Volume Negates Luck

Ollie: Hello, and welcome to Good CEOs, episode four. Now for many you avid listeners, you'll be aware that every other episode I record on my own. ⁓ We focus these sessions around what am I seeing in the creative from ⁓ all of the thousand conversations that Unknown has every single month? What we hearing that other leaders of businesses are doing? Okay, that was episode four of Good CEOs. I really, really enjoy doing that. Thank you. and also thank you for the questions. It's ⁓ really helpful to know what you all want to know about. and if you want to ask a question, it's really, really simple. Just subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the newsletter, follow me on LinkedIn. I put it out every two weeks. You'll see different slideshows of all the insights that we're putting from the conversation. So if you don't like listening to this podcast, What are we hearing that other CEOs are struggling with? People that are moving up into either being a CEO or becoming a founder. What do they struggle with day to day? And also, what do I struggle with? And what am I going through as a founder of a business and a CEO of a company that is growing in this wonderful thing that we call the creative economy? So today is no different. I'm going to begin with a little story and then move on into other percolations and reflections. You can slide along with our carousels or you can read the newsletter. So please keep the questions coming. Either reply to me, ⁓ to the newsletter, comment on the LinkedIn posts, ask me anything you like, troll me, whatever you like, whatever you want to do. I will try and come back to everything that is asked from me and asked of me. It's great to have you here and great to have you involved. from the last three weeks. So I'm gonna start with a little story. We've just come from having, and this isn't a flex, it will sound like it, but when I say it, it's not gonna be a flex, our biggest ever H1. And to be really honest, I didn't see this coming in January. We had a really, really hard start to the year. For those that don't know, we completely restructured Unknown. We moved from being an exec search recruitment company into being a talent growth consultancy. Got to say it, talent growth consultancy. And what that meant was that we weren't just helping agencies and brands hire talent, but we were helping agencies and brands acquire businesses, restructure their own businesses. And I'm starting with that because although we have done the biggest ever H, we wouldn't have done that had we not have restructured. And if I go back to years ago, when had kind of accidentally helped a friend acquire two or three companies. So somebody came to me, I won't name them. They to me and they said, look, I'm either looking to get a new job. ⁓ I'm ex chairman of a business or I wanna build my own ⁓ group. I was like, wow, that is ⁓ A, a compliment that a chairman is coming to me asking for a new job and B, that they come to me to try and figure out who they wanna acquire and. And so I got really excited. I spoke through the whole, what would you do or what could a chairman do? And every option I could think of, was like, okay, well, either it's going being like another CEO in another agency group or becoming a CMO. But if you've been a founder and then become a CEO, then a chairman, the last thing you're going to want to do is to be on the hook for ⁓ and, and you're going have a boss and it's going to feel like ⁓ maybe even a smaller role you've had before. So we kind of. We wrote off the idea of them going back into working for another business. And then when we came onto the buying and selling of companies, I just found that really easy because I was like, well, okay, in what kind of world and how would you build this thing out? And what does the world need and what does the world not need? So I spent the next kind of three months going through my Rolodex and being like, ⁓ my God, this independent agency. I loaded up that founders ⁓ diary with loads of different invites. And I was like, I'm pretty sure people charge for this. I'm pretty sure that. if you introduce someone that ends up becoming an acquired business, that there should be a kind of payment or something. Anyway, I didn't obviously then go and charge the person after they bought three companies, but it did make me think, there is so much value, particularly as we're seeing a lot of the holding companies come down on their size. We're seeing loads of people either build these kind of ecosystems of companies. Back then, there were things like Harbor and all these different ecosystems of agency brands that were coming together. But the more I thought, wow, okay, hold on, that's gonna be really powerful, particularly for brands that want specialist agencies. So I was like, okay, this is interesting. and this brings me on to my first learning. What I did was ask the people that I was closest to if they thought that we as a business could do M&A And 90 % of the people said no. There were loads of different reasons. There were things like, ⁓ you're known for recruiting talent. I wouldn't stray away from that, double down on what you're really good at. And I accept that advice. I give that advice to a lot of agencies that I work with. Others were quite negative about the M&A landscape. They'd say things like, everyone wants their fee. And these M&A advisors don't add any value to the process. ⁓ And I can't any white space that's required for a business to be in that space. So I thought, okay, that doesn't sound very positive. Maybe I should just not do this. But before I said no, I thought, well, okay, there must be these companies out there. There are tons. There are millions of M&A firms out there from W.Y. to Waypoint, like have Matt Lacey on, to Jeggy and Clarity. Over in the States, you've got Palazzo. ⁓ There's of M&A firms out there that are doing really well, that are adding value to processes. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna go and meet... those people and see if there is ⁓ anything that we can do to help them, but also understand like how, how they work. And yeah, I sat down, I met with, ⁓ think eight M&A firms in the end. And the number one thing that I learned in that process was the value, is opposite in the, to a recruitment company. So when you run a recruitment company or an exec search firm company, The value is in acquirers of talent. So all of the agencies and brands, you couldn't launch a recruitment company unless you knew a lot of people that had the problem of hiring talent. So that's where the value is. Yes, of course you've to know all the right people, but in recruitment world, that's normally the easier part of ⁓ job. In M&A it's the opposite. ⁓ Everyone who the buyers are because they've got all the money and they're very big names and they're either banks or P.E. ⁓ No one knows who the sellers are. So no one really knows who is open to selling their business or taking investment because they're in their own worlds doing their own thing. So I was like, wow, that was the penny drop moment because unknown has been, I would say 70 % of our clients are growing and scaling agencies that either want to hire a new talent, hire a new CEO, build new teams, expand into different territories. The number one reason why clients call us is because they're growing or because they want to try and grow more. So I thought that gives us quite an exciting, ⁓ you know, advantage point because hear when a company is shrinking the talent calls us, you know, if X company is making a ton of redundancies, we as the recruitment company get all of that talent coming to us going, help, I need a job, get me out of this business, it's not doing well. So we hear that side, but on the other side, we hear the positive news, which is we've just won three new clients, we're expanding into LA, we've built this new capability onto our practice and it's going really well, but no one knows about it. So you get this inside track of knowledge as this recruitment company. we about that and then thought, okay, let's go to school, let's learn as much as we can about... M&A what can we do and what can't we do? ⁓ know, there's loads of things like you need to be fully ⁓ if you want to do the sell side stuff. But for us, the that we were bringing really was on the buy side. It was, you know, a branding agency that's expanding into the US. Where are the best US based branding agencies that we could buy a mini version of us? Or it could be ⁓ an advertising that are expanding into design. Who are the best design companies in London? ⁓ A digital transformation agency. expanding into the UK. We need to divest and diversify our 95 % US revenue into European revenue. Who are the best product digital agencies in London? That we found really easy. So fast forward a year and a half, ⁓ we've had the best ever H our lives, our existence, which is six and a half years now. ⁓ And 30 of that revenue has come from our M&A practice. which I just find like crazy that there was just this undercurrent of revenue that we've been completely ignoring. it back, I have a point here, I have a quote, as I always do. The quote ⁓ don't listen to the closest to you, listen to the people closest to your goals. when you set a North star, you have a public facing North star that's aspirational for your client or customer base. But you also ⁓ need to have an North star that's a lot less sexy and more measurable. ⁓ like, you know, the North star you can imagine is Airbnb's belong anywhere. You know, we want to create, I forget what it is, what the words are behind it, but it's like, One more time. Don't listen to the people closest to you. Listen to the people closest to your goals. We've all been there where we're speaking to our partner and we're thinking about taking that promotion for that boss that she or he hates. And she goes, this is a terrible idea for your career. Or he goes, why would you want to take the promotion? They're the worst person in the world. And they're reacting because they love you, they care for you, but their goal. You know, we want to make every single tourist feel like a local in every city, in every country in the world. So that's a really nice North Star for a product-based business like Airbnb. I think like this is where agencies really struggle because they'll come up with a big thing. I think AKQAs was something like create a better future or IDEO, make everything human-centered. most partnerships is for you to be happy, you to be calm, you to be present at home. Their goal isn't perhaps necessarily your career goals that you made 15 years before you met each other that majorly important to you. You can't ignore their advice because you need to maintain your partnership with your partner, but you always take their advice as gospel. I look at situation, asked a bunch of, you know these are quite nebulous North stars because you're not saying to the rest of the company exactly how you're gonna make that happen. So I think when you're speaking about acquisitions and making sure that you're part of the 25%, the North star needs to be both spiritual, philosophical, belong anywhere-y, but it also needs to be pragmatic and measurable. So I think like the... respected friends in the industry. one of them, you know, have coached me, have mentored me in my career. Many of them are my clients who I'm should we do this new thing? ⁓ And the resounding answer, bar 10 % of was no. And yet, we should have, we did, and I'm so thankful that we did. ⁓ I am someone, I kind of had to this as I've grown, I'm very impressionable and I normally... The dream is the infinity loop Northstar, but not everybody can be Apple, not everyone can be Airbnb. ⁓ think, because they do this for brands, they struggle when they're thinking of themselves. And I think sometimes they can be quite flimsy ⁓ meaningless because they're so lofty. So, you know, if your Northstar is to create really strong relationships brands and people, yeah, no shit, that's going to be every single agency on the planet. ⁓ I'm so in on a conversation that I will take what that person is saying for the moment, for that moment as gospel. And when you get three people saying the same thing to you and you're going, ⁓ that's not what I wanted to hear. I've still got this thing in my gut. I guess what I'm saying to you is listen to it. Listen to you, listen to the people who are ahead of where you are achieving thing that maybe you want to achieve. There's a quote, which is people want what you have, but they don't want to do what you did to get it. I always like to think what's the inverse? If you can't do an inverse without laughing, then it's not a good North Star. If you go, want to become the most integrated agency in the world, Southerland says this brilliant thing, ⁓ like saying I want to have an integrated meal. ⁓ up to a restaurant and say, I prefer if I had my meal disintegrated ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ to be consumed. And I think that's very, true a lot of instances, whether it is your partner or your colleagues or your friends out in the world. Sometimes have to go and ask the people that have done the thing that you want to go and do. ⁓ How it? What is the grass like over there? Is it worth me doing it? Tell me it warts and all. What do I have to do to be a success in this new thing that I'm trying to get into? Is it worth So I think you had to be careful of the words, but to answer your question, I think it's a combination of those two things. It's a long, long shot, big North star that's real and the words behind it are meaningful and they mean something and it's a philosophical thing that the world wants. And at the same time, it's a measurable, like that Airbnb, every single person in every city in every country can feel like they belong anywhere with our new product. So for agency worlds, needs to be that kind of, you want to be able to drop the thing on your foot. It needs to mean something enough that there's no way that you can't understand that. we just pushed because we believe, we wanted to do it, we knew and we had accepted. to get to where we want to get to, we're going to have to do the things that nobody else wants to do. And in order for us to believe that that is possible, I'm going to focus my advice and my information diet on people that I believe have achieved the thing that I want to do. ⁓ yeah, in answer to your question, I a great North Star is it's both meaningful, ⁓ hard to reach, in the distance, and for the rest of the business to be able to say, wow, that's incredible. So like unknowns, example, So I wanted to start with that, just in case you are sitting somewhere right now ⁓ and you've done the thing, which we all do, ⁓ where you go and ask someone that you really respect if you should do thing and they give you the out and they no, no, no, don't do that, it's really hard. Ask yourself the question, number one, have they done the thing that you're asking if you should go and do? If they haven't. We've had loads of different North Stars, to be honest, because as we've evolved as a business, you know, back in five years ago, it would have been something like, we want to be the only company that creative companies call when they're growing. That North Star is still true, but I want to become the world's most connected creative company in the creative economy. Because I don't just want to be, Don't take their advice wholly. Take some of their advice, because they know you, but don't take it as a whole piece of advice. And number two, have you gone and asked somebody else? Have you gone to the person that has achieved the thing that you've done, all you want to go and do, and have you asked them how hard it was, the shit parts? Tell me what really sucked about getting to where you're getting to, because from where I'm sitting, it seems really inspirational, and it seems really exciting. Is it all that? be called about recruitment. I want to be called about winning clients, selling businesses, restructuring companies. And so that drips down into the rest of the business where it's like, okay, what are you doing today in the long term where your act today is going to impact that long term goal? And it needs to be able to be very clear. Is what you're doing, do the curtains match the drapes? Do the actions match the words of this North Star? And I think the ones that sit in the 75 % is when it's like, And what did you have to sacrifice and do to achieve that? So don't listen to people closest to you, listen to people closest to your goals. so nebulous, so random, so meaningless, that people don't know how they contribute to that North Star. Okay, my second learning from the week. And so look, some of these things come from, I might be listening to a podcast, it might come from a conversation. We had our recent Good CEOs get together two weeks ago, where there was lots of conversations. And it might be that a thing from that conversation might then inspire me as I'm listening to it. and then someone says a thing on a podcast where you go, oh yeah, and it kind of does this thing in your brain where it sticks. But I heard this quote. You can beat 99 % of people if you can master the shame of rejection, the boredom of repetition, and the pain of feedback. I'll do it again. You can beat 99 % of people if you can master the shame of rejection. That hits. The boredom of repetition, that also hits. And the pain of feedback. I see so many people thinking about starting a business and they love the beginning part. How might bending spoons learn from ⁓ some WPP's ⁓ mistakes? I think if you go back to why and what happened with ⁓ WPP, the whole thing was around acquiring assets that meant something. JWT, VML, Wondermen Thompson, sorry Wondermen that became JWT and Wondermen. thing that bought was... the fuck you, I'm gonna do it differently, I'm gonna, you know, here's my positioning deck and here's how it's all gonna sound and then they sit back and they go, okay, I'm gonna start this. They start, they realize there is a ton of rejection. No one wants you to do this. Not even your partner in some cases, not even your friends, not even the industry sometimes. Henry Ford, if I asked them what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses. Then he invented a car, I think. valued by the customer that was buying it. Brands needed advertising in the way that JWT made advertising. Brands needed ⁓ user experience and connected advertising in the way that VML were doing it. It goes on and goes on. Where I think Bending Spoons have nailed it is they've realized people have gone to Evernote, AOL, and all the other companies, Eventbrite, for a thing that they really value, and they've not taken that away. You have to accept that when you come up with a new idea, when you start a new business, when you join a new role, whatever it is, you're gonna have to have some rejection and you're gonna have to be okay with it. For me, my first ever job was working in what I call the Foxdens of creative recruitment. Lord love it, Gemini people, shout out, no longer with us, acquired by major players back in the day. But at this end of the recruitment industry, it was calling people up and people putting the phone down, turning up to meetings, people forgetting that they'd even booked a meeting with you. They've kept the value of the thing, but they stripped it out of the stuff that wasn't valuable. A lot of companies, I think, as you're trying to survive and thrive and diversify, you end up bolting on parts of your business that aren't cool reasons as to why the consumer's coming to you or why your clients are coming to you. And so I think Bending Spoons, it sounds like they've already learned from that mistake. They will be relentless in understanding the value of the things that they have bought. saying kind of sorry, but who the hell are you? It was like five years of getting a spoon out and eating shit and having to say, it's okay, people don't necessarily like me. I will have to try and convince them to like me or to come away to my way of thinking. There's the rejection part. There's also the monotony. Starting a business, starting a new role. think, you know, we underplay the importance of 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours isn't always enjoyable. There are gonna be times where you're kind of on, you know, in the customer's eyes, in the paying customer's eyes and not in their heads. We have a problem in the industry, which is we're staring at our navel for a long time and we're forgetting the very people that are buying the stuff from us. And we sometimes think we know better than they do. So I would say that the best thing that you could do if you were a Bending Spoons is focus relentlessly on why the customer's buying the product from you and how you make it better. autopilot, doing the same shit over and over again, not realizing that you're actually getting better and better at that thing. And then the hardest thing, feedback. We implemented a 360 feedback culture at Unknown. Has it worked? I think we're still getting there. I don't think people like giving it and I don't think people like receiving it. And I think you have to build an environment and as a leader, demonstrate. what it's like to give and receive bad feedback. I was a people pleaser. I'm a recovering people pleaser. I'm trying to get over it. But I hated giving bad feedback. I really didn't enjoy it. And so I had to find out these frameworks and way of delivering it. Receiving it, I think as a people pleaser, I'm better. I like getting feedback I think I've had so much of it in my life. ⁓ Bad feedback, awful at receiving good feedback. Generally, I found the best leaders that I know aren't protective of this ego where they can't hear any bad things said about them or their process or their stuff. They go out and they seek it. They seek it because they know that ⁓ bad things happen to quietly suffering parts of your business. And you can only find out about those parts if you go looking for them. So I like that quote. It really kind of made me land on this. belief, I think as we're seeing more of these independent agencies pop up, some will be brilliant freelancers where they take on two or three clients and some of them will be incredible businesses. Some of them will be built by people that are very willing to accept rejection, very willing to accept the monotony of their jobs and very willing to accept bad, good and average feedback to help them get better at their thing. And I think again, it comes back to a quote which I love and that is, people are either playing to win or they're playing not to lose. It's that whole growth mindset versus fixed mindset or the other way around thing. You want to spend your time around people that are playing to win. You want to spend your time around people because that is an attitude I believe we have where you've learned the things that it takes to win. The people playing not to lose and I hate to call out the holding companies but it's you got to start there right now. If you're a CEO in a holding company right now, it's a really hard place to be because you are reporting on a quarterly basis, your one to 5 % hopefully growth to Wall Street, to shareholders, to people that have put money in your thing so you don't lose. That is a very different business to a startup company where it's like, what have we got to lose? Let's just play to win. How many relationships can we grow? How many products can we build? How many different... Operating models can we try? How many people can we bring in and empower and break the rules and tell them they can do whatever they want and be whoever they want? What an incredible environment to be around. On the other side of that, you've got what it feels like to belong in a holding company where a lot of those crazy growth moments of what could possibly go right, know, that mentality flooding through the veins of every single person working in that business. I don't want to tell a negative story about the holding companies because I think at a time that model really made sense. It made commercial sense. You take out the key man risk. You kind of operationalize the business and you make sure the company is focused on doing what they do really, really well. The focus is awards and culture and work and that worked for a while. When it's not working, what's that thing? It's capitalism on the way up and then it's socialism on the way down. Everything's grow, grow, grow, baby. Try what you can, try what you can. Then when it starts to come back down, it's like, fuck, okay, who? how are we spreading this? ⁓ God, de-risk, de-risk. Make sure that everyone is doing what they should be doing. Not crazy things, but just like the right job at the right time in the right place. You start to see this kind of ⁓ to a business because they're so afraid losing. And then that drips into the culture of the business. They're playing ⁓ not to lose versus playing to win. And I think that's an attitudinal thing. I'm not saying that if you are in a holding company, you can't play to win. I'm saying it'll be harder, but it's worth it. And if you can figure out what is it that we need to do within this culture, within our relationships with our clients, so everything we do is about winning and trying things. I think the first thing you'll come to is the culture that you build around fear. I think the first place you'll come to is do people feel like they can give and take? good and bad feedback. Do people feel like they can plug in with full autonomy to do the thing that might be quite boring, but repetitive and therefore create bigger things? Do people feel like they're able to fail? Can they take big risks? Can they take strategic gambles on behalf of winning the $100 billion business? Or would you prefer them to play small and just focus on that million dollar business, just not losing it, just don't lose it? ⁓ I think there's something in there. I like it. I'll land on my last quote on this, is, money loves speed, wealth loves time, and poverty loves indecision. I'll go again. ⁓ loves speed, wealth loves time, and poverty loves indecision. What the fuck do I mean by that? start at the other end. loves indecision. When you're figuring out how to finance your company or you didn't make that decision or you went, ⁓ let's just see how it plays out. I guarantee you someone somewhere went and did it. Ahead of you, they took the gamble, they didn't mind the risk and they went, I'm gonna try it. And they won. they won the money, they won the thing because they made the decision. Those that sit ⁓ the purgatory ⁓ indecision of should we, ⁓ God, what if, I generally find that those are the ones that end up. less happy less wealthy. Wealth loves time the middle of there. ⁓ If think about wealth, if you put it into an S&P 500, it's ⁓ going to somewhere between 8 and 12%. That's a long-term 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 year play. Wealth, and that's not just in money, that happens in skills. ⁓ I the idea of playing long-term games with long-term people. ⁓ Many that I've worked with have left the creative industry and gone into the tech industry. and they found themselves competing against people that have been in it for a very long time. Your network is your net worth, right? So you spend time building wealth of relationships over the course of 20 to 30 years within a niche, you will be wealthy, not just in the great relationships that you've got, but also as a commercial vehicle as well. Long-term game with long-term people. So I like that quote. ⁓ guess I'm saying it, I'm saying all this stuff because... I think we sit on stuff for too long. I think we fear rejection. I think we fear being wrong. I think we about ⁓ it and find out. We worry about ⁓ for forgiveness versus asking for permission and all that stuff. I guess I'm saying this to you right now. If you're pondering something that in your gut you know is right, even though two or three people have said don't do it, I dare you to do it. ⁓ thing, not all the things, because that's one thing that we can get around. Don't do all the things at once. Pick the one thing that feels fucking exciting, like you're pulled to go and do it, but someone has told you not to do it. Those things always pay off. Not least because you wanna go prove them wrong. So I'll end that. That's my second insight that I've had in the last couple weeks. Actually, I want to add two more to that. I think we're in world of making big moves, big changes, ⁓ we've glamorised. Because of social media, you only see the success, you only see the outcome. And you'll just hear this business has announced this huge thing. You're like, how the hell have they done that? How, where did that come from? The reality is that it's really a case of small habits over time that's led to that dramatic change. It's very rare that someone just goes, I'm to do this thing. And in two weeks, it becomes a dramatic success. I guess what I'm saying is once you've made a decision on something and you're moving towards it, The success won't be the decision in itself. It'll be showing up relentlessly every day. Volume beats luck. Volume negates luck. If you stick at it, if you're sure on the thing and you're ready to prove everybody wrong, show up every day. Set yourself a mission. Set yourself a task where it's like, I know I wanna get to this thing. So to get to that thing, I'm gonna do this thing a hundred times. I'm just gonna be relentless. This could be... This could be starting a podcast. Don't you dare be part of the graveyard of podcasts that have started and given up after 10 episodes. They do a series and they go, fuck me, that was a lot of work and I got no followers. You have to stick to it. This year I said to myself, I'm gonna do two of these every single month for the whole year and if it still sucks, I will park this and find a new thing to do. But I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying the process. I've set a goal, I'm showing up every week to this thing. Hasn't gotta be a podcast. It could be building a personal brand. It could be, I'm gonna just write 100 LinkedIn posts in the next three months, every day. I'm even sure if that maths works out. How many days is there? In the next four months, every day. whatever it is, be relentless. ⁓ that small habits beat dramatic change and volume negates luck. I really, believe in that. There are so many things that I've started and stopped and I've looked back on and I've gone, I wish I just carried that on. Because I had something in me that ⁓ going, but I just didn't know. what the goal was or what I was trying to achieve. I wish I just stuck to it and just carried on doing that thing, because I know that volume negates luck. So, I don't know. Wherever you are in the world, I hope that hits you somewhere. Maybe someone said it in a meeting four weeks ago and now I'm saying it to you as you're listening that you want to go out and do that thing. Go do the thing. Go do the thing. About two and a half years ago, Good CEOs wasn't a thing. And two and a half years later, it's now 75 people in a WhatsApp group where we meet every six weeks. I feel like just being accountable to this thing and it kind of leads on to what I was just talking about, about just showing up and just giving it a go. I said to myself, I can get a hundred people in a group and we stick to making the culture right and we don't overload it and we keep it cool and make it a vulnerable, nice culture, that it will be worth it. And it's totally worth it. I love this quote that landed with me as well, which is, spend time around people whose minimum standard is your goal. That's kind of what I'm doing with good CEOs. Some of these people have built businesses that are 20 times the size of my business. And some of these people have the culture that 10 times the culture of my business. And it will just be, it's so interesting because not one of those CEOs is 10 out of 10 on everything. But the sum of the parts equal 10 out of 10. Some are great at finance, some are great at operations, some are great at culture, some are great at the work side of things. All of them are great and world-class at one thing. So if you spend your time around people, their minimum standards in finance or minimum standards in culture and operations is your goal. It's that whole thing of spend time around six people, you become the mean average of those six people. I believe that's what's happening to me as I belong into this community. So I guess I'm saying this to you to say, don't underestimate the time. that you spend with other human beings that you find inspirational. And if you can't physically do that, you can or-de-er-ly, surround yourself with those voices. I find that podcasts are my version of that. If I'm living a remote life, if I'm away for two weeks or whatever, I will find someone that I find really inspirational. And I'll just absorb that information because you're hearing from someone that you find inspirational. And again, it goes back to the first quote of the first part of the podcast, which is that ask people who are close to your goals. So it's quite a nice loop actually. It kind of loops back into this ⁓ philosophy of learning from people that you're inspired by and asking for directions and people that have been where you're going versus the people that have never been where you're going. All right, gonna into ⁓ one piece news. I'm only gonna do one piece of news in this episode. I'm gonna do ⁓ one piece news and also one prediction because, well to be quite frank, it's really fucking hard to do three predictions every two weeks. And if I did, and if I just fudged them, I feel like you'd be like, he's just making them up. And I really wanna mean the predictions that I'm making. So ⁓ this is because my, My piece of news drips into my prediction. Okay, what is my piece of news? I hear you all screaming at me. Bending Spoons has just announced its plans to IPO at an $18 billion valuation. What the hell is Bending Spoons? I'll tell you. Bending Spoons, fantastic name by the way, fantastic name. I'm seeing Yuri Geller Bending a Spoon. I don't know which show it was on, but he bent a spoon with his mind. And I guess. ⁓ at that valuation, this company had done something similar. What do they do? So, and why am I speaking about it? Because this is a tech company. It's a highly operationalized tech company, but we're called unknown for a reason. We borrow things that are happening from different worlds. We're not just learning, we're not navel gazing, we're not just asking one person how they're doing that one thing in that one industry. We're borrowing from different places. So, Bending Spoons, they basically buy aging software companies. Right, they bought Evernote, remember Evernote, Eventbrite. they've had a bunch of different things like that. AOL, AOL is in there as well, right? All these things you're like, ⁓ that that thing from 2012? ⁓ they bought them, they basically stripped them away from all of their complexities, where they have clearly a strong customer base, quite a loyal customer base. They will, you know, ⁓ those loyal users, ⁓ the entire business. ⁓ build shared finance, and then boom, off they go. Back to being profitable, back to being impactful for the communities that they serve, and back to being the business that they once set out to become. Who does that remind you of? Because to me, it reminded me of WPP. If you think in the 90s or in the 2000s, the of WPP was incredible. You would buy this is a bending spoon, not an aging software business, but a remarkable advertising business or media business or data analytics business. You would bring them in, you would de-risk them by taking out the reliability on the key man or the key woman. And you would take away all the things that didn't make sense, you'd share the operations and there you go, you'd have the front door with JWT. It's been advertising since 1933 and it will carry on being great advertising. in the WPP way. Wonderman, same thing. VML, same thing. These front doors are assembled. Where they went wrong, we go into that. But it's a similar model, isn't it? We can see that there is an arbitrage. There is a delta to be made. In this instance, it sounds like it's the bottom line. ⁓ And they're looking at these and they're going, wow, ⁓ they've way over leveraged in engineering teams, or they've way over leveraged in their ⁓ web or whatever it is, they've... operations, perhaps some of these companies have really complex operations, we can see where we can make them profitable again, and build them back into being a successful company. I'm talking about this because I think we're going to see some cool things happen. what would it look like if the holding company of tomorrow was ⁓ strategic consultancy ⁓ Fundamental Co or a mini interbrand? or it could even be like an animation studio like a buck, if you look at residents. And then you'd have a social first, a campaign business that could spread the word. So these guys would be building the word, building what the business stands for. And then these guys would be doing communicating that out to the world, campaigning in all the different me, me wonderful ways that catch fire culturally. ⁓ then they buy like AOL or they buy Claire's or Macy's. Topshop, you know, one of these shops that's falling apart, not doing very well. And maybe you bolt in a mini PWC, so you've got like the backend consultancy stuff happening, Imagine this bizarre little collection of businesses where, okay, you know, you're okay cool and you're or you whatever can keep your ⁓ 90 % client work you're doing, but 10 % of the work you're gonna put into reviving AOL or reviving Claire's accessories because We will then own billion dollar business. and because of the work, it's almost like you've got your own focus study happening with your own brand, but you own the upside. So you built the IP of the brand, the operations of the brand, and you're using your services like Interbrand or OK Cool or whoever to amplify this new strategic positioning and this new version of Topshop or AOL or whatever it is. Wouldn't that be cool? Because I think it will get to a point where private equity won't just want to back professional services businesses, and they're gonna say, well, what's your IP? Like, where are we seeing recurring income? Where are the 14 to 17 year old teenage girls buying earrings on repeat? I want you to buy Clare accessories. I want you to put your work into practice. I want you to show me how you can completely change the perception of a brand. all of its retail distributors, all of its heritage and the things that you used to stand for, evolve that thing, put your money where your mouth is, because that is what all of these companies are doing around the world. Why would they not share the upside? Who knows? Maybe we might start seeing this. Why doesn't a group buy the BBC? you know, why has it got to be that Sky buys ITV? Why can't WPP buy ITV and rebrand it? you know, why can't Stagwell acquire it? I just, think we're going to start to see lateral industry moves where the upside won't just be on the brand, it will be the businesses that are associated to that brand. and that will just be stunning and I can't wait for that. this has been quite a ⁓ podcast. I'm going to finish on my philosophical point. And I learned this from Fern Cotton, not directly, but you know, I'm sure we'll meet each other one day. Maybe she'll say, hey, thanks for the shout out. But I would just say one of those things that caught me on Instagram and I was like, that's really cool. Here it comes. Abracadabra. Do you know? ⁓ what abracadabra means I think it's in Latin, I think. Abracadabra means I create as I speak. I create as I speak. If you look at that the other way, when we say all this negative stuff, like I'm not very good at that, or I don't really know if I'm gonna be that, or I'm gonna be unemployed forever, or I'm not gonna start a business because I can't, and I'm not good at, and da da da da. Pay attention to how you speak about yourself. Pay attention to the world that you're speaking into existence, because I think the more you say it, the more your brain literally believes it, and I think that's a really powerful thing to be aware of. I've definitely done, for 10 years, I've weirdly told myself I was shit at public speaking. I told myself that no one wants to hear what I have to say and I stutter when I speak and I get this big throbbing fucking limbic nerve situation going on in my head where I can't think of any words and I'm ⁓ Turns out volume negates luck. It turns out actually the more you do it, you start a podcast and you invite guests on and you shoot yourself for five minutes before they join, you prepare for those conversations and you have a good conversation. And before you know it, you get this feedback loop saying you're not so bad. You can speak to people. They do want to hear what you have to say. So abracadabra. Remember that. When you are next saying, suck at, either mean it and own it and fine, but follow it up with, but that's because I'm good at something else. Talk yourself into existence. It might not even be true. Maybe rephrase from, you know, I'm really bad at, to I need to get, ⁓ I want to get better at, ⁓ there I did it again. I said need. I want to get better at this thing. because at the moment I'm not the best version of myself at that thing. Wow, this is a bit of a, I'm getting quite pastoral, is that the right word here? But it's coming from a place of Britishness, ⁓ Dowerism. We just lost the World Cup. So, you know, I think I believe all of those players believed and I believe we as a society are fantastic. taking the easy out and playing the underdog, ⁓ I can't do that. And a lot of the time you'll be right, you'll be true, people will start to affirm that thing and start to agree with you and say ⁓ yeah no Ollie's really bad at public speaking or you know Daisy's not so good at maths. ⁓ Yeah and that becomes truth and you'll be lying there on your deathbed going why the fuck did I say that? Why did I speak that thing into existence where I could have just gone I'm gonna get better at that thing. So I'll leave you with that. Abracadabra, I create as I speak. How beautiful if you can speak something that you are crap at right now into existence just because you went, I'm gonna speak that into existence. And you might be at home right now going, I might start that business. I'm not gonna say I'm not very entrepreneurial. I'm gonna say, I'm going to become very entrepreneurial. Who knows? Who knows? I've really enjoyed this. Thank you so much. hope you're still here. If you are still here, thank you. We have some questions, I believe, from our listeners that I'm going to get into. Here we go. We have some questions from our wonderful community of good CEOs. Here is the first one.