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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So David, thank you so much for inviting us to your amazing office here in Manchester.
Could you give us a top level view about what it is that you currently do and
what you're currently working on?
Well, thank you for inviting me on your podcast. I do appreciate it.
And welcome to sunny Manchester.
And we've got a great view behind us today. So looking forward to the conversation.
So in terms of my role and remit, I'm the Chief Revenue Officer of the Mawson Group.
So I'm predominantly responsible for our outward facing
functions so that's sales marketing commercial
and what have you and we're currently working with global organizations
across the world just helping them in terms of their projects that they're working
on whether it's simple or complex and finding them the right people talent skills
training etc etc amazing amazing so I'd love to go back to the start of of your
career right in your journey so why did you get into this role and what did
that look like and what's the story there?
Yeah, I think I've probably walked a path not really the most trodden.
It's definitely an unusual sort of path that I took.
I think just going right back to when I was at school and what have you,
I didn't really leave with the qualifications that I wanted.
I think that was down to the application that I just didn't put in.
I was more interested in playing football and seeing my friends and what have you.
And I think I didn't really have the sort of the guidance that I would have
needed really to really be able to apply myself properly.
So I fell into a role with sales and really did multiple jobs and learned an awful lot along the way.
Um and i think it was only really until i went to
work for my for my brother-in-law who really taught
me how to view a business in its entirety not
just focusing on the problem that was right in front of my eyes but actually
what how did that problem come to pass and and what were the ramifications of
that problem if we didn't fix the problem itself so it's it's the full end-to-end
uh spectrum really um and he really taught me um,
what it means to be in business but also what it means to be a good person and a good man.
Um so i loaded an awful lot from him and it was really from
there that my career started to take off yeah it's
one of those right where in school i was i was the same as well where you know
my brother and sister they were very much academics they were really into their
their school and work and everything now i was there just kind of failing through
through all of it not really putting my my all into it and everyone always said
hey you've got potential you've got potential but like i never really wanted
to push it right again i was kind of doing the things i wanted to do that
interested me at the time yeah um and when you do leave school when
you don't really have any qualifications it's you're kind of limited
on kind of what you can do um and so
similar i think to your story where you know you got this opportunity i
came up working with your with your brother-in-law i also had an opportunity
to work at a startup which for me again showed me those those
ropes you know how how do you work a business like what goes into a
business and all these different lessons that you learn along the way so
of course you know within that you know sales was one of the components
that you started to get you know interested in and everything like that so were
there any i guess pivotal moments where you're like you know what sales this
is this is something that i want to lean more into um throughout that that time
there uh to be honest with you no i don't think there's many people that think
i really want to work in sales um i think it was it was really um.
It was really only one of the open avenues
that I could pursue because of my lack of
my lack of grades but that wasn't
to say I wasn't intelligent I just didn't apply myself at
school and then all of a sudden you're you're faced with
very limited choices and I
remember seeing a job actually with um ironically with
BA Systems who's one of our biggest customers or our biggest customer now and
it was to become an apprentice engineer and i thought gosh that sounds that
sounds really interesting and obviously working across different different industries
within ba systems but i just didn't have the grades yeah to be able to even apply for the role.
And i had a bit of a an oh no moment um
so like you know what the hell am i going to do now yeah
so because sales typically you don't really need to
have any qualifications you don't really need to have
any sort of steeped experience in any particular subject matter
you can get in there you can go in at the
grand ground level and you can work your
way up um so i really did fall into it um but there's so many different versions
of sales you've got your your cold calling you've got your account management
your client management etc um so it was really the only avenue i could,
explore i suppose unless i was going to go into a trade but
i just didn't have a a passion for any of those yeah for any of those things
um and like i say where i did have passion i couldn't actually pursue the career
opportunity itself so um i really do feel for a lot of children that are in
that kind of category um i do think our educational system is.
Isn't set up to help people at times yeah if
you're academic and you have good
recall and good memory you can typically pass examination
yeah and i'm experiencing that at the moment in
terms of my son who's he's a bright young boy he's
doing the 11 plus yeah the 11 plus for people overseas
is our sort of entrance into into secondary school
um and he's missed the grade so
all of a sudden now he's thrust into certain choices
of schools yeah and maybe not the school that he wants to
go to but i know he's bright yeah yeah
so it's a case of you know are we
setting people up for success um and i
don't think we are i really don't yeah i
i have to agree with you as well because again it seems
like it just segments you know the uh you
know the children coming through right into two buckets either you know
you're academic clever or you're not and if you're not as we were saying is
you're pigeonholed into the options that you have right um and sales is definitely
one of those things where you can get those entry-level sales roles you know
without the qualifications as you said yeah and the organizations that i've
worked with before again they hire you know entry-level sales roles you don't
need to have the qualifications.
But i think also with that as well is naturally within
the business and they do tend to find like a lot of churn because people
are coming in trying to see if is it for them and then you know it might not be for
them then they leave and so i'll skip forward
a little bit into your current current work now but it'll be interesting to know how
do you guys um kind of build and
manage your your sales team right because ultimately it
is a very difficult a difficult role overall right you get told
a lot you know all this rejection all these different things yeah so
how do you guys kind of build that and build that culture as well within
the work that you're doing now and the team that you're building here
as well yeah it's um it's certainly not
an overnight thing um and it's taken the
best part of a decade to build a outward facing
function that um is very detail orientated and executes at the highest level
at every given opportunity um now in terms of the the team that i have around
me now um i've spent an awful lot of time uh and investment into.
Them um having the skills to be able to reach out and do well at what they do but also,
the person in front of me um and it's really about investing in in that individual
i want people to get things wrong um i want them to push the boundaries i want
them to really stretch themselves in terms of where they want to be within their life.
So I think it's linking what do they want to achieve in life and how can I provide
them with a vehicle to be able to do that?
In terms of our general experience,
approach and culture um as i
say i'm very detail orientated and and hopefully
that transfers over into my team um and
if they're going to show me something i want it to be their best work yeah
and if it's not their best work then i tend to push back
quite quite hard um and i
think we're now in a in a period where the team
self-polices themselves because we
hold ourselves to a high standard um
they hold each other to a high standard and that
that self-policing aspect is incredibly powerful
when you're in a team environment um and i'm really i'm really proud of what
they've achieved and what we've achieved collectively um i want them to do well
in life i want them to earn earn good money um but i also want to recognize
their achievements and that's That's really important.
And I think in sales, there's lots of different interpretations of what a career
path looks like and what we should do from a management style perspective.
This is just my interpretation.
And, you know, I didn't come into a startup. It had decades of growth and expertise.
It was really how do we accentuate the positives?
How do we go out to new markets? How do we introduce ourselves?
How do we, what is our go-to-market proposition?
And then when we're in front of a customer, we ask the questions.
We never assume we add value at every single stage. And I think that's why,
you know, we went from turning over 450 million to what we are today,
which is 1.5 billion turnover.
Wow. Wow. So incredible growth, right? And just zooming back onto the sales
team and the coach that you've built there, it seems like initially you create that roadmap.
So like, hey, here's your goals and here's how we're going to get to that point.
And I think that's really important, right? because if someone's you
know just trying a new a new career or you know whatever it's
going to be is they need to see how this is going to link to then the end goal
that they might have and I think when you create that roadmap it creates so
much clarity um and in a way motivation right to
keep pushing you know in that role itself so it seemed like that's what you
guys do the initial kind of stages of it yeah when building this these teams
out um and then also as well with the clients that you work with and business
that you work with of course these are huge companies and like enterprise and
everything. So I'd love to get your take on.
How do you manage the sales process specifically?
Because of course, these like multi-year sales processes, these deals are huge.
And so how does that work from a sales point of view?
Because whenever I've worked within a company and like managed or spoke to their
sales teams, it's always a case of, you know, they're trying to hit their pipeline
for this month and, you know, some things.
But if it's a multi-year deal, like how does that then add into keeping the
team motivated and on track to kind of push those deals through if it is on
this huge kind of time horizon?
Yeah, I think there's two parts to your question there.
I think that the first part is around simplifying the message.
I think just generally we've got, not we, but sort of the UK business landscape
as a bad habit of overcomplicating things.
And I'm a big believer in keeping the message fairly simple.
So if we look at one of the sectors we work in, whether it's defense or infrastructure
or energy, whatever it may be, I want the salesperson and the sales team to
fundamentally understand the market. What is our total addressable market?
What is our position within that market? And then what is our likely route to success?
I'm kind of not bothered about the pipeline element which sounds completely
um contradictory i'm more interested in the activity levels um because i know
if the activity levels are strong,
and we are putting the right information in front of the right stakeholder at
the right time and we execute well and we can get in front of that customer
six times seven times eight times nine times out of 10 will do very well.
So I'm ultimately looking to ensure that I'm trying to eliminate the chances of us not converting.
So by having that strong activity, work ethic and approach and getting in front
of customers and being quite old fashioned about it,
I can eliminate the chances of not having the outcomes or at least the opportunities
at the end of the pipeline, if you like. Right.
Yeah. And at any one time, I want my team to have at least 10 late-stage opportunities.
Okay. Now, some of those opportunities may have been in the pipeline for two or three years. Yeah.
One of the deals that I closed took seven years, which probably reflect badly
on me in terms of my ability to close.
But sometimes the customer just doesn't see the need.
And you've got to stay with them and stay on that journey with them.
And it's not always about having one stakeholder.
You've got to be able to engage at multiple stages, whether it's procurement
or it's talent or it's HR or it's an engineering director, whatever it may be.
You've got to be able to sit in front of those stakeholders and really learn and understand.
I think in terms of the second part of your question with the sales process.
We're trying to provide meaningful information to our clients.
Some clients are very open about what they want.
And they're very clear eyed about that. Others are pretty fixed around what they think they need.
And we have to be able to sit down, understand, take on the information flow
and disseminate what we believe is right for them today.
But also, I've always got a
lens around the three, four, five year mark around where they need to be.
And we really act as a guide and a facilitator throughout that journey because
we can recall from different industries from a best practice perspective to
say, well, actually, in the defense sector, they're doing X.
There is a learning to be had there. So we really, we look at a long time horizon with our clients.
It isn't a go in, sell, and we're never going to see you again.
Far from it because they are global organizations.
Yeah. And there are multiple layers of function that we need to engage with.
And because of the level of contract value that we tend to operate at,
you get a lot of decision makers that need to be within that loop because of
the high value of contract and because they're typically over three to five years.
So there's an awful lot of people to engage with.
And it can be tricky at times. It can be really tricky.
But I think where clients are the most open, we can tend to really help them
on that long-term journey, not just fix what they need within that week, if you like.
Yeah. So it's like meeting them where they are right now. But then also on top
of that is using the information that you have and essentially consulting with
them on actually what's needed in the next five years, right? Yeah, absolutely.
We're trying to take them on a journey. Yeah. And...
We tend to do an awful lot without actually invoicing
the client for it we take a long-term view and i
think that's that's absolutely paid dividends we'll go
the extra mile um we do things for our customers where um as i say we won't
shove an invoice under their nose for them we might build them a tech platform
and six months later they might say actually could you change this down the
other we're not going to charge them for that sure um so we're taking that long-term view And as I say,
it's definitely helped us grow and build on that growth from a,
from a baseline perspective.
Yeah. It seems like a strategy of value first, right? Where you kind of give
all this tremendous value up front, whether it's information that you guys have
uncovered from the clients you work with right now, or, you know,
other just technical expertise that you have and essentially packaging all that
up and providing that to them.
And so to your point without always invoicing them, you know,
for that specific thing.
Right. And for me as well, that's been a huge thing for us, right?
Where if we can provide so much value to someone up front
and our values i think is a difficult word to define sometimes of
what is actually value um but if it's something that's
timely relevant for for them and you can provide that and
you don't really have to charge for either then you build up all this goodwill
as well within the relationship and the stakeholders that you work with it's the
law of reciprocation exactly yeah yeah exactly that and
so i think as well with the clients that we've started to
work with or you know on talks of working with the biggest problem they
face is they're trying to be very transactional in the way they
handle their business development and their sales strategy and
especially in the b2b space like of course there's some industries where you can
be transactional it's the way it's just the way it is but ultimately in
in the b2b space especially in the high ticket b2b space it
is about the relationship so how can we provide that value but then defining
what value is is obviously the the next kind of um problem to solve you know
what is actually value because again sometimes we we think we know what value
would be to a client but it might not actually be valuable to them 100% And you can't You can't.
You almost can't go in there with an agenda with the client.
I think in the past when I was first starting out, I'm very clear about what
I wanted to talk to them about.
And more often than not now, I'll sit down and go, tell me about you.
What's important to you right now?
And that open kind of question, I've not defined it from a sales perspective.
I've not defined it from a function perspective.
I've asked them an open question. And then it's really over to the client.
And it's listening to those responses and being able to adapt within the meeting
to go, okay, I understand what you're trying to achieve now.
We had a call yesterday with a global entity. We're looking for very significant cost savings.
And I was pretty honest. I said, that's going to be tough. But this is the role
that we can play. This is how we can help you on that journey.
And being able to to offer that and say actually
you're not alone we've seen this before we've got
deep expertise in releasing and leveraging
cost um cost synergies um i
think puts the the the person in front of you at ease yeah and then they they
start to open up more yeah yeah no definitely so i did have a question around
uh you know the business development activities that you guys do So sometimes
just getting that first conversation is so tricky to get that in.
So from your experience and what you've seen work, you know,
what is working for you guys to get that first conversation,
getting that ball rolling, because it is something that a lot of people do struggle
with is just opening up that door.
Yeah, I think I'll point you back at the comment I made around the total addressable market.
Before any of our salespeople are going to approach a market,
let's say it's energy or infrastructure, whatever it may be,
I don't just want us to go blindly out with a pizza-style flyer, a menu of options.
And you can tell when it's a cold email. I get them all the time.
And if we're going to approach a client, we need to approach the likely stakeholder.
And we have a very good handle on who our decision makers are at client,
but they could look different from client to client.
So we need to typically identify who's the main decision maker from a HR perspective,
a talent perspective, a sector perspective, like an engineering director,
and procurement as well.
Procurement tend to hold the purse strings for a lot of these big global organizations.
Organizations but then that's great
you've mapped the market and you've mapped the the the client that you're looking
to approach what happens next so um i think providing meaningful information
to that end stakeholder has helped us to unlock new clients different clients different sectors,
because I'm not going out with this sort of flyer approach. Yeah.
I think the other element is consistency. We never give up.
And I think in a lot of cases with clients, there's four or five typical outcomes. They ignore you.
They say, it's not me, it's someone else. They say, we're working with someone
else, as in a competitor.
They say, sounds interesting, let's have a coffee, or A and other.
But in all those instances, there's a follow-up. If they ignore you, there is a follow-up.
You schedule that, you keep approaching, you ask for referrals.
There's different ways into a client.
If they say it's not meet someone else, you've just had an internal referral straight away.
So it's what you do with that information. And it's how you position yourself in front of that client.
And that approach has stood us in good stead.
And I genuinely believe we could take that approach to any industry, to any sector,
forget recruitment we could go anywhere and it
would be um it will be successful because there's
an element of consistency there's meaningful information there's
value and there's human to human interaction yeah
yeah and what i also like is even if it is a no
or like a negative reply you can still
spin that into a positive outcome yeah right and still
get some type of result because like again whenever i work with
companies and we look into their crm that what what they've been doing is the
amount of you know leads where they they could have pushed that conversation more
but they just didn't and there's just wasted opportunity there um you know it
is is massive and i think the other thing as well is even if it is a no right
now in six months time their situation changes like the market changes and so
ultimately it can then be more timely more relevant in six months time when
you do that follow-up 100 we've had it's not always worked.
So it's not always worked but over the 10 year long term horizon it's worked very well,
and you can see the sales people who have the tenacity to think outside there's
an overused phrase but it's true they're outside of the box okay they've said no to that,
But does that mean that they're not going to be interested, like you say, in six months' time?
Or is there another angle here that we can utilize to get their attention?
And, you know, these clients who have the purse strings and,
you know, they have a lot of responsibility.
So it's not just about we can find your people, et cetera, et cetera.
It's how can we help them solve their total talent problems and their productivity problems.
And like I say, from a responsibility standpoint, they need to be compliant.
And we take an awful lot away from them.
We do the heavy lifting when it comes to that compliance aspect,
which is huge, especially in the UK from a tax perspective.
We're engaging with, you know, 18,000 contractors at any one time.
And there's a multitude of different ways that you can operate as a contractor,
whether it's through PAYE or through a personal services company or any other sort of mean.
So we're there to provide that sort of level of assurity and barrier when there's
legislation in place, or indeed there's legislation that's going to be changing. Yeah.
So, and that's just one facet of why we should be having a conversation.
Sure. And as you say, it's not, it might be no, or it might be not yet. It might be six months.
And to the point I made earlier on my client took seven years, it was because.
We never gave up um we we
kept engaging we were different stakeholders we
presented them with innovation we took them through a
workshop on tax and it took
time but i knew
we knew in our hearts that we were
the right solution for them and we've been
trading with them since 2020 uh it's
now a global agreement and they're just extending for
another five years so yeah that that's
not an unusual sort of
flight path for our customers we give
that value we open the door we never give up and then
we we keep moving forward from there yeah definitely i
love to move into the staffing and recruitment industry specifically
so of course there's a lot of recruiters.
Out there we always get the dms with recruiters you
know saying you know we've got an opportunity and things like that as
well yeah um to you like what are some of the
the biggest challenges i'd say in the recruitment and staffing industry
that you foresee over the next five years right with the rise of
ai technology all these different things coming into play what do
you think is going to be changing and what challenges do you think in the recruiting
side of things that they're gonna they're gonna start seeing it's um
it's a very open question it is um it's it's a really uh challenging time at
the moment i think just generally in the in the economy um you touched on ai
there i think ai will have a profound effect globally both good and bad.
Um which we can probably touch on in a bit more detail um but from a recruitment sector perspective um,
there's an awful lot of different recruitment agencies and individuals out there in the market,
and there's no there's no defined accepted practice right yeah of of how recruitment
agencies behave and i see a myriad of people who are working in their bedrooms by themselves and
are bloody good at what they do because they worked in an agency and they've
decided to work for themselves and they've become a sector level expert actually
and they provide an awful lot of value and i've seen the flip side where someone's
just effectively trying it on and just trying to.
AI is going to have a huge impact because if you look at any business process
now, most of it's digitized.
And if you look at the recruitment process, the CV we receive is digital.
The candidate record on our CRM database is digital.
The way we pay them is digital. So that has real implications from an AI perspective
in terms of processing and being able to digest huge amounts of data.
Now, what we can't do is lose that human element of being in front of customers
that we've talked quite a bit on, but also for our candidates as well.
Um there's no way that
we'll go to a just completely ai-centric approach
um i want that human
to human interaction yeah that's going to be super important
um and the
way clients procure agencies differs some go actually it's a problem you deal
with it and it's fully outsourced some are somewhere in between and some are
absolutely we're not using agencies no agencies yeah no agencies but.
I think agencies can provide tremendous value from a number of standpoints,
really, whether it is that compliance aspect, whether it is intelligence from a talent perspective.
We've worked with major, major clients who've had real headaches working on
national infrastructure projects, and we've helped them to take talent from different sectors,
retrain them, and deploy them into said
sector that they're currently working in now would the
client have been able to solve that without using ourselves
sometimes you're just too close to the trees sure and
in the woods to be able to do that so i think there
are some fantastic operators out there and you know there's there's respected
competition without question um so i think agencies will be around for some
time yet people working in their bedrooms will be around for some time yet but i think the the ai um.
I'm going to say opportunity is really interesting.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's quite interesting. I actually worked in a recruitment
agency, you know, a couple of years back.
And I was like building up their go-to-market playbook, their strategies,
you know, building with that clay.com, all these new tools and everything.
And something that I learned from them, and they're like an amazing agency,
they work really well, is about the relationship angle and that aspect, right?
Where relationships really do matter. the human element in your process really
does matter and so i think this is a good kind of talking point for all companies
starting to add in ai into the processes like where do you need those human
elements those human touch points because again like when i started you know
this business we then was like let's go the full ai route you know we can just completely have an ai.
Exactly and um and so what we need to do
of course is figure out okay where do we have those human touch
points in you know where is it important to have that in and um
and make sure those are in there right because again especially in
in the work that that we do where relationships do matter is you
can't always outsource that to ai no but i think the interesting
conversation is going to be in the kind of next few generations because let's
say the you know the young generation coming through now where
they have been brought up with ai and all these things they might
be able to connect with ai on a on a much deeper level so when you kind of look
in the next kind of few decades is is that going
to shift where actually they can connect
and build relationships with that ai kind of kind of
presence let's say and so i think that's going to be interesting on a generation to
generation basis and how that's going to change but i do think for sure in the
next kind of decade two decades etc keeping some type of human element in is
going to be quite important and be a differentiator as well it's good it's going
to be difficult right because you mentioned um generations there and i think
that's going to be pivotal yeah um.
My sons are doing this their neck is at this angle, they're looking down they're on an iPad and,
the um 10 and 7 respectively but i think a lot of the the younger generation
coming through want to interface through this yep so they're not used to having
a face-to-face conversation they don't actually want to have a face-to-face
conversation so that we need to think about that because,
if they're going to live in this world you know this like single pane of glass,
how are we going to engage?
How are we going to provide value? How are we going to establish trust?
That's going to be really hard.
Um, I'm a strong believer in the fact that we're human beings and,
um, there is a connection there that, that needs to be established and developed.
Um, and I never want us to lose that. That is so important. Yeah.
But this is a challenge, this device thing.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, and it's, it's one of those, right?
Like the art of conversation.
It's something that you can't just like read about or anything like that.
You have to go out and have conversations with, with people.
Yeah. And what I love about the podcast setting itself, like specifically is
that you can start a conversation with someone and you kind of end up in a completely
different place. And it's really cool how that works.
Whereas let's say, for example, you're talking to ChatGPT or whatever,
it's pretty kind of systematic in the way it is. You don't really kind of go
off into these different angles.
And so the art of conversation, I think, is something that, you know, it does need to stay.
But how we then teach that to, you know, our children and the next generation
is going to be definitely an interesting, you know, learning experience, I guess.
A hundred percent. And even when, you know, we discussed doing this particular
pod, you didn't share an agenda with me. And I'm glad you didn't.
Do you know what I mean? Because I wanted to just have a conversation and share my story and interact.
Yeah. You know, that's really important. Yeah, no, for sure. For sure.
Okay, brilliant. So AI, of course, I want to zoom into this because it's such
a huge topic and so many things are going on right now.
So i guess in your processes right
now like how are you guys starting to adopt ai
into the day-to-day of working and then it'll be interesting to see about the
future you know what that could look like as well yeah i think it was the um
the site there was a science fiction writer i think called william gibson and
his quote was the future is already here it's just unevenly distributed and um.
You could really lean into AI. You could go all in and there are different platforms
out there where you can effectively automate an awful lot of your business.
Is that the right thing to do? I'm not entirely sure. I think there's definitely a place for it.
But there's a balance to be struck here.
I think AI has some wonderful abilities,
you can get information like that you can get white
papers in seconds um but i
think it could promote quite lazy behaviors yeah by
the individual and if you take away that
critical thinking aspect that any human
should have we're going to be in a very different world
in it in a few years uh time for sure
just circling back to your
question around how are we implementing in
ai i think we've looked at that journey from
you know onboarding a finding a candidate
onboarding the candidate making the candidate visible all the way through to
interview placement payment etc etc and without question there are aspects of
our process that ai has had a fact a fantastic effect on so for example if you think about.
The CV is an interesting one because I think it's a bit of an outdated method of communicating,
but essentially it's a communication document, but there are huge different
variances in how people communicate and their interpretation of what a CV is.
So some send them on pdf some send
them in word some send them as plain text would you
believe emails and that creates
um huge different silos of data now being able to understand that different
data sets in a in a in an ontology in a universal way so it's coherent is actually quite tricky.
But the AI partnership we've got with Palantir has enabled us to take those
different data silos into an ecosystem that is visible,
but also helps to really understand exactly what the job requirement is and
who are the best candidates and also give you a reason and rationale as to why they're the best.
Right. So that's been really interesting because in the past,
you're relying on a human to read the CV and to go, they're a great fit for
the role and then pick up the phone, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, the pick up the phone, speaking, et cetera, et cetera, absolutely still
happens. But has it made our recruiters more efficient?
For sure. Yeah. Because we're getting to the right quality candidates faster.
It's helping pick out elements that maybe the human might have missed a big thing that,
You'll hear more and more is around bias. Yes. Yeah.
And we work very, very hard with Palantir to ensure that, you know,
our matching was based on skills. Yeah, objective.
Correct. It wasn't based on any personal information or anything like that.
And we have an agent that's constantly running in the background to ensure that
that's absolutely apparent and working.
I then hear well ai is going
to be biased and i'm like what about human beings yeah
who's to say that they're not uh biased so
i think i think it's really
um provided those efficiencies now where
we go next with it is going to be really interested really
interesting i should say um but for
now it's it's definitely sped up the process yeah yeah
i guess on a wider level when we when we zoom out
what are some of the uh kind of ai developments that you're
the most excited about not necessarily in the staff and recruitment space but
you started generally speaking because i think right now there's like there's
so many like interesting use cases popping
up everywhere right um you know i saw one recently
a startup that's going to help people build ai podcast
right and so again yeah exactly
i'm not sure how i feel about it but it's uh it's an interesting use
case right and so what's some of the things that you're excited about and you
foresee you know coming up in the next few years um gosh outside of sector i'm
um i'm generally interested in um companies like tesla um controversial statement
but i think elon musk is the you know the greatest innovator of our time. Yeah.
You know, what he's done with Tesla and SpaceX and Starlink is just,
I think it's quite incredible, to be honest.
One of his companies is Neuralink, which is their brain interface.
But predominantly...
I think the medical field will experience fantastic um discoveries um for sure
that's that's going to be um
the main area that i would i would personally watch i think if you go to,
like the dark side which is you know how can ai have an impact negatively there
was a white paper called AI 2027, which I think they created different scenarios.
They went through a Monte Carlo type scenario, which they tested hundreds of
thousands of potential outcomes.
But it went down quite a negative path in respect of an AI technology was developed.
The government in that location put their arms around it.
And then it turned into a bit of an arms race right and
um the ai became uh sentient
or turned into a super intelligence and then started to run the
government so it's quite a depressing sort
of potential outcome there was like a red outcome and a green outcome and the
green outcome was let's talk let's work together let's make sure that there's
um guide rails around how we use ai and the deployment of air from a global perspective,
not US, China, et cetera.
Um, so it's going to be a really interesting time and just again,
you know, for, for the school leaders.
I think I'd probably go into a trade because you've got the rise of robotics and Optimus, a Tesla,
you know, Boston Dynamics, which if no one's watched a video from Boston Dynamics,
do that. You see some crazy robot stuff.
So robotics isn't far away. People go, oh yeah, robots, you know,
the Jetsons, all that kind of stuff.
Don't think it's coming, but it is. Yeah. And that will, again,
have profound impact in different markets,
whether it's picking and packing for amazon
let's say or it's working on a construction site or whatever
it may be so there's going to be there's going
to be some rapid rises here in
in areas that we're not probably even thinking
about yeah i think the robotics piece is something
i'm i'm very excited about but it's going
to be very interesting so i had a podcast recently um and what
the company does they make the the visual component for for robotics
um where what they do is that you know they're
the the producer of you know any type
of robotics when they need to have the visual input they create that component
for it and he was saying that the interesting thing with robotics
is that it's not just you know what we can see
they have many layers of depth on terms of like what's
their input so if it's thermal if it's like sonar if
it's all these other types of visual components they can merge everything together
into one thing and have this kind of incredible visual prowess
let's say yeah um about that you know that technology so
when we start thinking of the use cases of that right on the on the warehouse
floor when we're thinking maybe even in our homes like how does that all then
kind of add together and where's it going to go right it's huge and um again
going back to elon musk he talks about you know.
An era of plenty an abundant era where everything is done for us but then,
you know as human beings like we need purpose we need a reason to get up in the morning,
um and if we don't have that i've seen it
personally have like detrimental uh effects on
people yeah you know i i
hear that as well and i agree i'd love to move more
into kind of your own development over the years and
what you've been working on so obviously during this time
you've helped build and scale the company you're gonna help with a
lot of business and of course with that comes a lot of personal growth as
well yeah and also balancing so you know
for myself got married back in april so we're having this kind of conversation how
do i balance my my work and yeah relationship with
my family and i think it's very interesting when you are someone who wants to
be very successful and what you do is how do you kind of balance all these things
together so i'd love to hear from you how have you found the balancing act over
the last uh the last few years as you've also been very focused on the work
that you do as well hard if i'm being really honest it's.
It's a very tough balancing act.
And regardless of role and seniority, you know, these devices were always on.
So in the past, you left work at 5 p.m., 6 p.m., whatever.
That was it. There was no emails coming in. You didn't have a mobile phone.
You had a landline telephone.
And if the landline telephone started to ring, you were like, someone's ringing.
You might get one phone call a week kind of thing. It was unusual.
Whereas now, You're constantly on tap. And I think that constantly be on tap
feeds into your flight or fight element of our chimp brain, if you like.
So you're constantly on, and that's really hard.
And something that I've struggled with, young family, we're expecting twin girls
in any day now. Probably shouldn't be doing this podcast.
And there's downtime and there's
family time and there's work commitments and there's leading a team.
And then there's meeting commitments, whether it's mortgage payments or what have you.
For me i think um i'm
very interested from a wellness perspective you know i wear a aura ring um i've
had a myriad of different uh fads and pieces of equipment uh in the past sleep
is the most important thing to me yeah if i don't get enough sleep it has a detrimental impact,
being physical and going to the gym and um you know having a good healthy diet
really helps just maintain a baseline and helps me sleep yeah um and then it's
spending time with the people that can't.
Your family um when i was growing
up when i was a young boy you know you want to
have as many friends as possible i've got so many friends and
i'm so popular um but actually
you need you can probably count on one hand how
many actual true friends that you need
and that that um element of
connection if you're a b2b business and you're
struggling to build consistent pipeline and you
don't know what to do really you're sending cold emails trying linkedin
doing content doing blogs doing all these different
things but nothing's really driving results well what
we need to do we need to optimize for simply having conversations
with our ideal clients i know sounds very obvious and very simple but when you
optimize for just speaking to as many of your ideal clients as possible naturally
as a business you will make more money and so at the pods.fm what we do is we
build B2B podcasts in order to facilitate those relationships,
to build those connections with your ideal clients through the podcast medium.
It's a really great way to connect with people who you can work with,
referral partners, existing clients to deepen relationships.
And not only that, you get the content piece as well.
You get the content done for you on LinkedIn, the blog posts,
everything that can come off of one quick 30 to
40 minute conversation with your ideal client so
if you're interested in how the system works and how we're able
to book about 30 to 40 meetings per month
with our ideal clients and how we've seen personally tremendous
growth with our business but also our clients as well then click
the link in the show notes and i'd love to give you a quick demo on how we can
help one of the final questions we always ask guests on the show is if you can
go back to your 18 year old self and only take three things with you whether
it's some business knowledge some philosophical knowledge or just like general
advice what would Will those three things be and why would it be those things?
The first one would be around, don't assume that you need to follow a certain path in life. You don't.
There is so much opportunity out there.
And because there's so much opportunity, go out there, make mistakes.
You know, that's what I'll be saying to my boys and my girls when they're here
is explore, see the world.
That links very nicely to my second point, which is see the world.
I'm not that well-traveled. To be honest with you, it's something that,
um, I want to address when I'm older and I've got the means to be able to do it.
Um, but I wish I did it when I was, when I was a young, younger boy, a younger man rather.
Um, and just see different cultures and see, uh, different ways of living and
get out of this little bubble that I'm in and this world that I'm in.
Um i think it would just
have a profound effect on any young person uh any young woman any young man
so i will be shoving them on the next flight to thailand and saying get out
there and enjoy it um but be safe yeah um i think that the third one is um,
Probably the greatest attribute that I have is I'm incredibly determined and I don't give up.
And resilience isn't a given.
And I've had to develop that over the years.
But there's always a next question.
There's always a next element. There's always a next aspect.
What happens next? yeah and you know by my own admission if i was in front of
a customer this is going about 20 years and i got what i wanted that was it
end of conversation whereas the 2025 version of me,
is now going tell me more what else
how does that impact other people other functions other
people in your world um and it's that relentless drive yeah really um you don't
need to have great qualifications it really helps because it opens up options
yeah but um if you've got drive,
and you've got a good mentor um which i think should be in place for every young
person every young person should have a mentor,
you can achieve great things, you really can and yeah, I think those are probably my three.
Amazing, well thank you so much for joining me on today's show and then today's
episode, so I really enjoyed the conversation and there's so many golden nuggets
for everyone to take away, so yeah, thank you so much Appreciate it, thanks Gil, thank you.