Paul Cadman - From Bullring Barrow Boy to the Boardroom

In this episode of the DM-Mi Podcast, Sukh Hayre sits down with Paul Cadman, Birmingham-based entrepreneur, philanthropist, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Leadership, and founder of the One Thousand Trades Group.

Paul shares his remarkable journey from a humble upbringing in Bordesley Green, leaving school with no qualifications and struggling with dyslexia, to becoming a successful business leader involved in enterprise, sport, community development and major regional projects. The conversation explores how Birmingham shaped Paul’s mindset, from the old Bullring markets to the fire service, martial arts, business growth, mergers and acquisitions, and his commitment to giving back.

Paul also discusses the role of sport in building discipline and confidence, his work with Birmingham Youth Sports Academy, his involvement with Birmingham City Football Club, and why he believes Birmingham should stop thinking of itself as the “second city” and start recognising itself as “second to nobody.”

The episode covers entrepreneurship, resilience, failure, leadership, Birmingham’s tech and innovation ecosystem, the importance of community, and the future of the West Midlands. Paul offers practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and reflects on why values, purpose and people matter as much as commercial success.

A powerful conversation about Birmingham, ambition, social mobility, business, philanthropy and what it means to build something that leaves a lasting impact.

Follow Paul Cadman:

Website: https://onethousandtradesgroup.co.uk/

X: https://x.com/PaulCadmanUK

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcadman/

www.dm-mi.com

Transcript

Paul Cadman

Speaker Paul Goodman, welcome to the daily podcast. Good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for having me. Well, you're hosting me. So it's thank you to you. And thank you for your patience because I know I'm late. So apologies for that ahead of time. It's totally fine. But just for our listeners who aren't aware, uh, could you explain a little bit about your background? And we're currently here in the offices of one thousand trades Group, but as you were just explaining, uh, before the start of the podcast, uh, it's so much more than just one business, isn't it? So could you just explain a little bit about your own background and what we do here at the, the one thousand trades group? So I think, um, starting very early, so my background is pretty humble background, born in a back to back house in Bordesley Green. You know, there was four kids, we had sort of two bedrooms and that literally in the shadow of Boom City Football Club, that kind of thing. Across the road was a factory that bellowed out pollution. We all ended up with bad chest, bad skin and all this sort of stuff. And we played in a scrap yard, left school. School was really challenging for me. I left school with no qualifications at all. I couldn't read or write and a bit of a sad case, really. Uh, obviously doing quite well now. So life was a bit of a challenge, but I worked in the markets and, um, uh, sort of about twelve, ten, twelve years old. I was working ten hours a day kind of thing in the market as a barrow boy. And the old Birmingham market, which is probably the most inspirational place where you learn to meet people, learn to connect, understand what the terminology diversity is and inclusivity and stuff like that, because everybody just had a commonality. Nobody had anything and everybody there. So, um, every Saturday morning my mum would drag me on the bus, uh, for ten pence from Handsworth, uh, into bullring market. Uh, she used to love that place. So the old indoor market, the old indoor market across the road from there. So that's where I worked for years and years. And yeah, I remember going as about nine from about eight or nine years old because my dad was working Saturday morning, so she needed someone to carry the bags to the doors used to open. And there was like, it was like a jumble sale. There was hundreds and hundreds of people that used to come in and buy everything and all that sort of stuff, kind of before the days of supermarkets. So I was there kind of like the seventies, late seventies and things like that. So I'm talking kind of mid mid to late eighties. Yeah. So I was there then. Yeah, that kind of thing. But I think that just encapsulated it. Probably a story that's repeated in kind of the London market, etc. as well. But that I remember it now encapsulated what Birmingham was. Yeah. It was. And my reward for taking her would be the donuts at the top of the ramp. Yeah. So Dunkin Donuts. So I still go to the market now Saturdays and to do that. So the I was working in the market failed, uh, school education and things like that. And I realized the education failed me. I didn't fail education. And it was the days when there was corporal punishment and things like that. So I'd just get caned every day. Libido. So they asked me to stand up and recite the times tables. So I learned very quickly to memorize them, and I couldn't read them, but I memorized them. So I had this strategic thinking I'd be miles ahead of everybody else. So they'll stand up, tell me the two times table. But actually I've got three, four, five, six in my head so I could recite these. So very strategic, very thinking and stuff like that. We'll probably come back onto that. Yeah. Uh, left that, uh, went into the market. One of the, the first qualifications I had was, uh, we all used to cook, so we'd be in the kitchen and everybody would be involved in prepping the food to do that. So I had a little bit of a flair for cooking. So I turned up, um, University College, Birmingham, UCB because I wanted to be a chef. I had an aspirations to be a chef and, um, turned up there one day because somebody said, oh, they're taking people on, hadn't got the basic qualifications, hadn't got the money to pay for the course and said, can I have a course? And they said, well, no, you don't fit the criteria. But they invited me back a week later. And, um, they gave me an opportunity and a bursary. Paid for it. And, uh, I trained as a chef, qualified as didn't qualify. And interestingly, the Glynn Purnell's and the other, uh, Michelin star chefs around the city, none of them did, but they all went through there to that kind of thing went off and I was very good at sport, um, martial arts and boxing and things like that. And my dad was a famous story, my dad dragging me up the street after I'd been expelled from school on the third or fourth time. And he threw me into this boxing gym and everybody was like, don't teach him to fight, for goodness sake. I became a British champion in what we term as mixed martial arts now, and then started playing rugby. Very fit. Um, the a fire service officer saw me play rugby but I applied to go into the fire service. Knew no. Knew well that I'd smashed the physical but struggled with the academic. Yeah. Scraped in because I could play rugby. Ended up in the fire service. I spent twenty years in the fire service. Came out in two thousand and five. But let's pause it there. That's twenty years ago. And you've kind of lived a whole life already. But I'm fascinated to hear about the mixed martial arts side of things, because it is a bit of a passion of mine, so. Okay. When you were doing mixed martial arts, it probably wasn't even mixed martial arts, was it? No it wasn't. They used to call it British All Stars. So I was bizarrely and it gets a little bit embarrassing now because like dads or mums introduced me, their kids and they go, oh, you did. You'd retire before it even was born. So you don't really talk about it too much now. So it was British Champion nineteen eighty seven. Oh, wow. You know, that kind of stuff. So a long time ago. Um, but sport, I mean, the thing to take out of it, I still talk to the people I train with. It used to fight with. I still close people. You have a mindset, don't you? You know of of of deliverance, sport, fitness and excellence. You can't be beaten. You just keep pushing forward. So that's Yeah. I mean, my, um, close friend who's just down the road, uh, fearless MMA who's been on the podcast previously. Okay. Uh, so, um, I, I was with him when he first started just out of a couple of, uh, factory units down in Handsworth. Um, and now he's obviously training UFC, UFC champions. Um, but I think their bread and butter and the change I've been going there for like ten, fifteen years or whatever. Um, the change you see is because you, you get kids coming in there at, you get the young classes from five years old. But when we first started, there were fifteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year olds who were kind of, you know, um, a little bit rebellious and weren't the best at school. Um, but they found a home in the gym and they found a home to do what they could do. And they were fantastic in the gym because they had the work ethic and taught them discipline and teach them so much. I mean, you just go, it's time now, six o'clock, there'll be kids classes in there, and you'll see some of these kids who probably aren't achieving anything else from academic perspective. Uh, but the remaining in that gym and the confidence levels over a few weeks just goes through the roof. And that's what it did for me. And that's why I understand sports and I support sport all across the city. We do things. Um, there's a space in sport for everybody. Mhm. Uh, yeah. I'm told too many personal stories, but I'm involved in kids football. My daughter plays in the Manager Sunday team as well. Um, and you just see the, the progression that some kids can make. Okay. Um, some of them treat it as an extension of their school life, which can get a bit challenging for a wannabe parent coach. Um, but, um, some of them actually take on board what you do and they, they kind of advance so much and they grow up really quickly and mature. Yeah. So we, uh, I'm chairman of Birmingham Youth Sports Academy bio. So yeah, so we have four fifty to six hundred kids a week playing grassroots sports. And it's, and it's around small heath. Yeah. Aston Bulls, the green and everything else like that. The inner city challenged areas. Our home now is the acres. Last week we were twenty five years old. So there's thousands of kids have gone through that. And it's a privilege to to support and work with these kids. They've got such strong ethics. You know, we think we've got ethics, strong ethics. And all of these kids come from nowhere. Um, they don't have kids, so we buy them kit. So everybody looks the same. Everybody dresses the same. But everybody that comes to sports have to have have a mentor in classroom session. So we push them into classroom. And now because we're twenty five years old, a generation is twenty years. The we're five years into a second generation to the moms. Dads now bring their own their own kids. Yeah. And they, um, the, the pilots, the engineers, the military, the doctors, the surgeons and everything that's come through us who are actually saying, and I'm not stealing the thunder of some of the people who've been around the world and the realities of the world have done it since day dot um, have changed direction for hundreds and hundreds of kids to go into the right direction. So when I were both aligned there and sports. Fantastic. So I sit on the board of Birmingham City Football Club, and while I'm not exactly setting the foundation and kind of this year, we've, we've interacted with about sixty thousand people. So that direction of travel across the city and everything else like that. There's a few other things that we can talk about. Reminded we're on question or point two. So sorry. I told you it was very conversation as though we can go wherever we want, but okay, so let's go back to two thousand and five. And so your training as a chef and haven't qualified. So how do you start this entrepreneurial journey from there? Well, two thousand and five, um, okay, so I, I, I went to the College of Food, the College of Food took me on board and I worked harder than everybody else. And I worked day and night and all that sort of stuff. I ended up at the Swallow Hotel, ended up in the fire service. And he says that the data slightly wrong. So it was Uh, eighty seven. I ended up in the fire service. Okay, so eighty seven up to, uh, up to two. I've lost my track. Two thousand and five. Where am I? Yeah. Dyslexia running. Right. So two thousand and five, it was twenty year service and it was, um, it was kind of what am I doing? When am I going? I've got another ten years to go before I get my pension. I've done thirty year service and I'm kind of close to fifty and all that sort of stuff. But I lost my way a bit, and it was a privilege to serve in the fire service, and it was the most incredible times, seeing some of the most seen the humans being pushed to the elements, seeing that, you know, children and everything else like that. And death and destruction has a toll on you, but also the benefits of being around and seeing a rescue or seeing something, you know, saving people's lives is just aspirational. I'll tell you what's funny, when you talk about the fire services that you walk into a pub and somebody goes, all right, how you doing? What do you do? And you go, oh, I'm a fireman, I'm a firefighter. And I go, let me buy you a drink. You know, that kind of stuff. So the recognition of general and stuff of the public is amazing. So utmost respect for these people. At the same time, I was continuing until I was doing three or four different activities. I've always done other businesses worked and things like that. So this entrepreneurial flair was started from day dot from doing bizarre things like, you know, ten, twelve years old painting, making garden gnomes and selling them to neighbors and doing all this sort of stuff. There's other things we used to do to earn money and that kind of stuff, but it was like building bikes and all that kind of stuff and doing everything to earn a living, to earn a crust. But go on. No, I was going to say it's obviously it's a journey. So it's I think it's a common trait that you hear with entrepreneurs is that their minds are always active and never sit still and always have to keep busy. I can't imagine there's a period in your life where you kind of sitting there going, what am I doing next? So I sleep about four hours a night maximum, and I'm awake. So you heard some of my colleagues talk about me emailing, and I think you said I was emailing you at three o'clock in the morning, half two in the morning. I'm awake, I'm on my laptop. I'm thinking, and I'm even listening to podcasts and I'll be listening to some of your podcasts. My mind is active and it's focus and it's working. My because I'm a heavily dyslexic, my brain slightly works in a different way. So my brain sort of works like a bit of a filing cabinet so I can open the drawer, I can take something out, I can look at it, I can push it to the side and it flies around in my head. Then I can go to bed with a problem and I can wake up with a solution. Then I can take that. I can put it back in the drawer, open the drawer. But what I can do is I have a drawer open, a few drawers open with loads of different things flying around my head so simultaneously I can think about things to that. So when we get into business, you know, we've got eight businesses in our group. We've got eighty, seventy, eighty people working for us, all kinds of different people doing completely different things. But I kind of know where everybody is, what everybody's doing, nothing too controlling way because it's just it works. That's how my mind works and things like that. So perfect little segue. Then take us on to kind of the group as it sits at the moment. How have you developed from where you were, um, and leaving the fire service and having all these ideas in your head and doing various businesses? Have you grown from there? And what's the common thread throughout all these businesses during the fire service? So it was a lot of risk management was health and safety, fire safety, obviously, and various different things like that. And corporate manslaughter came out and all company directors thought if it went wrong, they were all going to end up in jail and things like that. Theoretically that's correct. But some certain organizations panicked a little bit. And there was a company called the Bibby Group who were looking for a middle manager that had a bit of a background that could advise them. And these guys were doing sort of saturation diving in the North Sea had construction ships and various different things, logistics. So they had, you know, hundreds and hundreds of lorries moving stuff around, so various moving parts where they could go wrong. So I went into that business, the sort of middle level, and then went into, ended up as senior, so ended up as a board member and looking at their mergers and acquisitions. So it was getting involved in various different things like that. Um, lost track a little bit. Then where was we going? No, we just had we built to the. So yeah. Sorry. So went into the Bibby group, got worked for them for nearly five years, got senior as I could do. And then it was the Bibby family and things like that. So I was a little bit lost. And and this is working for somebody. The next thing was the the car design. So we, I went into a company called Futura in Oldbury, and they worked with Jaguar Land Rover and they A creative prototype vehicles. So if you see clay cars, prototype clay cars and things like that, we did that and we'd create running prototype vehicles that might be a million, million and a half pounds. And we did that. This business sat at about sixteen, eighteen million. So I went in as a consultant after I left Bibi Group, because I didn't really know what I wanted to go, but I knew that I didn't want to stay in there. I'd got this thing where I'd spent twenty years in the fire service, and I thought, I don't want to do that again. I want to do segments of five or, you know, maximum ten years and that's it. So I want to do other things. So I went fire service to risk management, buying businesses, you know, construction into sort of we bought some burial sites, all kinds of different things to growing businesses, the mergers and acquisitions into prototype vehicles, but complex project management. So my mind as it runs, you know, way, way ahead of everybody else problem solving work really well in this industry. So we took the sixteen eighteen million up, not quite fifty million in about four or five years. And we we created what I reached like LinkedIn just reached out to all the OEMs, the chief executives, the car designers, and said, hey, this is who we are. We want to work with you. So the importance of networking actually came from the market, you know, that kind of stuff. It's the same skill that stays with you throughout. So I reached out to all these people we took it up to, as I say, close to fifty million. But some of the people we work with have stayed friends. So the guy Frank Stevenson, who designed the P one, he designed the modern mini in the X5, the Fiat five hundred, Save Fiats and all kinds of different things. So there's a whole podcast on him. Um, he's a close friend. I speak to him quite often and various different things like that. So we took this business, did it really did really, really well, lasted for about five years. One of the projects I worked on, and you can Google this, it's called Lilium Flying Car. So it's autonomous flying car went to Germany and we created a studio and we created this flying car. Another podcast because it's hilarious. Started off brown paper and string kind of mindset. And now it's flying three to five hundred miles, that kind of thing. So you order it via an app and this thing autonomous vehicle lands, you know, the top of a of a car park probably next door. You jump in it and you go, right, got to go to London, got to go to Paris and it'll take you straight there. Nobody, no pilots. Anyway, back into that. So from one business to the other. Um but when I'd worked at Futura at the end of Futura, this is ten years after the fire service not going to work for anybody else. I'm fed up of making everybody else loads of money, and they drive us and our values don't align with mine. Yeah. So it's all about money. It's all about me. What I can do, my bigger car, bigger house and all of that that doesn't align with me. So it was around supporting people, working with people and trying to find out my direction where I wanted to go, really. So that's kind of where I've ended up. There's been a number of different jobs and positions, and you can Google it. You can look at my LinkedIn and see where I've been, but it's gone from one extreme to another one thousand trades group. Okay. So the group that we've got today is only a year or so old, but some of the businesses have been going twenty odd years. So there's various different businesses today. The one thousand trades was available in the domain name. And obviously the city being a city of a thousand trades, ultimately proud of being a Brummie where I come from and things like that. So we've taken that domain name and all of the businesses work and support other businesses, make things happen. What's interesting about the group is that everything we do has to have a third sector mindset. Everything we do, every opportunity, every project to that, you'll see if you look at some of our LinkedIn and things like that, we constantly raise money for different charities and things like that. And that needs to be hundreds of thousands a year. We don't rest on our rolls. We don't talk about what we do. And I'm not keen to do that. I'll post quite a lot on social media, LinkedIn. That's leadership, thought pieces and stuff like that. I don't say, look at us, this is what we've done because that's not appropriate and that's not where we are and we don't need to do that. Is that very much a Brummie ethic? We don't we don't shout too loudly. Yeah, we do. And I have a bit of an issue with this. And I don't know whether you picked up on this because I challenge everybody and I am um, I'm very proud of being a Birmingham, being Mr. Birmingham previously. So Brummie of the year and various different accolades is incredible. So I have this mindset of we're not the second city, we're second to nobody. You don't sit there and compare yourself and go, oh, I'm second best to this person, this job, this car, this, this, whatever you don't say to your sons or daughters in the morning as they go to school. Don't forget you're in the second city. Don't forget your second best to anybody. You never do that. Why are we. Because London isn't the first city. London is a load of borrowers, and they're completely different to us. We are not compared to anybody else. We're totally unique. What we do, we set the world alight. The Industrial Revolution started here, you know, in the city and across the region. And what we do is incredible. Nobel Prize winning the things we've invented, the things that we've given back to the world. So we are you can't compare us to anybody. We are totally unique. So when anybody from the likes of some of the politicians and some of the people have challenged Prime Minister in the past, and I've challenged other people, we're not the second city. We're totally unique. You'll notice that Tom Wagner, who's bought Birmingham City and the United the sports quarter that we can talk about one hundred one hundred acres for that is going to reshape the city, the skyline of the city, me being involved in that because I want to do that for Birmingham to reshape the city. It's five billion. That's going to impact Every household in the city, every household in the city is going to benefit positively, financially. To do that. But I did see the, uh, the Birmingham City Stadium mock ups that were just released a day or two. Yeah. Incredible. It did look fantastic. Yeah, that blues fan myself. But, um, yeah, I was, but you're a city of, you know, you're a fan of the city of Birmingham. Yeah, absolutely. I've been, um, banging Birmingham drum every second I get. The first time I learned that, uh, industrial revolution and that Soho house where. Yeah, yeah, Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Rupert Rupert's, along with Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Matthew Murdoch. Anyway, um, they used to meet on the Lunar Society. I was like, I've literally, you know, the lunar society still exists. Does it? Yeah. So I'm a fellow of the Lunar Society and it's still going on in Birmingham. And these people are still meeting and they used to lunar society underneath the the lunar light, wasn't it? Because it was brighter. And that's how they used to meet. So they used to meet and talk industrialists, you know, um, and just the things they talk about were still talking about, although it's a few hundred years later and it's still people. So the, the lunar society still working now. I mean, literally, I grew up, um, amazing. Yeah. I was like, cool. I first learned that, uh, industrial started building and it started right at the top. So I was like, oh my God, I'm there every day. Incredible. Yeah, yeah. So everywhere I've gone in the world, not very many places, but I've always gone to the center of it all, the rich history of what we've done and what we've created and the impact across the world. The globe is immeasurable. Yeah. I mean, one of the other ones I collect, I'm quite, uh, when it comes to talking politics or economics. I'm very much a small government guy. Uh, and, uh, these arguments that, oh, well, you need governments to build infrastructure or whatever. Well, I'll point to Birmingham. Birmingham is famed for having more miles of canal than Venice. Yeah. So they're all privately funded, all built by private, private people. Absolutely. Yeah. We brought the water down from the Elan Valley because we didn't have enough water here. So they went, all right, how do we resolve this problem? We'll do that. We'll dig it. We'll bring it down. More waterways and the Venice. He's he's a factual point. But he used to be more trees than people in the city. So there's over a million trees in the city. The green spaces are incredibly important. Five hundred odd green spaces and things like that. The lungs of the city is so important and it's fascinating to do that. But yeah, and I think that as a city, we probably need to shout about ourselves a bit more. You're right. We shouldn't be saying we don't. We don't walk with arrogance, you know. We walk with confidence. Mhm. Yeah. Very much so. It's like a love letter to the city, isn't it? Well, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think we've kind of one of the questions I had for you is how has Birmingham shaped you? But I think you've kind of answered that already. Yeah. So moving on a little bit. Um, a lot of the focus of this podcast is kind of my own background is in tech and innovation. Um, how are you seeing Birmingham play a role in the kind of tech innovations that are happening? Are we there at all or are we in the conversation? So we launched Birmingham Tech. So there was a few of us sat in a pub a few years ago and went, the world of tech moves on. What are we doing? What are we doing in Birmingham? Let's launch Birmingham Tech. So I think we had about five hundred quid between us. We went around the city, um knocking on everybody's door going, got an idea, we want to launch Birmingham Tech. And everybody went, all right, you know, what's it look like. Can we have some space? Can we do this? Can we do that? We launched Birmingham Tech a number of years ago. I don't know how long. And now it's grown and it's globally recognised and things like that. And the tech centre of where we are is interesting. You know, the life sciences is interesting. You know, med tech, health tech and things like that. Some of the things that are being created and stuff like that, where are we? We're up there, we're making a difference and we're making an impact. And and what's interesting is the global interest in us of what goes on in the Midlands and everything else like that. So you look at Birmingham, West Midlands, taking out the commission and all that sort of stuff. And it's a resource of information, you know, and advice. So we're there. We're doing some good stuff, some of the things that goes on in academia and everything else like that is eye watering. And, and that's probably another podcast around tech. And it's amazing. We've got so many resources at our disposal. Um, we've got the history of the industrial revolution and the innovations and the tech that we gave to the world then. Um, I think I've got a few friends who are in the financial services and fintech area, and they're based in Birmingham and they're kind of building a network here and kind of building the businesses here. You look at the finance quarter, the financial sector of what we've got. Birmingham's got this quarter thing, hasn't it? We're trying to create a life sciences quarter. Yeah. You know this kind of stuff. And that's going to go from from the you be at the background all the way up to, uh, five ways Island to that whole quarter, the hundreds and hundreds of businesses that you start googling what's going on, cancer vaccines in Birmingham, and all kinds of different stuff on your doorstep. And you don't like you realize what's happened in the binding site and everything. It's incredible what we're giving. And you obey, as I mentioned before, have just won a Nobel Prize and everything else. So that's one of eight that they've won. Nobody knows about it. You know, this kind of stuff. The press aren't interested. So about a year ago and counteracting the clickbait arguments as well, we we launched West Midlands News. Now, this isn't a pitch for it, but this is a point of it's not clickbait and it's not negativity sells press. And all we do is showcase. We talk about what's going on in the world, what's going on in Birmingham, what's going on in the Midlands, but it's the positive spin on it. We talk positively about what's happening. When they launched, when they won a Nobel Prize, they sent the press releases out. Nobody was interested. None of the press networks run the story about Birmingham, you will be winning a Nobel Prize. Outrageous. Just heard of it as well. So, yeah. There you go. We should be better tapped in. So yeah, I need to subscribe to your West Midlands magazine as well. Yeah. Yeah, certainly. So obviously coming on to the great things that we're doing as a city. Um, but obviously above all that kind of sits the community and leadership in the city. And it's gone through a tumultuous time over the last decade plus. Uh, we've seen nothing if anybody on the listening to our podcast have been around the Birmingham area for ten, fifteen years. It's pretty much been a building site. Yeah, the centre has, but we are seeing the fruits of that construction going on and we are building. I think we had the big Birmingham build plan was the leader of the council. Um so you had Richard Parker. Yeah. And then we had Birmingham City Council didn't we. So it's a growth company. And then you've got the combined authority. You've got Birmingham City Council. You've got some national things. I mean, if you where we're sitting now in the jewellery quarter. If I look out that window, you're looking at the Octagon. Yeah. You know, which is the largest octagon shaped building in Europe. Didn't know there was a challenge for that. And if you look through that window you've got Telecom Tower. Yeah, this kind of stuff. So you look at what's happening here. You look at where you see be. You see that building across the road is owned by UCB to the growth sector. There you look at where UCB is, BCU and all that kind of stuff. That's just the academic one hundred and forty thousand students in there. But all the buildings that are spinning up, then you look at the BIC, which is down by the QE. So the QE itself is immense. It's a city in itself, isn't it? Yeah. It's incredible. You get to know the people there and the big building with hundreds of start up businesses in life sciences and things like that. It's eye watering. That's something that's going on. And then we as we talked about, you know, I'm not banging the drum about Boom City Football Club, but Knighthead investment five billion. It's the second largest infrastructure investment in the UK. And that's going to be up that, you know, the top of the chart for many, many years. Five billion investment. Yeah. The city is growing and will continue to grow. Yeah. I think one of the other big selling points is we've got one of the youngest populations in Europe. Yeah. So they talked about thirty five and it's under thirty now. So it seems to be every time I uh, I know we don't own newspapers anymore. Every time I log on it's dropping down. It's twenty seven, twenty six and I'm thinking fly me in my lifetime. Are we going to be on the fifteen years? You know, that kind of stuff. But we'll see where that goes. Yeah, we're just getting older. Paul. Yeah, there is that there. Is that okay? So not to just be conscious of your time a little bit then. Yeah. Um, have you've got advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? Some of that, uh, the younger cohort within the city who are looking to embark on their own entrepreneurial journeys, what would kind of be the basic one or two lessons that you'd kind of reach out to them and say, whatever you do, always have this in mind. Yeah. I mean, the it's celebrate failure, isn't it? So I'm supposedly successful people talk to me as that entrepreneur, professor of entrepreneurship, leadership and things like that about being successful and stuff like that. I'm the type of person as an entrepreneur that's never really satisfied, can do better, could do more, can go further, can, can give more back to, to never lose that, to have aspirations to sit there and go, you know, I'm working for this company actually. What's it take to own this company? So just do not stop have aspirations that are sky high and to deliver against that, but have a plan in mind of where you want to end as a stepping stone, not as an ending point. And the other thing is celebrate failure. Because the more you fail, the more you become resilient and the more that you're going to push forward and you're going to keep going. You know, it's that it, it's, uh, stoicism and things like that. Pressure is privilege and things like that. The more you pressure, you have to take it as a privilege and flip it. Yeah. Perfect advice there. I just got me back to another question, though, because just thinking back into the politics realm, unfortunately, which I can never get away from, um, first time we've met, but you're truly inspirational story. I think you you speak well. Have you ever encountered maybe or contemplated going into politics yourself? So I've been asked through the years to go into politics for all the all the parties have asked me. So I started my political mindset was in the fire service. I didn't care about politics prior to joining the fire service. And day two, you're told to join the union and you have to join the fire brigade union. You're told to sign up for it and you pay a couple of pound a month for this and you go, oh, okay. And then there you say, why do what? I don't want to be in a union. You can't say that because everybody, one hundred percent of the fire service were in unions. So then I went through the training because they paid for your health and safety training, all your different training. So I did all the qualifications and ended up as a trade union rep and was very much labour. As you're younger, you labour and things like that. And then I came out and started working. So you drift into conservatives what the conservatives say. And so I've gone through the whole political chain, you know, and I've looked at prime ministers that led us into war, that really should be tried for war crimes and various different things. And and I've looked at Margaret Thatcher and taken on board some of the things that she say. She's been a role model, you know, and and you look at Winston Churchill, what he did and all that kind of stuff, he doesn't fit today because some of the things he did, you know, today would be considered as racism and things like that. But stepping aside for the man who just took on the world and went, we can do this. So that leadership and things like that, you kind of look at him and think, wow. So no, I haven't. And you know what I say when I'm asked, I say, sorry, I can't do that because I'm too honest. Perfect way to, uh, wrap that up then. All right. So just for our listeners, if they wanted to follow yourself, your work, or any of the work done at one thousand trades group or kind of the one thousand businesses group, by the sounds of it, uh, where's the best place to follow you and kind of engage? So I'm on all social media platforms. You can find me on LinkedIn and things like that. You want to connect with me? It's thirty thousand connections, thirty odd thousand people follow me and things like that. But, uh, I'm an ex still call it Twitter on various different platforms, Facebook and stuff like that. Just reach out. I'll connect with anybody and talk to anybody as you know that and I'll always respond to people. But I always thank people for taking interest in making an effort to do that. And I will return that favor and privilege to other people. Awesome. Paul. Well, I can certainly vouch for that. And, uh, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for being on the podcast. And I think you're a fascinating person. You can probably speak for many, many hours and many, many subjects. It's, it's a pleasure and thank you. And I really appreciate your time. Okay. Until next time. Thank you.