Jason Stockwood | The Future of Britain

0:00This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Score more with the college-branded Venmo Debit Card and earn up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash. Got paid back? With the Venmo Debit Card, you can instantly access your balance and spend on what you want, like game day snacks, gear, tickets, and more.

0:42The more you do, the more cash back you can earn. Plus, there's no monthly fee or minimum balance. Sign up now at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Select schools available. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo.me slash stashterms. max$100 cash back per month. Welcome back to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. I hope you had a very refreshing Christmas and have had an excellent start to 2026. Today I'm joined by Jason Stockwood and he hits some of the key metrics for Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. He's involved with government as the Minister of State for Investment.

1:15His prior career to that was being a successful entrepreneur working at many different UK scale-ups and he's involved with football being the chairman of Grimsby Town Football Club. I've been talking to Jason about getting him on for a long time when he was made the Minister of State for investment last year by Keir Starmer. I was like, we've got to do this now. So it was great to get him on, chat all about the role, how he's kind of measuring the KPIs, etc. And also we ended up going quite deep into some stuff about his personal life, which I hadn't been anticipating and I hadn't known about before either.

1:47But it made for a really interesting interview. So I hope you'll enjoy listening to this as much as I do recording. Thanks very much for listening. On to today's episode. Make sure you subscribe so we can continue to get bigger and bigger guests.

2:07So Jason, welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Thanks a lot. I feel like this has been one of the longest recordings in the pipeline for ages. I think we first chatted about it three or four years ago in the early days. I was looking at your LinkedIn profile earlier, and I was delighted to see you've got the House of Lords, Investment Minister, et cetera. But before all of that, entrepreneur is still there. So I feel like you tick more boxes than anyone we've had, because you're also heavily involved with Grimsby Football Club, which we'll come on to as well. First, I think you've got one of the most fascinating jobs in government in terms of the Investment Minister.

2:41But what is the job? Well, firstly, thanks for having me. And I know you've had some patience going backwards, I think I've got something to say now, hopefully, as well, after all these years. And it's funny, I was at an event last night and someone introduced me as a former entrepreneur. I'm still, like, my career isn't over as a result of taking this on. I hope not. Anyway, I hope it's not over. But, yeah, I mean, I do think it's probably one of the best jobs in government. So, you know, it really is probably the least political, I would say. And it's been great because I've spoke to some of the previous incumbents, particularly before Poppy, so Jerry Grimstone and Lord Johnson as well.

3:21It's really about how do we capitalise some of the major projects in the UK. So one of the things that isn't as clearly articulated, I think, is that we've got a modern industrial strategy. We've got a plan for turning around the economy and growing the economy. And really my job and the team's job is to get out there and make sure we've got capital to do that. So a secondary responsibility is sort of being the voice of government, I've sort of the voice of business within government as well. I was a little bit nervous coming in as my first government role of what I would find because the role sits between the Treasury Department of Business and number 10.

3:54And so I was a bit nervous about what I'd find in the Treasury from the sort of things you read in the paper. But, you know, it was important to me to be part of a government that was pro-business, pro-growth, pro-wealth creation. So sort of three months in, that's definitely true. And so the sort of secondary role when I was coming in was really being that voice of entrepreneurship and business within government as well. And I guess the third bit is really about, you know, if there are people that want to invest in the UK, the Office of Investment just works as a sort of concierge and tries to make life easy for them.

4:23So, you know, how we help them navigate our systems, our legislation, you know, visas sometimes as well. So we're just trying to make the UK the most attractive place to invest. And how do you sort of, what are the kind of like KPIs that you're measured against? Well, it's funny because when I came in, so well you'll notice from your time in government it's really weird you sort of get the call and then you like you look for the induction and the welcome you just turn up and you're doing the job straight away so i had a few weeks to think about it so i wrote myself a 90-day plan as you would as a ceo and i'm just coming to the end of that now pre-christmas and um it really was to decide that so it was to a set the clarity of purpose and direction for the team um set the ownership structures and priorities both for the organization and for myself work on the team itself and then work on the deliverables and so we're in that process now of working out but without giving you the details the numbers the sort of things are you know how we affect sort of the gdp how we look at number of deals come through how we look at number jobs created you know how we look at i'm particularly interested in where we influence deals so making sure that we're just not passive recipients of people coming to invest in the uk because you You know, I never took government money in any of my businesses, so I turned up to places because I wanted to do business and wanted to work in those places.

5:43So I'm keen to make sure that we're value-added as well. So we've got a team of people, and prior to Christmas, we'll have those numbers. But broadly, what we're trying to do is help the economic growth story. Yeah. And how – it's funny because I think back to my time in number 10 and the two things whenever we were doing trade trips or anything like that was what is the investment figure that they're putting forward and what are the number of jobs that are kind of created. And it was funny because before going into number 10, I was a bit sceptical sometimes of these kind of like big announcements and so on.

6:15But actually a trade trip or an investment summit or something like that really does actually focus the mind and get it all kind of pulled together. What have you sort of got planned for 2026 in terms of that? Yeah, that took a bit of adjusting to it. I know it's only sort of four months, but everything is accelerating. but there is that whole thing around events, galvanized people, as you say, to actually put... So there's almost an infinite amount of complexity in deals and things that you could be working on in government, which is... We should talk about why... I mean, reform are talking about having business leaders run government.

6:47That is a terrible idea, and I can come back to why I think that's a terrible idea. You need business people in government, but all business people running government would be awful because there's something beyond deals. but i mean the us deal i think i was in for a couple of weeks and there's 150 billion dollars of investment both ways and it's really important that you know you just focuses the team on saying what can we deliver that we can announce but importantly the of is the delivery mechanism for a lot of those deals as well i think what i was slightly skeptical is it's just a big headline number then kind of so what you move on to the next one but there's a whole delivery mechanism that's behind that and then importantly for me um one of the things and this is a personal metric rather than an ofi metrics like how does it in it how does it impact particularly our regional growth because i think part of the reason i've i've come into politics is this this sense that these big headline numbers are quite meaningless if you're from grimsby and you hear 150 billion in data centers and sort of life sciences but like people are like my electricity bill is still too high my mortgage is too high so trying to work out how does that translate to the electorate more broadly how's it impact people's lives yeah um but so for next next year so in the first three months we've been you know in india with the prime minister in saudi with the chancellor i was in china last week um so more of the same i'm trying to have a sequence of travel every month so we're both um we've got this prospectus of projects and you know the the industrial strategy growth areas that we want to focus on so making sure that we're we're pitching those to global investors and that's a sequence every month I'm trying to get although civil service tell me you can't plan for longer than three months but I'm trying to get scheduled travel for the whole year so I can get out and do the job selling the UK um and then you know just being really structured around the delivery of the industrial strategy but there's eight sectors uh well defined focused on our key capabilities and making sure that there's plenty of capital to get those things going what surprised you about the job in the first three four months um do you know one of the things it it's quite prosaic but i i used to i've talked a lot about this is comes up to that point around being in business is that i used to find that time was fungible i could find time for everything i wanted to do by working a bit late a bit longer or getting some extra resource and stuff and there's just you can't do that in government there's just there's a there's that you know nearly everyone you meet has got a different view of what they want to see from government so you combine that by you know 60 plus million people in the uk and then all the international people were seeing so so the the discipline of prioritizing is is is 10x what i did as a ceo yeah that's interesting to me and and i have to be really disciplined around where you spend your time i'm to say no to a lot i've been disciplined around what the priorities because you're just getting so this far i've got five people who manage my time now which is just ridiculous i don't see my emails anymore in the same way I used to I've got this pathology around I just try and clear my emails every day as a CEO it's just not possible anymore so I think just being really disciplined around what are the what are the things that you can move and influence yeah and you have that as a CEO but I think it's it's 10x in this job because the demands on your time and then there's a there's a there's a um there's a sense of pace that I'm trying to put through this in myself and we talk about football I feel like it's the first time I can speak to our football managers at Grimsby and feel like, you know, you're going to get sacked at some point in this job.

10:12And that's inevitable about being in politics. So I'm trying to, I said to my wife and kids, I was like, look, I'm going to be fully on seven days a week for however long I've got this. Because I want to make sure when I look back on it, I've left everything on the pitch and I've done as much as I can to influence positive growth in the UK. And I had that as a CEO, but I'd sort of dialled that back and got a bit more balance in my life since I stopped being a CEO. and I've just turned that back on. I'm quite enjoying it, but it is clear priorities, infinite options that you don't have. And then there's just a bit about, yeah, how decisions are made as well.

10:48I mean, this is well documented in the public and that, but these are the complexity of decision-making when you're not just talking about growth, but you're talking about national security, you're looking at international relations, trade deals, you know, or diplomatic relations. There's a bunch of complexity that is very fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. And this is why business leaders shouldn't just be running government because, you know, I take a lot of advice, obviously, on security, on foreign relations, on diplomacy, and you just don't have that experience as a business leader.

11:17And that's just a level of difference that you can remember. It's just... Business looks a lot easier now I'm doing this just by the same way. You have products, you have services, you have your team, your organisation. It's all pretty well structured. And the nuance and complexity required in this is just... it's fascinating but it's it's it's it's an adjustment it's quite like direct levers like in being an entrepreneur like yeah products and so on and it's funny you say that about time because I always say to the team here the best thing about being an entrepreneur is that you are actually in control yeah the menu again if you want more sales send more sales email like it's quite sort of you know related but yeah when you're in government it's yeah completely different yeah just to build on that because i used to feel like um you know in simply business my last business if there's a i've always you know really empowered the team and really enjoyed being part of a group but if there's a specific issue you have to apply yourself to you just used to force yourself into an issue and just and you could by personal will and capability really change the direction of that and that only goes so far in government because there are there's our second and third order consequences you're not thinking about as well so your ability to direct stuff immediately.

12:28It's still there but I've spent the first three months and four months making sure I'm building relationships and because we're across different parts of government and that's even more important.

12:42So what do you make of the kind of like perception of Britain at the moment both from outside across the world but also from Britain itself because it strikes me we might be in danger of talking ourselves down a bit. Yeah, I think it's a really brilliant observation. And notwithstanding being full of cold and a little lack of an energy today, part of the role is trying to make sure we change that perspective. I mean, you can't be a pessimistic entrepreneur, right? You can't do it, right? So there's something about, we all know that sentiment and your own personal energy and optimism makes the difference on projects, right?

13:23And yeah, I'm seeing that quite a lot. the perception and the reality like I'm more this might sound like a weird step but I'm actually more optimistic having been in government for three months because I can see there's this mismatch between the analogy that I've been using is that we're in a turnaround rather than sort of 14 years of you know decline and debt and whatever I'm saying no look we won the election first year is doing that remedial work in a turnaround acknowledging where we are but we own it now let's kick on and we've got a plan and we have got a plan the industrial strategy the infrastructure strategy, our relationships internationally, we've got a plan to execute on this, which has actually been validated by economists when you look at the rate of inflation coming down, you know, our relative positions on savings, on consumer confidence, on debt.

14:06It actually is, it's going to work, right? And I feel that confident about it. And yet, if you turn on the telly or you look on social media, the world's going to have a hand cut. And I was in Saudi a couple of weeks ago, and they're talking about like, I was in London about all the stabbings. Yeah. So, you know, I'm just like, this idea that we live in this super unsafe city, and I'm just like, so there's something weird. Some of that is probably bad actors, you know, making sure that that's a story, a narrative they want to peddle. But part of it is ourselves, right? We've got to get out there and we've got to, you know, puff our chests out a little bit and tell the positive story, particularly relative to the places in the world.

14:43And so I want to be doing that. Part of what I want to come up and speak to you is to tell that story, right? like entrepreneurs will recognise this, is that you talk yourself into reality somewhat as well. And I think as I get into this role now, I feel really confident about the medium for long-term prognosis. But it's not as political as other parts of government. So when I see people talking about leadership, I'm like, look, we've got really serious, high-quality people running this government. And like in football managers, the illusion that changing a manager to change the trajectory is wrong both from a data point of view and a reality point of view and we've just got to get on telling that positive narrative and hopefully people are giving us the benefit of the doubt because ultimately, you know, your trajectory on something is curviline it goes up and down but as long as the trajectory is up and the trend is up that's what we want I think we're on that trajectory and we'll have good days and bad days but the overall trend is up and yet the media sort of cycle and the impatience that we have is that as soon as we go slightly down, people want change.

15:49I think that's a really, really bad idea. Another thing I've seen in government as well is that we need to do a better job at storytelling, telling that story. I think that's well understood and I want to be part of that. But, yes, sentiment and confidence as an entrepreneur is such a massive part of success as well as luck and timing. Hard work gets you so far. But telling the positive story and focus on that is important. So what is the story that you're telling when you're going out on these trips abroad and so on? Well, I mean, it's fairly straightforward, actually. We talk about, like, stability in sort of the geopolitical situation that we're in.

16:28The UK, from, you know, the Magna Carta 11th century onwards, like we've got this rule of law and this system of operating that we shouldn't underestimate in the sense that we have deep cultural and law-abiding ways of doing business and commerce and our relative position in the world that is valuable. And people see that and they value that. And we don't think about that often enough. You then have that we have, you know, for the where's and why's of Brexit, like we are where we are. We have this ability to redefine our trading relationships in the world. And again, we're doing that quietly and the Prime Minister is not getting enough credit for this.

17:02But the deal we did with America, when you think of perhaps some of our ideological difference, is amazing, right? And we've got that done, first one in the world, preferential terms and that wasn't obvious you know prior to that so you know same thing with india same thing that we're doing in the middle east the gcc now um we're stepping back into our relationships with china we're getting close to europe you know four to six percent of gdp depending on what you read there we're our closest trading partner and so we're redefining our positions and we're able to do that and then there's some really obvious stuff like our our deep r &d base our universities for the top 10 universities are you know our our deep access to capital structures you know and so so this our professional services go on and on and on and we just need to keep telling that story that when you go around the world we've still got a really positive image globally and i think we just need to remind ourselves of that sometimes our relative position relative to other countries is really strong yeah i think it was um deloitte put something out that we you know we are the most attractive investable country in the world still and we sort of forget that sometimes I think definitely what did you you spoke to previous holders of the office what was their kind of advice what were the top tips that they gave um one but actually they all enjoyed the job with varying degrees of like time that time spent I think the record was only two years I think yeah Jerry Grimston so but they've all been great and um yeah just just being really clear about what you want to try and deliver yourself because if you get if you get if you allow your diary to manage you yeah you can endlessly be meeting interesting people with with their own particular things they want to talk to you about so really defining what you want to achieve so i've spent the last three months thinking quite clearly about that and i'll probably announce some of that stuff early in the year but going there are specific projects where i want to personally influence that yeah and i have a massive bias towards regional development naturally from where i'm from i think that's going to be important i want to spend some time on that but actually just defining you know what are the things that you uniquely can impress ahead with the all said that and hopefully just try and see if you can last longer than a couple of years.

19:05That'd be ideal as well, wouldn't it? Which is a fairly low bar, doesn't it? Which is, again, something different about politics. You don't go into any job thinking if I make it to two years, I'll be the longest holder of this role. But that's definitely what I'm trying to do is have some longevity in this so I can deliver as much as I can. Let's talk a little bit about your early career because it's kind of amazing reading through some of the places that you've worked at. It feels like reading the kind of history of British tech almost in terms of like lastminute.com, Match, Skyscanner, like some fascinating roles.

19:39How did you end up at lastminute.com? So I always say, and I've sort of appreciated this as I've got older, that, you know, hard work is a necessary condition for any success, but it's not sufficient as well. So I had a massive amount of luck there. I've always been in quick. So I started off as a waiter on the docks in call centres, travelled a lot, drifted around quite a bit, and then studied philosophy as a mature student just because I was into it and I was interested. And I came to London. I was going to go back and do a PhD in York in political science. And I came to London basically to go clubbing in the 90s.

20:17And I worked at Trail Finds, a travel place, and I ended up staying for five years, probably enjoyed that a bit more than I should have. But then the internet was starting to come about into public consciousness. And I just started to read. I was like, this is interesting. I had no idea the scope or scale of what it would be, but I started to read up on it. And I saw this job, I was working in travel, and basically saw this advertisement for this new internet company. I was like, oh, it just sounds cool. And because I'd been reading up on it, I remember I met the head of HR, and I'd been reading up on it, and she went, oh, you know a lot about it.

20:47But I just was into it. And so I got the job running the airlines bit and the commercial bit. And I didn't know the number, but I think Brent put something out that I was like employee 30 or something. this was just i just was like into it and was lucky and then a massive amount of good luck there because it was a it was a real meritocracy i mean i just it was the first place i ever walked into and just felt this is cool i feel like it was you know businesses that we take for granted now that it was just one floor and yeah yeah if you had i mean i remember you having to encourage your convictions you go brent and martha the ceos and if you had to encourage your convictions you're prepared to put yourself out there they would just give you responsibility so it was it was and then we just got really lucky that you know it floated before the bubble burst and stuff so you know profit wasn't a high motivation in the business at the time and so it was just a real stroke of luck being in the right place at the right time and then and then it became like dog years is that if you've been in the internet by 2002 and you have three or four years experience you were experiencing the internet and so stuff started coming up and I left in 2005 I think I'd got promoted to run a couple of companies that would bought eventually and again just Just being in the right place at the right time, we bought 12 companies, I think.

21:56And so the idea that they would give someone 33 or 34, two companies to run, was just unheard of with my background. Yeah. And they just would like, because they knew I was a grafter, they just gave me this opportunity. And then the match stuff came. Match came about because I was internet dating. I met my wife on the Guardian website. I remember telling my mates about it and them laughing so hard about the fact that I was on, like, internet's for losers and, you know, you're weirdo. And I was thinking, I don't think I'm that, but you know if if we're buying travel and books this this might be a big thing yeah and so um yeah the opportunity to take mats throughout europe and stuff and so again it was just being slightly ahead um but it was um yeah a lot i've always been a grafter and i think that's the grimsby thing but at the same time i think just being born in the 90s when the internet was coming into public consciousness it was just like that's nothing to do with me but i grabbed it i definitely grab the opportunity okay so this isn't your usual ad read we've just partnered with hunch an ai job finding platform that i believe in so much i've actually invested in it if you've ever listened to jimmy's jobs and thought i'd love to work with those guests now you can whether it's the uk government google amazon or the bbc hunch makes it easy to discover and apply for roles at companies like those and here's the kicker we'll be hiring through hunch soon too so if you download it you might even end up working with us honestly for our listeners this feels like the perfect fit just visit askhunch.com to learn more back to the episode what did sort of working on the docks and the waiting side thing what did that kind of like teach you for the rest of your career well i mean I always like people.

23:40So I like, you know, the Grimsby thing is like it's very open community. People talk, people like China. I like that. So I always enjoyed working behind bars and waiting on. But like a bit of humility as well. I remember one time I played a football game for the county and the team was coming back to the place. I was a waiter. So I actually played the game and had to go back and serve the players that I played against. I remember that being really tough for me. So lessons in like I needed to make money because we were skint and humility and just not being bothered by that stuff. So just a bit of a thick skin on, you know, what you have to do to get by and stuff.

24:13And the docks was the same thing. I was skint. I'd come back from, I'd got a scholarship school in America and then I came back and I went on a kibbutz in Israel just because I wanted to travel a bit more. And I was skint and I came back and I worked on the docks because it was the only job I could get. And so just the necessity of having to earn money. But I also realised, like, I wasn't cut out for manual labour. I was just like, like... What was the job on the docks? i was a general laborer so i was like whether the jobs went day to day especially do some painting or i'd do like lugging stuff off ships or cleaning conveyor belts it was it was always the job the company we worked for did the jobs that the company's employees didn't want to do themselves it was always the it was the rough stuff and i was just like i do not want to do this it's really hard and there's some good people um some of us see now and about in grim street cleatels but i was like i need to get my act together like i don't i can't i can't see myself doing this for 50 years and that's no disrespect for people at Canberra.

25:07I was like, I am not cut out for this. So it was just a good level for me. And also it's a reminder now, sitting in Ballon doing a podcast, isn't it hard? Compared to what people really graft and do, it gives me real perspective and real respect for knowing what hard work looks like and this isn't it. Yeah, this is not it. There's no disrespect to me. I know there's not it. But it's not like getting up at like 5 in the morning being picked up to be on the docks for six o 'clock and you know working with your hands all day like that is a shift that is proper hard work i've got a real respect for that what did your parents do um well my mom i'm a single parent family so i'm one of four boys all got different dads i don't know my dad is so i've never met him don't know who he is my mom passed a couple of years ago so i'm not i'm not going to find out um but my mom was a grafted loads of different jobs so she was a debt collector she was a cleaner she did anything she needed to do just to keep her sort of fed and water basically so um wasn't it wasn't ideal but i was i reconciled myself as i got older she did the best she could for us and a lot of respect for when um we got our relationship into a good position by the time she passed and i was just like yeah look i've got three brothers and we're really close i love them all well we've got different dads but like when i look at the the start i had in life and the fact that i'm connected to my brothers you know i've got a real solid my wife and my kids for the last 20 years i'm part of a community that i love and i feel connected to even though i don't live in grimsby anymore and so yeah my mom my mom did a good job the hand she was dealt in life she played it really really well um her dad killed himself when she was 12 he committed suicide and they never spoke about that stuff so she had a a lot of trauma in her child i only found this out later on so i had um you know unpicking that as you think about having your own kids and family and the sort of parent you want to be my mom did an amazing job um in tough circumstances and um yeah um you just have to make sure that you get that to a decent spot i wrote an article in the guardian actually i have that column in the guardian that's on my twitter and i'm really proud of the um when she died i just felt sadder that i didn't feel sadder about it like i was upset about it but the fact that wasn't as close to her as i see in other relations like my wife's family the love and connection and traditional family they've got is is really powerful and really profound.

27:26And I had to get to that with my mum because my mum was out working and we sort of brought ourselves up with my nana. And it was rough, but it was what it was. And actually, I'll tell you something interesting. So my son, when he was eight, he's 14 now. When he was eight, he said something to me. To this day, he's a really smart kid, as is my daughter. But I was telling him about, so I was really honest with my kids about not knowing my dad and the sort of upbringing I had. and my mum was married three times and one of them was a boozer and a bit a bit physical and and so but i also said i was gonna be honest with my kids i was telling my lad this and um he turned around to me and said to me when he was eight he said do you think your disadvantages growing up are your advantages now in your life and have made you and i was like christ if he he's eight and he's saying stuff like that but there is some truth in that like as long as you get through all those things and any trauma that you have that you the resilience and i'm not scared of stuff like probably my wife thinks i've got a bit of my brain missing the ability to turn up and be a government minister with no training is not it's weird right but i was just excited about it yeah but i don't have that sort of fear because i you know i know what what life can be as an alternative so and a lot of entrepreneurs have that don't they either nor divergent or they have you know tough childhoods or whatever and I think it's you know if you're able to work through that stuff it's really powerful in terms of resilience and capability but that went quite deep didn't it I brought the mood down a little bit I'm trying to something uplifting speech about about the economy and I'm just like yeah it's about trauma and I think as well like part of it is you could you know how bad things can be and I think it'll be find it quite good in politics in terms of the you know idea that you might be sacked or whatever like i felt this was just that well yeah the background that my dad had as a coal miner and you know whatever i was just like it's not going to be like that like and and if you've had that growing up you it just gives you a lot more kind of respect and resilience i think really for it yeah and it also sounds grandiose and that but it's you know i'm doing it i'm doing this job for kids like me in the 70s and 80s like we we we we never we're never short of food but we were cold a lot i remember like so i used to go to school i told my wife like i just scored my pajamas under my clothes because i'd like so cold in the house we had ice inside and this was this wasn't particularly unusual in the 70s and 80s right as well but like it sounds like you're some character from a dickens novel you tell your kids now but I remember being cold a lot and and so there's something about I was really proud like being in the treasury last week when we looked at the two child benefit cap and thinking no this kids like me that makes a difference too yeah genuinely makes a difference and we can get into all the politics of like you know is it welfare you know is it is it is it promoting well I'm like actually there are kids that it will make a difference to their lives because I was one those kids and so there's something about for me there's a really deep connection and thread back to who I who I was then it's still me now that I remind myself and actually this is why I feel like I love being in Grinsey like going to football every week or hanging out with my brothers as I'll be doing this weekend and my mates from school is that I'm the same person to them that I was no matter what you do in your life and where you go I love that about being in the town look I'm not being false modest i know the stuff i've done the career i've had yeah but most people don't give a shit about that they're just like you're the guy that they've known for years and whilst they're proud of me they treat me as as one of their own which and i love that because you know it's a reminder of for me it's like i do when i came into politics a friend of mine rob griffiths said to me like just remember you know ask yourself the question all the meetings you're in would this translate to your brothers would this translate to your mate spencer who's a scaffolder still would it translate to you know your nieces and nephews that are there so when I think about that 150 billion data center I'm like they don't care about that it's like what's it do is that bringing their gas bills down yeah so it's a good reminder but it's also is there's a deep love and connection to those the people in the town still that's really meaningful for me and it's enriching for me as well so let's go back to the career because we did that sort of almost the the first third of it perhaps but then you set up simply business right like what was the opportunity that you saw there and like how did that sort of yeah so i didn't say else what happened what so i much got sold so it was owned by iac and it was great it was a bit early for me but i was trying to do a deal to buy a french listed company and an amazing amazing entrepreneur there actually did a reverse and went to my boss at the time and bought the bit of the company i was running so it was a weird situation that a it was a lesson in in deal making but i ended up with a few quid but it was unsatisfactory ending for me because i was enjoying the job enjoying the company they asked me to stick around but like it was just it was challenging working for you know french entrepreneur shall we say let's leave that out there so um so i ended up this weird situation i had a few quid but like i was only 39 then i was like so so i tried to take a year out we'd just had our first kid and like within three months my wife was like get back to work will you just like get out of the house this is not going to work for us or anything so I just started to look at again like just being a bit early on stuff and this wasn't particularly so I started to do this this sort of spreadsheet and calculus on I had a boss years ago that gave me some advice and it didn't make sense for me for about 10 years she was retiring and I said to her if you had your career again what would you do was in the travel industry and she said oh I'd pick an industry with high margins And I was like, you know, that's the best advice you can give your younger self.

33:12But like 10 years later, and as I was doing this, I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense to me. Because the ability to work in a market that has high margins gives you so much more flexibility and freedom. So I created this spreadsheet around high margin industries, low customer satisfaction, tech innovation low. And just like everything led to the insurance industry. Like customers hate it. Like the margins are insane compared to other industries. There's a lot of people who we know that are ridiculously wealthy from doing very little in that industry. I'm a lot of friends in the industry now, by the way, and it's moved on a bit.

33:44By the time, I was like, this is where I need to be. And not because I was passionate about insurance, but because I was like, I can see my skills and the things I know being applied here. So an opportunity came up. Chris Slater, who became my partner in this, had founded it with a few hundred people. But it was doing lots of different things. It was trying to be an aggregator. It was trying to be an invoice lender. it was so so um i always tell the story i met chris and like i knew nothing about insurance and um i needed him to stick around and he's a he's from salt he sends his from salford like he's an old man but he's actually from worsley which is the posh part of salford anyway we met we met in on euston station and um two things about this meeting were good so i was i was i'd been with my wife for a while but we weren't married so i said to chris i'm getting married next month So if I start, I'm getting married.

34:32He went, is it your second or third time? I was like, yes. I was like, totally set his stall out. I was like, that's my first time. But the second thing was I said, look, I need you because I've got no insurance knowledge. So I need you. He's been in the industry for years. And he said to me, I'll give you six months kind of thing. I said to him, I'll only need three. So we had this really sort of macho exchange. Anyway, he's become one of my best mates now and I love him and he's like, we're this great journey together. But so we went in and we quite quickly corrected. We changed all the technology.

35:01We sold the three of the business that were underperforming and focused on insurance. And the insight from Skyscanner was, Skyscanner was a really thin model of technology, really clever technology and data play, but basically didn't own the customer vertical. So I said, look, to really own the value, you've got to go top to bottom. And A, that protects against a market change, but also you can take a piece of the value every stage. So we became, in commercial insurance, we hadn't been done before, we became an aggregator, but we also owned the product so we were paying insurer claims and then the clever thing that we did is we became we started doing machine learning and and and um unique pricing for customers and this was like in again with a bit of luck in 2012 fintech became this big investable thing like it was around but and so again we had a business that was on a trajectory we changed the cap table um brought some private equity in and then just got a bit lucky on the growth and then and then sold it three times quite quickly and had an exit in 2017 for 500 million which was both luck and judgment but it just felt like um yeah but it was a great ride but it was yeah Chris set it up and then we I just basically went together we refined it into a real tech play yeah and a tech business that really understood but it was it was the stuff that was doing in other industries it was just web standards but in the insurance industry it was unheard of so it was like being the tallest midget or whatever the right saying is I just I just knew what we could do and it was quite straightforward to me and then we just built a great culture around it that was fun and progressive before you know working from home and four day weeks for a thing yeah and we just found that empowering people just allowed us to deliver with the product mentality and it just yeah it was great fun it was i'm really proud of it and what i'm really proud of a journalist asked me a couple of years ago what's the proudest moment in your career without thinking i was like simply business got better when i left i speak to people there all the time that all the metrics have improved it's a lot bigger you know it's profitable but hugely profitable and i was like i was really proud of the fact that it wasn't reliant on me and chris yeah that when we left like the team that was there have done an even better job and so the fact that it's built to last yeah is something that i hadn't thought about but i'm really proud that it continues got like over a million customers now and and so yeah that was um it was a great journey yeah yeah no that's quite a good measure actually of like yeah can the can the show carry on without you um and and then you got involved with grimsby right like yeah like how did that come about etc god this is a this is a long one actually so i'll try and condense it because i don't bore you and people listening quick thanks to octopus energy for supporting this episode now a lot of people know about octopus for their home energy products i have recommended people switched them for years but what you might not know is that they are now rolling out more products across home and businesses from solar panels ev chargers heat pumps so if you're thinking of upgrading your home or business and you are a jimmy's jobs listener you can ping jimmy at octopus.energy and get the very latest deals and insights and if you're already on the journey with octopus leave us a comment or a message i'd love to hear how it's going with their wider products all right back to the episode so i am there's two answers to that so so one is like i'm a fan i've been going to that club since i was since like eight or nine years old my first game and so there's just a sense that the club was struggling it was on a downward trajectory and kind of looking around for a universe of people that could do something and this is in a big universe of people that want to buy brinsbury town football club so me and me and a guy andrew pettit um who's now a really close friend brilliant we didn't know we knew each other's families um this is a grimsby thing so my brother dated his sister like when we were kids but his family it's really funny so he runs a like a five billion quid private equity funding properties from grimsby but his dad was the local butcher so when we when we get interviewed it's like oh there's jason who's a tech entrepreneur and andrew's the butcher's lad basically but he's like has a far better career than i've ever had so the simple answer was like the club needed some help and and there wasn't many people that could do it.

39:12But the longer answer was, like, I'd gone back to university thinking about politics and had this thesis around our democracy only works if we have civic institutions that bind us. So it's the work of Robert Putnam in The Upswing and Bowling Alone, which is, you know, capitalism is our best way of raising living standards, but our social capital is connected to institutions that we have. and so why our politics has become slightly untethered is because our civic institutions have been eroded by the church union social groups whatever so the sort of more grandiose thing behind it sounds a bit pretentious i was like well what if we could use the football club as an apolitical catalyst for bringing the community back together around the values of excellence aspiration performance inclusivity all these things and then aligned with that we've built or actually it's opening in february we've built an on-site youth zone in the town which i've chaired and helped raise the money with a bunch of brilliant trustees and so that's about an institution for the past that combined people the football club an institution for the future a youth zone and then i co-founded a charity called our future with a brilliant social entrepreneur called emily bolton who'd done this for 20 years which is about how do you build you know get a community to write its own story about the initiatives it wants to do but doing that with the data-led way so it can become part of government policy so there was there was a strategy behind it as well so the simple answer is like i'm a football fan i didn't want my club i wanted my club to improve but there was something strategic behind it as well but i didn't want to sound like some sort of pretentious yeah you know like it was genuinely about i'm a passionate i'm passionate fan i want the football club to do well but it was more thoughtful than that about the art of the possible about what could we do in terms of bringing the community together as well and so people can write their own story and then we can bring resources to bear on that to help facilitate the things people want for themselves rather than someone coming in and answering a problem.

41:06It was about how do you let the community tell its own story, if that makes sense. And so what are the sort of innovative things that you've tried to do? Because people will be a bit more familiar with the Wrexham story perhaps, but this is happening more and more. Yeah, so we had a massive stroke of luck. So I was trying to use data and analysis in terms of our recruitment. That's quite well understood these days. But we had a massive stroke of luck, and it's in the public domain now, is that Brighton, when I went to meet Brighton and Tony Bloom, we asked them if we could, because they're the best in the world at this stuff.

41:36They've got a company called Jamestown Analytics. It's fundamentally how they run their gaming business, but actually the offshoot of that is that they'd analyze players from around the world and find undervalued talent. And we're one of a handful of clubs globally that has access to their data. And so we were trying to build this thing ourselves with a great strategy consultancy called the 21st Group. and then with the massive stroke alert that they just because they knew we're doing this for social reasons we want to go up through the leagues but we're primarily doing it because we care about the community so um they're helping us with that which is transformative for us because we haven't got the biggest budget we certainly haven't got the the ryan reynolds looks and charm and stuff by the way i went to meet him it's true story my wife never comes to football and she came to football that day heavily made up with a new dress on and actually there's a photo of actually it's So our ex-CEO, Debbie, and me and Ryan Reynolds, and I actually airbrushed myself out of the photo.

42:30He was that good-looking and that charismatic. I looked like Gollum at a Lord of the Rings stood next to him. I was like, I'm not even having that photo existing. So we haven't got their money, their looks, charm, or their influence, but actually we think that we can have the most efficient budget and go through the leagues by using data, focusing on culture, and then importantly, having a strategy that's alignment So we know we want to play. We have a great CEO in terms of Polly Bancroft. We have a brilliant manager in terms of David Artel. We have complete alignment about what we're trying to achieve.