Jonathan Trimble - Part 2

Jonathan talks about the "loud and visceral" experience of launching an agency; winning a huge financial client (and later suing them); securing an incredible deal to sell his company; the relationship between capital and innovation; the joy of writing and music; and mentoring the next generation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello, and welcome to the Anthem podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howard. This is part two of my conversation with Jonathan Trimble. So far, we've heard about Jonathan's early life and his discovery of a wide entrepreneurial streak. We've heard about his career in some of the world's most creative advertising agencies, including BMP, DDB, and Fallon. And we rejoin him just as he's launching his own agency, 18 Feet and Rising.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

That morning we got in the cab, Martin Brooks and John in the background, who that he was we phoned him. We're like, there's only two of us. Are we actually going down? He was like, if you don't get down there now and release the story, this agency will be still born. So he was on the other end of the phone and he went, go with 18 feet and rising. It sounds weirder. And that'll command that'll command more interest. And so that's kind of how that that part of it ended up happening.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

And see, that that's a story that I thought I knew, but I but I didn't know it actually. Um I thought it was something to do with the floods in the States at the time and the water was 18 feet high and rising. That's a myth that's been out there, or that I just made up myself. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

No, it's the combined combined other founders. And we went up to what's quite fun is then as you get past the sort of very scary, there's there's many scary parts as you start. The first one is that resigning and then actually getting your exit date and then the campaign, the public part. Yeah, those are all like really quite like uh-oh, here we go. Because also you've got to remember, like, we're I'm 34, and so I have we've never actually even been in the C-suite. We are like board level, you know, or group group level players. We weren't, we were sort of kiss starting to kiss the yeah. We've never really been at the top of anything, and so we were running pretty scared at the time. And the there's some fun bits then when they start this the insiders that have done it start introducing you to the the kind of club, yes. And the first introduction to the club is you go up to Coots Banks, Coots look after all the bank accounts for independent startups, they have a media specific. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Yeah, is it against the law to have any other bank?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

No, but it's just super cool, and they it's really simple because basically they they give you the business banking, and then what they want is to get your private banking later, yeah. Yeah, but suddenly you're in this slip stream, right? Oh, all right, I'm in the Coots Club because obviously we're gonna be big, they're gonna look after the banking, then they'll look after my private wealth later. So this very pretty into flattering, kind of like other side of it, especially when you're nowhere and then you're marching up to Coots on the Stroud your lunch and all this stuff. And it was quite funny. We said I were gonna be called 18 Feet and Rising, and the the guy Rob Stapleton up there, who anyone who started an agency will know who Rob is. Rob Stapleton went, Oh, that's quite funny. Maybe we'll start a bank around our combined girth.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Stuff like that is like when you're like, this is now magic, you know?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

And as John said, the myth building starts. John Clayton was always saying this is this period now is where all the myths. This is like the BMP, the minis, the them standing under the tree. This is when you start getting into all the PR myth building stuff.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah, yeah. So then uh maybe you can just give us a couple of stories from from the the 18 feet and rising days, heady days.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah, well, I mean, it I already loved the business anyway, and was had done it at this level around the you know, the best people and the best work, and was feeling really satisfied by that. And then starting up then was just took that and like added another like at least 10 times. The experience was so loud and visceral, every single emotion all at once, all the time, so intoxicating. It was like the drug got even heavier. So there's many, you know, many, many parts to it. The the there's the very, very beginning few weeks where we were above the pub in Ganton Street, and that's lots of fun, a kind of like startup stories of you know, you do a pitch, then head straight into the boardroom, which was the Shaston. And every time I walk along Ganton Street, you know, you can kind of peer up at that little window, and that's where it started, tiny little yeah, office and all that stuff, and all the fun. And but again, some of the very difficult things were already beginning at that point. So you you're getting both. But there was the yeah, there was that sort of romantic first year where we just couldn't believe we'd done it. And for me personally, having always wanted to start a company, I mean, the way to the way to I can the only way I can explain it's like if people have something they've always wanted to do, I was doing it. You know, that was the only thing I always wanted to do, and I was doing it, and it was just the most exhilarating. Like, imagine being given the chance to do the only thing you've ever wanted to do. Yeah, the first year was was like that, and then the second year, obviously, we we then won nationwide, and that was the big we oh right, we've got to take these guys seriously. Yeah, because the first year is like, oh, they're they're well, we were out of Fallon, so already that had Fallon was the story, we weren't really the story. The story was Fallon was amazing. So, what are these guys gonna do? They've already got a weird name, we've never heard of any of them. We're meeting this guy, Jonathan. He seems maniacal about the pursuit of some kind of creative agenda, which of course everybody loves that that romantic story. That was year one, and we we traded on that, and then year two, we we won nationwide against such and such, in the very place I'd done work experience for. That was the making of us. That was like we had to win that pound for pound, meeting by meeting, and the process was really long. It began in November and it didn't complete, and we weren't properly awarded until April. Okay, it was it was massive. And I remember at one point going, This has taken up, you know, this has just taken us over, and this has taken me over, and we have to be ready that we might not win this, and then we're gonna we were we would have lost a significant chunk of it. In some ways, it wouldn't have actually mattered that much we had won it, but we were being promised it was really clear from the beginning that we had the potential to, then it became, but can you? Yes, the world's largest mutual bank. Are they gonna do it? And I can even remember we got down to the final two, and then we were sort of told we'd got it and they were gonna work alone with us to get us over the line. Then it turned out they weren't working alone with us, they were already talking to some other people. You know, the agency like you're into it now. The agencies are encircling this thing, and you're gonna be we had pros at it, and people were calling us going, you guys are you're gonna be the stalking horse. Believe me, you're pace setting this pitch. Yeah, you cannot win. There's no way the world's largest mutual bank is handing it to 12 people above a pub. We were then in World Street, it was but I mean we were we were kind of nowhere, and we did, we won. Uh that was like a whatever you want to call it, like a moment of like total affirmation. Yes, that's the one story. After that, it was all very, very, very difficult, actually. A lot of snakes and ladders after that, but that was like a peak. Wow, we've you know, we've we've done it, yeah. And then obviously there was the selling, then the selling of the company, which came at the end of 2014, so 2012 when we won Nation Force quite quick. Like you look when I look back at it, it seemed a very long time. It's actually quite quick when you especially we're invested in companies now, we expect like a decade, like at least, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

So yeah, we packed a lot into a short time, that's what happened. It's therefore it probably seems like a lot longer than it actually was.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Well, and also Adam and Eve it changed like the business was changing. Facebook ads were really taking off, but the industry wasn't admitting it. And Adam and Eve actually sold them within 36 months, so a lot was moving off. So then suddenly we were kind of in a hurry. We were also having a lot of troubles at this point, other difficulties. And the story there is is more of a game of two halves where Friday, the first Friday back in 2015, I'd gone in to see this group, Unlimited Group, which eventually became a Decentration. Yeah, quite quite a cool London stock exchange listed mini group, which is sort of perfect for us. They didn't have an ad agency at the time. The environment looked good, it looked like, right, that's not gonna be a corporate sellout. They were also willing, you know. Well, I I tabled a deal that was essentially completely in our favor and entirely unreasonable and way over the paper value of how you would ordinarily. And I remember everyone going, this is not gonna, you know. We almost did it as like, I almost did it as like, we don't really want to do this, but if you want to meet these terms, we we can talk, we could, we would have to talk again. And the first January back, first Friday, I was, you know, called up for their response, went over to they were on Great Portney Street, and Barry Barry Bryan, who I I liked Barry Bryan from the minute I kind of met him, he was just seemed like a really good guy. Often these things are done like that, you just connect with someone there, you think, actually, I could see myself being around this guy. And he he just read back the terms of what I'd already asked for. He'd get his term sheet out and they'd run through it all. And I kind of got to the end of the reading of this term sheet with his CFO and there was my advisor there and stuff, and kind of went, I don't really know what you want me to say. You've just you've yeah, all the things I asked for. So what could I say I'm disappointed? You know, obviously we have to take it away and think about it, but you know, so thank you for and Barry just looked me in the eye and just went, Yeah, we we we do what we say here. I'm thinking, yeah, okay, that really works. So suddenly, you know, in that half an hour, 45 minutes, you're gone from an entrepreneur to something else altogether. Again, like a guys, you know, with this is this is happening now. We we've made it in a in a different way. Now, the later on that day, that same day, the same first Friday back, yeah, bearing in mind we had one Alliance at this point, which is another big client. We had Alliance nationwide, were like our big juggernaut clients, not quite what we had in mind from the creative over the horizon.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Fucking far from it. Huge. We were failing on every like I said, we would be creative agency of record for the decade, right? And we were like no hold and the work we were doing and the clients we had, it was it, we were really struggling, like in my head, creatively. It was nowhere near what I was used to producing. So, in some ways, this whole sale, it was luke, very, very lucrative. And that part had a kind of like, well, we've done well. But in my heart, somewhere, all of us sort of knew we haven't become that creatively led, yeah, industry changing, like our forebearers, like the agencies we've worked for in the past, we're just nowhere in my head on that structure. And also, there wasn't a limit on that. And my I didn't know what they were like, Well, what's your exit plans? What are you talking about? We are going to take over the whole world with whatever this creative mission is we've got, and we'll work that out. That's I can talk to me about it. I don't even know what you're talking about. And suddenly it was like, oh no, there is going to be a sale, et cetera, et cetera. So it sounds weird, but it was it came with a sort of, and I think a lot of founders feel it, it comes with a moment of what feels actually like, oh, we're falling short when you're actually winning. Anyway, it doesn't matter. The point is that afternoon, Alliance and Nationwide were our big, you know, one of our big revenue drivers, and they would be driving a lot of the value of this deal in theory. And I called the client as I would do on the Friday that first day back, you know, how was your Christmas? All that kind of thing. He said, Actually, actually, I'm in London. And I'm in, you know, and we were both account people. My spidey sense immediately went, what is that? Doesn't make any sense. And he said, actually, do you mind if I drop in? And I was like, Uh-oh. Well, I know what's coming. You know, we were pretty used to reading the I mean it out. They would always, it would always come out of nowhere, but you were slightly trained now that it would come out of nowhere. And yeah, they put us on notice that afternoon. So in the same day, I had the deal of the lifetime slid across the table and then was put on notice. So that's the so you've got this startup year that was like great fun, we're living our dream. You've got a kind of heroic score from the halfway line, magic, and then you've got this very like qualified knife edge. Yeah, that's kind of more what having an agency was like. It was like for every ladder, there was a snake, you know, it was it was a very brutal existence, and it and it is for any company, you know, even when it's going really, really well. Yeah. Your experience of it is mostly setbacks.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

So hell of a ride, Jonathan. It was wild, it was wild. Hell of a ride. So take us. So take us from there, the the days of 18 feet and rising. Well, perhaps you can talk as about how that deal did conclude, but then beyond that, how how you went from that to just hand rising and what that business looks like today.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah, so it got worse before it got better. When you when you get to heads of terms, there's a period of diligence. Yeah, so deals can fall out of bed at that point. And it's happened to a lot of my friends. They go through heads of terms and they think something's coming down the track. It actually happened to a very good friend of mine who I'm still close to the founder of ClearScore, Justin Massini, which is one of our big tech UK success stories, is still a client that we I enjoy working on C and tomorrow. The you know, they were they were nearly acquired three years in by experience for 270 million and it was blocked by the CMAs. You know, it's just you know, you you go home, you tell your wife there's this money coming and it's already being spent in people's heads. So you know you've got this very treacherous period where it actually might not happen. Now, I could kind of tell they were very hungry for this to happen, as it turned out way hungrier than it that their ongoing needs financially actually, I probably could have doubled my offer and and still got it because they had other things that they wanted to happen that all to do with financial engineering. So that's the other thing you start to really learn, which is people doing the actual work and then the capital owners, the game the capital owners are playing is very different from the ones that people actually doing the work are. And you then realize that whether we're losing or winning this client, it's not as much of a factor as the corporate game that's going on or the market game that's going on above above everybody's head. And that was an amazing whole other dimension of learning that would then kind of come out. So the fact that nationwide was leaving, first of all, it didn't have to get disclosed for quite a while, and second of all, we managed it through the press to make it look a bit like we might be kept on as project work. It was a lot of fudging going on. Basically, we were being pushed out, but there was a temporary marketing person there, and they weren't sure if they were, you know, how so anyway, we benefited from the ambiguity of the whole thing. They then used a script that we presented to them and kind of pushed it out themselves and said that their internal agency had done it, and that was a real problem for us because you know it was very naive what we did next, but I tried to understand why. And at that time, remember we said, look, the reason why we exist is this creative over-the-horizon thing. We're never giving up on that. Yeah, we're still in the journey of that, we haven't got there yet. And then suddenly what was gonna be one of our magic moment scripts had had been taken, it'd actually been changed and then produced quite badly.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

We had previously been ready to shoot that and they cancelled it about a week out. So you had that whole thing we've got to stack, it was like a big shoot. That whole thing you've got to stand everyone down. I'm sorry about this, and that sort of thing. Anyway, it turned out then it did get made. We, you know, there's a whole I will never know what on earth happened. There was no there was a CEO leaving. And I think we're weird things can happen when CEOs of mutual banks leave. Uh anyway, this script came out, and obviously they credited themselves with it. And the problem internally then was well, if you let that go, we're none of the things you've said we are. And actually, even to myself, you're a bit like, I don't think you get away with that. And so we sued them uh at the high court. Uh, you know, there was some preliminary letters like, and unfortunately, the contract's pretty clear. Like, you, you know, we all learned the hard way then that you do you do give away all the IP to these things and a whole lot of quite hard lessons. But they had passed off, meaning they had claimed they'd written it when they hadn't, and they sort of owed us an apology. So, I mean, really from the get-go, there was never there was the chance of a pretty big sub-financial settlement, which we thought we could bully them into. But the reality of the core, and then of course, once they were in it, you were then a relatively small independent company going up against the world's largest mutual bank, and they had the resource, they had the resources to run it all day and all night, and they'd and dirty tactics as well. They were using this like mad manchester base, grout. I mean, this this uh you know, they were not playing nice. It was it, you're in it, you're in it, and you've you've chucked a stone at the tank, and it comes around to blow you up. So, anyway, we went through that, of course, also while we're trying to complete this deal, which wasn't a great look. We were suing a client pretty publicly. Fortunately, we we did get a good settlement out of it, mainly in the way of our exit. It didn't come directly, it came indirectly through the the terms of the ramp out, and somehow the the holding Barry, you know, bless him, kept his nerve through the through the whole thing. I think some people did see it as like a the stand the industry needed to take. I think it scratched a lot of things that the industry was feeling towards clients that it had gone too far, that the relationships were way out of balance, the pitching had gone crazy. And I think people did admire the stance, but you'd be surprised what you know, they admire the stance for 1.6 seconds, yes, and then no one wants to go near it. You are like on your own and you know, campaign, everyone then went, nope, we're not, we're not, we're not gonna take part in this. Thanks very much. So you sort of see the true colour of you know what really goes on. Anyway, we managed to get out of that. We then went into Unlimited and Matt, who was the remaining partner, we'd exited a partner previously the year before. Matt and him didn't get along. That was very tricky. We had to raise money to exit him and pay him out before we had been paid out. So there was a sort of a risk there. But again, at that point, I'm like, this is gonna work. So there's this amazing June 9th moment in 2015 where I'd actually borrowed the money from my mum to buy that other partner out. It was again, this is just like as just as like a side thing. At some level, when if you want to start a company, things like you do need access to capital.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

You know, if we hadn't had access to that capital at that point, you know, these things eat themselves and they don't go, and that's why people fall out and it doesn't work. Like I was able to write a check up front, and that went into the businesses alone. And a year later, I was able to pay my mum back with interest. We took all the money, we took all the upfront with all the money off the table. But this was one of these weird deals where all the money came out up front, which never happened. The whole point is they buy a bit, yeah, and then they run you along. Obviously, they want the joint synergy, the other side. They were so desperate to do this deal, yeah, that they just pushed it all across the table up front. And there were never any ideas around what would happen after that. And they only acquired a minority and they were only allowed one seat on the board. So basically, I had my cake and I was able to sell the company without really selling the company.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

And and even and they then sold to private equity. And people would come along and look at this deal and were a bit like, who did this deal? You don't have any power in this company, but you've paid the money to have the power in it. Yeah, I don't know, it was a simple deal. That was the good part of it. They wanted it quick, I think, and other things. Anyway, without getting too boring into what happened after that, then you're then weirdly stuck, you're sort of engaged, can't make the synergies work. Kel Sapries, Matt left, he took his money and ran back to Australia. And I had a, you know, and I know and I actually I hadn't, you know, you I had the opposite. I had this incredible desire to start this company, and all my dreams came true, but then I had no clue what happens up, you know, next. I didn't even know what would I turned 40 two weeks later. I hadn't thought past 40, I hadn't thought past sale, you know. I then became, I don't know, I was like, I don't know who I am now.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

It was which was a really difficult, weird experience of well, it sort of didn't quite become the thing I had in my head. It's I'm somewhere here in the past, but I don't know what I might what do I do now?

SPEAKER_01 19:34

I mean, that is fascinating because a lot of the time I I will ask deliberately sort of story type questions, and and you know, I might ask some people, did you have a kind of a mission at the start of your career? And as we discussed, you you definitely did have one, but like you've got there, you've got to your kind of happy ending, if you want to use that story term, and then it's kind of what's next. It's like there's a there's an abyss almost a void. It was, it was how how did you feel that then?

SPEAKER_00 20:00

It was pretty bad. I mean, it was it was it was a really weird, yeah. I don't remember it as a happy time. I I remember it as I enjoyed the platform of it. What what what happens is you the ego of it, you're really starting to enjoy because you you know you go to this lawyer's firm, you go around, you sign all these papers, money transfers, like you feel like a bit of a player, yeah. And people treat you differently, yes, yeah, very, very, very differently. And it's like you enter one club when you start an agency, and you enter another club when you sell it, and you're not you now understand how that machine works, and you're now introduced to it hanging out with other people who have sold companies and what have you. So I was really enjoying that part of it. I was doing far less day-to-day in the company. I was pitching a lot, which I sort of enjoyed that, you know. I would, you know, we just sort of boozed our way through these pitches. So I was enjoying the sort of boozing, you know, pitching hard lifestyle aspects to it. We did hire a couple of people who were doing a really good job making it. I sort of went, look, okay, we're not going to be afraid to be, you know, here's a radical idea. How about we give clients things they need uh and then make them happy? That's an old-fashioned idea. And I kind of settled myself to a very big change of heart, and even to this day, a huge change of heart on, you know, Ant Rising has no zero ambitions to be in any way defined or understood as or recognized as creative. I say, guys, I don't really mind about if the work is working, if they are writing checks, if they are satisfied and they are having a good experience, then that is the end game. So it's quite, you know, had to get really real about I had this sort of like horrible realization that these creative agendas weren't necessarily like there was a time maybe in the past, those things overlapped with tremendous business success, kind of naturally one and the other. Now it had become a lightning in a bottle thing, and it actually became quite selfish and not in a Most of the clients we had didn't need that. They didn't want that. And so occasionally there's like a we need something to sort of spark ourselves up. So I had this sort of like difficult realization that all of these ideals that I had around what creativity could do weren't weren't real.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

You still have the word creative in your descriptor, don't you? Creative Studio?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

We do uh creative ventures company. And yeah, and sometimes I'm just a bit like, even that, yeah, even I kind of think, do we need I'm very careful before I sort of lean on that word creative. And the other difficult reality, and you see this with startups, and you see, I'll talk with 18 feet, and you see it with many, many other things, is when you look at a success story that's quote unquote creative, somewhere in there, you will find capital, you will find a V6 rocket of money that is fueling the ability to overcome the strike rate of innovation. Because the strike rate of innovation is tiny, it's basically not worth doing. And I I had the other idea, I thought, oh, it's always worth doing. The trouble is no one's doing it enough. And I was sort of right at that time, I think. But now I was really like careful about innovation, guys. You basically are going to fail, it's not going to work. Even the VC model, you know, nine of them go wrong. I mean, this one has got to be so spectacular.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

You know, so unrealistically spectacular that I'm kind of like, I don't have the, I don't have the no, I don't think so. And I kind of almost back to my mom saying, like, buy for one, sell for two, keep this really simple, don't try and go for these moonshot guys, because unfortunately, I hate to break it to you. But unless you have an outstanding idea that finds its moment and has the capital backing, yeah. There's lightning in the bottle thing. I've chased it so long.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

That sounds almost like I mean, you spoke about your mum there and back in the day, and this bit of kit that would mold uh, I don't know, a nail extension or something that she could do for better, or she could buy it in for one and sell it for two, to use your phrase. Is that sort of the model now then? Is much more certainty about what you're buying and selling?

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah, or you need really, really deep access to capital. And if you've got if you've you know, everyone, you know, mother is an amazing agency, it's able to stay real. I know the finances of how these things rock. I can tell you that that company's making money from things that are not related to advertising, but that fund its ability to say no, that fund its ability to sort of march on the crusade. I can tell you that by 2017-18, the economics of an advertising agency are essentially loss-leading. So it needs to be bolted on to a bunch of other things, and you hope that it's the marketing for those other things. Increasingly, it's not even the marketing for those other things now. So, in and of it, so it has to glue back onto media or it has to glue back onto something else. And that's why a lot of the below-the-line agencies, the CRM, the digital agencies, they've kind of ended up munching the ad agency because the economics of it don't don't start. They maybe never did. There was, you know, because it did start in media, didn't it, as a free service? So that's so you have to you have to have access to capital. And so you can go for moonshots if you if you can keep keep spending your way over setbacks. And that's why, again, when you see a really, really big breakthrough, always comfort yourself with the fact that money somewhere along the line has propped up the ability to keep at it long enough for those conditions to emerge. Very occasionally, someone flings a dart at the board and hits one, not that often.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Not that often. Normally there's a process and it and timing, and many, even then, most won't make it.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

So, what is the secret, would you say, in a nutshell, for for the and rising? And I'm interested to know that you know, 18 feet of rising and and then what's the significance of it's now just and rising, and obviously the company has changed a lot in the last few years. What what would you say in a nutshell is that kind of model for success?

SPEAKER_00 25:53

So 80 feet of rising then was an ad agency. It started to go very mid-market. We were like, I was like, we should focus mid-market, we should focus on clients that are spending sub-10 million in media. Uh, they we can provide a lighter kind of creativity light, easy to work with sort of solution. And we just got more and more into that. And once you start going sub 10 million, you get pulled closer and closer to startups and scale ups. We're like, that's actually we need to come away from big spending clients. We can't make any money. We were looking at the pitching and stuff to go. This thing's losing money. These smaller ones, you get in, you get it done, you get back out. So there's still margin in it. So it started off just really doing advertising for smaller clients. A lot of those smaller clients were doing above the line for the first time. And at a certain point in 2018, 19, then went, guys, we're no longer going to be able to fulfill any role for you. By the way, the group had then gone into the hands of private equity. So again, you know, back to Rainey Kelly, the the people I'd done the deal with were gone. So I had no allegiance to guys goes, I'm I'm done. I'm not gonna be selling the rest of the company to you. Yeah, or I will, but you, you know, we need the kind of money I was looking at before.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

And then uh, you know, but even then you're like, oh god, have I really then I've got to go to meetings and actually be employed. You're very vulnerable if you're employed, yeah. Especially if you're disgruntled and there's a listen, there's a really difficult part of people that sell their agencies, and they don't like being contained by the corporation that then owns them, they then rebel against that, they then spend all the money, yeah, they end up in in real trouble, and life gets very miserable for them. So I didn't give up my independence. I said, I'm gonna go the other way. I will we're gonna become effectively independent again. Yeah, do you want to you want to sell me back my share? We couldn't agree on a price or anything like that because obviously they monstrously paid for it, yeah. So it was just a stalemate, but I did leave the building and then COVID hit, and COVID really then gave us a chance to lean into like the purest version of it, which is the creative capital model, which we again borrowed from everything that comes out of America. Red Antler had cornered a uh a decade of direct-to-consumer branding, mostly branding work with these companies and taken various payments in equity. And this brilliant guy, he was at Us Two, a tech, really cool tech products company. He'd left there and done this state of the nation analysis of the industry and basically said the secret is you've got to you need a remuneration model that owns equity. And that period during COVID gave us a chance to do it because investment in new consumer brands went through the roof because everything was innovating. And we joyrided in there and we took share in 11 brands and continued to do starter kit advertising campaigns. We also started to book the media for those, so make quite a lot of money in the media on the media side, smaller budgets and things like that, and branding work. So it's sort of it's a little it's a ventures company that's got multi-tools, we don't pit, we don't do anything, you know, we just don't get involved in the industry and we live off grid. And increasingly, I don't really do anything in it. The guys, the guys run it. And then at the end of 2024, the private equity people then finally we we would we would meet, you know, they you know, they they they came off the board, we would meet like, are we gonna do something? Can you guys fill a role? They knew they were getting to the end of their deal cycle, they would have to sell. They definitely, I think, were interested to have me up me specifically around. So they were kind of like, Look, you chat well, we can sell you in to push our price up. So then it becomes like, do you want to share swap with us? And we'll just roll in, and then your share of this will be worth more, and you can have a second prank at the whip. But I could never get any visibility on the numbers involved. Would neither one of us had a duty to tell each other very much. We were now really like contractual rules only. Okay. And the next thing I know, they're selling to Accenture Song. And the great thing about Accenture is they don't, they're pros, they are pro-MA people. If you are not interested to be on board, no problem, we cut you loose. And I and I wrote them a sportsman's check, you know, just like a nothing burger. And they were like, no problem, we don't fucking care about you. You're a barnacle on the bottom of our much bigger plan to swallow TMW and the other bits of they you know, they break these companies up to get the to get the valuable part. And so anyway, there I bought it back, you know, for um a tenth of the value it was uh I I had taken off them in cash in the first place. And this consultant, you know, was like, this this kind of stuff just like I don't really know how you've made and I said to him, this this must make me entrepreneur, like CEO, yeah, best ever, right? And he said, he said, well, yeah, if you've done it deliberately.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Oh mate, no, I think you have to give yourself a lot of credit for that. It's incredible. So a bit of like so what is what is the kind of the current status then and and maybe added on to that, what what comes next in the near future and possibly the far future for you?

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Well, with the the the so you I didn't answer your question, like I look back a bit, which is like how is Unrising able to do well, the reason people are like, Oh, I want to do the creative capital model, I want to do, you know, we we put some share into served, which was early golding's alcohol. It was actually a hard sell to originally now, it's just ready to trade cocktails. And out of our out of our 11, you get one winner, that's the winner, and it was acquired by Heineken in 2021 for a hundred million. Wow. Or it's a hundred million paper deal, it completes next year. So next next year we'll see, well, there'll be a tot up, yeah, and then we will receive uh a pretty significant chunk of change from that. Wow. So for the luck of the spread better of investing, yeah, in a period when consumer brand investing was benefiting from the pandemic, yeah. It's a pandemic winner. That's that's a that's a pandemic win moment. Very been very difficult since to get into those kinds of like you need you can much longer term, but think about it over 10 years or you know, those those kind of things, then no problem. But it it's able to do those things because we sold a chunk and have a lot of cash in the bank, you know, I'm economically secure, so it's in a privileged position of a bit like a mother, or other, you know, to the extent where it doesn't have to entirely play by the rules of needing to feed itself in exactly the same way that others do. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If I it it currently will pay me a salary, other bits and bobs, and actually for as long as it's doing that, I'm you know, it's a sort of like a but like almost like a bonus, you know. I'm only in some ways, I'm sort of only 50. So for as long as that keeps what happens is people sell their agencies and then they actually spend the money seven by seven, eight years later, yeah, they haven't really done much work, they haven't innovated, they haven't done new things, they're still talking about advertising, hanging out with their advertising mate. Yeah, might might have a drinking problem, might have got divorced and ended up with a younger girl. I'm speaking about the men now. I've seen it, yeah, yeah. I've seen it, and then they're like, fuck, I don't have anything. I've got this incredibly expensive divorce or two. I've spent all the money, I've had an amazing time. Um something totally and wholly unemployable now. Uh, I've got to start again. So there's this little I used to hate the word lifestyle business. I used to actually take it as a an affront. I'd be like, do not ever, ever call my business a lifestyle business. We are backed, we are scalable, we're a limited company, all these kind of things. And now it's the complete opposite. I'm very proud to have a lifestyle business that's small, controlled. It doesn't have to, you know, if if something, if a project doesn't happen and it doesn't go ahead, we don't have to go into a big panic. Like when you lose a client out of a setup that's made up of lots of people, you have to roll the dice fast enough to get back on the ladder to get back up to the level. Otherwise, you start you start losing money.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

It's back to that that old old agency model that you talked about, which became obsolete, really.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

It can happen really fast. You can you know, so the snakes and basically agencies now and advertising agencies in particular are snakes and ladders boards. Yeah, yes, you will go up, you will also go down. Don't be hard on yourself. Keep rolling the dice. If you're bored of the game, I feel for you because yes, it's a snakes and ladders board. And you're up at the top, you know. Apart from the mothers of this world, they're not really playing the snakes and ladders board, they're just picking the ladders because they're really a problem company. Yeah, so you know, and that's sort of and rising it's sort of off-grid, very small boutique, niche, just gets us to work with the things do. And I only have to do the things I really enjoy, which is the certain clients that enjoy having me in the room, or I might lay the founders on the couch and do a bit of this or chatting. I obviously have done when people talk about their 10,000 hours, I must have lived a hundred thousand hours. So even just chatting in a room with them about things, they'll, you know, there'll be things that from I'm covered in battle scars, you know. I that's I I provide a bit of that value. I'm very I got quite interested in the media side of things, I get a bit stuck in there sometimes. Yeah, and then I've have in other interests as well. So I have a stake in Brave Bison, which is like another mini comms group.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

And I'm sort of like an active investor with them as well. So they're kind of like more like the world I was in, kind of the uh the other world, they're doing a super job.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah, kept a kept a finger in, as it were, but more as a in that different role, that kind of investor role.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

As an investor, it's it's really, really good fun because they're an amazingly again, they're quite a good size, they're doing, they're making really good moves. It's basically more like family office kind of money.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

They talk to you in a in a mentoring role at all. Any any of that stuff goes on as part of that role or not really?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

It's basically, I mean, the active investor part, like it's presented. I don't want to sit on the boards and have fiduciary duties and actual serious stuff. So it's presented as an active investor role, meaning I'm there to protect my interests and so on and so forth. But yeah, most most of the time it's a kind of sounding board, emotional, a lot, a lot of it, you know, is emotional support. Like, don't worry, it's going to be fine. I speak a lot with the CEO of social chain in particular, which is the creative kind of end of it. And they have, you know, they are looking after big clients with difficult challenges, yeah, going through a lot. And you are just that can see the label from the outside, bit of therapy. And then to the guys, to the Brave Bison kind of owners, if you like, they're involved in a lot of MA that's from the advertising world. Whether it's you know, they bought Mark Ritson's mini MBA last year, and you know, I'll go to the dinner with Mark to represent old advertising, you know, the well-trained knows what he's talking about, apparently, you know, kind of or um, you know, people like Les Binet or, you know, anything from that sort of marketing excellence world, or you know, today they've announced that the founder of System One is swapping shares with Brave Bias. You know, that ad testing, that's my 100,000 hours. So I'm like a then they don't know a lot about that world. They're actually they know a lot about digital edge, they know how a lot about how to buy companies. So I sort of represent, yeah, sort of the gray hair into the traditional world. So it is mentoring really the other way, but they know what they're doing buying companies, and they you know they don't need me to tell them any actual advice. I'm more like a cheerleader and bridge into you know certain people and moral support. And it's great fun. So I enjoy that. And then Unrising runs itself, the guy's the team in there, there's yeah, but I'm the 90% shareholder, so it's a benign dictatorship.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

How benign? I don't know, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

I I think look at the end of 80 feet and rising, I thought I was a really nice bloke and it was pretty easy going. I think it's it turned out everyone, you know, you're everyone with rot running around the ego at this point, and it was quite a bruised ego as well, because it hadn't become, in my head, the creative yes, it wasn't ballant, yeah. It was so I wanted to create BMP. Yeah, I even had Paul Feldwick around, who is amazing, by the way. Told us all this stuff. We had him in our orbit for three or four years coming in and out coaching me personally mostly because we wanted to create BMP, you know, and it just just nothing. I'd have lunch with Martin Bose and just touch that era and just think he'd be like, How's the agency? Is it in good nick? And I'd be thinking, it's just not the same. It's just not the I can talk to you about it. Whereas at the beginning, we really thought so. It was just quite a bruised ego, and that actually can make for quite a you know, quite a brittle running spit scare, get a bit annoyed with the client, sort of grouchy, yeah, what have you. So, what I've done over the last five years is kind of stop worrying about all of that, kind of said, you know, in some ways, sort of close the door on the industry and enjoy it for what it is, but very much from the outside. And I therefore I think the version they get, because it's the same team.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

I think the version they get of me now is much more you you get to call this guy's I don't. And they more or less said, we'll only do this if that's the case. We're happy for you to be the benign dictator, but don't first of all, your calls are not as good anymore. You don't your eye line is not right, not at the level of the stuff we're doing. You're kind of your heads in how money moves and other things like that. Uh, we can see more clearly what needs to get done. Um, they are both, all of them, they're amazing, amazing practitioners. So I lob in from the outside and they sort of take it, take it or leave it. Uh, very occasionally I'll get a phone call you've been put in for this credit meeting just because they want to maybe meet someone who's a bit older and safer. And then they'll just go, You think do you really need to be in this meeting? You know, and I'll get quietly sort of like that. Yeah. And then I'll talk for 35 minutes at them about like what might make for a good meeting. Don't forget the chocolate buttons and throw a whole load of old school advice at them. Yeah. And then they get they do put the phone down and yes, yes, phone down.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

So, but what seriously though, what what do you personally, professionally want to do or achieve next in the next year or five years or whatever horizon you look at?

SPEAKER_00 39:40

I so I was uh it's only very recently, really since I bought it back. Yeah, the when you don't when you still got a minority shareholder, I've still got this funny role looking after them or in relationship with them at some level. And actually it turned into a real battery drain because we'd really we'd really moved on. And now that I'm sort of fully owned, I had part is that part of the ability to let go because I no longer have to worry about a minority shareholder or their interests, or whether actually I'm at some point going to say to these other guys, I know we've moved on, but bad luck. I'm selling you into the colonies, we're going to accenture song, everyone. Sorry about that. I was just telling so that I can, you know, drift off into the sunset. But like, as I said, like 50 years old, like it's a long time, right? So actually, if you can have an agency and not really work in it, and it kind of so it's the other way around now. Like, I really need these guys to be happy so that they're happy to have me around uh and we can sort of keep keep doing what we're doing. So it's only actually in the last 18 months that I've really started to maneuver into what I would call more of a chairman role with these guys. I'm still CEO in title.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

Are you at peace with them in that chairman role?

SPEAKER_00 40:46

I I'd rather be the chairman. If I could change my title, I I probably would, and maybe I will over the next thing. It's just that they do like to see sort of okay, who is the CEO if there was one?

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Well, it's none of the other characters quite fit the bill. It probably, yeah, we're quite small.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

So for the size it is to have a chairman is a bit is probably a bit weird. But I'm kind of spiritually speaking to the company, more of its primary shareholder and chairman. I do hold them accountable, if you see what I mean. But then I better not upset them because if they go, I'm in real trouble as well. Yeah. So we're we're we're an e we're sort of ecosystem. But I've only, yeah, so really enjoying and it's doing amazingly. No surprise, since we've been been free of our minority investor. We we had like a few, we had like a sort of a little bit of a regrowth year in it. It's kind of done that post-sale, basically. Like snakes and ladders, and then it then just held steady, kind of didn't really do anything, and and suddenly it's back into growth, and we've hired a couple of new people in, it's got some new blood in there.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

So I talked to them, I said, like, I want that to be a farm, guys, like make that very long-term, very sustainable, you know, repeat. So that's that's still a job, but from a kind of overall, and and I can see a version of events where eventually I will have to like they might MBO it or something like that. The guys will guys will take over and things like that. So enjoying stepping back from that, loving the active investor stuff with Ray Bison, involved in some really interesting deals like the acquisition of these, like Mark by Mark Ritson's mini MBA and being on the inside of that is what I know, it's what I'm good at. It's the size of it is something that I'm very comfortable with. Like they're they're quite a bit smaller than the group we sold to, yeah, but coming up to that level. So it's a playing field that I'm really comfortable with. I really, really enjoy being around them and seeing what they're up to. And then the last bit that I'm I'm starting to enjoy over the last 18 months is writing my newsletter, which is called Rise Up. And I started it in 2024, April, thereabouts, and just thought it was a bit of a like a one of the marketing things we were trying. It started interaction. We also tried to do some retreats, which I've also really enjoyed doing. We have these retreats where marketers come and found us will come and do that stuff. So I have these market toys basically that I play with that I call marketing for an rising.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

And the reality about the retreats is they're a bit, again, like another one of these sort of wonderful creative ideas in that they're really it's really hard to make it work.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

So we basically I basically subsidize it to make it happen in the hope that it creates this lovely glow for the company. And every time we go on one, we did four, we've done four a year for two and a bit years. This year might take it to a beat, they're not quite sure. But anyway, so that's like a bit of a bit of what you want to call it. Yeah, like a it's the big event, pet project, yeah, that's funded joy. But the newsletter in the background's been quietly and actually growing and is actually, and people kind of go, I was reading Jonathan's thing, and that's what that's why I gave you a call. So if I'm going right, Jonathan, rather than adding cost to the business that might be bringing us a brand glow, yeah, what can you actually do that brings bacon in? And it, I think it's this newsletter. And so I'm I'm revving that up. I'm trying to get better and better at producing that. I'm trying to take it in, I'm experimenting whether it goes into video, whether it goes into podcasts or bits and bobs. But if I'm really doing a good job for and rising and myself in the long run, I've got Become a kind of like a Bob Left set or a small, even if I'm like a fraction of a Bob Left Sets, I Bob Left Set sort of left the record company business and now looks back at it from the outside, a tiny fraction of that, and I will not only have plenty to be getting. And that's what I enjoy most at the moment is being on my own, writing those things. I'll often put a personal story in there that's got nothing to do really with the newsletter, but is some form of therapeutic cathartic, you know. Uh I lost a you know, lost a couple of really good pals over the past few years, which has really given me a tremendous sense of um perspective. And so I think I'm grieving a bit with those newsletters as well and writing those. Um I'm when I'm sat in front of as you you might you might experience this as someone that's been writing for a lot longer, but just as I wrote music, I've realized that I absolutely adore the process of just writing this exhale at the front. Um when I'm sort of sat there typing away and fiddling about with sentences, that's what I absolutely love doing now. So I've it's uh again, it's a bit of a my next slightly scary thing because good newsletters and good commentators are really, really good at it. I don't know, I get some good feedback from the corners. I don't need it to be like enormous, but um, I've definitely got to slightly sort of step into the ring on it a bit more and and become you know the hard-won wisdom guy.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

Uh which then I think I can then you know parlay into being as old as I like and being able to then just keep doing this newsletter as a way to to just keep a little bit of revenue coming in. As long as you keep revenue coming in, yeah, your your stockpiles and things like that sort of take care of themselves. The secret isn't selling the agency, the secret is not running out of money after you've sold it, actually. Right by spending that and not having an having an income and living, you start to live a slightly more expensive lifestyle and things like that. So I sort of see the newsletter as a as a way of having a little bit of revenue in the future, and maybe also hopefully maybe do more things like the Brave Bison thing, so that there's Anne Rising, maybe Brave Bison. I'd like to take more stake in Brave Bison. Perhaps there is a world where maybe we use some of uh Anne Rising's cash reserves to buy a bigger chunk of that. Uh Anrising to become more of a family office, yeah. Which it's sort of already is person. We've got the other investments in there that brand investment. The guys have got to be making 10 or so investments a year, which we're not currently doing. We need to get back to that kind of 2021 investment level again. Think about 10, 15 years' time for them as well. Because I really want them to gain a level, and I've been with them a long time, and I'd love, you know, again, a next level would be for them to start to experience some very serious levels of economic security as a result of rising. These are the these are the hard the next level.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Can I can I produce a newsletter that's interesting enough that that can provide a kind of a role for advice and consultancy that can help any of my portfolio companies? Can I become a proper portfolio player? Because I'm sort of a beginner level one. That's the other thing that when you sell, I'm only the graduate trainee of people that have sold a company.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

You're in the next echelon that you haven't seen until my god, and that goes, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

So that's the other thing is you feel like, oh, I've sort of apparently I'm a big deal, and then you look at going, oh my god, that's like, oh yeah, no, I bought this football club last week, you know, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

It's a whole other thing like even Mark Britson. I was looking at when we were buying his thing, I was thinking, I don't reckon he's that much richer than me. And um, and fucking hell, he he sells an agency every year. So look, there's always the and that's Mark. That's Mark talking about marketing stuff I know an awful lot about, etc. I don't want to do what Mark does. He he's a superstar, he wants to be on the road all the time, he wants to be out there all the time. I I really, really don't. I really enjoy not having to be on the stage anymore. So different choices, but yeah, it's I'm at a very entry-level, you know, John Clayton, the guys that backed us, they're they're the next level up of investor backers, etc. I'm sort of big little league. I've still got Anne Rising kind of subsidizing that. So I suppose a really good version would be over a slow period, solidifies into a slightly more stable, more interesting portfolio. But I I I also have to say at this stage, I I'm sort of done with my moonshot. You know, I've got a really, you know, of course we could always be bigger and all those other sorts of things, but uh at sort of at what cost? I mean, I all that intoxication I told you about, you know, yeah with this industry, I don't want to go back to that because it's roll it robs you of your family and friends. And I just I didn't see anyone for two, you know, two decades.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

So let's taper towards the end by talking a bit about your life outside of work then. Let's let's take it as red that you know, friends and family and loved ones are important to you. Outside of that, like in your spare time, if you have any, but you're a busy boy, obviously, all the time. But outside of that, what what are you particularly fascinated by? What are your passions and hobbies and interests?

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Well, I've gone back to music and so alongside the newsletter, which is sort of uh creative pursuits, basically, there's this sort of full circle. I was an ad guy for a bit there, and then and at the end it's actually uh really a creative. I think we all are really at some level a sort of creative soul at heart, and creating things is the bit that enjoys. So I enjoy creating the newsletter, and I have gone back to a lot of you know when I before I did advertising, I had a small studio at home. I had yes, various bits of gear that I would tinker around with, and I have all those things again. I bought a drum kit when I first sold. I love and adore playing the drums. I'm pretty good at it just by you know by nature of my dad. There's a band of people in the law in law in the law firm, they have like a law rock. So back with the bands in in the lore industry, that's like a hundred times more serious, it's massive. And so I ended up in I'm I've ended up as the drummer in a law firm band who's a my pal's a partner over there, and sort of thank God for my pal because he's really passionate about playing these covers for these parties, he they do all the law firm parties and things like that. And I remember when I was arguing with my mum about becoming a musician, she went, Look, why don't you get a corporate job and then you can always play in bands in your spare time? And I remember I remember shouting at her, going, Are you out of your fucking mind? I'm never gonna play in some shit corporate fucking band. Cuts ripple.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Now you are hooray!

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Come on. But I absolutely love it, and I'm really, really grateful to have that kind of thing. So we're there, there's about three or four gigs a year. They're always pretty good. There's a thousand or two thousand people, proper back lines. Yeah, you get the setup day, that's always a good day. We unpack all the drums, the sound check. There's a whole I love every aspect of it, including the part where you actually get to play. But I enjoy just having the drums around. I've got a nine meter by three meter shed in my garden, which got my my son's now set those drums up. Yeah, there's a piano, there's a piano in there. I've got some synths, and I and I've latterly really started getting interested in vintage synthesis, which when I was kind of growing up, sampling was the big new thing. And I was really getting your hands on samplers was everything I wanted. And I managed to get hold of a couple of samples and do a lot of like sampling kind of stuff. Now the sampling isn't really a thing anymore, and you can do anything you want more or less on your phone. I've got more fascinated by the analog 1960, the 1970s and 80s vintage analog synths. And so I'm doing a couple of courses in just this. And yeah, just that these guys, you can set up all this really old school stuff with knobs and it all, and I'm kind of building up to a setup, I think. And they're just honestly just a lot of this stuff just makes like weird bleeps and that. So, for example, there's this movie documentary called Sisters with Transistors, and it's about these women that came through the 70s and they were in the Bell uh Radio Labs working with synths and early stage of that, and they've got some really experimental music, and like I only found out about them a week ago, and I'll just go on a massive deep dive now of each of those characters and their music, and yeah. So, yeah, you go it you go back to sort of back to being a teenager again on the on the synth front. And I've got a couple of I've found a couple of pals through the industry as well. Yeah, I run we run these sort of new biz breakfasts, and um, one of them there's a vintage synth fan, and so I just get well, I just do these breakfasts to meet him to be honest. Hang out and talk a bit of vintage synth stuff. We might go to LA and see the vintage synth museum.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Oh, that sounds a dream!

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Very dorky.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Come come and report back after that, please, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

And then I'm really into my son. He the he does whatever he's doing. I want to be around and try and catch on to his coattails. He does cube, he went through a year of cubing, yeah. Speed cubing really. So I was on I was on the road with him for a bit, and now he's he's coming into rugby, he's enjoying his rugby. So I went to England, Ireland, my first rugby game ever. So I went to see that on set. So I'm sort of doing things that I think men of my age who are ex-advertising more typically do.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Yeah, you need to get your tailored jeans and and your and your brown suede shoes. Yeah. Yeah, my boots. Must be brown suede, by the way. I've got one more, one more question for you, Jonathan. And uh we're on a podcast at the moment. So yeah, I just want a podcast recommendation from you, please. What are you listening to? Or what have you been listening to that you could recommend to our burgeoning, swelling audience?

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Yeah, I listen to a lot. I love podcasts. I listen to them a lot. I've got I've got loads. I think a lot of them are the standard ones I think people would know about. So I won't bother with I won't bother with those. I I think the one that that's good for everyone to try out that I think is just wonderful, is one called Radio Lab. Okay. I don't really even know exactly what its remit is, but it's sort of like docu stories, but with the emphasis on story. So it'll really zoom in on somebody or something at quite a small detailed level. There'll often be quite a deep level of research on it. And it'll pick a topic and it'll just within that 45-minute period take you from A to B or somewhere in a really thought-provoking learn something along the way kind of way. And they're immaculately produced with sound, and they have this very cool intro that comes in at the beginning. I think it's a PBR American, I think it's a public. It's like the closest thing they've got to like a BBC thing.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

And then they get a member of the public to read the credits at the end. There's just these lovely touches throughout, but it'll be like the last one, for example, was it'd be something very, very difficult that they're like, okay, what's gonna happen here? So the last two, for example, were study how somebody studied bee behavior to figure out how to how algorithms work to allocate server space.

SPEAKER_01 54:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

So there'll be like in 2020, the the trade towers collapsed and the internet broke with everyone trying to. How do we stop the internet breaking? Well, we figured out a way to allocate resources and it was based on this bee, and they'll go to a whole lap of the people that then numbered and labeled these bees and what the bees actually do. And you know, you you get swept up in this little story. Yeah, and then the other one will be more difficult. It'll be it was a woman who had twins and they knew one of them was going to be really difficult, knew one of them was going to die.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Oh Lord.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

And they lived about four days and then passed away. But then it's the story of how that baby's eyes and organs then went into this research center, and then they met the head of this research, and it turned out all this good that had gone to as a way of dealing with the grief. Like, really, they'll pick these like little tales, and I think that's I think they're wonderful. And pretty much anyone I give that recommendation to will find a story or two in there that just lights the mind. Yeah. So Radio Lab a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

Radio Lab, no, that's a fantastic recommendation. Thank you. And thank you even more for giving so generously of your time and telling the various stories of your really impressive and totally fascinating career. It's been an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

Thank you very much. You don't often get to kind of read it out loud in in one space, so it's been uh a chance for me to look at it in the round as well. And yeah, I like talking a lot and talking about yourself 40 minutes the hardest task of the world.

SPEAKER_01 56:02

Ideal for this show. Well, uh, Jonathan Trimble, thank you once again, and very best of luck with your next chapter.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

Well, thank you very much indeed.

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Join me next time on the Amber moment, when we'll be hearing another story of another remarkable career. Until then.