Meet Mark Taylor, the Founder of Automated Analytics | S2 EP1

Welcome Back to Season Two of the Automated Analytics Podcast!

We’re kicking things off with a twist! This time, I’m not hosting… I’m the guest!

In our brand new studio settings in Doncaster, Jordan Smith takes over the mic to interview me, Mark Taylor - Founder of Automated Analytics. We dive into everything that’s happened over the past 10 months since Season One, including:

✅ My background and career before founding the business
 ✅ The journey of building Automated Analytics from the ground up
 ✅ How our tech has helped global brands like Pizza Hut, KFC, and more save thousands
 ✅ Our products, growth, and what’s next for the company
 ✅ Why our technology never sleeps  - and neither do we when it comes to innovation

Whether you’re new here or a long-time listener, this episode gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the story, the mission, and the future of Automated Analytics.

 Follow us and stay connected:

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-taylor-b9290b2/
 Website: https://automatedanalytics.co/

Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the show!

Chapters

• 0:00 Season Two Introduction
• 2:14 Mark's Presidential Inauguration Experience
• 5:05 Why Doncaster? Building a Global AI Company
• 10:33 Working with Government on AI Regulation
• 20:25 Call360: Solving the Attribution Problem
• 33:30 Mark's Early Years and Entrepreneurial Spirit
• 58:27 Launching Automated Analytics
• 1:13:14 American Expansion and Rapid Growth
• 1:22:49 Future Developments and Growth Plans
• 1:31:29 The Ethics of AI and Personal Reflections

Transcript

Jordan Smith: 0:00

What sort of stuff are US doing differently in AI that maybe the UK can learn from?

Mark Taylor: 0:05

It's interesting. A lot of people said why are you going to President's Inauguration?

Jordan Smith: 0:08

Yeah, how proud does that make you feel to be able to just represent Doncaster on a global scale? Incredibly proud. And how did that initial relationship start with the government?

Mark Taylor: 0:18

Interesting Initially on a very local level.

Jordan Smith: 0:21

So when did Call360 come to life and, in simple terms, what is it?

Mark Taylor: 0:25

so in in simple terms, is is if you're a business today and you're manually listening to calls, call 360 takes all of that away from you was there ever a moment where you just sat down and thought we're onto something?

Jordan Smith: 0:38

yes, but no. What would you say is like craziest thing you've used ai for I think the craziest thing I've used ai for what can we expect from automated analytics and mark taylor in the near future?

Mark Taylor: 0:49

in terms of our development, of our tech, it never stops. Hi, we're back with the automated analytics podcast for season two. You'll notice that we've got these great surroundings. We've upgraded to a new studio, but this time around, for this episode, it's not me that's doing the questions. I'm being asked the questions by Jordan. Please do like and subscribe.

Jordan Smith: 1:16

It's been 10 months since you've launched season one of the Automated Analytics podcast. Just give us a little bit of a recap of what's been happening.

Mark Taylor: 1:23

Yeah, it's been an amazing 10 months, some parts surreal. So from a business point of view, we've continued our growth at 100% year on year now for four years, which you know sometimes we make it look easy but it's been hard work that's got us there to that good growth. But then there's been some real highlights, like going to the President's inauguration in January, running our own event at the House of Parliament, being invited to the House of Lords, being invited to advise the government through the APPG on AI regulation. So it's been a real fascinating 11 months since we did our first season of podcasting.

Jordan Smith: 2:04

So the inauguration just tell us a little bit about that then. What sort of stuff are the US doing differently in AI that maybe the UK can learn from?

Mark Taylor: 2:14

It's interesting. A lot of people said why are you going to the President's inauguration? Well, first things first, I was invited to go and, as an owner of a British-American software business we've got several thousand clients in the States I thought it was super important to be there, one to understand the geopolitical landscape in America, but two to represent Doncaster. You know Doncaster we're putting on the global stage. We're a global leader in AI, but we're not the only ones. There's about 20 AI companies, ranging from Thales I think that's how you pronounce it through to you know some startups and us included, and so I was very proud to represent Doncaster and Britain going over there. And it was fascinating because very early on I met Trump Jr. He pretty much told us that the inauguration was going to be locked down because of the weather, and so therefore it gave us an opportunity to network and it was almost like corporate America had gone to Washington for the inauguration and just the amount of people and networking that I did over the four days. It was absolutely fascinating. I really wish there was an inauguration every year that enabled me to do that, but yeah, we even ended up with some clients out of the networking, but it was just a fantastic opportunity to see what was going on.

Mark Taylor: 3:33

But also what's interesting about the US is that they are some way behind the UK.

Mark Taylor: 3:35

The UK really is a leader in AI Sometimes don't think we know it and I think the US is looking to the UK in terms of AI development.

Mark Taylor: 3:46

And certainly when you see the people that are in Silicon Valley, you've got a lot of British representation there and so I think America is actually looking to the UK and to Europe and they're on a bit of an acquisition spree at the moment, and so I think America will eventually catch up, as they normally do, because they really are a great innovator, their culture for innovation.

Mark Taylor: 4:06

They celebrate failure as much as success, and I think it's one of the things that we're very good at creating startups, I think, in this country but we're not very good at kind of fostering the growth of those startups, and sometimes I worry that we may lose one or two of our unicorns or larger companies to American investment. But America is such a big market it's the biggest consumer market in the world and for us to be there and the growth that we're seeing in America yes, we're growing 100% year on year globally, but I think our growth in America is something like 300% year on year. It's just off the charts, it really is, and we're literally scratching the surface in Europe. It's just, it's off the charts, it really is, and we're literally scratching the surface in America.

Jordan Smith: 4:53

So one thing I took away from that was I wanted to represent Doncaster With the product that you're building and the industry that you're in. Why Doncaster? Why not New York? Why not Dubai? Why not Silicon Valley? What is it about Doncaster?

Mark Taylor: 5:06

I think Donc doncaster picks you. If I'm honest with you, I I moved here 15 years ago to be closer to my uh children and my then partner and when I came to set up uh automated analytics, I've been in private equity. Um, I'd done three private equity gigs but I was working away from home and I really wasn't enjoying it, and particularly the last kind of year. In my last private equity gig, which was a company called Evander Glazing Locks in Norwich, beginning at 4 o'clock on a Monday morning, traveling three hours, three hours, 20 if I got stuck behind a tractor to get to Norwich. It wasn't fun and I didn't enjoy it. And when I came to set up the business, we had an ex-Apple person join us, an ex-Googler join us. Neither of them wanted to work in London. The whole reason for setting up the office in Doncaster was they didn't want to commute anymore. And so I think Doncaster picked me and it was probably about two years ago. We'd just set up the American business.

Mark Taylor: 6:06

I came back and I was really jet lagged and I'd been invited to do a speech at Sheffield University but in Doncaster and I was on stage and it was raining and I thought, god, where's the Florida sunshine gone that I've just been at. I was really badly jet lagged, thinking what am I doing here? And I said we're Don Cost's best kept secret. And Dan Fell, who's the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, really challenged me on that, said stop saying it. You know it's down to you. Go out there and get it, and I'm a big believer in that. You know, if you want to grow your business, it's down to you to go out and generate the revenue and get that business coming in. So for me he challenged me about right, we'll represent donkos, don't talk it down, talk it up. And um rosie, who's the xmp for for donkos, the central pretty much echoed those thoughts and really pushed me and I thought well, why not donkos? Why don't we see it as a growth zone? It's the home of the industrial revolution with the trains, you know, and and it's great for us because we're not necessarily competing against other local companies in ai, we're actually competing against, you know, digital hubs in sheffield and leeds where people are commuting from doncaster to go to sheffield or leeds. So from a staffing point of view it makes sense, but also just that can-do attitude.

Mark Taylor: 7:16

When I met damien allen, who's the ceo of doncaster council, I think within 15 minutes, we got a mutual understanding that I wasn't going to give up and that the new gateway one building needed to be a digital hub, if not an ai hub and he's been super supportive. And when you have a collection of people around you in doncaster like yourself, jordan, when you and I first met, I was super impressed with your ambition and your growth plans. You want to be part of that and, and for me, doncaster's given everything. It's given me a beautiful son. You know we adopted a little boy 10 years ago, joshy. You know. He's one of the best things that's happened to me. My daughter as well, so I've got a lot to thank for Doncaster. But representing Doncaster on a global stage, I'm so proud and so proud to say that we're made in Doncaster.

Jordan Smith: 7:59

I was going to say. That must be a pinch me moment, for when you're literally shouting about Doncaster all the time. You're hosting these big events, like we saw you last week. Yeah, how proud does that make you feel to be able to just represent Doncaster on a global scale.

Mark Taylor: 8:13

Incredibly proud. But I'm only as good as the team behind me and my colleagues. The people that we employ are my biggest asset. So whether that is, you know, our CTO, ben, who's out in Asia at our coding lab out there, jason, our chief operating officer, who runs America for us in Charlotte, you know, or the senior team in the UK, you know, josh, sophie, adam, you know, without them this business wouldn't be as good as it is. I'm owning the front man at Inder. I've got a really good team behind me and for me, you know, I get more pride representing them and showing the world the good work they do than anything else. But also, you know, the inauguration. It was a bit of a pinch me moment. I'm here representing Donkos on a global scale. It doesn't happen every day, but you know it was a great experience.

Jordan Smith: 9:04

You've also been working with the government on AI regulation. Talk to us a little bit about that experience.

Mark Taylor: 9:10

So the government has been talking about regulating AI for some time. So you've had the European Commission who've regulated AI, and to me they've gone too extreme and I understand why AI needs to be regulated. I firmly believe it does, because an AI algorithm is all about predicting. It's predicting the future in some way, shape or form. So our platform predicts the outcome of a call, predicts what you need to bid on Google moving forward or Facebook. So it's a prediction tool, right. But our accuracy? We've got the highest accuracy of our data classification than anybody in the category and we've got the lowest word error rate, which is what transcription engines run off of anything globally. So our model's pretty darn accurate. But if you're making a prediction based on a model that isn't accurate so there's an African nation that is using a malaria app to predict whether you've got malaria or not it's less than 50 accurate. So the odds are that if we use this app, either one of us would have malaria when we clearly don't. That's what you've got to regulate against, because you know making a decision like that, you know you can't let AI do that and therefore the accuracy, the ethics of the model, should you even be using a malaria app that is only at 50% accuracy. America have kind of gone the other way. There's a little bit of regulation, although the Texas bill that they brought out recently is trying to add more regulation into AI so less profiling using AI models, which I think is a good way to go.

Mark Taylor: 10:47

Britain hasn't done anything yet. What Britain tends to do is they tend to come up with the gold standard of regulation. My worry is speed and time in terms of getting something implemented. The first stance was that they were going to let individual, if you like, industry bodies decide what they were going to do, which I didn't think was a consistent way to achieve good regulation. So I started to come up with it. So we've been working with Sally Jameson, our local MP. We've been working with Lord Ranger in the House of Lords. We've been attending the APBG, which is your party group, cross-party group. We've been contributing to select committees to try and show the government a way of regulating AI that doesn't stifle innovation but gives people the confidence that you know whatever the AI is being used is accurate, and I think I think they've got it right in most circumstances, except when it comes to copyright.

Mark Taylor: 11:48

I mean when Elton John turns around and calls the Labour government some choice words. I could understand why he's upset because, from a copywriting point of view, if you're an artist and your music can get sampled and you don't earn a royalty out of that, well that's someone's livelihood and I don't think that's fair. So I think you made a very, very good point and it was very to the point was elton john. But when elton john gets up and says something, you take note and I think his idea about allowing artists to opt in and if you do something, they're using music, using ai, then you win a commission off it. I think that's a really good idea.

Mark Taylor: 12:23

But I do think we need to be very, very careful that we're not using ai, you know, to profile people, um, because I think that's where it starts to get a little bit dangerous, because what you're going to stand is ai is written based on a model if that model isn't accurate. So if you take the BMI calculation for your body mass index, basically that originally was based off 2000 white males. So it won't be accurate if you're female originally. You know, if you're of colour, it won't be accurate because it's based off white males. So if your model is based off a subset of the population. It won't necessarily be accurate for you, and that's where I think the risk is.

Jordan Smith: 13:07

How do you even create that connection with the government? What made automated analytics get involved with the government? You know, you text me, you sat there, you sent me pictures with different MPs and I'm thinking how has a guy from Doncaster created this unbelievable network and how did that initial relationship start with the government?

Mark Taylor: 13:27

Initially on a very local level. So it was a case of I'd invited Ed Milliband and Dame Rosie who's now a Dame to the offices to start the conversation and what I realised was very, very quickly was that government regulation could affect my business and therefore it's very much about ensuring that I built connections into Westminster and then I basically just started going to Westminster. So any excuse you know, any event I could go to to network is what I would do. And then I met Lord Ranger at the end of last year. And then I met Lord Ranger at the end of last year who he was actually the guy responsible for getting the Oyster card on the underground, very much into tech, very interesting guy. I met him late last, I think it was late last year. You know the formations of a great relationship and you know it's aligning yourself with people that can help you navigate Westminster because it is, yes, you know it's quite small, you know there's not that many MPs when you think about it, but I think we you know I purposely have gone down to Westminster, if that makes sense. So we ran we do run event at the House of Parliament every year where we take over the pavilion which is a hospitality room at Parliament. We invite various MPs along. Last year we had Ed, but we always had the Under-Secretary for AI, farrell Clarke, who is the current AI Minister. I met her a few weeks ago. We're hoping to get her up to Doncaster soon to show her the industry here.

Mark Taylor: 15:07

And it's very much. You know, you've got to go and get it and I've always I say this to my kids actually go and get it. You know, if you really want something, go and get it, don't sit back, don't wait for it to happen, because it probably won't. And so for me, realising the impact government could have and I'd never done this before, but what I did do was go out and make sure I networked with the right people and got known, you know, within Westminster and pushed, you know I challenged Ed we had the Chamber of Commerce, prime Minister sorry Members of Parliament question time and I was the first person to ask a question said Ed, you know AI regulation is worrying me, you need to get me into the government and he got me introduced to Peter Kyle. So sometimes it is, you know, it's about demanding access to these people in a nice way.

Jordan Smith: 15:52

Seems like you've had a hectic past 10 months. What would you say has surprised you the most from the last 10 months?

Mark Taylor: 16:01

It's not normal what you're doing, I think that we're a global leader and and I think, and it, it. It suddenly hit me because in in ai, there's essentially two metrics, which is we've developed a transcription engine with sheffield university. That transcription engine there's only five in the world and we've got one of them right. So we're up against amazon, open ai, uh, and google, okay. And there's this thing called a word error rate. So when you trans transcribe speech to text, how many errors have been made? So the lower the score, the higher the accuracy. Um, so um. For example, we've looked at amazon web services and there's been some research published on them. They have word error score of 20%, between 20 and 22%. Our word error score is less than 6%. So from a speech to transcription point of view, we've got one of the world's most accurate engines. Then, when you look at our data classification engine, which we use to classify data, once you've transcribed it, that runs at 95% accuracy. We created a compliance module which schools a telephone call based on your individual compliance tree or your individual compliance process. The first time we ran it it was 85% accurate. Other people's models are very know, not even 60 accurate first time. Now runs at 93 accuracy.

Mark Taylor: 17:28

So, understanding that we're a global leader I think really was was was the shot of lightning, but then really getting ourselves out there. Really, only until about two years ago I'd run the business for about eight years did I want to put my head above the parapet because I was very worried about you know? Know, if someone understands our tech, will they be able to steal it, will they be able to copy it? And what I realised and again it was a conversation with Peter Dainenberg, who's the number two at Google AI in California, and we were chatting about, you know, could the model be copied? And it's actually down to the data. You know we've got eight years' worth of data that can't be replicated. So the reason why the model is so accurate is because the amount of data that's gone through that model, you just cannot replicate it.

Mark Taylor: 18:12

And so for us, it was very much about, you know, really getting ourselves above the parapet in terms of getting ourselves known, and I think, you know, again, a lot of people can't believe that we're from Doncaster, and I was on Times Radio a couple of months ago talking about AI and a lady contacted me through LinkedIn and said it was refreshing. You know, I was walking home through the park in Edinburgh and it was refreshing to hear Doncaster's name mentioned and not Shoreditch. And it's great the work that you're doing and you know, doncaster shouldn't hold anybody back in my opinion. You know, if I can do it, anybody can do it, and so for me it's been that, I think, realisation that we are a global leader justifiably and really using that, you know, not only to help our clients hire better people, but, you know, also drive things for Doncaster as well.

Jordan Smith: 19:04

When I asked you what surprised you the most, I thought you were going to say getting a call-up to test an Italian racing car.

Mark Taylor: 19:13

Well, yeah, that was about four weeks ago. It was quite funny because TB Karting so I race go-karts, the ones that do about 70 miles an hour. Actually, we were actually trying to work out how we could make it do 100 miles an hour. Tb Karting contacted me and I did my first race of the weekend Could have gone a bit quicker, if I'm honest with you, but, yeah, to get a phone call from hey, do you want to race our go-karts? They're Italian, they're pretty cool looking. Do you want to join a team type of thing? I was expecting that at my time of life. I expected that when I was like 15 or 16, but not now.

Jordan Smith: 19:48

Not at your age, yeah. So look, we've had a bit of a catch up what you've been doing the past 10 months.

Mark Taylor: 19:55

I want to go back to young Mark.

Jordan Smith: 19:58

I want to know about what were you like as a kid. I know you went to the same school in West Midlands as Jim Shark, owner of Ben Francis. Right, yeah, I went to.

Mark Taylor: 20:07

South Brunswick High School. Yeah.

Jordan Smith: 20:09

Just tell us a little bit about you. Know what kind of kid were you?

Mark Taylor: 20:13

So I had ridiculously bucked teeth, I had to have braces on and I think I was very much happy-go-lucky. I had two very, very supportive parents. You know it was all about hard work. So if I wanted you know the latest Nike trainers, I had to go and work for them. You know I didn't get them.

Jordan Smith: 20:33

What did you do when you had to go out and work for them? Oh, I did a paper round, paper round.

Mark Taylor: 20:37

Yeah, so it's the first job I did. I think I was helping my brother actually underage, unfortunately, uh but I told my brother to do his paper round on saturday, sunday, which he used to pay me I think it's about a pound and uh, and I got my own paper round and I still remember it today. I went to bromsgrove sports lines and bought a pair of nike bongo. They were blue with a white tick on 27 pounds 99 my first nikes and I thought it looked pretty cool. I managed to talk my dad into allowing me to get a t-shirt at the same time, so I absolutely loved the bomb when I walked up to the spa supermarket in in the village.

Mark Taylor: 21:10

I grew up in a place called barn green, but yeah, I went to south brunswick for high school and I struck I had to work very, very hard at school. I struggled a lot. I was pretty good at maths, um, but I wasn't so good at english, although it's quite creative. I really struggled. And then I did my 11 plus and I think that's when I had my first, if you like, blow. Confidence hit was that I got accused of of cheating in my 11 plus. Now, back in the day. It's multiple choice. So with multiple choice, you you've got a chance of getting it right, just on the law of averages, but you don't have to write anything down, you just tick a box.

Mark Taylor: 21:44

I, mrs Allen, my teacher at the time pulled me into the science lab at Watclose School which I now think is called St John's School, I think it is and she showed me my results. Compared to another lad who you know, my results were the fourth highest in the school. He was the third highest, but I was sitting near him, and so the acquisition was made that I was cheating and I was distraught, absolutely distraught, and it's it's not even in my psyche to cheat. You know, it's like with the go-kart racing you mentioned. I I'd rather, you know, finish second and not cheat, than than win and cheat, if you get me, because where's the fun in that? So for me, it really hit me, and what was interesting was it set off a cycle of a lot of rejection, and what I mean by that rejection is I then went to high school.

Mark Taylor: 22:29

I was put into higher class, in my opinion, because I really struggled, and Mrs Allen did it say, she said to me at the time she said I think it's something to do with your writing, but I can't tell I my writing was very jumbled up, it's it's quite messy at the time. And then when I got to high school, um, I was put into a higher class so I was put down to study french and german. So I struggle with spelling in english, let alone trying to spell, you know, uh, in french and german I really struggled, and and they pulled me down a set, uh, a set or two at high school, which really sat my confidence. So you can imagine, I've got buck teeth. I've just, you know, been been royally kicked twice in the space of 12 months. It was, it was quite tough, but it made me resilient and it and it. You know I I want to prove the doubters wrong. So I remember when I sat my uh gcses I I was predicted to fail all of them.

Mark Taylor: 23:25

I wouldn't be offered a place at Sixth Form. The night before Sixth Form started I managed to negotiate with Mr Clements a place at South Bromsgrove Sixth Form College and I remember him saying to me you know, I don't think I'm doing you any favours, letching you in, and what he didn't realise was and I don't know if he may have mentioned it, but that was all the motivation I need, because I'm going to absolutely show you what I'm made of and I'm actually going to show you that I've made the right decision by staying on at sixth form. So, again, predicted to fail, my A-levels, didn't get any university offers because I was predicted to fail. And so, past my A-levels and so, uh, past my levels, actually did, did a better job than than other people that I was. I was, you know, rated not to to do so well, then managed to get a place at university. So originally I was going to go to the isle of wight technical college because my parents owned, uh, a bungalow in the isle of wight. I thought, oh, free rent, that'd be good, uh. But then cheltenham, uh, university, uh, offered me a degree and I, I, I went and did a degree at university.

Mark Taylor: 24:26

But again, I still struggled, and one of the things I realised was to make myself different when I went out and looked for a job was that I wanted to get work experience. How could I do that? And what was really interesting was when I was at South Brunswick High School, I had a business studies teacher called Mrs Gull and she really fostered my, if you like, my like, of marketing and sales and business and I'd worked out that if I'd taken business studies I could go and do projects on Formula One teams. So I pretty much processed to kind of visit all the Formula One teams in the UK doing various different projects on them and let's be honest with you, it was a very, very easy call to choose business studies because it was either business studies or music and I'm tone deaf and I can't play an instrument. So business studies chose me in a way. It was either that or music and I'm tone deaf and can't play an instrument. So I think business studies chose me in a way. But it enabled me to really get insight into.

Mark Taylor: 25:26

One of my passions is Formula One, and so when I went to university I actually started my own PR agency looking after various different race drivers. So Cristiano Di Matta, who raced for Toto in Formula One, was in Formula Three. I did some photography for him. A couple of the race drivers I looked after his British touring car team looked after. I didn't really get paid but it was enough to pay for petrol and various bits and pieces, but it started me on a road to really okay fine. So academically I might not be the strongest, but by sheer hard-willing determination I can get there.

Mark Taylor: 26:01

So I went to university and it was only in my finals, um, that my international marketing uh lecturer saw I'd written something and he says right, do me a favor, write that same sentence, but do it on yellow paper. And I wrote it on the yellow paper and he and he compared the two and one was, like you know, missing loads and loads of words and letters jumbled around. The other one was perfect. It says right, I want you to write your, your uh, all your exams on yellow paper. And up until that point I was struggling to even get, you know, 50% mark. I've got 93% for international marketing Um, and it kind of set me on a path to make me realize that that you know. Okay, I might be limited in terms of my ability to to, you know, to get letters right, which is why I type a lot. Uh, you have to reread stuff uh, quite a lot to make sure. I like to use voice notes quite a bit.

Mark Taylor: 26:54

I also love meeting people you know it's one of the things that I really like rather than corresponding with people, so that really, you know that whole experience really gave me the motivation and it's funny because I don't know if you've ever seen the Last Dance. You look at Michael Jordan. I'm not comparing myself to Michael Jordan, by the way, who's a great athlete I'm not, let's be honest with you. But when you look at great sports people, a lot of their motivation is the world's against them. So you look at Lewis Hamilton the world's against him. Look at Michael Jordan in Last Dance, you know the world's against him.

Mark Taylor: 27:24

And often I do think back to that Mr Clement's conversation of I don't think I'm doing you a favour letting you into sixth form. That was all the motivation. I need to kind of prove him wrong and hopefully I've proven him wrong in many ways. And you know there's still certain words I really struggle to spell. You know I get the words jumbled up, um, but I've got some very forgiving colleagues, clients and, and you know, shareholders. That that I think you know.

Jordan Smith: 27:50

Allow me the grace of of not always writing something perfectly Back to school and you know, uh, uh, yeah, the high school days. Have you got any memories of you actually filling that entrepreneurial ambition? Did you want to be a business owner back in school, always.

Mark Taylor: 28:09

Always. It's an interesting one because when you look at my family history, so there's two families Taylor, which obviously is my father's name, and Redwood, which is my mother's maiden name. They used to be George Taylors. They were silversmiths during the 20s. They then got into making essentially bomb parts during the war. Afterward they went into the automotive industry and it's only recently actually.

Mark Taylor: 28:36

I've been finding more about my family history and spent a lot more time with my father since my mother's passed away and some of the stories he shared with me about my, my grandfather, austin taylor. It's been quite heartwarming to hear how he was an entrepreneur. He was very giving, very focused, and so I think that entrepreneurial spirit has come from from both sides of the family, because my uh, my grandfather on my mother's side was a salesperson for for bsa and even lived in Sheffield, for he moved up from Birmingham to Sheffield for a couple of years because he was involved in the steel industry. And also my. I think a lot of it is the influence you have from your parents. You know. I think your parents, your teachers, are your biggest influence, because of the people you spend the most time with. Parents are always. You know, my mum was. You know I'll go halves with you. You earn half, I'll put the other half um, and and that that work ethic has always been distilled in me.

Mark Taylor: 29:28

But whenever there was a project at school where and I remember, um, I think this was when we're around 16, you know we had to do, uh, create our own business and and try and, uh, you know, generate some money for charity and, and I was always the one that was organizing things, always the one that wanted to do it and and setting up my own pr business. You'd think that'd be really difficult to do. I just went to donington park one day, got talking to somebody who said do you know what? I've got a few race drivers that I can introduce you to that that need help with with writing press releases. Obviously I didn't mention, I was dyslexic at the time, you know and I went home that night and created my first press kits and went back the next day to Donington Park and ended up with four or five clients out of it.

Mark Taylor: 30:12

And so, you know, sometimes it's been you know, I'm a big believer in fate, but also sometimes it's just been sheer hard work and determinists, you know, and you know know what's the worst they can do, say no, you know, it's not, it's not, you know, too difficult to deal with. So for me, that entrepreneurial spirit was really fostered through my parents, but then, learning about my family, it's been part of my, my family for some time and, and I'm very proud of that fact, to carry it on I've gone through school, gone through, you know uh university, diagnosed with dyslexia.

Jordan Smith: 30:43

You've then set up a pr business for racing drivers which involves writing, yeah, and then we sort of move into. The first job role was that in dudley oh god, dudley.

Mark Taylor: 30:58

Now I've got my father's blame for this. So so I'd finished university I didn't, I hadn't lined anything up. I was going to take a year off and go travelling and then my father spotted a job in the Birmingham Post for a marketing coordinator with a company called Regal Hotels that I'd never heard of and it was based in Dudley in a hotel called the Ward Harms Hotel, which I think is still there, and it had an Irish pub downstairs. And so I went for the job and got it, and so, yeah, I got to experience the inner workings of Dudley very, very quickly, and it was a great job for me because they pretty much gave me loads of autonomy and an Irish pub in Dudley to run, which you know was an interesting challenge. I remember I came to work one day and the radiator was missing because someone had taken it the day before, and so that was interesting. And also, you know, working during the day in marketing and then working in the bar on like a Friday, saturday night was really good fun. But what running a hotel teaches you is, I think, entrepreneurism, because you've basically got a box and you've got to fill it, and if you don't fill it there and then you've lost that revenue opportunity. So, whether it's a hotel room, the leisure club, the meetings and events, the bar, the restaurant, it's very entrepreneurial and I really, really enjoyed it.

Mark Taylor: 32:22

And I was lucky that I met the CEO, a guy called Charles Holmes, who I actually switched name places with someone else so I could sit next to him because I'd found out that he was really into motor racing and had got this idea about getting our suppliers to pay sponsorship to sponsor because we were launching a new brand called chorus hotels. And so I switched name places and he, he sat down next to me says, oh, um, you're unlucky, I'm charles holmes, the ceo. How are you? And I didn't want to say yeah, I know exactly who you are. I've switched name places. I did tell him a few years afterwards what I'd done. He laughed about it. But, um, I gave him entrepreneurial spirit. Um, I realized he was big into motor racing, he wanted to do something to raise the profile of the brand and so we sold advertising space to our suppliers to then fund the brand marketing of Corus Hotels and we sponsored the Vauxhall, I think in the first year. The second year we had a partnership with Lotus which was super successful, but it was one of those opportunities for me again to show show my entrepreneurs. And we got a bunch of marketing for free, whether it was a Vox or Lotus or wherever, and got really good return on investment.

Mark Taylor: 33:30

And then I then was approached to go and work for a startup with Microsoft company called VerticalNet, which I'd never heard of before, was in this thing called IT, which I thought you know well, that's just computers, isn't it? And um, it was brilliant because they paid for me to go to america three times. I think it was my first experience san francisco, which was mega, but I I, whilst I worked with some really, really talented individuals, um, I didn't particularly enjoy um work you know, working for for uh, it was a joint venture between, I think, bt and microsoft, but I stuck it out for a year. We did very, very well. And then I went back into hotels and worked for hilton and I have to say I had two brilliant bosses in hugh taylor and john philip. John philip was very much hard task master operations guy I worked um, or I ran the marketing for the central north division of of hilton, and he was brilliant for me because he kept my feet on the ground, um. I remember I got a um, a colleague feedback score of 100 and he absolutely ripped into me. He said that's the worst score you could get because it can only go down. Thanks, thanks, motivation, um. Whereas h Taylor was very much um, a classic marketeer, and he taught me about partnerships, and Hilton were brilliant for me, and I think it's why I support our colleagues the way I do, because for me it's all about development and developing you.

Mark Taylor: 34:55

You know I'm not the perfect CEO at the end of the day. I know I'm not. I know there's areas that that I I need to improve and I mean, if you look at Ben Frost at Gymshark, you know he was the CEO, stepped down for two years, you know, and really went and developed himself into being a brilliant CEO that he is now. I mean that that takes, you know, a lot of dedication and commitment. I think that's brilliant, you know. It's some real honesty and some real transparency there. And so with Hilton, they sent me to La angeles business school and really developed me.

Mark Taylor: 35:26

But I got to a point in time where I kind of done what I'd done. You know, I think I was on the team that signed the, the first sponsorship deal with mclaren 401 comes back again, which hilton still sponsors this day, and I got stage in my life where you know my then partner was was pranked with my daughter, ruby, and I needed to move on and so I went to Swallow Hotels as their group marketing director and I think from day one pretty much realized that that whilst our CEO of the hotel division was very, very good guy called Peter Gray, I think the hotel division was very, very good a guy called Peter Gray, I think the ownership wasn't very, very strong and the business model was definitely not strong and it was a real shame. The business went into administration. It was my first experience of a business going into administration, really through a lack of cash, basically, and so again it was experience having, you know, marketed Hilton, which is a brilliant brand, you know we worked out, you put the Hilton logo on anything.

Mark Taylor: 36:30

It increases the value of 27% of revenue to swallow hotels, where you know the thing hadn't really got any money, was really struggling for cash, was overexpanded way too quickly, and so I had to reset and I and I went to. I got a job at virgin, which I was really looking forward to working for, for richard branson. Uh, and then you know, virgin active was was run um by a guy called peter, an american guy very, very passionate about the business. Um really enjoyed my time there but was attracted to private equity and that's when I got into my first private equity gig, which was Nationwide Auto Centre. I joined a management team of Duncan, bill and Andy.

Jordan Smith: 37:11

Have we missed something out here? Because, according to my research, you launched the world's first locksmith booking engine that nobody used.

Mark Taylor: 37:19

Yeah, yeah, that was my third private equity gig around the glazing and locks. That was an interesting one. So when I, when I was at nation world auto centers you know the senior management team I think I was in my early 30s and I think they were, you know, late 40s and they put me through seven interviews. You know it was a six month process and and when they told me they got the job, I couldn't believe it. I thought I, you know I, I, I did, you know I I didn't believe they were going to pick me because I was put through so many different interviews. But I think it's because they were so impressed that they want everybody to sign up to me as an individual, which is great, and it was what I realized with nature world.

Mark Taylor: 37:56

Uh, auto centers was one how to run a business. You know duncan bill and andy run a really tight ship was one how to run a business. You know Duncan, bill and Andy run a really, really tight ship. You know they didn't spend a lot of money but they created a very, very profitable business. I mean, I came in midway through the investment and you know they were really, really good leaders of the business. I learned a lot from them and I really enjoyed my time there and in some ways I wish it had been longer. But we sold the business to Halfords and um, you know my, if you like, my, route. My career wasn't really about working for Halfords. If I'm honest with you, I'd been, you know, excited by private equity. It's very entrepreneurial, you're very, very aligned. It's all about growth, uh, and so I was looking for my next project to gig, which was um is sports.

Mark Taylor: 38:46

But when I was at nationwide auto center I tell the story many times, but I was in a in an auto center posh word for for a garage Um, it was actually in Derby, of all places. And I just remember, sat there, I was responsible for the website. There's me and a guy called matt robbins who ran the website. Uh, we turned it from doing six million into 18 million. So at the time, the two of us a credit website was turning over almost as much as halferscom was, but they had a team of 30. But different business, right, so you're gonna, you're gonna have more people. And I sat there and and the center manager answered the phone and the guy said oh, you know, I'm on your website, can't book an mot and at the time there was there was. There was a two-day time lag as to when you could book an mot. Oh, my mot is going to run out. You know, can't you fit me in today? And the center manager said yeah, I'm thinking straight away, hang on a second. I'm bonused on the website revenue. That's website revenue. We're missing.

Mark Taylor: 39:34

How can I attribute all of the sales I generate? And that's really where the first, if you like, starting point for automated analytics of attributing all of my sales back to my marketing started. It was funny because matt and I was sat on my sofa at the time. I lived in trap from avon. We were doing a lot of content creation at the time and we sat on my sofa because we decided, right, let's, let's just shut ourselves away, we'll do it from home. He came around to mine we're watching I think cricket was on the tv and um, we went out for lunch and we just started talking about saying, oh, wouldn't it be great if we just attribute all the marketing we could do? And and today that same sofa is actually in our meeting room in doncaster. We've recreated my, my original lounge, as it were. A little bit different, but the original sofa's there and that's where we're the seeds of of.

Mark Taylor: 40:18

How can actually all of my marketing? You know all the clicks that generate a sale for me. How can I attribute all of my marketing? You know all the clicks that generate a sale for me. How can I see all of those? And so when I went to Esport, we had a similar problem where you know it's a gym chain, you know you generate a lead online, but then it would be an offline gym sale, although you can now buy gym membership online now, but you still get a lot of those sales coming through the door. How do you attribute those back to your marketing? Because you know, if you're attributing all the sales you could, that could have a significant impact on your marketing. You know, there's this old adage of you know 50 of my marketing works, I just don't know which 50. That's what automated analytics is all about. We're trying to find right which bits work and the bits that don't just get rid of them, don't do them anymore.

Mark Taylor: 40:58

And then I went to uh, so we had a very successful exit of of esporta health clubs to virgin my old colleagues, which was a bit weird because my final day there, the the management team from virgin active, which were the people I was working with a couple years earlier, were all in the boardroom at esporta and, and you know, we had a good chat and it was good to catch up with them and they made the business very successful. Um, so then, when I worked for vander glazing locks created the world's first locksmith booking engine. It was like uber of its time where you could see the locksmith and it's brilliant, no one used it. I was so gutted. I was like, because most people, right, I'm locked out my house, where's a locksmith? You know how quickly can he get to me, type of thing.

Mark Taylor: 41:40

But then we realized that in certain circumstances you're always going to want to phone and speak to someone to know they're going to turn up. Um, and even now, you know um, a lot of our, our clients, as you would expect because we're we're a phone-based solution. Um, you know um. British Gas, you know we, we work for Dyno. 80% of their sales come from the phone line, again, because their emergency proposition, and I think about it, you know, with my daughter ruby, you know when there's, when there's a problem, she'll call me. You know when it's not such a big problem, she'll text me. You know it's, it's, it's very much human nature, I think.

Mark Taylor: 42:15

At the end of the day, we've pretty much got through the pre-automated analytics life, but then there was a cruise that changed everything yes, yeah, the marketing forum, so, um, so if I had to go on the marketing forum which, um, at the time I thought it was just a a trip on a boat and it's a networking thing where you know you state projects that you want to deliver and you have suppliers come pitch you type thing. I thought it was one day. I got on this boat, realized it was three days, so you can imagine I fed up my ex partner and told her I'm on this thing for three days, normally back till saturday morning, which I completely miscalculated. Not the message I wanted to give and you can imagine, didn't go down too well at the time, and I was on on the boat and it gave me some time to think and and it was then where I met my angel investor, neil campbell, and I met him for breakfast one morning.

Mark Taylor: 43:03

It was one of the suppliers that was pitching me for work. We just had a chat and and you know, and he said, you know what you want to do, moving forward. I said, well, I've got this idea for a business and you know it's all about attribution. I want to attribute, you know, online marketing to offline sales. And he just literally said, well, why don't you go and do it? And it was one of those light bulb moments. You know and you can imagine, I'm on this boat. It's moored outside of guernsey, unfortunately, richmond events who run it, they don't do on a boat anymore, they do at the grove in in just outside of watford. Um. But I'm on, I'm on this boat and I'm thinking, well, is the drop gonna kill me or is it the swim to shore that's gonna kill, because you're about two miles outside of Guernsey. And it ended up being a great couple of days. But it was that light bulb moment of what's stopping me. And so I think the boat docked at six o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, at 6.05. I ran off, literally ran off the boat, got to my car, drove to Newbury Services off the A34, stopped off at the McDonald's which there's one up there where the petrol station is and phoned my then partner and said, right, I'm quitting my job on Monday. And you know it was a decent salary where I was. So she thought I was mad, but it was just something I had to do. And I always remember that entrepreneurship it always went through me.

Mark Taylor: 44:18

I remember when I was at Hilton, I went on holiday to the Maldives and I took my partner, jane, to the Maldives and I took a book with me about the story of Ryanair. I came back thinking I could set up an airline because Ryanair did it, so why can't I? And so I think my ex-partner Jane she always knew I was going to do something. It was just a question of when and if, and I resigned. I think it was about a week or so later, and it was then a case of right. I need to do this.

Mark Taylor: 44:50

And I incorporated. I think it was on the 5th of December 2013, the day after I spoke to Anna Stadwelli, who was at Google, who's our first employee still with us, you know, 10 or so years later. And that's when I started on this road and I remember I I hired a um an office because I need to get out the house, because when I first started working on a kitchen table, you know part of the thought I was, you know, wasn't working. Therefore, could I do the washing or the ironing, whatever, but I need to get out and have a break. And I I hired a um an office in lovers hall, which is on the outskirts of Doncaster, beautiful old building full of ladybugs, you know, no internet connection whatsoever, which didn't work until I rented it, or very limited. And so the first two years I was pretty much in the office trying to get the tech to work, and it was very much.

Mark Taylor: 45:41

I could understand someone had made a call, I could understand the source of that call, but I just didn't know the content. So I started hiring people to listen to those calls and the business got, when I say, expensive to run. Our operating costs were quite high compared to what I wanted them to be, and so I went on holiday to Benidorm posh bit, the old town, and I can tell you exactly where I did it the cafe, the seat I was sat at. I literally wrote our first algorithm right how do I score a call, how would I work out if a call's been answered, what type of call it is, and then the outcome of that call, how would I work it out? And I phoned up our then CTO, andy. I was all excited, andy, I, of that call. How would I work it out? And I phoned up our then cto, andy. I was all excited, andy, I've got this idea, I've got this idea. And he's like, you're supposed to be on holiday. Yeah, I've never gone on holiday.

Mark Taylor: 46:27

And um, and within a week we got a working model up and running and it really transformed the business, because I think up until that point we'd been more of a media optimization company.

Mark Taylor: 46:36

You know we were selling leads. Uh, you know we're working for america's fourth largest franchise operator, a company called Neighborly in the UK doing okay, I was also doing a bit of consultancy to bring a bit more revenue in, but I decided working on other people's businesses was taking time away from working on my own. And that's when we got Maven to invest in the business and help us go from I think it was about £50,000 worth of recurring revenue to we've just got just below 3 million today, and so that year-on-year growth of 100% has just been stratified and a lot of that is down to Maven. You know I signed pretty much my life away when I did the deal with them, because that's what you do with private equity, but I knew I could deliver for them and I knew I would deliver for them in spades. It was just having that capital to enable me to grow. It was a really big turning point for us.

Jordan Smith: 47:25

So when did Call360 come to life and, in simple terms, what is it?

Mark Taylor: 47:30

So, in simple terms is if you're a business today and you're manually listening to calls, call360 takes all of that away from you. So if you're in marketing and you're using a telephone number or even whatsapp chat or even online bookings, we can actually track what they call the linear click, which is every click that leads up to that conversion. So a lot of models are based off last click. So the last click I've clicked on that's what's converted, that piece of business. What we're able to do is actually track all the clicks. So it might be a Facebook ad that someone sees, and then they go on Google organic and then they convert. We can actually see it's the Facebook ad that's driven that initial response. So in terms of tracking that, if you like, that click traffic, that's the first part of the solution. Second part is is we've got our own large language model, which means that, as I mentioned, the word error rate that we have is less than six percent, which is, you know, which is globally the best from what we can see at the moment, and so it means that when someone does phone up, or when your sales team phone out, rather than listening to that call to understand what's actually happened, it goes through our data classification tree and we can tell you straight away. So, was it a sales call? You know? And if it was a sales call, did you qualify it? Did you convert it? You know what was the average invoice value. All of that we can take out automatically from the uh, from the data we generate. So it means that as a markete, you can see exactly what your return investment is, down to keyword, so you can bid for the keywords that work versus the keywords that don't. Likewise, if you're a salesperson, you can see how good your salespeople are when they're doing their outbounding or their inbounding.

Mark Taylor: 49:16

And what you'll often find in most organisations is they've got an attribution gap. So got a French company that we're working with at the moment. They generate a form fill from their e-commerce site, so half the revenue comes through quotes. That goes into a quote box. There's then an outbound call to that quote. So at the moment, all they can see is right, we generated the form fill. What they can't see is the keyword that's actually delivered the sales from that outbound call. And that's what we're, if you like, bridging the data gap is we're able to cover that data gap by understanding that outbound call. Oh right, that ended up in a sale. It was that G click which created that keyword, that created that sale. So therefore, let's upload that G click back into google, because that's that form fills generator sale rather than just a form fill conversion. So what that means is for a lot of our clients is they reduce their their cost per sale dramatically and increase their return on advertising dramatically as well so before call 360, then what?

Jordan Smith: 50:23

what is it that businesses were getting wrong? Is it visit? So is it what? What you're saying is it's more accurate now and they can put more investment into them ads because they know exactly that, them keywords and that correct right, okay, or those online channels.

Mark Taylor: 50:36

So if you're not tracking the linear click, you're tracking the direct response, if you get the last click. But often a lot of social media, um, and paid advertising actually generates that, that conversion. So one of the things that we spot is that facebook doesn't always get correctly attributed because often that's the first click. Someone will see a facebook advert, click on your site won't convert, go off. Probably do some research on you, come back back via Google Ads or Google Analytics. So you think it's sorry, google Organic or Google Ads. So you'll think it's Google Ads or Google Organic that's generated that sale. No, it's actually Facebook that's contributed to that and so being able to see that entire journey, you know cookie-less, because obviously less and less people are allowing cookies on their browsers, so your data becomes less accurate. We use a cookie-less model, so it means that essentially, your attribution data becomes more accurate and therefore you can see, down to the pound and pence dollar cent, what's giving you the greatest return investment, what isn't so? If I take dyno, when we first started working with them, I think the site was doing about 600 000 pounds a month. Now there's about 1.6 million. What? Why? Why have we increased it that much. Um, there were two brand terms that they were using, um that they could use that money elsewhere, generate a you know, better, better response um. They also made some changes to their uh sales, uh journey to make it easier to convert um uh customers. And so it's not just you know, the google ads optimization or facebook optimization, sometimes, business process.

Mark Taylor: 52:19

But then when I look at um, you know our compliance decision tree that we've created is, if you're running a, an fca regulated business, so you know, uh, maybe you're a broker um, you've got to make sure that you're compliant all the time. How do you ensure that happens? We're not going to listen to every single inbound or outbound call you your company generates. You can't, you know you can't, can't unless you've got teams and teams of people. But you can do automatically using call 360. So it's taken away that manual process, and that, to me, is the superpower of ai. A lot of people are worried that it's going to take jobs. I don't think it is. I think it's going to make your staff better, more productive. So, instead of listening to 20 calls a day, we can now analyze 10000 calls in 0.2 of a second. So your compliance team could be more proactive rather than, you know, listening to calls, and it's that data creation that I think AI is brilliant at and what we focus on the most.

Jordan Smith: 53:17

Was there ever a moment where you just sat down and thought we're onto something?

Mark Taylor: 53:26

Yes, but no, because I'm quite a humble person, if you get. What I mean is is that you must internally must have thought we're onto something.

Jordan Smith: 53:31

You can still be humble and think like we're onto something here yes, because I think the results that we've generated.

Mark Taylor: 53:39

So if I take barchester healthcare, one of our, our first ever clients, they were spending, I think it was about 28 million on staff recruiting agencies. I think they're now spending less than two um and because they've used our recruitment solution, talent track um, with they've just been able to generate better quality hires for cheaper. You know it's costing five grand to our agency um through through sorry, a nurse through a staffing agency costing less than 700 pounds now using our tech. So you know there's big cost savings that people can make. And again, it's really getting rid of those inefficiencies, you know, in terms of manual processes, right the way through to inefficiencies in terms of buying media. So the third part of our solution is the programmatics, which then automatically buys your media on your behalf. So that keyword at the right time, that Facebook ad at the right time, so that it then takes away all the complexities of optimising your media and does it automatically. So you can spend your time on improving the business rather than generating the data to find out where to improve the business.

Jordan Smith: 54:40

When you launch a new product, do you ever get a little bit nervous? I actually read something that did you have like 500 signups in an hour and you thought that the system had broken. You called your dev and he was like hey. I think the system's broken. It's like no Mark, this is legit.

Mark Taylor: 54:56

Tell us a little bit about that, I think sometimes even we're surprised, and I think that's one of our biggest challenges is because we're, if you like, closing the loop on a data gap that organizations have and and sometimes people just oh, we just accept the numbers of the numbers and when you see really what's going on, it's like, well, you know, I thought that might be happening, but now I've got the data to prove it. But, yeah, when we went live in america, uh, we partnered with a company called fourthth who they've got I think they've got the biggest applicant tracking system in the States for quick service restaurants. So Christian, who's one of the founders of Forth, was a big supporter of ours in terms of getting our tech within their tech. And then we worked with Christina, who's director of products, who's a great supporter of ours. And then we worked with Christina, who's director of products, who's a great supporter of ours, and we partnered with them and it was a case of their clients signing up to use our programmatic bidding for recruitment.

Mark Taylor: 55:50

And, yeah, I've sat in my kitchen in Sprockborough in Doncaster, where the business started, on a Friday afternoon and I remember we went live, we sent it live and it was at the end of June and, like, we got a report that told us how many clients had signed up, and it was quite a rudimentary report. It just showed us accounts and, like you know, the names of people, basically, and I remember you know they'd sent the email out, you know, to get the signups and I think it was like within the first I don't know half hour. I think it was like within the first I don't know half hour. I think we were aiming for 20 clients, I think the first half hour I think we've got like 40 or 50 and I'm thinking, right, something's up here. This, this isn't right, we've broken it. You know, it's clearly like double counting or it's something's wrong.

Mark Taylor: 56:34

And Ben who's? Who's based in Asia, he's based in Thailand, although he's originally from Doncaster. Um, you know, I think it was his nine o'clock at night I phoned him saying look, I think there's a problem here because there's no way we've got this many signups. And he's like no, no, no, no, no, no, we haven't. I'm like no, we haven't, no, we haven't. Go check it. Anyway, takes him because he's gone out for dinner. So it takes him about half an hour, 40 minutes to go back home, start his laptop up, look at everything, and in between that time we'd only breached a thousand signups, right, something, it's definitely broken. I'm not, I'm not worried about this, it's definitely broken. And he calls it back, said no, no, we, we really have and, and, and it was like wow.

Mark Taylor: 57:14

And then then literally sheer panic of oh my god, we've got a thousand clients in america, right, we need to get ourselves set up. And Jason, our chief operating officer in the States, I remember calling him saying, have you seen this? And he said to the same thing oh, it's broken, it's broken. I said no, it's not, it's true. And I think by the Friday night we'd got to about 2,000 sign-ups. And that's when the gin and tonic started flowing and I was just like I can't believe this. And every time I'm refreshing it, numbers are going up. I'm thinking this is just mad.

Mark Taylor: 57:47

And then, I think by the Monday morning we got to about 3,000 signups and I was already on a plane to America. You know I'd said, right, jason, you need my help. And it was a real, real challenge. I mean, you know, be careful what you wish for in some circumstances. It took us some time to work out and kind of cope with having that amount of clients land on your doorstep, let alone the billing issues and make sure billing worked and all those things, but just servicing those clients. But it was a great experience. I mean, you know I still think back to you know, did we bake it with 20 clients?

Mark Taylor: 58:21

Yeah, and when you end up with that amount and it's funny because I remember talking to Christian and Christina and you know I remember pitching them the original idea of partnering with them and they went away and had a thought about it and you know they were going to find America's best and they were going to partner with someone who was already in America and then they came back and well, there's no one in America doing what you do. So were going to partner with someone who was already in America and then they came back and well, there's nobody in America doing what you do. So we need to partner with Doncaster's best, which is when we started to believe that we we had this kind of global if you like, this global opportunity. But they've been fantastic supporters of ours and and really, really helpful. But you know it's been great. We saved Pizza Hut in America a million dollars on their recruitment spend. You know we've helped KFC increase their hires and when you're working with.

Mark Taylor: 59:06

You know such big brands or you know all starting off on your kitchen table in Doncaster. There's obviously a lot of pride in that, but also a lot of pressure as well, because you know you're now on a global stage and you're not just dealing with UK companies. So all the complexities of running a global business which I'd never done before but threw myself into it and it's been one of the most enjoyable experiences for us. At times, as Jason will attest to, we were very lucky in finding Jason. I think that's one of the things I've learned, because we tried to go live in America previously and it just didn't work because it didn't have anybody on the ground. And I think we were very lucky in getting Jason because he you know he's a very well-traveled American, very passionate, very, very supportive and has been a great chief operating officer for us that's amazing.

Jordan Smith: 59:57

I mean, you've saved Pete's a pounds, just how.

Mark Taylor: 1:00:03

Well, a million dollars. Well, they haven't had to spend as much money in their recruitment marketing as that as they had to previously, but got a 44% bump up. What, what we could see from the data that we were collecting was there were certain points in the day when they absolutely should advertise and there were certain points in the day when they should not advertise because it was just generating applications that were that were useless. And so the great thing about digital marketing, if you like digital channels, is you can switch them on and off. Now, a lot of people, you know, don't necessarily I'm not saying they don't see allow you to do that, don't have the functionality to do it. So, switching off, on and off an advert on, indeed, we're able to do on a daily basis. If you advertise directly with, indeed, you can't. You know it's either on or it's off, and it's generally on until your your uh, you know your advertising budget runs out, which means that, unless you're advertising with a lot of money, your adverts will run out at some point during the day. That's then an opportunity to advertise when there's less uh competition out there.

Mark Taylor: 1:01:03

Advertising, um, also, I think again, when you attribute the full journey, um, and that's what our platform can do. It can track an applicant right the way through to hire and then use that data in a programmatic model. Often a lot of people can tell you well, you know, you know this is the source of your best hires. But then using that data then by the media moving forward, that's a lot more difficult and that's our uniqueness, as it were. So really we are middleware for ATSs, applicant tracking software and CRMs, you know, because they're really good tools.

Mark Taylor: 1:01:38

But we plug a gap in the attribution. And you know I never thought I'd go to Wichita in my life, but it's the home of Pizza Hut. The original pizza store is there. I had my photo taken out of it last year. Funnily enough, we've just won a new client in Ticket Socket in the US and their guy is based out of Wichita as well. So I guess I'll be going back. But it's been a great experience to to, you know, to go out and meet clients and and and see the progress that we're making in the states it's all right.

Jordan Smith: 1:02:07

So, talking about great experiences, every time I speak to you it's like jordan, I'm in. I'm in monaco f1, I'm testing a waymo car in san francisco, italian this cars, and talk me through some of them experiences.

Mark Taylor: 1:02:22

I mean, I fortunately, because I have a strong team behind me, I'm able to go out and see some of these things, so I got invited to go to San Francisco in March earlier on this year. It's one of the podcasts that we've got coming up. I love tech, right, so, yes, I'm in the tech industry, but I love tech, and one of the things that I think demonstrates AI the best is a driverless cars that they've got in san francisco and I think it's. You know, there's not many locations in the world that have these driverless cars, and so one of the benefits of going to san francisco was that I could experience this tech, and it was pretty much the first thing I did was other than dump my bags in the hotel right, how do I get a Waymo driverless car? And it was a fantastic experience. It's a bit scary at first, actually, and if you know San Francisco, it is very up and down, it's hilly and parts and flat and others, and there's one point where I'm going down this real steep hill and it literally feels like I'm on a roller coaster, like no one's next to me, the car's driving itself, it it's. It's pretty freaky, but, um, what a great experience and what a fantastic bit of tech. Now, unfortunately, don't go to the airport, because to get to the airport you've got to go on the freeway, which they're not licensed to at the moment. But around town, um, you know they really are good.

Mark Taylor: 1:03:37

Now, when people say, oh well, it's going to come at a cost of taxi drivers, it's not, and you know why? Because there are some people that will use them, some people that won't if you. When people say, oh well, it's going to come at a cost of taxi drivers, it's not, and you know why? Because there are some people that will use them, some people that won't. If you want to get somewhere quickly in San Francisco, don't pick a Waymo, because they drive like they've just passed the test, which is what you'd expect. If you want to get somewhere quickly and you're in a rush, choose a taxi driver, and I think you'll always have those choices of their eyes is that it's not going to replace everybody, or it's not going to replace certain industries. I just think it's going to be a compliment to them at the end of the day, and that's certainly what's felt in San Francisco, and I hadn't been back since I think 2001 was the last time I went to San Francisco and it's got its reputation in there, but it is, you know, silicon Valley is an hour up the road. It's the home of Google and Facebook. There's a lot of innovation there and you can feel it when you land, you know, you can feel it when you're walking around Union Square.

Mark Taylor: 1:04:29

You know it was a great situation to be in and I'd met a lot of people outside. They had quite a few meetings set up and it was just great to kind of feel that innovation that I think the West Coast has in the States. It was a great experience, although the jet lag wasn't great coming back. It's not brilliant and I remember I was up at pretty much 3am every morning in the gym and it was kind of like 10 o'clock over here, so that percentage changed, but it was. It was a great experience.

Mark Taylor: 1:04:58

And and again, as you know, because I'm the lead, I'm the lead, I'm the ceo, it's it's my job to go out and network. It's my job to to uh, go out and meet as many people as I possibly can and I think one of the things I you know I don't really turn down that many opportunities. Um, and so, because we're in a unique situation, I think, because a lot of ai is theoretical. We're proven. If that, you know, we're real world example. I think that attracts a certain amount of interest in the business of how have you done it, what have you done, and the fact we you know the uniqueness of coming from Doncaster.

Mark Taylor: 1:05:35

You know I get invited to a lot of things. I mean we were in the top 50 fastest growing tech companies in northern UK. We got the accolade for. A couple of weeks ago I was nominated as the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year, one of the finalists. Last year we were in the FTSE top 1,000, so, financial times, sorry. Top 1,000 growing companies and those accolades are nice to have. But it's also a good endorsement from, from, you know, the people that work for us, my colleagues. You know it's it's endorsement of all the hard work they're doing. But, um, you know it's also getting that stamp of of britain, uk, out there at the end of the day and showing them that we are global leaders uh in uh, which we very much are. There's some great tech in in the UK, uh, and we should be very proud of it.

Jordan Smith: 1:06:26

You said you spend a lot of time just networking. Now, um, I had a quote that said your network is your net worth. Just talk to us a little bit about how important that is. I know he was in Monaco F1 and he was actually chilling with, chilling with the director of Hunger Games. Right yeah, francis.

Mark Taylor: 1:06:42

Are we going to get him?

Mark Taylor: 1:06:43

on the podcast Well big ask, but I was fascinated because I'm I'm not that creative, so I'm a great lover of art, but my first question is where do you start? Like do you start with, like, the sunset, the clouds? Where do you start? Whereas when I think about an algorithm or a business problem, I know exactly where I'm going to start, right. Well, let's do a research, let's find out where the problem is, see if we can solve it right.

Mark Taylor: 1:07:09

So I sat with Francis for probably about I think he was thinking it was going to be like 10 minutes and I think it turned into an hour's conversation like where do you start filming a movie? And what I realized was it was so similar to product development that we employ. So you know he would get the book. You know, right, what do we want to keep? You know, what do you want to film that's in the book and what characters have we got to fill for? You know. So we're developing something, right. What are we trying to solve? What are the features we want to bring in? How do we want it to look? The actual process of filming something is very, very similar, and Francis is an amazing director.

Mark Taylor: 1:07:47

I mean, he's directed, I Am Legend. He's directed all but one of the Hunger Games. You know, fantastic to even just have a bit of exposure to that hollywood experience, if you like. And um, you know my mum always used to say to me make a friend, you know, wherever you go, just make a friend. And and that's followed through with me in everything that I do and and and it's you know for me. I agree with you. You know my father used to say to me it's it's who you know, not what you know, son, uh, and I think that very much comes through. You know, the world is not as big as you think it is, and it really is.

Jordan Smith: 1:08:21

Is is who you know, it's true yeah, my mom used to say, uh, it's a small world, but you don't want to hoover it. That's very true, very true. We're getting sort of to the end of, uh, this podcast, but what can we expect from automated analytics and mark taylor in the near future?

Mark Taylor: 1:08:38

well, in terms of, of our development, of our, of our tech. It never stops. In fact, sometimes I don't think we tell people enough of of what we're, what we're developing. So, uh, the cook list tracking uh gets launched fully from the 1st July. Clients are already testing at the moment, which will give you that linear tracking. Texting will become part of our platform, so things like WhatsApp and even being able to take payment on WhatsApp will become part of our solution. So for us, really, with Call360, it's turning more into an attribution solution for all of your channels, not just calls. On the recruitment side, it's all about generating hires faster, particularly in today's competitive labour marketplace, whether that be in the UK or the US. We're still trying to find those 10 applicants that you're going to hire, not the 100 that you're not going to. Applicants that you're going to hire, not the 100 that you're not going to. So for us, it's about improving the AI and what we're bringing in. So you know, for us, really, it's about building on the feedback from our clients. I mean, most of our development I'd say pretty much 99% is a client coming to us with a specific problem that we then solve. It just happens it's with AI. Let's be honest with you, be akk 3000 I wouldn't mind, but it's all about solving those and continue to invest in development. Um, and continue to invest in our products, because our retention is I mean it ranges between 100 97 each month. I mean the last two months been 100 um, you know, once a client uses our tech they generally stay for long periods of time, which is a great endorsement. The product shows you how sticky, how good it is, but we're always looking to improve it and so for us it's very much about that continual product improvement and making it a better product In terms of really for us as a business. We've applied for Growth Zone status for Doncaster, so we're part of the application for that. So we're very much the driver behind the initial expression of interest and then engaging with South Yorkshire Mayoral Authority to put in the application for Doncaster, which will be super exciting.

Mark Taylor: 1:10:51

Doncaster's unique and it's got 1.4 gigawatts of power that comes online next year. So the biggest issue in the UK one is the amount of power that we have. Two is the storage of power. So you see all of these solar farms or even the wind power. The problem we've got at the moment is being able to store it. There's a batch plant that's going online in Doncaster, in Thoughtmarsh, at the end of next year. The government wants 500 megawatts, 100 acres of space by 2030 to house an AI server farm. We can deliver that in Doncaster at the end of next year and it's green powered. So for us, I think that's a massive opportunity for Doncaster to lay its claim to being a global leader in AI.

Mark Taylor: 1:11:31

We've then got the development of Gateway One, which is grade A offices in Doncaster, which we're one of the founding tenants.

Mark Taylor: 1:11:39

That's also part of the Aero Growth Zone as well and it means that anybody that's investing into Doncaster, you know, will get certain incentives to do so, and it takes Doncaster from being well, you know, I'm going to invest in Doncaster to I'm going to invest in the UK, I'll pick Doncaster, and that, to me, is a massive statement, I think, and really has moved Doncaster.

Mark Taylor: 1:12:01

Someone mentioned to me the other day, actually, that 10 years ago the appetite for Doncaster was to get a Pizza Express to come to Doncaster. You know, now we're reopening the airport. Now, you know, hopefully we put in a good, good option for the uh growth zone and, um, you know, for me I think there's some massive opportunities in the uk, certainly with what the government's doing in supporting ai. I think done a very good job so far in terms of supporting it. But over the next couple of months they're really gonna have to really, you know, deliver on the promises that they've made. And I think that's quite critical for the AI industry is that the government, you know, made some, you know some very good initiatives. Now they've got to deliver against those initiatives. And so for me, the next 12 months, you know, we'll very much see, you know, that hopefully the government deliver on their promises big future for automate analytics.

Jordan Smith: 1:12:56

What about? What about you personally? What, mark taylor? What's, what's, what's planned for you? Any more sort of uh car testing? What's on the agenda?

Mark Taylor: 1:13:04

so, personally, for me, um seems to be quite motorsport orientated, um. So, as we alluded to earlier, I started racing for a telling car manufacturer which, which you know, at my time of age, if you like it was a bit unexpected. I'm testing a Formula One car in August, which I'm really looking forward to. I've wanted to do this since, I think since I was about seven and I saw my first Monaco Grand Prix. It was 1982 Monaco Grand Prix. Keke Rosberg won it. You know, it's 982 monaco grand prix, kicking rosberg with it. Um, you know, I remember watching the grand prix and just being fascinated by it. So I'm going to test a formula one car and hopefully, over the next 12 months, get to race uh, le mans, not the 24-hour race, but the go-kart track. Uh, hopefully, get a chance to either european or international round. Uh, there is something I'm really looking forward to doing.

Mark Taylor: 1:13:54

It's funny because I thought that America and the UK was enough for us. We probably are going to be expanding into France. We are live in Germany and Poland. We're also taking a look at the Middle East at the moment, because NVIDIA have just set up a fantastic facility at the Middle East, and so we're certainly looking at that as an opportunity and for me it's, you know, I'll never stop. You know, I remember we had a colleague who worked for us for a couple years ago and you know we were talking about targets. He said you know what happens when we hit that target? Well, we hit the next target, and then we hit the next target, and we used to joke about it.

Mark Taylor: 1:14:40

But we never stop, uh, and and I don't intend to, you know, I love my business.

Mark Taylor: 1:14:42

I'm very lucky and I say this to my kids, you know find something you love and the money will follow. Um, you know, my daughter's very passionate about hair and beauty and nails and she's launched a very successful business. You know, my son is very much into science and so you know they'll find something to do they love. And, and I'm in that position, I'm very lucky, which is why it's you know, it's not difficult to put the hours in, uh, and I love solving problems at the end of the day. So so for us, um, you know, it really is about continuing um, that, that journey and it, and it's exciting in a day, it's exciting to be talking about America, it's exciting to talk about the Middle East, about Europe, and so for us, really, it's continuing that year-on-year 100% growth that we've been achieving over the past four years and continuing that for the next couple of years and making sure that we're aligning ourselves with a good quality team and adding to the team when we can and continue that growth.

Jordan Smith: 1:15:41

You just mentioned your kids there. I read that your daughter, Ruby did work experience with you. Yeah, what do you think she learned from you?

Mark Taylor: 1:15:50

It's not as easy as it looks and Dad works pretty hard, I think. I think those are the two things she said loved it. I loved her coming in. Um, if I could have really be worked for us every day of the week, I would. I would have it. You know those people that don't want their kids in their business. I don't understand it. You know she, she was, she's a brilliant job and it was great to spend that time with her. But she's got her own life to lead at the end of the day and she's got her own path to go, which I fully understand. But it's great having come in and doing her internship.

Mark Taylor: 1:16:16

It was funny because her, her cousin colby, he came in and did his work experience with us. He was at, he was doing his a-levels, I think at the time and the deal was right. He you know he can't stay. He's got to go back to school and I think within the first like week he was already. Can I stay? Can I have a please? And I remember phoning up his dad saying, look, I know we agreed, but he's been quite persuasive, what do you think? And he's now working in the marketing department of Jet2. He did his apprenticeship with us. He's very successful, done very well for himself, and I'm pleased that was part of his journey at the end of the day, of getting to where he wants to them to have options in life, like I had options when I was growing up. So I think it's very, very important and, yeah, it was a great summer when she came into work. But no, she just passed beauty or hairstyling qualifications and she's qualified as a nail tech as well. She'll do very, very well.

Jordan Smith: 1:17:20

Good for her, good for her. So, season two of this podcast. What can we expect?

Mark Taylor: 1:17:26

Well, it's a little bit different. So one, we're in these delightful surroundings, so we've upgraded our package. We've gone for a serious upgrade, so it's interesting. So I wanted to show people the Waymo experience. So I think it's the next episode that's coming up, isn't it? And it really was a fascinating experience to experience that tech.

Mark Taylor: 1:17:48

We've then got a few of our clients Richard, who's been a client for about 12 months now, talking about his success. I learned something new from him. He's actually a musician, a recorded musician, so I never knew that about him. And then Mark, who's I think he's episode three. He's been a client of ours twice now. You know very, very good marketeer Gives some really, really good insights. And then, you know, we've got some other people that joined the podcast later, like Lord Ranger, who's going to tell us about how he invented the Oyster card on the tube, which you know. Jason, our Chief Operating Officer in the States. He's very delighted with, because in the States you generally have to pay with dollars or cents. Over here you can just tap and go, which he's super impressed with. So it's a bit of a different season, a bit more professional, but I'd liken it to how Automated Analytics is going. You know is I'm really looking forward to this season and the next couple of seasons.

Mark Taylor: 1:18:46

Don't tell us about Bumble and Don't tell us about what Bumble, bumble and Bumble it's his bloody fault drumming that train ride to Bristol, don't? We went to Bristol, is it, wingman? It's a fucking long way right. And on the way back I was chatting and he was like, right, let's do it, let's do it. And we used chat GB to write my dating profile, to write what write my dating profile on my profile. Do that? What right? My dating profile? He was. I live. I live my life like a. I live my life like a formula one race, fast paced, usually pit stops in nice locations. If, if you was it, if you, if you're up for a bit of banter, come and join the ride, or something like that. I can't remember. I used it. I used it honestly. It was fucking great. You're going to have to write the next, the next one, actually.

Jordan Smith: 1:19:37

What would you say is like the craziest thing you've used AI for. I've actually used AI to give me advice on my relationship, really, yeah, yeah. But it's also very biased, because then I've I've actually said to have. Look, I've actually said to her look, I've gone through our argument, this is what ChatGPT said and she said well, actually, based on what it's told me, it's also been biased to me as well.

Mark Taylor: 1:20:01

Yep, that's the issue you're going to have with the airways bias and I don't think people understand that. It's like the BMI index. It was first established by measuring 2,000 white males. So if you're a white male, it's accurate. If you're not a white male in the age range that they tested, it's not going to be accurate. It's got a bias in it.

Mark Taylor: 1:20:19

So and I think that's one of the biggest challenges with AIs is the bias that goes into the model. So, you know, for me it's, and that's where regulation needs to come in. It needs to understand like is the bias you know needs to come in. It needs to understand like is the bias you know in the what is the? What's the model been based on? Because it can fundamentally change the outcomes. And you think, my god, you know, as you've just said it, you know what it said is is it actually accurate? Is it true? And they they call it data labeling, so that that bmi index is is basically your labeling data. Get that wrong. Your model's wrong, it's inaccurate, but you'd believe it because it's come out and it's given you that answer. What's the craziest thing I've? I think the craziest thing I've used AI for is to write my dating profile. I think it's pretty much the craziest thing.

Jordan Smith: 1:21:11

I've been getting discount codes off it.

Mark Taylor: 1:21:14

Not in it. Well, it's funny because they're saying that 10% of searches were done within an AI interface like chat, gpt, and so I don't think you're going to get 100% of searches using AI. But I think what you are going to get is searches going to become, because as our searches become more complex, you're going to get ai to answer that. So if you say you know plumber doncaster, there's no ai answer for that. It's just they give you a list of plumbers, but I can see in the future where, well, I'd like a plumber in doncaster that's between this price range. That's got this rating on on trust pilot. You know that's been established at on Trustpilot. You know that's been established at least for 10 years. So your requirements are greater and therefore that's where I think AI will come in in terms of right, here's the plumber for you or here's the plumbers for you, and so I think the search gets more and more complex and your parameters change. You put more parameters in it. That's where AI search, I think, will come in. I don't think it will take it over fully. I also think there is this reluctance of well, actually, how accurate is it? Is it going to give me the actual right answers.

Mark Taylor: 1:22:23

The bias, because that's the one thing that you'd argue, that Google search has bias in it. Originally without AI, because it was based on the quality of your site, your backlinks. They were looking at various kind of touch points that rated your site highly. Ai there's less known. You know what is the bias within that model. You don't necessarily know what that bias is, but it can still affect the outcome of your search. So I think that's one of the challenges that we've got and it's sort of understanding what the model is based off. I think that's one of the challenges that we've got and it's sort of understanding what the model is based off. I think that's one of the things that Google needs to answer about Google search. Now you start to see a lot of AI answers. Okay, so how is that result being generated? Where are you putting that data from? Why are you putting that data?

Jordan Smith: 1:23:10

I think that's one of the things they've got to solve at the moment. How long till you can prompt AI and say here's my diet plan. I've got a £100 budget. Find me the best online food shopping deals and have it to me ASAP, to my address, and it just literally buys your diet plan.

Mark Taylor: 1:23:22

So I think yeah, you can do that now how accurate it's going to be. It'd be worth testing it, and that's a lot of the time I'm testing different things to see actually how accurate is that AI prediction? So, yeah, you can ask it to do that now, but will it be the cheapest, the best, the most nutritious It'll be? What it thinks is won't necessarily be what is actually the right option for you. And this is where, with artificial, it's artificial intelligence. At the end of the day, it's not artificial consciousness, and there's a difference between two, which is why AI will never replace human beings, because we've got this thing called common sense. You know which. You can't really teach a computer common sense, because we can think for ourselves. Ai is based on predictions, it's based on previous data. So I don't you you know I think you will struggle to get you know hundreds of accuracy, like a human being is.

Mark Taylor: 1:24:19

So if I take the Waymo cars fantastic cars, right, if you get three of them, a junction, they stop. Don't know which one to let first. And so, even with the Waymo cars, there is someone in a control center. You know who is looking at those cars and command manly override them. But you see all the time on YouTube you can see literally where you've got three Waymo cars pulling up to a junction and they're stuck and I don't know which one. You know which one goes first because usually what they do is follow the rules of the highway code. Who got there first? And all that kind of stuff in America. But you've also got images of of a waymo car going around in circles in a in a car park because it doesn't know what to do. But a human would know what to do because they'd know to. You know, drive and exit the car park. And that's where I think this artificial intelligence versus artificial consciousness. You won't get that.

Mark Taylor: 1:25:09

Take the elton john scenario that I gave you earlier. You know his music could be sampled and he not earn any right out of that. But that again, that's a computer program sampling something he's created himself to make it slightly different. Still needed that that, that music being created in the first stage, for the model to work. And yes, you will get models that potentially will think for themselves, but again, it will be based on previous data. But because we've got common sense, we can already do that already. Um, and that's why I think I see it as a bit of a superpower, rather than it being uh, you know something that's going to cost jobs and hold people back daniel priestly is often saying ai can do this, it can do that, but it can't be you.

Jordan Smith: 1:25:52

The best way to protect yourself from ai in 2025 is build your personal brand. Yes, what's your thoughts on that? And what? What would you? What would you? What advice would you give to people that are, like, scared about ai?

Mark Taylor: 1:26:05

um, so two questions there. So, first thing is, totally agree with you in terms of of, uh, your personal brand. I think that that's you know. We've recognized that even when we post on LinkedIn as a company, we get more views. If it was me posting and I am posting sometimes the same content so definitely it's about your personal brand. I mean, you've just got to look at Stephen Bartlett for what he's done with Diary of the CEO, which I think great podcast, and you know, I think he was one of the first to really do it in, in, in the style that he's done it in. I think he's done a brilliant job.

Mark Taylor: 1:26:40

So, in terms of protecting yourself from ai, I think really it's understanding where your data is being used. Uh, and you'll be quite surprised how much data there exists on you. So, uh, for example, I I don't have any loyalty cards, so I don't have a loyalty card. So one of the things I also do is turn off the mic on facebook messenger, so I don't allow it, so that I don't get served out based on conversations. It was funny because I went to harrison college.

Mark Taylor: 1:27:06

Um, it's a specialist college in in don costa, a great job for kids between 16 and 18, uh, you know that of, uh, I've got adhd and the like, and they were asking me. You know that have got ADHD and the like and they were asking me. You know we had a conversation about In-N-Out Burgers, which is an American restaurant brand, and then suddenly on Facebook we're getting targeted with ads. That's their algorithm listening to you because you've got the messenger microphone allegedly on, and so for me I'm very protective. I don't have, um, you know, like, say, a loyalty card with any of the supermarket brands you know, for my fuel or for anything, because I'm not saying that days that data being used to profile me in a negative way, which is one way of protecting me from being profiled. But at the end of the day, we are being profiled because every time I go in and out of the UK, my picture's being taken with facial recognition to get through passport control.

Jordan Smith: 1:28:00

That's interesting. Let's talk a little bit about AI hacks. Last year, my business partner over in Sydney. Now he said right, for the team, we're all going to get some personality tests which sort of displays your strengths, your weaknesses, blah, blah, blah. Then we're going to create a business goal and then we're going to create individual KPIs based on this personality test, to who's going to be best for that role in order to achieve that goal. So I thought that was a really interesting AI hack. But, from your experience, is there anything that you swear by in terms of AI that you do on a regular that you can sort of share with the audience?

Mark Taylor: 1:28:42

yeah sure, I mean, I use chat GPT quite a lot purely because of writing correspondence. So if I've got a letter, an important letter, to write, I'll start off and chat gpt and then check it myself. You know, which is known as a supervised model. But, um, one of the things I really love is ways, which is um. It it's a a um, basically a direction like a sat nav, um type of application that uses ai to predict your journey times. But I think it's great because you get warnings of potholes and traffic journey times. But I think it's great because you get warnings of potholes and traffic and stuff like that. And it's one of.

Mark Taylor: 1:29:18

I downloaded it last year after some controlling where a friend of mine, uh, we were driving through france and she suggested that I used it.

Mark Taylor: 1:29:25

It's been, it's a, it's a brilliant tool and that's where you know, even talking about the waymo, you know the way we're driving this car. It's just a cool bit of you was just a cool bit of you know, just a cool bit of tech, a great implementation of AI and there's a lot more. I think there's a lot more advances that we're going to make in medicine and healthcare through AI, not necessarily predicting, but actually helping doctors get to a better diagnosis quicker, I think in the day, and there's some really, really interesting tech and tools that have been developed in the healthcare sector which I think will have a big impact, and it's one of the things that we're looking to do. We're looking to work with the NHS at the moment. At the end of the day, we save a lot of our clients, a lot of money on their advertising costs. We'd love to do the same for the NHS on some of their operating costs.

Jordan Smith: 1:30:17

Do you think ChatGPT can be a little bit reckless in terms of its copyright policies? Because I can literally go onto applecom print screen a section of a sliding banner, stick it into GPT and say write me some custom code for my Shopify website? It knows full well it's off the Apple website, but where's the protection against Apple's code that it's built? And if I found some creative work it could be some artwork of Nike products I can put that into GPT and say put my logo on it. 7 Studios Where's the sort of protection and copyright with AI? Are we there yet? How does that look? And I think that's the sort of protection and copyright with ai. Are we there yet? How's that?

Mark Taylor: 1:30:56

love, and I think that's the challenge that I mentioned earlier, that elton john mentioned. So I think copyright is one of the biggest issues. So whatever you put into chat gpt, it is taking a copy of that. So if you've got any code or anything that's super sensitive to use your business, you've got to be aware you're putting it into the chat gpt model, so they're taking a copy of that. So as a business, you've really got to decide actually how much sensitive information do we want to even put into chat gpt? And I know of of um, a couple of companies that have implemented AI within their business, primarily ChatGPT or the Microsoft equivalent and not realised. Actually you've got to be quite careful because the more sensitive information you put in there, someone else can have access to that. So we have rules and limits in terms of what we allow our staff to do.

Mark Taylor: 1:31:51

But the copywriting issue is exactly as you highlight. Someone's been paid to do a very copywriting issue is exactly as you highlight. You know someone's been paid to do a very good job of creating that banner, um, and, and someone owns the copyright of it and and you've just created and added, you know, a slightly different version using chat gpt, and this is where I think the copyright argument comes in, because and it's what elton john points out is, you know, someone's sampling my music, putting it through through AI to make it slightly different, and I don't earn a royalty off that because I am the model, if that makes sense. Yeah, my music was the model. It's why Getty Images created an AI picture creation tool. So you put in it. You know what you want the picture to be, so you know sky know what you want the picture to be, so you know sky at night in in san francisco, and they've based that model off.

Mark Taylor: 1:32:40

You know hundreds of millions of images that they own the rights to. You know they've had other people trying to download all their images to create a similar model, and obviously that's breach of copyright. So I think the copyright law is really aware. You know it's a bit wild west at the moment and that's where of copyright. So I think the copyright law is really aware. You know it's a bit Wild West at the moment and that's where I really think you know the governments of the world need to crack down on that, because I don't think it's fair. You know, taking someone's work and re-engineering it, you know, at no cost. That's interesting.

Jordan Smith: 1:33:11

I've got a really personal question I need to ask you now.

Mark Taylor: 1:33:21

When will enough be enough with LinkedIn AI written captions? So that's one of the things I don't use. And it's funny when you say about LinkedIn captions, whilst you think, being an AI innovator, we'd use AI for everything. I don't, because some things it's good, for some things, uh, it isn't it. It's funny. I saw some content on facebook, uh, that was talking about, uh, lewis hamilton, and exactly the same content was presented to me a day later with the word lewis hamilton removed and mac for stappen. You could see it was plagiarised. And I think you know people that use those LinkedIn captions.

Mark Taylor: 1:33:58

At the end of the day, that's a volume play. It'll lose its stickiness. It'll lose its ability to capture people pretty quickly. There's nothing compensates for, you know, human thought. That's why I said the difference between artificial intelligence and human consciousness. At the end of the day, we're far better creatives than we think we are. Um, and it's one of the things I don't use, because I like to be authentic. You know, I like people to know it's literally me posting on on linkedin. It's me. I don't always get it right, it's the spelling mistake in there, as we know, but it's genuine and authentic and I think that's that. That's what's the difference in today's society is being genuinely authentic.

Jordan Smith: 1:34:36

I think there's a massive gap there to be your authentic self. Because if I go onto LinkedIn now, I see AI posts, someone commenting with an AI comment, I see my friends who have been to the studio many times commenting and saying looks a great space. It's not even them writing it and I'm like where is the real authentic posts? And that is the problem that we have got today, isn't it? So, based on everything you've learned in your career, you know before automated analytics, if you could give any advice to a younger self, what would that advice be?

Mark Taylor: 1:35:12

I think it's being grounded. And it's being grounded in the numbers. You know it's great to get feedback and to be introduced to entrepreneurs and in Doncaster, you know I regularly get asked the question I'm thinking about raising some money. For me, it's start with your business plan first, you know, start with what I would call a proof of concept. You know, show that whatever you're looking to create actually can generate revenue and can generate profit, because I think gone are the days where people would invest money on an idea. I think it's now about, well, is that idea actually going to make money? Or even, you know, generate revenue? Even you know generate revenue. And so for me it's having that plan and and occasionally get approached by people who are expecting that, you know, as part of an investment round, they're going to get paid a fortune. You know I earned less than I did when I was 32 because I believed in myself and I was willing to take a pay cut because I knew I was going to get return investment for my investors. So whilst to some it might have been seen as risky, well, I knew I was going to deliver, so I didn't see it as a risk for me. But I think at the end of the day, it's it's it's coming up with that minimum viable product, which is what a lot of people talk about, and making sure you've got something that that can actually get traction almost before you're you.

Mark Taylor: 1:36:30

You're looking at a funding round, really, and and I think you know you know our perception in the UK is very much. You know we've got our feet on the ground. You know in the States that you know there's more money, but they're looking for bigger ideas at the end of the day, and we are very, very good at starting companies up. I believe I think we need a bit more support around how we help entrepreneurs grow. One of the things we're looking at bringing in within the growth zone is an incubator, which you know. America has got a number of tech incubators. I want Donkos to be one of the tech incubators, one of the best ones in the UK, and give something back at the end of the day, because I've got a lot of experience and I think one of the things I would have told myself, you know younger, is focus on that idea that you, you know, and put your heart and soul into it.

Jordan Smith: 1:37:19

Well, look, it's. Uh, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. I could literally go on all day. I don't know what we're like for time, but uh, so next time, episode two, season two, you'll be the man asking the questions. There's a of exciting things to uh look forward to, but, um well, yeah, thank you very much. Looking forward to partnering with you, absolutely, and uh, and yeah, let's, uh, let's have a successful season two brilliant.

Mark Taylor: 1:37:43

Thank you, jordan. Thanks very much.