry for the last five years.
39:11
We've been doing this for 10-15 years.
39:13
How dare he simplify this. How dare he make it more
39:15
accessible. And they seem to have more of a
39:17
problem with the fact that I'd had the audacity to publish a
39:20
book rather than the book itself.
39:22
And then there was one or two people who got really nasty.
39:25
They started attacking my character.
39:26
They started attacking my business.
39:28
And then there was the, you know what?
39:30
The thing that surprised me the most was the amount of people
39:35
who were joining on the bandwagon.
39:38
And almost like it was bullying on LinkedIn.
39:40
I don't know if you saw the posts right, but literally I was
39:43
getting bullied on LinkedIn and I was like, this is meant to be
39:45
a professional platform. I can't believe people are
39:47
behaving like this. And it, it, it did have a
39:50
significant impact on me because that Saturday I woke up to
39:54
message text messages like my phone was going beep, beep,
39:56
beep, beep, beep, beep. And people that cared about me,
39:59
people that had read the book, people that were in the book,
40:01
Have you seen this? Have you seen this?
40:03
They all kept sending me the same post by these two nasty
40:06
gentlemen. One of them actually went as far
40:08
as to buy the book and write a review and completely slate it.
40:11
Which was actually very helpful because he pointed out
40:14
suggestions in the book, which I have then gone and made better.
40:17
So I was in this position like, Oh my gosh, I put so much time,
40:20
effort, energy into this and how is this going to impact stuff?
40:23
And that Saturday, I was meant to go out and celebrate with my
40:25
family because as you can imagine, I've seen very little
40:28
of them over the last month while I've been working on the
40:31
book. And so we didn't actually end up
40:33
celebrating because we had to deal with all of this drama that
40:36
was going on. And I remember having a serious
40:40
impact from my confidence at the time.
40:41
I was questioning myself, like, have they?
40:44
Is what they're saying right? Maybe I'm not as helpful as I
40:48
think I am, and maybe I've got this wrong and I kind of
40:51
withdrew a little bit. And the people that I thought
40:54
were supporting me, the people that I thought were my friends,
40:56
that were my associates in the industry, that I'd met at
40:59
networking events, that I had helped, that I helped them
41:02
elevate their personal brands. It was shocking to see those
41:05
people chiming in and some of the stuff people were saying was
41:08
completely untrue. And when people that know me
41:11
were going to defend me, they were deleting the comments.
41:14
Like you couldn't make this stuff up.
41:16
And so there was one particular person who was very helpful and
41:19
supportive throughout that. And I have to mention her and
41:21
Debbie Reynolds, the data diva from the USA, she could see what
41:25
was happening because one of these people, she, she was one
41:27
of the people that endorsed the book, along with the, the CEO of
41:30
the Future of Privacy Forum, Jules Polonowski, right?
41:33
One of these nasty gentlemen had made it their business to
41:36
message them on LinkedIn and say, Hey, why are you supporting
41:39
this guy with the book? He's rubbish.
41:41
Why are you supporting him? Why are you associating with
41:43
him? And they send me the messages
41:45
like he has no idea. These people have a lot of
41:47
respect from me. They didn't want to get involved
41:48
publicly, but they wanted me to know.
41:51
So if there was anything I need to do, I could do something
41:53
about it. Anyway, he ended up with me
41:54
taking legal action just to kind of nip it in the bud.
41:58
And it took a little bit of time for me to recover from that,
42:00
like mentally and then like thinking I wanted to start
42:05
offering stuff, but the sales of the book just kept getting
42:08
higher and higher. And so that started speaking for
42:11
itself. And then more and more people
42:13
started messaging me. More and more people were
42:14
posting about the book and how helpful it was.
42:16
And I was like, you know what? Why did I even question myself?
42:19
Why did I allow these gentlemen to leave rent free in my mind?
42:22
And that gave me a lot more resilience.
42:25
But it taught me a few things about how to approach people,
42:29
how to trust people and not to take things for granted, not to
42:32
assume things. But what these people don't
42:34
understand is I've buried three children and I've got over that.
42:39
So it doesn't matter what you say or do to me because you
42:42
can't do anything worse to me than what I've already been
42:44
through. And so even if you're trying to
42:46
shut me down, which is pretty much what they was trying to do,
42:49
is trying to shut me down, make sure I disappear, it's not going
42:51
to happen. And what's happened in that
42:53
time, from that time to where I am now, I've pretty much gained
42:58
an extra 20,000 followers on LinkedIn.
43:00
They pretty much stayed stagnant.
43:01
I have been awarded privacy leader of the year.
43:03
I've been invited to the European Commission.
43:06
I've won all of these awards that you can see on the
43:08
bookshelf behind me and I'm getting more and more value.
43:11
I've featured in Foes, featured in some of the world's press.
43:14
I've been flown out by clients all over the world and business
43:17
class just to go and speak to their audiences.
43:20
And so the key from here is believe in yourself.
43:24
If you know you're adding genuine value, there will be
43:27
people who try and get in your way.
43:28
But overcome that. And if you are genuinely sincere
43:32
and you're adding value, then God will take care of you and
43:35
everything will work out in the end.
43:36
I actually had one follow up question to that situation.
43:40
You mentioned what your family has gone through and and also
43:45
person from from this period, but I find it fascinating that I
43:51
always when I see you on LinkedIn or otherwise, you're
43:53
also with a smile on your face. Yeah.
43:56
How is that? Thoughts about how do you do it?
43:59
So it's the mindset, right? It comes back to the mindset is
44:02
you can either be in control of your life or you can be reacting
44:07
to other things. So again, this comes back to
44:09
some of the coaching that I've had and what I teach in The
44:11
Academy Is in life, there's two sides to the equation.
44:15
So you can either be at cause for everything that happens in
44:18
your life, or you can be someone who's always reacting to other
44:21
people's choices and always be reactive to them.
44:24
Now, if you want to be empowered, you choose what you
44:27
stand for, you choose how you want your day to be, and you
44:29
choose how you want to show up. And I know that I want to make a
44:32
massive impact in the world. I know that I want to change the
44:35
world to make it a better place. And the best way to show up is
44:38
to add value, is to be cheerful, is to be happy, because that's
44:41
who I am. And in even if there are other
44:44
people in the world who are nasty, I'm not going to let that
44:47
get to me. I'm not going to give them the
44:48
power. I'm not going to disempower
44:50
myself. I'm not going to give them the
44:51
satisfaction for that because it's not worth it.
44:53
I've got so much bigger things I'm focusing on, right?
44:57
The people that were attacking me, how many books have they
44:59
written in the last five years? They was talking about they're
45:02
having the book tools. No one's seen a single book or
45:04
anything of value from them. You can pay attention and you
45:06
can gang up on me with these people who are doing nothing and
45:09
who are just throwing mud at other people.
45:11
You can either be be like one of these people and throw complain
45:15
about other people, or you can choose to be empowered and say,
45:18
you know what, I'm going to do what I want to do and I'm going
45:20
to do in my own terms and I'm going to make the world a better
45:22
place or I'm going to show up with value.
45:24
OK, there we go. It's on my.
45:26
No problem. And now you're empowered to
45:29
write a new book on the AI. Yeah.
45:32
So I've been working very hard on this new book, which is the
45:35
Easy peasy guide to the EUAI Act.
45:39
Just this week, literally last night, it's been peer reviewed.
45:44
So I, I wrote this book at the end of last year and then over
45:48
the last month, I've given it to 30 peers who applied from
45:53
LinkedIn with so much experience.
45:55
Some people have no experience. I've got a housewife in there.
45:58
Some people have tons of experience.
46:00
In fact, they're actually leading some of the debates and
46:02
the conferences on AI around the world.
46:04
And so I've got a group of 30 select professionals from
46:08
founders to engineers to lawyers, to AI governance
46:11
professionals, to privacy professionals, to people who are
46:13
in creative industries. And I've given them the book.
46:16
And I said, here's the book. I want you all to look at it.
46:18
If you have no experience, what I want you to do is to read
46:21
through it and to see if it makes sense.
46:23
Because if it makes sense to you, then great.
46:25
If something doesn't make sense, let me know.
46:27
And if you have experience and you're working on this, I want
46:30
you to check to see if I've oversimplified anything to the
46:33
detriment of the reader or to the detriment of anyone that's
46:36
gonna rely on this book. And so they've been working very
46:39
hard going through the book and they've given me lots of
46:42
suggestions. Some of them have found some
46:43
typos and errors. So now what I'm gonna do the
46:46
rest of this weekend is try and organize all of that and then
46:50
refine it and then send it to the publishers.
46:52
And hopefully it'll be ready for publication around August,
46:55
beginning of August, end of July.
46:57
And of course, after you wrote that also Commission came with
47:00
the digital omnibus. Yeah, yeah.
47:03
So I mean, while I was writing that, we had the digital
47:05
omnibus. So one of the things that I've
47:07
been very careful is making sure that anything that could change,
47:11
I get as much clarity as I can. It actually helped that I was
47:14
able to go to the European Commission and have lunch with
47:17
the people in that area to actually get the inside scoop of
47:21
what's happening and what's likely to change and what's not
47:23
likely to. Change I actually.
47:24
Want to have some privileged information there?
47:26
I actually wanted to ask you about that situation when you
47:30
actually had the speech at the Commission, like a month ago or
47:34
so. Beginning of end of January.
47:37
Yeah, it's a little bit more than a month.
47:40
The the feeling like, as you said in the in the very
47:43
beginning of this conversation, like where you came from, ending
47:48
up standing in front of the EU Commission.
47:51
I mean, it must have felt really special.
47:55
Yeah, I mean special in one way. There's so many words I could
48:00
use, and then at the same time I would run out of words to
48:02
describe it. It was surreal.
48:03
It was amazing. I felt a huge sense of
48:07
responsibility because what I realized when I was preparing
48:10
for this was this isn't about me.
48:12
This is not about me. This is about representing
48:15
people like me. This is about making sure that
48:18
we put forward why privacy rights matter.
48:21
This is about representing people who really don't have a
48:24
say and helping the European Commission, one of the most
48:27
powerful institutions when it comes to privacy influence
48:29
around the world, and helping their staff and helping their
48:33
employees across the institutions of European to
48:36
understand how to do privacy better, how to do privacy better
48:40
for the 450 million citizens that they look after.
48:42
It is about showing that you can come from a minority and not be
48:46
a lawyer but still have a huge impact and be hand selected and
48:50
be invited to come and train and teach the European Commissions
48:55
lawyers, some of the best lawyers in the world, how to
48:59
show up even better, how to have more of an impact, how to cut
49:03
through the noise and make sure they create the reactions that
49:06
they want across the institutions.
49:09
And so I felt very privileged, but it was a heavy sense of
49:11
responsibility to make sure I get it right as well.
49:14
And the reception I received and the feedback I've got since has
49:17
been absolutely amazing. Yeah, because you are a little
49:20
bit concerned about the collection today of personal
49:23
data as I understand it. I want to say I'm concerned
49:26
about the collection. What I'm concerned about is I, I
49:30
still believe that people should have freedom of what happens
49:32
with the personal information and they should have visibility
49:35
over that. So I'm all for empowering people
49:38
with choices and making sure that people have a say and they
49:41
understand. Now whether they want to say or
49:42
not, that's up to them. But I want to make sure that
49:44
people are protected and empowered by their privacy
49:47
rights and that that's what the whole vision is about, is about
49:50
making sure that every single individual is empowered and
49:53
protected by the privacy rights. And that's what I'm working for.
49:56
So how do we do that? And I thought, you know, I'm
49:59
gonna go and do this thing on my own through the consultancy.
50:01
And I realized it's just a drop in the ocean, right?
50:04
Even though I work with some big companies, some big government
50:06
agencies, it's still a drop in the ocean.
50:08
And I realized what I need to do is I need to build a army of
50:13
world class privacy professionals.
50:15
And the moment we have a private professional working for every
50:18
organization, every company who has the same mindset, the same
50:21
level of training, the same dedication to the same passion
50:24
about protecting and empowering people everywhere, then my work
50:27
is done right because it's not relying on me.
50:29
We have a community of people supporting each other, making
50:31
sure that we're all doing the right thing.
50:33
Now, that might happen in my lifetime.
50:34
It might not. But you know, I can work to the
50:37
end of my life knowing that I'm making a difference and I'm
50:39
working towards the right thing. And that gives me joy every
50:42
single day because through that, what I'm helping people to do is
50:44
change their lives. Like nobody's going to come and
50:46
say, yeah, I'm, I'm so into this mission.
50:48
I'm going to give everything up. But if I show, hey, if you want
50:51
to be part of this mission, I'm going to show you how to get the
50:54
reward, get get the respect and get the recognition that you
50:57
need to be the best version of yourself.
51:01
Then everyone's like, yeah, definitely.
51:02
I wanna be, I wanna be a world class privacy professor.
51:05
I wanna make a difference. I wanna be a podcast.
51:07
I wanna do these speaking gigs and all of these things that
51:11
help make the world a better place.
51:12
Why wouldn't I wanna do that? And so that's the kind of people
51:15
that we attract, people who want to be much better and become the
51:18
best version of themselves. It's actually both empowering
51:21
individuals and by that, changing society.
51:25
That's exactly it, right? So we're closing to the end and
51:31
I'm really grateful for you taking the time and sharing all
51:34
of your insights and both the success and a little bit about
51:41
when you have struggle, I think that is such an important thing
51:45
that everything is not always super positive.
51:49
You do struggle sometimes in life.
51:52
Look, we're, we're all going to struggle and it doesn't matter
51:54
where you are now. Like I remember there was a
51:55
point in my life where I was struggling with more month than
52:00
money at the end of the month and I was worried about £30.
52:02
Now I have problems out of 30,000 lbs, right?
52:05
So there's always going to be struggles at every stage of your
52:08
life. But what kind of struggles do
52:09
you want? Do you want the small struggles
52:11
or do you want the biggest struggles?
52:12
And the biggest struggles are much more fun.
52:14
It's like a computer game. Every time you unlock a stage,
52:17
you go to a new level. And at every level there's a new
52:20
devil that you have to overcome. And that's life.
52:22
But you choose the struggles that you want because you're
52:25
always going to have your heart, but you choose which heart you
52:27
want. Now, it can be a very small
52:28
heart or it can be a very big heart where if you overcome
52:31
that, then you could literally change people's lives.
52:34
You, you could hold completely transform things.
52:37
And so I say we should always be striving to solve bigger
52:39
challenges. Great download, thank you so
52:42
much. I will just stop the recording.