June Sarpong with Rory Sutherland and Elfried Samba on culture, connection and staying in the game

26:22You know, it was doing well. Still alive, that's it. And then it went vroom. Yeah. And then it was, you know, once that sort of flywheel. Was that a Kervig thing or was it earlier than that? No, it was earlier than that because it was a couple of things. It was sort of leading figures in Switzerland wearing the shoes. You know, they had some marathon runners. One of the founders is a marathon runner. He's a triathlete. And so they had some sort of famous ones in Switzerland. So if you're into running, the people that were wearing it were sort of, you know, elite runners. But then obviously when Roger Federer came on board, it just went to a whole nother level.

26:59And so imagine having to staff up and to have the capacity to hold that level of growth. That was the thing as well that I saw with a lot of the leaders is how they had to increase their own capacity and up level their own thinking to absorb that success. Now, it's different if you're, you know, becoming the CEO of Deloitte or whatever that's a long-established company. But if it's a startup and you've been there from the beginning, even if you're not the founder, but you've been there from the beginning, it's tough to be able to go along that journey. So, yeah. That's astonishing. So, the Federer thing was the sort of, that was the breakthrough.

27:45Yeah, one of them, yeah. And then it just went from, you know. Yeah. Yeah, because the product's always been great. The product's fantastic. We talked about the importance of fame, right? The right kind of fame. The right kind of fame. There's a lot of fame out there. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And we talked about in marketing, really what you're trying to do is build fame, be easier to find and buy and being hard to leave, right? And if you get a really great product that's able to embody those three different things and do that the right way, that's how that luck happens. And really, you notice with a lot of businesses, especially startups, they just have to not die for the first three years.

28:26Yes. Just don't die. Which most do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most do. Just don't die. And then slowly people realize, oh, you're still around. Yeah. Oh, this is good. Yeah, yeah. This must be good. Three years. Three years. In a sense, if you think about it, in evolutionary biology, stay alive long enough to get lucky. Yeah. In a sense. Yeah. And so there's this very interesting thing that he said in the... It was Stephen Wolfram who said that actually evolution's got quite a loose fitness function. It's not... In other words, if you can stay alive long enough to reproduce successfully, your DNA stays in the game.

29:01It stays in the game. And what's quite interesting is you're allowed to do almost anything that meets those two criteria. You can be a patch of moss, you can be a shark, you can be a tree. If you can find an ecological niche in which you can take root, then that's... And actually, part of it possibly is. I mean, if you think about it, there are a lot of companies which had this lucky break. I think Superdry. Am I right in saying that was a David Beckham accidental purchase or something? Oh, was that? What happened with him? I hope I'm not talking complete crap here. But someone told me that it was effectively a guy in Cheltenham because he's not actually Japanese.

29:37No, yes, they did. Yeah, you've been talking about me, aren't you? His wife is amazing too, actually. They're like this power couple. So apparently it was that he was selling clothes, you know, pretty much locally. And then for some freak reason, David Beckham was photographed wearing something by Superdry. And it just went whoomp. Just went whoomp. And so there is that argument which nobody's comfortable with because everybody believes there must be a plan. And it doesn't sound like a plan saying, I'm going to stay around long enough until I get lucky. but actually, have you ever seen that wonderful guy, the Australian who won the gold at the speed skating in the Winter Olympics?

30:15A guy called Bradbury. In Australian English, it's known as doing a Bradbury. He, in some ways, lucked his way into the final. He was a very good speed skater, but he was nowhere near as good as the Korean, the American, the whatever. And his strategy in the final was, the only way I can actually win this is by hanging back and hoping the other three crash. They actually crashed. So it's hysterically funny. He manifested a crash! No, no, he manifested effectively. So he's there hovering behind effectively at a safe distance. And then all three of them take the penultimate corner and end up smashing into the wall.

30:56And then he went around. He's called Steve Bradbury. I think I've got his name right. It's one of the funniest bits of Winter Olympic footage you'll ever see. And they call it in Australia doing a Bradbury, which is you basically stay around long enough, wait for everybody else to cock up. I think that's been my career. I stay around long enough. In some ways, I mean, if you think about, you know, if you look at most careers, there often is... We also love, when we write history, we love to pretend it was all planned and also completely meritocratic, and that luck played no part in our success, da-da-da-da-da-da.

31:36When you actually pull it to pieces, you find that usually, you know, I mean, there are extraordinary cases of luck, like Mick and Keith of the Rolling Stones meeting on a train, and one of them has a load of blues records, so the other one... Weirdly, they grew up, their houses weren't quite back-to-back, but they were kind of diagonally... I think they shared a corner, their back gardeners shared a corner, but they'd never met. and then they meet on a train from Dartford into London. And you have these kind of... That serendipity. These extraordinary serendipitous things. And maybe, you know, I argue this, that you can't actually plan luck, but you can massively increase the odds of it happening.

32:14The odds of it happening, yes. Make sure, as you say, you're in the game. In the game, somewhere, yeah. You're around... And also, I suppose, there's a certain sort of opportunism, which is when it happens... Be ready. Be ready, yeah. Well, this actually, if I may tell you this story, to how they ended up partnering with Roger Federer. So, back to your point of being ready, and knowing how to turn a situation around so that it does become lucky for you. So basically, you know, they'd been wanting to meet him for years, and, you know, he's the biggest tennis star in the world, this is a small little company, it hadn't happened.

32:53Then, Roger's wife started wearing the brand. Whoa! So his wife was wearing it. So then, you know, Roger started sort of taking notice of this brand. So he's like, okay, I'll meet them. So they were at a sort of a, a really, the founders, they were at this sort of very posh venue at like an awards ceremony or whatever. And they get a call that he can meet you tonight. So they turn up in their tuxedo. Who's to meet Roger Fedorov? I said, they meet Roger Fedorov. And Roger Federer is, you know, talking, blah, blah, blah. And then they're like, oh, this is amazing, this is amazing. Oh, my goodness.

33:28Hopefully he'll, you know, come on board as brand ambassador. So they, you know, afterwards have this call with his management and the management sort of mentioned Roger's fee. And it's nowhere near there, budge. And in that moment, back to your point of knowing how to be lucky. In that moment, they could have said, okay, well, that's not going to happen. or, you know, we'll wait till hopefully we've got enough money to be able to sign Roger. They knew they were never going to get that money, not with the size they were then. So instead they said, we can't afford to pay you, but why don't you pay us and invest in this business?

34:06And instead of being the face of something, be an owner. And so Roger signed a big check and became a major shareholder. And so that check, which, you know, sort of legend has it that I think it was a$5 million check. No one really knows. But it's something in that region. It's now worth over$1.5 billion. So, yes. So, yeah. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs.

34:52So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. And the funny thing is, if you look at, so, and look at Michael Jordan's story. Yes, same thing. And the fact that his parents told him to take the meeting with Nike. Yes. even though he wanted to go with Adidas. And they gave him the opportunity to have his own shoe and everything changed there. And there was a funny story. And to co-own the shoe. Yeah, 100%. 50-50 partnership. With the equity, et cetera, et cetera. So we did a thing during COVID. So my brother talked about him before.

35:29He also was one of the founding members of Gymshark's influencer marketing team. And during COVID, Nike's poster boy in the NBA was a basketballer called Yanis Adetokumbo, right? And he has three brothers that are also in the NBA. One's in college, right? So, Dirk, Nigerian and Greek, right? Wow, so they're super tall. Yeah, yeah. So he was the MVP. So he's Nike's poster boy, right? So Gymshark is a competitor to Nike, right? So what Derby did, he's like, oh, they're all in a house together doing TikToks. Let me send the youngest brother a box of a lot of Gymshark stuff, right? And let's see what happens, right?

36:10Oh, my God. So you leave it a week or two on Complex, which is a culture magazine. I know what Complex is. One Ferrari. I'm cool. I'm with the kids. So on Complex, you've got Yanis Adetokumbo wearing a Gymshark shirt, playing the guitar, singing Harry Styles music, and it's going viral. Right? And he stops and he does this and then he continues. We all looked at each other and said, oh, my God. And that's because we looked at the proximity of influence. So instead of just going for the person directly, you get all the people that are around that they'll be like, wait, hold on a second. So if you want to get the Kardashians, if you know the circle, target the circle.

36:57Two sisters, the twins. Yeah. So you get everybody around them. I joke about this, which is that I get weird access to senior marketers. Now, the standard advertising agency approach is you approach the senior marketer, but they're approached by everybody. What actually happens, it happens backwards, which is their young staff want me to come in. Yeah. Of course. So, anyway, which you effectively, it's exactly like sort of military strategies and the art of war. Yeah. It's in other words, you find the flanking move somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And is that what you've always done? No, no, no. I mean, it was totally unintentional.

37:31Again, it was totally unintentional. As I said, it was a very talented film student. I did a lot of podcasts. Someone during Covid just started TikTok-izing them. Because if you think about it, no one would have said, if someone had said, you know, we want a marketing influencer on TikTok, I know, we'll choose a 60-year-old fat guy. Okay. It's going to sound absolutely ridiculous. Okay. But in a weird kind of way, of course, the ridiculous is why it works in a funny kind of way. Well, it's not the ridiculous, it's the authenticity. Because you're so real, you know, And also you drop such... But I suppose it's one of those things which is...

38:08Shames of wisdom. Bars, yeah. I mentioned this in the last podcast. Anything that comes out of your mouth, you're like, yeah, what he said. We said with flat white will fuck off, which is the company I kind of inspired, I like to say. The really funny thing was that we always assumed there was this application for airports and railway stations, i.e. small footprint, very fast service, tap to pay. And then we get approached because we make a lot of noise around the launch. They get approached by people who run conferences who go, actually, this is a dream for conferences and events because you get everybody flooding in from out of a plenary session.

38:46They all want coffee simultaneously. They've all got this ludicrous expectation that they can have a customized drink. And so what then happens is that your imagined target audience and your real target audience are never really exactly the same. I mean, you'll always find that there's something else going on. Or quite often you discover... This is the great thing, I think, that a lot of people think it's all know and then do. But there's a hell of a lot of stuff you can only know by doing. And so we have this daft idea in business that you have to be able to prove everything and everything has to be data-driven and based on pre-existing factual data.

39:28Which is, as I said, it's a bit like saying to the cops, you can only use information that has evidential value. Because cops know that you make use of anything. Word on the street, door-to-door inquiries. Did you notice anything unusual on the evening of? There was a man driving a white van, isn't it? Whatever it might be. But you pick up this stuff and then you investigate further. When you look at the current sort of marketing with everything changing so much, we always talk about the fact that you need to do two tests, right? One, you come up with your hypothesis, you do, and then you review what you thought.

40:04And then you think, okay, so what has this changed in our mind? Now let's test that again. And then let's compound and go. But so many people spend so much time justifying and they think that the work is the justification. No, the work is the doing. And the learning and feedback loops is what you need to be able to do. And companies that embrace that culture, right, are the ones that seems to be navigating in the space we are right now. They're saying, so AI is a thing. How is this going to influence our industry? Let's try it. Yeah. Let's figure it out. Yeah. And then let's iterate and iterate and iterate.

40:39How are you both using AI in what you do? Do you want to go or should I? I've never even used ChatGPT. Oh, interesting. Interesting. No, I mean, I use it very extensively for... I mean, I still weirdly think it's... I don't think this is the final manifestation for a long way. God no, yeah. But... As we found with our LinkedIn captions. There are certain things. I mean, there are some specialist ones, for example, in looking for academic research, which are astonishing. And its ability... I mean, you know, at a very simple, banal level, it's a scarily fast typist, isn't it? I mean, you know, but I'm astonished also because some of the ones I've seen in terms of reframing things, in other words, there's an element to it which I never expected.

41:30I thought it would come up with a very, very good, what you might call default answer, the expected answer. And, of course, sometimes it does. And, in fact, if you're not very good at prompting, that's what it does. But its ability, when prompted well, to come up with a completely different take on a whole business, actually. What is this business really for? And what makes it different from its competitors? And some of its psychological insight is just freakily good, which in a way, I hate to say I used to think that it was effectively raising the floor and not necessarily raising the ceiling.

42:14And I don't think that anymore. What's your take on that? Oh, no, I'm all in. So let me roll up my sleeves for this one. What do you use it for? I think that AI is going to reinvent everything. I think that everything is up for grabs now. What I've seen is it's become the bridge between the digital world and the real world. And those, so there's a guy that I keep talking about right now that I'm very fascinated by, a guy called Palmer Lucky. So, Pomalaki built a business called Oculus. It was bought for two billion, and then he got kicked out. Because I think it supported like a Trump campaign or something like that.

42:50But Meta didn't even use it, though, did they? Well, it probably informed the new Ray-Bans and everything. So, that was an evolution of it. So, they took the tech. Yeah, but then what he said was, okay, AI is a thing. There's this new technology. His whole thing is all about finding in-the-box industries and thinking out the box, right? And there was a couple of problems that he wanted to solve. And the one that he landed on was the US defense system. And he said, okay, how can AI apply to this? And now you have autonomous driving airplanes. Like, they're able to give them helmets where you can see through walls and be able to start to anticipate things.

43:33Now, why I think that AI is good. Where I think AI will be powerful is that I think that we're only using it at the bottom surface right now. Because a lot of people still have this Google mentality of, I ask a question, I get a response. Yeah, don't do that. Well, they do do that, but I mean, that's not the... It's a co-creation. If you know somebody that has a particular perspective, you can run to their brain and make them part of your counsel. So what I do is, if I'm solving a problem, I'd say, okay... What would Steve Jobs do? Yeah, what would this person do? What would this person do? And you can have a council of different contrarian perspectives when you make a decision, which is super interesting.

44:11We use Fireflies, and Krish from Fireflies was our first guest, and we record all conversations we have, right? But the good thing about it is our team can, if I'm busy, like today we're shooting all day, they can ask my AI version, what would I think about this? And I've given them the permission that if you don't get a response from me in 24 hours, whatever the AI says, that's me, right? And from a copywriting perspective, creative society is great. But when we start to bridge industries that have not evolved in a long time with AI, that's when you're going to start to see some real magic happening.

44:50And I think that for the last 10 years, you had very brilliant people building apps. And now, last weekend, my co-founder, Michael, there's tools, so we love the idea of using tech to make our experience a lot more efficient. And what we noticed is that we had to buy all these tools to make that happen. Now, one thing. Now you can just build it yourself. Yes. You can just say, okay, we have this problem. Let's build the tool to make it happen. A bit of this, a bit of that. So the actual products themselves no longer have any value. The proprietary data has value and the products that you build has value.

45:26And if you can bridge those two using AI, there's going to be a lot of companies that are going to fall. Going above, yeah. So, so many companies... It all has to evolve. Yeah. There's so many apps that we're getting these crazy valuations, right? But now, a bigger organization can say, well, I just want this feature, AI, build it for us. That's gone now. And, well, Lovable's building everything, isn't it? Right? You look at the companies that basically make money per desk. Yeah. That's a threat. That's a huge threat to them, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Because they assumed they had this guaranteed future revenue basically coming in through, you know, desk subscriptions.

45:58Monday.com, all those people. All those people. It's a very interesting time, is that actually people can just build the features. A feature is no longer a moat. It's not an outlier anymore. So my weird one here is I'm kind of weirdly intrigued because I don't think anybody's done the Apple of it, which is they've done the tech, but they haven't done the interface. Or there is, of course, that weird chat GPT thing coming up designed by Johnny Ive, isn't there? Which is some sort of pendant thing, we think. Oh, so you think we will need a specific device? Well, do we talk to it? I think it's gonna be in everything.

46:38Okay, part of this is just selfish, which is I'm 60 years old, and I don't want to spend 30 % of my remaining waking life with a laptop anymore, okay? I don't care what the alternative is. It could be spectacles. One of the things that interests me is big screen. Yeah. In other words, what's collective AI like? In other words, just as we watch a film together, or you have a board meeting together, how does AI intervene in collective decision making? So, like, we all interact with AI at the same time. So we'd all sit there. There'd be a bit like the... I suppose, what is it? Blake Seven. Does anybody remember this?

47:13No, nobody does. I haven't got a clue. You do. There was Aurac, wasn't there? And there was Zen. They had these two... This is really tragic. I'm breaking the fourth wall here. Sorry about that. I've got to talk to people who can remember Blake 7. There was ORAC, which was a thing with lights in it, which spoke, which was this sort of super technology. And Zen was the ship's computer, which had a big screen. So we all want an ORAC, do we? Well, I wonder if, you know, do we want to talk to the thing? Why isn't that what those robots are going to be? Yeah, that's all I was saying. Yeah, that's another thing altogether.

47:48The robot will do everything. Yeah, because if you think about... Although currently they're outsourced to low-wage countries, and the robots are being... They're made in China. Well, literally, there were these robot demonstrations where it wasn't really an intelligent robot. It was being controlled remotely by someone in a low-wage country. No. My question is, I don't quite get how that's different from colonialism. It's the same. Just because it's remote. Yeah, it's not. It's not different. You could argue that at least colonists have the decency to go to the places they colonized. I'm making the point that you did at least have to go there.

48:32Just Saba Lach! No, no, no, no. But you could have exactly the same adverse effects without going there, is what I'm saying. Yes, yes. You know what I mean? But then that's where this whole conversation... Which is even worse, actually. Which is why this conversation of what Pomalaki and the guys at Arendra are building is that they can basically send soldiers on missions. They can send AI products on missions that people wouldn't go to, which is crazy, right? Because there's certain things where, actually, you will not do it because you'll risk not only harming people. Actually, the good thing about this is that it's supposed to not hit any civilians.

49:13You can now be more targeted. But on the other side, you have the risk factor. Well, war's not... I'm sorry, that's not something I'm here to co-sign. Yeah? Not co-signing at all. Yeah. What I mean is that with the technology that they're saying, that's what they're saying. But on the flip side, if you are doing more risky missions, because that's what people always do, oh, so what can we do when we can't do it with people? You always have to look at the spectrum of it. Because when we're talking about AI, we're only thinking about it from an assistant when it comes to copywriting, but every industry is going to use it.

49:49Well, the scary thing is then, it's like, well, then it means that it's limitless. Exactly. And at what point does the destruction get beyond anything humans can control? That's the scary stuff. Yeah. So all the rules... At least risky missions. There's a point at which human beings are like, actually, we can't do that. Exactly. Now, if we've got machines that can, what does that mean for the safety of humanity? Exactly. And I'm never one of those people. So I'm an optimist by nature, right? So am I. But in my brain, I always like to say, okay, how would the hero do with this? And how would the villain do with this?

50:28And you always have to look at it that way, especially in the social world, right? When you're putting content out, you always want to make sure that how would different people use this perspective, right? And I look at AI and I'm like, okay, you need to make sure that it's used to empower human capability, right? Not replace it, right? And we're not inherently built to do some of the work that we've actually been made to do. And it's a good thing that there's going to be automations in those spaces. But I think that it's still very important that in our pursuit for efficiency, innovation, et cetera, et cetera, that we maintain our humanity.

51:06We don't do the pursuit of decency. Right, right, right. Which is why I think that it's super, super important when we're thinking about AI is that we don't think about it as how it is today, but potentially what's going to be built for it's going to be tomorrow. But as we're still here today, how do we make sure that we use it in the right way? That's super important. And how we use it in our company is we now realize that we have no borders, right? So there's a tool called Deal that allows you to hire people from anywhere. And because we have AI, you don't have to be in every meeting. It's all documented.

51:40And you can go back and say, give me a down-another meeting and everything like that. So all those gaps that are filled with being in an office, we can automate all of that. So what does that mean for the office? Because the office was already under attack after COVID. I know, really. What does that mean with OEI? But we still need to interact with each other. Like this. Yes, we could do it over a screen, we can do it over Zoom, but it's nothing like being here with you two. You can have, I mean, Then you could have a fourth participant in the conversation which added factual corrections, inspiration, whatever.

52:13I mean, there's something about big screen AI, even potentially, you know, Ibex AI, which kind of interests me. Ooh, yeah. The spectacles thing, I think, metas. I'm not sure that meta will succeed because they're meta. But I think that's fundamentally right. I think that sort of augmented reality approach where we effectively... You'll know this from across TV. It's, what do you call it? The lower third, isn't it? The scrolling bit at the bottom of a news program. So in other words, what the spectacles would provide is, you know, is effectively a commentary, contextual commentary on what's going on.

52:49Kind of like on Amazon Prime, when you click on it, it tells you who the actor is, what's happening in the scene, et cetera, et cetera. What's it called? They've got a name for it, haven't they, Amazon? It's quite cute, actually. I suppose they bought IMDB didn't they so they must have all that data from that and what they've done the other thing that's of course terrifying in terms of physical intelligent moving objects which is if we look at what the really successful species are they're not humans they're social insects and if you think about an AI swarm of things where one will you know any individual is happy to die to fulfill the collective mission.

53:32Oh. Which is kind of how wasps and bees operate. Humans don't. Generally, if you had a mission which said three of you are going to die getting into the compound and then the rest of you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it happened. Obviously, Kamikaze pilots, etc. One gorilla versus a hundred humans. The same conversation. Most humans aren't happy to do that. One gorilla versus a hundred humans. But an insect like AI intelligence would be difficult to compete with. What, we couldn't? We couldn't. No. Yeah. Wow. Okay, can we change the subject? Yeah, this is too depressing. This is very too depressing.

54:07I was going to ask two marketing geniuses, you know, marketing legend and a marketing supremo. I was going to ask you, from a marketing perspective, what are your views on the Kardashians? When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kids' pool day to feel like. And your hotel bed to feel like. Ooh, and room service to feel like. Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like. Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton, for this day. Don't be to go first or do you go first? I think that I would rather take a masterclass learning about marketing from Kim Kardashian than going to a Harvard University professor about marketing.

55:04Because they are marketing geniuses, aren't they? No, because I think people underestimate how long it is to be relevant for, like, to be relevant about something. As long as they have. And all of them. Yes. Attention for over 15 years is really difficult. Yes. In this age. In this age especially. Yeah. I think a lot of people underestimate how much, look at all the men that have been associated with them and how they always disappear, right? It's because it's so difficult to be able to handle that level of pressure, scrutiny, lack of privacy, and still being able to be creative, build businesses and brands off the back of it.

55:45I think that a lot of people look down on the current state of marketing and the approach, but I think they've just been pioneers, if I'm honest. I think what they've done, and you've seen the business they've built off the back of that from Skims to like Good America, to Kylie Cosmetics and everything, and the way they've got people... And even Courtney's vitamins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're in all the different spaces. And I just think that they're brilliant. But Rory? Yeah, I think the thing that really amazes me, I think you're right, is the longevity. It's not the fact that it happened.

56:21Those things happen all the time. The flash in the pan. Because Paris Hilton happened, didn't it? Yeah, yeah. And she was Paris Hilton's assistant. Yeah, of course. So going back to the whole thing about staying alive to get lucky, she was probably waiting for her turn. Yeah. It's the Michael Faraday working for Hungry David. Yeah, absolutely. waiting, learning. And then when the opportunity came in, she was like, I'm just going to go. And she had the genius mother. Yeah. I mean, because I think, you know, from a business perspective, I think Kris Jenner does not get enough credit. That woman is probably one of the most successful business executives in modern American history.

57:05She has helped to build over five at least half-billion-dollar brands. I mean, Skims is five billion. The smallest is 500 million. Do you know what I mean? Each brand is a billion-dollar brand. It's unbelievable. I've got a theory that that was always the case. That actually, not always the case, but actually a huge number of what we think of as business titans. There was someone there who might have just been their assistant. Yes. Okay, back in the 1950s, you know, who was as decisive or even more so. But at the time, it was the guy who got all the credit and was deemed as the author of the success.

57:48But there was somebody there. Could have been a wife, could have been an assistant, could have been, you know, whatever, quite often, who was, and actually, funnily enough, there is a case of that, which is, I think, if I'm right, Carl Benz's wife, as in the automobile, Mercedes Benz, was the marketing genius. If you dig this up, she did some famous drive in a car, massive sort of publicity event. Wow. And so, but I think that in reality, that was actually much more common than was ever allowed because at the time, you wouldn't have spun the story that way. Milton Hershey was his mother. Oh. And Carnegie was his mother, actually.

58:30A lot of... Interesting. OK. So there's a whole story there. I think I've probably redeemed myself from the... But I think there were a lot of unsung female heroines. For sure. And it was simply the narrative made it, look what this guy did. Yeah. But there was always... Ben's is definitely a case where they did at least record the fact that she had the kind of marketing nous. Yes. He was the nerdy inventor, and she had the kind of publicity now. It happened with Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos and his wife, right? She played a massive role in that. And I think a lot of the times, people, they don't understand.

59:07So a lot of the leaders I've had in my teams, from Gymshark to Butterfly Effect, have been women, right? And I feel like, especially in the modern-day business-building world, and we just talked about empathy and understanding our human difference, our soft skills. That's super, super important because you have to get other people on board. We were just speaking to Ellie, and I think that she's one of those people that has that, that everyone's able to unify and get on mission, but in a way where you're not very combative with each other. There's another channel on YouTube. I forgot their name, but they usually do these like crazy formats where it's like one person versus like 20 different people, right?

59:53Yeah, and you debate them. Yeah, yeah. You debate one after the other. And the best... Isn't it called one to 20? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the best discourse is all usually with like, the women guests because they're trying to get into an agreement. Not necessarily an agreement, but an alignment. There's listening, there's exchange. You actually want to understand what the other person has to say, so you can better understand how they think, and so you can come to a conclusion. But a lot of the time when you see two guys, it's always like, it's like, who's going to win, right? And no one actually ends up making any great points.

1:00:23It's just like one-upping each other, right? And when you just like, it's actually very uncomfortable watching that conversation. And you realize that this actually happens in society, right? Which is why we need equitable workforces. Yeah. You need that balance. It's also the difference between, do you want to win an argument or do you want to solve a problem? Exactly. Or do you want to win? Do you want to win? Yeah. Or do you want to understand? Sometimes it's just, do you want to understand, right? Nassim Taleb had that great phrase, which is, there are people who win arguments, and there are people who win.

1:00:53They're never the same people. Never the same people. It's true. And actually, there's a mentality which is, if you go in trying to win the argument, generally, you're doing that by ignoring things, effectively by cherry-picking in some form or another. And bullying. Yeah. So, let's talk about the career end. So, you're now in the media space. you are thriving, you're learning, et cetera, et cetera. What are some of the lessons that you've learned from being within an industry? How was it at the start? How has it evolved over time? What are some of the key lessons that you found across that journey?

1:01:29Yes. I would say the number one lesson is not defining myself by what I do. Never did and never have. So therefore, as a result, I've never been somebody that's frightened of change. So I've always been flexible and evolved and tried different things. And I think that... And the beauty of not defining myself by what I do has also meant that I've remained curious because I've always wanted to try different things as well. But it all connects to the same place. It all comes from a place of connection and communication. I would say that is, if anybody was to ask me what I do, I would say I'm a communicator.

1:02:21and everything I do feeds into that, whether it's a book, whether it's, you know, a show, whether it's speaking, whether it's a product, whatever. Um, but yeah, I, even when I was at the height of my television career and, you know, I loved what I did, you know, I loved the show and I loved interviewing people, et cetera, but still I never defined myself by that. You know, I never, you know, I never thought if I wasn't doing that, that I wasn't of value. Yeah. So that is what I would say. That's interesting, because, of course, you get into that trap, don't you, which is, if you do define yourself by what you do, it's kind of like a sunk cost thing, which is you become too dependent on that thing.

1:03:05And I always make that point that retired politicians always seem completely sane. You go and interview a retired politician, once they're out of it, they're completely sensible, common-sensible individuals. How come you weren't like that when you were in? No, no. Ed Balls. You go out for a pint with him. Lovely guy. When he was a politician, couldn't stand him. And you have this weird thing, which is that when you have too many people with too much at stake who can't afford to fail... Yeah. Or they think they can't afford to fail. Or they think they can't afford to. It actually creates a kind of sclerosis.

1:03:40And I think actually defining yourself by how you think rather than by what you do is probably a really helpful, really liberating thing to do. Totally. And here's the other thing I've found, and it'd be interesting, I think Rory, you can really speak to this, is people who have been in organizations or companies for a long time become institutionalized. And you find that they are brilliant when they're in that company with the safety. And then when they leave, it's like they don't know what to do. And you're like, it's amazing. It's almost like there's something in the brain that feels that when that safety net is taken away, that you can't function in the same way.

1:04:20The nice thing about marketing, I think, is that as a job, is that one of the agreeable things is that more or less anything you do in response to curiosity can make you better at your job. It's probably not true if you're an actuary. If you sit outside a cafe in France for half an hour, it doesn't make you a better actuary. But it can make you... If you've got the right mindset, it can make you a better marketer. It can make you better anything creative to build. If you start asking that question, why did I buy this? Why does Pernod taste delicious in France and shit in the UK? If you have the right kind of observational mindset, then anything you do can make you better.

1:05:03I would never mind if two people in a creative department bunked off for the afternoon to go and see a film. Yeah. You know, it's, you know, now obviously, if you're running a department full of actuaries, that's a bit of a problem. But going back to your question about the Kim Kardashian versus the Harvard professor, it's because she's doing things, right? And then you're getting more feedback loops. And if you are observant enough to look back and say, well, how did we end up here? What happened? let's pinpoint the lessons from this, and you're iterating and iterating and iterating, that's when you move a lot faster.

1:05:44Whereas if you're too busy reading the books and not out in the field, like doing the stuff, that's the difference, right? Especially in a time when the time we're living in, there is no books for the time, there's just action. And those that act the most and are around are the people that are acting as well. They can feed off each other. and that's what I think is going to propel like the next inventors that are coming through and obviously one thing about you that differentiates you from a lot of people is your energy and I'm really fascinated by the fact that as I started to climb in my career I realized there's three things that I have to think about it's my decision making so that's knowledge understanding, listening, et cetera, et cetera.

1:06:31There is my networking, so communication is important, reasoning, getting people on board. But the one thing that I realized that is, above all, it gives me the opportunity to even do those things really well is energy. And whenever you walk in, you have a lot of energy, right? We can feel your presence coming through, right? And what role does energy play when it comes to influencing culture, making sure that people get on board. What role has it played in your life? I think it's everything. I think, well, a couple of things. I think, one, I genuinely really like people. I find people fascinating.

1:07:11It's very rare that I'll meet someone that I don't get along with. You know, usually there'll be something that I can connect with them on. And, you know, I just find human beings just so interesting. And sort of two things. I always look at people from the perspective of, to somebody in the world, that person is the most important person on the planet. Yeah. So, whether it's their parent, their spouse, their child, their best friend, to somebody, if that person was no longer around, that would be a devastating thing for whoever that individual is. So I try to experience people from that perspective.

1:07:58In that, you know, even if I'm not connecting with them, there's somebody that is. So what is that exchange? So that's how I sort of view people in general. And then the other thing as well is, did you know the Indian guru, Satguru? Yeah, I came across it. Yeah, so he's an Indian guru. And he said something that really stuck with me. He said, think of the miracle of being alive. Like, what are the chances? Yeah, what are the odds? The odds are that egg, that sperm at that particular time, that you survived nine months of pregnancy in your mother's womb. It's ridiculous, really. It's ridiculous.

1:08:41Human beings kept you alive for the early part of your life where you couldn't do it yourself. I mean, when you think about it, it's mind-blowing. We are a miracle. We are wow. And I think when you look at life that way, you can't help but experience people that way. So, yes, I think for energy, it's that. When you sort of truly value other people, I think your energy sort of reflects that. So, yeah. I think people gravitate to that. Mmm, yeah. Especially... That's an alternative. The gents, you call it the aura, right? Oh, they do? Oh, look at this. They call it when people have aura, right? I'm learning.

1:09:19All right. Come on, kids. And you see that a lot of, they talk about it with like athletes, they talk about it with leaders in businesses, et cetera, et cetera. And it seems that people like to follow people that they gravitate to. And for the longest of time, when we talked about business leadership, it was the same archetype. But now I think that it's, I think it's time for the EQ leader. The same jobs. Hey, hey. I always find that it's really interesting when it comes to, and a lot of it is like American culture versus other spaces. Actually, very good point. I talk about the idea that you like the idea of American pace, but European taste and African heart.

1:10:00I like the intersection of those three things. Oh, I love that. This is good. It's American pace, European taste, and African heart. Oh, that's good. I think that if you can get those three in there. Where's China in this? Efficiency. Efficiency and productivity. Productivity. Asian productivity. Yeah, Asian productivity. Right, right. As you start to go to the different continents, it's a different mix that comes into. It is. You get all of that, you're unstoppable. Okay, can I have another question for you both? Yeah. Because this is fascinating. I'm learning so much from you. You're trying to take my job now.

1:10:36Sorry. I can't help it. I'm so sorry. That's great. I love it.

1:10:45Sorry. Let's do it. I'm going to ask you both your thoughts on China and Africa. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, smart move. Being financially savvy, smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling, just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

1:11:21Okay. Do you want to go first or should I? The really interesting thing is the potential for economic growth in Africa is absolutely huge. Huge. Is absolutely immense. Yeah. I mean, there are actually some literally low-hanging fruit in terms of agriculture. Yeah, of course. Which is immense. Yeah. One of the interesting questions I ask is we've automatically assumed that urbanization, that agglomeration of people into megacities is an inevitable part of the future. It shouldn't be. My argument is actually someone needs to question this. I agree. I was talking about the joke about London's a bit like Tesco Extra.

1:12:05Yeah, there's a lot of stuff, but there's a hell of a lot of it you don't need. Sorry, Tesco. And it's really difficult to get around. And that actually, a nice town of 40 ,000 people is kind of like your M &S Simply Foods. It's got pretty much... There's a bit of me which... And you still have community. Yeah, you still have that community thing. There's a bit of me which... In a way, nobody... A lot of what happens in the world, and this is true of Marxism in a way, we always assume that people said, look, this Marxism would be a good idea. So everybody tried it. The real belief wasn't that it was a good idea.

1:12:43They thought it was inevitable, because that's what Marx effectively said. There are, you know, these developmental parts of history and it will end up with the ownership of the... Now, that didn't happen. But a hell of a lot of people behaved not because they thought it was... adopted it, not because they thought it was a good idea. They thought it was inevitable. And there are certain aspects of life which, You know, for example, the endless quest for efficiency. That's where I take issue with the United States, in a way. I mean, the pace I love. As you said, a little bit of the European... So, you know, is what we need a universal basic income?

1:13:21In other words, redistribution of wealth. Well, yes, possibly. We're in danger of straying into a world where it is literally a very small, very wealthy cast of fairly arbitrary people who effectively control the capital and everybody else is effectively in a state of indentured servitude. But equally, there's a sort of redistribution of leisure as well, which I'd like to see. The interesting question is, as a wider society, if you had more people who are working a three-day week... Now, what would it mean for quality of life? Also, what would we mean for creativity? If you, you know, if it produces the Beatles, okay, there are going to be a lot of people who bum around.

1:14:07You know, they're going to be a lot of, well, actually, there's nothing wrong with that either. John Lennon always said, time spent doing nothing is very rarely wasted. But it wouldn't, you know, I'm not saying the gains for that leisure would be, you know, widely dispersed, but in terms of sort of inventiveness, you know, is it natural that people only have one job at any one time, or is actually some form of multiple employment, you know, where people both have a side gig and a job. Actually, that's what the young people are doing. That's happening right now. Yeah, it's happening anyway. But companies should embrace it.

1:14:42Yeah. This is about, you know, I've gone to all, effectively. I'm two days a week with Ogilvy, and three days a week I do my own thing. And at some level, to be honest... You're better at your other job, I'm sure. that Ogilvy isn't better off with me doing other shit than they would be if I were on the corporate dime five days a week. Yeah. 100%. I bet they could charge more. Well, the other weird thing is... If they've got you on it, of course the brand's gonna pay more. Well, there's this weird idea, I suppose, that our productivity is proportionate to time spent. Which is weirdly Marxist, of course.

1:15:16It's the Labour theory of value. OK? That you pay people for the hours of work. The day of work, yeah. Actually, that's why your salary's called compensation. Because in labor economics, it's compensation for loss of leisure. That's why they call it compensation. To a fair, whenever I used to do any consultancy stuff, I used to say, I'm not charging you for me to be here. I'm charging you for me to be away from my family and my friends. Yes, I see what you mean. What I want to do. Or for my business, right? And people don't think about it that way. They only think about, okay, you are paying the person to do the thing, not what they're going away from what they would have done.

1:15:54The opportunity cost. Yeah. 100%. But there's also the thing which is that, yeah, I mean, it might, well, first of all, of course, being plural gives you a degree of resilience and robustness. You're no longer dependent on one employer or indeed on one business sector. That actually a sort of return to diversification powered by AI, you know. We do that as an organization. We work with the senior minds on a fractional basis because we need that input every so often, right? So one, two times a day, like a week. And that's when they make their biggest decisions. And then the people that actually execute on that on a day-to-day basis, they don't have...

1:16:35You don't need that brain power, right? You don't need that. You need more people that are actually doing it. Exactly. There was no hype cycle because nobody was investing billions in this stuff, and nobody stood to make billions of it out of it. but the widespread adoption and what you might call the there was a kind of I suppose there was a yeah the widespread adoption and sudden non-shittiness of video conferencing is I think a much more important business development than it's been given credit for because I kept saying you know I kept saying to people I don't think they got it really because people are still very much rooted in this permanent employment mindset.

1:17:17But I said, look, shouldn't Ogilvy employ Rick Rubin for one hour a month? I'm not going to ask Rick Rubin to come into the office five days a week. That would be absolutely ridiculous. But shouldn't we have a kind of Rolodex where we have a corporate hinterland of people where you go... By the way, there are people, and there are thousands of them, who are literally worth £10 ,000 for 10 minutes, but simply because what they do is they put you in touch with somebody else. Now, it's not easy to monetize because it seems a bit... We don't like monetizing. We don't like that. In the arms industry, it happens all the time.

1:17:54They're dodgy industries where people go, you know, I will get you to meet this person and you have to pay. You get that in corrupt societies, which is payment for access all the time. And, you know, they're probably diary secretaries in certain countries who make a fortune for that basis. But it always occurred to me, and it always made me anxious in a way, that the most valuable things I've probably done economically in my whole working life, I never got paid for at all. One of them was basically persuading, I think, the government's behavioral insights team not to allow the government just to ban vaping as a knee-jerk reaction.

1:18:30Because I said, look, as a harm reduction approach, this could be the biggest thing to happen in smoking cessation, as indeed it was to a large extent. It was a bit of a risk because we still fully don't know the long-term effects of it. No, we don't. But at the same time, it's better than the alternative. You know, it's a bit like COVID vaccines. I'd probably argue that, you know, yes, there will be people who get side effects, but net, net, this is at least better than an alternative. And better for the wider society. And better for wider society. I don't know if that's the case with vaping, though.

1:19:00Isn't the data showing... It's very difficult to quit smoking. And the magical thing with vaping is partly because of the flavours, which is you reach a state where the idea of smoking a cigarette seems disgusting to you. Now, even people who quit for 10 years... But isn't the nicotine going straight in, though? It was anyway. Paper didn't make a difference? I mean, it's inert. I mean, the main problem with smoking wasn't the nicotine. That's the irony of it. It was the carcinogenic tars that were a byproduct of the combustion. So, I mean, nicotine is quite unusual as a drug in the sense that the delivery device is what's serious, not the drug.

1:19:41So if you imagine that you drank coffee, but that you had to drink coffee in a kind of radioactive sludge, you know, that coffee would be carcinogenic not because of the caffeine, but because of the associated thing. So the idea about vaping was same nicotine, same delivery mechanism, different chemical constituents. Okay. I'm still not sold, so... No, no, no. My only point was that the knee-jerk reaction would be to ban it without even finding out what would happen. Yes. Without finding out what happened. And actually, the three countries which were most liberal with their vaping legislation are also the ones that saw the fastest decline in smoking.

1:20:22Which were they? UK, I think it might have been Sweden. And there's one other one. But there are three countries in Europe, which basically went, we'll just see what happens. Okay. And they saw a pretty dramatic decline in the percentage of people smoking. Could it be in the Netherlands? I'll dig out the data. But some of the important stuff you do is neither proportionate to the time you spend doing it. I mean, there's an amusing thing where somebody came with a new business idea, and they said, we think our target audience is this. And I said, you might be right, but you might be wrong. Let me put you in touch with somebody.

1:20:55I put them in touch with our media people. The media people said, no, no, no. We've been looking to do this for years, you see. Ten years later, the company is now worth a hundred and something million. And they go, that meeting you arranged was why we're worth a hundred million. Now for that meeting, I got paid precisely zero. I was doing it as a favor. Now one of the things we've got to get out of our heads is the idea that the value of what you do, the time you spend doing it, and what you get paid for it are necessarily well correlated. Yes. They were in manufacturing industry. Not now. If you're in a factory, those three things were fairly well correlated.

1:21:32I don't think it works like that at all. No. Not in what we do, anyway. No. If I look back... Actually, you can only see this in retrospect, that probably 10 things you did in your life are more important than everything else put together. There's a great book by a guy called Brian Klaas, I think it is, called Fluke, which is all about this. That actually, we like to think of life as if it's proportionate, but actually it's very fat-tailed. Wow. You know, five or ten outlier events determine a hell of a lot of everything else. What fascinating. I mean, there's a wonderful thing, which is the whole of the First World War started because the Archduke...

1:22:14The guy who was trying to shoot the Archduke basically fucked up and his gun jammed. Isn't that Franz Ferdinand? Franz Ferdinand, yeah. And Gabriel Princip was, I think. He was trying to shoot him. The gun jammed and, oh, fucking hell, I've given up. So he goes to a cafe and goes, oh, well, one assassination attempt failed. Because of the failed assassination attempt, the Archduke's car was rerouted to the hospital to go and visit the people who'd been injured in the assassination attempt. and it turned into the street where he was sitting outside the cafe. It was a one-way street and the car got stuck and it couldn't get into reverse.

1:22:52And he shot him. And so he shot him there. So the whole thing was not a planned assassination attempt. It was a total concatenation of random events, which then leads to World War I. Oh my goodness. And Klaas has loads and loads of these examples of how, So, you know, I mean, I've got a vague idea. Churchill nearly died in a car accident in 1935. That was lucky, could you be? No, no, no. It was just total random bollocks, basically. Our reactions would be the thumbnail of this thing. We're in huge denial about this, because we want to pretend that everything's proportionate. Yeah. And actually, you know, one of the arguments might be, you know, if we actually had more leisure...

1:23:32I mean, there's a wonderful thing that happened, which... I can't remember the name of it. There's a left-wing journalist who wants to bring back an old Thatcherite thing, which was called the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. Do you remember that? What was that again? Well, what it was, was if you started a business, you basically got paid more dull money. Oh. Right? And so if you started any kind of business, they effectively increased your... That was exactly the idea. We'll get people to start a window cleaning business. What actually happened was that everybody who had a band said... They were just unemployed.

1:24:04They were in a band. They said, if we call the band a business, we'll get more bell money. Wow, the innovation! But the weird thing that happened... You always have to think about what's an organization. This is the bad thing, because the government couldn't say, no, a band doesn't count, you see, because the definition was any business. But then what happened is, because they'd started a business, they thought about the band completely differently, and they started investing in buying a transit band or whatever. And so this guy's argument is that half of the great bands of the 80s, that Thatcher era got started because of the enterprise allowance scheme.

1:24:35I mean, UB40 was started. I wouldn't be surprised, I bet. And so the argument is that if you, and I've often wondered this, if you just gave everybody at age 20, you just give them a business. In other words, it's an off-the-shelf business. You know, OK, if anything you earn goes into this, you don't get taxed on it until you actually pay it to yourself. You can reinvest it. the extent to which that might change behavior so that everybody effectively has a business off the shelf to get started, some basic accounting software. And then the mindset then changes the behavior completely. Then you change the whole story we tell ourselves about entrepreneurship in this country.

1:25:16And you asked the question about China and Africa. And I believe that is the future, right? It's in the maths. I think there was a stat that said 40 % of under 30-year-olds will be in Africa. Well, actually, the African demographic figures are much, much better. And the Indian ones are much, much better than the Chinese. Yeah. Because the Chinese have a huge aging population. Exactly, yeah. But I think that... Africa is one in three people on the planet will be African by 2050. 2050, is it? Yeah. And to add to that, that's why I think there's such a race for AI and robots, because who's gonna look after the aging population, right?

1:25:49So in the other, they're not gonna encourage an increase in birth rate. They're gonna have to have robots doing the work, right? So to be able to maintain power, because that's what a lot of governments want to do, they want the AI to get to where it needs to be so that people can actually do the work. But I think that from a human power standpoint, these countries, Africa, well, continents, Africa and then country India are going to do really well in the future. That's where the youth are. And any organization that's serious about being global, they should really be thinking about. Has to be thinking in that way.

1:26:20The African country, just have, like, Kenya is doing really well. You've got Nigeria. You've got Ghana. Hopefully, the Congolese will be firing our flag. You're coming. We're doing okay. You're coming. We're doing okay. We've got a few things to sort out. You're coming. I mean, the interesting question is, can we do it? My great question is philosophically, the assumption is that it's like mega cities, huge urbanization. We don't want that. It's got to be something else. Do we want that? No. Can we find some way? Also, the planet can't sustain that. No. Yeah. I mean, there is an argument that big cities are very environmentally efficient because of density of population, all that sort of stuff.

1:26:58I buy all that. But there has to be an alternative future, I would have thought. What I always love about those cities is it's the fact that the problem you get in a megacity is that everything really good is either too expensive or too crowded. Yes. What you find if you move somewhere smaller is you can actually find somewhere pretty that isn't insanely crowded, that doesn't rip you off. And you know your neighbors, and you know the people around you. There's a bit of me which goes, I don't know to what extent we really scale successfully that way. How much of it is made unnecessary by new technology?

1:27:39In other words, do you need people to co-locate to work effectively together? Well, yes and no. I mean, no one's asked the question, well, what's the equivalent on Zoom of an evening in the pub? Can we replicate that? It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose. Proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously. And we do too. Which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours, with purpose in every detail and crafted with intention.

1:28:20Timberland, built on craft. Visit Timberland.com to shop. We tried. During COVID it wasn't the same. I didn't mind it, actually. Remember you have those drink parties online. You have those communal drink parties. But you still wanted people in your own home, though. It was quite interesting in the sense that, we ought to actually remember this, there was a massive drop in carbon emissions, and everybody sort of survived. Yeah, do you remember? I mean, the only argument I would make is an awful lot of activity is often performative. So we're traveling somewhere to show commitment, not because the journey is totally necessary.

1:28:56There's an awful lot of activity, I think, which is done for symbolic reasons. And there's a great guy called Michael Liebrich who runs this podcast, Cleaning Up, and he He always wanted to create a metric for carbon emissions, which he called fun per ton. In other words, if we're going to actually produce carbon, does it generate happiness? Because, you know, I always remember the leader of the Green Party got into a load of shit because once a year she flew to New York. Well, her son lived in New York. I'm kind of like, come on, right? You know, I like calling out a bit of hypocrisy, but once a year you want to go and see your son.

1:29:36It has to be worth it. But I don't really expect it to sail across like Greta, you know, take off three weeks on a boat or something. Right. And so the fun per tonne measure always struck me as we need some new metrics here, don't we? Because growth has become pathological metric. Efficiency and cost reduction have become pathological. And fundamentally, if we can engineer, maybe, as you said, if it's African heart, fine. If you can engineer something which is, you know, the GDP is 10 % less, but it's really livable. And sustainable. And sustainable. And I think to your point, actually, you know, and it's actually what you were saying as well earlier, Alfred, I think what's really exciting is with Africa, we do get to design something new.

1:30:27You know, there's the last place on the planet where actually you can. Interesting. You know, it's underdeveloped enough that you can. And, you know, if you look at the way Africa was able to leapfrog certain technologies, like with mobile payments and with mobile phones as well. You've got M-Pesa, which is universal. Yeah, totally. They've been doing that for decades. So I just wonder. You've got Starlink. Yes, you do. You've potentially got pilotless drones. Okay. So arguably geographical concentration. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the whole geographical concentration thing. Doesn't have to complicate.

1:31:05Don't get me wrong. Just a bit of advice to anybody who's listening to me. What I'm not saying is move to the Outer Hebrides, okay? I'm not saying overcompensate and go somewhere tiny. I'm just saying that the future has to have... It has to be a metropolis. It has to be Manchester as well as London, if you like. Yeah. You know. Anything you're saying? No, I'm saying, for me, I think it's very exciting. that actually this is probably the only place on the planet where you can try something completely different. So we talked about culture and as a parting message, June, it'll be great for all you've learned, all your wisdom, all your energy.

1:31:44What's your parting message to anybody that's listening about culture? My parting message to anybody that's listening in relation to culture is ultimately it's about how you make people feel. That's it. You know, do people... Because you had a BBC brief, didn't you, for a time? Yes, I did. Yes. A head of creative diversity. Yes. So everything you saw on screen and all of anything you heard basically are output. Got it. Yeah. So I didn't do any of the workforce, but the creative stuff. And it was great. You know, we made a very big investment in inclusive content. And some of that stuff is actually on air now.

1:32:28You know, the great thing with these jobs is you do the work. And, you know, it takes at least three years for a show that's commissioned to then end up on air. So you might not actually be there to see it. But, yeah, it's wonderful now to sort of see those shows on air and all of this great talent that's coming through. So, yeah. But, yeah, I would say it's about how you make people feel, whether that is individually or as a corporation. This is the interesting thing. I always said that, you know, the Apple insight to get back to Steve Jobs at the very beginning. Everybody else was focused on what the technology could do.

1:33:02And he was the first person to say, no, no, no, it's not about that. It's how it feels while you're doing. That's the decisive factor. And what it says about you. Yeah. And how it makes you feel about you. June, you're incredible. Oh, likewise. This is so much fun and congratulations, honestly. It's a fantastic show. I actually am a fan, so I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming down. Thank you very much indeed.

1:33:38Ready to lead at the highest level? Kelly's online Executive Doctor of Business Administration is built for professionals who think strategically and lead with impact. Apply advanced research directly to your organization while earning a respected doctorate from anywhere with a fast track option for MBA holders. Tap to learn more about elevating your influence, your credibility, and your career with Kelly's program. Learn more at kelly.iu.edu. Akamai Cloud. GPUs for agentic AI. Bring AI inferencing closer to users everywhere. Get started at akamai.com slash GPU.