David Mansfield: Ex-CEO of Capital Radio and creator of The Monday Revolution

0:00Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meek Cleaver Colon. BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Smart Bunny. Smart Bunny.

1:00Download the free Smart Bunny app today on your phone and use it when you need it. Whether you're a frequent flyer or a weekend road tripper, Smart Bunny's got your back. So before you pack your bags, pack your peace of mind. Download the Smart Bunny Insurance app today and travel smarter. Wherever you go, we go with you. Smart Bunny Insurance. Fast, easy, and always ready to hop into action. Smart Bunny. Smart Bunny. Insurance sold by Smart Bunny Insurance Services, Inc. Underwritten by various insurers. Coverage exclusions and limitations may apply. Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea.

1:32What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues.

1:42This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal.

1:55Listen in colour. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest that I'm very pleased to say is David Mansfield, ex-CEO of Capital Radio. We'll talk about the Houston Tower shortly because we're not far from it. And he's director of many companies including Carphone Warehouse and The Game Group and creator of the Monday Revolution, aiming to help you seize control of your business life. Having left school at 16 for an engineering apprenticeship, David became a chocolate salesman for Terry's, where once labelled the worst rep in the country, he grew to become one of the most successful.

2:30After helping to build Capital Radio into a multi-million pound company and building a portfolio career as a director, David became a serial angel investor and entrepreneur. He's also, in his spare time by the looks of it, chairman of Radar and a speaker, mentor and business coach, advising companies and individuals from students to high-profile business leaders. And in 2020, he became a founder himself. He founded the Monday Revolution on a mission, he says, to simplify business behavior and provide all executives, whatever their role or size of company, with the tools and approach to get more done.

3:02It's funny when you must hear these things, David, snippets of a life incredibly well lived and continues to be well lived, but amazing accolades, amazing titles of big companies and directorships and all sorts. Does it sound like you? Well, it always feels a bit surreal, to be honest. I mean, when I was an engineering apprentice, that was a five-year thing. And I can remember going through all the learning to be a toolmaker, working on all the machines and everything else. I mean, it was a proper apprenticeship and college and everything to go with it. But I remember when I'd go home and my hair would be covered in bits of metal and slurry and everything else, thinking, you know, I'm not sure this is me, really.

3:44and I've always been interested in business. And so I sort of, you know, I left there and I didn't ever go back to it. I did lots of part-time jobs. I got fired a few times. I was on benefits for a bit. And I turned up at an interview to be a training sales rep for Terry's. And really that was the sort of pivotal shift from engineering and being an engineering draftsman, which is where I ended up into, I suppose, a bit more, you know, a commercial world. where I was responsible for sales, and I had to live or die by what I sold, and mostly I didn't sell very much. You got free chocolate, though, probably.

4:22I did, yeah. Yeah, I imagine. It doesn't show, by the way. Obviously, you've run it off now. You said I was always interested in business, and at what age did it fascinate you, and why? I think, if I'm going to be brutally honest about it, I've always been interested in money, really, because my family didn't have a lot of money, and my dad died when I was quite young. So, my mum was great. I don't want to sound like I grew up in poverty because I didn't. Obviously, I didn't. But if I wanted to buy a pair of Levi's, my mum would say, well, we'll go and buy a pair of jeans from the co-op because they're just as good and half the price.

4:58But of course, you couldn't be a cool guy in Woking if there was anybody cool in Woking other than Paul Weller, of course. He's pretty cool. You couldn't go out and co-op jeans. So, if I wanted Levi's jeans, I had to go and earn the money for them. So I did everything from paper rounds. But my big thing was really working at the local garage on the petrol pumps. I mean, I would do that. So during the week, I'd be an apprentice engineer, and at the weekends, I would earn more money doing other jobs, and that was probably my most lucrative. Because I didn't want to be the guy that went down a pub and said I can't afford to buy a round.

5:32I wanted to be able to do things. So I therefore had to go and earn the money, and I enjoyed that. So I'm going to jump forward and then I want to go back because the money thing's interesting to me. What you're doing now as the founder of the Monday Revolution is helping people be more effective, helping people, I suppose, tap into their purpose and stuff. What role does money play in all these conversations you have with people? You know, I'm a commercial guy. I'm a business guy, really. A business is about money, isn't it, really? And, you know, I've done a lot of different things since I left Capital nearly 20 years ago now.

6:07and really money is at the heart of it, particularly with startup businesses and founders. It's all very well having a dream and everything, but actually most of them go bust because they've run out of money. So money is really important to people and my book, it's not all about making money. In fact, I don't really talk about it in that sense, but it's really about having commercial plans and sort of being realistic about stuff and saying, what do I need to do starting on Monday, which will help me achieve what I want to achieve? and that's really, I have a commercial approach to my advice with people.

6:41But I do business coaching and I'm a qualified business coach and that's with people of all sorts of levels and quite often it is about things like business development. So you can take a partner in a law firm, you'd know all about this, you take a partner in a law firm, they join because they're a great lawyer but there comes a point at which someone's looking at the spreadsheet and saying, well, you're supposed to bring in a million dollars a year and you brought in half a million dollars and we're not very happy about that. And of course the person was a great lawyer, but they weren't a great business development person.

7:09And you need, you know, there's a recruitment issue there, of course. But really, I work with people like that to help them build a commercial plan, a network and teach them how they can be successful by doing a number of different things. What am I going to do on Monday? I hope you're thinking about that because it's Saturday and David Mansfield is my business shaper here. He's the founder of the Monday Revolution. he used to run a small radio company called well it's actually the station's capital radio but went on to do other things in the world of radio that were even bigger mergers and the like that corporate world i just want to talk about it for a moment were you yourself all that time all the way through it was david mansfield true to exactly who he was and what he stood for or did you find yourself becoming what some people call a corporate animal yeah i mean i think i think that all of us we adapt to the context and the situation that we're in you know i mean if you're if you're out with a certain sort of people in a certain environment then you tend to reflect to some extent the environment you're in so you might talk differently you might have a different voice you know that that is very normal and it's what happens all the time i mean in terms of my my sort of underlying principles and being authentic to use probably an overused current sort of word I was always like that.

8:23And in fact, I think, you know, modestly, I was known for it. I mean, when I stood up in front of analysts, investors, and shareholders, I told them the way I saw it, really. So if things weren't going well, I would say so. And I did it the same with the teams at Capital. You know, I was very happy to stand up in front of 300 people in Leicester Square and tell them that actually the numbers were pretty poor and the sales guys were doing the best they could. But frankly, we weren't hitting our budgets, so don't ask for extra staff. Don't ask for more money for expenses because it's not going to happen.

8:57You're probably going to get less, but that's the truth of it. And I used to run a communication thing, which I refer to in my book, because we had lots of radio stations around the country. I thought it was really important because I couldn't go and visit them all at the same time to give them all the same news. I used to go and visit them a lot, but I couldn't do it all at the same time. So when I had something to say, they all used to dial into a call, and it was called the horse's mouth. And the reason it was called the horse's mouth was because when I spoke to the station directors, and there were a lot of them around the country, I could say, right, this is what we're doing.

9:25This is the situation. This is what I need you to know. And you can ask me questions now. But when you leave this call, you can confidently go to your people and say, the CEO told us. It was the horse's mouth. So it didn't get filtered or reinterpreted. I had to be careful with that because obviously there were people between me and those guys who were managing them and doing all that stuff, but everyone accepted it. I didn't put anyone in a difficult position, but I always tried to remain authentic, but it's quite often got me into trouble, really, saying what I think. Has it, though? I mean, you say that with a glimpse in your eye.

9:59Yeah. Well, I'm sorry, I suppose I'm sorry. You are who you are. Yeah. Yeah, no, without sort of naming names, I mean, you've mentioned companies that I was on the board of, and I haven't always been the best non-exec director in terms of getting my thoughts across. I mean, I'll give you an example. So I was on the board of Game Group, and I wasn't there for very long, and I joined it from Carphone Warehouse, and obviously I bought my Carphone Warehouse board experience to Game, and it was a very different experience, and I probably didn't do enough due diligence before I joined the organization.

10:35Anyway, I joined Game, and it became apparent to me quite quickly the business was sort of going to run out of money. They've made a lot of expensive acquisitions. Most of them were losing cash outside the UK. And I pointed this out not very carefully around the board table more than once. And basically, I got fired from the board for being pessimistic, miserable, and not understanding the cyclical nature of the games retail industry. You know, and when Call of Duty comes out, you know, everything's great. We can all go and buy a new Porsche because, you know, things have gone well. But, you know, Tesco's were selling Call of Duty and it didn't quite go to plan.

11:13And I pointed this out and I got fired. And then the business went bust a year later and I felt vindicated and sort of thought, well, you know, I told you so. But actually, when I reflected on it, I think that I hadn't done a good job because if I'd been clever and smarter and framed my criticisms in a different way, I think I might have persuaded the non-exec directors and maybe the executive directors that actually there was something here that was a bit of trouble, a bit worrying, and that we should do something about it. And that's actually, it's interesting, and I want to pick up on that in a moment.

11:44I want to float this for you to have a think about, because we're going to go to the Mishkon Innovation Series in a moment, but this distinction between being tough and pessimistic and also motivating people to do the right thing, not just at that board level, but at team level, is a conundrum for me, and I want to come back to that specifically. Much more from my guest, David Matz, we'll come up in a couple of minutes. Right now, as billed about 30 seconds ago, So let's hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing.

12:17In this clip, we hear from Robert Elding, founder and CEO of MyStoryboard, an AI-powered platform aiming to revolutionize visual storytelling and indeed content creation for businesses, creatives, and marketeers. The Mishcon Innovation Series. Inspiration from founders of cutting-edge businesses. in association with Jazz Shapers with Mishkon Derea. How have you found the technical challenges of working with Gen.ai? It's like working with any technology has its limitations. With Gen.ai, because it's pretty new technology, you don't necessarily know what those boundaries are, what will it definitely do and what won't it definitely do.

12:56And a lot of the developers that are developing it don't necessarily know what the end result is going to be because they are pretty inexperienced in terms of their dev work as well. So whereas in, you know, if you're building a website, whatever, people have been building websites for 25, 30 years. So that's fine. So, you know, the technologies to use and everything else. But with Gen.AI, there's a lot of trial and error involved. You kind of need to find workarounds. As I mentioned before, when you're developing your product, you create that MVP and you think, okay, well, that's not quite delivering what I wanted it to.

13:30and it's not quite what that end customer wants. What would we need to change in order to make that deliver exactly what we want to do? So then a lot of it at the moment is thinking what those workarounds might be and how the existing technology might be able to push this new technology in an area that they hadn't necessarily thought about. The Mishcon Innovation Series. In association with Jazz Shapers with Mishcon Derea. jazz shapers on jazz fm in partnership with mishkondorea it's business but it's personal you can enjoy all our former business shapers on the jazz shapers podcast and you can hear this very program again if you pop jazz and the word shapers after that not too difficult into your podcast platform of choice my guest today is david mansfield ex-co of capital radio director previously of many companies including carfam wells and as you were just hearing the game group and importantly, the creator of the Monday Revolution, aiming to help you seize control of your business life.

14:30So yeah, Mr. Pessimism, Mr. Cmudgeonly, Mr. Mansfield, there he is, he's telling the truth, he's truth to power. A, the board is like, as you said, I reflect, and that's obviously, it's a good thing to reflect, that's the learning moment, you reflect, you go, actually, if I'd have said that in a different way and framed it, we could have done that better, and maybe there would have been a series of interventions and they would still be alive. Part two of that is, you've got a big team of humans, and they're hearing David, who they trust and respect, but they come out feeling, and this is a hypothesis, they come out feeling depressed and go, well, how am I going to deal with that?

15:02I mean, where did you try, did you try to motivate people beyond the tough news, broadly, teams before the board bit? Because that's the bit I'm interested in. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, particularly when I was chief executive, I mean, when we were at Capital, you know, we had lots of high and low moments. I mean, when you're CEO for eight years, you know, I mean, you have great times and you think, well, there's no reason why these shouldn't continue. You know, then something comes out of left field and the things change quite dramatically. And sometimes those things are outside your control.

15:31So you have to think about how you're going to pick people up. And, you know, you don't want to be the leader that goes missing in action, really. And, you know, so again, it's something else which I talk to people about. You know, it's really important to be visual. And I think it's important to have something to say. And so, but you have to be, you can't, you know, it's like a lot of things in life, really. there is, when you don't know about the future because it's unknowable, you can't say to people it's going to be okay because it may not be okay and they know it may not be okay. So what you have to do really is to say as a leader, these are practical immediate steps we're taking to do the best we can in difficult circumstances.

16:05And, you know, and I'm going to be here at the front of this and I'm going to be doing it with you. You know, and that was always my mission. What do you think they said about you when you weren't in the room? um i i think that probably you know a mix of things really i mean there were there were people there that um that probably uh would have preferred a different leader i the leader before me was a really really good guy but had a very different style and he was uh i think probably it came across as more compassionate and perhaps more in tune with people's feelings i i was you know not not ruthless i would never describe myself as that but i was really quite sort of practical And I've always, as we said earlier, I've always had a reputation for telling it how it is.

16:47And sometimes, you know, people don't always want to hear how it is. You know, they'd rather hear a more sort of sugary version. But the practical thing is important. And I think just that you can tell me if this is incorrect. But I think in terms of the Monday revolution, you say top line. Now, not later. Get on with it. Invest time wisely. It's your most precious commodity as a leader or as a founder. Keep it simple. Just because it's a complicated question doesn't mean the answer should be complicated. In fact, the opposite is true. Find better ways. Look beyond the usual well-trodden paths and evidence-based decisions.

17:20It's the Thaler and, I forget, the co-writer of Nudge basically saying, we've all got internal biases and we just go to my guts telling me. Sunstein. Sunstein, thank you, and Richard Thaler, I think. Yeah, yeah. Isn't it, yeah. Those are lessons from life. Those are lessons from work. And are people receptive to that, David? Because they sound very sensible. Yeah, I think they are. I think they are. I mean, I don't preach them as a list, but I try and practice them when I'm talking to people. So if someone says to me in my coaching environment, you know, I've got a particular problem that I need help with, then I will help them explore that problem.

17:53And, you know, quite often, of course, it happens to all of us, you know, we end up trying to solve the problem by thinking what the outcome should be. And really what we need to do is have a process to examine what the problem is. I mean, that's the most important thing. First of all, what are we dealing with here? What do we know? What don't we know? Not starting with the end. And in fact, there's a lovely quote, how you decide determines what you decide. I think that's one of yours. Yeah, that's my current studies. I mean, at the moment, I'm doing a doctorate in strategic decision-making processes.

18:21It sounds a bit highfalutin, really. But basically, I'm looking at how senior people, particularly in everything from startups to FTSE 100 companies, how they make decisions. And I'm interested in the process of decision-making, not necessarily the outcome. And I'm currently, I'm in the third year of my doctorate and I've interviewed around half of the 40 people I'm going to be interviewing to ask them to come up with an example. It's all anonymous, an example of a situation where they had to make a very fast decision. And the only thing that they could, they only have two things that they can go to, which is the information and their intuition.

18:59Are they strange bedfellows? the rational on the one side and the intuitive on the other, because just putting myself in my own executive shoes and watching decisions being made, often it's a combination. And you get this whole thing of, well, we only look at spreadsheets, or I only ever use my gut. Surely there's a middle ground. Yeah, that's a very shrewd observation, and it's absolutely right. And, you know, as part of my doctorate, I've reviewed a huge number of academic papers and done a literature study and looked at what we already know and what we don't know. So basically my work that I'm doing at the moment and my research work I'm doing at the moment is looking at how intuition and rationality could be incorporated to help people make better decisions because quite often, as you suggested, people take a polarized view.

19:44They sort of go, well, I haven't got enough information so I trust my gut. That could be great but it could be really dangerous. I mean, if any of you got to watch Traitors, you would never trust your gut. No. So therefore, but there's a paradox there because those things appear so far apart. So rationality is all about numbers and data, arguably, and a linear process, and intuition is all about how you feel about stuff and what's in your subconscious. But in the middle, David, there's this motorway called the real world, which is there's real things happening, dynamics are changing, you don't have perfect information, people do come to the table with prejudices, and within all of that swirling mess, the executive, the leader, or the founder is meant to make the right decision.

20:23That is a tough call. Yeah, it is a very tough call, and quite often we don't get it right. and there's a lot we could do to improve the outcomes. I mean, roughly half of strategic decisions never meet their outcomes. Just give me one way of improving the outcome, just one simple thing before I ask you a broader question. Okay, well, a good example would be if you're looking at a set of data and it's telling you something, but it doesn't feel right, you need to explore the feeling. You need to sort of say, well, why doesn't it feel right? What's missing here? Equally, if your intuition is telling you to do something, you shouldn't just take it.

20:54you should go and try and find some evidence to back it up. So what we're really saying is that you're incorporating intuition and rationality, as it's described academically, into the same process. It's not an either or. You're moving between the two to try and get a better outcome. And reflection both ways. Yeah. Education, as I look at you, David, obviously you left school, not many GCSEs, not great. You then went and did your engineering piece. Yeah, yeah. And here we are now, and again, when I'm researching my guests, I go, oh, he or she has got that one, that one. I mean, the number of academic accolades you've got, I'm not saying you're collecting them, but there must be something in your psyche that says, I've got the itch I need to scratch that I've wanted to do from a very young age.

21:37There's something to me that you're obsessed about learning, and I'm trying to work out where that's come from. Is that true, firstly? Are you obsessed with learning? Yeah. And where is that from? Well, when I meet, I still meet the guys that I was in class with at school, and I mean I got asked to leave at the end of GCSEs because my results were so poor. I was in the top class but I was far more interested in listening to rock music and girls and doing all sorts of stuff. So I just gave up on academic stuff really. But I always liked writing and I was always interested in reading. And when I meet those guys now, they talk about what a great time they had in the last two years of school and of course they always forget I wasn't there.

22:15I got chucked out. So I felt it was unfinished business really. And I get asked a lot about, why did I do a master's four years ago? Why am I now doing a doctorate? And I've struggled a little bit with that answer, but I think I've worked it out now. And the answer is I just want to see if I could. It's the same reason that I go running. Because the drive in you, David, is extraordinary. You just have to look at even without, we've just met, but what you've done in your life is what some people might, they might find 5 % of the output that you've done. so you're doing all this stuff obviously there's a compulsion in a good way and that's you and you're not slowing down, you're speeding up I think I read that some way 71 going on 30 well I said when I was 60 people say you're going to slow down and that's what happens when I'm 71 now and people still say well you must be slowing down and I go no no I'm speeding up because time is a bit more limited now so therefore there's more to fit in so I try and do that and it's just me but as people sort of say anyone can do it.

23:21You know, I'm not a remarkable person. I'm not, you know, I'm not super bright. I'm quite the opposite, in fact. And I'm not super fit. At least I wasn't, you know. It's available for everybody. I went for a sort of cardiac checkup thing the other week. And the guy said, oh, yeah, you're really fit. He said, I hope I'm as fit as you are at your age. And I said, well, how old are you? He said, I'm 53. I said, he was a cardiac surgeon, right? I said, well, that's a choice you can make. Because it is. You're giving your cardiologist advice. I love it. No, no, quite right to. Well, it's a choice he could make.

23:50He was a bit overweight. He could do something about it. He should know better. He should know better. Final chat with my guest today, David Mansfield, who will tell you you should know better too. We've also got some Ezra Collective coming up for you. That's in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. David Mansfield's my business shaper. Just for a few more minutes, we're running out of time too. We're all running out of time. I know you've you've presented yourself David as you know you tell it as it is and you mentioned your predecessor at Capital you said maybe we had different styles and all that there's a few things there's a lot of you talked about rock and the fact that you ended up in radio is not coincidence to me at all the passionate feeling side of David Mansfield has it played more of a role than people might realize in the way your life has gone?