[00:14] Darren Jamieson: I would like to tread the boards. I think I sat there, stood there, and thought I’m completely out of my depth here. I haven’t got a clue how to help this fella. Visionary tick. You need one of those. So on this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I am joined by Les Murray of 2020, who I first met at a Public Speakers Association meeting, I believe. Les, is that correct?
[00:38] Les Murray: PSA. PSA.
[00:38] Darren Jamieson: So tell me what took you to the PSA and what’s your interest in public speaking?
[00:48] Les Murray: Well, that’s a good place to start.
[00:49] Darren Jamieson: Oh, isn’t it? I do like to ask a good question.
[00:56] Les Murray: I guess because I thought at the time that the world, I think when I moved into the PSA that was during COVID, wasn’t it? It was about two, three years ago. It, it, yeah, COVID was still a thing, but yeah, there was no separation or anything.
[01:07] Darren Jamieson: There was no keep two metres apart from people.
[01:10] Les Murray: Yeah, and I’ve never really had much aspiration for doing stuff on stage.
[01:14] Darren Jamieson: Have you not?
[01:15] Les Murray: No. No, I have. No, not for me. I did some of that early career and big conference presentations, etc. But that wasn’t my drive. I think my interest was really around doing stuff online and webinars in particular. I think that’s where we first clicked, wasn’t it? Because in that first meeting, you wanted someone to help you put a webinar together.
[01:38] Darren Jamieson: Yeah. And I’d literally just done that. So that’s why we started talking.
[01:42] Les Murray: Yeah. Yeah. I think that that’s right. So, and like everything, you know, there’s much more to it than meets the eye. You know, you make assumptions from the outside that looks really easy until you try it. Yeah. And I think I’d probably had one or two hamfisted attempts at doing a webinar. And I thought honestly the PSA would help me ascend that ladder, but I’m not sure it has.
[02:08] Darren Jamieson: You’re not sure it has?
[02:10] Les Murray: Well, because it’s not, it is built for the stage, you know, in terms of that’s its focus. And it’s not really about, I mean there’s some basics associated with that clearly that transfer to online, but they don’t have an offering or they don’t have an avenue in that particular space.
[02:38] Darren Jamieson: So did you pick anything up from it, do you think, that helped you with doing that?
[02:44] Les Murray: Yeah. Well, not on webinars, but I think on a whole host of other things. I actually find myself being quite a strong advocate of the PSA because it’s helped me look more critically at my own business and how I market myself and what I’m trying to do and how to formulate and get a message out there. And, you know, it’s a very open forum of people who are on very similar journeys to the one that I’m on and I actually find that as a support group, network, conversations to chew things over, problem solve, it’s actually a very helpful community and believe it or not there’s some excellent speakers. There are some excellent speakers there.
[03:26] Darren Jamieson: Yeah. Yeah.
[03:31] Les Murray: So, you know, on a Thursday night or whenever it is, you know, you’ll go along thinking why am I really going this time and be highly entertained, discover something, learn something new. So, to that extent I’ve actually really quite enjoyed it. You know, it’s a very low pressure environment, mind you.
[03:56] Darren Jamieson: Haven’t taken to the stage. Oh, someone’s left their phone on.
[04:00] Les Murray: Yeah, well, someone’s left their phone on. Yeah, that’s a cardinal sin.
[04:03] Darren Jamieson: Well, that’s up to the editors whether they cut that one out or whether they let it in.
[04:06] Les Murray: Oh yeah. I can’t get rid of it.
[04:08] Darren Jamieson: Okay. Sorry about that. This is live, mate. This is live.
[04:11] Les Murray: Is that ringing?
[04:12] Darren Jamieson: That was ringing. Yeah. Yeah, I could hear that. Yeaheah. Microphone hears everything. Microphone hears everything. Apologies. Apologies.
[04:18] Les Murray: That’s all right.
[04:19] Darren Jamieson: So are you still a member of the PSA?
[04:21] Les Murray: Yeah, you are.
[04:22] Darren Jamieson: And how do you find the meetings? Because I really enjoyed it. I found it was kind of like organised chaos and everybody in the room was the kind of personality that wanted to be the centre of attention. And I didn’t like that because I want to be the centre of attention, so I’m like everybody else in the room probably, apart from yourself, because I don’t think you’re like that. But most people I found were all like big, massive personalities and I found it was, it was a lot of competition for me. My ego couldn’t take it.
[04:48] Les Murray: Yeah. I think I once heard a description it’s a bit like turning up at drama school. Yeah. And, you know, that there is, because everybody’s got a voice and they want to be heard. Yeah. There’s an element of that. I mean it’s, you know, it is quite an extrovert environment for sure. But no, I think it’s a very healthy community. And whenever I’ve reached out to people like yourself, others, you know, thinking about doing this, what’s your experience on that, or indeed there’s a piece of work I’m doing with a client at the moment, I’ve run a particular study on them using a profiling tool, somebody else in the group’s got very good experience of working with that. So just bouncing that around with them in terms of what do you think of this profile then, what’s this telling you. So I’ve actually found it, you know, really quite an engaging group to be with. Enjoyable.
[05:55] Darren Jamieson: Oh, it’s definitely engaging. I mean the only reason I actually stopped was because it clashed with something else I did on Thursdays. All right. And it meant I was travelling from Peterborough, usually leaving about two in the afternoon to get to Warrington for about half five, six. And it was a rush and I picked up a couple of speeding fines on the way while doing that.
[06:18] Les Murray: Well, we won’t go into that too much, but it meant I was struggling to get there on time.
[06:24] Darren Jamieson: It was too much of a rush for me. And yeah, it’s just the day of the month unfortunately when it hits.
[06:30] Les Murray: Well, it’s moving to Wednesday, is it?
[06:32] Darren Jamieson: Yeah.
[06:33] Les Murray: I didn’t know that.
[06:34] Darren Jamieson: Cat’s cracking the whip. Cat is cracking the whip. Cat, the new president, who’s been on this podcast herself.
[06:42] Les Murray: Yeah.
[06:43] Darren Jamieson: Well, she’s a good girl. She’s organised and it clashes with her cello night. So it’s moving to Wednesday. So she’s moved it because it clashes with her. So much for democracy and any votes. She’s decided, El Trumpo, that it’s going to be on a Wednesday.
[07:00] Les Murray: I’ve never heard Cat described as Trump before.
[07:02] Darren Jamieson: Well, no, there’s a decision making process that I think is kind of akin to that.
[07:07] Les Murray: Mm hm. Okay.
[07:09] Darren Jamieson: Well, if it’s moving to a Wednesday, I could probably do it again.
[07:12] Les Murray: Yeah. Well, see you there.
[07:14] Darren Jamieson: I don’t see any reason why not. That’s like in two weeks’ time, I think, isn’t it, from when we’re recording this right now. I think they have a conference and then yeah, we skip October. So it’ll be November.
[07:28] Les Murray: November. Okay.
[07:30] Darren Jamieson: All right. Well, fantastic. I’ll look out for that then. Next year, most next year it might. Oh, hang on. Next year.
[07:37] Les Murray: Yeah.
[07:38] Darren Jamieson: So it’s still Thursday, I think. You’re toying with my emotions.
[07:42] Les Murray: I am. I am. But then my recall is slow.
[07:45] Darren Jamieson: Right. So next year it moves to Wednesday because of Cat’s cello.
[07:49] Les Murray: Right. Yeah. It’s as good a reason as any.
[07:52] Darren Jamieson: One of the reasons I joined the PSA originally is because I, unlike you, I wanted to do more stage work and I thought it would help me get onto stages. It would help me with advice. It would help me with pitching. It would help me with contacts. And I didn’t find that it did that for me. That was the big thing that I wanted help with. Have you done any in person talks as a result of it? Have you got anything?
[08:01] Les Murray: No, but I haven’t pushed that agenda. What I have found that I’ve got from it is I do a lot of workshop activity. So there’s various tools and techniques that I use in workshops and various things that I work on. So in terms of how I stage a workshop, in terms of how I structure it, ice breakers, formats and all the rest of it, again helpful conversations to have with other people because there’s a number of coaches, trainers, consultants, facilitators within the group. So that’s been helpful. That said, because of the way my work profile is changing and I think also my market reach is changing, I would like to tread the boards. I think so. There is actually a course. I’ve been speaking with Heather about this.
[08:48] Darren Jamieson: Okay.
[08:49] Les Murray: And Sue. Because I think they both coach and facilitate together with Penny. Which is some GoPro kind of development course. So for another couple hundred quid, you know, half a dozen sessions, here’s how to engage with speaker bureaus. This is what they’re looking for. These are the assets you need to have.
[09:21] Darren Jamieson: Ah, so that’s exactly the kind of thing that I actually wanted.
[09:23] Les Murray: Yeah. And that was, well, exactly. But so it’s kind of like, okay, you’re a member, but you have to pay a premium, but fair dues. And of course with those characters, lots of experience, they drip it and they do it. They’re on the road doing speaking. So I’ve been sort of badgering them, when’s it happening, when’s it happening, because I’d quite like to go through that. So, was to do a little bit more speaking. But that’s for 2026.
[09:52] Darren Jamieson: Right. That’s your plans for next year.
[09:54] Les Murray: Well, that’s one of them.
[09:56] Darren Jamieson: And how did it go with the webinars? Because that’s what you were originally looking to do. You said you did a couple early on that were, what was the phrase you use, hamfisted or?
[10:04] Les Murray: Yeah. Bit amateur hour. I learned a lot. Like all of these things, you learn a lot from doing any one of these processes. I think for me webinars were pretty poor ROI. Started a few conversations off the back of them. A huge amount of effort, huge, aren’t they, huge outreach, marketing, second wave, third wave, emailing, blah blah. And then, you know, six people show up. But so that was disappointing. But also I think critically for me the format. You sort of learn constraints about the medium, I suppose. But I would have ideally wanted it to be more interactive. But because of the nature of the technology and you’re online, not really able to do as much as one would really like to be able to do. But I’m sure there’s ways around that, but I didn’t know them.
[11:18] Darren Jamieson: I personally hate doing webinars because I don’t like the fact that you can’t see the audience and you can’t interact with them. I much prefer a face to face talk because if I can see the audience, I can see who’s resonating with it, who’s not, who I need to push a little bit further. If somebody I can see is a little bit distracted, I can pull them back into it. So you get somebody on their phone, for example, you can make a joke about that and pull them in. On a webinar, you’ve got none of that. You don’t know if what you’re saying is landing. You have no idea if they’re listening, if they’re driving a car, if they’re doing the ironing, if they’re watching TV. It just doesn’t work. And you feel like you’re talking to yourself. Yeah. I hate that. I need an audience.
[12:08] Les Murray: Yeah. And I guess I think the way I felt I was performing in webinar scenarios was kind of like a lecturer. So it was very one way. And, you know, people, yeah. There was some interesting questions and stuff that would happen. But you just want more of a two way dialogue as you go through material really. It’s just sparkier.
[12:30] Darren Jamieson: So tell me about 2020. What’s your remit with that?
[12:35] Les Murray: Well, I set 2020 up over ten years ago. And I really did it because it was a reaction to everything else that I’d been doing in my previous corporate life. So, you know, I sort of described myself as being in my third career. So first career was retail. And that was marketing and operations for about twenty years. And then ten years in large scale corporate restructuring. With a big heavy emphasis on taking headcount out. So that means getting rid of people.
[13:08] Darren Jamieson: Getting rid of people.
[13:09] Les Murray: Yeah. Big time. And strangely enough, I actually quite enjoyed that particular task.
[13:15] Darren Jamieson: We’re going to push on that in a little bit, but just brace yourself for that.
[13:19] Les Murray: Okay. Well, there’s a lot to be said for it. And we can have a good argument because it’s a George Clooney film about that.
[13:25] Darren Jamieson: Oh yeah.
[13:27] Les Murray: Well, I was living proof of that because I was very much in that lifestyle without the sex, I hasten to add. But the hotels and airlines and all the travel. I was doing a huge amount of travel. And the last really great gig that I did in a project was over in Hong Kong with a super team. And we delivered a fantastic result and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I kind of knew that was my last gig. I knew that was the last one. And I was desperate to sort of work locally, sleep in my own bed at night rather than, you know, some Holiday Inn or.
[14:06] Darren Jamieson: So what was that gig? What did you do in Hong Kong that was so good?
[14:11] Les Murray: Well, it was another headcount reduction.
[14:13] Darren Jamieson: Headcount reduction.
[14:14] Les Murray: Yeah. Which went in and sacked a load of people.
[14:17] Darren Jamieson: Yeah.
[14:18] Les Murray: In an environment where the economy was growing at ten percent per annum.
[14:18] Les Murray: In an environment where the economy was growing at 10% per annum for probably the previous 15 years where headcount reduction just didn’t exist. It’s not in, it’s not in the way of thinking. It’s not the British model if you want to put it that way and certainly words like outplacement don’t exist which was kind of outplacement.
[14:42] Darren Jamieson: Yeah. You know where you sort of help people find their next position.
[14:45] Les Murray: Those kind of services, those kind of concepts were completely foreign in Hong Kong. They had no notion of it. And we helped them free up something like 15% of their overhead and redistribute it across other companies within the overall group that we were working for in the Far East.
Over a process of about 3 4 months, something like that. So it was a really successful project. Everybody very happy. Nobody actually terminated. They were just transferred and two years later they returned back to the company cuz they were having to deal with a sort of slump in demand that was very forecastable.
So yeah, it was that kind of stuff that I did for 10 years and I enjoyed it. It was genuinely enjoyable work actually. You wouldn’t expect somebody doing that kind of work to say, Oh, I really enjoyed that. That was good fun. Yeah, it was good fun. Traveling around the world sacking people.
[15:55] Darren Jamieson: Well, I didn’t actually I wasn’t the one who actually fired the bullets, but I certainly
[15:59] Les Murray: You loaded the gun. Loaded the gun. You aimed printed listed names. Yeah. But I suppose my biggest number that I actually achieved in that regard was 2 and a half thousand.
[16:09] Darren Jamieson: So people people yeah two and a half thousand people. Wow. Okay. Not for one company. For one company.
[16:22] Les Murray: So that was an accumulation of various jobs that had been going on over probably about 18 months, 2 years uh which came to a head in quite a dramatic moment and the pressure was on share price under pressure all those kind of things. And uh yeah, very satisfying assignment. Um because you save a company.
[16:52] Darren Jamieson: And so how many people were working at the company that still had jobs? Cuz it sounds like a lot of 2 and a half thousand people sounds a lot, but presumably there was
[17:02] Les Murray: Yeah, that was about 7% I think, right? Massive massive. So big company. Yeah. So 2 and a half thousand people in a single community like Chester would be you know major impact but no this is 2 and a half thousand over a number of facilities. There’s over 30,000 people in that company.
[17:15] Darren Jamieson: Yeah.
[17:15] Les Murray: I think the headcount that we were zoning in on was of a particular type, white collar engineering, uh was somewhere around 28 29,000. Um and uh total headcount 45 I think from memory. Um which is now as a business closer to 60 or maybe even 70. So doing well. They’ve survived and they Yeah, they needed to make an adjustment.
It’s a very sobering moment when you get invited to a meeting uh by the president of a division of a company and you’re sat down and you have a nice coffee and bit of banter about the flight to get here and all that sort of thing and then they ask you a question like guess how many orders we uh processed last quarter and you sort of go well 2 billion pound company order book of uh Three. So you must have processed uh 250 500.
What what’s the number? Zero. Zero. Uh just imagine how many cancellations we received last quarter. Now you’ve got me thinking cancellations. Cancellations on existing contracts. Yeah. You know, there’s penalty clauses and all the rest of it. The commercial team obviously have a lot of things to unpick when a cancellation comes in. But guess how many cancellations we had last quarter? Oh god.
Now you got me going I don’t know 300 500 15,500 1500. Yeah. So a company, you know, senior team looking at an order book like that, that kind of scenario doesn’t take very long for the cash to run out.
So they’re very accomplished at, you know, managing their customers, managing their supply chain in a much more steady state environment. They’ve got relationships. They’ve got product focus. They’ve got engineering capability. They’ve got real depth and skills and so many different areas of running that business.
But when they need to make an adjustment to a change in demand like that, very often they are just a little bit lost. And the unit that I was working with, that was our sweet spot. That’s what we were really good at.
And we could crank out an answer in terms of where our value added was being generated, where it was being destroyed and if you set various demand parameters, how you should set and balance the workforce uh to trade through the next cycle. So, it was a very powerful formula, uh, very enjoyable, but the travel sucked, flying around the world, flying around the world, drinking lots of wine, which again isn’t necessarily always good for you. But, um, that was awful, mate. Sounds awful.
But, no, what was satisfying is you you you worked on something that really mattered. M you got inside a business strategy, you know, you really understand where the difference was made within this business, what really mattered, what counted, what they were trying to save, what was, you know, nice to do, but we could, you know, that could take a bit of a bath and uh navigate and plot a course in terms of yeah, ensuring a company’s survival.
So, you know, whether it was 200 people, 500 people, 2 and a half thousand people that uh had to move on, um you were saving a lot of jobs.
I’m guessing you can’t tell us the name of that company. Uh I’d prefer not in You say the industry or uh engineering and probably one of the comp country’s biggest engineers. Yeah. So, that was Bang. They I take it they’re international as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And what would have happened if you hadn’t done what you’d done?
Um, they would have probably found someone else, but um they um Yeah, they would have probably had to borrow more debt. Uh increase their cost of sales. They would have probably done some stuff to themselves.
Uh probably, which they did do. They tended to do. They took some fairly easy straightforward measures like you know releasing contractors you know put pressure on the supply chain procurement pressure etc all that kind of classic stuff but um they weren’t going to make any significant structural change where structural change is required.
They weren’t going to reshape some of their divisional boundaries and they certainly weren’t going to uh sweat their overhead assets any harder than they felt necessary. There’s too much self-interest at play. So um they would have they would have plotted on meandered on it suboptimal.
So you said you you’ve got a formula for doing this. Does that used to used to Yeah. used to do all this used to did that take into consideration anything about the personal aspect of the employee? So, you know, family, whether they have mortgages.
Well, no, we didn’t go into that. But as a general rule, um, you make 100 people redundant, um, 30 people are punching the air with the light. It couldn’t have happened at a better time in their lives.
Um, another third are, you know, not very happy about it at all. Massive inconvenient mortgages, new family, whatever the stress stress or pressure may be. And the third are usually, well, okay, well, that’s that then. Well, we’ll just go and get another job.
So, um, it’s not usually, um, terribly traumatic for the whole population, if I can put it that way. M um of course I think it was Harold Wilson who said you know unemployment might only be 5% but if it’s 100% in this household it’s pretty crushing. Um but you don’t know the individual circumstances of those people. Um you just know that their role is no longer justified. So that’s it.
And the experience you’ve got with that which is quite quite in-depth. Uh how’s that helped you with working with smaller businesses that you do now?
Well, what I found um ironically was um and I’ll never forget my visit to a workshop in Warrington for the first client potential prospect that I reached out to and I listened to this guy speak about his operations and his business and his client mix and you know all the challenges he was experiencing and I sat there or stood there and thought I’m completely at my depth Yeah, I haven’t got a clue how to help this fell.
If he wanted to lay off 10% of his staff, well, we could probably do that in a coffee break because there’s only uh 35 people here and that’s really not on his agenda. Um he’s got a whole host of other issues that he’s grappling with and he’s severely restricted on his bandwidth and I don’t actually have the vocabulary to help this fell. I don’t know really what’s going on.
I haven’t experienced the pain that he’s experiencing. Uh this is my first day I’m speaking to somebody who’s going through, you know, growing pains with a business. So that for me was quite a a major wakeup call in terms of you know you arrogant swine you know you’ve been floating around business class first class travels staying in swanky hotels wherever you know boardroom consulting doing big engagements saving millions of pounds adding value to share prices and all those good things but you know the real dirt under the fingernail moment when it comes down to it you’re completely at sea you know nothing.
And um it spurred me on to invest massively in myself in terms of a whole new learning uh around what it really is like to be a founder, entrepreneur, the sleepless nights that people incur, the personal as well as the business in terms of the balance that people need to strike and yeah, you know, lots of stuff before you come down to actually thinking about Okay, so I’ve got a very good product here, whatever it may be or service.
How do I scale it? Which markets with what? How do I distinguish it? How do I make it stand out? How am I going to provide operational capability to support that in the field in another territory where I’m not represented? How do I do partnership deals, you know, distributors, etc. How do I get organized on all that? Who do I need to speak to?
So I find myself that for probably 2 to 3 years actually I put myself through a massive learning curve. Um joining organizations, reading, completing courses, gaining certifications, all that kind of good stuff, you know, it’s part of, you know, I’ve got this badge, that stripe, and this PIP. and slowly slowly building up a portfolio of clients and gaining client experience and doing it.
But I did find that and it’s not I’m not the first person to say this but you know nice shiny bright impressive reading corporate CV doesn’t cut it inme land.
[33:19] Darren Jamieson: It’s an interesting point. Well, it just doesn’t um because you’re so far removed from what actually happens to make a business grow. So, if you thought that you you weren’t sure how you could help people with your corporate experience, how did you plug that gap? How did you fill the gap in your knowledge for you to be able to help businesses?
[34:36] Les Murray: Uh well as I said I I I sort of put myself through a number of courses and different experiences and such like and I guess what I did was in a nutshell took off the consulting hat and put a coaching hat on. nice. and uh focused much more on the business leader and founder invariably and um working on quotes their psychology, their outlook on the world as well as their skill skill sets and their ability to lead uh as uh as a person and introduce some management practices which inevitably are founded on management systems and processes.
[36:05] Les Murray: And introduce some management practices which inevitably are founded on management systems and processes.
And uh helping people actually translate visions into reality. So lots of people wake up with lots of bright ideas every day. Uh but you know very small percentage ever actually see the light of day. And um even in relatively small businesses where you would have thought that translating something from that vision to uh reality is quite a short journey.
Well, you’ll know only too well that there’s a lot of pain and agony in building a new product or service or add-on to whatever it is that you do already. It’s complicated. It gets complicated very quickly. There’s resource requirements. You know, there’s a system IT upgrade that’s required. There’s implications which are hidden that you haven’t actually seen at the outset and for a lot of people that can be very overwhelming.
And um they can give up and have another bright idea the next day.
[36:54] Darren Jamieson: Shiny penny syndrome.
[36:56] Les Murray: Yeah, absolutely. And so they’re in this kind of whirlpool uh chasing a dream uh but all they’re doing is having a dream.
[37:03] Darren Jamieson: Does that come to personality types though? Because there are certain kinds of people that have ideas and are creative, but they’re not finishers and they need people around them or a business partner that is a finisher to be able to finish the projects or the ideas that they have.
I’m not really a finisher. I come up with the ideas, somebody else implements them because if it was left to me, I would get distracted and come up with another idea. I want to do that. It’s the case you can’t run a business like that on your own.
[37:39] Les Murray: No, you need the support around you.
[37:41] Darren Jamieson: It’s probably where where you come in.
[37:43] Les Murray: Well, you need a team.
And I think there is a makeup to the team. There’s some key ingredients in terms of the type of player that you require. And for sure visionary tick, you need one of those to, you know, set out the path. This is where we’re going. This is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re going to create. This is the destination. This is the voice we’re going to be.
But yeah, you need an integrator or an orchestrator who can actually go, right? Okay, that sounds nice. That sounds great. But what do you mean by and how’s that going to happen? How much money are we putting into this thing.
[38:18] Darren Jamieson: You need a Steve Wozniak to a Steve Jobs.
[38:20] Les Murray: Yeah, exactly. So, there’s definitely a partnership uh that should be present around that.
But then as you scale and grow uh then invariably some of the um talents that you may have uh outsourced uh to various providers not least marketing um you know you might choose to think it’s timely now I actually bring some of that in house and I need that voice round the table upstream when we’re making decisions about this so that we have a more informed perspective of where we’re going and how we’re going to do it.
So for me, business leadership is much more about the team and less about the individual. And that is how well that’s one of the key ingredients anyway in terms of how you get out of this shiny penny trap.
[39:01] Darren Jamieson: But there are people like myself who are the visionary people that have the ideas. They don’t want to bring somebody else around them because they fear that they’re going to steal their ideas. They’re going to slow them down or they’re going to stop them doing what they want to do or they’re going to take their ideas and set up in competition.
There’s just this general mistrust of others. So consequently, they end up just crackpot weirdos with loads of ideas and nothing ever really happens. You see them on Dragon’s Den all the time. Look, I’ve invented this in my study. It took me nine years to come up with and I’ve got, oh, I’ve not spoken to anybody about it. I won’t tell anybody about it.
That I think is a problem where people set up businesses and they don’t really know what to do and they shouldn’t be in business for themselves on their own. They need that help around them, but they have an inherent inbuilt fear of asking for that help or trusting people to be able to do it.
[39:49] Les Murray: Yeah, I think that is a a serious point. That’s a serious issue. Um made in a non-serious way, I suspect.
But no, I I think um I would probably frame it slightly differently that what you’re describing is almost like a product zealot, you know, who’s totally focused on, you know, the transistor or the piece of software or whatever it is. Um that gets them out of bed in the morning and work late into the night.
Uh but actually now you need to build a business to be able to bring that to market. Yeah. You need to be able to win a commercial argument so that you can actually price it and sell it and actually fund its development. Yeah. If they try on their own, it’s not going to work.
And you know, as soon as you put a business wrapper like that around it, well, that’s probably a different set of skills and capabilities from what this individual brings, which is a fantastic creative talent and zeal and love for what they do. But actually that in itself is not sufficient. Doesn’t cut it.
[40:36] Darren Jamieson: It’s because I know a lot of people in my industry in web design who’ve tried to set up their own agencies and do it for themselves and quite often they have a business partner who is also a web designer.
So you’ve got two web designers trying to run a business together. Neither of them understands operations. Neither of them is detail orientated. Neither of them is interested in sales or quite frankly speaking to anybody. All they want to do is build websites. Most of them fail.
[41:02] Les Murray: Yeah, most of them fail because they just want to sit behind a computer doing designing, being all artsy, fancy creative, and do the fun stuff. But you need a yin to your yang. You need somebody different to you. Or as you’ve said, you need a team.
I’ve heard so many tales of the kind of website designer that you’re kind of describing who a couple of years out from trying things on their own from having escaped big corporate they begin to realise and appreciate all the other jobs that their colleagues did.
And it’s a very painful lesson learned that um you know I think everyone should have a go at it. I have to say um I would love to see people in the public sector give it a run out and see just how far they got.
[41:42] Darren Jamieson: Oh, imagine.
[41:43] Les Murray: Yeah, exactly. It wouldn’t be far. I suspect it would not be far.
[41:48] Darren Jamieson: What do you mean we’ve got to produce results?
[41:50] Darren Jamieson: What do you mean I don’t get thirty days off a year?
[41:53] Les Murray: Exactly.
I think um yeah, it would be a really interesting to see what kind of long-term psychological effect that would have. And I agree, everybody should give it a go because from our perspective, when we’re hiring web designers, which we’ve done for like the last sixteen years, it’s much better if that web designer has already tried to go freelance.
Then they know the difficulties with it and they welcome the security of having somebody doing the sales aspect for them and doing the operations for them and doing the billing and the invoicing for them. They just get to do the fun stuff of building websites.
Whereas if you hire somebody who’s never done that before, they’ll be sat there building websites going, do you know what, I could do this myself. I could go out and start my own business.
[42:54] Les Murray: I had the privilege once earlier career of sitting on assessment panels for recruitment and I was always struck by the perception that some of the most impressive candidates that came forward were people who were precisely what you just described.
People who had had a go at doing their own thing, setting up a soft drinks business, knocking on the doors at Tesco, negotiating contracts with Asda, whoever it was, and had some drive and verve about them.
And the X factor that we would invariably use to describe it was just gumption.
[43:24] Darren Jamieson: And you can’t teach that, can you?
[43:26] Les Murray: Absolutely not. And they would sail through and get job offers and it was really very much for them to decide whether actually this company is one that I really want to work with.
Is this going to help me in my little journey rather than I got a job.
But um yeah, so to that extent as a life enhancing experience which is guaranteed to leave you bruises, I think everybody especially public sector should have a go at a real thing.
[44:07] Les Murray: I am struck, I mean I’m obviously a little bit longer in the tooth than you and I will say that in my little lifetime in little blighty there is a much stronger sense of enterprise culture than certainly there was when I started out thirty knocking on forty years ago.
[44:25] Darren Jamieson: You say yeah without question.
[44:27] Les Murray: Without question. And I say that not because I’m in it more actively than I was thirty, forty years ago, but I think there’s definitely more recognition of it and there’s more encouragement of it.
I think it was largely unheard of thirty, forty years ago.
[44:50] Darren Jamieson: Do you think TV and social media play a part in that?
We all watch stuff like The Apprentice, Dragon’s Den, Shark Tank, people getting funding, starting businesses, getting investment. Then you’ve got people on TikTok and YouTube making money just messing about on the internet.
Do you think that’s inspiring people to think, I can do this?
[45:18] Les Murray: Yeah, I think it does. And I think um like them, loathe them, hate them, but folks like Steven Bartlett unquestionably encourage people to go and give it a whirl.
[45:36] Darren Jamieson: I think Steven Bartlett started his company the same time we started Engage Web. Pretty sure it was 2009.
[45:44] Les Murray: 2009. Right.
[45:46] Darren Jamieson: He’s done well.
[45:48] Les Murray: He’s done all right. Made a couple of quid.
[45:51] Darren Jamieson: He’s got a podcast. I’ve got a podcast. What’s the difference?
[45:55] Les Murray: Exactly.
[45:57] Les Murray: He’s got a book out. I’ve got a book out. We’re practically the same.
[46:02] Les Murray: But I think that kind of individual is inspiring.
[46:08] Darren Jamieson: Richard Branson was the poster boy.
[46:10] Les Murray: Yeah. He was one of the pioneers.
[46:14] Darren Jamieson: We were talking about mentoring earlier. Even Richard Branson has a coach.
[46:18] Les Murray: Yeah. Everybody needs help from somebody.
[46:22] Darren Jamieson: So tell me about your book.
[46:24] Les Murray: My book is my life’s joy.
Somebody said to me, can you say that with a bit more excitement on your face?
But somebody did make a serious point to me that it’s not the book you read that changes your life. It’s the book you write.
[46:48] Darren Jamieson: That’s a good quote.
[46:50] Les Murray: Yeah, and I think it’s very true.
I got the idea of writing a book around about this time last year. And I sort of, you’ve done it fairly quick then. Yeah.
Some people take years procrastinating. I came from a place of why would I do that. That’s an awful lot of effort.
But as I approached it, developed a plan, found the time and space, I started writing it.
I’ve got a place up in Scotland I disappear to, in the garden, birds twittering, hunched over an Apple Mac.
I bashed out my first manuscript in probably about twenty days.
[47:46] Darren Jamieson: That is fast.
[47:48] Les Murray: It is fast. But I had a very good plan.
The feedback stage was brutal. A refreshing smack around the face.
Processing that feedback transformed the book. If it took twenty days to write, it probably took forty to review.
It ended up at fifty eight thousand words.
[48:32] Darren Jamieson: What’s the book about?
[48:34] Les Murray: It’s about senior leadership teams.
How to ignite the energy, clarity and performance of a senior management team.
How you build, sustain and evolve that team.
[49:08] Les Murray: Poor hiring is incredibly costly. Teams churn. Momentum is lost. There’s hidden cost everywhere.
So anything that helps you build a more aligned team is critical.
[49:42] Les Murray: Teams evolve like football squads. You can’t use the same team to scale from five million to fifty million.
You phase people in and out. Just like Wrexham.
[50:47] Les Murray: There’s an evergreening process. New players, new leadership, new capabilities.
[51:09] Darren Jamieson: What’s the book called?
[51:11] Les Murray: Lighting the Blue Touch Paper.
[51:34] Darren Jamieson: And it’s out when?
[51:36] Les Murray: Ninth of December. Available on Amazon.
[51:56] Darren Jamieson: Just in time for Christmas.
[52:00] Les Murray: Great stocking filler.
[52:13] Darren Jamieson: Before we both die of a cold, where can people find you?
[52:18] Les Murray: LinkedIn, or wy-20management.com. Drop me a message.
[52:45] Darren Jamieson: Les, thank you very much for being a guest.
[53:36] Les Murray: Thank you very much.
[53:39] Darren Jamieson: Send the paramedics.
[53:42] Les Murray: Wrong country.
[53:44] Darren Jamieson: People know what I mean.
