Barry Jessup - Part 2

The second part of my chat with the founder of property companies Socius and Populate. Here Barry talks about becoming a CEO and business owner; dealing with imposter syndrome; the power of intense curiosity; being unafraid to fail; "never settling'; his mission to bring fundamental change to the property industry; an extreme aversion to nay-sayers and politicians who don't take responsibility; keeping promises; the world's most environmentally friendly commercial building; and his love of live events. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome to the End of the Moment, the podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howarth. This is part two of my chat with Barry Jessup, the founder of property companies Socius and Populate. So far we've heard Barry talk about an inspirational Australian boss who explained that you can combine work and pleasure. We've heard him talking about risk taking and backing your own judgment. And we've heard about him working for the property developer Lendlease and developing the Blue Water Shopping Centre. We rejoined Barry now as he's seconded to first base and is about to make the move to CEO.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

And no, this was the boom years for development, probably just prior to GFC, so a lot of cheap credit available, able to do some really, really interesting things, mostly in London at that point in time. And I was I was do doing that in a capacity effectively as a commercial and sales director, so very much identifying the sites and bringing them to market and creating unique identities and identifying the customers that would want those. We set up one of the first co-work spaces in London. That was in 2006, I think. One of the first developments on the King's Cross estate that really set the bar high for future developments there. So lots of really, really interesting things, but loads of lessons along the way as well, in terms of how we set the business up to succeed. So and I'm learning on a daily, daily basis, spending time in Hong Kong and Singapore as well as the UK, and with major investors, major funders, a lot of exposure on all of those elements.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

And so how did that then take you to socialism populate?

SPEAKER_02 1:46

So that was the time period we're just discussing here, is probably around 2004-5, probably for about the next 15 or so years. And first base grew and it shrank. It's the nature of development. We we typically work in a cyclical uh industry where things are going really well or going really badly. That's slightly different at the moment. We might touch on that later. Uh, and therefore you tend to grow quite quickly and you shrink really quickly if things aren't going well. And that probably concluded with First Base working on a very large development called Silvertown in East London. And uh we we secured one of the largest planning consents in the country for that, for a highly visionary development of the future that we wanted to develop there. But our partners at the time, and the nature of my business is that we're working with large investors and the money makes the decision ultimately, it's the way it works. So the investors at the decide at the time decided they wanted to sell rather than develop out, and the consequence of that was that we exited Siltown, and First Base as a business had to think about what it did next.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Um, and I became chief exec of First Base at that point in time because I had a clear vision for what I wanted to deliver in terms of vibrant mixed-use developments in city centres, but not just in London, elsewhere in the UK, including Brighton, Bristol, some of the other locations you mentioned at the beginning. And as that was very clearly my vision, uh, I took over as chief exec. And having done that, uh, I was able to just shift the culture a little bit, employ, bring on, bring on board people I thought could help us, maybe move on people who I didn't think were quite on the uh same path as we were. And I did that for a couple of years until deciding that maybe now's the time to go it alone effectively. Uh at which point uh we structured effectively a management buyout of business, and we were able to bring it into our own ownership.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Talk to me a little bit about that shift. So you've you've sort of risen through the ranks of the of the property industry, you've held various roles, finance director, commercial sales director, and you and you then take a CEO role, so you're boss of everything, and then that you take that through to your startups, etc. What what's the psychological shift between moving from having those yes, very senior roles to being the person at the top, kind of with that vision and making those decisions?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

I think there are two enormous leaps. So the first leap is going from a senior management director position to become chief exec, where everything effectively is your responsibility. That's leap number one. We'll come back to that perhaps. The leap number two is then going from being chief exec to being the owner of the business.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Where ultimately making sure everybody gets paid every month is also your responsibility. So that those are the two enormous leaps. The first leap, in terms of going from a senior management position to the chief exec, inevitably comes with massive imposter syndrome. And so challenges with that. There is nobody else you can know, you can't turn uh your emails off on a Friday and not worry about what's going to happen until the Monday because the buck stops with you. And I think that creates a very significant change in pressure. I think you feel the need because you're probably at that point in time also responsible for people's remuneration, for hiring and firing. It changes your dynamic with the team as well, uh, because they just look at you slightly differently. And even if you try not to change your behavior, the reality is you are no longer one of the guys going out for drinks on a Thursday night, and who cares what happens afterwards. And I think some people in MD chief exec roles still are still able to maintain that to a certain extent. I think I do a little bit, but the reality is you do become distanced. There is uh even in a flat business like we are, and we're really quite a flat business, there is still an element of hierarchy. So you your behavior changes, I think other people's behavior to you changes even more. And there's a combination, I think, of behaviors that you need to demonstrate in terms of leadership that are absolutely critical. I was probably okay with those, but then there are other behaviors that you don't need to show, but you think you do. And I think those those are those are the challenging ones. No, to the it maybe you think you need to be acting differently. Uh, maybe you think you need to be talking in a different way to external parties. And the reality is you don't. The reason you've you've usually the reason you've got to where you've got to is because you've been successful at those things, and that's what you should continue to do. So it's interesting. I think the babies you need to change, and anybody else I would talk to now about moving into that position, you need to be very clear about what are essential parts of your role, which typically are you know the way you deal with external funders and leadership and acting uh through example and those elements, but there are other other elements that you don't just need to copy other people and the way they do it because then you lose, I think, a lot of what made you successful in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

You know, we've we've known each other a long time, and you've always struck me as someone who runs towards those sorts of things and embraces it and actually wants to accept all of those additional responsibilities with you know humor and alacrity and all those things. So when you talk about imposter syndrome, when you arrive in a position like Chief Exec, how do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

It's a great question. Because I'm I'm not sure whether you deal with it or it deals with you. Uh and I I think I think um the advice I give to anybody else going through that process is you just gotta be yourself. Um it seems like a cliche, but but but it isn't. I think it's when you then pretend to be somebody else, and I probably did for a short while, then then you well, then you'll pretend to be somebody else. You are an imposter. Yeah, so the critical thing is not doing that, and I think that once you realize that, and that maybe it's the passing of time, maybe it's though it's it's a little bit of more self-confidence, whatever else that is, that is the point at which I think you you lose that issue, you lose that concern, and you become better for it. Uh, and there's no two ways about it, because you then start, you know, rather than second-guessing everything you're doing, you're able to revert back to you know, the hopefully the processes, the thoughts, the intelligence, the smarts that allow you to move into that position in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Well, let me let me ask this whether I like to ask uh everyone who comes on the show, which is which is the bit that requires you to kind of park your modesty at the door and maybe send that imposter out of the room for now. Because I want you to talk about we might call them your magic tokens. So, what is it about you? What skills, knowledge, talents, and character traits do you possess that have helped you to be successful, particularly where others may not have done.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

As you say, is yeah, sort of modesty to one side. Uh, and and no 100% people will know me probably laughing as I say them. Uh, I I think the biggest one I say this to a lot of the guys that when we're looking to recruit, the attribute I look for more than anything else, uh, there are certain things you need. You certainly need a certain amount of smarts, and certain and you need a massive work ethic, right? Those two are are non-negotiable. But the one I look for is curiosity, right? And particularly in development, where and and we haven't really ever defined what development is, but effectively, uh any anything where you are creating something or you are adapting something into something new and new spacing, new places is what we're talking about. So it could be as simple as you know, how do you redesign uh a the garden to how do you redesign a whole housing estate, whatever else it might be? But the the only way you could possibly do those well is by having a really strong sense of curiosity. So I'm trying to understand all the time why why are the people like this space? Why is nobody using it as a piece of the park? Why do I always feel uncomfortable as I walk into this reception? No, why uh why didn't does nobody come into work on a Friday? No, and that that is the whys is infinite, right? So if so I I do think I'm innately curious, yeah. Probably contrary by nature as well. So I'll just my natural reaction is well that's wrong, isn't it? Uh and and so I think those elements of curiosity and contrariness are probably important, particularly in my world, where the only way a business of our size, and we're sort of a medium-sized business, but the only way we could be successful is if we're zigging when others are zagging. If all we're doing is just following everybody else, then we will only ever be a smaller, less successful version of everybody else because we don't have the same capital as other people might have. So, and and to do that, uh, what do you need to do to be able to zig when everybody else is zagging? One is you need to be smart, you need to work things through. So I'd like to think I'm really reasonably analytical in terms of the way I think about things, but then you need to overlay that, uh, overlay on top of that human emotion and intuition, and that again, that's that's for observation. Uh, and you know, you can you can do some analysis, but that's observation, and then there has to be an element of self-confidence, and with self-confidence, I think comes an element of not worrying if you're wrong. So there's a phrase, isn't there, in the tech sector about no, if you're gonna fail, fail fast.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

And this relates back to my comment about uh to be fair, I think that's existed way before what we now call the tech sector.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

But yeah, I think I think what tech's very the tech sector is very good at doing is is coming up with catchy phrases um that that summarize you know well-established wisdom. But anyway, uh um putting that to one side, I think the point is not being afraid to fail is really, really important. Yeah, uh, and and that is not a common skill. I mean I certainly in my sector, I can't comment in other sectors, but certainly in the development industry, a huge percentage of people will don't want to fail and are much more scared about failing 1% than they are succeeding 50%. So they'll never it goes back to the gambling point, it goes back back to risk taking. So not not risk not willing to risk anything in order to get better, in order to be more successful, in order to make a better place. So there has to be an element of risk taking in what we do, and then just just never settling. I mean, I I'm it's probably to my detriment, my team would definitely say this, just always trying to get better as a as a business and and every day, and and and and just coming up seeing combining all those factors and having curiosity and observing what other people are doing. I have no issue whatsoever, by the way, copying other people's good ideas. Yeah, I won't copy necessarily the way they do things, because I think we've got an approach which is a little bit different from everybody else. And in my industry, you definitely want to be as unique as you can, but certainly if other people have got new ideas that they're testing, what's the phrase about like nothing new is ever invented or whatever it is, nothing new at the sun? Sealing other people's good ideas is a fundamental part, I think, of running a successful business.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

You just gotta decide which ones are relevant to you, and you've got that that restlessness that that I imagine you could be an absolute nightmare because your team will have set something up and you think you've agreed all this stuff, and you're new coming in the next day and go, Oh, I want to do it differently. And that yeah, I can I can I can really see that, but well I was gonna ask you there. Oh, yeah, you mentioned in the course of that answer, you said something like, um, but our approach is is slightly different. Can you maybe expand on that a bit? How is how is your approach different from what else goes on in the market?

SPEAKER_02 13:40

So I suspect a lot of sectors are similar to this, but I can't comment on them where uh and it goes, it kind of goes back to where where I started, which around you know, just the lack of ambition, lack of curiosity, and I think a lot of people do settle, and a lot of businesses settle, and and you know, and a lot of very successful businesses cut and paste. In fact, a lot of the most successful businesses on paper, and I define that as maybe purely financially with external shareholders, cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste, and you can you can drive the time and the cost of of pacing each time down, probably retain roughly the same value, and you can repeat and you and you you can be successful financially by doing that. That's never been of interest to me. For me, it's always about how do you get better. Therefore, the approach for me is how do you consistently try to challenge all of the perceived norms? And in our industry, we have loads with effectively not building techniques in in this country are not very much different in 2026 than they were in 1876, right? Is the reality, which is massively disappointing, and you know, uh are we really marketing things very differently to how we're used to positioning them differently? Interior design, does it look very different to what it so there are a lot of things which are uh haven't changed. I think we I don't think we have an approach of really treating every different different location development on a personal level, understanding what the people who are coming into that development will want, and what people want in a retail center in Sheffield will be different for what people want in a hotel environment in you know in West London, and and and just getting under the skin of all of those elements and then making sure that we're no just trying to always think about the physical elements, but in the context of people. And and and that is much harder than you think, because whilst most people most developers would would say that they people focus, etc., if you actually scratch beneath the surface, that's usually not the case. Very, very quickly, we all tend to regress back to the mean, as it were. So we we regress back to just the churn and the complexity of developing these business, uh, of developing these projects without necessarily always having an eye on who the end user is, how they're going to get the most out of that, how is it gonna be successful, and how is it gonna have a long legacy that is way longer and way deeper than purely financial?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

So if you think about market analytics and you think about customer insight, we might call it, presumably most of your competitors will have access to similar sources of information. Yeah, so is it the case that you just use that information differently and apply it differently, or or what is it?

SPEAKER_02 16:35

I think one of the reasons I set populate up. So we set Socius up um under the MBO about four years ago, about two years ago, I set populate up because I didn't think as a developer, I thought we were pretty good, yeah, but I thought we could be better, and I wanted to apply a even more focus on the people aspects. And and what populate does, we talked about the place management aspect effectively, however, it's an operating company as well. So it's it is thinking about how are these spaces used. And I think what we are then doing is is not only setting out an ambition for the spaces, we're actually enacting it. So you know, down at the London Cancer Hub, now we are arranging conferences of scientists to discuss the latest in in cancer research and drug discovery and elements. So we know nothing about the technical side of that. What we do understand is by putting smart people in the room with the right motivation and the right stimulation, you can create really good ideas, really good bonds. It's the power of network. And again, that's typically not something a developer thinks they do. And most developers don't do that. So we we believe that almost any real estate development is only as good as the network you create. Even going back to my lack of attraction to housing estates, etc. Some of them are good, and uh and that and no, some you might drive past aesthetically you're not like, but some are really successful because they're they're really strong communities and the neighborhoods work really well, and you know, and the people help each other out, and and that's that's about the power of the network. So the power of the network will always trump the quality of the real estate. That's the reality. And you can have the best real estate in the world, the best buildings in the world, if your network isn't strong enough, then ultimately it won't operate well, it will not be successful. So for me, it's that element that really is different, and not many other developers do that, and that's what I think makes us unique.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Okay, of course it's that's that genuine combination of people and place that at the heart of your businesses, I guess. I'm gonna ask you a question now. If you think back over the the totality of your career, who have been your great allies, would you say, the people or groups who have who have really supported and helped? Because no one can do it on their own.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

No, and I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name names, I don't think. Well, that's fine. But there are no probably almost more than any other sector, you know, real estate and development relies on an enormous team of people, and the collaboration between those. So no, you know, great architects who understand people, understand space is is an obvious one, but great team members who are you know uh who are prepared to challenge you. I have a lot of bad ideas as well as good ones, so prepared to challenge you on those bad ideas and but then support you on the good ones, and frankly, sometimes take a bit of a punt. Okay, not sure about this, Barry, but okay, but but you won't be able to deliver this on your own. So I'm gonna help you to do this, and then we'll fail together. So that that that that's you know, that is, and again, a lot of people won't do that. A lot of people say, just not sure about it, therefore I'm just gonna distance myself, and nothing is more certain to kill a good idea than a lack of buy-in. Uh, so I think it's you know, people who are prepared to do that. Clearly, my the way our our business works is that we come up with a lot of the ideas and the thesis and the opportunities, but we need significant funding to deliver these. These are typically 250-500 million pound projects. We need investors with strong vision, strong convictions, and and I think those those are critical parts of any development business. And and and and that's to this day, I probably spend a lot of my time now trying to understand what investors want. So, you know, it's not just about standing the end consumer. Because of our reputation, we're a B corporation, we do a lot on ESG. I've been asked before whether we're not not for profit organization and things like that. And no, absolutely not, we're definitely for profit. And the the main motivation there is well, one, it's quite helpful having money. Um, but more important than that, from a business perspective, if you if you do a really good thing but you don't make any profit, you can only ever do that once. If you do a really good thing and you make a profit, you can do it over and over again. And that that is a critical element to to what we're doing, but you need investors that buy into that as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

So understanding what makes them tick, uh, understanding how you could deliver on their objectives, as well as any sort of no placemaking, social, environmental objectives you have as well, understanding all of those elements requires a lot of support and buy-in from the people you work with.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Well, what would you say your kind of beliefs and values are as they apply to how you conduct yourself in business? Like, do you do you live do you live your business life by certain rules?

SPEAKER_02 21:27

On a personal level, probably some of the ones we've already spoken about, just intense curiosity, right? So absolutely critical, not settling ever. So just no, and and don't get me wrong, that needs to be balanced when you're running a business. And and you know, I did again talking about people that have allies that have helped me. I do get people tapped tapping me on the shoulder going, Yeah, that's enough. Take a breath. Uh, let's just let's just let's let's close this out in the way that we currently are until we decide to go again.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

I think on a personal level, which I I've always been of the view that we don't spend Enough time on this planet as individuals. So just living every day. So and I think I've got three kids, and certainly messages for the older ones, both of which are university or leaving university, is you've got to find in life. Most people will have to work, certainly my kids will. And um you've got to find something in life, certainly on the work side, that you enjoy. Yeah. And that, and I think life is relatively easy to enjoy if you have that sense of curiosity, because the every day is interesting. And I think in our world, development world, every every day is different. There are no two days the same. And if you are curious about that and open-minded to where that might lead you, it takes the pressure off, but it also takes leads you to some really interesting places, both on a personal level and a and a professional level. So I I think that in terms of my own personal beliefs and values, it's it's just being open-minded, being curious, not being afraid to fail, trying new things. And if you do all of those things, it's really exciting and it's really fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

And what about the opposite? So think you you are the hero of your own story. What in your professional career, particularly, would you consider to be the anti-hero? Again, I'm not asking you to name names unless you particularly want to, but you know, it might be people, but it might also be systems or structures or prevailing ideas or things you've had to overcome to be successful.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

I mean, general naysayers, right? So um there is a general mentality. I mentioned it earlier about this whole progression to the mean, the uh playing it safe, you know, never getting fired for hiring IBM, all that sort of sort of cliches.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

That is an enormous part of the world. It's also not particularly, I think, uh, prevalent in the UK, and just an uh an unwillingness to change, to vary, uh, is a constant challenge, I think, for everybody. I think in this country, and this is not colour focused, um, in terms of political colour, politicians uh particularly who are misaligned with what they should be uh responsible for. I think I think what's interesting in this country and other countries for that matter is there is politicians really don't have responsibility, they don't take responsibility for anything. Uh and I think power without responsibility is an enormously dangerous thing. And we, I'm afraid that's what we have in this country. We don't really have politicians that are responsible for anything, and yet we give them a lot of power. And so, certainly in the development world, you know, we suffer from a lot of really poorly thought through policy decisions. We think through a lot of there's some good ones in there, but you have to sift them out. Um, we we we we struggle with an enormous amount of over-regulation. You know, some of the regulations we passionately agree with around environmental standards and elements like that. Others are just, you know, people sat in in Whitehall meddling in areas they really don't need to be meddling in and making life more difficult and expensive for everybody. So I I think politicians typically uh and there are some good ones, don't get me wrong, we've some really good ones, but there are there are a number who just make who just seem to make life uh difficult for their own personal motivations rather than anything else. And then I think no in in real estate, it's fair to say that the you know some of the thinking is quite quite old. You know, the construction sector is is really not keen to adapt, doesn't like new materials if you want to use materials, doesn't really like to change methodologies. And uh there's good reasons for some of that, you know, cost efficiency and practice, etc. But um, so it's more I think the maybe the the lethargy or apathy of the sector more than the probably individuals. I've I've lucky enough not to have come across or not to have hung around with many individuals that have been a problem, and maybe that's just because uh move on quite quickly if you find them, yeah, uh, and you decide you're not going to work with them, uh, or maybe that's just because the issues we have are more structural, perhaps, than necessarily personal.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Got you. What does uh a happy ending look like? I'm not I'm not talking about the end of your career by any means, many more years to come, I'm sure. But what like when you get everything right, when everything works as it should, and you and your team sort of bring all those values to to life, what what does that world look like?

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Well, one of the one of the reasons what once I discovered real estate and development by chance, really, that I decided to stick around and come up to nearly 30 years now, was because you end up with something really, really tangible at the end of it. And and I know when I was at BP, uh I was working on the exploration side, some guys discovered some oil at a massive party. Really, they all got bonus, everybody was celebrating. And I I celebrated with them, and then a few days later, I thought, so what? And actually, with hindsight now, of course, we understand better some of the damage that oil does. Um probably my reaction would have been even stronger. But I there was definitely a so what? No, what have what have what have I achieved here as part of that team? Absolutely nothing, in my view. And the great thing about development and property, and you are creating spaces, you're creating places that people occupy that want to go to, want to visit, whether it's a shopping centre in Kent or it's a cancer research park in in uh in South London, or it's a climbing wall in Brighton, or it's an office in Cambridge, whatever it is, these are places you're creating that people want to go to, or not, if you get it wrong, but we like to think we get it right. So that is on a development, it's very, very simple. We get a really tangible test at the end of our developments to see whether people like them or not. That is what a happy ending is at a development level, at a company level, and they will carry me out on my shield, I suspect, um, whether it's Socius or somewhere else in due course. But something I've always tried to do, for good or for bad, is I'm a big believer in setting a vision for the future. Some people almost call it manifesting, having a uh a target of where you want to achieve. I do this on a personal level and a professional level. And then effectively what you what happens if you do that, in my experience, is that it naturally it becomes embedded in all of your life decisions and all your business decisions almost intuitively, because if you can use that as the filter for where you want to get to. So I think as a business, the only way we can keep on the path of progress and and and growth is if we want to fundamentally change the industry. Yeah, we want to we want to transform the way that real estate is thought about and delivered. And uh that's a really, really lofty ambition, don't get me wrong. But the whole analogy of you know aiming for Mars and hitting the moon. Um without that, we want to change the whole way that our sector, our industry works, has to be our ambition because that sets the direction in which we uh we we move on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

So, with all that in mind, what is next for Barry Jessup? That can be both the near and the far future.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

I mean, the boring answer is constant improvement. The practical answer is now we've got projects to deliver. I've got a couple in Cambridge that work on at the moment. The highest rated Briam building in the world, that won't mean much to most people. That effectively means it's the by a what is an objective measurement, the most uh um environmentally friendly commercial building in the world. We're delivering at the moment with with rail pen in Cambridge. So delivery of those and keeping those promises is is the in is the in a sense the practical answer. We make a lot of promises in development and yeah, uh, and and populate is there to help us to keep them, but keeping those promises is is is a really important next step for us on those. I think at a corporate level, it's just looking there. Are so many opportunities in this country. We we only work in the UK, there are so many opportunities in this this country to improve elements of our towns and cities, yeah. Uh, and um there is always the next one, there's always a better way of doing it, there's a faster way of doing it there and ways in which we can keep ensuring that we're creating long-term impact. So, as well as creating great places, we're helping, as I mentioned earlier, local schools, local kids. We know that there's an enormous issue coming forward with AI. I think AI is fabulous. We've probably been an early adopter using it a lot in our business, but I am not blind that that has. What is it doing is replacing a lot of work that probably in the past younger people would be doing.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

And we, I think, as a I don't know if I'm the older generation, we're getting there. Um, we have a huge responsibility to ensure that we are providing opportunities for younger people, and that is in every shape or form. That's no, is that professional opportunities, but also opportunities in space and place where do people hang out? You know, what how do people get inspired? You know, we know there's an issue here with grassroots music venues. So it I would like to think that as a developer, the impact that we have is so wide. It goes back to this point I made earlier about uh the inputs being amplified so much into the outputs that we create. So, can we tackle some of these other sectors? Can we bring more medical facilities closer to where people need them? Can we reopen grassroots music venues? Can we inspire our younger people and give them motivation to become more ambitious, to have more opportunities, all those things that means are quite grandiose and ambitious? Without setting those targets, I'm not sure how you get anywhere near them.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

And thinking we're coming towards the end, you'll be glad to know. But thinking about your personal life a bit more, we'll we'll take as red that family and friends and loved ones are important in your life. What else are you like, what your hobbies and interests and passions?

SPEAKER_02 32:11

Well, I mentioned a few of them. I think you know, so um talking about nicking other people's ideas. Well, in my world, and I I have a massive overlap. So my professional and personal, I'm very, very fortunate to love what I do. And uh the consequence of that, however, is it kind of gets a very blurred line between professional and personal lives. So understanding how other countries work, how the other cities work, is a constant element of part of what I do. And so, you know, just traveling and spent some time in China this year. Again, it's amazing how close off the Western world is to a lot of the brilliant stuff they're doing in China. It's less good stuff as well. Um, but you've got to pick the good from the bad, but some amazing stuff. So a lot of traveling and just understanding how those elements work and how they can inspire and change what we do here on a personal level. I love live events, I love people. So no, so anything where there is a congregation of people, or you know, you I I I you don't get too far wrong. So whether that's uh music festival or you know, grassroots music venues, which I love, areas where you and sporting you know experiences of all kinds, you know, anywhere where you can get a see humanity at its best, you know, in its purest form. Uh whether it's vitriol on the football terraces or it's elation and a gig or whatever it is, that sort of that purity of emotion that you can get from live human events, you want to call them that, is is something I'm enormously excited about. And then all of that for me, so that goes back to the curiosity point, all of those then provide oxygen for smart thinking, for clever thinking, for new ideas, and then and then not my brain then goes into a fine, how do I now apply this to what we're doing? How do I test it to see whether I've just come up with a silly idea or a good one? Uh, and and or how do I how do I turn this into some form of tangible reality? And that's that's the interesting piece.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

And final, final question, since we're on a podcast, would you have a recommendation for a podcast for all of us?

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Yeah, I actually listen to quite a lot of podcasts, including yours, and very good ones, but I'm not gonna plug, I'm not gonna plug one of yours, I'm sure you'll do that separately. Um the one I particularly like, which combines probably my personal and professional interest, is a podcast called Acquired.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

It hasn't.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

I'm surprised because it is fabulous, and there's so many elements. So, well, in short, it's two chaps, American chaps, and they analyse a business and and it sounds sounds dry, doesn't it? But they they do it in such a way, a meandering way, that starts with the history that really puts meat on the bones of some of the individuals that got involved with that, and then runs through their whole process. It's amazing how many sliding door moments there are in all of those, how many luck moments or uh or twists in the road that they were. So I'd highly recommend that. The other reason I particularly like it, it's very, very successful now, so it's called called acquired. Yeah, is it is totally contrary to the way that most podcasts work. So, my understanding is that a lot of podcasts want to be of a certain length, you want to get them out really frequently. There's a way to actually generate a lot of the right algorithmic um answers to podcasts. They do exactly the opposite. It's a four-hour podcast, which sounds horrific, but it's not. It really you'll listen to it in several bits, but it's brilliant. And they only release them about every six weeks because they're enormously highly researched, and and so they they work on examples of businesses they they focus on, obviously, Microsoft, Google, Ford, but they also look at things like Formula One or the NFL, and and the so and all of these successful businesses have really interesting backstories, really interesting personalities, and it is one both at a great yarn that that they spin that that you just get wrapped up into, but equally the amount of learning and ideas that come out of that as well as well, I I find really, really inspiring.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Well, that hasn't come up before, uh so thank you for that. But thank you even more for sharing some terrific stories of your meandering and yet remarkable career. It's been terrific to have you on, and Barry Jessup, best of luck with the next chapter. Well, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. Join me next time on the Amber Monument when we'll be hearing another story of another remarkable career. Until then, stay amber.