#124: Paul Goodhew, Partner at Ernst & Young – How AI Is Reshaping Audit & Assurance Globally?

0:00I don't think that you ever set out to be a CEO. It's something that just happens. What I've really learned more than anything else as I became a CEO is, you know, it is lonelier than you can ever anticipate.

0:16Ben Dorks is a proud Nottingham lad, big Nottingham Forest fan. And from the age of 14, he wanted to pursue a career in the field of sales. Upon doing that, Ben quickly came to the realization that sales is more of a science than an art, and that suited his style very well. And his trajectory was established, fueled by the IT adoption and digital transformation boom of the early 2000s, right through to the point of setting up his own IT company in 2004 with his brother. Fast forward eight years, Ben's company was acquired by a larger organization called Ideagen, And then he went on to become the CEO in 2018.

0:59And what a journey that was. We discussed how sales has changed since the early days of his career, what it means to be a CEO, effective delegation, the impact of AI on the compliance industry and other industries, and being driven and relentlessly optimistic. We talk about that a couple of points during the conversation. The compliance and regulation space is not the most glamorous of areas, but this is a real human story with fascinating insights and anecdotes. This really is a great conversation full of value. This is Ben Dorks.

1:40Ben, thank you so much for coming on the Tech Leaders Podcast. How are you today in sunny Nottingham? Well, Nottingham is sunny, which after the past few months is a miracle on its own. But yes, doing very well. And thank you for the opportunity, Gareth. Great to meet you. Likewise. And I'm really, really excited to unpack a number of things. It's a crazy world at the moment. We've got lots to talk about. But let's start with this one, Ben. What does good leadership mean to you? I use a pretty unusual RIP, which is probably not the best way to describe leadership. But sometimes it certainly feels like that.

2:13And I break that down into the three areas. So good leadership for me is about responsibility. Leaders stand up and be counted and take the responsibility for their actions and the way that they behave. And that's every day, whether people are looking at you or not. And that is everything from the numbers to how you think about the individuals to the outcomes that you're trying to deliver. The second part of leadership for me is leading with impact, you know, and trying to make sure that you are making a difference each and every day, trying to make sure that you're leaning in to the challenges that are in front of you.

2:54And I think for me, most importantly, when we look at leading for impact is making sure that the individuals that, you know, are working with you are all aligned and aiming towards the same goals. and finally it's about the people you know ultimately any business is about the people and the individuals we talk quite a lot within our organization about how do we make the boat go faster you know and to do that you've got to create a you know really open and transparent culture where we can all work together to achieve those same outcomes but also that we can you know constructively criticize each other but within a very psychological safe space um you know and so So for us, when we think about people, it's creating an organization where there's no glass ceilings, where people can really feel like they're part of the family and they can achieve great things.

3:47And so ultimately, RIP may not be the best terminology, but it's something that as an organization we live by each and every day. I love that. Brilliant. I think you covered all bases there, Ben. I agree with all of that. That's a fantastic answer. So let's look, let's delve back to the beginning then. I have to say one thing, looking at your background and the research we've done, one thing that strikes me is that you're not somebody who's jumped around to loads of jobs. You're very loyal. You've obviously just excelled up through the sales route into your current role of CEO. So I'd be fascinated to understand and unpack that a little bit.

4:27So the question I've got is, how did you get into sales? I'm sure you're going to tell you fell into it which is what most people say but tell us about that early part of your career what was sales like during that time when you first got into the industry i wanted to be a salesman from about 14 years old oh brilliant i'm happy you were one of these people who just fell into it as a second choice i'm so glad that was the same as me ben so i'm glad you said that my dad worked for for alba the the old electronics company so you know i know you had your sony Sony Walkman, you know, and I went to school with my Alba Walkman, which was never quite the same thing.

5:02It was about 30 quid cheaper though, wasn't it? So, you know, it was a good piece of kit. It was 30 quid cheaper and lasted about a third of the amount of time. Was it a British company then, Alba? Yeah. I think it was Korean or something like that. It was, you know, when they first came over and then you had your Alba Walkman and turntables for your decks and all that type of good stuff. So it was quite popular for a small amount of time at school. And so he was a salesperson and my stepfather who brought me up was also a salesperson. And so for me, I always found school quite a challenge. And having initially wanted to be a vet but realized you actually needed to turn up at school, then sales was the second best option.

5:46And so I sort of joined sales when I left school at 16, started off selling paper and business forms and letterheads into the industrial estates of Leicestershire, which I can assure you is a proving ground, creates great resilience. Oh, absolutely. Let's just put it like that. So you were door-to-door sales then? You were proper, hardcore, frontline door-to-door sales, is it? Proper, hardcore, door-to-door sales. I had to go, you know, if I couldn't get a meeting with a buyer, i.e. get through the sort of receptionist gatekeeper. then I had to collect a compliment slip with the buyer's name on it and then I had to go back to my boss at the end of every single day and you would count out and you had to have done at least 60 door knocks during that time and uh and four meetings of at least 20 minutes each and uh you had to be able to demonstrate that you were going to do two quotes from that uh from that period that's pretty similar so I was talking to David Buttress who's the founder of just eat.com and Just Eaton, obviously, a very disruptive company.

6:47And he said when he started the organization, him and another guy who'd already started a similar business in Denmark, but he was in the UK trying to sell this new concept to restaurants. And he was working off a very similar ratio to that, you know, X amount of visits, he would get X amount of conversions. He was essentially walking into restaurants and selling them this dream of receiving orders online, which was crazy. You know, it was a difficult world in the early 2000s when he started. So, yeah, but it's interesting how he kept that ratio from when it was just him and one other guy right to when they were a public company.

7:24So can you tell us about what type of salesperson you were and how did you perform in your role and why did you excel? What sort of attributes have you got that made you successful in this world? To be honest, in those early years, Gareth, it was as much about resilience and confidence as it was about anything else. I think subsequently, as you grow and mature, what you really learn is the ability to speak to lots of types of different individuals. The way that you're able to converse across multiple groups, I think, becomes super important. and I think ultimately I think what stood it apart was was just if I'm really honest was really hard work I've never met anybody successful who's not been a little bit obsessive and yeah you know prepared to walk the extra mile each and every day I was certainly that in my uh in my early career and I think many would still say I am today yeah absolutely so you you basically well they say once a salesman ever the salesman I suppose are they but you worked within the IT space though come the turn of the millennium yeah and you were you're selling IBM products I think is that right to the automotive industry yes that's right yep I mean I basically got into IT sales because of the money you know I uh I remember my first car was the old 1.7 turbo diesel Cavalier um for those that are old enough nice and I would be turning up at meetings and the the IT salesperson would be there with their shiny BMW 3 series um and I was like I I'd like a bit of that so I sort of got into IT sales through Perseverance.

8:58Once I sort of found my opportunity there, then it grew and evolved and ended up selling Katia, which is a 3D design program to automotive and aerospace suppliers, even through the terrible times post 9-11. Yeah, yeah, sure. So look, looking back now, knowing what you know, what were the sort of most important milestones in your career before you embarked on the idea gen journey you know that that earlier part of your career well what were the sort of key milestones which set you on the path which you ultimately went on to probably the biggest milestone was when I learned that sales was not just an art form but was also a science I read a book called power-based selling actually and you know I went away from that and went wow this this is a real opportunity for me personally and subsequently have tried to be a learn it all each and every day probably the next biggest milestone for me was was starting my own business in in 2004 you know having been reasonably successful in in tech sales over the last five or six years those heady days of the the late 90s and early noughties where sales people earn too much commission and you know using that to start my uh to start my own business and you know that that really has been the the sort of basis and platform from uh from which you know the next nearly 20 years of my life have come from.

10:26Sure. So you set a plum tree group in November 2004. Yeah. Can you talk us through how that came about and what it was like to get in the trenches and grow a business from scratch? What did you learn from that experience? I think you learn more during that experience than probably any other point in your life. You know, I think you walk into starting your own business, probably believing that you know it all and then subsequently realizing that you know nothing. I was at that time, so we developed some document management software for the healthcare market, which was really supporting hospital laboratories to be able to report the pathology reports and x-ray reports effectively and be able to manage the incoming requests and all those types of things more effectively as well.

11:15And it was a lot of door knocking. the early sales, which you think are going to happen overnight, take three times as long as you think. You know, you become a product manager. I was a salesperson. I was the project manager that went and implemented it. I was doing the onboarding, the customer success, the training. And certainly until probably 2008, 2009, I was also the 24-7 support desk. So, you know, I think, I think you know I learned I learned everything but what I really learned is the value of people within that and that you can't build a business on your own you need to surround yourself with great people and great individuals and you know create a really positive forward-looking culture and it only works if you achieve that yeah sure so can you talk us through how it came about though you how did you was it you and was it a conversation at a pub was it something you'd been thinking about for years well what was the specific moment that you thought right we're going to do this my brother used to work for chorus uh down in south wales he was one of their graduate program and he'd been tasked with uh shutting down one of the furnaces it sort of you know was was very emotional for him having to uh to go through that process and so we sort of sat in a pub one day post him doing that and he said i'm i'm leaving i don't want to do this anymore and I said well you know I'm happy to I want to come back to Nottingham because I was working in London at the time and I had a young family in Nottingham had a six-year-old and a four-year-old at the time and so I said why don't we start a business I've got this great idea and he was always much more sensible with money than I and and he was like that's that's great I'll manage the money and the process and you go and you go and sell it and I said this is great this is gonna be a wonderful partnership.

13:07The fact that we're still really close together means that we've done okay, but it's... Yeah, I'm sure you had your moments, Ben. We definitely had our moments in that. And rightly so, you have to, I mean, I'm sure this made your relationship infinitely stronger, isn't it? But you went on a journey, it took, was it eight years, and then you got acquired by IdeaGen. So can you tell us about that? Where did that interest come from? And what was it like to see the fruits of your labor really get recognized with interest from a from a bigger organization like idea gen and just tell us about that whole thing how that come about and what was that acquisition like for you personally yeah so we'd almost sold about two years before yeah and i think actually that's probably one of the best things that happened to us so we'd gone through a really tough time as many had in 2009 and we'd had to take some people out the business and pay the salaries in December 2009 on the credit card and all that, almost desperate to exit.

14:06As we went through that process, I think we learned a huge amount about what businesses look for when they acquire other businesses. So when we sort of went into it the next time around, we were much more focused. I think we're more articulate about what the hope and expectations were for the business. I'd known David, who sort of set up IdeaGen as a vehicle on the AIM markets. And I'd like to say it was some really convoluted process, but I was sat at home. He phoned me up and said, I've been looking at your business. I've looked at the track record, confirmed your revenue number, confirmed your profit number.

14:43He said, do you have a price in your head? I said, I do. And he went, well, I'll give you two and a half million. And I went, that's the price. And that was that. That sounds a lot cleaner than it normally is for those type of transactions and engagements. so yeah you did well there i think yes i did i had to phone my brother up and say hey barney i've i think i've agreed a price selling the business are you okay with it but um i bet i mean that was a phone call he wasn't expecting the reality was that we were at a time where we were looking at you know what do we do next in terms of future investment to grow revenue was about two and a half three million you know it wasn't the heady prices that you get in today's world um you know So do we think we can get to nine or 10?

15:28What does that VC funding look like? And all those types of good things. And I think being honest, I'd spent eight years doing this. And I was really excited about the fresh challenge of being part of something that had, you know, bigger and faster ambitions. So, yeah, it was a relatively simple process. DD was six weeks and happened pretty much just before Christmas 2012. My first working day was the 4th of January 2013 in Idea Gym. Great Christmas present as well. And I'm sure you had a lovely Christmas break that year then. But so look, I think you mentioned the word ambition there, Ben. And I wanted to sort of pin you on that a little bit, because what strikes me about yourself is obviously you've built a successful business and you've exited and now you're a CEO of an organization.

16:12and so you clearly are you know probably got a bit more ambition and drive about you than perhaps the average man in the street and I just wanted to ask I know you're a proud Nottingham lad your dad's done a lot for the local community you've got a lot of altruism in your sort of dealings are you do you do stuff for the local community yourself but I'm really keen to understand where does this drive come from I think it's a bit of nature and nurture and and experiences you know my family have always been been workers and you know I've worked really really hard so I sort of grew up in an environment where you know my mum wouldn't have been home until half six seven o 'clock at night and you know I learned how to cook jacket potato beans and cheese pretty expertly it's all you need to know that's all you need to know and so for me I think you know it was sort of part of my family that I saw it each and every day I think the second part is I'd made some promises to my to my father that I was going to be a successful because what he really saw was somebody who'd you know flunked school most of his life so I had to to go and work hard to live up to my promises to him the third part of it is it is just who I am you know I am a relentlessly optimistic relentlessly dissatisfied person you know I always think we can do more achieve more and so I just have this this inner drive that I wake up every morning and I'm excited about the day and the opportunities that it creates.

17:34Yeah, sure. When you are giving young people advice who have got aspirations to grow businesses of their own, what kind of generic advice do you give to young people in terms of, you know, that they could benefit from that, you know, you wish you'd known when you were their age sort of thing? I think the generic stuff is, it is about confidence and it is about resilience. I would often suggest that you do it earlier in life rather than later because yeah the stress of life gets bigger once you've got you know families and mortgages and challenges of school and you know all those things so you know i'd always suggest do it early believe in yourself and every single day is a new day and a new opportunity and don't get dragged down you know by by bad news on a particular day you know that that resilience that inner drive that ambition um you know our company values are ambition adventure and community certainly starting your own business is is ambition and adventure you you really you know you've got to love the change the challenge and you know if you believe in it and you believe in what you're trying to achieve then the uk is a flourishing enterprise of of entrepreneurs and and far more so than many other economies.

18:50And I think it's something that we just need to really encourage, because there are so many great ideas out there. Obviously, even today in the press, there's this conversation in the press about jobs disappearing because of the introduction of AI. IBM announced something earlier this week along the same lines. So what they actually see is, what am I going to do? How am I going to be involved? What's my future look like? you know for me i think it's all about articulating the opportunities available to them the wide variety of careers in technology and as i said you know trying to create that unimagined future and that's certainly you know a large part of our community program doing in a sort of various global locations yeah absolutely i mean i wanted to talk about ai actually ben have you had to fiddle around with chat gbt have you have you or have you used any other ai based tools as a consumer man as everybody i can't believe a tech leader's not at least gone on and uh and played around and asked it some questions i use it every day i gotta be honest all the questions i'm asking you ben were generated by ai no go for it um well you can't help yourself can you you know and certainly when i'm trying to do my nine-year-old homework then you know it's a really useful teaching tool we are already starting to look at how we introduce it you know so there's some some great technology out there that enables us for example if i'm doing a risk analysis i could put in what are the risks associated with hot yoga we'll go for a very safe subject yeah and it would automatically if you if you type that into uh into chat tpt it will come back and say dehydration pulling your muscles dirty dirty dumb and then it would actually say here's the benefits these are the controls that you can put in place and it will actually create you a pretty reasonable risk profile in about 35 seconds you know so for us already we can see lots of opportunities to enable medium-sized organizations and smaller organizations to understand you know their their risk profile secondly to that for us what's really exciting about ai is the ability for us to start using it for predictive risks you know and that's that's you know looking at health and safety if you carry on on this trend this is definitely going to happen if we take all of this big data lake that we have and we have over 11 and a half thousand global customers then we know that if you're doing a and b the outcome is definitely c and d and that could lead to a major incident you know and that could be fatalities we do a lot in the food industry all the way from farm to fork so that could be you know affecting the quality of the food on the table for these individuals or the you know the life sciences industry where we do a lot in the drug approval process using that AI to actually manage forward-looking outcomes I think is is hugely exciting for us and will have a you know really positive impact.

21:43Yeah absolutely so can we maybe look at AI then because there's so many directions you can go with this because it's going to be so impactful on so many industries but let's stick to what we know then Ben okay so let's look at it through the prism of sales and marketing, okay? In terms of AI technology, like, you know, innovation, has this started to change how you guys operate from a sales and marketing perspective? Are you embracing tools for, you know, blog writing, social media posting, writing content, et cetera, et cetera? Are you already reacting and using tools to benefit your sales and marketing purposes?

22:20The second part is, is this technology changing the type of profile we look for when trying to hire good salespeople? You know what I mean? Are we looking for people who are going to embrace technology more these days? Or is it still about the old fashioned sort of, you know, blagging good talker, you know, that type of thing? I mean, the AI specifically enables us to be far more forward looking in things like our funnel management, it can turn around and say, you know, based upon this whole profile of customers, and the time they've been in our funnel and the sales individual and you know the market and the you know and the product that actually this is the likely outcome so suddenly based upon a whole set of data you can start getting really predictive analysis about what your future pipeline looks like we also use some of the the sort of visual and listening tools that actually start to pick out what's good and bad about conversations and can feed that back into some of the micro learning for those individual salespeople.

23:22And that's definitely been beneficial when you start to actually dive into the detail of how your salespeople engage with your customers. And I think as we continue to move forward, certainly marketing have really embraced the AI. So they don't write our blogs, but they're certainly supportive in terms of some of the education around our blogs and our content specifically. Quite a lot of our applications are content driven around regulatory requirements. And we certainly use AI to be more effective in some of that back office data gathering than just having tens and dozens of people collecting it.

24:02We can utilize the AI to be able to go and bring this information to us and validate it before putting it into the software. So I think for us, AI is an everyday. The second part of the question, probably a more personal answer, I'm a great believer that sales is both a science and an art form. And I would try and sort of articulate that. If you had paint by numbers, you can still get anybody to paint by numbers. But if Picasso painted by numbers, it would still look like an absolute piece of art. And I sort of view sales in that fashion that, yes, you can take anybody and make them a salesperson.

24:41But there's also a little part of the natural DNA that makes them a great sales individual. And so what we're really looking for is people who need to be able to adapt and change, you know, and I think in today's sales market, you need to be able to adapt and change quicker than ever before. Turning around and saying you were the ranked Xerox top salesperson in 1989 is no longer a guarantee of getting a job. What we're really looking for is people that are resilient, looking flexible about change. Great listeners, two ears, one mouth, use them in that proportion, I think is still hugely important.

25:17But also really willing to adapt because users are adapting faster than ever before. And that means us as a technology business and the individuals within it need to adapt faster than ever before. That's a really good answer. I think listening is such an underappreciated skill within sales, isn't it? I think so many people think sales is about talking when it's actually about listening and changing and adapting, isn't it? So I wanted to talk about becoming a CEO. What was the biggest change between being the chief customer officer to the CEO? What extra accountability did you take on? Was it what you expected?

25:52did? That is a great question, Gareth. I don't think that you ever set out to be a CEO. If I'm really honest, I don't think there's a set of skills that make you a CEO. I think it's something that just happens. And I don't think, if I'm really honest with myself, I'm a salesman first and foremost, and I put a CEO hat on every day, having taken off my sales hat. What I've really learned more than anything else as I became a CEO is, you know, it is lonelier than you can ever anticipate. You know, people often talk about the loneliness of a CEO, but you know, there is an acute loneliness that you get as a CEO as you're running and growing a business.

26:30And so what I really realized is, very, very quickly is you just need great people around you. It is the standing on the shoulders of giants is I think the best type of leadership. And so bringing in people that really complement you and are additive to your culture and what you're trying to create, I think was my very early lesson of being a CEO. I was very lucky in the early years. I had great support from the former chief exec of IdeaGen, who was my chairman and was brilliantly supportive. My brother was still here at that point in those early years as well. I was very lucky that I had that early early support network in what is probably the most difficult bit which is that first 12 to 18 months of becoming a ceo for the first time and subsequent to that it's just about the people if you get great people then yeah you are surfing their wave and i've just been lucky enough to surf the wave that they're creating each and every day that's a great great answer again i really wanted to pin you on the delegation piece there because i think this is again just like listening is an underrated skill for a salesperson i think delegation is an underrated skill in any leadership role is something that sounds easy when you're talking about it but to actually live it and do it well on a regular basis is an art form.

27:50Delegation done well is probably is up there with one of the most important things that a CEO needs to get right. What is the key and the secret to good delegation? How do you delegate things effectively to motivate people or the people around you? I think to be fair, Gareth, it's both an art and a science because I think you can read every book and you can read the sort of philosophical approach to how do I delegate, but fundamentally has to come from within you as an individual in the belief that other people are better at doing it than you are. And even if they're not better at doing it, they will, through experience and time and coaching and mentoring be better at doing it than you are and and if you have that as your as your as your sort of belief system then once you've got over the hump of the first two or three where it all goes horribly wrong and you sort of want to scream and shout but once you get over that belief then you know it it really makes a big difference and internally in idea gen we have something called there's no such thing as failure only feedback You know, we absolutely believe in that, you know, and that just encourages delegation all the way through the organization to enable empowerment, to enable people to grow and develop, you know, and take away those glass ceilings that often exist within organizations because people never get the chance.

29:16Yeah, no, absolutely. So let's move on to regulation and compliance then. And you guys have been in this world for a very long time. How do IdeaGen differentiate themselves from other companies in the regulatory and compliance software industry? What's different about you guys? I think the regulation and compliance industry is, I mean, a lot of it's about who the end users are. So, you know, we talk internally about supporting those safe hands and quiet voices. that protect those organizations. And that is, you know, for us about domain advocacy and thought leadership in the space. Very rarely is the person in charge of compliance or regulation listened to by the C-suite.

29:59Often it's thought about as something that is a tick box process rather than, you know, something that is part of the DNA of the organization and about improving business processes. So I think what we've tried to do to differentiate is really be really supportive of those individuals within the organization, try to give them a voice and create software that is really, really simple to use. And by that, consumers are changing behavior each and every day for technology companies. And so our biggest challenge is in regulation and compliance software, we're asking you for the extra six bits of information you don't want to give and the extra four click buttons that you don't want to go through.

30:43and submit this and then verify and validate that. And you've got consumers who are used to sort of flicking through Netflix, you know, or Amazon, where everything is, you know, dead simple and as quick as a flash. So, yeah, I think for us, it's about making sure that we get the right support, the right leadership into, you know, supporting our customers, you know, and our customers' customers. You know, if you take the food industry and farm to fork, it's about, you know, it's about my mum eating her food at night. and taking her medicines. But we also need to make sure that it's really simple because the compliance officer going in and saying, hey, you've got 60 more things to fill in, just get huge pushback from the business.

31:25So really making it part of the DNA of an organization and simple to use is really been the big difference for us over the years. So has the evolution of AI technology that we've seen accelerated in the last sort of 6 to 12 months, has that changed a great deal in the compliance world then? yet? Because there's going to be a lot more to regulate, isn't there? Things are talking to each other a bit more now. Everything's going to become more efficient. Things are going to get created more seamlessly through automation. How does this affect the world of compliance and regulation? A bit of Oscar Wilde, really.

31:59The only certainties in life are death, taxes, and more regulation. AI will create a whole new set of regulation on its own, I have no doubts at all over the next three to five years. And so for us, although AI is still pretty nascent within the regulatory and compliance industry, it's an emerging tech, we can see some future trends where, especially in things like the banking and finance insurance industries, within the aviation industry, around safety management, where you're able to really start driving that far more predictive behavior i think which is going to be really really important but also reducing some of the monotony of compliance within those industries and within those markets you know and i think that's really important if you can if you can really drive some of those back office improvements as well then you know ai moves from being that tick box into something that is absolutely embedded into a business then you know that becomes really advantageous for that organization and that organization's customers.

33:05Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think AI needs to be regulated for a plethora of reasons, doesn't it? Because it can basically create imbalances, it can be biased towards certain outcomes and things like that. It's a bit of a minefield, I think. Have you sort of been asked to work with regulators, perhaps, or with your clients to ensure that they're setting things up correctly, like from the sort of embryonic stage with new projects? Are you doing a lot of consultancy about this subject right now? So you're absolutely right. You know, AI doesn't have diversity and, you know, inclusivity at its heart. So, you know, it has an unconscious bias to use the sort of people term.

33:51And there's certainly some fairly embryonic conversations that are happening on that subject about exactly what does it look like and how do we manage it although i'm aware of a a few bodies that are looking to start to formalize that into medium-term objectives of of creating regulation around ai but you know being honest i think most most bodies and most regulators have been taken by surprise at the pace of change over the last three to four months i was certainly in a conversation not long ago with an unnamed body who basically thinks AI was only invented three months ago when they saw about it in the newspaper, post the big front page announces on ChatGPT.

34:36Yeah, well, it's kind of hit the mainstream in the last couple of months. But obviously, this has been working progress for the last 30 years, isn't it, I suppose. But I want to turn the conversation back to yourself, Ben. I'm really keen. You're a CEO. You're a busy chap. You've got a lot on your plate. You've got volunteer commitments as well how do you stay mentally sharp and avoid feeling overwhelmed how do you avoid burnout basically i'm really lucky the office is based where i was brought up so you know three miles away from here is is where my mum still lives and my my brother who's down the road and my brother other brother who's a you know a baptist minister my old friends are still my old school friends you know so i'm really privileged that i i go to football and uh and watch the mighty nottingham forest on a very rarely on a saturday at three o 'clock now we're in the premiership just to make sure everybody knows that with the people i went to school with who you know don't recognize me as a of a as a ceo of a business that recently was sold for a billion pounds to private equity they just know me as ben you know and and that that's fantastic that just sort of keeps it very authentic and and very grounded and you know they take the mickey out of me each and every day as they absolutely should do you know and so I'm really lucky that I don't I don't live in a in a in a world that you know does anything else that be supportive of what we're trying to do so productivity advice how do you stay productive have you got any tools that you use how do you ensure that you you know get through your day in the most productive way possible I am a big reader so I read every morning so I'm a I'm an early riser and I leaders are readers leaders are readers and i i do it is a uh you know something i've followed for years and years and years now and i take a little bit out of every book i think it's you know i think a lot of it's just repeat rinse and repeat but there's always some nugget um which is which is great i'm a big user of one note yeah brilliant use my ipad i scribble everything down because i prefer writing than i do typing um and i i sort of religiously walk around with my ipad and my OneNote.

36:38Outside of that, I'm really, I like the flexibility. So I don't actually have any really predetermined long-term meetings in the diary. I don't like agendas. The sort of saying is, you know, be brief, be bold, be bright, be gone. If you're having a meeting with me, I just like people to say that as it is, good news, bad news, and, you know, go in and don't give me the history, just give me the answer and i'll you know go away and do it and i never take myself too seriously to be honest i'm i still sit here every single day gareth look in the mirror and go how did we build a tech unicorn and and why me um yeah so i've always just been a believer that you know if you work hard and try hard and don't take yourself too seriously then being honest it's all okay very well said so what person book or story have you been inspiring a big reader i think uh i heard you say elsewhere that you uh you read sort of five plus hours a week which is very commendable but but or maybe it's a documentary or film or what have you what piece of content have you been inspired by recently ben i love uh satya nadella's book um you know i think that That's brilliant about his background and where he came from, the challenges he has, you know, both at home, you know, and at work.