Seedlip founder Ben Branson on overcoming adversity, innovation and neurodivergence

0:11Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Marketing Week podcast with me Russell Parsons, Editor-in-Chief of Marketing Week, your host for this episode. Our guest today is Ben Branson. Now Ben describes himself as someone who wants to make things to make things better. His attempt to do that is largely twofold, inventing non-alcoholic spirits brand Seedlib in 2015 from his kitchen and scaling it to 35 countries before selling a 20 % stake to Diageo in 2016 and then a majority stake in 2019. It hasn't stopped there. He launched Pollen Projects in 2024 as a hub for further innovation in the non-alcoholic drinks category, which has seen the launch of Cocktail Bitter's Season and an age non-alcohol range made from trees called Silver.

1:02He's also the founder and CEO of charity slash campaigning body slash podcast The Hidden 20%, which he launched in 2024 following his own diagnosis for ADHD and autism. It's modus operandi to raise awareness of ADHD or, to quote Ben, making it impossible to ignore. The challenges of building products, creating markets and building movements are our topics for today, as is the story of what motivated Ben to get started in the first place. Ben Branson, welcome to the Marketing Week podcast. Russell, thank you so much for having me. Now, when you read people's achievements, as I did, a top line of what you've done in your career to date, it can all seem almost disarmingly straightforward.

1:51It's clearly not. So let me take you back, if I could, to before Seedlip's invention. Where does your desire, or as I mentioned in my intro, your desire to make things better come from? I think I am driven by, I don't know, I want to solve problems, kind of, and as I said, make things better, improve things. and the trick or the marker for maybe how I'm trying to do that is when you get what I would call a triple win. So when it's something that nourishes, feeds, excites, challenges me, can be viable, and whether that's as a business or a charity, and then meets a need and is relevant, to a big enough group of people and so that's probably yeah and that that comes in a form of that could be a business um and that could be in drinks or that could be a charity and it could be in neurodiversity i think i'm i'm sort of i don't know i want to say kind of agnostic to sector you know product industry i'm driven by wanting to change things and i guess that is being driven by two things.

3:22One, a fear of failure, and probably two, connected to that, being dissatisfied about something and wanting to look into it and have a go at changing it. Thank you. I'm going to just dig into a couple of elements of what you've just said. I mean, the triple win seems like a good rule of thumb for doing anything, whether or not it's an initiative or business or charity, as you quite rightly say. But just picking up on what you said latterly there, you are motivated out of a fear of failure. Just illustrate what you mean by that. you know I run on anxiety Russell and really up until Seedlip which you know kind of began at what was I about 30 I'd had lots of ideas and I'd never seen anything through and I'd you know I'd been a pretty after I left school and to be honest even at school I'd not that I was the kind of disappointment but I definitely I did keep letting people down and I did keep letting myself down and and that kind of that took the form of everything from you know drugs and um self-harm and mental health and exclusion and yeah I kind of so I I sort of, I guess I gave myself this belief that I'd probably give up.

5:08It probably wouldn't work. But I had all this stuff in my head. I had all this ideas and curiosity and kind of ultimately drive, I guess. And so Seedlit was this, the goal was to get a bottle on a shelf. That was the goal. And that to me was about seeing something through. I take probably increasingly more and more, I don't know, emphasis on being accountable and doing what I say I'm going to do and holding myself, holding my own feet to the fire in that sense of just taking action and seeing something through with whatever small goals or big goals there are. And I guess now I would back myself to see something through.

6:03And that's, you know, that's a big shift for me from 12 years ago. And thank you for sharing what you have there. If I could ask you just a couple of follow up questions about that. You started off your answer there by talking about being driven by anxiety to an extent and then continued by saying that you wanted to address, I hope I have misinterpreted, you letting people down. Is that actually or your perception in terms of letting people down? Your actions are a response to what you think you've done or what you actually did? no i i i think it's i'm a i can be a super you know realist and pragmatist russell and and it's not even about kind of giving myself a hard time or or kind of woe is me i i think i was i was horrible to myself and because i was horrible to myself i was i was not nice to other people and because I yeah I kind of held myself in extremely low regard I think I held the relationships and yeah my kind of behavior with other people in super low regard as well And I guess that, you know, I got clean at 25 and I'm now 43.

7:46And so the last 18 years have been about rebuilding my life, my esteem, my relationships and understanding how my brain works and what I what I've wanted to do and what I'm good at and what I'm not as good at. So, yeah, I'm kind of back to the fear of failure. It's I guess the opposite is the sort of pursuit of success. And I am the harshest critic of my projects. I am you're never going to say anything as bad as I've thought about anything that I do. And that's not because I don't believe in them or I don't, you know, I'm not proud of the work. But I don't know, that's what fuels me that a dissatisfaction and a fear of failure is an anxiety.

8:46I probably like this trio that fuel me. The difference now is I think I have built some evidence that I am capable, that I can do things. You talk, or at least if I'm interpreting this correctly, it's about making amends, but also ensuring while you're doing that, that you do the absolute best job you can possibly do, whether or not that's seed lip, whether or not it's pollen, whether or not it's the hidden 20%. Is my assertion correct there? Yeah, I don't want to let good ideas down. I don't want to let, and this is not like, again, I qualify this by like, I'm not, I'm not making decisions for any of our projects out of, out of total fear, right?

9:44It's not, otherwise I wouldn't do anything. you know we have a a very big community now with the hidden 20 of amazing people in this world of kind of neurodivergence and i don't want to let them down and that to me is really healthy and i don't want to let you know silver and season i don't want to let them down and however abstract and conceptual that sounds to like not let a brand down and whatever that even means I just want to do I want to do my best as you say and I want to work with people who want to do their best too and ultimately I want to be proud of what I'm doing and you know I have three daughters Russell and and so there's another dimension of wanting to be the best role model I can be I just I want to be good and I want to be at my best and just want to do good stuff if i could continue as uh cod's uh psychologist psychiatrist just for a moment if you indulge me that uh you've already talked about some of uh what you have been through and um to an extent what you've done sick since being a reaction to that you've also you talk quite openly about some of these things i've seen lots of posts on LinkedIn and perhaps elsewhere where you've talked about drug addiction and you've talked about your attempt to take your life.

11:19Why? Well, let me ask you the same question in two ways, I guess. Why is it important for you to talk about that? Is it both for your own catharsis and also perhaps for the good of others so you can talk about your story and perhaps leave a positive impression about what's possible? I think it's been gradual. I've been clean from using horrible drugs like heroin for what 18 years but I've only just started to talk about that And so I can be incredibly impatient and incredibly impulsive, but I can also be incredibly patient and diligent and strategic and thorough and structured and rigorous and really want to think things through and make sure I'm doing things for the right reasons.

12:22And so really the trigger, I guess, for wanting to be more open and I, you know, I'm, I'm someone Russell that, you know, I don't have friends. I'm very antisocial. Um, I know lots of people, but I don't have a kind of friendship group and I'm okay with that. I like my own time. I focus my time on my family, my wife and my children and my colleagues. when I got my autism and ADHD diagnosis and started to look into what that meant for me and what was going on in society I felt compelled to say something and do something and that has opened up an opportunity to share. Ultimately, what has come back, I get 10-15 DMs a day on LinkedIn from people sharing their story with me.

13:28And that's just one platform. And just to me, that's not the Hidden 20 inbox. That's not Instagram, etc. And so there is a feedback loop that says if I share and when I share, it helps someone. And so I keep doing that in like such simplistic terms. You know, I'm sure we'll get into all the ins and the outs around what's going on in the world of ADHD and autism and neurodivergence. But there's a lot of people hurting and there's a lot of people that have been missed and there's a lot of people on waiting lists and there's a lot of people stuck. I feel like I have some experience of that, that I want to give back and share.

14:20And I can be quite detached from it, right? I can be, you read out my bio and you're talking about me, but I am quite detached from what you're saying. And that has been throughout my life, the ability to detach. God, this really is a therapy session. The ability to detach is an incredible survival mechanism and is a response to trauma that I have learned. That I can be detached from things that have happened. And so I don't have any feelings about telling you that I tried to die. And that's good and bad. And, you know, I'm, I'm, but I, I keep, I keep being topped up with, I've done the right thing because people feed back and say, thank you.

15:20That's me too. I don't feel alone or, you know, people sharing all kinds of horrors with me. And so that, yeah, that fuels the belief that we have, I guess, at the end 20 % to kind of, it's important to, yeah, stories of people's lived experience is really important to share and to be able to listen and, yeah, help people not feel that. we're coming still coming out of decades and decades where people didn't talk about such things and weren't able to talk about such things or even to their friends and family never mind publicly and I guess every time that you hear that somebody has been through a similar experience even though the circumstances might be very different that's net positive and again thank Thank you for sharing today and thank you for sharing like you have on LinkedIn.

16:26Can I just say, Russell, that the marker, the only interesting marker is I don't want to tell you what I did at the weekend or what I'm doing at the weekend. I don't want to tell you what I'm doing this evening. I don't want to tell you where I'm going on holiday. I don't want to tell you about my children. I don't want to tell you about my wife. but i am and so i'm sort of incredibly private on what is going on in my personal life but then i i but because that to me is not helpful to somebody that's not useful and that's not interesting but if i i i'm only i'm kind of sharing this stuff about what has happened in my past in the hope that someone who needs to hear it might hear it.

17:18There's no easy way for me to segue from that to this, but I'm going to do it anyway, which is Seedlet, which I guess is your most, well, you can argue with my description, but it's probably your most notable launch to date. Can I take you back to, I think it was about 10 years ago, wasn't it, that you invented it, founded the brand, the company. What was the big insight? What was the origin story of the launch of Seedlip? The origin story for Seedlip was nothing to do with Seedlip, nothing to do with drinks, nothing to do with non-alcoholic spirits, nothing to do with the gap in the market. I was living in Buckinghamshire in a little Hansel and Gretel cottage with my dogs on the edge of these wonderful wonderful woodland and I got quite you know I was agency side and I was doing kind of strategy and planning consulting for various brands and so I had you know a bit of time and I could kind of dine out on yeah I started learning about botanicals and reading herbals.

18:38I'm a great lover of history. I had a very dangerous kind of secondhand bookshop not very far away, which was just stacks and stacks of old books that were not mega expensive and you really had to go and look through them, right, to kind of see what was interesting. And I was getting onto Wikipedia and, you know, getting lost down rabbit holes. and you know i'm from a farming family so i didn't grow up learning about herbs and spices and botanicals it was kind of barley potatoes oilseed rape you know quite simple things but this this world of botanicals just i found fascinating i found fascinating from a flavor and a plant and then uh you know the mythology around it um some of the stories connected to it and as I got deeper into it somebody had scanned in a copy of a book called the art of distillation which if you google the art of distillation pdf you will find and it detailed herbal remedies using alcohol and not using alcohol using distillation and obviously I don't drink alcohol so I wasn't going to try and make anything alcoholic and so I just bought a little cop still off the internet and wanted to have a go and i absolutely loved it and the process of taking a plant and making a liquid that smells and tastes like that plant to me was was pretty magical and was really powerful and i just kept doing it and this was sort of evenings and weekends and then with no real outcome in mind i'm a big fan of hobbies i think we all should have hobbies and more of them and try stuff and not have to have productivity and outcomes and businesses and side hustles as like these these end games and then i was out for dinner in london at a nice restaurant i wasn't obviously drinking alcohol the menu looked amazing food people i was with happy with their cocktail choices or their red wine and i asked can you you know have you got something that's non-alcoholic she said sure and the waitress then brought over this tray and the picture is so clear in my mind of a tray with like lovely looking glassware and cocktails and big nice glass of red wine and then my pink fruity sweet disgusting thing that was sort of handed to me like an apology and I just felt like an idiot it didn't fit the occasion it didn't I didn't feel part of the round no one was asking to try my drink you know like it just it didn't fit and it was then a process of very slowly dots joining in my mind over the next six months of maybe there's something like a why the option's so rubbish b maybe i could work with my family farm c maybe there's something interesting in this distilling and plants and herbs and stuff i'm doing at home and yeah maybe i just i could do it as a little project i could maybe take it to a farmer's market but i thought it'd be great to show clients who you know were founders and brands hey look i've got i can do my own little thing this just gradually like then buying literally buying you know business for dummies the book the handbook and starting to ask people to have coffees and learning about financial models and what a gantt chart was and a value chain and some other like industry terminology um and so it took two years to then launch it was sort of that was as fast as i could do it but was actually really slow and gradual and gradually building the confidence of like oh my god actually no fuck that let's go to selfridges let's see what they think about this let's go and talk to some amazing bartenders and see what they think forget this farmer's market idea if the best bartenders and selfishness think it's rubbish then maybe there's nothing in it and luckily they didn't and so that kind of was a further proof point but yeah i just flipped between this is the people telling me it was a rubbish idea what was the point nobody cared about non-alcoholic drinks we didn't need it i should not bother wasting any time or money on it to then my delusions of grandeur of like i'm going to change the way the world drinks you know this this is needed we need great drinks full stop regardless of alcohol content i've got to see what happens i've got to i've got to get a bottle on shelf i got a bottle on the shelf and then it was sort of a huge exhale and kind of well i'm done you know and then the snowball and the snowball began and then i really started to hate it i really hated the first six months well i was going to ask you without any expectation that you were about to say what you just said um how it sat with you from uh absolutely being illustrative of everything that you said at the beginning the triple wind and everything that you said that you think others should do and also that you enjoy doing which is inventing things trying things at risk of diminishing your achievements in getting it up and off the ground you were going with the flow as as it as it got to where you wanted it to be which is on the shelf but um obviously it scaled very quickly um and i was going to ask you you've almost asked answered the question how being a business and it's successful one sat with you given everything you said today you didn't like it I mean you took the words right out of my mouth uncomfortably why what was it you didn't like by the way it dawned on me quite late that which sounds so stupid to say but it dawned on me quite late that you know I was the only person working on seed lip right of course there are loads of helpful people I would have coffee with it's the guys that print the labels and make the bottles like lots of people involved but I was the only person that was full-time on it and so I was the only person that was going to talk about it and I didn't really want to be a founder a kind of voice a spokesperson I didn't yeah I sort of maybe I just naively believed that like i was going to sort of put this out there and then i don't watch the simpsons but that kind of bart simpson fade back into the hedge you know i was going to sort of retreat and not have to talk about it um and maybe that was partly in truth because my plan for the first six months was only to sell a thousand bottles and to go quietly and you know really work on the selfridges launch and get some feedback and kind of see how we got on but the market kind of shouted back and yeah i put my phone number on our website you know put my mobile number on the website we weren't even selling d2c was really against selling seed lip from our website which sounds crackers now but we didn't do that for the first 18 months because i never bought anything online i mean god i sound like such a dinosaur but um yeah i i didn't i would not buy anything online so i was like no no we're not having seed lip online but i put my mobile number on there you know i was getting calls we heard from 100 countries in the first three months We sold the first thousand bottles in three weeks It did not go according to my plan And I have learnt that Being autistic, I really like a plan And I really fucking like it being stuck to And so when it didn't go according to my plan Which was selling a thousand bottles in six months I was really unhappy about that and that really threw me and so whilst that was all going on I guess I was also I wanted to you know make a big change and I wanted lots of people to have the choice of a great non-alcoholic option and so I was constantly fighting with this I don't want to be out there i want to be behind the scenes don't talk to me let me hide away with no but i do really want to get out there and i i can understand that now in the context of adhd and autism and that push and pull is very much the like tug of war that i have of wanting to basically be a hermit and stay at home and be in the woods and the garden and doing my things with desperate for change and wanting to make good stuff and wanting to tell people about that and needing to be out there and so yeah that was a that was a real wrestle and and i think i you know i kept burning out i take on too much i spent hundreds of days you know on planes and in countries all over the world totally out my debt totally out my comfort zone um and so yeah it was it was amazing but hard really really hard and your decision uh to sell to well the seller minority in the majority state to uh diageo i mean lots of founders will going back to their kind of founders that you might hear on other podcasts um the narrative is that they build to sell um to make money um was part of your motivation in selling the stakes that you did to the NGO just to get out to get rid it was very carefully thought through and so my thinking was was really I mean actually really simple if you start from the basis of I want to change the way the world drinks and I want there to be amazing choice globally for people I don't care whether you drink alcohol or not it's like there should just be great choice and there's a great opportunity for that.

30:09I am really, really not good at scale. I am really good at the beginning. That is what I am best at. And that is what I can do. And I can do really well. So in order to like achieve the goal, someone with scale, and who understands scale and is really good at scale needs to be involved and so i gave 20 of seed lip to my team um everybody had shares whether you joined first employee or three months before exit you would you would win and we were all driven in the same way we're all incentivized in the same direction the goal was to change the way the world drinks the pathway was to build seed lip and the reputation and profile of non-alcoholic options to be taken seriously to a point where Diageo could take over that was that was the goal the byproduct of that for the category financially for the team for me all came secondary because we wanted to build it in the right way and so now to to just close that off of like okay so what's happened now well now there's a 25 billion dollar category with a thousand brands and the way that we drink without even having to go into the challenge and decline of performance within alcohol, which is happening at a increasingly fast rate, we can say that we changed the way the world drinks because there now is great choice.

32:01And there is a category that is still only two and a half percent of alcohol, right? is still tiny, but 10 years of a category versus hundreds of years of alcohol and the pace at which change and growth is happening and people's behavior is changing. Yeah, kind of tells me that we've achieved our goal. Now with my new brands, it's about upholding and maintaining that quality and showing what's possible. So Dad, you obviously were able to offer you the scale for seed lip that you weren't or weren't interested in being or leading at least. What's your relationship? How do you view seed lip now? Something that you created in your garden that is a I don't have the numbers I I might be speaking erroneously but a much bigger brand obviously than it ever was presumably however well it's doing right this moment but how do you view it what kind of relationship do you have with it when you see it out there in the wild or what what what your thoughts i'm always and i think i always will be like scanning back bars and scanning shelves and i'm always happy to see it of course i am i'm always like super proud when somebody says oh my god you know see if it was amazing at this point or I remember when I first discovered Seedlip or Seedlip got me through my pregnancy or whatever the feedback is, it's always amazing to hear.

34:03And I guess because it was the first, it's an important marker yeah it's an important marker for the category and like it's a bookend right it was the beginning and the kind of first chapter and yeah i mean i'm i'm immensely proud of what a group of just absolutely brilliant people were able to achieve in creating a new category pollen projects uh what are you doing differently to try and avoid some of the pitfalls and some of the personal challenges that you found that scaling at seed lip caused you what's the modus operandi what's the big idea for pollen so i think creating a category when you're there and you're out there on your own we had to do all the jobs of creating a category before i could even tell you about seed lip i had to tell you about drinks and the need for a great non-alcoholic option and health and wellness trends and i had to like explain all this stuff to you and then i could then i could kind of go and so you get to this problem of like what do you drink when you're not drinking alcohol and then i can kind of talk to you about the solution but it it it was 75 about the problem and now i very very rarely i'm having a conversation with somebody where i'm having to like spend a long time talking about the need for a good non-alcoholic option which is amazing and so that is very different and what that does is that clears up a lot of time to be able to just talk about what you're up to and get to a tasting for example rather than having all this stuff about trends and insight and people's behavior and the way in which people are drinking so that that's a huge difference um we have not built a massive team so we we built a big team at seedlet we had three offices in you know one in sydney one in la one here in the uk we had 85 people that we hired in basically three years um it was a big team fast growth with lots of young people, lots of inexperience.

36:50And that was amazing. And that naivety was something that we celebrated and dined out on. We've taken the opposite approach this time. So I have my former COO, Emma Wikes, who is there from Seedlip. In fact, half our team now are from Seedlip. Lots of drinks expertise, lots of industry expertise, small tight remote team you know nearly three people in the us okay five or six here in the uk um so that's different we've built our own manufacturing facility um for silver so we've built this sort of maturation laboratory where we're tasting trees and experimenting with ultrasound and the impact of oxygen on dark non-alcoholic liquids so that's very different I didn't put my mobile number on the website this time which was a good idea is it DTC and you can buy them online I know are you now at ease with buying things online I am and I do buy yeah I actually buy most things probably online from not buying anything online so the categories different the the kind of the landscape of people's understanding and education is is very different and i think the category that we're in now you know is is competitive uh the quality is not where we'd want it to be um i think we'd yeah we'd love to see a real kind of a real focus on product quality and liquid quality and technical expertise within this space but we have the credit ability from seed lip which means our access is dramatically different to the first time you know where a buyer doesn't take 12 months to come back to you they're straight back to you and that and that for a small business in the drinks industry that's that's a huge competitive advantage yeah i guess you've earned that from your previous endeavors and those are the people that you're working with now i mean fast forward five years what would a win be uh for pollen what do you what do you what do you view success as in the future success for me yeah it's probably you know there are 73 000 tree species russell and i've tasted 250 so far i'd love to break thousand um yeah it's still a tiny proportion of the species that are out there um but we are building our second laboratory at the moment um in upstate new york which is super exciting to work with north american tree species and yeah making these dark non-alcoholic spirits that you can sip in that kind of whiskey type occasion um and then we plan to open a third one in japan um in the next five years so lots more lots more understanding of wood and its flavor and trees from a silver perspective and we've got some yeah super exciting things coming down the line um silver wise season our cocktail bitters um we want to go fast with that one that is you know their cocktail bitters they are in that kind of angstora type space adding them to your mixers or your soda or your cocktails um we want to go kind of fast with with season and for that to be a global brand and the aim is to be the second biggest.

40:43So we don't want to take Angostura's crown. Very happy with second. Very happy with second. Yeah, and we'd love to see that in the next five years to be the second biggest. And to your other ongoing and current concern, the hidden 20%, which we talked about a little bit already, other than, as I mentioned in my introduction, for it to be not ignored for autism and ADHD, not to be ignored. What other big objective do you have for that campaign, stroke charity, stroke podcast, a triple threat as I identified it as? There really are two key things for the Hidden 20%. number one very important that we want to close the charity on the 1st of january 2033 so that is our that's our deadline to make the change that we want to see and that is the urgency with which we want to bring to this um and to help change the outcomes for neurodivergent people.

41:58The goal and part of the second piece to that is we are calling for the appointment of a minister for neurodiversity within government. And this is about having somebody accountable who can work across the four systems where neurodivergence really shows up and has a big and negative impact, but potential positive impact on people's lives. And so that's education, the workplace, justice, and healthcare. And that Minister for Neurodiversity would be in charge of coordinating a national neurodiversity strategy that would loop in all those four things. And within that, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, DLD, Tourette's, the kind of full neurodivergence umbrella.

42:59Because what has happened historically is everything has been very siloed. And so we have an autism strategy. We have an ADHD task force, but never the two shall kind of meet or talk to each other. And ultimately, we've got lots of individual silos from funding, services, support, assessments, pathways, you name it, everything is very siloed. and the reality is is that when you look at what people are actually like co-occurrence i.e me being autistic and adhd or somebody being dyslexic and adhd or dyspraxic and tourette is the rule not the exception it is the norm and yet we've put everybody in these single boxes and labels and so yeah we we kind of much in the same way that mental health did such a brilliant job of of being a banner for lots of things to sit within and underneath we need to do the same with neurodiversity i believe and so our research and campaigning work and our work with government so we are the secretariat of the all parliamentary party group for adhd um and have that line into talking with ministers and talking with government yeah but we we want this minister appointment it's super critical there's nearly a million people on autism and adhd wait lists with the nhs at the moment there are you know anywhere from 10 to 20 year kind of waiting times in some of the trusts around the uk we've got a million people young people who are neat not employed in education or in training and the one of the biggest factors within the reason why so many young people are neat is neurodivergence and unrecognized unsupported neurodivergence and then we've got a million kids you know who've been referred to mental health services as as was reported probably about six weeks ago and neurodivergence is a huge factor or the biggest factor the majority factor in lots of those referrals and so we've got to do something about this and we've got to change these systems at the same time public perception attitude and a communication job to make neurodiversity a national conversation and so we need we need this dual yeah this kind of dual approach and how confident are you not only of meeting your rather punchy deadline but it's not easy I suppose dealing with government at the moment when I say at the moment I mean over the last however many years given how many changes of government that we've had what's your confidence level given we've just we've just seen I think it was the seventh prime minister in 10 years or I probably got that wrong but many prime ministers in a relatively short space of time how are you feeling about this government today i am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and you know i i spoke to an mp last week who called me idealistic not in a um she said not in a that's not a not a criticism i'm so committed to like i can't not do this and i can't not see the kind of blueprint of how this could be and i can't not see the the similarities actually with changing perception and accessibility in non-alcoholic drinks and the and the similarities with what we're trying to do building a movement and making change and changing and educating for people to understand that this isn't a bad thing and neurodivergent people are not broken and they don't have a disease and we don't need to fix them we have a different operating system and unfortunately that different operating system most people haven't known about and has been missed and has been misdiagnosed and has been masked and unfortunately that has meant that all of the bad things that can happen in life from being bullied and excluded school-wise right through to suicide earlier life expectancy divorce homelessness all of the bad things neurodivergent people over index on versus the rest of the population and when you're talking to you know 20 30 percent that kind of ballpark of the population you know nearly 25 million people right that's a that's a lot of people and that's a lot of people that that are hurting throw in the the stigma the out-of-date perceptions the daily mail ridiculous headlines about over diagnosis or benefit scrounging for ADHDers and yeah that adds up to being being a crisis and being a real problem but and this is the but then look at who invented the airplane and made the significant contributions across the arts science engineering architecture sport music creativity medicine like music etc and there is evidence there that when people are able to thrive and can be supported they can do amazing things and we need a society that can include all minds now more than ever you know we we need the creativity the the skills the innovation um the pattern spotting the all of the the great things that can come yeah from from working with different different brains but at the moment yeah before we jump to all the all the positives and the and the skills we we need to come together and understand that there's yeah there's a big challenge here.

50:03Raleigh and call heard and thank you for that and indeed thank you for everything that you shared today both your experiences with CLIB and some of what happened to you in life and how they were perhaps motivations for many of the things that not only you've done, but also that formed you as well, Ben. So I do appreciate your time today. And until the next Marketing Week podcast, it's goodbye from me and on behalf of Ben, goodbye.