The Real Threat to Your Career Isn't AI | Steve Rigby, Rigby Group CEO

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0:59Steve, welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Let's talk a little bit about AI and this transitional change, because I think you were touching on it there. There is a sort of similar vibe to the 90s now, in terms of we sit here recording in 2026. It feels like the world is at a real technological shift moment, right? Yep. I think the technology is moving at lightning speed, and it's moving at a far faster pace than business will be able to accommodate. That's the one positive. So when we hear, I'm sure like you, I listen to lots of kind of US podcasts on some of these topics. And all the guys are talking about this change happening in the next year or 18 months.

1:41And I don't buy into that journey being so quick. And the reason I say that, you know, as a large business is actually AI is about process transformation. It's not about deploying an AI tool. And process transformation is really hard. So, you know, it requires a big group of people to think differently and logically work through a problem. The second issue is we have, you know, a lot of a lot of governance and security and companies. Those two things will mean that actually the technological shift will be slower for big businesses. For businesses like yours, you can adopt tomorrow. So you've got no restrictions.

2:11And actually, I think for SMEs, this is a huge opportunity to move at a much faster pace than bigger businesses can do. The barriers for entry are almost almost negligible now for starting a business. and you know that that can't last forever because there'll be too many solopreneurs which is the new phrase yeah coming through and starting and lots of people talking about you know a billion dollar one person business you know some of that will happen but uh in the short term smes have a great opportunity to try and grasp this in the midterm the technology has to be deployed what i'm seeing what i'm reading is that the consumer is starting to resent the technology and the potential implications in their life.

2:53They don't want to be displaced, understandably. They don't necessarily want to reskill. Less understandable, but most people don't like change. And they don't want to necessarily work at a different pace than they're working. Unfortunately, that train is coming towards us. So we really have to think about the societal shift that's going to happen in the coming years. I fear we're substantially behind the curve as a country on this point, both in the way we're deploying technology and government and the way in which we're incentivising our businesses back to those carrots and sticks around what they need to do with their current workforce.

3:27So I think it's critical that we start thinking about learning and development inside employers and inside the government. But 28 million people work in the private sector. Of those 28 million people, about 22 million work inside medium and large companies. So it's the majority, it's the rump of people in that environment we've got to get those companies to train their staff on the transition that's coming and coming and that that training is sector specific so you know if you take your role in editing you know that that may well be replaced by ai at some point in the future the reality of ai is it's not ai that's going to take your job it's someone that knows how to use ai that's going to take your job so the new jobs will be creative but if you don't have those skills if you don't have the fundamental understanding, not just of ChatGBT, which is, for all intents and purposes, a much better version of a search engine.

4:19But unless you've got the ability to use productivity-based tools effectively in your industry, in your sector, that doesn't mean everyone has to become a coder, but it does mean that using those tools effectively to accelerate your business's journey will become critical. I totally agree. And it is interesting on the other side how it's shifting and it is improving all the time. But I can totally see from a big business perspective about it's difficult, partly because it is improving at a fast rate of being like, okay, well, you know, is the temptation maybe not to wait three months and then kind of try and implement it all?

5:00Because you're right, humans are always just quite resistant to change, right? It's been like that since the start of time. people have ways of working they know what they're doing they've got a mastery of it and even if you can make something simpler there is always an upfront time cost of changing right you know you and i spend a lot of time around political leaders and i got some stats of the day which was about to publish on linkedin unfortunately as we stand today 39 of our mps have never used ai when you look at the conservatives unfortunately it's 60 and that's an age issue so the average conservative MP is in their early 50s in labor it's 31 percent uh haven't used AI so significant difference but overall 39 percent and if we haven't got the leaders of our country political leaders of our country using this technology how do they know what that transition is going to be so you know we've got a great great minister AI minister in Kanishka yeah and actually you know he's a very bright very articulate communicator the challenge we face is that what we need is a multi-departmental approach on how we're going to deploy AI.

6:04And in most departments, I don't think the race is on. I think people are saying, well, this is happening and maybe we should start looking at it. But I believe this is a war footing. I believe the country needs to think we're at war in three or four years' time. That war happens to be a technological war. And we need to gear our country and our businesses to react to that war that's coming. It's quite strong language, but I genuinely believe that we're in this situation where there is a seismic shift coming and the UK can play a major role in it or can be consumed by it. I agree. As you know, we've had Peter Carl and Keir Starmer on the show say that AGI is going to be here by the next election.

6:43And I have wanted to kind of like pick them up by the lapels and be like, do you realise the impacts that could potentially have on the economy? So I think you're right to use some of that language. where are those stats from about politicians not using ai by the way actually it was a it was a report that outlined what social media including podcasts that politicians were listening to and it became when you read that article but uh yeah yeah yeah i can't remember who did it but the message space in the five six five four guys it is interesting on that i think it's really interesting um yeah the way that they are consuming news and the way that it impacts and yes i think podcasts and video are a big part of how that's going to change that is the argument we're always uh making here of course but um yeah that is nuts that almost four in ten conservative mps haven't used it that's actually quite shocked me six in ten of conservative haven't used it incredible yeah you know the other obviously thing that we need to do and i know you've had lots of people talk around this you know is our data center expansion so i'm a bit of a numbers nerd so i apologize jimmy for quoting numbers and for some reason they stick in my head so as we stand today we've only got 100 megawatts of ai enabled data center space in the uk america's got 33 gigawatts so you know so many more quantums i know there are nine times bigger country but so many more quantums, 100 times more quantums than we have.

8:17And our issue is we're stuck in the same planning issue that we're talking around on housing and other issues in the UK, the same grid issues that we're talking around. Again, being stopped by DESNES, the Department of Energy and Net Zero. And we need a coherent strategy. And again, by putting something on a wall footing, by saying this is important to resolve as our defence challenges, as our NHS challenges, as the welfare challenges, as the other sort of three major issues I think we face as a country, by putting it on that same footing, people have to concentrate on it, and it becomes a priority.

8:51And is that an equal priority or even a greater priority than perhaps some of the net zero challenges that we face today? Yeah, but I think what this Iran war has taught us is that sovereignty matters. You know, we've now got a German state, a material German state, three million people physically moving off Microsoft. We've got the French government coming off Microsoft Teams. we've got you know the Saudi government again coming off American technology there is going to be a massive swing towards sovereignty what people are these days calling air-gapped so the ability to isolate your infrastructure from outside influence and in that situation you know we have to start thinking as the UK possibly as Europe and in reality the UK on its own is too small to perhaps comprehend some of these challenges and deal with the capital required But we have to start thinking more about sovereignty for the UK and for Europe, where the world is less certain with the US and with other jurisdictions than it was 18 months ago.

9:50I agree. But how does the UK become more AI sovereign? Because having open AI data centre here does not actually necessarily provide that, right? So we actually have two or three organizations right now trying to build sovereign compute. Someone called Sovereign AI does what it says in the tin. Another organization called Carbon 3. There are two examples who are trying to build sovereign infrastructure. So built in UK data centers, UK power, UK connectivity, not reliant on a hyperscaler, which are people like Microsoft and Amazon. The problem they have is that they're getting no government commitment.

10:30So it's what's called offtake. So if you want to go and put$500 million of NVIDIA chips in a data centre, those chips degrade every day they're there. So every day they're not being used, they're going to have a four to five year lifespan. So what you need to do is put that chip base to work on a defined income structure. What the government really should be doing is saying we'll be the offtake providers. So we'll take that$500 million over five years, let's say$100 million a year, and then we'll allow other departments and other organisations to use that. so they need to put get the capital behind or in fact the operating expense behind that commitment and then there are lots of other organizations in the public and private sector which will consume it but to start with someone needs to take the brave bet and we're seeing that happen in almost every other country around the world in the g20 so it's happening in the middle east it's happening in in south korea it's happening in singapore and the uk unfortunately is just substantially behind this it's happening in france uh and it's something we have to resolve urgently you are chair of family business uk why did you decide to become the chair of family business uk it's probably a good question jimmy uh i approached them and uh to join the organization at the time james waits was leading it big family business waits crew yeah they've been very involved for for most of the duration of that organization it's 25 this year and i felt that i had a lot to offer the family business sector I've been through a complicated journey myself in family business not necessarily in the relationships of family but the transition the succession and it is a different type of business you know we really do think differently about business and duration of time the importance of people obviously our legacies so I felt that I could contribute back to that organization and quickly during my tenure there the the changes around taxation happened and we agreed as perhaps a faster transition than as perhaps early envisaged.

12:22Which changes the taxation. So we had some changes that actually come into effect next week in early April, and they changed the ability to transfer companies between generations. So for the last four decades, you've been able to do that to the next generation without a taxational charge. Unfortunately, all that changes as of early April, and there's a 20 % charge that comes in which unfortunately for some organizations will mean they have to be broken up and this is this is similar to what the farmers are going through right because i think there's can you talk to us about some of the biggest family businesses that are out there because sometimes i think when we think of family business we can think of mum and pop shops literally right but actually you know there's you guys there's timpsons yeah give us some other examples it's i mean you're Right.

13:12The majority of family businesses are smaller businesses. And in fact, about 15 million people are employed in family businesses. But the majority of those are at the smaller end. When you get to the bigger end, you do have lots of big businesses still. So Dyson would consider themselves a second generation family business. JCB is a second generation, third generation family business. We've got members like Samworth Brothers, who are a big food organization, Warburton's, Whitworth's, who make all of our flour in the UK. There are lots of great businesses out there that, in fact, are FTSE 250 or FTSE 100 scale organizations, but have chosen a different path of ownership.

13:50Yeah. And give us just a quick overview of the Rigby Group and the size of it as well, because you're also a family business and of significant size as well. Yeah. So we're a reseller of technology and an integrator of that technology. It's a very high revenue business, so we're just over$4 billion in revenue. Some of that's operating here in the UK, about a billion, but three billion overseas. France is our biggest market. About 8 ,500 people. Yeah. About 3 ,800 of those are here in the UK. And today we're quite diverse. So we're really focused not only on that later stage business in technology, we're also a private equity owner of technology businesses that we own and operate in more of a private equity style.

14:33And we're also one of the most prolific venture capitalists on technology here in the UK. added all together top 10 family business biggest technology private technology business in europe and in fact we're also in the top 500 family businesses in the world so we're very proud what what happens jimmy over time you know because time is one of those things family businesses generally have got lots of so they've got lots of history you know we're relatively young second generation but you know those businesses that are around for 100 plus years uh those organizations typically at some point we're branched into a new area so today we call that a family office historically they called that an investment arm but most of those larger businesses do have them and in fact take Pentland Group as an example owner of JD Sports their family business you know which is a very very large family business part of it listed uh their family office is actually larger in scale so often those parts are a bit less understood a bit less visible but the way in which we look at investments is very similar to the larger families in the world and there's probably in the UK about 100 or so families that operate that model.

15:37As we know, London's a real mecca for family offices. It's one of the biggest capitals in the world. We've got about 550 family offices, as I say, about 100 UK and the rest will be overseas. Branch is all the primary office for the particular family in question. And why do you think London is such a mecca for family offices? I think all the reasons we know. you know it's it's language it's schooling system you know it's great restaurant scene good housing uh it's a fun city you know we all talk about people leaving to go to new jurisdictions like jubai or milan but london's pretty hard to beat um especially if you're coming where perhaps english isn't your first language but you've typically learned english throughout your career and throughout your schooling um and actually going to live in milan's pretty hard You've got to learn Italian, which is not necessarily a straightforward language to learn from scratch.

16:29So I think that's one of the reasons why London will continue to be a draw, not for everybody. But, you know, we have this amazing legal system, this amazing language. Strangely, our time zone, even our weather, which you and I, you know, sit here probably having coming off the back of this long winter and not enjoying. But a lot of people do enjoy that. You know, if you're in the Middle East coming here in the summer, you know, it's actually it's the weather suits. I do joke that it's one of my controversial opinions that one of the best things about Britain is the weather I think the variance of it the fact that you get four real clear distinct seasons you get good summers, springs and autumns yes, the winter is miserable maybe we're just sitting here recording on the 1st of April in optimistic sort of terms for what's coming ahead but I think it's going to rain it's not mince words here but you know, the whole non-dom thing is a really important issue in London right now.

17:23And I don't think it's been handled particularly well. And as we know, this was a conservative move at the end, picked up by Labour. But, you know, London has such a draw to it, it has such a draw of capital. That capital is philanthropic as well as investing. And somewhere in this next change as we go through, we've got to work out how we get back to attracting the right talent here. And I think the non-dom rules were way too generous for non-doms. We've kind of swung the other way. In fact, you know, not that I get stuck with inheritance tax, but it is the biggest issue for non-DOMs. People I talk to in the family office community, which I'm part of, people will pay a lot of money to be based in London.

17:57And it's absolutely right we tax them, but we can't necessarily tax them on every piece of income they have everywhere in the world they've ever earned in their life prior to arriving in this country. I also would notice one of the things that you're proudest of is the amount of tax that you pay. You talk about this a lot. Set out how much you paid last year. Do you know, I don't actually know the absolute number. I look at the Sunday Times tax list, which is really the basis that we use that information from. We sit at about number 38 in that list. You know, it's a calculation of employee taxes you pay, corporation tax that you pay.

18:36So there's a number of taxes that make up that personal taxation that you pay, dividend taxes. So I don't know the aggregate number, actually, off the top of my head. But, you know, I am proud of it. I think I believe that tax is a force for good when used effectively. You know, I've been saying more recently, you know, Treasury only sells two things, carrots and sticks. And the problem is we've got used to too many sticks. And we need some more carrots. And carrots are there to incentivize behavioral change. And if you're incentivized to invest, as we're doing today with capital allowances, as an example, that's a positive thing.

19:06you know if you're incentivized to build a company perhaps not necessarily sell it but keep it for a longer period of time maybe that would change some behavior so i think it's really important that we get back to the world where we've got an equal amount of carrots and sticks let's try and make the country do great things and to do that we also have to offer incentivization to do it i think it's a really good point because i was thinking about it this morning on my run a bit actually like kind of what has this government ever done for us type thing and And I think you're right. The Treasury has implemented a lot of stick of late.

19:39Now, obviously, in the grand scheme of things, the UK is still an amazing place to do business. And there are lots of things. Probably you listed in there with London as well, like all the things that are in our advantage. But there is that sort of cultural aspect of it where you almost just don't feel that you're being as a business, trying to grow a business, trying to employ people, that for the last five or six years, there hasn't been much of a carrot. And that includes the sort of end of the Conservative government as well, right? Like, it's not just a party political point I'm making against the Labour Party.

20:12Yeah, highest burden of taxation, etc. Like, it's just, there's a cultural challenge, isn't there? I think that for startups, it's pretty advantageous, let me be honest with you. I think the tax system that we have here, you know, is set up to promote co-ownership. It's set up to promote scaling a business, raising capital relatively easily, certainly at the very early stages. Where it gets more challenging, I think, is when you become a medium-sized business or a larger business. And then I think those incentivization programs to perhaps scale or internationalize or export more are more difficult to comprehend.

20:48But, you know, we are in a high-tax country. You know, we're at 38 % today. The train has left the station. Whoever's in charge, we're going to at least 40%. But that 40 % starts to get in the very, very high levels of taxation globally. We're already, in terms of the OECD, we're already, from a tax competitiveness point of view, I think number 31 out of 36. Yeah, interesting. I wanted to talk a little bit about your journey into the world of work, because I'm always fascinated by that and what the first thing that people did for money, etc. you're obviously grown up in a family business and you started in the business at 17 am I saying what was your kind of like first job and how was that so my first job was in a clothing shop when I was about 15 and a half and which I actually carried on until I was about 20 just because it was a you know it was a good social thing to be doing and was that part of the Rigby group no no no No, it was separate.

21:47Something completely different. But, yeah, it was a part-time affair. And, you know, I told my father at 17, you know, I'd sort of just fallen out of school not particularly very well. I struggled academically, if I'm being honest with you, at the time. And with the process, you know, that style of learning wasn't particularly conducive for me. And I told my father he'd got six months. And 35 and a half years later, I'm still there somehow. So, and, you know, it's very lucky to be in an environment where you can fall into a family business the majority of the population aren't in that position and you know i'm desperately trying to make sure that my own children you know follow their own path first rather than necessarily stepping in but in reality in a family business you know everyone thinks you have a you know a silver spoon in your mouth but often you're treated the hard harshest you've often got to prove the most to everybody not just yourself and your immediate boss but actually to everyone that looks on that thinks you know you're the boss's son and then And importantly, you know, you've got you've got your in my case, my father or your mother, you know, acting is quite a tough guardian of where you are in your in your business.

22:52And I look back, you know, on my time in the family business and my father and I have had moments in our lives where it has been fraught and difficult. But, you know, much much of those fraught, difficult periods is where I learn my craft, my skill and many of the skills that I've learned in a sort of unorthodox way, non-academic way. you know I've gone on today to make me quite a powerful individual in terms of my ability to adapt and change and again very fortunately in one single business we've had many different company types many different asset classes so that learning experience almost a university of life sat in the family business has also been you know one of the blessings that I've had.

23:31What was the first thing that you did then kind of within the Rigby group like how do you because I can imagine that boss's son scenario is double-sided, right? Like, I mean, I was in politics and my father was a politician and have desperately tried to keep very separate lines. So I think I can kind of empathise with you on some of this. So what did you kind of do? So our main business, SCC, I was a junior salesman in that business at the start. And And then in 92, we started to, which was my father's idea, not mine, but we started to create a retail superstore business in technology at the same time that PC World was in its infancy.

24:17And we went on to create that business. I was there from the start of that journey, ended up leading it from about a very young age, actually, 40, I was 25 when I started leading that business. But, you know, it became a big business. We were in about 15 superstores. we were in partnership with office world and another 50 500 employees 100 million of revenue uh and it's a business we sold to uh to dixon's uh in 1998 uh who were a fearsome competitor and you know just competing against the might of dixon's back then today they're a little less than they used to be as an organization but back then they were real powerhouse it's funny actually you're talking about pc world and office world then like reminds me of how exciting those places were to kind of visit in the 90s yeah like that but they were right it was you felt like you were looking into the future of technology you know you look you look back on you know what we used to have then and when the first store launched you know you had this thing called in Carter which was a Microsoft encyclopedia yes you know I remember launching Windows 95 you know which at the time was revolutionary alongside Microsoft you know we were selling computers with internet connections which were sort of unheard of and you think forward it's it is a short period of time it's 30 years but you know we're about to go through this incredible shift again and you know you i've been lucky to see many of these shifts which have had many casualties along the way and um you know we've been a survivor in that period of time and it's it's that that surviving mechanism is about adaptability yeah it's about determination it's about hard work but it's always about thinking forward and finding that next opportunity and you know my father did that well my brother and i have gone on to do that well since and this next phase of life is critical to do that well because you know i think all industries including your own are going to be you know upended with this technical technological change that's coming i do want to explore this kind of like working in the sort of family business and so on like is it is it like succession the tv series you know it was um i think everybody enjoyed that series and uh you know gosh if i was the murdochs i wouldn't sit particularly well if that was based on my family yeah and i'm sure obviously it's been dramatized um certainly our organization and the majority of people we deal with in family business uk are not like that yeah but they are you know they are but it is all encompassing though right it must be at weekends and so like that's just the bit that sort of struck me is like how do you separate you know it's difficult the dinner table you know revolves around business you know we didn't spend as much time in my children with their cousins growing up because frankly we've seen each other all week the last thing we want to do is see each other the weekends yeah so you know in in that situation you were a very strong very close family but we're very strong and close in business affairs much less so in our in our private lives and in fact my brother and i are trying to fix that now by doing an expedition every year with our children and making sure that we kind of do things together as as a sort of future team as it were the six of them so it gets a lot more complicated and the old adage of shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves you know where you start with nothing and you end with nothing in three generations you know that that adage is global uh there are so many examples of it happening and that that generation that comes you know the father or the mother creates the business the the son or the daughter continues it often develops it quite substantially as we've done in our case and then it goes to a situation where the next generation are arguing about the future direction incapable of making decisions and the easier thing to do is sell all the business centers some difficulty and you know our job in fbuk is to help that journey as well for our members that's really interesting right is it i hadn't actually heard of it like that shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves uh adage before but yes aware of the kind of three generation side um so how do you how are you kind of preparing them on that side i ask this because i have seen i telling you i've got three daughters under six so this is advanced planning but i'm now being spammed with video editing courses at half term for kids and i'm like hmm i might might send my eldest on one of those actually that's a tad early yeah it is a tad early but they start from they start from age seven essentially so like and i'm just you know thinking about the future of the workforce and whatever and in a way i think oh well it'd be great to have them working the family firm and so on but like what are the things that you need to consider talk us through this expeditions that you'll do so the first thing with a family tree uh is that they need pruning like a normal tree does and obviously we know in our garden you prune a tree it becomes healthier it grows better so if family members aren't involved then they shouldn't necessarily participate in decision making so they need to be pruned out of that in some situation that goes as far as their financial interests being being changed and they might be bought out of their shareholding uh as in many situations you know planning is critical so you plan for events happening people passing away uh you work out in that situation what will happen to shareholdings what will happen to decision making so our third generation actually joins the board next month so right uh the two eldest are both 27 and each branch my brother and i have a branch each uh are electing family members the first one is the eldest but they're after that after three years they'll elect their own family member what we can't have is six young people around a table trying to make decisions with what they may perceive as sort of crusty old guys and gals that yeah you know are very seasoned and experienced but may have life looking through a very different lens so in that situation you know we will transition to professional management because of the scale we are yeah and that's already happening as we speak now but it's really important in a family business for the family to be involved and that doesn't mean run the business necessarily when they get larger and bigger and multi-generational but it does mean stewarding the values it does mean engaging in the culture of the organization in the strategic direction in the philanthropy but often in in modern larger businesses the day-to-day management will sit with an external professional manager interesting so that is different how they're sort of being brought on you really are managing that in a different way how interesting what have they done before so you said the because you joined at 17 six months you know 35 years later and obviously you've just celebrated your 50th year as as well what um so so what did you encourage them to do in the first bit because i think there's a there's an interesting generational thing here partly as well of like adolescence is partly stretching out a little bit everything is basically getting 10 years later yeah no i think buying a home having kids like all yeah all sorts i think i think young people's expectations are different than perhaps ours were and um and yeah so i think we are seeing a shift and i agree with you whether it's 10 years i don't know but it's it's certainly uh it's shifting you know further right so you know nick my brother's boy was a professional rugby player he played for england um uh in the under 18s and then went to worcester warriors had a bad injury you know had to leave unfortunately from that and then went back to university and came into the business and then my son is still out of the business jake um and he He is in private equity doing M &A.

31:41So in a technology business, so in a relatively similar path to his father. Adjacent. Adjacent, yeah. Yeah, no, but I think that's good. And part of it is like we do get our identities wrapped up a lot in our jobs, et cetera. And so, yeah, giving them a bit of that outside, I can see the appeal of. Why do you not think you're academic? Like when you're talking about all this, Sorry to jump back to one of the earlier points in it, but I'm like, he's got all this and he sticks it all together so brilliantly. And you explain it really well. What type of intelligence do you think you have? Academia is a very specific way of teaching intelligence.

32:22So it's very memory orientated. And as you probably can tell, my memory for numbers is very strong. But give me names and it's a different world for me. and you know where i am on the spectrum here only knows i don't feel an inclination to find out where but you know we all have different ways of learning and uh you know i'm a sponge in life so i mean i love consuming information as quickly as i can do as i'm getting older my learning appetite is growing and i like writing which i've never liked doing before um and but you know so i think intelligence comes in many different forms yeah and you know we can see that with peter carl can't we you know he's yeah yeah dyslexic super bright man and you know so i think i think this is where you know we spend a lot of time as you as you may know jimmy with our foundation thinking about education especially with disadvantaged children again it's one of those really interesting things coming down the road around the ability to have multi-tier learning in a classroom so if you've got a child who's fallen behind for whatever reason they could learn at the same pace they need to learn that in a classroom as someone that's three years ahead yeah and that's done through individual technology helping with teachers stewarding that technology.

33:34And there are examples of this in the US now where it's really working. So one size fits all for schooling. We can see that with the trying to move towards vocational grades, technical colleges. I think the government recognises that that's the case. But again, if we look at the curriculum review that's just happened by Becky Francis, that's the first one for 14 years. If we wait another 14 years, it's game over. so what we really need now is a is an evolution of the curriculum as the technology starts to change in our schools so long way around intelligence comes in many forms i've got my own flavor and schooling wasn't it for me no but it's interesting to hear because i think we so over index on academia intelligence in the first 18 years and individual uh ability as well is the thing of like it's all about teamwork and working teams and yeah so it's just interesting to because you have this thing with the rugby foundation from the cradle to the career don't you because it is interesting i think back to my own schooling and yes the brightest person in the class may have been given some sort of like extra sheets to kind of get on with and the teacher might have gone out a couple that were behind in that side but actually out of a class of 30 you've you probably have got four or five sort of sets really of a different ability and learning styles operating in it yeah i think there's a charity we support called cradle to career rights to see which run that cradle to career program and it supports people in a community award which is about 10 000 people about 3 000 children it supports them with their ambitions for their families and these are the very most most poverty-stricken disadvantaged communities in the uk bottom three percent and they've got horrendous problems i mean really horrendous problems and they've been had a top-down approach where they've had things forced upon them what we're trying to do with cradle to career is is have a the opposite approach so the community decide what they want we bring in other other organizations such as social services who are feared uh by the community we bring them into a community center and with the charity we we work out how we can change over five to seven years the trajectory of that of that charity but i literally just had them in today talking about four more wards that we're going to fund they were talking about children arriving at school at five who are non-verbal children arriving at school you know which we've all heard who are unable to go to the bathroom on their own yeah who are unable to hold a knife and fork who can't climb a stair and you know so we've got this situation where people are arriving at school not ready and then they're going to go through a schooling system that's really rigid and if they're not ready at that point the likelihood it is they're going to fail at every stage moving forward.

36:14So we're baking into these children's lives so early on failure and something in that system has got to change. So that's certainly one of the things that we try and work on in our foundation. You know, it's a big issue. There's only so much we can do. I've only got so much money I can give and so much of my time, whether I spend about four days a month on our charity activity. But, you know, I think it's really important to try and amplify the work of the third sector it's a really critical part of our national infrastructure um what are the other things that you do prioritize in the foundation and what are your systems for deciding those because i can imagine there's a lot yeah it's a trustee board like any other boards um there's a executive leader in the business and a small team of people our other main major project outside of that is called inspiring futures so we work with schools and charity partners that we've selected and schools we've selected 10 schools 10 charity partners and they co-create between the two of them agendas that can change the livelihoods of those children so only secondary school average secondary school is a thousand pupils so we're trying to work with maybe a hundred pupils a year in those schools and in that situation it might be one-to-one mental health support it might be one-to-one maths tuition it might be you know working as a team to create you know a large long-term science project might be help into university so we we give if you like about a thousand pounds per child that's involved in that through the school through their own choices so we're enabling the environment to happen with our capital and through structuring it for the schools but they make all the decisions and the pupils make the decisions and there's some amazing outcomes already uh we're only a year into that project but it's really we think it's groundbreaking this is all along the lines of what's called place-based giving so how do you make a difference in the place that you came from or perhaps your business is based from you know i i was i was born in a suburb of birmingham spent all of my life trying to get out of birmingham uh to come to london and work down here and then got to 50 and thought hang about here i've got to put back into society and actually the very best place to do it is where I came from.

38:26And that's called despair of giving. And it's a really good way to give money. It's a really good way to get involved. And sometimes time is equally as valuable to money if you haven't perhaps got money to give away. So that way of giving back to your place and your community, I think, is really important. How do you split the rest of your time? You mentioned four days on the foundation there. How do you think about your time allocation? Because I've got a really diverse job, what we call today in life a plural career and that means I sit on about eight boards formal boards so that has to have an element of structure to it you know for my sins I'm trying to impact things at a political level yeah it's pretty hard Jimmy you know not not wanting to go directly into politics but you know having a pretty fierce brain having some financial resources so I'm now doing policy work in our foundation around critical issues which we are funding but you know it's really trying to influence the direction not just philanthropically but in the treasury and in in department of business you know that takes a lot of energy and especially because it's a brand new career for me yeah i'm only 18 months into that which i'm finding fascinating and you know mental olympics um and i'm still you know sure that i'm going to make a difference even though it's pretty hard work uh but you know i think more people who have done well in life uh need to consider giving their skills and for me it's easy in a private company I haven't got shareholders to answer to and for a lot of public leaders, public company leaders it is harder but I can be a bit more outspoken which I'm not afraid to do but I also want to be constructive so there's no point me shouting at people that's not going to help anything there's no point criticising without recommending an alternate so my job is to be a critical friend and hopefully try and recommend ways of doing things differently and I'm lucky that government is listening across many different departments and what are your reflections 18 months into to doing all that because i remember when your team first got in touch and said you know can you come do the podcast etc and i was like oh it's really interesting etc and like you've had a really interesting 18 months since then like watching you right because you've done like laurel coonsberg you've gone into the bear pit that is question time yeah like you have like you've you've done a lot of those media things so it's two-part question i guess what are your reflections on learning of how to change policy in that 18 months and so on which is quite a tight window anyway but also like what else is on the media horizon like where would you where else would you like to go you know so for me and it's useful that all the things you learn in business and life you know come to come back to the front on these things so you know I was always taught to go knock on doors so when I was a lonely salesman when I was 17 I knocked on doors and then when I you know went on you know through my career the doors I might knock on might be buying a company and knocking on an owner's door and today i knock on politicians doors but the same skill is there why are you doing it what's your proposition how can it add value to them so you've got to work out you know where where can you add value as an individual communication i think is really key as you said i've been very lucky to get the bbc to support me you know i'm very lucky to go on radio four at some ungodly hours in the morning sometimes sometimes radio five wake up money at 550 that's a lovely one yep um and you're lucky to have a column in the times i have to say linkedin for me is by far the best vehicle of communicating it really is an incredibly powerful vehicle if you use it wisely and you know it's so for me that that's been an important important gift so you know i hope to continue on the same sort of media journey that i've got today um you know where it all goes i'm not entirely sure i'm too early in my journey and uh you know certainly i believe importantly i can make a difference and in philanthropy I think it's important that there are some strong leaders and hopefully I can give a good voice there clearly I'm already the strongest leader in the family business arena you know I hope to be a strong leader in AI where you know we've got I think a good perspective and importantly I'm investing a hundred million dollars in AI businesses right now so I've got a great spectrum and we're a top three reseller of AI technology across Europe yeah so my visibility of what's actually happening on the ground in customers with deployment in businesses we're investing in is reasonably unparalleled.

42:40So my job is just to make sure that I can help the country in areas that I can help it in, not get out of my depth and stay in what I'm calling my swim lanes. Yeah. Well, it's good to be a bit out of depth, right? The whole 18 months has been the deep end. I mean, I've not got the wings anymore, hopefully. No, no, but you clearly are sort of making a difference and the impact you've had where we started with Family Business UK as well. That's a really good journey. So I came in at the end of 23, October 23. I'm quite proud of this. Start-up mentality. I came in with a lesson. We've got to resolve things here.

43:18This is way too small. We're not having enough difference. Turning over£700 ,000, five and a half people. I look at us this year, 2026. We're turning over£2 million. We've got some really meaningful, great corporate partnerships with people like NatWest and JP Morgan. we've got 20 of the largest private companies in a grouping of patrons we employ two percent of the uk workforce between us all we're a really strong voice to engage government the business you know is really financially sound it's got a policy team of three it's got good customer good relationships in government so it's a great example of a transformation in in frankly just over two years learn all the skills i've learned in life throwing it into that environment and you know my one of my gifts in life is momentum so i'm i'm in fb uk family business uk for three years so when i'm there we're going to run at 100 miles an hour yeah yeah when i'm not they might back off but in between they've got to run who also some of the other patrons uh yeah so people like ross warburton as an example from yes and breads uh the pentland groups at jd sports um sam with brothers oh yeah um you know we've got some great families around the table really people that employ people that aren't known like the swire and sons you know an amazing company they own cathay pacific they own all of the coca-cola bottling in asia they own supermarkets in in sort of indonesia down uh you know a mate they have 110 000 people it's a uk company uh companies that people aren't even aware of so there are these there are these gems you mentioned timpson's earlier you know john timpson's you know he's a lovely man he's 82 he's such a wise man when you talk to him every time i see him he's been in three or four of his stores yeah yep and he's 82 and obviously his son his son james is uh is a junior minister and you know committed to doing a good job from what i can see yeah yeah absolutely and also we should say that you are you've flipped the media as well because you're now doing your own podcast as well thank you to you yes well yes exactly thanks to the amazing box like team of course but I did wonder how you've found doing that and what you're kind of like learning from I mean I know you're still only just like a few episodes in yeah but I mean I love listening to it like genuinely like I think it's really we were talking earlier about your episode with Nadeem Zawahi like it's it's it's nerdy policy stuff right yeah I mean listen it's uh it's not going to get 100 ,000 you know likes um but you know what we're trying to do is interview serious people about serious issues yeah and if all we have is a thousand serious listeners i'm okay with that because actually the issues we're trying to talk around are the really critical issues that we have today yeah and if we don't start talking about things like welfare being a cross-party issue or the nhs being a cross-party issue if outsiders like me don't say that who is going to because these issues today that we have welfare is 330 billion today uh as 400 billion next year 400 billion in in 2030 if we if we can't tap we have to tackle that as a country and that needs to be tackled by every political party you you take the pension triple lock as an example so you know we're giving we're giving an environment where it's the higher of cpi um average wage growth or two percent when we're not able to do that for our teachers and nurses who are at the early stages of their careers perhaps struggling to make ends meet yet we're prepared to do it for people that have probably had some good years in their life, that's an issue that no one will tackle because it's an election loser.

46:50But if everybody tackled it, if everyone said, listen, let's come together, this isn't the right decision, we need to be more reasonable here, it's a six or seven billion pound saving. And today, you know, that could go to defence, or it could go to the health service, or it could go to the deficit. So some of the issues we face today are really, really sizable. And in my opinion, they're too big for a single party to deal with, especially in that environment where the single parties, as we've seen with the Conservatives, as we're now seeing with Labour, have five ruling fractions within them, and they themselves aren't able to make those decisions as a party, let alone take the whole country with them.