Jimmy McLoughlin: The Career Ladder is Broken. Here’s What’s Next

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0:34The career ladder's gone, but the career catapult now exists. If you are talented and driven, you can go even further, even quicker. How do you future-proof yourself when the ground keeps moving? We're essentially moving towards the end of the knowledge economy. The tools change, the graduate jobs shrink, the career ladder your parents climbed doesn't really exist anymore. First job market has never been tougher for lots of different reasons. My guest today is Jimmy McLaughlin. He's spent five years putting that same question to almost everybody, from the governor of the Bank of England to founders half his age.

1:07Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We'll explore how to reflect on your career in a positive way. Sometimes you'll be ahead and sometimes you'll be behind, right? And what future-proofing yourself against the changes in the workplace actually looks like. Is AI a friend or a foe?

1:32Jimmy, great to see you again. How are you? I am very well, thanks, Tim. How are you? I'm alive. Last time we spoke, you took the mick out of my glasses because you were exposed to the whole world. Now, because I'm older, these are real. I really want to get into what your views are, the future of the world and everything else. But before we do that, right, I want to go back, as we just have, to you. You started in the Prime Minister's Plane. You're going across the world, doing stuff at number 10. And then within six months, you're in a room with a microphone that costs 40 quid, talking to the world about the future of work.

2:07How did that happen? And how would you feel? So, yeah, I left Downing Street in the autumn of 2019. I'd done three years with Theresa May since 2016, and I'd done the transition period with Boris Johnson. And we were expecting our first kid. And I was just like, it's time for me to go do something else. I need a bit of headspace to work out what my career is going to be about and so on. But I was like, I was the business and entrepreneurship advisor to the PM. I thought, well, it's not going to be hard, is it? They'll be lining up with offers, et cetera. How wrong I got that. And what I hadn't known was there was going to be a pandemic on the horizon.

2:43And so I'd spent a couple of months studying at Stanford on one of their exec courses, which was amazing. And then March 2020 happened. And everyone remembers their March 2020. And my wife is a doctor. so she was like i need to go back to work and i became a stay-at-home dad to our five six-month fold and it was yeah from downing street to diapers and you will know like with young kids there's really not much you could do they can't even watch tv so yeah we had a one-hour walk around the park and then we had to sort of fill another 11 hours and what we did was we listened to the radio and we listened to lots of audio that's where i discovered podcasts and i thought is there something I can do to help tackle the unemployment crisis coming up?

3:24And I thought back to conversations I used to have in number 10. I used to get the call from Debenhams or Wilkinson saying, we're about to go into administration, about to make 10 ,000 people redundant. I would go in and tell the PM this great news at the 8am meeting. And she would say, Jimmy, all you ever tell me about is job losses, yet we're at record high levels of employment. So, and what I realised was it's, yeah, it's entrepreneurs that are creating one or two jobs a week, but that never gets wrapped up into a jobs announcement. et cetera. So that was where the podcast started was like, well, maybe I can interview some entrepreneurs about where they're hiring.

3:57Maybe I could find my next job. Um, and that was sort of the, the plan for it. Um, and yeah, it's kind of expanded a lot since there. You've done amazingly well, right? So congratulations on that. You're the accidental entrepreneur who's made it happen, right? So you must be proud of it though. Yes, I am. Um, I am proud of it. And I think at the heart of the world, it's a bit of a paradox at the moment that I genuinely think there are more exciting jobs than have ever been available more interesting things out there but because the career ladder has broken and the traditional careers aren't as obvious it means that if you don't come from a privileged background you don't get to see those things and so that's the whole idea of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future is just like well can we interview interesting people about their careers and hopefully get this into the ears of young people and now the eyes as well um and they can they can kind of see it and be inspired like one of my favorite examples i talk about is um our hundredth episode that we did with miles jacobson the chief executive of football manager yeah they employ 300 people out in east london now and i just think gosh if we could get that into young people and they could hear about all the jobs that they create a football manager and what they need and actually yes being interested in football helps um but they're not short of computer programmers they're short of people that can write english narrative and so on so it's just you wouldn't necessarily think if you were you know if you loved english and you love stories that you should go and work at football manager but so that's the whole kind of like premise of the show essentially is like let's just showcase as many amazing careers and one of the things and i think you're a great example of this as well tim is that a lot of people's careers early doors are pretty haphazard all over the guy.

5:42Right, it's like all over. And just making, I think one of the things now in the modern world, it has been possible. I talk about it like the career ladder's gone, but the career catapult now exists, right? You look at the likes of Ben Francis and Steve Bartlett, like built amazing businesses by the time they're 30. That wouldn't have really been possible for our generation actually, but it is for theirs. And sometimes I worry that young people can see those and think they're falling behind or whatever And they have to realise that those two are statistical outliers. But there are sort of lots of amazing jobs that are kind of out there that they can get access to.

6:19So do you believe, therefore, because you're saying about the old way of doing things, do you believe the social contract is broken where it was go to school, get a great education, potentially go to university, go and get a job, work for 25 years, get a gold watch and then sit on the beach? Do you think that's broken? I think there is. I think it is a bit broken, actually. I think sort of like the good eggs that you might have termed them, who would get a job and perhaps work their way from shop floor to store manager to regional manager to the boardroom, potentially, I think that has broken.

6:49You're sort of seeing that middle layer disappear. And I think that's hard for people. But in a way, I do think we're almost more meritocratic than we've ever been, right? Going back to those stories that we just mentioned, like people, you know, if you are talented and driven, you can go even further, even quicker. But for the vast majority of people, that isn't the case. And I think that's really, really challenging. So you obviously frame the whole conversation around the future of jobs. What do you think the future of work looks like in the next five or 10 years? What's your view? We're essentially moving towards the end of the knowledge economy, right?

7:26Like for a long time, it used to be from the kind of 80s and 90s, how much knowledge did you have? How could you bring that into a company, et cetera? You know, it is the white collar professions. I have a blue one on it. Exactly. And I think that's changing now with AI, but it's going to be how you can understand and use those tools because seven out of every eight jobs in the United Kingdom are in the private sector. And the private sector's job, business's job, is to be able to research and then design a product and then take that product to market, it get it in front of people and persuade people to buy it yeah like none of that changes that is all going to be the case still but the products are going to be different and the tools that are used every single step of the way are going to be different as well even if you speak to a lawyer or accountants you think about some of the most kind of like stable professions their jobs change completely in 10 years in terms of what they have to do and the tools required so i think there is going to be enormous change coming but then i also think i get very worried about scaring people too much with it and you know thinking well let's let's break it down and take it back to first principles well i suppose you mentioned two professions they're really interesting lawyers and accountants i really worry for them actually because those logic-based knowledge businesses or industry sectors are under huge amounts of threat from what you've already mentioned around artificial intelligence and i can't see where the moat that those industries will create around human capital versus the efficiencies of technology, which is rapidly increasing.

9:01Do you agree? So I think there is some truth in that. But then I also think, you know, there are many predictions about the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet killing off the accountancy profession. And we've actually got more accountants than ever before. And that's because the job of accountants has changed. And actually, they've become much more kind of advisors. And come on, Excel is not the same as artificial intelligence. No, it's not. I mean, but even running a small business, putting it now into Excel or Gemini, Google Sheets, and being like, what does this all mean? Like you do get amazing advice.

9:34And I think that's one of the things that will happen is that you will just get, people will have access to much more advice, but ultimately people will still want to pay a human to take the judgment on it. And that's often what we're doing when we're hiring advisors of any sort. I think you're right. So you look at the taxi business, the waiters of the world running around now, I think people will be very cautious to get into a driverless car for a period of time, even though the technology exists and there'll be safety nets. But I just think there are certain professions that I really do worry that I would not advise my own children to start thinking about.

10:11And I think this is the bit that I struggle with. When I ask lots of people what they think of the future, they give me this lovely, rosy picture. It'll be fine. We'll find a way. But then I say, what would you advise your children to do? And I suppose that's the question I pose to you. What would you advise your children to do? I think it's critically on the Ubers and so on. It's quite interesting, the Jevons paradox, which is that essentially you can have a disruptor in a market, but that ends up expanding the market, right? So if you look at private vehicle hire now, it's like gone up exponentially since Uber.

10:40So you can - But there's prices for those drivers that you earn go down. Totally. So that is a challenge. But Airbnb as well has also kind of facilitated more travel and so on. So I'm just, I'm trying to give the sunny up plans. No, I want you to, because that's the heart of the debate, because I am trying to be, I'm ever the optimist, you know me, my glass is always full up, right? I am the jolly, we can challenge everything and fight. But I can't ignore the information that's in front of me. The reality is that I'm telling lots of kids to go and get the best education they can. then employers are reducing the graduate jobs that they have in the marketplace.

11:15These are facts, right? So I'm saying I don't want us to be pessimistic by any stretch of their imagination. I think artificial intelligence is a great tool. But at the same time, I want to delve into your knowledge of you speaking to hundreds of people who are experts in the film and say, okay, where is the optimism? And where are the oasis? So I think one of the things that I advise young people to do now is we've often thought about the portfolio career at the end of one's career. I think there's something to be said for doing it at the beginning and trying a few different things, moving different places, et cetera.

11:52And also I think at the moment, the graduate market has never been harder, right? The first job market has never been tougher for lots of different reasons. So whilst it's harder to get work experience than it's ever been, it is easier to get experience than ever. And what I mean by that is you can start something. You can start something, a community, whether it's online or in-person, whatever you're interested in. And I think that's really important. You can use AI to be able to learn all these skills, set up some branding and so on. And I think that's really important is emphasizing to youngsters, go and try things, go and build communities, find your tribe.

12:30Like a lot of this stuff has always kind of existed, but in some ways is now easier to do than ever before. and I'll give the example of um two young chaps who've come and worked with us right they have their own podcast they came and interviewed me and at the end of it I was just like what are you guys doing over this summer like why don't you come in for a bit and so on and they've been brilliant and I think that is just the example where it's like we would if they'd just written to me on spec a year ago you know can we come and spend some time with you that wouldn't have necessarily been a given but because they'd got the podcast they'd come and see me they were clearly good um you know they've now got what I think is quite a good internship.

13:08I 100 % agree. I couldn't agree more. We need to encourage young people to try and fail quickly so they build up what the employers are saying they want more of, which is resilience, right? But do we have to therefore do more work with the parents? Because the parents are still saying, I want Johnny and Jennifer to go to a red brick university when actually maybe university is not the future. Yes. I think we do need to do quite a bit of work with the parents. And it is interesting that one of the fastest growing listenerships of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future is the over 50s. And I think it's exactly parents trying to understand this new world for their kids.

13:42Because I think it's always hard to give kids advice. You're both parents. I know it's first dad, right? Exactly. Remind me how old yours are. Very old. 24, no, 25 and 16. Yeah. Right. And so I think it is a challenge. And there is a lot of status ascribed to going to university. The whole, you know, people are often the first to go and so on. and there's no obviously university for a lot of people is is the right thing to do but i'm not sure it's the right thing for everyone and the sort of 50 target that tony blair had etc i just don't think it's true i also think we're funneling people into it quite young right we're almost asking people at 16 17 to be like okay what do you want to specialize in and so on and actually one of the things i think is happening in the world is that partly because we're all living longer as well adolescence is stretching out a bit longer and we have this sort of like cut off moment of when, okay, 18, you're an adult, you need to know what you want to do with your career and so on, I think is really challenging.

14:39And that was often as well, the way that generation were brought up as well. So people have their own biases from it. But I do think for youngsters, it's like, well, you've got to look at, do you want to have the£50 ,000 worth of debt? Are there other things you can do? And so on. Like, I think degree apprenticeships are amazing. if you can get one. But I also, it's interesting now when people are at university, when I go to campuses, like how much more enterprise, venture capital societies are going on, right? Like it's changed so much. Like I was at university between 06 and 09 and there was a little bit of that, but a tiny, tiny amount, right?

15:21And so I think that's really, you know, inspiring. And I think, you know, if you're going to go to university, don't just think about the degree, but also think about all the other things that you can do alongside it whilst you're there as well. I couldn't agree more, but I think the bit I'm very frustrated with is that the parents have such an influence over the young people, but they don't have all the information on what to feed the young. So I'm loving that they're listening to the podcast more. But I think one of the challenges is that A, you know, teenagers don't listen to parents as much, but they often end up with like following into their parents' work or often their parents' friends' work.

16:01And I think that's a real challenge because you just need to try and expand it. But partly because schools aren't very good at careers advice anyway. They weren't very good when I was there 20 years ago and it's got even more complicated. You know, being a teacher is a full-time job and then some as it is, right? Without sort of like, you know, having a side hustle and kind of being an expert in all the careers that are available as well, right? So, yeah. What I'd love to see is an entrepreneur adopt a school. Because you're right, I don't think we should put the pressures on specialists around education, being specialists around employment and recruitment.

16:35They have no clue, right? So you could find a corn ferry or any organisation who could go into a school, adopting that school and saying, this is what the world looks like. And I think it would be a great incentive because they'd be getting their brand in front of their future customers really, really early. Why isn't that happening? Listen, that's what I would be telling the education minister tomorrow. Get businesses more engaged with education. What would be on your list for the education minister? So I think, I mean, I think a lot of schools, a lot of businesses try and do this. You know, Salesforce are doing something with the other day and they're kind of giving everyone a day to go into schools and so on.

17:13So I think it's happening, but it's pretty mis-spread. I think one of the weird things about education, I think, is in the first 18 years of somebody's life, we massively over-index on academic ability. Very few jobs actually require real academic, like, rigor. Like, there are some, and the top jobs do, and we should test for that, etc. But the other thing as well is that almost all of school is individual-based as well. So actually, we're sort of training people in the first 18 years of their career for, you know, two things that don't exist in the vast majority of jobs. Such a good way of looking at it, you're right.

17:51There's no collaboration, teamwork, doing stuff to get you right. Exactly. And it goes back to that old adage of, you know, the most valuable lessons of school to learn outside the classroom, right? And it's been one of the things that I've always thought about, like why sports players at school are popular people. and the characteristic of that is actually they work in a team and learn to rely on each other and build a deeper kind of trust and friendship through that. And that means they have kind of more stronger kind of like social networks. And life skills, because you're actually going to have to go and work with people in some capacity.

18:25If you never trained that for 18 years of your life, you're going to be kind of behind. I've never thought of it in that perspective. And that's why lots of, I think, employers like to look at kids who have worked in sports teams and see that as a positive when they're coming through. Okay. I like that. What would you be telling the next Prime Minister who's coming in about the future of the world? Which one? Mike James is getting by the time. It's very true. Goes out again. So imagine it's Andy. Imagine it's Andy, because it looks like it's going to be, right? He's got this whole devolution agenda.

18:57He's going to move everything around the world. He's going to stand up with a black t-shirt or some dark blue, who cares? And his eyelashes and tell the world what's happening. What's your view and what he should be focusing on with regards to the future of work? So we have 1 million under 24s not in education, training or work. It is a stain on our nation and our economy. And I think that that needs to be one of the main focuses, right? I also feel particularly bad for this generation because they had the worst of COVID as well in some ways. You know, they were teenagers, should have been going out and getting up to all sorts, and they were told to kind of stay at home.

19:37And I just feel they've been dealt a really sort of tough hand. And I think that we need to do something, and we may need to do something pretty radical. Because if these people are left without work and a job early on, then that ends up, you know, costing our economy so much over the 21st century, it doesn't even worth their thinking about. And so I think we may need to do something quite radical when it comes to that. I think, you know, what Rishi Sunak did during COVID in terms of furlough, in terms of the kickstart scheme, rather, like I think those are the types of things that we need to be thinking about for how we get people into work.

20:14I also think there's a, there is a bit of a challenge to young people as well. I hear a lot on the radio now at the moment about I've applied for 200 jobs on LinkedIn, et cetera, and haven't had any responses and so on. And I get that must be kind of like soul destroying and so on. But I also think there is something about going back to kind of like old school methods with some of this, right? In terms of messaging people directly and thinking about the tools that you now have available. It's not necessarily going along the high street and putting CVs through. But I think if you're looking for a Saturday job and so on, I do think that's quite an interesting place to start.

20:48So that's one of the things that I think needs to be really top of Andy Burnham's priority list. And we haven't heard that much from him yet on it. And I worry greatly about it.

21:05So there's obviously a lot of focus on young people, but what about the older ones? Like even my age, you're getting people now who are getting taps on the shoulders, thinking about what are they going to do next? And if we are going to live a hundred year life, there's a lot of work still to be done. And if you've got to pay for your social care and stuff, you can't be retiring on the golf course just yet, right? So what's your advice for people who are slightly older who've got experience? I think it's interesting the amount of people that I get come and see me that have been made redundant and so on, sort of at a stage of life where they weren't expecting to be.

21:35And I think it's really challenging, and I think it's something that isn't talked about much. There is a great book called Designing Your Life, which I recommend to people to go and read. By Bill Burnett and Dave Evans? That's one. Because I think it can be very difficult when you're in a job to actually have the headspace to work out what you want to do you know I was talking about my Downing Street experience earlier when I when I left you know it took me a proper kind of six months to sort of begin to put the pieces together of what I wanted um to do and so on um and yeah I think it's it's a real challenge and I think it's one of those things that is not talked about and also the sort of even beyond that as well the over 55s as well right you're exactly right like you might need to work for another 20 years right they might have thought at the beginning of their career that they'd basically be at the end of it whereas now actually you sort of look at it and it's yeah they might only be 60 percent of the way through and so on so there's there's a lot left to kind of give and how you kind of sell yourself and your skills at that stage is is a challenge as well so have you got any thoughts on what jobs will actually look like in the next five to ten years because there's the working from home culture that's crepting after COVID.

22:47I know lots of people are trying to get everyone back into an office, which I personally think is a good thing, but the flexibility is also really important for those who need it. And with technology facilitating lots of distance learning and working, what does a job look like if the knowledge economy is passing its phase and we're now entering into value via technology and artificial intelligence? So I think human to human relationship will, and those human skills will be really important. And I think that AI is really not great at that in terms of like, I'm doing question prepping for podcasts and so on.

23:25Like it just doesn't, it doesn't get it. It doesn't get it, does it? It doesn't get it. Like, and I just don't think it ever, ever will. Like it comes up with some interesting ideas and whatever. So that's where I think is the really important side is kind of relationship management, stakeholder management, to give it that sort of 90s corporate phrase. I think a lot of that will become quite important. I would say as well that I wouldn't underestimate humans' capacity to create work for one another. I think about, you know, how many meetings you've sat in that have been slightly pointless. Maybe you get, probably, yeah, probably aren't many pointless meetings with Lord Sugar, I dare say.

24:03I don't think he's... They're very brief, so that's good. Exactly. They don't last long. But I read this great book last year by Charlie Colnutz. and it's called is this working and he was sort of late 20s wrote this book and basically went and spoke to 80 people about their jobs today so it's like the opposite of jimmy's jobs of the future essentially and what struck me about in that book was the amount of bureaucracy there is in a lot of people's jobs there's a great one about a construction site worker who says um it's impossible to me for me to have a conversation on site without me then having to go and write up an email afterwards and i think that is just a great example of where humans kind of create work for one another that's you know i'm sure there's health and safety regs around it and why that's important but i wouldn't underestimate our ability to to create work for one another as well i hope my hope is that technology takes away some of the mundane elements that can be automated freeing up more creative bits where we can come up with necessary solutions for enough of the problems that we've got in society, right?

25:08We're struggling with social care. We're struggling with energy. There's enough things we could be getting on with rather than worrying is someone with an AI degree going to take our job. I think there's enough that we could work collaboratively on. Humans will always be the ones that provide the breakthrough. That is, you know, AI will be able to do a lot, but the sort of the innovate and going to the next level, I think will always be, you know, kind of human led. I totally agree. And I think the challenge is, it came from an Oxford professor who said, the problem with the human condition is that we always rely on somebody else who's clever enough, smart enough to come up with a solution.

25:39I think we all have to come up with a solution. We can't be waiting for some magic messiah to save us in the world of work. We just have to start doing new things and then the momentum will build up. So that's why I think your pod is really, really important. So if I'm that 35-year-old individual, I've done the normal traditional route and I'm worried about the future, what are some of the things that you think that I should do around future-proofing myself in the world of work? So I think you have to look at yourself as a kind of like T-shaped individual. That's something that Greg Jackson, the Octopus Energy CEO, kind of uses.

26:12And you're going to have a deep knowledge of something, but you need to think about what you can kind of add on to the sides of it. Because I think this is one of the things that we get wrong about jobs, or we think of jobs as quite like singular tasks. Well, actually they're not. They're a collection of tasks, and all those tasks are going to change in the next few years and so on. So you need to be thinking about like, what skills can you kind of put on and what can you learn and so on. I'll give you an example of something that I've kind of become sort of slightly obsessed with in terms of podcasts.

26:43I always wanted to do individualized podcast artwork for people that kind of came on. And, but it just cost a lot of money to hire a graphic designer to kind of do that and so on. Dan O 'Banana would do everything. Yeah, exactly right. And I've become like quite, you know, and I sort of love it because it's partly, it is my love of history as well of the portraits and the different things that you can have in the background and so on. And I'm sort of like, when I'm doing my research, I'm thinking, oh, that'd be a cool thing to do. That'd be a cool thing to add, et cetera. And so that's kind of like an odd skill that I've developed.

27:14Now, I was terrible at art, right? I was kicked out when I was in year nine. I was that bad at it. But now, like, I'm able to kind of like create these things and so on. And it's one of the most kind of like joyous parts of my job and so on is thinking, okay, what's going to be in the background and so on. So I think, yeah, like I'm, I'm optimistic for what, for the things that will kind of be created as well. But I think it's hard to, it's hard to measure and it's hard to, to value these things. I think when you think about people like Steve Jobs, one of the things that he often was told that he had was his love of art and the calligraphy that he then inputted into his systems which differentiated his his offering from the microsofts and everybody else in the world so actually what you're saying is to be useful at something and that can be applied to something else yeah so it's having those transferable skills which is going to benefit people transferable skills and i think also sort of having like two expertise in in different areas and being able to kind of bring them together as well like greg talks about t-shaped people but there's also now like the M-shaped people, M-shaped people as well.

28:20So it's like M people. Somebody paid a lot of money to come up with letters again. Consultants. To do it. But I think, I think there are all those, yeah, it is thinking about all those things of where you can kind of bring it together because it is just the way that we think about jobs, I think is quite outdated and we still think about it in quite a sort of 20th century style. 100 % agree. My desire would be that we start going back to a future looking at what we need. So you'll remember back in the day, there was the Leach Review, which then looked at what do we need to be a functioning member of the global economy, right?

28:58And he said, we need these X, Y, Z and skills. And it was based on the knowledge economy. But as you rightly say, that's changed now. Why aren't we having the conversation about what's necessary? Because the thing I did like about Rishi, regardless of politics or colours or masks, is that at least he was saying we need to be an expert at something where we're renowned for something. But no one is coming with that agenda. What do we stand for in the UK? What are we supposed to be great for? I know. And I don't know why Jobs of the Future doesn't get more kind of coverage because I just think it is so important.

29:33It defines who people are. It defines their kind of economic stability and how they can kind of get on on life. I appreciate the family life partner are the most important things, but secondary to that is kind of what career people go into. So I don't understand why it doesn't take a bigger prominence and why we don't talk about it more, because actually politicians themselves have often quite interesting careers. But I also think it's very difficult. It is really hard to know what the skills of the future in 2030, 2035 are going to be. But come on, it's not that hard because I'm not saying that I'm Mystic Meg or Deirdre in the newspaper, but let's look at the obvious things that we're seeing.

30:19The trends are energy is going to be massive. We're going to have people who are getting older. So we're not having as many young people. So elderly care in some way, shape or form, what do we do with all these people? And then you've got resources, natural resources occurring like water and other things. They are going to become scarce. So we could say we're going to think about food security, for example. So when I think about the continents around the world, you think about energy in the US, you think about lots of technology maybe in Asia and China, and then you might think about the youth demographic out of Africa, as well as its natural resources, but they're being pillaged from every different direction.

31:03When I'm thinking about Europe, not just the UK, Europe, going to say we're the financial sector of the world is it's kind of weak now do you know what i mean when when money moves everywhere and it's our stock exchange is not even holding onto our competitors right so i just want us to be thinking about what are we going to be renowned for and we could use soft power to lead that charge i think but definitely no one's having that conversation no i think the other one i would add in as well as defense right like you know we're literally sort of doubling the amount of spending that we're going to do that is you're right in terms of healthcare energy and defense are going to be three of the growing sectors i also think the creator economy i think the creative side of it um i think a lot of one of the things when you're young is that you don't appreciate necessarily what your kind of country is good at because you're just sort of grown up with that now i can kind of see sort of looking back it's like how good we are at the creative side of things you know look at the amount of film studios we've got in the southeast massive impact on our gdp completely and really great jobs you know we were talking earlier about set designers and so on like all these very cool jobs that are that are out there as well um so i think there's there's lots of reason to be kind of optimistic about it i also think you know britain is trying to find its way in the world work out what it is still i know it's 10 years now since brexit but i think there's a lot of like okay well where where do we kind of want to position ourselves etc but i think there are some some kind of key sectors there and we've often led the world in lots of things i think the ai density around king's cross as well yes um is is really encouraging as as well so yeah there's there's lots to be optimistic about i think you're on some of the creative industry thing there because my fear and worry with artificial intelligence and i've said it several times i love music right but at the moment you can plug in a couple of lines of code and get out some kind of version of music but that for me says it's gonna become this dichotomy of people who don't have money you can just get artificially created content and people who have access with money getting premium live stuff so theatre opera and live events and gigs we saw what happened with the oasis concert tickets right for example and that if we had even if you create a benchmark around live activities or something that we have with the brit school and all these world-renowned um advantages we put into the creative economy i just want someone to be a bit more i want to be inspired by a leader who stands up and says we're gonna go to do this and at the moment i don't feel any of that it's just this when i'm better than you i'll better pmqs and i'll do it why don't you go in into pmqs and sort them out for us maybe one day i think at the moment the british people just like some competency before the sort of like it's every pm comes in and say well you're going to radically change everything and so on.

33:50And I think that, I also think on your point, anything that is human made will become a luxury as well. I mean, I am stunned by like the prices of tickets for the World Cup. Like it's extraordinarily high. Forget the World Cup. Have you been to the cinema? I don't know. I went to the theatre with the kids to watch Hamilton. I took a bank loan. It's nuts, isn't it? But there's no empty seats. No, you're right. It's full every night. Like, you know, it's it's tough to kind of like you know argue with that as a kind of like free market capitalist it's um and they do do lots of these places do do schemes and things of course for um for underprivileged and schools and so on but yeah you've got to again it relies on sort of like active teachers looking at these things being aware of it and so on right you know it's there's lots of privileges there with your obviously experience and your deep level t knowledge of the world of work.

34:47If the next incoming PM gave you a call, would you go back in? Oh, gosh. Yeah, I would always want to help the country and so on. And I do think this is a real kind of like national mission that we need to look at. And, you know, like I say, I think there's amazing jobs there. There's amazing opportunities and so on, but we're just not, you know, talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. and that is something that we need to do. And I think Andy Burnham will particularly get that, you know, having been mayor of Greater Manchester and so on. Like, we'll understand that in some ways as well. Go on, give me your pitch.

35:26What, for what I would want to do? Well, I would want to focus on the 1 million under 24s, not in education and employment, and, you know, think about the ways that we could do it. I mean, you know, it's often pointed out that we, you know we give people 50 000 pounds and expect them to rack that up in debt to go do a degree etc like you can start a business for a lot less than that right and there are all the startup loans and so on as well and i think you know i think entrepreneurial skills are you know making stuff happen having agency is like really important and so encouraging that and having like a nationwide campaign of enterprise is why i think the apprentice is brilliant and dragons then etc right is it makes people see those like opportunities and realize that anyone can kind of do it so i would want the government to kind of do more of that i think the start of britain campaign from 2011 right the great big bus buses have taken on quite a but like that and like rolling around the the country and and yeah one of the funny things that i sort of realized the other day is like how every entrepreneur sort of like lionizes their own story, right?

36:38You started it with this as well. Like you started Jimmy's jobs as a feature of a 40 pound Amazon mic in his spare bedroom, right? Every business starts in a spare bedroom or a kitchen table. No one goes into the office, full office block. I'm going to do it. Jeff Bezos. Exactly. Right. Bezos started like, and I think they still have this of like, they use doors for tables. Right. So like, and that's great, but it's like it means that anyone can kind of do it as well and i think that's that's what i would love to see more of in government i do think it's a real problem with this labor government there aren't really any entrepreneurs or any of them that worked in the private sector i do think that's why you know we do have some challenges around the economy and so on because you need to inspire people i think business leaders you know or anyone that runs a business it's just had 10 years now of like uncertainty and so on like you know brexit it was a real challenge whether you were for it or not.

37:31Like it created a lot of uncertainty, particularly if you were exporting products of sort. Then you've had COVID. Then you've had the various energy shocks. And you've had all the changes in prime ministers, the increase in NICs and national minimum wage. The geopolitical environment. The geopolitical thing. It's been really, really tough to run a business in the last 10 years.

37:53We had Sarah Davies on Jimmy's Jobs of the Future the other day. And she said she thinks it's been the toughest in the 20 years that she's done it. And I just, you know, it is hard. Can't argue with that, really. I know. We had her as well. She's amazing. But I think the challenge is, how do we create more entrepreneurs from places like York and others where you might have gone and studied a degree or not and get them inspired? I think the big opportunity for government is that its ability to corral people. It can bring people to the table. It's got access to all of the data in the world that you could ever want.

38:29And I think using its convening power with its access to data, it should be able to say, these are needs we have now. Let's create a sausage machine of putting those proportion of those million young people through a course or training programme to get them up to speed, to deal with social care, to deal with the fact that we're going to need more electricians or whatever, because these are all learnable skills that a system can produce, right? Totally. I have written about this a number of times to the point where my dab is like, you've got to stop writing about this. But if I burn, I throw open the doors of number 10 to entrepreneurs, right?

39:05I would be like, right, let's get a day of like 100 established entrepreneurs like yourself, et cetera, and other dragons, and then be able to like have another 150 come in and just kind of like create a load of sessions and collisions, et cetera, that I think could be like really transformative. And I'd pay them, I'd incentivise them in some way, shape or form because it's value they're going to create. And we had Sir Richard Harpin in. He's very clear about putting his money where his mouth is, right? To back the next generation of entrepreneurs. Rather than thinking of taxing these individuals, incentivise them to put their money to work because their egos will love it and their experience will help create better things for the future.

39:46I got so wound up the other day. I don't know if you're aware of this kind of like TikTok social media phenomenon of cake sheds, right? There are like a thousand cake sheds now. For the audience, a cake shed is often set up by a teenager placed in the garden next to a road, often brightly coloured. They put cupcakes and cookies in that are made at home and there is a sort of honesty box and so on. It's like such a kind of like wonderful return to when you could go and buy eggs. Eggs, that's right. Or honey or whatever it might be. And so, yeah, people are making a bit of money on this. And then the local council are just like, understandably they have to have food safety regulations of course that has to be inspected but they want to charge them 1200 pounds for a street trading market license and you just think what are we doing a few cookies like you know and i just think like that is the immediate reaction that the sort of bureaucracy has like rather than being like well done come to the council maybe here's a pop-up shop that you can have it's like no you're having a little bit of success Tax that.

40:49Tax that. Off you go. And I figured that's the thing. You've got all these empty shops on the high street. Give them away to people to test stuff. Anyway, before we get off our hobby horses, let's bring it back to conversations and your insight. One of the big things that you are incredibly passionate about, and you've spoken to a lot of people, whether from sales for CEOs to people who are experts in the field, is the future of AI. And the impact it's going to have not just on our lives, but on the world where we are, right? So in your view, is AI a friend or a foe?

41:24So I think it's both. I think for small businesses, I actually think it could be a huge friend, right? I think like I look at the amount of stuff that we're able to produce at Jimmy's Jobs of the Future and Boxlight now, and already we are able to do a lot more than we were able to do previously. I think for big companies, it's probably a friend for the C-suite. If I work in a middle management of a big company, I'm not sure it is a friend. I also think it's really hard, potentially, at these sort of 50 to 200 people stage business of where you might not have sort of technical specialists in it and so on.

42:08and you've got a system, you've been quite established for 10, 15 years, perhaps. I think that is quite a challenging sort of thing of where it could disrupt people quite a lot. So there you are. You've got about six answers there. No, no, no. I think they're good. Because I think lots of emphasis has been put on the so-called digital natives who are just going to walk into this new world of tech and be fine. My bigger concern is for the person who's 30, 40 years of age, who's done the job really diligently all their life, and all of a sudden they're being asked to deal with all this technology with not huge amounts of training and the assumption that they'll just get on with it, right?

42:44But I also think that's quite a sweet spot, right, in terms of the sort of 35 to 45-year-old because I think there's a great opportunity in terms of you've got the knowledge and the experience of how to pull it all together and what it can do. So I think there is a sort of sweet spot there with some of the polling that we've done that actually those people are finding it the most beneficial in some ways. I mean, I think there could be a challenge in it as well. I mean, one of my team put it quite well to me the other day. He was like, you know, being 22 and not having a job is really bad at the moment.

43:19Like being 25 and having a job is actually great. Like, because... You're living life. Yeah, living life, doing a job for a couple of years, know what I can do. Bank of mum and dad's looking after you probably. Still got the kind of like plasticity of the brain to be able to be like, I can bring all this and see where the AI has come in and so on. I mean, they're using like Fixer to record all their calls and write proposals straight afterwards. And like, you know, it's kind of amazing to sort of see. And they're just able to kind of like ingest that and so on. So it's tough. And that's where I worry about.

43:52And this happened with the internet and technology as well, right? It's like you'll get the top 20 % of people who are able to understand it, use it every day, et cetera. And they are able to accelerate their careers even more. You then have the middling 40 % who use it a bit. And then you have the bottom 40 % who don't potentially use it at all. And you basically just, and you had, like I say, you had this before and it just, you know, the curve goes wider. My thing is I want to have an equal balance between the talent that's coming in fresh and the experience that's already established. Because my mum used to say the new broom sweeps cleaning, but the old broom knows all the corner.

44:28So Caribbean is saying, right? So the older experienced individual, if you arm them like a transformer, say, with a backpack of AI technology, they'd run 100 miles an hour. And I think that's where we're missing the opportunity. Because if someone's been doing this thing for 10, 20, sometimes 30 years, you don't want to lose that knowledge experience of what really works around it. But you also don't want to be slowed down by missing the opportunities, the efficiencies that can be brought in by technology. So I think we need almost like a national training program, which says, these are the basics.

45:01Have this. Off you go. And then you'll come up with new or novel ideas. Your bottom 40%, leave them. They might not make it. You can't help everybody. But that middle 40%, they could be massively beneficial to the economy. Let me give you a great example. We were talking about people in career transitions and so on, of where you can use AI. So with my AI the other day, I said, take everything you know about me and everything you can find out online and predict my career for the next 30 years. Wow. And it was fascinating. What did it say? Well, it came up with like three different. You'd meet Tim Campbell, you'd have a great conversation.

45:37Well, it did say I could be director general of the BBC, which made me. Run the oven with our director. I, um, I thought to myself, it was so interesting because there were all these different things that it said and then about an hour later i was like in some ways it's not that impressive right because it knows i'm interested in the media entrepreneurship politics and so on so actually it was able to kind of like map out a few different things but it it did make me think i could actually go lean more that way i could lean more that way and maybe i could do that and so on and i just thought gosh you've like had top level career coaching there almost in some ways without all the discovery calls and so on and i just thought that that is really useful for people to kind of have access to.

46:21You know, I often think now, if I were leaving Downing Street now, what would I kind of do with AI to work it out? And I think I would have probably navigated towards Jimmy's job to the future much quicker, potentially. I also am not sure it'd be a podcast full YouTube show. It'd probably be a phone out on the street with people, right? You're doing TikTok Live. Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? But I suppose that's the thing I think, is that if it's an assistant tool that you can bounce off, that's got to be good. And I don't think it's going to take over because I think the human condition is ultimately going to win.

46:51The provocative element of me wants to test where things are going. But I think we're always going to drive the conversation. What's the most interesting thing you've used it for lately? I've used it as a bit of a marriage guidance counsellor. So the honest thing is that sometimes I have no clue what my missus is thinking and I don't pretend to know or understand. And I need, because I'm very logical. I'm very like, do this, fix that. we'll move on to the next question. And that will get you stabbed in my house if you do that on the wrong day, right? So I've used it really to say, listen, this is the situation.

47:26This is my view thing. And it comes back and it says, well, you could go that way, Tim, but if you want your relationship to be nice and harmonious, maybe this is a different perspective. And I think to your point, sometimes we just need a nice angel on our shoulder that gives us advice. And without having to pay or be vulnerable in front of someone you have no clue who they are, that's been really good for me. seeing my daughter's perspective and stuff. She's now 25. She's left home. We got to a point where we were clashing heads. So putting that into AI to have the conversation was quite interesting.

47:57Someone said that large language models are becoming the new church because you tell them everything. You tell them everything. Confession box. It's a live confession box. Thankfully, I go to church and have proper conversations. But that is the place where you can tell your deepest secrets. And I think that's the point of the benefit I see from some of the AI platforms is that we carry a lot of rubbish as individuals, as men, as business owners. And you can't be vulnerable in front of lots of people. And I can be ultimately vulnerable, giving it to somebody in the US, going through some data centers somewhere.

48:35But that's how I use it. I use it as a sounding board to help me make better decisions. And I don't have to always follow them, but sometimes it's good. So now I'm going to test you with a couple of professions to see whether or not they'll be in existence or extinct in the future. The first one is a lawyer. Thrive. They're going to fly. Lawyers always win, generally. I really worry about lawyers. Because someone is. Because it's a process where you graduate to different levels. Yeah. And if the entrance level of the graduation process is taken away from you, paralegals, research, do all this stuff, how do you get to be a judge?

49:15Well, I think one of the things in top end professions like law, investment banking, actually what we're training a lot of people for in their 20s is stamina. It is like corporate stamina. And like I say, I think, okay, fine, it might not be reading the documents anymore. but I think lawyers in particular will be very good at finding ways to still stretch the 20-somethings and build that corporate stamina. I often talk about that because I don't think it's acknowledged much even in that profession, but that's what they're trained for. That's why they're being pushed to their limits, right, to sort of like, you know.

49:55It's a consultancy model as well, isn't it? At the beginning, go in, you get punched up a little bit, you accelerate and then you can manage. Okay, I've never thought about it. Okay, cool. I like that. Accountants.

50:07Jeremy Hunt got in terrible trouble on my podcast because he said, I wouldn't train my kids to go into accountancy. And it happened to be the account, like the week the episode came out, it was like the Accountants UK conference. It's like Jeremy Hunt. I could see everyone running with account players. Exactly. But I think there'll always be accounts, but they'll just become business advisors. I think if you look at a lot of the top consorting firms, now like actually they're sort of it's a hybrid of business and accountancy advice anyway my thing is that accountants train for a long period of time to manage people's bags of receipts and actually they are going to be now utilized for what they're actually good at which is helping you to future plan so they're going to use the technology to get rid of all the rubbish and that will be a an easy bit you can pay for a software as a service piece but they'll be paid for the advising, navigating our tax laws and everything else, which if you've seen the state of them, you have to know what you're talking about for them.

51:08Okay, podcast hosts. Drive. Because? Because I think conversation will be important. I think it will get a lot sort of news podcasts I think could end up being AI generated quite quickly. I'm pretty sure the amount of data that Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart have got out there and their views on the world that you could kind of like generate what they think pretty straightforwardly. Nah, not Alistair. Not Alistair. Not Alistair. Never. Not Alistair. Never. Of course, you're first guest. But I think the, I think basically everyone will sort of, I think podcasting will become a bit like blogging.

51:52Everyone will have. Some version of it. Some version of it, corporate, et cetera, and so on. So I think it will thrive. I hope so anyway. Actors? Thrive. Definitely. I think acting as a skill, I think you've seen how well the West End is doing as well. A lot of that sort of in-person stuff will do more and more. All right. So tell me for me what you actually do and use AI for yourself. So I often sometimes use it to get me fired up in the morning in terms of being like, what do we need to do today? Like, I find it helps get over that sort of mental block procrastination. It may just throw like a few quick questions at me about what I think about the world or whatever.

52:38And it sort of just lights a spark. So I find that really useful. I find it amazing for research, obviously, and guests. Do you trust it? I'll always sort of double check things if they don't sort of like stack up. Hallucinations. Yeah, and so on. It's reasonable at sort of doing, coming up with some question ideas and so on. It can often lead to a spark. That's what I find it's sort of the most useful for. Like I said earlier, it's quite useful for kind of career guidance and future planning. It's very useful for getting inside other people's heads. That's probably where I find it most useful on the podcast, actually, is like when we did Keir Starmer on Jimmy's Jobs of the Future, it was quite interesting because I was like, why is he picking, why has he picked this podcast or why has his team picked this podcast what's he going to want to get out of it and so on so it's just quite useful to sort of like get in their head did it get right well it was interesting because it came up with a phrase it was called the reason they're probably doing your podcast to me is that you're half parky half punk and i was like what do you mean by that like you sort of where you highlight it and go let's go deep on that and it was like well you're half Michael Parkinson, the establishment, but also you're kind of like half cool, you've got this podcast, etc.

53:55So they sort of know that they can trust you and that you're not going to do anything like ridiculous, you know how to play the game, but they also get the kind of like cool vibes of whatever. And I thought, God, that's good. Like, yeah, yeah, that was like, I hadn't thought of it like that. I use it personally for remembering stuff. My brain doesn't do small details, so I need it to capture stuff that I would usually have people running around with notepads or stuff to do. And then it connects things together where I have, cause I've got like 20 million tabs open in my head. It connects those tabs together and it says, Oh my gosh, you should have done this with this.

54:32And I was like, Oh yeah, that's actually a brilliant idea. So I definitely get the spark bit. I love it for the fact that after lots of my meetings, it summarizes everything and produces the actions and knows what to do. And then puts it into my diary to say, this is when stuff should be given to you by x y and z person so it allows me to to chase people like i'm really diligent and it makes me look much cleverer than i actually i was you do have this moment again where like i sort of slight jaw-dropping moment of you know it's auto-drafting your replies yeah gmail and whatever and it sort of drafted this reply and it clearly looked at my calendar as well because it suggested times that i was about i was like wow that's like you know It's pretty cool.

55:13Yeah. So we've got a company based in Bristol called Eternal, and we've worked with the NHS to help doctors get better on their procedures and aftercare because we encourage patients to collect all their stories and then we can take all those data sets and give it back to the doctors to improve the care that they do. So I think it has huge potential. I'm definitely an optimist. I just worry that there's going to be a certain amount of people who are going to be left behind. Yes. because i'm sure you and i both probably pay for a premium and do other stuff and my concern is that who are we creating another two-tier level of people who have access to the tools and those who don't well i yes i think that's true it's probably more than two tiers right i mean i think about it from the the the coding size yeah but in some ways the ai for what i use it for hasn't like dramatically changed in the last six months whereas it's an advanced google for many people exactly right like um and i i you know i think gosh if you were a builder and you were technical uh and so on and that's where i worry as well slightly it's like oh we're not going to need coders and whatever and it's like well you are you're going to need a little bit of knowledge about a lot of things i think because you're still going to need to be able to talk to it in the language to be able to code and instruct it like if you or i tried to instruct it how to build a website and so on it would not you know somebody with a little bit of technical knowledge will be able to go much quicker and much further than those.

56:40Do you? Yeah. So I have a prompt professor. So I tell the prompt professor what I want to do and it spits out the ideal prompt to get the optimum result. I find that slightly mad that you need, like, yeah, that's interesting. Because for me, the tool needs a special way to be spoken to to get the optimum output. I don't know that. So to your point, I don't think you have to be a coder anymore. And that's my worry. Because if me, Tim, with no coding experience, can build websites that look like a coder, who is very experienced, can, I now employ kids from UCL and Imperial, and I give them that same tool, they fly.

57:27They tell me now that they're 10 times more efficient at iTernal than they would have been without access to the tool. So all I do is spend more money on the tools so they're even better. But for me as an individual, I say, this is what I want you to do. Tell me where I could make it better. It tells me immediately based on the platform I'm using. And then I reload that code back in and it gives me exactly what I need. So where's the prompt professor sit then? I made it up. Oh, you made it up. So that's what I'm saying. I now have an agent called the prompt professor. Interesting. You should get one.

57:57Yeah, yeah. I'll send you it. Yeah, yeah. I'll send you it. I'll charge you a fee. So what, you've spoken to industry leaders like, as I said, head of Salesforce and other individuals. What are they saying about the future of AI? Well, I think there is something interesting that's happening at the moment where what people are saying publicly and what they're saying privately is a bit different, actually. And I think... So you know what I'm going to ask you? Yeah, what they're saying privately. I think they are thinking about efficiencies and what they need people to do and areas of it. And I think that's happening a lot.

58:34and you're seeing a lot of jobs kind of being cut. But they don't want to, you know, I will write about this on LinkedIn sometimes and I'll often get journalists being touched. Like I'll be writing about how AI is taking jobs. And they will often write to me and say, have you got any examples of it? And there aren't because no one's saying it, right? And it's like, one of the things I look at that I think is happening is that people aren't losing jobs to AI necessarily. but when somebody leaves they aren't being replaced that's one of the things that i think is kind of happening is like okay well actually you know we can get their peer to potentially take on their work with extra ai support and so on so i think that's happening i don't think it's a sort of big moment of where you know people are going to get rid of 10 000 people or whatever although that that is also happening and it's not just ai right like we talked about earlier big increases in the cost of employing people the geopolitical situation as well just means that businesses are constantly reassessing it used to be when we had a recession businesses would use it as an opportunity to take stock and be like okay right where do we need to make cuts and be efficient etc because of the last 10 years and the constant chaos i just think businesses are doing that constantly now right like almost on a kind of sort of monthly basis i just think more people have got to get more savvy that this is happening i think we should be more honest with people that it's occurring but then you have more time to prepare because you can now use some of the streaming platforms and learn this stuff it's not it's not impossible to learn exactly i think some of the sort of lead ai people do not help themselves by sort of like at one stretch they're sort of saying you know all 50 of white collar entry work is going to be gone within two three years and so on um i i think that that those outlandish statements do not help the kind of like have a nuanced conversation about it and i know there's a lot of hype cycle that they have to come generate and so on um but yeah i think we need a bit more like you know it's definitely having an impact right like let's not get away from it um but it might not be as strong as people make out because humans will will find ways around something something's got to find a way around is that the majority of these companies are owned by the us and as a uk government is that a to your point around one of the big areas for us around defense is that a concern for us as a as a nation that we don't have a hand in the big technology that's going to drive the world um i mean yes it it is a concern um and i think the uk government has done quite a lot around sovereign AI and so on because we have to think about how we build our capabilities right it's like you know trying to compete with America on this stuff is not going to be the way it works anyway but it's like what are the specialties that we've got and I also think we do want to be the first jumping off place and we are for a lot of these companies like OpenAI will have their biggest office outside the US in the UK and so on so I think that is really important I think what the government has done in terms of sovereign AI.

1:01:45And I think, like, whilst I have plenty of disagreements with the Labour government, I think they have been excellent at kind of bringing entrepreneurs into the fold. There's been Matt Clifford from Entrepreneur First there, Timpson, Alex DePledge as well has been helping Rachel Reeves. She's amazing. And James Wise from Volderton running sovereign AI as well. There are good people in there that have gone in on quite specific projects to do. and pay tribute to the government on that. And those people also for doing the tour of public duty as well in it. I think it's really encouraging. I hope that will sort of continue under the new government and so on.

1:02:23Because I think it's really valuable that business and government understand each other better. They have to. And I think the only way you can do that really is, well, really understanding the kind of culture of these places and spending a bit of time in them. Great. Breaking bread is very important. So moving away from politics and technology for a minute, just thinking about what you've had or what you've seen from your conversations with people, what do you think makes somebody successful? What are the traits that you have seen that really stand out to you when you've spoken to people?

1:02:56Drive, resilience and curiosity. I think they're sort of like the really big, big things. In that order? Probably. And not having much of an ego as well. I think humility, sort of like the more successful people are, I often find them more humble. Now, maybe that's easier the more kind of like successful you get to be humble. But somebody was asking me this the other day, and I thought it is a trait with almost everyone we've had on the podcast, including yourself, about how humble. Yeah, so drive resilience, humility, and curiosity. Okay. I didn't even have that as a set thing. That's just… That's come out.

1:03:32Yeah, that's just come out. I like that. Listen, that's what I do. Yeah. so what's the best pieces of advice that you've heard from from some of your guests what's the ones that stand out in your head there isn't a sort of specific one but i think just sometimes you'll be ahead and sometimes you'll be behind right i think it was basle but like i just think that's really true like in in in a career there will be times when you can kind of accelerate and there will be times when you're kind of plateauing a little bit and that's fine um another way of talking about it is you're kind of either in an explore or an exploit phase and i think that's quite interesting as well um that year after down the street i was definitely like in exploration mode and so on and then you kind of move into exploit and so on and i think that's you know to that point about kind of like how do we develop careers and so on thinking that you need to do those uh different things also i think the thing is is like priorities change as well right like you have kids i i've got three under six at the moment so that's definitely been like quite a big focus of mine over the last few years but we're youngest is just about to turn three and and sort of you know it's like okay it's a bit more manageable now like there'll be a bit more space to do evening stuff and whatever um so yeah it's quite like understanding that and recognizing that as well explore explore and explore i like that a lot um not just for the alliteration um my one of my great mentors tom alubay he said don't worry so much about qualifications or jobs or whatever he said just find a way to be useful if you're useful someone will give you an opportunity because we're always looking for somebody i can you can do that who's up for that and i think that's very powerful i think one of the biggest things we haven't really touched on this but is is i think status will change quite a lot i think i think what every generation comes into the workforce and slightly defines themselves against the generation and aspects back to your punk thing yeah back to the punk thing but also like you know having you know really sort of wanting the corner office or that type of thing they come in and and slightly reject those things or prioritize different things and i think like job titles is one of the ones i think will will change quite a lot and it will become quite a lot about proof yes of what you've done right so it won't be you know qualifications will matter obviously to a degree still but like there will be more like what have you built what's the metric what have you done to say yeah okay you want to come in and you know run this community or whatever well what community have you run show me yeah show me right like it won't just be show me the piece of paper show me the thing that you actually do Yeah, that's going to be.

1:06:13Yeah, and that's an encouraging thing because we want people to do more that's less personal brand bravado than actually real tangible stuff. And that creates a meritocracy, which is what I want to see going forward that people can show. Okay, coming towards the end. Quick fire questions. Just say the first thing that comes into your mind, right? One aspect of your career you wish you could redo. Oh, one aspect of my career that I wish I could do. Probably get on with a podcast sooner. Have a bit more confidence and faith in it. I mean, I would love to do the job at number 10 again because I'd probably do it quite sort of differently.

1:06:53What would you do differently? I think I'd be like talking about like Alex and Matt and James earlier. They've gone in with very specific things. And I think that's one of the key things when we're asking business people to go in to government is like rather than just come in and just sort of see see if you can be used like you know it's like come in and help us do this that or next thing so like yeah if i i'm not going to go in now but i'd go in back in later in my career at some point it'd be like right well let's let's tackle this kind of like one one thing i mean there's a special advisor you just you have to do like it's just it's just massive and i think that that would be something i'd do a bit differently what's one core belief that you've had to reconsider?

1:07:35It's something that is under consideration at the moment. Off the press? Yeah. I have never been that sort of like focused on inequality and so on and don't believe that it is necessarily a problem in itself. I do think a rise of a trillionaire class is potentially problematic in some ways. I think individuals becoming more powerful than than really quite sizable countries. Yep. And so on. It's something that, like, might be a problem. That's interesting. I don't know what we do about it, et cetera. Because conservatism with a small C, that's, like, that's quite a big step. Like, it is, right?

1:08:21And I think Elon Musk is the most incredible entrepreneur. I think the value that he has delivered the world is extraordinary in lots of ways. you look at all the kind of different companies he's done. Like he, he's just incredible. Let's, let's pick that apart for a second. Outside of a car company and a reusable space rocket, which yet has to be seen as being valuable because, okay, you can go up for what? What value are we talking about? Well, I think it's Starlink as well. Okay. Yeah. I mean, Tesla, I just think is. So why have we got kids? Why have we got kids who have no education? cage and all the other stuff.

1:09:01Well, yeah. Well, I think it's a big question about what people put their money to. And I think they're often like, they often donate huge philanthropic wise. You look at kind of Bill Gates, but if you look at sort of like, since, you know, how Bill Gates was basically the richest man in the world in 2000 worth about 20 billion. 25 years later, we've like gone just so far beyond. Like, I just think with a potential scheme that, or investment that might not ever do anything. So I just, I - Anyway, I see what you mean. I see what you mean. I think even before the likes of Elon Musk, and that's a personal thing for me, you have lots of people who have lots and lots of money.

1:09:43Yeah. And the gap between those who have and those who haven't, I think you're saying is just going to get bigger. Yes, completely, right? Yeah. And I just, yeah. And should Bill Gates be solving polio? Should that be his focus? Should that be his thing. Well, let's see. Anyway, very interesting. I wish we had this conversation at the beginning of the podcast. I'm glad we did it because I'm not sure. You can run now. Anyway, take me back to the good time, the best time that you've ever experienced. What would be the moment you'd want to relive? I mean, working in Downing Street was pretty amazing.

1:10:15I mean, I had a thing where I didn't really get a chance to take a lot of it in because you're so busy and a moment. But I do remember being on the trip to Beijing and being in Tiananmen Square. And I'd been there literally 10 years before, having taken the train from London to Beijing, or actually technically from Derby to Beijing, all the way across Russia and everything. And I just had a moment being like, gosh, it's quite a long way in 10 years. And that was like dashed off into the thing. Yeah, I was like over there in my backpack 10 years ago. And now I'm sort of being whisked in the motorcade.

1:10:49So that was definitely a sort of like a moment that I would - A pinch you moment. Yeah, a pinch moment. Great. And our final one, What do you still have to rework? Oh, I have to rework still my interview technique, constantly thinking, re-evaluating, et cetera. And it's a skill I love doing and how you get it. And you're great at it as well. But I'll also watch this back and be like, yeah, that is always something that you rework. It's human engagement, how you get the best out of people, how you get interesting answers as well, right? Like I think it's a real, real skill. Well, listen, Jimmy, you've given us some amazing answers that have been more than interesting.

1:11:31It's great to see you again. Let's see where we can do the next one, number three. Yeah, yeah. It's your hosting next time, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's Bridge Cafe this time. Oh, that was the promise, right? Brilliant. Thanks, Tim. What a brilliant conversation we had with Jimmy. Here are three key things that I want you to take away from our conversation. He made it clear you can't future-proof your job, you can only future-proof yourself. Jimmy said a thing that stuck with me. A job isn't one thing, it's a collection of tasks and every one of those tasks is about to change. So stop guarding the job title and start stacking skills next to the ones that you've already got.

1:12:11Go deep on one thing, then keep bolting things on beside it. He went on to say it's harder than ever today to get a job, but it's easier than ever to start something. The old career ladder might be broken, but Jimmy believes a catapult still exists and he doesn't care whether or not you've got a contacts book. What it does care about is whether or not you can build something. That's your proof and nobody can build it for you. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind and that's the reality for most of us. The best thing Jimmy's heard from all of his guests was exactly that. Careers have a phase where you explore and they also have a phase where you exploit what you've learnt.

1:12:50and measuring your quiet middle against somebody else's highlight reel like the Stephen Bartlett's or the Ben Francis of the world, it's a trap because those two are statistical outliers, great achievers, but they're not the norm. The one thing that carries you through all of this is probably the best piece of advice I got from my mentor, Tom Alube. He said, just find a way to be useful because talent is everywhere. Just be the useful one and the opportunity tends to turn up for you. If something from today's episode resonated with you, please share it with someone you know who wants to rework their career or their life and don't forget like and subscribe for more great conversations just like the one we had with see you next time

1:13:35this was a rayo original podcast