The Reality of Business

25 Years of Bob, Jeremy & Reality: Lessons from Building a Training Business

• Bob Morrell and Jeremy Blake • Season 6 • Episode 16

Share episode

Send us a text

What does it take to build a successful sales training business - and still be laughing 25 years on?

In this special anniversary episode, Bob and Jeremy reflect on the lessons, surprises, and stories they’ve collected over a quarter of a century of running a training company.

One of the biggest revelations? Learning to take business a little less personally. As Bob admits, “Every knockback felt like a blow to the heart” in those early days. Over time, they learned to separate self-worth from outcomes - building resilience, perspective, and a clearer sense of what drives long-term business success.

From standout leadership moments to spontaneous karaoke, the stories span cities, countries, and conference rooms. You’ll hear tales from Dublin to Delhi, and Amsterdam to Atlanta - all reinforcing a simple truth: business growth often comes from the unexpected. Whether it’s a three-hour wine-fuelled lunch in France, or a client mix-up that sparks a brand-new idea, there’s wisdom in the unplanned.

There’s practical insight here too - around investing in personal development, taking time to reset, and remembering that culture, connection, and not taking yourself too seriously are all part of a sustainable leadership journey.

Whether you’re leading a business, growing a team, or reflecting on your own path, this one’s for you.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned in your own business journey? We'd love to hear your stories and questions!

For more info, free resources, useful content & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.

Reality Training - Selling Certainty

Jeremy Blake:

so, bobby, happy birthday to you, of sorts happy birthday, I suppose.

Bob Morrell:

So yeah, 25 years yeah 25 years A quarter of a century.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah.

Bob Morrell:

So if you take any 25 years going back over the last few hundred years, imagine the historical things that took place in that time.

Jeremy Blake:

And in this episode we'll see the vast difference between great 25-year tranches of history and ours.

Bob Morrell:

Almost certainly. Yes, listeners, this episode is focusing on the fact that Jeremy and I have been in business now for 25 years. Now, some of you will be shouting at your smart speaker saying, my God, you don't get that for murder these days, and you'd be right, but it is a significant amount of time and a lot has changed over that period. So we thought to mark the occasion. We're doing a number of things we're having a new logo designed and various other fun things and we thought we'd do an episode to reflect back on those 25 years, and the value for you, mr and Mrs Listener, is that we are going to go through some of the things that we've learned over that period and also share with you some of the more amusing and enjoyable times that we've had together over that time. So that's what we're going to be looking at today. Anything to add, jeremy?

Jeremy Blake:

No, but not really my style is. I was going to ask you questions about it and if you ask me some, that might work quite well.

Bob Morrell:

Why don't we do that? So okay, well, why don't you start with the first question, and then I'll reciprocate?

Jeremy Blake:

Okay. So I said to my wife two days ago I'm doing a podcast this week on our 25 years. She said it's not 25 years. I said it is darling. She said that's nearly as long as we've been married. I said well, it's kind of exactly about how long we've been married, or at least together. And she said which is interesting, being a teacher. She said what do you think you've learned? And that's a typical teacher for you. So I took that away and thought about it. Your memory is better than mine.

Jeremy Blake:

But I said I'm not going to come back to you straight away, but she did say to me what's the single biggest thing you've learned in 25 years?

Bob Morrell:

about business, which is interesting, rather than about people so I thought I would start with that one for you well, that is my number one on my list, actually good, um, and the thing I've learned about business which has taken me many, many years to learn, and I now know that I've learned it is to take business less personally. Good, because if you think back when we first started, every minor knockback felt like a blow to the heart. Everything that we thought we should be doing that we didn't get we took very personally I definitely did, and over time maybe that comes with sort of experience and confidence in what you're doing, but also a realization that there's so little sometimes that you can do to influence these things that it's best not to take it personally and just see it for what it is, which is just the sort of highs and lows of business.

Jeremy Blake:

Well, that's valuable. As we reach this point, that's really good. I would say. I've seen that in you as well. So I've definitely seen that change in you taking it less seriously.

Bob Morrell:

Well, let's ask the same question what's the biggest lesson you've?

Jeremy Blake:

learned Is that the vast majority of people I work with are not like me and I thought they would be, and what I've learned is that most people we work with, client wise, are not massively entrepreneurial. They're not massively entrepreneurial, they're not very. They're quite risk averse. But for years I thought I would be working with lots of kindred spirits when I was an actor which I was, other actors and creative types, but actually we seem to have ended up working with very large corporate organizations that want to do all sorts of things that we don't do as a business in how we behave, and that's a really weird balance to try to walk.

Bob Morrell:

I think, if I look back on, that you always wanted the best for people and you always wanted them to aspire to things beyond what they were actually doing them to aspire to things beyond what they were actually doing I won't stop that, because that's me.

Jeremy Blake:

But I sometimes think, gosh, they think that's important, or they're asking about measuring that, or they're looking at that. Wow, don't they really get this? You know okay. So I suppose what I've learned is to is to you worry less about business. I worry less about that. These people might be different or change. I now don't worry about that and realize that's how they are and let's try and connect as best we possibly can okay, anything else I learned that people are obsessed about measuring, often things that don't matter half as much as they think they do.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, and I think what's fascinating for a business like ours, that is all about how well you communicate to somebody, how you make an impact on a human, internally or externally what you say, how you listen, how you express, how you're there for them. So many businesses think that the task efficiency will move the needle in terms of profitability and margin and growth, whereas it's absolutely all the other stuff, or a large amount of the other stuff. Of course, wonderful innovation and process improvement and technical innovation, yes, but to really get a workforce to be phenomenal, they've got to feel listened to, cared for, understood, inspired. Good, and you Okay Any more on the learning side, yes, I've learned that it's important occasionally to take time out.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah good, you and I have both had chunks of time out of the business occasionally for various reasons, and I think it's an important thing. I don't think you can continue working at a certain pace without taking time out occasionally to sort of reset and restructure, and um, I think that's important and I didn't think I would ever do that.

Jeremy Blake:

So when you do, you just think, gosh, what, why didn't I have more? Or sure you know and my wife also right now, who I can see gardening in the distance. When the end of the holidays comes and I say, okay, hon, time to go back, she'll go. Oh, I don't want to go back, you know, from that time off. Yeah, and that's nice, because we all get that when we have a proper break.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you're better at breaks than I am.

Bob Morrell:

I'm working on that one well, I, I, I don't just mean, I don't just mean holidays and a few days no, I agree.

Jeremy Blake:

Time a few months out yeah, is is important.

Bob Morrell:

um, I've also learned to appreciate my own business achievements, our own business achievements, even if other people don't really appreciate it in my life and why should they? It's just, it's, it's my business and I get on with it, and the things that we achieve, I suppose, are solely to do with that business. And so I should feel a sense of achievement. And why should anybody else? But I think sometimes I've been guilty of diminishing my own achievements because you sometimes think you know this job we turn up, we train people. It's relatively straightforward. But actually, when I look back, we've trained so many thousands of people over the years and if we've made a tiny bit of difference, then it's good and we should appreciate that and celebrate it more.

Jeremy Blake:

You often use literature and things as reasons not to, so you often quote pride comes before a fall which is very, you know, bleak. That you can't be proud at times, and you've trounced that one out quite a few times in your career and you haven't said that for a while. So that's good.

Bob Morrell:

No, because. And then that comes back to the point where you would feel hurt in terms of pride if you take it personally. Hurt if in terms of pride, if you take it personally, yeah, but if you don't take it personally, then that's fair enough. The other one I've got. It's important to invest in yourself, and you and I have both invested in ourselves in numerous ways over the years been coaching and other courses that we've gone on, and also I've done my pilgrimages, which has been an investment in myself which I would highly recommend to anyone. In fact, my son's just completed one yesterday, so I think that's a great thing for people to have a an investment in themselves in terms of their personal development. And then my last one is I think that it's been so essential in such an important part of what we've done that life would be so much harder without curry and, certainly in the early days, karaoke.

Bob Morrell:

I wonder if the business would have survived without those two things my god, karaoke was like a vital pulse for us, wasn't it? I'm going to go back to that. We've got a big tour coming up and wherever I can. I'm going to seek out karaoke because I think such a good idea yeah, yeah, changed it to karaoke.

Jeremy Blake:

It wouldn't quite work quite so well because you'd be full of full of curry before you sing yeah, I don't.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah, you couldn't have to combine the two in the same building, I think, um. So those are mine. Any others from you on the learning?

Jeremy Blake:

front. The only other learning thing was collaboration has dramatically improved us as a business and people we yes, we were a bit more insular, going back a bit well, there are only a few of us well, exactly, but now we get other perspectives, other ideas.

Jeremy Blake:

I've just been working with lisa, who's joining us again, you'll be pleased to know, um yeah, and she's just given an amazing insight on objection handling by combining two of our models together, which, which is really delicious. You're going to love it, so I'll share good, good, and I said that's great.

Bob Morrell:

That's I mean. I definitely feel that I mean, I loved it the other day when we had all our trainers together and everyone's dipping in with ideas yeah and you then realize that you've got people who really know what the hell they're doing so that makes it so much easier for us, doesn't it?

Jeremy Blake:

and the other thing which we'll come on to is humor is is the key to all of this having a giggle, taking the piss, allowing the piss to be taken out of oneself yes is glorious, really well, that brings me on to I've got five what I've called the best times that I've thought of off the top of my head.

Bob Morrell:

So I'm going to and they're under these titles best gig, best tour, best night out, best conference and best lunch. Okay, so I've got five best of there, so you can have a think about those while I go through. Okay.

Jeremy Blake:

So I put in best times generally. So.

Bob Morrell:

I would like to see if they are the same. Okay, so the best gig? What do you think I got for that? What was the best gig? Do you mean a one-off Yep, okay, best gig. Well, it may have been part of a tour, but we did a day. It's us doing our training. We turned up, there was an audience of people.

Jeremy Blake:

Okay, I'm going to go for Benidorm. No, oh, that was one of the best. No, I won't guess anymore.

Bob Morrell:

The best gig was 35 people from all over Ireland who we met in Dublin at a hotel near the airport, and that day was one of those days where you have your audience. Yeah, halfords, you have the audience in the palm of your hand. The laughter was just hysterical all day and at the end of it it was just so warm and so fantastic. That was a top gig.

Jeremy Blake:

And they had. Actually, the guys from northern part of Ireland had flown to Dublin as well, hadn't they? Or come into Dublin, and they said why don't you come to Belfast next, do you remember?

Bob Morrell:

Absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was a brilliant gig and I've always loved going to Ireland ever since. And that particular trip, you may recall, was the night we had dinner in the Restaurant in Dublin and Marie, a lovely waitress gave us a fantastic close, an assumptive close. Now, none of your nonsense. Which dessert are you going to have? And we immediately ordered two sticky toffee puddings whereas we had been feeling quite full. But her assertiveness gave us a close that we talked about for years, so that was a great one.

Jeremy Blake:

Well, one of my best times is in Belfast in Northern Ireland. We were doing some training and I can't remember it could have been a travel group.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah.

Jeremy Blake:

And people were coming from different agencies.

Bob Morrell:

Yes.

Jeremy Blake:

We then went to the Crown Bar.

Bob Morrell:

Fantastic bar.

Jeremy Blake:

And we met John Linehan who plays May McFetridge, very famous pantomime dame character. We had an evening with him and the chap who'd been in holby city and jerry, jerry, spring of the musical we had an evening with both of those two. Now, john linehan is absolutely legendary in belfast, but it was literally just the four of us chatting for hours with him. He's still doing the panto. I looked him up before this podcast.

Bob Morrell:

This year will be his 35th there we go, that's his, that's his pension 30, oh yeah, but he's just done an interesting podcast.

Jeremy Blake:

We should go and see him again we had a great night with him.

Speaker 3:

He was an adorable man.

Bob Morrell:

He's an absolutely so that was a terrific night now let's extend this, so I've now got the best tour, and it was a toss-up between two um, but in the end there was no contest for the best tour well, the first one we ever did was pretty important at growing our confidence for twoe so that was just an amazing experience of becoming trainers and growing our business yeah I don't know what have you got? The best tour was, without question, travelocity, which took us to india, pennsylvania, texas, seattle, um yeah, all over the us.

Jeremy Blake:

The other place place on the border of Mexico.

Bob Morrell:

No, that was San Antonio.

Jeremy Blake:

San Antonio, sorry, yeah, yeah.

Bob Morrell:

So that was a fantastic tour. We traveled around the world. We went to Delhi and trained over there. That was a huge project, training hundreds of people. We had some wonderful gigs there, very funny gigs there. We can't say some of the things that came out of, some of the things we were asked in Texas, but it was hilarious.

Jeremy Blake:

I nearly lost you safe to say, I nearly lost you wanting to remain in India, didn't I?

Bob Morrell:

Oh, I could have remained in India for a long time. You were rather smitten with somebody's love. Of english poetry I mean, you know, english literature is a is a wonderful thing you thought that was great.

Jeremy Blake:

You thought you could live in india. You loved it, didn't you?

Bob Morrell:

oh, I, I mean india is just one of those places which is so fast moving and so um so full of excitement, and we had wonderful nights and striker's bar yeah, with the brewery again. Yeah, with the brewery and watching uh ragu dixit do his fantastic gig and meeting him. It was. That was a great trip, so that was all part of the same project, so we can't complain about that. My sec, my runner up, was the ubm tour we did.

Jeremy Blake:

Oh yes.

Bob Morrell:

Which, across the US, took us to New York, minneapolis, which I love visiting as a big Prince fan.

Jeremy Blake:

Michael Casehammer. We went to see the jazz artist.

Bob Morrell:

We saw Michael Casehammer, and then we flew on to Los Angeles and worked there. Oh yeah, and so that was a fantastic trip. And all the Netherlands trips.

Jeremy Blake:

Oh, absolutely. That was a great tour. Do you remember you were singing in the bar in the Netherlands?

Bob Morrell:

Well, that's my next one, oh okay, right, good. So my next one is the Best Night Out.

Speaker 3:

Is that it, that's it.

Bob Morrell:

Oh yeah. So we were in Amsterdam and we did a day's work, and then we weren't flying home to the next day, and the night before we'd found this fantastic jazz bar, which, when the jazz finished, became you guessed it a karaoke bar. So we got all the people that we've been training that day to come along and meet us there, and we absolutely stormed it on the stage that night, didn't we, jay, do you remember?

Jeremy Blake:

I did love shack with half who was, uh was one of the Welsh members of UBM you did Holding Back the Ears by, of course, simply Red. And a Dutch pilot came up to me, still wearing the uniform, and said is your friend Mick Hucknall? And I had to say no no, that's Bob, and you've always not liked that, but he couldn't see you, didn't you? And I also do ebony and ivory no, not.

Bob Morrell:

We did um easy lover, which brought the house down.

Jeremy Blake:

That absolutely nailed it you did the phil bailey high bits?

Bob Morrell:

yes I couldn't do any more from earth, wind and fire. Of course that's right.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, that's right oh, it's a great song that was a top night. We had a few drinks and a good laugh do you remember the man running the place as we left?

Bob Morrell:

oh, he was delighted.

Jeremy Blake:

He shook our hands and thanked us so much for our business coming that night and took for quenting his bar I mean, when we went in it was quiet, yeah, but when we came out, the whole place was jumping, thanked us personally for what we'd done in there. Oh, it was a good night.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah, it was a good night, so that was good. Now I've then got two more. So the fourth one is what's the best conference we've ever attended? And I really had to think about this one but I have hit on it.

Jeremy Blake:

Well, it could be Benidorm, because that was a wonderful speech. You just went off on your own the next day talking and distilling the essence of travel, and then the, the lady gaga stuff. That was all wonderful, but you've got something better, have you?

Bob Morrell:

oh yeah, as an experience, I've got the.

Jeremy Blake:

I've got the best one we did and my brain has gone blank, of course dubai.

Bob Morrell:

Oh yes, yes, that was a great conference. We flew out, we did a gig, we did an hour's work, we had a few days in Dubai, we went out into the desert. That was a fantastic trip.

Jeremy Blake:

We met Martina.

Bob Morrell:

We met Martina Navratilova. I mean life doesn't get much better than that. We ate well, we drank well. Yeah, I mean. Dubai, I think, is very much a Marmite place for lots of people, but I think for a few days we had a great fun there and we affirmed our relationship with lots of companies there who we have worked with and work with over the years, and it was a really fantastic experience.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, that was tremendous. So, Martina, what she did which is a good tip for anyone listening is, if you want to get questions at the end, you won't quite be able to do what she did, where she said any questions and no hands went up. And she then got a tennis ball out from a massive box of 24 or 12 tennis balls, started to write Martina Navratilova on the balls and said any questions and I'll throw you a ball, and every hand went up. It was brilliant. So what can you throw out into the audience to get?

Bob Morrell:

questions. Very good idea. Now, the last one I've got is the best lunch and I really had to think about this, but then it was obvious to me.

Jeremy Blake:

Are we working or just eating? We're working. Oh, is it the cocktail coaching type thing?

Bob Morrell:

No.

Jeremy Blake:

Give me a clue.

Speaker 3:

You're listening to the reality of business, created by Reality, training the minds behind the five principles that power so many successful sales models today. These principles deliver consistency and certainty in your sales approach.

Bob Morrell:

Discover how we can help you sell more at realitytrainingcom um.

Bob Morrell:

it was the best lunch on a training day god, this is difficult, oh, montpellier absolutely yes yes, so we went out to Montpellier on a few occasions actually, and this was something that we realized was a big thing in France was that when you do training your timings for the day, kind of go out the window watches and they say, look, we've, we've got to go because we booked a table for lunch. We go, okay, so you go down to this little restaurant and you have three courses and coffee with wine, yeah, for lunch in the middle of the day. So everyone gets stuck into the wine and you come back at sort of half past two quarters to feeling slightly warm and relaxed.

Jeremy Blake:

But it's been lovely in the chat and the conviviality of the team.

Bob Morrell:

We got to know everybody better.

Jeremy Blake:

It was lovely.

Bob Morrell:

That was brilliant and I think that was a real, you know a real sort of… Everybody walked down together, oh yeah.

Jeremy Blake:

Everyone walked down together into the restaurant with the sort of lovely canopies and whatever you call it, the tent-like structure. You know, it was all fabulous. Yeah, oh, that was glorious.

Bob Morrell:

Absolutely. Now it's interesting when I look back on that list. The sadness for me is that a lot of those things are foreign. In fact all of those things are foreign.

Jeremy Blake:

For starters, yeah, Well, because we're Europeans, aren't we, Bobby? We like to collaborate.

Bob Morrell:

We're internationalists.

Jeremy Blake:

We are actually internationalists totally.

Bob Morrell:

We are internationalists and also I think it says something that these days there are less foreign gigs going around, and that's for various reasons that we're not going to bore the listener with now, which are probably self-evident. But I think there is something in that thing of going away somewhere, and we've had many great conferences and many great trips, you know.

Bob Morrell:

But, those ones stand out because there was something very special about them. You're also joined by very special people who you remember, who in many cases we're still friends with, and that's really nice, and also for us. We're running a business and lots of businesses don't have many perks, and our perk is that you get that social engagement along with your work, which is extremely lucky, I think.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah Well, and you get to know, you see lots of companies cut back on these things and people go out of the room to get lunch and they don't eat together and lots of these natural things that other countries do quite well, we don't always do as well.

Bob Morrell:

No, I agree.

Jeremy Blake:

Because it comes down to cost sometimes.

Bob Morrell:

It does. But then I think recently we did a conference that was thrown together at the last minute by a large brand and was very successful and had a really good focus and maybe it's coming back round. I think the world is going through a huge change at the moment. Maybe there is more of a market for a more international view on business sales. I think it's going to come back. I think it's just.

Jeremy Blake:

In fact, it's almost certainly to come back, because the pendulum can't really swing that much further.

Bob Morrell:

Do you know? You've just made me think of another trip we did for a conference which must go on the list. We went out to Madeira.

Speaker 3:

And do you?

Bob Morrell:

remember we did the treasure hunt around the island of Madeira over that day, finishing up at Reed's Hotel for a cream tea. That was all right and my team won. Do you remember that? I think I won, actually, I think I got all the questions right and I went and collected a prize Brilliant, Even though I was a speaker and I remember saying we've had a brilliant day today because, the ladies who organized it were the sponsors who made sure that we saw 10 major aspects of this beautiful island which you would never have done under different circumstances.

Jeremy Blake:

That was very well organized. I remember that she did really well. That was Michelle, michelle, michelle, yeah, Sharon. Yeah, brilliant.

Bob Morrell:

But there's one other thing I must draw listeners' attention to, because this is something which, whenever I think about these trips away, always comes back to me. There are people who may listen to this podcast who know that they've booked us for things, not just because they want us to speak at their conference, whatever it may be, but because they want us to sit in the coach at three in the morning going back to the hotel with the microphone telling jokes and doing funny sketches and getting everyone going.

Bob Morrell:

we haven't done that for a while, jay, no.

Jeremy Blake:

Maybe we're promoting ourselves incorrectly, as well as the speech.

Bob Morrell:

this is what we do. I remember once we were on the mic and there were various people walking on the road and you were commenting on them and it was just bedwettingly funny, very, very, very, very funny and doing impressions and all that sort of thing.

Jeremy Blake:

It was just and the signs, which is unrepeatable, I said, oh look, the local club yeah, yeah with signs that look similar to various things you know.

Bob Morrell:

Oh, it's just great so I I think so I've got another quick round biggest bull, biggest blur, biggest?

Jeremy Blake:

oh my gosh. I don't know quite how to answer this, and it's usually me where I've stumbled out with something to manage the situation. Do you mean? You mean the?

Jeremy Blake:

biggest bull that we've come out with yes, absolutely, but usually I come out with slightly more bull than you. You think a bit longer. I've had to sort of cover some things and I've got my favorite, which I know is one of your favorites. Go on then. So we had a project selling a machine to to newspaper companies or their printers, and the machine would. You've got it and the machine would apply a sticky note to the front of a newspaper.

Jeremy Blake:

And we were working with a guy and he had an example of how the Sydney Morning Herald had run a campaign for McDonald's deli choices and you would simply peel off this kind of yellow sticky note, take it into the McDonald's where you would redeem it and then they would give you some money off your coffee or a salad. And we were asking this bloke was saying, okay, how do they measure the success of this? I said, right, well, and he went yeah, how would they measure this in the McDonald's? You know how's that going to work? And I went. Do you know what they did? He went, no, what. What did they do? They got three spikes and as people would come in, they would take the sticker and push it down on the spike, and they needed three of them because there were so many of these stickers coming in the end of the day.

Jeremy Blake:

They'd pull them back off the spikes, count them up and say, all right, we've done 500 of the redemptions. And they counted by pushing them down onto spikes.

Bob Morrell:

I mean that that is a great load of bull there. Um I can. I think you've probably come up with even more extreme than that over the years, but that was one of the best. But I think what your thing is is analogies.

Bob Morrell:

So you always want to use an analogy to illustrate something, whether it's required or not. You always sort of leap to an analogy and in most cases, I'm afraid, they come from your class. Okay, which is undeniable. And so we've had some beauties over the years. So, talking to people who work in a, you know, in a frontline position in a major retail store, telling them about the difficulties of buying a saddle for one of your daughter's ponies Minty's saddle saddle, I mean that context is brilliant um flooring.

Jeremy Blake:

I had the saddler over for me.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah, I mean, I remember joe working with me, crying with laughter flooring has been a constant theme for you as well, because everyone's buying flooring, aren't they? I mean, we all have the option to buy new flooring, so that's a good one. Um, there are others, but, yeah, my favorite is actually a personal one.

Jeremy Blake:

When I was tash and I was staying at your house, you were changing broadband supplier. No, we were changing broadband supply, me and tash. I received the call because we just moved house and we are staying at your house. I received the call and I'm going what? What do you mean? I won't have broadband next week. And then I said, right, do you know what this is like? And the bloke went, like what I said it's a bit like studying GCSE Hitler, gcse history and then, years ago, finding out that Hitler didn't exist. What does that mean? And I heard I said this line, you were getting ready. I heard you erupt in the other room and you just laughed for ages. Just the sounds coming out the room attached, looking at me, going.

Speaker 3:

what are you talking about? So good, how is?

Jeremy Blake:

installing broadband in any way connected to study history, anything to do with history.

Bob Morrell:

It doesn't work. Anyway, that was very funny. I mean we've all come up with it, though. I mean I mean there's another one which I could tell. I mean we won't say who this was with, but one night we were booked. Uh, we did a day's event and that evening there was a gala dinner with awards. Okay, oh, lovely we. We had nothing to do with the awards, nothing to do with the awards at all. We were just there for the meal. I was staying, you weren't, and I'll come to my bit of the story.

Speaker 3:

I know well. We don't want to break people's hearts. No, no, no, it's okay but but so.

Bob Morrell:

So I um was on a table with a load of a load of guys who I didn't know and I had nothing to do for the rest of the evening. So I had a few glasses of wine, a few, and then, well, a fair, a fair few glasses, because you know what do you, what you're gonna do. And then the guy came over and leaned over and he said, bob, and do you think, jeremy, you think you and jeremy could present the awards for us? And I was like, yeah, sure, sure. So we got up and went up and there's a picture of me hanging.

Jeremy Blake:

I chose to recede at this point.

Bob Morrell:

I let you go on your own and I was hanging on the podium. I think I got away with it, but I.

Jeremy Blake:

So what you did was you took the P out of every company name. If it sounded like something else, you would make it something else. So there was a company that sounded a bit like well, I'm going to say what you said instead. So you said instead. So you said now aunt sally have got an award here. They weren't called aunt sally, they had a name a bit like that, but you called them aunt sally and they're sponsoring an award.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah, because it was our character of wurzel gumming.

Jeremy Blake:

Then the karaoke came on and you said jay j you've got to do one song before you go, so I came on and I chose common people.

Speaker 3:

Now, I was in a very weird mood.

Jeremy Blake:

So I was going common people like you and I was pointing out in the audience doing this slightly abusive common people song and then as I went I said I've got to go back, I've got to put my cat down in the morning. Good night. It was just so odd, as I drove away away, suddenly switching my emotions to being really upset about my cat, I heard you go, come on, real, light my fire, my heart's you really I don't.

Jeremy Blake:

I don't remember as I drove away with the windows down I heard you trying to get them all going to relight my fire oh oh my god, that was brilliant.

Bob Morrell:

See this. This is this. Is you know, again classic times?

Jeremy Blake:

um so actually what we've discovered on this podcast which we haven't really discovered you've hinted at earlier is when people book us to speak, they don't really book us to speak, they're going to get that anyway, they book us for this other stuff of course, and only the existing clients know this. We need to let new clients know this. Well, absolutely, we just have.

Bob Morrell:

And then we come back to this. You know, your common people thing brings us right back to the beginning, which is you're always a little bit different, jay, aren't you? You're just a little bit different to everybody else. Well, different is good Not everyone's like you, which is good which is a good thing, and even if you're pointing at them, calling them common, it's okay.

Jeremy Blake:

I was just being abusive. I was in a weird mood, oh dear.

Bob Morrell:

I know Bless you, but you know, it all comes from love, which is you know which is something like that.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, but yeah, it's been 25 years of training, development and I suppose as we get older we do more and more leadership work, helping leaders in how they can inspire their teams. Companies get us in to lift the sales graph, improve their communication. It's actually a never-ending job. We think that a company might be sorted, but then they're not.

Bob Morrell:

Why not no, and that's often the case where you start with the company in one place and then they move you to the next division and sometimes it's other countries, and of course we do lots more on Zoom now and that means you can get to more people more quickly, but I still enjoy. I know you enjoy it less, but I still enjoy the travel and the fun away. And, having had this conversation now, the next two tours that we're going to be on.

Bob Morrell:

I'm going to make sure I ramp up the fun element because I think we've got to bring back karaoke.

Jeremy Blake:

Got to. A lot of our trainers have beautiful voices as well. Yes, let's get on the carrie sing unless they're paid, which is fair enough, because they're uber pros.

Bob Morrell:

Well, I think that, when it comes to karaoke, we should look up the karaoke nights, look at the competitions. We should go in and win some competitions.

Speaker 3:

Why not?

Bob Morrell:

I'll go and do George Michael, you do a very good, frank Sinatra. Yeah, I was amazed once when he did Frank Sinatra in Benidorm brought the house down.

Jeremy Blake:

I couldn't believe it. Well, you do your george nicely. Yeah, it's better. I do that rather my melancholic, depressive, depeche mode stuff you know my morrissey. My morrissey stuff, you know, depends on the audience these days. Now, the other thing that we must say we couldn't have done any of this without our amazing employees, our team um of anne harris and lorraine collins yeah, and also our amazing employees, our team of Anne Harris and Lorraine Collins, and also our amazing trainers.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah, you know who you are.

Jeremy Blake:

We won't list you on it in case we miss one off.

Bob Morrell:

No, they're a great group. I'm looking forward to seeing them soon when we get ramped up.

Jeremy Blake:

Well, we're working with nearly all of you, nearly all of you on this next tour that is starting tomorrow. No is it? Yeah it? No is it? Yeah?

Bob Morrell:

uh, yeah, starts tomorrow bob starts tomorrow, you're on it yeah, I'm on it tomorrow, yeah so, ladies and gents, I hope that was an interesting float down memory lane for you and opens the door to the character of your hosts, but also, I hope some of those things we learned may be of use to you as well. Um, I'm sure we'll be returning to this theme of the 25th anniversary, because 25 years is a long time to do what we do and we're still doing it. So there may be other things that come up as we go through the year, but in the meantime, thank you all for listening and we look forward to speaking to you soon on other business-related topics.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, have a look through the list of other episodes. If someone sent you this and you can always send this to somebody else you can give us a review, forward it. But thank you for pressing play. Bye for now.

Speaker 3:

Bye.