Why Dyslexic Thinking Creates Better Leaders

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1:12Paul, lovely to have you here. Thank you so much for joining.

1:15Paul Wright: I think when I reached out to you, I wasn't sure if you'd actually reply because I know that you're a busy guy and you've got lots going on. but I guess for those that don't know you it would be great if you could I guess introduce yourself and a bit about what you're up to at the moment but why it was important to come on to Behind the Title and share a bit about your story yeah so my career started way back when Sky was a concept I think people forget that I was working in a bank on Baker Street which is just about still there I think Lloyds had just sold it but there you go come out of university and I was sitting there and a friend of mine I split up I think I split up with a girlfriend a friend of mine said come over for dinner cheer yourself up and I was like fine and he was working as a runner at Sky Sky Channels it was then which was a crazy they had WWF wrestling and Spider-Man at the same time as like cable and wireless yeah yeah and it was and he said look they're building this thing called Sky TV and they're looking for sales people and I said well I know nothing about sales he said well that probably isn't necessarily a disadvantage in this case they're just looking for people who want to join it's a bit risky and I went into this chaotic office which was up on Ogle Street which is for those who know it's just off near the BBC and it was the former office of News of the World magazine I think kind of way back now and the thing was about it it was the they'd obviously moved to whopping by then but then the editor had had a flat at the top of this building it's weird which had very very 80s it was loads of mirrors and speakers and stuff you just said about that um anyway so i went there and i was interviewed and they said yeah well if you're mad enough to leave a safe career in banking then join out join sky so i did and then it obviously became sky tv and i spent 10 12 10 years there as it went through iteration after iteration and then again bust and all the other things that happened but it was just great for me it was just a great introduction into entrepreneurship because it was a very entrepreneurial business yeah and people forget that and just learning about the industry because we were a challenger brand coming into advertisers and saying hey do you want to buy advertising on sky and then most of them going well yes sort of but you're just more tv aren't you and we're like no we're a bit more than that uh and then i got involved in the web in the late 90s inevitably um and that was super interesting we're doing program sponsorship and we started doing web stuff on that and i got really interested and then obviously the dot-com boom happened and if you for those people who were there in that moment you were basically being phone call there was a phone call every day from a headhunter saying oh you know a little bit about digital come you know do some stuff and i took a job i'd always take one of my great my career ethos is always go somewhere where you're going to learn something that you don't know already no point going otherwise why was it important for you to come on to behind the title what what was it that drew you to the conversation well the initial email yeah i mean i think there's always i mean i'm doing a lot of i suppose not giving back a little bit in terms of a lot of things i do now and i do think that for a lot of people there's not a lot the world we currently live in i think we especially work there's so much frenetic activity you don't really have a lot of time to think about what makes good leadership what challenges do people have and building their careers and all those types of things and i think you know it's important for people to understand that what it says on the outside is not what it says what is there behind um and i've gone through my own challenges and tough times despite that sort of what seems like you know fantastically interesting career which it was but um so i think it's just good and i think you know people do appreciate that because it just as i said i think you know when i first started in the industry people would mentor you almost automatically it would just happen and there wasn't the interruptions of phones and emails and all those types of things and social media and everything else so you just get on and do it and you chat with someone at a pub and they'd be your boss or you'd there'd be a mentor and an unofficial mentor and it would you get a lot of understanding i think that's a lot harder now so maybe this is this is a helpful part of that i i'm always fascinated with people that have i mean so we got apple uber amazon yeah farfetch i guess during that time were there moments or was there a moment where on the outside you know ostensibly and just you looked great but on the inside actually shit's just fucked yeah things aren't going well you're not feeling great about yourself yeah i mean i think um one of the things so i learned this more when my kids were diagnosed so my kids were both diagnosed dyslexic and i didn't realize i was until they were okay that's recent not that reason but when it happened probably uh it's probably the early 2000s when they we started well certainly my son my daughter was diagnosed much later um but i started i knew i was slightly different in the sense of my appetite for startups and chaos and that type of stuff uh not this chaos but you know just building things from scratch and this guy was very much that and a lot of the businesses i've done have been very much that uh and i think you know that is a certain the way you think and the way you behave is is is different but not so obviously different that people notice it so when you get managed by people it becomes quite interesting and my biggest challenge i think being dyslexic is i can see where the ball is bouncing and where it's going to go next and if i'm managed by somebody who doesn't want me to think about that but wants me just to do just please do this becomes a real problem and there have been several occasions in my career where I thought I was doing the right thing I don't think I was but then I had managers who got in the way of that and didn't want me to do that and wanted me to you know behave under their and in their ways and I think that's a real big problem because I'm a great believer that teams should be diverse in every way because that's the best performance and you have to therefore adapt your leadership style to every different person that you have in your team otherwise if we're trying to create you know the same thing we might as well just leave it to ai right because it'd be a lot easier there's a lot of controversy out there at the moment as well about that exactly so i'm not a great believer in that but then i have had um you know some tough times where i've been managed in situations where people are like no you have to i want you to do it this way and i'm like well no that's you know whatever and i you know i'm not deliberately rebellious but i i struggled a lot with that and then equally there has been times where my performance has been judged on on criteria that doesn't work for dyslexia so um you mean example yeah i mean if you're having to do written work and this is way before ai and you know when word was pretty basic you stick stuff in word and it'll still miss out half the words and you say well the grammar's fine no it's not things like that i naturally don't one find really difficult to do um to create a document i mean i love writing but i but it's it's a challenge it's something i yeah i used to spend hours writing emails just trying to make sure i got them right and I never tell anyone that but it would be like yeah I've got to get this bit right and I've got to get the time right I've got to make sure I haven't dropped anything but but if you are you spell wrong or you can't create that document people think you're a bit thick or you're a bit difficult or you're not conforming and that was pretty tough when people push back on that and particularly when i guess when i was a kid i knew i was slightly different but i didn't really get diagnosed dyslexia i just was a slow reader i wasn't very good writer all that type of stuff but it was just like you know at that time you were just put in a bucket of slightly underperforming yeah and and again for the ignorance in me and maybe others i just think about dyslexia as you just mix letters and numbers up is that is it is there more to it than that well i yeah there is more to it than that i mean it's the way the way you think there's a little bit of left and rights and all that type of stuff so you you don't want to get into a car with a dyslexic in a map okay um i mean i even get lost on google maps so that's how bad it is right i'm with you so um but i actually see it now as much more of a sort of benefit superpower i mean there's some really interesting research on dyslexia in terms of how many entrepreneurs are dyslexic it's much about 10-15 % of the population are but I think most something like in entrepreneurs is 30 to 40 % wow so there is a that's astonishing because because the way the slight variation in our brains is we can we jump to strategic links that other people take longer to get to um and i guess most entrepreneurs um are always looking the great entrepreneurs always look at this classic line that i use is like they're looking for where the ball bounces second not where the ball bounces first right and if i think the dyslexic brain is obviously quite good at seeing that thing i mean richard branson's a dyslexic uh picasso with dissex it's a lot of you know interesting people who were um so i see it as a power but i think you have to understand it to see it like that and also you have to have management and bosses who will understand that that means yes some of your writing might be not so good and but equally you'd be very good in this area or good in this area because because we spoke about on the phone one thing that i hadn't thought about is actually with a lot of the advancements in technology now i think it opens up the opportunities for an incredibly diverse workforce yes so people that once before either wouldn't feel confident or couldn't do stuff with large language models can probably perform the same tasks that i can and if not better given the way their brain might think yes i think i think that's i think that's true and there's a slight irony of course it's suddenly that our spelling and everything becomes a lot better which is no is that less authentic i don't know but maybe i'd have to program an lmn so please occasionally just drop in a couple of dyslexic moments just to make sure that we're still authentic but um i don't know i yes i think i do think these types of things do help people who have those challenges definitely and can and can express themselves i mean the thing about the other power power is that you know dyslexics the people i know are dyslexic are very good verbal communicators because of they're not so maybe not so great um in the written work it's opened my eyes to um i guess some of the challenges that people face that are sometimes just hidden yes so when when we spoke and you said you know i i have dyslexia and i said i was like i haven't covered that yeah and and i don't know the exact stats think you said 10 15 of the uk the uk it's quite an astonishing number yeah when you when you think about the people you work with you're likely on one of your banks of desks yeah to be with someone that suffers with yeah dyslexia and there's still prejudice around i mean donald trump had a go at gavin newsom about being dyslexic which you know i'm like where are we right we what era we in yeah i i think there's that prejudice there's some prejudice still there unfortunately but because it but it is hidden you're right it should be one of those you know how you got skills on uh on linkedin yeah they do have they do have that yes dyslexia thinking is a skill yeah interesting okay there's a made by dyslexia group that do a lot of stuff and they've got they got that put into linkedin which is good and i put it on my profile some people i think there is it's funny talking to when i've been mentoring people they still don't really want to admit it on their cv or stuff just in case that's seen badly which i think is not great and that's something that we do need to change i think the industry's moved on but there's a lot more a lot more to do it's it's part of the reason why i started this podcast was and and i think that if i was to want to be remembered for something in this industry it's not because i can create a brilliant media plan or i can do an amazing pitch it's because the very small amount of time that i allocate to this the impact that it can have and if one person from this episode says jesus you know that's someone incredibly senior who's held roles at some of the most iconic consumer brands, but media and tech brands in the world has struggled, then that's okay.

15:14Paul Wright: And it is, I mean, it's not okay to not be okay, but it is okay to say, I suffer dyslexia, but here's how I manage it, and here's how I use it to my advantage. And I think you've got to own that. Yeah, you do. And I think it's one more, I've talked about it over the last few years, I think the more I've got comfortable with it, I think, and I think, and I was talking at an event, actually the IB did an event with Neurodiversity and Media Group that I'm part, I support. And the thing that they wanted, the people came up to me afterwards and said the most important thing is getting more people just to talk about it.

15:55Yeah. And particularly senior people, because to your point, they can go okay it's fine you know in that sense it sort of it's a reassuring moment

16:06Paul Wright: and how do you translate some of that uh reframing of dyslexia with your kids how do you coach and support and teach them for it to not be seen they're both adults now so they've sort of got through it i mean they're both very creative very interesting um uh they they naturally i think explored their creativity perhaps more than i probably did at school actually to be honest i didn't ever think i was creative in any way because that's one of the other traits but they they sort of embraced it um and we don't really now need to talk about it we're just like you know there's we all we all just know where you know when we type stuff sometimes there'll be spelling mistakes in the whatsapp groups and stuff like that so it's fine and i'm you know i'm super proud of them they just they've dealt with it my son was early diagnosed my daughter was late diagnosed that was one of the weirder ones but sometimes it's happening we like to understand a little bit more about your time or people's time at you know their their their roles but in particular was there a moment where there was shit that you wish you'd said that you didn't that you held back for worry that it will have a repercussion or it will hold you back or possibly because you were conforming it might be bad leadership it might be poor management it might be I guess a mismanagement of expectations in your roles I think it's a bit of both I think I probably got myself into a couple of challenging moments simply by saying things I probably shouldn't have said but equally there have been several times where I probably could have done more to defend a position or to call stuff out I mean leadership to me poor leadership to me is a really big problem because if you're in fast growth businesses you've got to have someone taking you along the road journey well because it just doesn't work otherwise so I'm very, if I fight I get pushed back in or don't get allowed to do what I want to do and there was one occasion where where I was basically being told to do one thing and it took me way too long to deal with it.

18:44And by that stage, it then became, it was a much bigger problem than it should have done. And ended up with me losing complete confidence in my own abilities because of the way I was being treated. And I ended up going to therapy for a bit on it because it was just, you know, I'd allowed the situation to develop to such a level that I couldn't control anything anymore and I didn't feel I had any support from anybody. Not a good place. Probably my lowest part of my career, actually, in that sense. Really difficult. Came out of it very well eventually, but it was one of those moments where I really wish I'd gone higher up and said, this is a problem, we need to solve this, and it didn't happen.

19:35and there was another occasion where i was forced into a situation which just gave me no choice i had to deal with it um i ended up leaving the company but it was i i could see it's i i think i saw it coming for about six months but i didn't do enough about it before it came i always think that is like you know there's always the oh it'll be okay tomorrow it's going to get better you know and all that type of stuff we're sort of programmed to do that i think a little bit in corporate life it's like you know it's not it's just a job it's fine but that just kept on i mean that was pretty bad i mean i was being called out in meetings for stuff that um i hadn't done or whatever but it wasn't it was being it was i was being highlighted against standards that no one else was being held up told to and i think that's when you see that happening and you see sort of favoritism happening elsewhere you're like hang on a minute why am i being treated like this and someone else who's been treated completely differently and arguably they're not achieving what they should be achieving either so yeah there's been quite a few of those moments and you know it doesn't look like it on the cv but you just uh i think i'm i'm a lot more comfortable now knowing that if i was in that situation again and I can deal with it.

20:59But at the time, I think particularly for guys, you just don't really want to admit it. You're having a problem. How can you deal with it? Who can you reach out to or whatever to help you through that process? And also, corporates aren't particularly well-designed sometimes to deal with those types of difficult personal situations. Their default tends to be let's protect the organization rather than everything else, which I think is a real challenge. So, you know, there are a lot of times where that's been the case, and it hasn't, you know, I don't know if I, I don't regret anything about any of my career, but I think it was, there were moments where I...

21:45Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. it just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last?

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23:22Paul Wright: could have probably dealt with it quicker do you think that those specific examples you shared were accelerated or brought on perhaps by at the time you obviously didn't know about your dyslexia but the entrepreneur that might have been in you yeah i think so i think that i think the entrepreneurial spirit or the approach um is slightly sometimes slightly contrary to the way some companies would like to process everything yeah you know you're a bit of a i think it's easy to to categorize people like me probably as maverick sometimes not enough not in a bad way but it is like oh well they're a bit like you know they'll break the rules and it's not about i mean and i've worked in a lot of corporates as much as i've done done startups so i'm certainly not incapable of working in corporates at all it's fine but sometimes you you know the wrong person can go well this person just not doesn't conform um and that you know you're sort of you know you're not you're not on your own but you're sort of in the corner on the side getting being pushed there you talked about it before around you know the team and working with the right people and providing them the right support.

24:42I guess, do you feel that your people are an advantage

24:51Paul Wright: if they are more entrepreneurially minded versus if they are more process driven or indeed they are someone that just wants to get stuff done? Because it's hard to create, like if you look at some of the leaders out there, you know, Richard Branson is a good example, probably a bit maverick yeah goes and just does stuff yeah and people follow and then you've got other leaders out there that are probably uh i would say a little bit more buttoned down tim cook um again perceptively from the outside um he looks like the corporate you would expect him to be i don't think he is and so i'm interested to know when it comes to leadership in all of the places you work what do you think it does take to make a brilliant leader for your team i think they need i mean i think they need to understand process as much as they need to understand you know doing the right thing taking a few risks here and there all that type of stuff but i think that's an environment driven issue rather than a it's not just a skills issue you've got to give people the opportunity to fail but also not criticize them for failing um i mean i always remember at amazon i went on a uh leadership thing in seattle and they one of the guys came up and presented who basically presented you remember those buttons that used to sit on washing machines so you can press to get stuff and he presented it as a failure as a business failure but then talked about his success subsequently right and i thought that's very powerful because too much of teams is like conform you know you've got to conform with whatever the leader says and i'm a great believer that give them give people the sort of the protection to do what they need to do the people all the way through the team are going to be better at certain things than others but they also see weaknesses and opportunities the better than others the people at the top particularly now and speed with which you move you don't necessarily know everything that's going on in down the bottom you need to have that input from the most junior member and the middle members and all that type of stuff so i think it's it's not about and they've got to understand that process is important and they've got to understand that you know everything else is important but it shouldn't be just process it shouldn't be just risk-taking to be a balance um but it's the leadership challenge and i i'm getting increasingly talking to a lot of mentees worried that we're sort of giving up a little bit on leadership as a as a skill set and what do i mean by that well if you look at when i first started working leadership there were leadership programs where people would send off for two weeks on a leadership program you know and you would go off and that would be accepted by everybody in your team that you were doing a proper leadership program these days leadership is a couple of videos and that isn't really leadership because i think leaders will learn better from other leaders but they've got to be embraced within that culture and i think at the moment we're sort of putting people into leadership jobs because they've been there a long time or whatever the reason is they know their stuff but we're not giving them support to become the leaders they should be and therefore produce the teams that they should have Yeah, it's funny because in my career at the moment, I'm seen as a leader and there'll naturally be progression.

28:18Paul Wright: And I've had off sites and lots of training. Well, it is. But if I look, I'd say, again, I hear this a lot. In terms of growth and development, 70 % is on the job, 20 % you seek out, and 10 % the special stuff that they give you. and actually I believe that that 10 and that 20 should be 30 yes you know when I think about leadership um often you know I I'm responsible for showing up in the right way for creating the conditions for people to feel that they can be who they are um if someone has a specific condition or they're struggling with an issue on a personal level I have to be empathetic enough to spot it but then also provide them space to be able to talk about it and and take the time um working in these big organizations i can imagine there were quite a few times where there were kind of cultural or workplace triggers that really pushed you yeah over the edge yeah i mean i think i think general things i mean the demands of any big tech company are tough yeah and you probably have i'm sure you have people on the podcast talk about this i mean i think they have very high expectations of delivery at a very very fast pace um some of them are better than others a bit of candor some and it's it's an interesting thing this i think amazon was because of its document culture and everything was quite an interesting place because the truth was a little bit easier to see perhaps than it could be in other organizations where it could be the truth could be pushed by a certain agenda of a certain person because the document culture forces everybody to read the same this was the pre-reads yeah yeah you got a six-page document you've got a pre you read it at the beginning of the meeting and then you get to the end you get halfway through the meeting and then you have a discussion about it but it basically gives the info the same information to everybody at the same time there's no bias towards who's presenting it because no one's presenting it um and because there are quite strict guidelines around it.

30:42It's really powerful. So it's probably an easier way to do fast growth. I mean, Amazon is an amazing company for doing fast growth. They know how to scale businesses very, very quickly. And that is part of the reason, is that culture works. I'm not saying there's no politics and all that type of stuff. Of course, there's that nature of human relations, right? But the thing is, that's good. Whereas in other companies, I've seen perhaps a little less candor and a little more unrealistic, not really unrealistic, but very high demands without that candor, which can be quite challenging. And you're like, well, how the hell are we going to get there if we're only here and no one's got a plan?

31:25And people haven't necessarily pushed back on a part of the organizations that's come up with this theory. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place. So anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast.

32:09No more, wait, who talked to this customer last? And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash tech. That's q u o.com slash tech.

32:44So yeah, there's been some pretty tough times where you're like, looking going. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I mean, even when I seem to remember when, when I joined Uber, and they were like, they've made a public statement they wanted to be a billion dollar business. And I was like, that's gonna take a while. I haven't got that long. So, you know, I think it has been, there's some very tough moments and the demands can be excessive. I mean, one year I was traveling all across the world and it was just like I was on a plane every week pretty much.

33:24Paul Wright: Do you find it hard to separate being in those big roles and actually coming back home and being Paul the parent? um because i think i i think i i used to i'm probably better now although um my kids are adults now i'm so better now yeah um and i think the way i found of dealing with it is running and guitar one of the two things that i sort of like became my go-tos i mean running mainly because i was traveling so much and running is a very good stabilizer when you arrive somewhere and it's a great way of seeing a city actually because you never really if you go go on business trips most of your time spending ubers ironically and and hotels right um or offices so the running thing has been made me much better i wish i'd done that earlier actually i've been doing it for about 14 years but earlier in my career i think if i'd done that i would probably got through some of the tougher times a bit easier and who who inspires you um out there day to day maybe your family or maybe there's a a poet or someone else like what where do you draw your inspiration from to keep pushing forward being entrepreneurial overcoming challenges that you have with dyslexia whatever it may be i think my inspiration now comes from helping others to go through that I think that's what it's all about.

34:52I mean, I'm a board advisor with them. Last night, I was a board advisor to a company which was co-founded by one of the guys who used to work for me. And they just raised some money and they're doing really well. And helping them, because they've asked me to help them, is great because I can see they're going to be successful. The company's called Audiences. They're doing really well. But that's nice. And the mentoring thing has been great as well because I like to keep connected with a lot of different generations because, you know, otherwise, you know, sit around and talk to a load of Aldi's is fine, but it's not, you know.

35:31So I'm doing a lot of that. So I think those are the things that keep me motivated. And this industry is always interesting. It hasn't changed. I mean, I've been lucky because I've managed to jump into every, a lot of the changes that happened. But, you know, my last one was retail media, commerce media, which is still very big, big subject matter, a boy in time. And the AI stuff that comes into that is good. So I think the industry keeps me going. People keep me going. And then who do I get inspired by? I was probably a bit more inspired by the early tech guys than I am with the current crop.

36:09Steve Jobs and those guys, of course, at Apple. And actually working at Apple was fascinating and seeing how he created that organization. And then other people. I guess, I mean, I'm still a big music fan, so I'm probably more inspired by musicians than I am by anybody else.

36:26Paul Wright: It's so powerful, though. Yes. Ironically, we're in Spotify Studios. Yeah, we are. So it is hugely powerful. So we'll kind of start bringing it to a bit of a close. Sure. One area that we find really interesting is when people start to unpack, you know, during their career, personal or professional, you know was there a moment or a realization or a piece of feedback that you received that changed how you saw yourself for you know forever um ultimately charted a different path for you um because as i said you've worked at some incredible organizations but i think that i think the biggest thing i think a lot of entrepreneurs will tell you this actually is if you sell a business and if they tell you it's about money it's not about money it's about the validity of that it was your idea and you took it all the way to the end is that so not about the money thing is yeah i mean yes i'm sure there's entrepreneurs who just focused on the money but actually when we set up the the sports business we ran we wrote a business plan saying we were going to sell it in four years and we sold it in four years we also wrote i don't know if i said this we actually wrote down i still got a plan somewhere the three companies we thought were going to buy it all three pitch for it which is obviously i mean but when it was sold it was like that's that's really powerful for me because it's a validation perhaps that i needed that is difficult to you know in careers that's there aren't many moments where you get real validation like that and that was really powerful for me i mean i've had lots of other times as well for those types of things, but that was probably the thing that went, no matter what happens, you've got that, you've done that, build it from scratch to the outcome, and did it with a great team.

38:26It's a 20-year anniversary of that team now when we're getting together in the summer. They're all doing great jobs in other places.

38:34Paul Wright: Amazing. That must be quite nice to see that. It is great to see that. so I think that's the yeah I mean that would be the thing and then I think the other thing is and going back to people point I've seen people who've worked for me being incredibly successful and there is one occasion where I was at a party in Cannes I can't remember which DJ was banging out whatever it was it was one of those ones and I was just standing there chatting to someone and someone who I had mentored for a bit and helped in their career who's now super successful I won't say who they are just saw me across the the floor came up to me and said thank you for your advice on that all that time ago because it's made a fantastic difference to my career and then they disappeared back into the thing and it was like okay i'll take that yeah i um i've been most moved over the last uh year since i launched this podcast i get i'd say every time i launch an episode i get two or three personal messages and i'd say a lot of time from people that i don't know that well yes which one tells me that it reaches people but two it touches people because the messages that they send normally uh talk about how the podcast has either helped them realize something they've taken action they have a friend or a family member and that to me because there are moments right you can fall into a trap of wanting this to be the biggest and the best that there is and you know I'm not a high profile celebrity you know I'm someone that has a relatively low-key life that works in the world of media and I've built myself a bit of a career but the same feeling that you got from that person walking across to you when i get that message it reminds me that if it helps one yeah then my job is done like literally it's as for me it's as basic as that and i just wish there was more of that in the industry yeah i agree i mean i think the dyslexia thing for me has also been that i've got a lot of people coming to me that you're one of the few people who talks about this and it's been really helpful i showed it to my daughter or whatever that's great yeah it's a massive it's a massive change but yeah we need but we do need more of it because you know it's it gets lost in all the speed of everything else that's going on sometimes well you know there's a huge you know we've got we've got can coming up in in a couple of weeks and you know there was there was talk of i got i got two people that suggested oh yeah we'd love to come out talk on a panel do a live podcast and radio silence now i don't mind i'm not bothered about getting the invite but it's really interesting how quickly agendas take over around yeah i've got a commercial priority rather than realizing for me i believe that if you put people at the heart of your business i totally agree and you recognize the strength that they have in all shapes and sizes i i'm i'm 99 confident you can transform and accelerate the growth of your business faster than any other business out there i agree um but we always get caught up in the runway the shareholders and what's required that's cool that's that that's that is industrial commerce you know uh at its best but um hearing from people like you sharing this is so important yeah and but this thing about you get the teams and team you know giving people the culture where a team can everyone as an individual can thrive within a team it's so powerful so what permission would you give to people um to think feel do or say differently uh based on the career you've had the diagnosis you had the experience that you've built um that can help them i always say to people look i mean i think there's a couple of things if you're comfortable somewhere you need to take a risk a little bit and to move on to learn i mean learning's the big thing for me i've everywhere i've gone i've learned something no matter whether it's a good job or bad job and that keeps me going because you know um it's a bit like my music collection which has got wider and wider in terms of genres over the years because of that to some degree but i think it's um just keep learning if you're not learning then find something to learn within your current job or find another job because I think there's a there's this theory and we touched on this with AI is that in the world that we're moving into people who are generalists have got lots of experience across a lot of things will do really well because arguably AI will take over some of the specialist areas because they can be replicated if it's super specialist now whether we believe that or not is another matter but you know whatever but i do think this of having a a wide experience of things is it's going to be helpful in the future um and you know when i'm mentoring people i always say to them well what do you want to do next well i want to get there and i'm like okay well how are you going to get there if you stay here because that's not going to happen i'm not saying you have to leave but you've got to stay where you are in that moment so i always think that's the keep learning and keep building from there and then the other thing i always say to people is your network's way more powerful than you'll ever realize and to i think in this world of ai linkedin in particular you know it's like well i can just get loads of followers i'm like that's not a network that's that's an ai model or whatever and sometimes if you've got a network network of people who um i did a post on this recently actually you know people who answer on whatsapp when you're needing a bit of help someone to say oh you know this person is this job interesting that type of stuff because that's the the powerful thing and that network grows with you and as long as you treat people decently in that network then they will be very supportive of you as you go through your career.

45:00Paul Wright: And if I can just ask for anyone on a practical level, if they're unsure whether they have dyslexia or even they've been diagnosed with dyslexia, what would you say to them? I think talk to some other people who've got it. Not got it, it's not like it's... But are dyslexic and understand how they deal with it. And then decide how you want to play it. would you want to play it comfortably and openly as a positive? I mean, I see it as a positive. I don't see it as a negative. There are negative elements to it, but as we said, some of those will probably go because of AI. If you can position it as a positive to your life, then you'll probably find that you'll naturally go to places where you will thrive.

45:46Paul Wright: Great. Paul, thank you so much for coming on. A pleasure. It's been great. Really enjoyed the chat and look forward to everyone hearing the episode. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, mate. That was great. Thank you. Was it right for you? Yeah, perfect. No, it was really good.

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