Sarah Jennings - Part 2

The second part of my conversation with Oban International CEO Sarah. Here she talks about setting up her own company with a working model ahead of its time; the importance of shared values; the transition from non-exec chair to CEO; and the part that cultural differences play in buying behaviours around the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello and welcome to the Amber Moments podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howarth. This is the second part of my conversation with Auburn International CEO Sarah Jennings. So far we've heard Sarah talk about her early life in Harlow and the joy of Topic at school. We've heard about her move from teaching to media planning and learning the Ogilvy way. And we're just hearing about her time at a different company with a quite different culture and how that set her up for the rest of her career.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

I felt that I had in some ways lived a very charmed life up till that point. You know, I'd I just lucked into one thing after another. Yeah. Um, you know, I'd wanted to have this new position of responsibility and seniority in a business. And I thought actually, you know, you you can't just get waltz through life with being everybody's friend. Yeah, everything's always lovely, it's always a lovely sunny day. Sometimes you're gonna have to put your marker down on something that's not working or call out something you're not happy with.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

So I think it was a good life experience.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

But not one necessarily that you wanted to herbal one. Yeah, that you wanted to extend for a number of years.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

So how how then did did you bridge from that to towards your other senior positions and then spark and and and over?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

So I I decided, you know, after a suitable amount of time of about a year to to look around and see what was going on out in the world. And I thought, what I'll do is I will go for a range of things and find out more about them and just see if maybe there's something kind of different to think about. And I saw that there was a job for a strategy director at a small media independent called MBS. And I thought, oh, well, it'd be interesting to go and see, you know, kind of a small business and see what that's like compared to you know the large conglomerates. But I think in my heart, I thought my next job would be in one of the big networks.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

And I went to MBS and I met the person that was recruiting, who would be, you know, one of my fellow directors, a lady called Claire Barnes. Yeah, was super impressed with her. She was very bright and clever, her was excellent, put me through my paces. And um, she said, you know, I'd like you to come back and meet the rest of the team. And I just kind of got captured by the idea of going and working in a small business, yeah, and thought, actually, I'm kind of you know selling myself into this idea of going somewhere where you can make an immediate difference. It's up to me, you know, there is no Brazil office to fall back on or New York to send instructor or you know, German colleagues to bail you out or you know, make life difficult, depending on what was going on in the world. And I just thought, right, okay, I'll um you know, I'll give this a go and see you know how this works for me. So uh so I joined MBS and spent several years at MBS and started off as the strategy director, which was a new position for them, right? Which allowed me to stick a finger into all of the account portfolio. Yeah. I could then you know kind of focus on the ones where I could make the most impact or or make the most difference. Work a lot on new business, which I really have always liked and enjoyed. And you know, they were they were really super bright, clever people, and much to my embarrassment, yeah. I think I probably, like a lot of young people in big networks, had always assumed that people in small agencies were going to be slightly less impressive than people in big agencies, and realized immediately that that was not the case. People in small agencies were as, if not more, impressive, you know, that the senior people worked hands-on on things and um they did a great job, and they had some fabulous big accounts as well. So introduced me to a whole new world of owner-run, owner-led businesses, really.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Uh-huh. And thereafter?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

So I stayed at MBS for a long time. And then the guy that owned the business was thinking about selling it and retiring, and did a lot of work to try and make sure that the legacy of the business would be, you know, to go and make a difference somewhere else. And one of the big big networks was shopping. And well, I suppose prior to that, I'd kind of gone up through the ranks in the business as well. So I finished up as the group managing director because they had uh MBS and then they had a smaller agency, which was a uh a kind of conflict business that specialized in a certain type of work. Uh, they had a uh joint venture that was a setup with um another group of people, and they had a small poster specialist. So I looked after all of those, and that was good because it gave me some new experiences of doing other things as well. So when we were looking to kind of sell the business, I went round with the chair to go and meet you know potential suitors, yeah, and um, you know, deciding kind of where we would be interested. And one of the big networks was looking for some people to help them go international. And we had a kind of fairly small international network. They didn't have that at that point, and it was kind of attractive to us because instead of us being merged into something that already existed, it was an opportunity to go in and create something new. So he decided, you know, that's the one that I'm most interested in, you know, that's the one I want to buy. And we did a lot of work with the new suitors in order to set up how it was going to work, you know, the reality of what the new world was going to look like. And I was thinking, that's interesting, I'm gonna find myself back in a big network again. Yes. Um, and we signed all the paperwork, and then halfway through the sort of due diligence period, I suppose, between exchange and completion, that network was aggressively taken over by another network.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Oh Lord.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

And so we found ourselves owned by somebody that we hadn't chosen to sell to the end of that buyout period. And what was interesting was we got slightly lost in the wash because they'd taken over such a big group of networks and reorganized them. I think because we'd not been on the original list that they wanted to buy and had completed afterwards for a long time. We sort of slid under the radar and just sort of carried on as we were. And then I went uh one very entertaining day to a meeting of all the managing directors, and there's sort of a hundred people there, yeah, and they were going through the list doing all the introductions and things. And when I introduced us, there was a lot of bemused looks with people and lots of flicking through their folders. So we arrived on the radar after a sort of a year or so, um, and they decided to put us into the initiative network.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Got you.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

So we went into uh initiative group, and we were set up as a kind of conflict network called brand connection, yeah. So a sort of a intrapreneurial, I think was the um the name at the time.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

There we go.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, so we were allowed to behave a bit small business-ish um within a big network.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

And how rewarding was that in that environment?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

It was fascinating to go back into a big network again, and actually, in one sense, I suppose it was a bit best of both worlds to have a bit of each. I really liked brand connection, really enjoyed working, you know, still with what had been the MBS team. Yeah, we had some nice, you know, good accounts, and our clients had come over with us, so that went very well. What went less well was I think, and you know, was a lesson for me again on what a big business thinks they're going to give you as a small business. You know, you as a small business think, yeah, they're gonna help reduce my costs, they're gonna give me access to new business, they're going to give me access to tools I don't have.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Actually, the reality was all our costs went up. Right. Uh, because when you've got your own business and you negotiate really hard, and everything is a very kind of personally driven thing. You know, suddenly you've got centralized sectors to pay for and offices and you know, kind of owned buildings, etc., etc. So, you know, a lot of our cost base increased. New business didn't just walk through the door, we had to go out and you know earn it exactly the same as before. We definitely did get access to some tools and so on, but the eyes of the the network were really on the bigger players, you know. They're sort of their focus was initiative, their focus was universal, it was much less uh about brand connection. So yeah, we were kind of left to get on with it really, and it was interesting but hard work.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

And then how how did that take you from being a senior member of a team within an agency and a network to doing your own thing?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah, so I so I was at brand connection for I mean, I think we were there right the way through to the early 2000s, and then um, yeah, very carelessly, some of the rest of the network lost some big bits of business. I felt the writing was on the wall pretty quickly that we were about the right size to plug a hole and thought, you know, if that was my decision, I'd probably think three networks when I could have two. Yeah. So I thought it was pretty obvious that they would want to move us uh into fill a gap. And I just didn't want to go back into one of those big kind of network roles because even if you've got a very ground-sounding job, like a managing director, really in a big network, you're you know, you still don't have much influence. And I really enjoyed at MBS the fact you'd go to a board making meeting, make a decision, and you come out and do it. There's nobody to say yay or no after that point.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

So I started chatting with a colleague of mine, Richard Britton, um, who we got on very well together. Um, he'd had a little agency previously, he was very keen to set his own thing up again. And we thought we'll, you know, maybe think about setting our own consultancy up, focused on planning and comms. And we looked through our client list, and there were a couple of accounts that it was pretty obvious would not be happy to transfer elsewhere, uh, that were very bonded with us. And so we approached the kind of you know, we approached IPG and just said we would like to leave and we'd like to take these uh two things with us. Yeah. Uh, you know, if the clients are happy to do that and you're happy to let us, and then we'll help secure everything else over into its new home. And they said yes. So that's what we did. And of course, you know, it wasn't our gift to give. We had to make sure that that's what our clients wanted too. I think we judged well. Um the two clients that were both adamant they did not want to move elsewhere and they did want to stay with us. So, you know, I think the good learning for us was that we set our own thing up, but it already had some business. Yes. Uh, I think to set your own thing up and have nothing would be very different, a different problem, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

So to have a you know, to have a couple of accounts just helps you get started and get going. And I'm yeah, very grateful to those two accounts for yeah, giving us that chance, really.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah. So talk to me a bit about Spark and how that went.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

So Rich and I worked together you know, right the way through till well, I mean, Spark is still going. I changed out of it a few years back.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

It worked brilliantly. We made a decision right at the beginning that we weren't gonna have offices and we weren't gonna have staff, and what we were going to do instead was we would have a budget to book the space that was right for whatever we needed to do for the project. So book a meeting room, whatever we needed to do. And that we would use experienced consultants that we knew well, yeah, to you know, work alongside us so that we have really good people, but just at the times that we wanted them. Now that's quite a common pattern now, but you know, 50 years ago at all.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

I was gonna say it feels very familiar now, but probably less so.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, but it was very unusual. But meant you could put a really bespoke team together at scale for what you wanted to do. And media people always go to the agency, they always go to the client. It's very unusual for the client to want to come and have meetings in the media department. So um, we really didn't miss not having premises, and what that meant, you know, I mean, having everybody thinks it's very grand being an MD, but what actually happens, of course, is all the jobs that don't have a natural home will float their way to you. So you're the person that ends up becoming the expert in getting the plants watered and where you're allowed to keep your bicycle on the premises and whether the fire certificates are and all of that went away. And you know, still dealing with people, but not being responsible for you know, kind of hiring and career progress and coaching and so on, meant that you know, just work with great people and and do good work. And and we we worked with some fantastic accounts on some projects, on some retainers, and both had very similar values. Um we we kicked off, we hired uh Miranda Kennett to start with to run a culture session with us before we began. And she ran a really interesting exercise with us where she talked about you know what shared values we had, but she also did a lot of work on where do you want to be in a certain number of years, time and flushed out you know, lots of things about you know working days, holidays, working styles, what do you expect to be consulted on, what decisions do you think you should make together, what decisions would you just expect to crack on with. Um, and we were incredibly compatible, and so we felt very comfortable kind of working together, and um, and so it proved. So we've got quite complementary skills, but we've got an absolutely embedded shared set of values and work together and never had a crossword in the whole time we've worked together and been very aligned on what we've wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

And what what what are those values, if I can ask?

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Probably a little bit back to some of the ways to be able to do before. Yeah, hard working and accountable, yeah, yeah, lots of personal responsibility, like step and get things done, kind, sense of humor, honest, yeah, you know, a fair bit of pay it forward and step up to the plate, which are two of my favorite expressions, uh you know, quite generous, I think. And that was important to us. So yeah, I find it difficult with working. I don't really enjoy working with people who are tempestuous. Um, I like people who are predictable. It doesn't mean you can't get angry, it doesn't mean you can't get upset, but it should be around a particular thing, a particular time, and then you should be able to reset, yeah, yeah, and go back to an even keel. Yeah. Um, I find it difficult when you don't know who you're going to be walking into each day. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, we're both kind of even-tempered people, both fair, both able to hold the line. So uh yeah, it worked very well between us.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Yeah. And what about the last few years? How how have those values manifested themselves in what you've been doing more recently?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

So we did lots of really interesting things at Spark. Yeah, we worked client side, we worked agency side, we worked for ourselves, um, we did you know gigs and projects, we did some recurring things, we worked on you know, kind of some interesting projects for certain clients. And one of the things that I was asked to do was to come in as a non-exec and chair a board in a small business. And uh that small business was Oban. So I came in to chair, hired a new uh CEO that came into the business, and you know, we worked together well for a couple of years, and then very sadly he got cancer. And when he was ill, the job of the chair is to step in temporarily and and cover the ground. So, you know, a spark loaned me temporarily into Oban to cover the ground whilst he was uh ill, and then it became clear that he wasn't going to come back to work, and so the founder said to me, you know, kind of like what you're doing. Is there any way you'd think about making this permanent? So I thought about it and I absolutely love Oban. The business is fascinating, you know, it's still a small run business, but it was back to buildings and people, yeah. Um, and you know, um we and I had a great time with Spark, but I just thought I really liked the sound of it, so you know, kind of agreed that I would join Oban and stay. So I had a strange move from being not a Zec director to being an employed leader in the business, yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

And so tell tell us about Oban then, because it's it's quite an unusual model, is it not?

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah, so Oban um has yeah, we've got we've got a core of people who are in our headquarters, which is in Brighton, and that's where you know kind of we centralize and run a lot of things from there. But what we do is we help clients grow their business in international markets, and that usually means they're already in that market and they're wanting to get a better performance out of that market. Sometimes it might mean they want to go somewhere new, but generally it means yeah, we've launched into X country, it's not going quite how we thought, and we'd like to get a better performance going. And so what we have is what we call our Lyme network, and you know, this will feel a familiar thing where our LIME's a local in-market experts, so we have a series of experienced consultants in different markets who've worked with us for a long period of time, they've got different specialisms, they are native speakers, and you know, we we insist on feet on the ground because a lot of research shows that when you leave a country, so you may be a fluent speaker, but if you come and live in another country, you start to lose the culture, you start to have more of a hybrid culture. And what we're really interested in is the little nuances of what is appropriate in that market, because we buy things online because, like with all advertising, we we trust them, you know, they feel familiar to us. If the website and the queues feel familiar and safe, then we can focus on the message and decide you know if it's persuading us. But if we get caught up because something feels off, immediately our antennae go up and we wonder if it's a fake site or you know if I'm going to spend some money, and that that feeling has intensified in recent years as cybercrime has come up.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

And and very small things can throw people off. So although we are increasingly a global world, there are still quite big differences in the way that people will expect things to be within markets.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

In some markets, you expect prices in blue and discounts in red, in other markets, prices are in red and discounts are in blue. You might find that some markets expect to find a page which has got lots of kind of legal copy on it. And if that's copy's not there, yeah, then they won't buy. When they go to pay, they expect to see their local credit card. Yeah, they expect to have a weekend as a weekend. It can be something as simple as a photo with a football in, and the football is the wrong shape, or the word football is not the word that's used in your country. Yeah. Or it can be as simple as a B2B photo where somebody is standing around the desk and somebody's leaning over them. And in your culture, you wouldn't do that. Yes. Men and women would not stand that closely to each other. You know, so there's so many different things that can just jar. And you know, our job is to kind of smooth all of those cues out for people, as well as bringing to bear marketing performance skills and marketing branding skills. So a great job on targeting channel mix and what makes people buy, yeah. But also a frictionless way to experience it. And you know, it's interesting when we were talking last week, you know, in in Mexico, everybody, WhatsApp's a small business. That's the way all small businesses talk to each other and their customers.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

In this country, that is still quite an unusual thing that is only done by a certain number of businesses. You know, we would expect to communicate with a business probably still to a degree via their website.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

So you know, it's it can be incredibly different from one part of the world to the other. So it's endlessly.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

It is fascinating. It is fascinating. And I should imagine if you get a lot of those things right or more right than other people trying to do a similar sort of thing, then that's clearly going to have some commercial benefit ultimately.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yes, and you know, you see performance in proof straight away as soon as you kind of you know fix a lot of the things that maybe weren't right on the site. And a lot of the time it's you know, somebody in a market can look at something and say, Oh, you know, the this is not translating, or this is translated incorrectly, or that image. The word's been embedded, so although the rest of the sentence is translated, that word is staying as a picture in the previous language. You've got the wrong dialect for this part of the market. Yes. That's not the word we would use for this. I mean, we get some funny ones sometimes. You know, you get people who will, you know, use words in a very different way from one market to another. And you know, things just don't make sense to them if you don't use the vernacular of what they'd expect. And then of course, it's all of the cultural niceties as well. You know, it's having that feel for what's going on in a market, yeah, at a certain point where to make sure things don't jar. Yeah. So that um you know you're kind of aware of what the the mood of the moment is.

SPEAKER_04 22:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

So, you know, one of our one of our clients, you know, runs open top bus tours all around. Yeah. It's very important. We know what's going on in cities. Yeah, there's a big weather event, yeah. The riot.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

You know, anything that's happening, you know, you need to be fast ahead of it. Yeah. To make sure that you pause and you know, can make sure that things are you know appropriate and anticipated so that you don't you know offend local customers, really.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Can you think of a of a particular, a particularly rewarding example of where all of this of knowledge and expertise has has come to fruition and gives delivered a great result or just been a particularly pleasing little case study?

SPEAKER_00 23:26

We won we won a we won a lot of awards for our work with uh one big global financial business. And we kind of inherited it from one of the big networks who at the client wasn't particularly happy with the performance. And we did a a big piece of work around travel patterns between markets. It was for you know an insurance product for expats, and we had to work very closely with compliance. And what was fascinating was you know, in this market, this comes for free, in this market, you have to pay for it. Yeah, you aren't allowed to buy it from another country in this market, you are allowed to buy it from another country in this market. You can get it in this market if you come in, but not if you go out. And so we had this incredibly complicated, sort of looked like a flight plan. Yeah. You had a grid of the world with you know red lines and blue lines and green lines about what was and wasn't allowed, what was within financial regulations, what was compliance, what wasn't, and distilled it all down and re-patterned all of their spend into kind of buckets with different categories. And we reduced their cost per lead by 90% by getting that right. And it was just you know, really proper, yeah, hard work attention to detail, yeah, understanding where do people go and you know how they're going to feel when they get there and how are they going to buy.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Incredible.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Um so yeah, so sometimes you know you can make a stonking difference and things are able. And then sometimes it might just be a little nicety of you know fixing something that they hadn't realised was jarring for customers or you know didn't work particularly well.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

And it's that you know, people people are endlessly fascinating, cultures are endlessly fascinating. You do sometimes have to set your own personal views aside. Yeah, our job is not always to challenge every culture in the world, sometimes it's to reflect it, and you have to tread a bit of a tightrope sometimes in a year where maybe some of the behaviours are quite different from Western cultures.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

But you know, if you want to sell products, you have to recognise who's buying.

SPEAKER_04 25:43

Yeah, indeed. Indeed.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Which is uh yeah, which is interesting, and then you have to be ready to react very quickly to what's going on in the world.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yes, and there's a lot going on. There is right now for sure. I'm gonna ask you to think uh a bit reflecting back uh across your the totality of your career now, because you know, every every great story has a lead character, a hero, but every great story also has an anti-hero. So I want you to think without naming names unless you particularly want to, um, and it doesn't have to be people, but I'm I'm talking about the kind of the people or or things or prevailing ideas or systems or structures that that have you've had to overcome, the sort of barriers that you've had to overcome to get to where you've got to in your career.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, so I I genuinely haven't had a kind of you know an arch nemesis anywhere. I remember being interviewed for a European MD job, which I got, but being interviewed for it and being interviewed by a very sort of Sicilian tribe interviewer who asked me who my enemies were and why they were my enemies. Oh, right. I said I didn't have any, and he was incredibly disappointed in me. I could tell that he felt, you know, you haven't really lived a worthwhile life if you haven't managed to make some enemies. And I'm sure there are some people that don't like me, but I haven't got a kind of you know an art nemesis. I think the things that frustrate me and that get in the way sometimes can be a bit more structural.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

I think occasionally you can get a client blocker where you can do good work for somebody, they maybe hire somebody, or they have somebody who not necessarily senior always within the ranks, but who can really cut across potentially good work and a good relationship. That can be very frustrating if it's not spotted. It is very difficult to uh ask a client to uh change or replace somebody in their own when you're the agency. You know, your job is to provide a great service with and get along with and you know with the people they've chosen to work with. Occasionally somebody will you know do more harm than good on an account somewhere. That can be frustrating, yeah. Uh because it's often unintentional. Yeah, you know, haven't they not quite in the right role. We're not trying to do the same thing here at the right scale, but we're definitely not all trying to achieve the same thing. That can be tricky. I think that if you've got somebody who is very unreasonable occasionally, you know, somebody who is away from the day-to-day in an agency uh relationship will kind of jump in and have an expectation based on no real kind of what they would think they would see. And you know, you never like to sound as if you are making excuses for something. I'm all for the C-suite understanding a lot more about marketing and how things take. Um, for people that kind of who are signing off budgets or who are approving choices, especially in some of the more complex purchases, you know, to really understand that getting in leads and converting, yeah. Um I still think there there can occasionally be people who think run an ad and you know, wait for the phone to ring tomorrow and you're gonna have a new customer. But when people are making B2B decisions worth uh hundreds of thousands of pounds, you know, decisions are incredibly complex and many months to happen. So that that can be frustrating. I mean, obviously that doesn't happen very often because you know generally the C-suite and the client pretty much are all over. But it's occasionally when somebody new comes in who's come from another sector, maybe has slightly different expectations of what they thought they were going to see.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yeah. And then conversely, through through your career, you've mentioned some of the uh great people and great influences um that you've had and great relationships you've had. Can you think of other sort of um allies? Again, you don't have to name names, but you can individuals or groups who have been real allies as you've built your career.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

I think you know, I've probably named the people within the businesses. I think outside of the business, you know, people that you have a laugh with and you have a chat with. I mean, Richard definitely, Richard is definitely one of those. I've also got a great friend called Julian Walker, and Julian is an interestingly charismatic person, quite different for me, and I like to sound him out about things because he has a very interestingly different way of approaching things. So yeah, it's always interesting to hear how he would go about uh an issue. And then, you know, I also have a a lot of time for Greg, who set up Oban, yeah, um, and who, you know, put a lot of trust in me to be the CEO. We became an EOT a couple of years ago, an employee-owned trust, which is a fairly new vehicle. And um, Greg and Grant, who, you know, the two owners of Oban at the time, you know, have kind of shown a lot of trust in the business by being prepared to sell to an EOT and get their money back over a period of time. So, yeah, that's a new adventure for us at the moment, is to be you know one of the earlier for a while, but it's still a fairly early style, I think.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

And what sort of material differences do you think that makes being being an EOT?

SPEAKER_00 31:15

I think that I suppose a lot of the ways that OBAM was run and that I was running it was in the style of an EOT anyway. So maybe to our team it doesn't all feel right as different. But you know, if you are an employee owner in an EOT, you have more influence, you have more insight, you have a tax-free payment potentially that you can get uh as part of um a bonus scheme. So, you know, for young people that kind of come and work in the business, it's a sort of hybrid between maybe setting up or owning their own thing and working within the safety of working in a business. So they aren't genuine shareholders, but whilst they work for the company, they own a proportion of the shares whilst they're in the business.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

And you know, you share an amount of information with them, they understand more about how the business runs. You know, they've done quite a lot of research into the model. The more people understand, the more they know how to make good decisions, the more they can impact revenue, the more they earn, the more interested they are in making sure spend is wise. Yeah, makes sense. Well, great.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

And is there anyone you work with currently who you'd consider to be a particular ally?

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yes. Um, I think that you know, uh the whole board of directors works very hard at Oban, um, and they're they're very skilled. But you know, I definitely would give a special shout out to Susie Oakford, who is our managing director. She actually is super bright, she is incredibly hardworking and accountable and um surely good fun too.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Excellent. Well, no, we all need good allies in life and business, so uh that sounds great. I'm gonna ask you about happy endings now. I don't by any means mean the end of your career or anything. I just mean when all of these things come together, when when you when everything goes well and and it clicks, what does that world look like when you when you get it when you get it all right?

SPEAKER_00 33:14

I mean, for for me, I will I want us to you know pay the founders back. You know, they've put a lot of trust in us and been very generous to you know kind of allow us to pay them back over a period of time. So I would like to make sure that that is done. That's kind of the ethical part of the equation. I want to make sure the business is happy and successful. Yeah, I'm left hung up on how big it is. I want it to be profitable and well regarded and secure, and you know, kind of doing a good job for the our clients. You know, the most important thing for me is that we make a difference so that when people work with us, they get an outcome in their business that makes them feel that the estimate in us was worthwhile and that we are helping their business to grow and grow you know where and in the way they want it to grow. And I would like the you know, the team of directors who are working with me to feel that they have the skills fit to take the business on at the point at which I retire out of it, which not planning to do straight away, but you know, sometime in a few years' time.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Well, okay. So one of my last questions, that there are only a couple left, by the way, is that you know, what's what's next for you? What's in in the near and or the far future? What's next for Sarah Jennings?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

I think that I want to kind of you know stay at Oban while the debts are paid off, make sure the business is secure and stable. We are living in interesting times to call in a phrase at the moment. Indeed, indeed. There is an awful lot happening everywhere that's fascinating, but presents its own challenges. So you know, I want to make sure we um have a future-proof business. And then I don't really have a very clear plan as always, you know, for what's next. Uh just one step possibly head up to Orkney, yeah, and uh look at the lovely views and enjoy, you know, a kind of a 1960s lifestyle.

SPEAKER_03 35:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Scottish Islands, but possibly stay, you know, back close to Brighton and some other things. I've you know, I've I've done some side gigs along the way. I've been a trustee, I've been a director of a you know, I've been a school governor, been a director of a foundation, that no doubt there are many other fascinating things to go and find out about in the world. And let's see.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Yeah, and and and outside work, we'll we'll take family and other loved ones as kind of read that they're important in your life. What what else um do you like doing? What are your sort of passions and hobbies and interests?

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Massive armchair in general of any kind of sport. Yeah. Um, and um uh love watching any kind of sport. I particularly enjoy football, but you know, in recent weeks I've been enjoying cricket. I've loved the rugby at the weekend, even though the result didn't quite go our way at the end.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Hell of a game.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

And um, I was enjoying the Paralympic winter as well. Yeah. Um, you know, like everybody, you know, you watch curling for five minutes and suddenly become a shit expert on exactly how a shot should be played. So, yes, I really, really enjoy sport. Yeah, and the other very kind of an old person hobby that I really like is I like doing jigsaws. And I was discussing this with somebody the other day and saying it's one of those kind of secretly embarrassing hobbies, and then discover that nearly everybody else likes it as well. And we just have never discussed it. There is something about a non-digital hobby where you have to think about what you're doing, it just relaxes you and say it's your brain things. And quite often I'll sit with you know one of the kids and um do that and you know have a good laugh while we're doing it. So that's my other little secret will be.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Amen. Amen to jigsaws, and then just final, final question. I'm gonna ask you for one recommendation. It could be anything from popular culture, TV programme, book, podcast, whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

I would say if you haven't tried it to watch LOL Laughing Out Loud, which is a TV show, yeah, where the whole purpose of the show is they put lots of comedians together and you mustn't laugh. And I wasn't very taken by the suggestion to start with, but having watched it, it's brilliant. So that would be my recommendation.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

I could heartily endorse that one. That's terrific. Sarah Jennings, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your wisdom and your stories of your fantastic career. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

And thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

And very best of luck with the next chapter. Join me next time on the Amber moment, when we'll be hearing another story of another remarkable career. Until then, stay amber.