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4 episodes with natwest bank
2 episodes with natwest bank
2 episodes with natwest bank
In this episode of Chatzzz, I'm joined by Hayley Gardiner, a passionate property expert with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Born in Kendal, Cumbria, and now living in Carlisle with her partner Tony and their blended family of six children, Hayley shares her journey from working at NatWest Bank to becoming an experienced estate agent. With a deep understanding of the mortgage process, customer service, and local property markets, Hayley has worked with auction companies and agents nationwide.Having bought and renovated her first property at just 20, Hayley has been a landlord since the late nineties and has a genuine passion for helping people navigate their property journeys. She emphasises the importance of trust in an agent and is dedicated to providing a stress-free, seamless experience for both buyers and sellers.
Unlocking Innovation: Kratix and Platform Engineering at NatWest In this episode of the FINOS podcast, Grizz Griswold interviews Chris Plank from NatWest Bank and Derik Evangelisa from Syntasso. They delve into the evolution of platform engineering, open-source technologies, and how NatWest uses cloud-native tools to deliver platforms as a product. Learn about the innovative Kratix framework, its role in enabling developers, and how open-source principles are being adopted in financial services. Whether you're a technical enthusiast or on the business side, this discussion provides valuable insights into modernizing IT practices and fostering innovation. 00:00 The Evolution of Team Collaboration 00:38 Introduction to the Guests 01:08 Overview of the Talk and Key Topics 02:00 Chris Plank's Background and Role 03:14 Defining Platform Engineering 05:52 Derik Evangelista's Background and Role 06:24 Understanding Kratix 10:41 The Journey of Platform Engineering at NatWest 16:54 Building with Kratix: A Technical Insight 19:35 Exploring FINOS Projects and Kratix Integration 20:01 Deep Dive into Kratix and Its Technical Aspects 22:31 The Concept of Golden Paths in Kratix 24:07 Real-World Applications and Industry Impact 29:50 Challenges and Lessons in Change Management 32:51 How to Contribute to Kratix and Future Prospects 37:26 Final Thoughts and Reflections Kratix: https://www.kratix.io/ Chris Plank: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisplank/ NatWest: https://www.natwestgroup.com/ Derik Evangelista: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derikevangelista/ Syntasso: https://www.syntasso.io/ Grizz Griswold: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarongriswold/ Find more info about FINOS: On the web: https://www.finos.org/ Open Source in Finance Forum (OSFF Conference): https://www.finos.org/osff-2025 2024 State of Open Source in Financial Services Download: https://www.finos.org/state-of-open-source-in-financial-services-2024 FINOS Current Newsletter Here: https://www.finos.org/newsletter LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/finosfoundation/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/FINOSFoundation About FINOS FINOS (The Fintech Open Source Foundation) is a nonprofit whose mission is to foster the adoption of open source, open standards, and collaborative software development practices in financial services. It is the center for open source developers and the financial services industry to build new technology projects that have a lasting impact on business operations. As a regulatory compliant platform, the foundation enables developers from these competing organizations to collaborate on projects with a strong propensity for mutualization. It has enabled codebase contributions from both the buy- and sell-side firms and counts over 50 major financial institutions, fintechs and technology consultancies as part of its membership. FINOS is also part of the Linux Foundation, the largest shared technology organization in the world. Get involved and join FINOS as a Member.
How2Exit: Mergers and Acquisitions of Small to Middle Market Businesses
Watch Here: https://youtu.be/F2BN0d4dmn0About the Guest(s): Issac Qureshi is the founder and owner of Bauer, a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) firm specializing in e-commerce. With roots in the banking sector, Issac began his career at Royal Bank of Scotland Group. He was the youngest board member and played a key role in significant acquisitions such as Natwest Bank, Citizens Bank, and Bahambro in the Netherlands. Transitioning into entrepreneurial ventures, Issac established several companies in marketing, property investment, and leisure. Today, his focus includes leveraging his extensive M&A expertise to foster growth in the e-commerce sector through strategic acquisitions and brand development.Summary: In this episode of the How2Exit podcast, host Ronald Skelton interviews Issac Qureshi, a mergers and acquisitions expert with a focus on e-commerce. Issac shares insights from his banking and entrepreneurial background, explaining how platforms like Shopify have transformed business operations. He introduces his “four-tweak model” for boosting profitability through traffic, conversion, sales, and cost optimization, offering actionable strategies for scaling e-commerce businesses in today's fast-paced, data-driven market.Key Takeaways:M&A Skills Transferability: The skills acquired in large-scale M&A are highly transferable to acquiring smaller e-commerce businesses, with the main variance being in the volume of documentation.E-Commerce Appeal: E-commerce is appealing due to its real-time data availability, which supports rapid business adjustments compared to traditional models.Four-Tweak Model: By focusing on four key areas (traffic, conversion, sales, and cost reduction), businesses can significantly enhance profitability across sectors.Importance of Branding and Storytelling: The use of effective storytelling and brand positioning can elevate standard products into appealing lifestyle choices.Strategic Affiliate and Collaborative Marketing: Building relationships with affiliates and utilizing social media for peer-to-peer marketing can profoundly impact a business's organic growth and profitability.-------------------------------------------------- Contact Issac onLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/issac-qureshi/Website: https://bowarr.com/--------------------------------------------------How2Exit Joins IT ExchangeNet's Channel Partner Network!-Why IT ExchangeNet?Since 1998, IT ExchangeNet has created $5 billion in value by selling more than 225 IT businesses in 20 countries. IT ExchangeNet works exclusively with IT-enabled businesses generating between $5M and $30M who are ready to be sold, and M&A decision-makers who are ready to buy. For over 25 years IT ExchangeNet has developed industry knowledge that helps them determine whether a seller is a good fit for their buyers before making a match."Out of all of the brokers I've met, this team has the most experience and I believe the best ability to get IT service businesses sold at the best price" - Ron SkeltonThe IT ExchangeNet M&A Marketplace we partnered with has a proprietary database of 50,000+ global buyers seeking IT Services firms, MSPs, MSSPs, Software-as-a-Service platforms, and channel partners in the Microsoft, Oracle, ServiceNow, and Salesforce space.If you are interested in learning more about the process and current market valuations, complete the contact form and we'll respond within one business day. Everything is kept confidential.Are you interested in what your business may be worth? Unlock the value of your IT Services firm, visit https://www.itexchangenet.com/marketplace-how2exit and complete the contact form.Our partnership with IT ExchangeNet focuses on deals above $5M in value.If you are looking to buy or sell a tech business below the $5M mark, we recommend Flippa.--------------------------------------------------
Louis Fernandes shares his journey from working at NatWest Bank to becoming an advisor in sales and marketing. He grew up in the UK and had a studious and geeky personality. After not getting the grades he expected in his A levels, he randomly ended up working for NatWest Bank at the age of 18. He gained experience in various roles, including marketing and sales, and developed a passion for helping others succeed. He also pursued his interests in sailing and skiing, which taught him resilience and the importance of focusing on the outcome. Louis emphasizes the value of building relationships and understanding customers' needs in sales and marketing. In this conversation, Louis Fernandes and Paul Lanigan discuss the challenges of stepping outside of one's comfort zone and the importance of self-awareness in personal growth. They explore the concept of imposter syndrome and how it relates to conscious incompetence. They also discuss the role of technology in sales and marketing, emphasizing the need for a balance between automation and human connection. The conversation concludes with a reflection on the value of passion and living in the present moment.
This week on the Wonderspace Podcast we ask our six questions to Jacqueline Lim. A strategist and certified coach focused on advancing equity and a regenerative future for all. Jacq is currently an Associate with the Finance Innovation Lab and has recently worked with clients such as Natwest Bank, Partners for a New Economy and A Blueprint for Better Business."I found myself in 2019 really immersed in so many questions about self and about my work. Questions like, 'What really is a systems change?' 'How do systems actually change?' And crucially, ‘What's mine to do in systems change?' I've gathered so many answers since that time, one of the answers being systems change is actually deeply personal. It's not just about the outward change."In her story of hopefulness Jacq promotes the work of Possible Futures who are starting their next cohort. Intro to Decolonial Sustainability course. One of the facilitators is one of our previous guests on WS Lorraine B Smith. The application deadline is 3rd June.https://www.possiblefutures.earth/decsust For more införmation on the Finance Innovation Lab: https://financeinnovationlab.org To view the episode page with a summary of the interview, links to social media and projects mentioned, go to https://ourwonder.space/episodes/_134
The High Street outlet will shut on the eleventh of September, leaving just three other banks still trading in Petersfield. These people told Shine Radio's Julie Butler and Maggie Buckley what the closure will mean for them:See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It's been over 27 years since 64-year-old Abe Lebewohl was gunned down in front of the NatWest Bank in East Village, NY. On March 4, 1996, Abe was at the bank dropping off a $12,000 deposit from his place of business, the Second Avenue Deli, when he was robbed and killed. The perpetrators have never been caught and today, Abe's case remains unsolved. This kind, generous man deserves justice. If you have any information, please call the NYPD Crime Stoppers at 1–800–577-TIPS (8477). Click here to join our Patreon. Click here to get your own Inhuman merch. Connect with us on Instagram and join our Facebook group. To submit listener stories or case suggestions, and to see all sources for this episode: https://www.inhumanpodcast.com/
In episode 118 Coffey talks with Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey about how “evidence-based inclusion” strategies differ from traditional DEI approaches.They discuss the concept of inclusion outside of the notion of DEI; the difference between equality and equity in a business environment; the meaning of "evidence-based inclusion" and how it differs from traditional DEI narratives; where to find that evidence and expertise; what the research actually tells us about the business case for diversity; whether there a moral argument for DEI; what evidence tells us about how to achieve inclusion; understanding "belonging" as a part of inclusion; practical ways to measure and understanding inclusion; and what skills to develop to build an inclusive culture.Good Morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative—premium background checks with fast and friendly service. For more information about our commitment to quality and excellent customer service, visit us at https://imperativeinfo.com. If you are an HRCI or SHRM-certified professional, this episode of Good Morning, HR has been pre-approved for half a recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information for this episode, visit https://goodmorninghr.com. About our Guest:Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey is the world authority on Evidence Based Inclusion in the workplace. His consultancy provides research, training and consulting to make organisations inclusive. He has a PhD from the London School of Economics and this allows him to combine professional expertise with the academic rigour that his clients expect, these include Aviva Insurance, Sony Pictures, Conde Nast, John Lewis, Natwest Bank and Meta. He is the host of The Element of Inclusion; a weekly podcast that informs and educates using applied research and thought leadership. Dr. Jonathan has been featured in the Financial Times, Bloomberg and BBC News. A prolific writer, Dr. Jonathan is on a mission to help a million people to make their workplace inclusive through his writing, courses and other resources.Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey can be reached at:https://www.elementofinclusion.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjonathan/ https://www.instagram.com/jalamptey/About Mike Coffey:Mike Coffey is an entrepreneur, human resources professional, licensed private investigator, and HR consultant.In 1999, he founded Imperative, a background investigations firm helping risk-averse companies make well-informed decisions about the people they involve in their business.Today, Imperative serves hundreds of businesses across the US and, through its PFC Caregiver & Household Screening brand, many more private estates, family offices, and personal service agencies.Mike has been recognized as an Entrepreneur of Excellence and has twice been named HR Professional of the Year. Additionally, Imperative has been named the Texas Association of Business' small business of the year and is accredited by the Professional Background Screening Association. Mike is a member of the Fort Worth chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization and volunteers with the SHRM Texas State Council.Mike maintains his certification as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) through the HR Certification Institute. He is also a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP).Mike lives in Fort Worth with his very patient wife. He practices yoga and maintains a keto diet, about both of which he will gladly tell you way more than you want to know.Learning Objectives:1. Differentiate between traditional DEI narratives and the concept of evidence-based inclusion.2. Explore the research-based business case for diversity.3. Learn practical strategies and skills for achieving and measuring inclusion in organizations.
Nigel Farage is a prominent British broadcaster and former politician. In this interview, in the wake of the controversial closure of Nigel's bank account that led to the resignation of the CEO of Natwest Bank, we discuss the importance of individual sovereignty and the control of money by the state. We also discuss the growing concern over CBDCs and the critical importance of cash. - - - - In June 2023, Nigel Farage had his Coutts UK bank account unexpectedly closed. He firmly believed that this action was a result of political persecution. This sparked a heated debate, with prominent politicians, such as the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, expressing concerns about the denial of financial services to those who engage in lawful free speech. The BBC reported in early July that Farage's Coutts account had been shut down because he didn't meet the bank's minimum investment threshold. However, this version of events was untrue. Farage had obtained a document (through a subject access request to Coutts) revealing that the closure of his accounts was in fact due to his political views not aligning with the bank's values. The CEO of the NatWest Group, Dame Alison Rose, was the source for the BBC's initial incorrect story. Natwest, the owner of Coutts, is one of the major UK banks. The British Government bailed out the banking group during the Global Financial Crisis, and they still own 39% of the company. Responding to the mounting pressure, Dame Rose resigned on July 25, 2023. These unfolding events shed light on the challenges faced by individuals when financial institutions seemingly conflate personal beliefs with the provision of banking services. The situation underscores the importance of upholding freedom of speech and the need for transparency and accountability within the banking sector. Show notes: https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-debanking-of-nigel-farage This episode's sponsors: Iris Energy - Bitcoin Mining. Done Sustainably Ledn - Financial services for Bitcoin hodlers Bitcasino - The Future of Gaming is here Ledger - State of the art Bitcoin hardware wallet Wasabi Wallet - Privacy by default Unchained - Secure your bitcoin with confidence
“If the desire of the big institutions to basically prevent a flight of money into bitcoin…what on earth do people do?”— Nigel FarageNigel Farage is a prominent British broadcaster and former politician. In this interview, in the wake of the controversial closure of Nigel's bank account that led to the resignation of the CEO of Natwest Bank, we discuss the importance of individual sovereignty and the control of money by the state. We also discuss the growing concern over CBDCs and the critical importance of cash.- - - - In June 2023, Nigel Farage had his Coutts UK bank account unexpectedly closed. He firmly believed that this action was a result of political persecution. This sparked a heated debate, with prominent politicians, such as the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, expressing concerns about the denial of financial services to those who engage in lawful free speech.The BBC reported in early July that Farage's Coutts account had been shut down because he didn't meet the bank's minimum investment threshold. However, this version of events was untrue. Farage had obtained a document (through a subject access request to Coutts) revealing that the closure of his accounts was in fact due to his political views not aligning with the bank's values. The CEO of the NatWest Group, Dame Alison Rose, was the source for the BBC's initial incorrect story. Natwest, the owner of Coutts, is one of the major UK banks. The British Government bailed out the banking group during the Global Financial Crisis, and they still own 39% of the company. Responding to the mounting pressure, Dame Rose resigned on July 25, 2023. These unfolding events shed light on the challenges faced by individuals when financial institutions seemingly conflate personal beliefs with the provision of banking services. The situation underscores the importance of upholding freedom of speech and the need for transparency and accountability within the banking sector. - - - - This episode's sponsors:Iris Energy - Bitcoin Mining. Done Sustainably Ledn - Financial services for Bitcoin hodlersBitcasino - The Future of Gaming is hereLedger - State of the art Bitcoin hardware walletWasabi Wallet - Privacy by defaultUnchained - Secure your bitcoin with confidence-----WBD699 - Show Notes-----If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:Become a Patron and get access to shows early or help contributeMake a tip:Bitcoin: 3FiC6w7eb3dkcaNHMAnj39ANTAkv8Ufi2SQR Codes: BitcoinIf you do send a tip then please email me so that I can say thank youSubscribe on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | Deezer | TuneIn | RSS FeedLeave a review on iTunesShare the show and episodes with your friends and familySubscribe to the newsletter on my websiteFollow me on Twitter Personal | Twitter Podcast | Instagram | Medium | YouTubeIf you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.
In the latest episode of the pod I'm talking about: What your tax free saving and investment allowances are How they're under pressure or changing When an ISA might help Changes to Chase's 1% debit card cashback £200 RBS/NatWest switching offer A listener question on Club Lloyds freebies And more For links and further reading head to becleverwithyourcash.com/cashchats ABOUT CASH CHATS Cash Chats is presented by money blogger and broadcaster Andy Webb. The podcast was "Show of the Week" in the Radio Times, and it has been featured as one of the top money podcasts by publications including Apple, Good Housekeeping and the Independent. In 2021 and 2019 it was awarded Best Money Podcast at the SHOMOS - the UK Money Bloggers community annual awards, and runner-up in 2020. On each Cash Chats episode you can hear Andy share ways to get the most from your money. Andy also runs the award-winning website Be Clever With Your Cash, presented Channel 5's Shop Smart Save Money and founded the community ukmoneybloggers.com. To contact Andy email Andy@Becleverwithyourcash.com ANDY ON SOCIAL Andy's handle is @AndyCleverCash and you can follow him over at: twitter.com/AndyCleverCash instagram.com/andyclevercash youtube.com/andyclevercash GET ANDY'S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER You'll also get a free Quidco bonus for signing up https://becleverwithyourcash.com/newsletter/ MUSIC The music is Easter Island by Lonely Punk and provided on a creative commons licence
Last week I published the first chapter of Peter's new book. This week I interview Peter on the book, who should read it, what the conclusions are, how it is different from his last two books, and why he is like George Lucas.If you are interested in buying the book, you can do that on Amazon, but this week it is 40% off if you buy direct from the University of Pennsylvania press. Use the code “HOLIDAY22-FM”Full transcript below.Main Takeaways:I fed the full transcript into ChatGPT and asked it for the main take-aways from the podcast. I then probed it for more, but it could not come up with anything else. I THINK that it only “heard” the first part of the podcast and ignored the rest. But here is what the AI thinks are the take-aways:Peter's third book, titled "The Customer Base Audit," is a prequel to his other books on customer centricity. The book focuses on providing insights into customer data and is considered a foundational work. Peter believes that if the book were released first, it would not have had the same impact as it does as a prequel to his other books. He believes that starting with the "sexy stuff" and then diving into the details is a better way to grab readers' attention and get them to care about the subject matter.Full Transcript:Edward: All right, Peter. We're back. We're back.Peter: It's always good to talk to you. Ed. What are we gonna talk about this week?Edward: We're gonna talk about your book.Peter: We're talking about my book. Love it.Edward: I know there's a heck of a lot going on in the world, but we're gonna take a break from fraud and we're gonna take a break from Elon Musk. We're gonna take a break from ai. We're gonna talk about your book.Peter: We promise not to mention any of those things.Edward: We told the audience that we're gonna do it. We did an excerpt from your book last week in the newsletter. So if you those listening who have not seen that, you should go back and check that out. And now we're gonna talk to the man himself. It's interesting, Peter, this is your third book, correct? I got the number right?Peter: It's crazy, but true. Yes.Edward: Okay. And so my concern always for like big thinkers when they're writing multiple books, is that the first book. The Thing that they've worked their whole career on. It's like the first Beatles album. They've worked on it for the last 20 years of their lives, and they get it down and now two years later, they have to get another album out and they just, okay, let's see what else we can get out. And the sophomore albums tend to be weaker than the first, I feel like with big thinkers like like Clay and Christensen when he releases innovators Dilemma. Earth Shattering book blows our minds on how to think about strategy. And then he proceeds to release four more books after that, that are frankly derivatives of innovators dilemma. Are you being derivative, Peter? What's going on?Peter: Actually it's a great question. Cuz this book actually comes first, and I mean that literally and figuratively that, if you look at the, of course the book is called the Customer Base Audit, but the subtitle is the first step on the journey to customer centricity. And literally it goes back to a conversation that I had with one of my co-authors, Bruce Hardy, back in 2004 long before I had any inkling of the other work that I would then write on customer centricity. So this stuff is actually much closer to the work that I really do for a living day to day with customer data and so on. Those other books are more of the the so what, like what do we do with the these insights. But this is the book that gives the insights. This is the book that if you were to read the first two and say, wait a minute, how would I know that this stuff is true? Prove it to me. This book does that.Edward: So is This is like George Lucas making Star Wars. So after he is made that then he can go back and make the movie he really cares about,Peter: It is the prequel to the other stuff. And again, in some ways it is foundational. In some ways it's really quite different. But I don't think anybody, I'm not saying everyone will like the book, but no one's gonna read it and say it's.Edward: Okay. And so which I guess if someone's coming to you for the first time, then do they read this book first as a prequel? Do they jump to the prequel? Or is it like, Hey, watch Star Wars first, enjoy that, and then read the next book to understand where that, where that song came from?Peter: Know, That's beautiful metaphor. And I actually agree with that. See, here's The Thing. I've been doing this kind of work forever. Even since, you were an MBA student 20 years ago and, 20 years before that. And for the most part, with some exceptions, like you people would ignore me saying it's all just quanti and who cares? So what, so I wrote the other books to basically say, pay attention. This stuff matters. You should care your business depends on it. And that's a great way to grab people's attention and get them to lean in and say, oh whoa, how do we do this stuff? This is the book that begins that, how do we do this stuff if we release this one first? People would've read it and said I guess that's nice, but so what? So it's nice to lead with the so what to lead with the sexy stuff and then have people roll up their sleeves and want to dive into the details.Edward: Got it. So the first book is customer centricity.Peter: Focus on the right customers for strategic advantage.Edward: And that, so that book is the why, right? This is how. Not. Not the how, but the why to do it. Why customer centric? So both the what and the how. Which is what and the why.Peter: Yeah, exactly. What are we talking about and why do we care?Edward: Cause people, I think back then, I remember talking to you and a lot of people think things like, oh, customer-centricity just means doing whatever all your customers want. Which is, that book says, no, that's not what it is. Let's redefine what customer centricity.Peter: That's right. And again, it's gotten a lot of people to pay attention and say, wait a minute, we should be doing that. Or, wait a minute, we've been thinking along those lines, but we thought we were alone. So let's start at the C level to get people to really care and to, care about, everything from incentives and organizational structure and corporate culture and stuff that I know nothing about. And then it's gonna charge the the. Quine nerdy people to to do their thing at the service of customer centricity.Edward: Got it. So number one is, Hey, yeah, buy in. We know what customer centricity is now and we think we want to do it.Peter: Yep.Edward: The second book is the Customer Centricity Playbook. Is that like the project plan to actually implement customer centricity?Peter: Exactly. It's the how do we do it. Yep.Edward: Got it. And so now we've gone full circle. Now we're back to the prequel, which is the customer based audit, which is the new book. And so that's about. I guess not. I was gonna say how, but it is it howPeter: it's first steps? It's step one of the how, which is get your data in order. Okay. Don't take our word for it. Look at your data. Let's not even run any models or forecast or lifetime value or any of that stuff, just given the data that you. Look at it the right way. And you'll notice that not all customers are created equal. And you'll get all kinds of insights about how customers change over time. Stuff that you know, I, and you to a large extent take for granted. But for most companies it's sometimes news they don't know about and sometimes it's the polar opposite of what they think they'll see when they look at their customers.Edward: Who should read which book first?Peter: See, it depends who you are. That's right. So if, so again if you're c level, as much as I'd like them to dive right into the audit I recognize its place, it would be start with books one and two again, just to be motivated to wanna lean in further. If you are someone who plays around with data, you're a data scientist or maybe you're someone in the CFO's office where you're comfortable with numbers you're, you're interested in accountability and rigor marketing often lacks. Then maybe you start with the audit and maybe after you see the patterns, then you start to say, what does this mean? What do we do about it? And that leads to books one and two. So it really does vary about, who you are and where you are in the org chart.Edward: Got it. So it, it feels like if you're the CMO and you have the authority to like make this happen, you should probably read the other two books. Probably read the first book. Read customer centricity. If you haven't been bought in on the whole thing, that's gonna get you bought, that's gonna get you bought in or you're gonna reject it, but at least you'll know what you're rejecting and so on. If you're not in the marketing department, so if you're not in the marketing department at all, if you're in the finance department, you could be as bought in as you are on customer centricity, but you're not gonna be. The marketing department to do what you want it to do instead, read the customer based audit. Now you can go and , it's right in the title. You can go and audit the marketing organization to to see what's going on with your customers. And you can provide that information just generally to the organization. And hopefully that causes things to move.Peter: That is exactly right. And really. That's a really big part of our motivation for doing this. A lot of the work that I've been doing recently, as has been this idea of customer based corporate valuation. Let's basically show the finance people that we can be their friend. We can be their partner by basically projecting revenue and free cash flow accurately and diagnostically. And again, this would be the first. Towards that. Cuz doing that requires models, projections, forecasts and sometimes people will be skeptical about that. How do we know you can forecast it? If we can look at the raw data, simple, just simple data summaries as we say in the book, unashamedly descriptive and see some of these patterns. Daring us in the face about the differences across customers and all that then it just makes you more curious, more willing to start taking that next step and forecasting things out. So this is the starting point for all that.Edward: It's more than just the numbers though. It's also how you interpret those numbers. Cause I feel like if you just come up like a chart and these are the numbers, that's one thing. But if you pull up the chart in the numbers and they look in a certain way, and you could, and you know what that means when they look that way? Then that's a lot more powerful than just having the chartered numbers.Peter: So let's talk about that. It's a really great point because yeah, just charts and numbers, eh but on the other hand, if we over interpret, if we start, getting too colorful with the interpretations and start bringing in things like you, Demographics and personality, character no. For us that next level down would be instead of just looking at overall sales, let's break it down into, were you active or not? How often do you buy, how much did you spend when you did? So let's come up with a, simple but powerful decomposition of sales and start looking at those separate drivers.And here we are, it's holiday season and every company is out there acquiring a bunch of really bad customers. Why are they bad? Is it cuz they're not gonna stick around or they're not gonna buy often or they're only gonna buy when things are on sale? It's really good to know that stuff. And then you could bring in the marketing messaging and all the targeting and all that stuff to basically, Either take advantage of or combat some of those next level patterns.Edward: So I remember even back when I was a student of yours, we talked about, you talked about how you use this the, when you go and do these analyses, these datas you see the same patterns everywhere, whether it's a long before eCommerce came around and then eCommerce companies, church attendance going to on cruise ships. It just didn't seem to matter what you were doing. You kept seeing the same patterns. I assume that's still the case.Peter: That's it and that's why doing it in this audit manner, that sounds so formal. And that's exactly the point that instead of just making it up as we go along, which is all too often what happens on marketing because we expect certain patterns to be relatively persistent, that we should be doing basically the same kinds of analyses on a persistent basis every quarter, every year, whether there's a crisis or not, whether there's a new product being launched or whatever. Let's look at things the same way, anticipating that those basically same patterns are gonna be there. And if there are differences, that's when it gets interesting. And that's when we get,Edward: So let's talk about that. So if the patterns are gonna be the same all the time, you do the audit and you almost know what your answer's gonna be before you start, because hey, this is just, it's almost like a. Let's go and measure. I remember we do these science experiments when I was a physics major in undergrad, and you do the science experiments and at the end of the day, you knew what the answer was going to be before you started because physics is what it is. And if it was wrong, you were more likely that you did the experiment wrong. Then gravity is different than it was last week. And if that's the case here where it's, hey, these are almost laws of nature, that you're gonna see these same patterns over and over again. But what are the differences in the audit? What's the gravity's not changing? What are the variables that change from one audit to the next?Peter: I love it. So we can take the, the two most obvious metaphors. One would be a financial audit. Again, you do your required financial audit from one quarter, one year to the next. And 99% of things haven't changed. But it's, the little bit of stuff that has changed is what makes the audit interesting and valuable. It's those discrepancies. Those variances, and then, Understand what happened and what we need to do about it. Same thing here. The basic patterns are gonna be the same but the, there's gonna be some nuanced differences for from one period to another. So just like we look for those variances in the financial order. The other great example would be your. Your annual medical checkup. just an audit of a sort and you want nothing to change. , you want it to be exactly the same from one year to the next. That's good. But there's always gonna be some kind of variance. And once again, we're gonna wanna understand what that means. I think it's a absolutely perfect analogy for why we do this and what we expect to see from it.Edward: And so can we get specific, are there examples that you can be like, okay, here's an audit. Or even a specific company, whether it's disguised example or not, of we did this audit, here's. The second audit, here's the third audit, here's what changed, or here's what we saw. Here's what surprised us to the, even the first audit. Let's start there. You do a company, you do a first audit. What are the surprises that you saw in a specific example?Peter: Yeah. One of them, as I alluded to before, and again, you and I have talked about endless times, is the holiday season is those customers who we acquire in q4. And again, I've gone on and on about this for years, about how those customers be acquired during that season aren't so good. And sure. Boom, we do this, you using real data set from a real company. And not only is it plain as day when you see it, but it's nice to then be able to go that next level down and say, again, as it purchased, frequency or spend or whatever. So we'll just see differences across, say, Cohorts of customers might be due to holidays, might be due to new product launch competition. Who knows what. You'll very often you will see those kinds of cross. They're slight, but they're persistent and they're important cuz it might be the case that you've overfished your waters. There are no new customers left to acquire. You're only getting crappy ones. So if you start seeing. These cohort level changes, it might tell you that your company is, your customer base is going over Cliff. So it's it's really good in that way. And the other part would be to tie it back to action, to tie it back to products. So let's, instead of just looking at which products we sell the most, let's look at our products through the lens of what's the quality of customers who buy. And to give us real guidance about what kinds of products we should be producing, developing, promoting and it's just, it's a whole different way of looking at product development, but through the appropriate lens.Edward: Got it. So the customers that bought Product A tend to churn out fast product customers that with their first purchase of Product B tend to last a long time. Therefore, we can afford to lose money when we sell Product B, but we can't lose money when we sell product a.Peter: Exactly. And I've been saying stuff like that and, General hand wavy terms for years. But it's really great to actually not only demonstrate that it's true, but to be a little bit more specific, a little bit more guided about it. Say, here's how you look at the data to see those differences and again, what they mean. And then of course, the back end is. Audit to action, what do we do about it? And that's where our third coauthor, Michael Ross comes in. Cause I'm like Hardy and me, he's a real world guy and he's been basically doing this kind of thing, again, not a formal audit like we're proposing but informal bits and pieces of it. And then talking about the, so what he's been doing that for years. And all we're trying to do is to make it a little bit more formal, make it a little bit more standardized. And I think the subsequent actions will be easierEdward: great. Excellent. So that's the first audit. So now you've done that and you've found all those low hanging fruit and you've made the changes but now you recommend what an audit every year, every quarter. How often?Peter: Yeah. It depends on the cadence of the company. For a lot of, I don't know, say a packaged goods company or a restaurant chain. Yeah. Quarterly would probably make sense. If you're selling mattresses, then probably yearly is more than enough. Really. It's not much different than how often you should be doing a financial audit. It just depends how how turbulent the company or the the ecosystem is. Could be a lot of different factors. You know what, I love that question cuz it implies we are gonna do it regularly. , you know how often I like that as opposed to should we do it at all?Edward: That is my next question, which is, okay, so going to the specific examples, we've done the audit once we've cleared up all the low hanging fruit. Now is there an example of a company who's done that and then when they do their second or third audit, they find something new and different because of some sort of.Peter: Oh yeah. Inevitably that's gonna happen. Again, it might be small. You of hope it's small, you kinda hope there's nothing. But the, but unlike physics, the world is constantly changing. There's all these forces on us, and in many cases we don't recognize the nature of the impact of that change until it's like too late and it's really showing up on the bottom line. The audit's kind of a, an early warning system about that. So again, it's fine if nothing's going on, that's good status quo, stay right on course. But when you see those little changes, then you're gonna wanna pursue them because those little things can become big.Edward: You talked about this kind of like being at the same cadence as financial statements is there any company that's sharing, is any publicly traded company that's sharing these as a financial statements or even, I guess a private company that's sharing it in board meetings privately that are doing these on a regular basis and sharing them public?Peter: We are starting to see it. And through my company, theta, there's been a couple of companies publicly traded, big, dry and publicly traded companies who have said that we want to start disclosing some of these metrics. We wanna know which ones we should disclose. We want to know what, caveats and guidance we can offer as a result of it. And then basically educate our investors and analysts to understand what that metric means and how it, it shines. A better light on just how healthy our company is. There, there's one that's about to start doing it I think in their next quarterly filings in in probably in February. And it's been really gratifying to see that again, though, I gotta admit, those companies are still exceptions and we want it to be more rural, that more companies will be doing this thing just on their own without needing us read the book and. Do it and that companies are doing it voluntarily just for, the right reasons instead of doing it because they're in trouble or they're defending against something.Edward: It almost feels more and more like this book should be targeted at finance rather than marketing. I, what I was writing my figuring out who my target audience was for, even for the newsletter, for marketing bs. And I often thought, you know what? I'm saying marketers are doing stuff wrong and people don't like to be told they're doing it wrong. When I get brought in to help out companies, it's almost always the CEO who's bringing me in or the investor bringing me in, not the cmo. If the CMO either is you know what? I'm comfortable with what Ed's doing, I don't need his help, or he's, they're like, you know what? I don't like what he's doing. Please don't help me. And so it's usually the CEO or the CFO that's bringing me in. And so I almost thought about, hey, marketing BS and having a tagline of marketing for finance people. I don't quite go that far, but this almost feels like it's that far. It almost feels like you should be going on finance podcasts and telling them all, start doing this audit, your freaking marketing team.Peter: Yeah, it's no doubt, and of course we're not doing out there to trash CMOs but you do have to acknowledge that the CEOs and CFOs do have more power and. In many cases are skeptical about, all what those customer experience campaigns or The Thing or the or, a lot of the other customer experience campaigns. What all that is buying them. This is a way to hold marketing accountable to basically say let's see, in the audit, can we see that we're getting a different mix of customers, that they're doing more stuff with us. So again, it's a very regular, accountable, rigorous way to demonstrate the impact of those marketing actions. We hope that the C'S will embrace it as well because they really are moving the needle. This would be the best way to demonstrate it, as opposed to, brand favorability, indices or customer satisfaction. Not that there's anything wrong with that stuff but the audit on these more financial metrics are kind of closer to the bottom line and therefore closer to the hearts and minds of the people who matter most.Edward: You know what I think this would be great for is a new cmo. If I'm going into a new business one of my philosophies when I started a new company is the first most important thing is getting all your metrics in order and get all your reporting done and getting that all set up. And then, and only then do you create five or six initiatives that we go after this stuff for. And then figure out if you have the team to do it, and then go and figure out your team. But this feels it's like a standardized way to go in and be like, no matter what your company is, use this format to go and get all your metrics set up. Cuz chances are when you come in, they aren't gonna be set up this way. And you need the, if you get them set up this way, you'll understand the business a lot more and you'll be able to track whether your initiatives and your team are gonna be. Moving things in the right direction.Peter: Amen. I like to give you a specific example of that. I know you like specifics. One of my favorite people who's been doing this, even if you haven't called it an audit for quite some time, is Zachary Anderson who runs all data analytics for NatWest Bank over in the uk, but in his previous gig in the same role at Electronic Arts, the gaming company, that's what he was tasked to do by the ceo, Andrew Wilson said, Zach, I want you to give me the four or five metrics that I should care. And I'm going to tie my compensation like for the next year or two to those metrics. And it was wonderful to see, first of all a CEO kind of going out on a loom like that and trusting marketing type metrics. Giving this kind of marching orders to not just one person but the entire organization and then saying some wonderful results emerge from it. So we wanna see that kind of thing happen. And once again, The metrics shouldn't be cherry picked by the CEO or any one person in the company. We should agree in advance should be a standard set of metrics, standard set of analyses that would apply to pretty much any company. And again, that's what the audit's all about.Edward: That's great. And so I think what we should do is in February when this company you think is gonna release their financial statements with this format, we should definitely dedicate an episode just to walking through those statements.Peter: I would love to do that. And of course, this is the kind of thing we're doing informally all the time. Big shout out to my former PhD student and co-founder, Dan McCarthy who really we talk about customer race, corporate evaluation. He's the man he invented as part of his dissertation and every time he sees companies talking about different kinds of customer metrics, like just last week he was talking about clear. Wonderful company and they put out some really interesting metrics and it was just really great to see Dan tear them apart in a positive way to say what it all means and what this, what light this sheds on the company that we wouldn't have known otherwise. And so then there's a lot of examples like that. And again, We just want that to become part of just the, a regular process and not this kind of one off thing that occasionally happens.Edward: That's good. Hey let's start here. So instead of just talking about Elon's latest adventures, let's when companies release earnings that have this information, or Dan releases one of his deep dives, let's make sure we talk about it on here and we can be the the heart bringers of.Peter: This is the right place to talk about Ed. Cuz not only do you appreciate and understand this stuff, but you do a great job of putting it in the right context to know where it all fits in. It's not just metrics for the fun of it. And I think it's important to get that full picture.Edward: That's right. Come here for your marketing news and your Star Wars metaphors. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com
A Load of BS: The Behavioural Science Podcast with Daniel Ross
I'm thrilled to be launching my partnership with BEworks today. Co-founded by Dan Ariely and Nina Mazar (previous guest on the show alongside Dilip Soman), BEworks is a multidisciplinary team of behavioural scientists and psychologists working on complex challenges across financial services to healthcare to sustainability, helping businesses reimagine a future in which individuals flourish and prosper.And so today starts a 10-part series of short, sharp and very digestible conversations with practitioners at the heart of the action; from Coca-Cola to Novartis to Natwest Bank to the World Bank.But today, I'm delighted to be kicking off by talking to BEwork's new CEO Wardah Malik.Show notesHow does BEworks approach client challengesWork Wardah is most proud ofCreating, sustainable behavioural change at scaleBEworks's Reimagining strategyDiversity of talent in behavioural scienceWhat skills are needed to be a successful behavioural scientist?The different languages of behavioural scienceThe next frontier: what does better access to data and AI mean for behavioural scienceThe intersection of behavioural science and cognitive technologyBehavioural science is like the Wild WestSubscribe for more hereClick here to access rewards to power your brainFollow me on Twitter
It was such a pleasure to talk to Sarah Harkness. Sarah is a former partner at Arthur Andersen who had a career in corporate finance and then as a non-executive director. She is now a literary late bloomer. She has self-published a book about the Victorian artist Nelly Erichsen. She has an MA in Biography from the University of Buckingham, where she studied with with Jane Ridley. She won the Tony Lothian Prize, 2022. And she is now writing a biography of the Victorian publisher Alexander Macmillan and his brother which will be published next year. We talked about Sarah's career, her long-held ambitions, what she learned from corporate finance, her views on talent spotting, Alexander Macmillan, how Sarah would try to discover other late bloomers lurking in the wrong jobs, and why a business career helps you to understand Victorian literature.Being a Late Bloomer and Alexander MacMillanHenry: Are you a late bloomer?Sarah: My husband says I should be very annoyed at that question because he says I've been marvellous all along. I think I'm a late bloomer if in the blooming bit, which is that I'm now doing something that makes me really unconditionally happy, whereas before I did a lot of stuff that was sometimes important and sometimes well paid, but I never enjoyed it half as much as what I'm doing now.Henry: So, let's start with just briefly, what are you doing that makes you really happy now?Sarah: I have a contract to write a book that a proper-publishing house says they're going to publish. So I'm writing a biography, a double biography called The Brothers of Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, who founded MacMillan publishing 180 years ago. And it's taken me a while, but I've got an agent and I've got a publishing contract, and I need to submit a manuscript in the next eight months, and it will come out in 2024 all being well. And that's making me very happy.Henry: Good, and that's the grandfather or great-grandfather of the prime minister?Sarah: Daniel is the grandfather of the prime minister, and Alexander, who's the one who really built the business after Daniel died, is his great uncle.Henry: So an interesting family for more than just their business interests.Sarah: Yeah. And I mean, fantastic achievers themselves because Daniel and Alexander were born into absolute poverty on the West Coast of Scotland. Their father was a carter, who died when they were young boys. Daniel left school at 10, Alexander when he was 15. And by the mid-1860s, Alexander is one of the literary hosts of London, and within two generations, they have an offspring who will be prime minister and married into the Duke of Devonshire's family, it's quite a climb.Henry: So, what we're talking about, this is really the Victorian self-made man?Sarah: Absolutely. Samuel Smiles and all his glory, absolutely.Henry: Yeah, yeah, we love Samuel Smiles.Sarah: Yeah, same.Henry: So, where does your interest in that type of subject or person come from?Sarah: Well, there's a basic love of all my period, of all the periods of history and all the periods of literature, Victorian times would be absolutely bang on is what I know most about. I'm very comfortable working in that time, and I love the books and the poetry from that time. The way I found it was very serendipitous, which was that my husband collects art and had found a lot of art by a big, very unknown Victorian woman painter. And I researched her life, and the more I researched it, the more I thought I need to write this down, and it turned into a book that no one would publish, but people said to me, "Write about someone we've heard of and come back to us," and that's a really hard question because almost everyone you've heard of has got a book. That's why you've heard of them, but I had a stroke of luck, which was literally in the research on the book about... The artist is called Nelly Erichsen, and in my research on her, she was a neighbour of the MacMillan family in South London in the 1870s, and related by marriage, sort of in a hop and a skip to the MacMillan family, so she knew the MacMillans, she stayed with the MacMillans. And I did research the MacMillan family to write about Nelly, and there wasn't a book, there haven't been a book since the 19... Since 1940. So there was an opening to do a book because most people have heard of MacMillan Publishing, most people would think it was interesting to understand how that had been started and no one has written about it for 80 years. So that was the stroke of luck, I think.Henry: So it comes from a kind of a long-term immersion in the period and a very indirect discovery of the subject matter?Sarah: It does, it does. I mean, I have been talking about Nelly Erichsen and her bit of Tooting where she lived and the people that she knew for, gosh, nearly 20 years now, so I mean it is a long immersion, but it took me a very long time to have confidence to show anyone what I was writing about it.Early interest in VictoriansHenry: Yeah. And that if we go back 20 years, is that where you start sort of reading and working on this?Sarah: Yes.Henry: Or had you been reading about the Victorians from earlier?Sarah: I think that... I mean, I did PPE at Oxford, but my favourite paper and finals was Victorian social political history, so the 1860s is bang on the period. I think all the time I was working and having a career, I was reading my way through Trollope and Dickens and George Eliot, so... And Tennyson. So that in that way, and it's the sort of art I like, so it is definitely my spot, but I had never thought about researching online, finding out about anyone and writing it down until, yeah, 15 years ago when I started doing that.Henry: But when you started doing that, you'd actually had years of reading the novels, being immersed in the period, it goes back, you were ready, you weren't just coming to this out of nowhere?Sarah: Yes, I wasn't, I wasn't. And it does remind me that about... Well, it was at the time when my children were babies, I wanted to give up work and study Victorian literature. I mean, I felt then that it was something I wanted to do, and I had an idea of writing... The book that inspired me was some Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now.Henry: Fantastic book.Sarah: And I was fascinated, yeah, fascinated by the Melmotte character and I wanted to do an MA or something that would allow me to write, to use the knowledge I had at the city today against what was Trollope writing about, I thought that would be interesting. So I have thought about it 25 years ago, and that had to absolutely no encouragement from anyone to do anything about it. So I didn't, I kept working, but it's funny that that's almost where I've ended back up, which is looking at Victorian literature.Henry: Yeah, it's like a... It's a deep vein that runs through your life and now it's come to the surface.Sarah: It is, it is, absolutely.Sarah in the City: business expertise as a literary advantageHenry: So, you've hinted it that you did PPE, you were in the city, tell us, because you were already blooming before, you are not a late bloomer, you're a repeat bloomer, tell us what was happening when you weren't being a Victorian writer.Sarah: So, I went from Oxford into the city into a corporate finance house that was part of NatWest Bank, so we call that NatWest markets, and I did corporate finance, so flotations, mergers, takeovers, raising money from 1983 right the way through to 1990s. In the 1990s, I left London and moved up to Yorkshire, but I kept working. And at that point, I had small children, so I was working three or four days a week, working in Leeds doing corporate finance. And then there was a big excitement in 1998 because I left NatWest and took my team into Arthur Andersen, which at the time caused a bit of a fuss and a bit of a stir. And I had three or four... Four years at Arthur Andersen. And then Arthur Andersen went into liquidation. And at that point, I'd been doing corporate finance for nearly 20 years and I'd had enough of it, and there were a lot of young and unpleasant young men coming up who didn't think that women in their 40s with children should be stopping them doing what they wanted to do. So I did head-hunting for a little while, and then I started becoming a non-executive director, so I became plural. And I'm still plural, I still do trustee jobs, and audit jobs, non-executive director jobs.Henry: So you, in three different ways, at Arthur Andersen, and then as a head-hunter, and then as a non-exec, you've actually been a senior person. You've been running an area of a business, you've had that kind of oversight?Sarah: Yeah.Henry: Does this help you... You've got the background reading Trollope and understanding the character of Melmotte, but you've also got the background as actually a business person. So when you look at someone like MacMillan, if you hadn't done that career, you would have had less insight. Do you sort of...Sarah: I think that's right, I think that's right. I've spent some time in the archives just the other week looking at the partnership deeds from when he set the business up. I've looked at... There had to be a court case in Chancery when Daniel's widow died because she died in testate and there was a risk that the partnership would have to be dissolved and split around his children. So to me, that makes sense. The big risks that he takes, like moving from Cambridge to London, and then at the moment, I'm really interested in him opening an office in New York, which he did in 1869. I mean to me, that is about a business risk. And then, this little small bit. So at the time when I was running an office in Leeds, I was very conscious of how vulnerable you feel when you are not in the head-office, when you are running a satellite. And I've been reading this week, the letters coming back from New York to London, from the poor chap that Alexander sent out to New York. And I can... I mean, I could have written those letters, you know, "Just tell me what's going on?" "What are your plans?" "What do you mean your son's coming to work here?" "Is that alright? Is that a good sign?" And so that to me is business as well, so I do recognise a lot of it.Henry: Yeah, that's a timeless problem, especially in big-business today, right, global businesses?Sarah: It is, it is. "How do you make everyone feel equally important?" and, "How do you manage something that's the other side of the ocean?"Henry: So your book will be interesting, not just from a sort of literary and social-history perspective, but for people in business or people trying to understand how to be a manager.Sarah: I hope so, I hope so. Alexander did an enormous amount all on his own, but as I move on, he's going to start running a more complex business. And I haven't really gotten into that yet. He's got one partner and he's just set up, sent someone to New York. But it will become more interesting. And then, how he's gonna bring the sons and nephews into the business, is gonna be fascinating. Because they didn't all want to come in at the same time and he's got to manage that as well. So it is a business book.Henry: So he's a sort of... He's a great publisher with an eye for a book, he's a great businessman who can cut deals and manage money, and he's also important as a people manager.Sarah: He is, he is, and seems to manage that well. Other firms are not nearly as successful as MacMillan, avoid the wrong people. He never really gets anything... The big calls, he doesn't get them wrong. He never has a big failure. If he launches a magazine, he goes on supporting it, it survives. If he launches an office in New York, it becomes... MacMillan, New York, becomes bigger than MacMillan, England. He doesn't make bad calls, he is a good manager.Henry: And where does that come from? Because he grew up... He did not grow up around business people. Where does that come from?Sarah: He certainly didn't, he certainly didn't. I don't know, that's really interesting. I mean, I think he was much more entrepreneurial than his brother was. The business really takes off when Daniel dies. Daniel was driven by a Christian missionary spirit. He was driven by Christian socialism, he wanted to bring good-quality and religious literature to the masses and the working man. And he saw it as... He wasn't well enough to go to India, so this was his mission. Alexander goes along with that and is fascinated by the Christian socialist side, but he also wants to make money. And I think some of it might just be, you know... He wakes up one day in 1857, and suddenly he's responsible for eight children, his wife, and a widow, people who work for him. He really has to grip it or he'll sink. And he grips it. But how and why? Apart from sheer bravery, I don't know how he got to do that. He didn't have any models, he wasn't being mentored by anyone else in the industry, they all saw him as a Scottish upstart. So there's one guy he talks to who's a publisher in Edinburgh called MacLehose, but he becomes much more successful than MacLehose.Henry: Was he a late-bloomer?Sarah: Alexander? So when Daniel dies, he... How old is he? He's nearly 40, he's nearly 40. And up until then, yes, he's been the second fiddle in the business. He's had a ton of energy. I mean, if you research him, he's living in Cambridge, running a shop in Cambridge, but he's also... He's on the board of the Working Men's College that they establish. He's doing stuff with the YMCA in Cambridge. He's a parish overseer. He has a ton of energy, and he talks about... You know, he was up reading throughs till 2:00 in the morning, and he was up again at 6:00 to get a train to London. His wife must have been pulling her hair out, I would think. [laughter] So he was a man of phenomenal energy, and not good health, he suffered badly from sciatica and various other problems. He was sometimes frustrated with pain, but he never gave up. He's quite a hero.Henry: Yeah, he is. He sounds really interesting. I'm really looking forward to this book. So, I want to go back over your... We've had the summary of your life. I want to get into some details because it's really, really interesting how you kept to yourself those interests and ambitions for so long, and obviously lots of people do that. Lots of people leave university and they've got a thing that they really, they're passionate about, but they end up as an accountant or whatever, and it just sort of slowly dies, or they realise they're not quite as interested as all that, or life gets in the way, or they have kids. Why didn't it go away for you? Because when you were a senior at Arthur Andersen, you were pretty busy, right?Sarah: Yeah, and I don't think, if you'd said to me... If you had said to me when I was a senior at Arthur Andersen, "Would you still like to write a book?" I just said, "Don't be daft, of course not." [laughter] But my huge frustration with Andersen, and I had some mentoring at the time from a coach who said to me, "The problem you have is that you have a person who needs choice and the more involved in one particular job you get, the more you push, get pushed down a tunnel, the less happy you will be, Sarah, because you like to wake up every morning and you think, I'm gonna do something different today. What am I going to do today? What am I going to do today?" And that's the life I now have. And it's the life I've had since the day I walked out of Arthur Andersen in 2002, which is every day I've done something a bit different. And the lucky break that happened to me was the collapse of Andersen could have been a disaster, but actually it gave me a lump sum and it gave me freedom to explore, bend my career to suit my children and my circumstances, and it gave me time to discover the things I liked doing.Henry: Do you think... So one thing that separates a lot of late bloomers from early bloomers, although as discussed you were an early bloomer, but it's that early bloomers often have a mentor or they belong to a small group of their peers. So they have people that they can experiment with and have ideas with, or they have someone saying, "Don't be an idiot, you need to do this, why haven't you written to that person or whatever." And late bloomers often just don't have this.Sarah: No.Henry: But I've got a little theory that it probably wouldn't have made any difference. And that in a way, you're... Tell me if this is right, you're quite a divergent person.Sarah: Yeah.Henry: But you were in a very narrow life.Sarah: I was.Henry: And the only mentorship that you required was for someone to say, as they said to you, you're in the wrong game here.Sarah: Yes.Henry: And you needed to take your own time, you needed to take your own path. There's something innate about, or just in your personality, that means you were never going to write a book when you were 25.Sarah: No.Henry: And the other experiences you gathered along the way were part of that divergence. What do you think of that as a sort of model of you and of other late bloomers?Sarah: I certainly think that there was no way when I was in my 20s and 30s, anyone that I knew, socialised with or worked with would have had any interest at all in what interested me. I mean, none of them read. None of them went to the theatre like I went to the theatre. None of them had the interest in film that I had. And at the time, I was married into the medical profession, and they absolutely weren't. So I mean at business they weren't interested, medics aren't interested, or don't have time to be fair to them. So it had to be just in my head and what I read and what I started listening to once you started getting audio books and I had time. So definitely there was no one around in my 20s who would have given me any encouragement to do anything different, and I was sucked into a job that was very high, very exciting, very high pressure and very rewarding, and then I had children, which we know, really upped the confusion of life. And I was just lucky that at the age of 40 I was relaxed and comfortable enough to be able to start spending my time with people who were encouraging.Henry: How unusual do you think it is to have... You do PPE, you work in corporate finance, but you've also got a strong interest in literature and the arts, and as you say, you don't do...Sarah: Really unusual. I can think... Of all the people I worked with right through for NatWest under Andersen, I can remember the one guy who, if you went on a business trip with him would open his briefcase to get out a book. He was a wonderful man, he was called Simon Metgrove, and he carried poetry around his briefcase. I remember him. He is the only one. I mean, no one else did, they read the... They read the FT, they talked about business. There was a lot of heavy drinking. It just, it wasn't part of the culture at all, and I didn't live with anyone who read like I read either. So it was completely me on my own blowing my own little furrow.Henry: Where does this joint interest come from? Is that parents, school, Oxford? Is it something you just always remember?Sarah: I think from my parents. I think particularly from my mother who had, came from a very, very poor background, left school as fast as she could when war broke out and got a job at the age of 16. And then after she married, my dad became a more senior civil servant. My mum discovered she needed and wanted to educate herself, so when I was growing up, my mother was doing WEA classes, and talking to me because I was by far the youngest child, so I was more or less at home on my own with her. She would talk to me about an essay she had to write on Jane Austin or she was reading T.S. Eliot, and she would talk to me about it all the time. So that was very encouraging. And she knew poetry, and that's... I've passed on to my children who are all interested in literature in their way. That background, if you need to... You know the stories, you know every Jane Austin, you know your Dickens, you know your poems. That comes from my mum and my dad as well. Yeah.Henry: Sounds like your mum was a bit of a late bloomer.Sarah: I think she was a frustrated, never bloomed because she was that generation of just they stated at home, and it didn't do her any good at all. She was quite an unhappy woman.Henry: Do you have her in mind as a sort of model of she went back and started doing that education and was that something that was just with you?Sarah: I think it probably was, I think it made sense to me that I could do an MA when I was 55, because my mother would have thought that was a sensible thing to do. If I had the time and the money, and then why wouldn't I do it? So yeah, it seems perfectly sensible to me, I didn't think it was odd. My husband had done one as well, and he was... I've never had any education at all, and did an MA ten years ago, so.Henry: Oh great.Sarah: Yeah, University of Buckingham.Henry: Oh very good.[laughter]Henry: And how did you end up at Oxford?Sarah: Oh, I came from a tiny Grammar School in Dorset that sent one girl to Oxford or Cambridge about every three or four years, so it felt like quite a lonely process. And I had massive imposter syndrome. I didn't get into the college I applied to, but there's a college in Oxford, Mansfield, that used to just collect all the best people that didn't get into any of the other colleges. We were all there with chips on our shoulders because we haven't got into some St. John's or Balliol and the others. And it was an incredibly good atmosphere, but it's still, there were two issues, one was Oxford was still dominated by the public schools, and I was a Grammar School girl.And Oxford was dominated by the big confident academic colleges, and I was at the college no one had heard of, so spinning out of that and into the city, just felt like that was a bit of a weird stroke of luck, because even though I was at Oxford doing PPE, I didn't feel like I was... I didn't feel like I had... It would never have occurred to me to become academic when I left university. I wasn't going to get a first, I wasn't going to do that.Henry: But did this thing about imposter syndrome and sort of being in a marginal position, is that quite good because it does encourage you to sort of keep seeing yourself as divergent and keep seeing yourself as not quite in the right place. It preserves that energy of well, I'm here, but I'm not going to stay here, whereas if you'd got into the right college and being more accepted, maybe you would have just a bit more easily slipped into a, staying on the track, if you like.Sarah: Maybe, maybe. But I don't feel that I was a very assertive person when I started work. To me, working my way up through the city, I would contrast myself with mostly men who were working around me, all of whom had a time table, I've got to be an assistant director by this age and I'm going to be director by this age, then I'm going to go out and join a real company and I'm going to make money. And I was just wanted to keep my job and keep doing it.And not get in any trouble. But then what used to happen is I would get to know someone at my level, and I think, well, other clever people in the next room because he's not very bright, and then why is he gonna get promoted and not me? Because I think I'm better. So I think there's a bit of that chippiness or edginess which makes you... Which can make you push on a bit harder, but it certainly didn't drive me. I was always a bit surprised, to be honest, I was always a bit surprised when I got promoted, I was a bit surprised when Andersen hired me and I was very surprised when that got in the papers. It was always a bit of a surprise to me. So I didn't have much confidence.Henry: As you talk about your background, it sounds a bit like there are parallels between you and McMillan. You don't come from an Arthur Andersen background, but there you are and you become very successful, just like he didn't come from that. Is that part of what interests him to you, like, are you writing about yourself?Sarah: Well, I haven't thought of that, but I think I absolutely am sensitive. So I feel for him when I know how much he did for certain Victorian writers, and I go to their memoirs and diaries and letters, and he hardly gets a mention. And I know because I can see all the letters he wrote to them where he said, "You've got to change the title, you've got to take out half that book, why don't you write about this instead." I can see what he was giving to them, and then you go to the index of some of their books, and he gets a one line or it mentions that this is something I wrote in Macmillan magazine. I am very sensitive to Alexander 's, feeling that people took him for granted, didn't give him any due reward, and I suspect he... Yeah, I suspect, I do imagine that he felt some of the stuff that I felt, which is, have I got any right to be in this room and actually now I've met them, they're not a bright as I thought they were gonna be. And you could see his confidence grows in the '60s, he definitely becomes a lot more assertive with his authors during the '60s.Henry: Oh, really?Sarah: Yeah, the more he spends time with them, the firmer he gets about I'm not publishing that, this isn't good enough, he takes on Lady Caroline Norton and that's quite a brave thing to do.And I think he wins, so that's very hard to tell.Henry: I always have a slightly, not very well-informed view, but a view that there was less editing of novels in the 19th century, and that Thomas Hardy dropped off his manuscript and they printed it, and that was that. You seem to have found a lot of material that suggests that the authors wouldn't talk about it, but that their work more edited quite heavily.Sarah: I think their work was edited quite heavily. And particularly, so the complication is the ones who are submitting for something for serialisation in a magazine, I think they were just so relieved to get at each month and another month that turned up. 'Cause you know that they were writing up to the deadline. So that didn't get edited, but then sometimes you can see at Macmillan saying, "When we turn this into a book, we're gonna do something different with it." That definitely happens. He does it to Charles Kingsley, Water Babies when it comes out as a book, has been edited from what appeared in the magazine. And what the other author, Mrs. Oliphant published a serial in the magazine, and he definitely got her to change it before it went into the book. So he did have an influence on these people, you wouldn't get from either their biographies or autobiographies.Life LessonsHenry: No. So this sort of feeling that you've described as almost a chip on the shoulder feeling, I think this is potentially an advantage because when I look at some of the scientific research on late bloomers, one thing you notice is, take scientists, for example. A lot of scientists make their breakthrough when they are young, but when people have researched this and said why is that, it's because a lot of scientists stop working once they get tenure or once they win a prize or whatever. The scientists who do carry on working, keep making breakthroughs. [chuckle] So it's actually not because there's anything special about being young, it's because that's when people are really trying. If you don't ever settle into, the people you have met who are on a time table, "I'm going to be a director at this age," they get there and they settle in and, great. They can cruise through for a bit. But if you never settle into that or you retain the chip or you retain the sort of feeling of oh, God. Oh, God. Should I really be here? That's actually quite good because it keeps you energetic and it keeps you looking and it keeps you thinking "What am I going to do? What am I going to do?" Do you think there's a kind of... I don't know. Was that part of your success and Alexander's success that it... You never settled for what you had.Sarah: Yeah. I think that's right and there's something else I would see a parallel, which is I was not the greatest corporate financier in terms of my grasp of numbers and I'm hopeless at negotiation. But what I was doing, which most of my colleagues weren't, is I can market and sell. I'm interested in people and I used to go and win business. I used to bring it back and then other people would transact it, but that's certainly what I did in Yorkshire. I was out all the time meeting people because I was interested and I wanted to know what they did and what they did and how does that business work.So I was always out looking and I never wanted to just sit at my desk and shout at people and run the numbers again. I wasn't very good at any of that, but I think I can see that in Alexander too. I mean, Alexander recruits a partner in the mid-1860s to take the back end off him because he just wants to be out meeting new authors and that's what he's gonna be good at and George Lillie Craik is going run the numbers and have the fights with the printers and talk to America. So I can see that and I think that is... You're not that interested in the day job, you're interested in the next idea and the next interesting thing that's gonna grab your attention. And because you're interested, other people bond with you and, hey, you've made a sale. I used to talk to potential clients who would say, "It's really good that you've come out because you sound like you're genuinely interested in this business whereas the other three guys were just wondering what fee they could get out of me."That's why I would win business 'cause I was interested in them as people and I made friends and I asked interesting questions. And I wasn't just there kicking the tires and then hoping I can sign someone up, you know?Henry: Yeah, yeah. That's the novel reader in you.Sarah: Yes.Henry: There will be lots of women in their 30s in City jobs or office jobs or accountancy jobs or whatever who feel the way you felt. Either they've got imposter syndrome or they secretly would rather just be reading Trollope or whatever. What's your advice to them? Difficult to give advice in general terms, but, you know.Sarah: Yeah. My advice is you will... The thing you will do best is the thing that makes you happiest. So if you go on trying to push yourself into being something that you see other people being and it's not really making you happy, you won't be very successful at it anyway. So it is worth taking a risk and thinking is there something out there I could do, which I'm... Owning a flower shop or whatever, that would make me happier. If I had stayed on in corporate finance, if I had gone into private equity, I could have made millions and millions, but I don't think I'd have been any happier. In fact, I think I'd have been a lot less happy than I am sitting here on a tiny, little book advance doing exactly what I wanted to do. I don't regret any of that because I wouldn't have enjoyed it. I wouldn't have liked doing it.I mean, the other thing is... The other thing I would say to all women who are in my position is don't beat yourself up all the time that you're not being the perfect mother or the perfect executive because you're gonna live with that guilt forever and you're never gonna know what you could have done better. If you had given up, maybe you'd have been a terrible mother at home. If you'd found the children out or never had them, maybe your career wouldn't have taken off. You're never going to know. So don't beat yourself up with that, just do the best you can and cut corners wherever you can and get help. And don't be afraid to say, "I need help with this" and "I can't come tonight 'cause I've got to go to a parents evening." Just... The more women say that we need help with this and don't try and pretend that it's easy. It's not easy. It's never gonna be easy to do both. I found it very hard.Henry: So you are now navigating the publishing world. Doing book research, being a writer. What things did you learn from your earlier career in all its guises whether it's like small techniques and skills or sort of big life lessons or whatever, but what things did you learn from that earlier career that you're sort of using now?Sarah: I certainly learned... I mean, I certainly picked up a lot of small skills along the way. I am a very fast reader, I'm a summariser and a lot of my job in corporate finance was writing good, crisp, prose because you wrote prospectus because you wrote... So I think all of that has helped. I think I'm a better writer and a better researcher because I did it professionally for 20 years, but we called it corporate finance. I mean, there was a lot of cross over. In terms of the bigger stuff, what have I learned? I've learned to cope with worry and stress. I mean, if you wake up in the middle of the night and stuff's going around in your head, get up, have a cup of tea and write it all down. Don't lie in bed worrying that you're not going back to sleep. You just have to learn to cope with stress.And I think the other thing I've learned and I try and get into my children's head all the time is to be more assertive just not to run away and hide. If you think something's wrong or you're not being treated properly, don't lose your temper, don't sulk and don't spend your whole life taking it out on your friends and your family. You have to address it at work. Nothing is more boring than the person who really ought to have handed in their notice and just spends their whole life moaning to their wife, their husband, their best friends about what their bloody job is. Don't do it. If you don't like what you're doing, you will become very boring and to everybody else. Change your job. Change your job.Henry: Yes. Yes. Having recently been that person, I can endorse that sentiment. Sarah: So we've all done that. We've all spent time listening to someone who's thinking, why don't they just stop doing this job if it's making them so unhappy? And I know that's a... I know particularly the current climate that's easier said than done, but don't, life's very short really.Henry: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's right. And what would the Alexander McMillan advice be? Could we have a little book of the wisdom of Alexander McMillan?Sarah: I think he's going... I mean, I am absolutely immersed in his life in the 1860s. And it is that the decade of the 1860s is the absolute pivotal decade for the business. It completely transforms. It looks utterly different in 1870 than it did in 1860. In 1871, his first wife dies and he rapidly remarries a much younger woman. And I think he starts going abroad on holidays. And I think his life changes. I think the 1870s Alexander is gonna... Had a younger woman saying to him, you're killing yourself. It's not worth it. You've got sons coming into the business, let George take the strain. We're going to France for a month Alexander and you are coming too. I mean, I think his life is gonna change in the 1870s.Ask me again when I know what he's writing to people in the '70s. Because in the '60s, he's saying, get your head down. Really got to work. Put start another book. Don't let the grass grow on your feet. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He's at it all the time. I think he's gonna have a very different attitude in 10 years' time.Henry: A lot of writers seem to have a decade or a 15 year period where they kind of really do most of their great work. If that seems to be like that for him, but in a business sense, then you're saying the '60s that was his time and then it cooled off.Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And well after... But with a publishing house in particular, I think once you built up a critical mass, it's not so difficult to run because good authors are going come to you and you can be selective and you can take a Thomas Hardy manuscript and you can take a Kipling manuscript and a Henrig. They're going to come to you. Whereas in the 1860s, he's really scrabbling around. What's going to be good? And he creates things like the Golden Treasury Series or the Clarendon Press textbooks with Oxford University. He's creating things because he hasn't got Thomas Hardy or Henry James. He's got Charles Kingsley, who's becoming increasingly racist and unpleasant. By the 1870s, the business is... There's a magazine that comes out every month. It has regular subscriptions.And now Nature is going to come out every month and be written for by her Huxley. And he's got, he can choose who he publishes. So I think by the 1870s, the business runs much better even when he is on holiday. Whereas in the 1860s, he just needs to be there every day and he needs to read every manuscript and he needs to look at every proof and he's changing the colour of the bindings. He's in all over it and I think it would've killed him and it killed his wife possibly. And I think in the 1870s, it's easier for him to step back. And then he starts having a son and a nephew in the business. And then he has three nephews in the business, I mean, it just moves on. And he's lucky that the next generation of the one, two, three, five boys, three of them stay in the business and are still in the business in their 70s and 80s. And they all die within a couple of months of each other in 1936, bang, bang, bang. But they were all there, three brothers. So he's lucky in that there is at least two generations of McMillan that know how to run a publishing company. Not everyone gets that. Do they? Some people can't even get to some...Talent SpottingHenry: What did you learn about talent spotting when you were at Arthur Andersen?Sarah: That one of the best things you can have in a business career is instinct about people, that I could always tell within five minutes of an interview starting whether I ought to hire this person or not. It's a bit like house hunting, it all looks lovely on paper and then sometimes you get to the gate and you think I'm not even going to look at this house. [laughter] I can't imagine living in this house, why have I come? And I think I had really good instinct for people spotting and I was good at bringing people on particularly women. I mean, there were a couple of women around who say nice things to me about I learned a lot from you, Sarah.Henry: What were the signals? The good and the bad signals? What set your instincts off?Sarah: Genuine intelligence, not just... A spark in the eye literally and a bit of a sense of humour. So not just they've learned it all by wrote. I wasn't ever interested in the people who told me they'd been reading the Financial Times since they were 12. I was interested in someone who'd tell me something interesting they'd seen it on the back of a lorry coming into the interview. That was a better sign for me of genuine interest. And I always used to say when I was teaching other people to interview and hire as well, if you don't think...If this new person is going start on Monday morning, am I going to really look forward to seeing them? Or am I thinking that, I hope this is gonna be alright? Then you've already made your decision, you want that person to be someone you wanna work with on a Monday morning when it's pouring with rain and you've got to hangover you. So pick people who you are gonna get on with and who are as bright as you are or brighter if you can find them.Henry: Let's say I was going to plant you into the offices of some big consultancy, PwC or EY or someone, and your job is to talent spot some potential late bloomers. They don't have to want to write a book or be victorious, they just have to be some other Sarahs, who have this in them, but they're not talking about it, and we don't know what it is, how are you going to go about looking for these people, and when will your instinct sort of prick up and say, "Yeah, I'm gonna get to know her, she seems like there's something in the background there."Sarah: I think it's the... You're gonna see that person thinking outside the box. So in a room of people where everyone said something around the table, they've said the most interesting thing that wasn't what anyone else said. And it might have been a small point that they've made, but it was just different their brains weren't working, they weren't doing groups speak. Because they may not have been listening to the group speak and they might though it was very dull, but this was the thing that had been interesting them about this problem. And I know that's the thing. I also think I would be looking for the person who had done something interesting at the weekend, or was going to theatre that night or just the show that the brain was not completely sucked into the job, that in fact, they were probably more looking like hoping they were gonna get to the national theatre that night, than worrying about anything else that was going on. It's that feeling that you have a life outside work. And for lots of people, there is no life outside work.And I feel so sorry for them when they give up because, what are they gonna do with their lives? Whereas I always knew that there were 50 things. If I'd have to stop working tomorrow, I wouldn't have been bored for a second, there are 50 things I wanted to do, and I always feel sorry for people to say, "Oh, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have this job." Really? You know.But I think, how do you spot them when that's not coming out? I think you are gonna spot them because they are gonna say something that's a different take from everyone else.Henry: Yeah, no, that's interesting, if you're not going to sort of have the chance to see them pull a book of poetry out of the briefcase or whatever, you can... You're saying there are signals in the meeting. Comes back to divergence almost, they're not...Sarah: It does.Henry: How many people do you think you met like that in your career? I tell you why I'm asking, I feel like we have no idea how many late bloomers there could be out there. But my suspicion is there a lot of people who could be in the right circumstances, given the right conditions or whatever, but we just don't know.Sarah: No, I don't know. I don't think many. I can't think of people. There were people who did surprisingly well after I'd worked with them, went off and did other business things and have done very well, and I think... Well, I wonder what they might do next.Henry: Were they the ones saying the out of the box stuff in the meeting or are there other indicators of those?Sarah: There's a girl in particular, I'm thinking about, who worked for me and Leeds who could have gone down a very boring banking corporate route. Actually, she's now running a really interesting small business, and she always... She used to get teased and laughed at because she would sometimes say such off the wall things, used to make a look a bit stupid sometimes, but I always used to be interested in what she'd said, 'cause there was something going on there. So I would think about her. I'm trying to think. So later life, when I've been around NHS boards, there are people there who I think could easily spring off and do something completely different, 'cause working for the NHS is so completely absorbing of your life, your energy and your compassion, but some of them are very interesting people, they wouldn't be doing that job otherwise.Best Victorian Novel?Henry: Finally give us a recommendation for one really good Victorian novel that we might not have read.Sarah: Okay, I'm going to say a part from I've already told you that I love The Way We Live Now, and I love Middlemarch, which I think are the two absolute classic novels. But the one that I read last year, which I'd never heard of and loved, it's by Mrs. Oliphant, and it's called Hester, and it was written, I think in the 1880s, and it's set in a small town, but it's about a woman who saves the Family Bank from going bankrupt. Her father has over extended the bank and run off, and a bit like, It's a Wonderful Life, there's going to be a run on the bank, but Hester goes into the office, it's a small town, and the fact that she's there, she saves the bank and effectively runs it, and then the book starts as the next generation are coming through what's gonna happen. And will she have to do it again? It's a really good book.Henry: Yeah, that sounds a great.Sarah: Hester by Mrs. Oliphant.Henry: I'm going to read that. Well, Sarah, thank you very much.Sarah: Thank you, Henry. It's been very enjoyable.Thanks for reading. If you're enjoying The Common Reader, let your interesting friends know what you think. Or leave a comment at the bottom.If you don't subscribe to The Common Reader, but you enjoy reading whatever's interesting, whenever it was written, sign up now. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk
Welcome to the Trade Secrets Podcast, hosted by Damon Piatek, President & CEO of Welke Customs Brokers USA. In this episode, Mark Ridley, CEO for GreenShoots FX, re-joins Damon for an updated discussion on international payments. Mark began his career at NatWest Bank in London, England in 1991. Since then, he has held various transaction banking roles at a number of global financial institutions including Nordea, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank. Most recently, Mark worked for BNY Mellon as North America Regional Head, Treasury Services. Throughout his career, Mark has partnered with an array of clients, providing them with the global FX payment solutions that best met their needs. Here are the time stamps for this episode: 1:04 Welcome with Mark Ridley 3:54 Updates from GreenShoots FX 6:35 Success Stories 10:43 What is Hedging and how it Could Help Your Business 18:20 Contact Information Connect with Welke Customs Brokers USA: LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/WelkeCustomsBrokersUSA
We bring this trilogy of episodes around transaction monitoring failures to an end with a final review of the NatWest case and a comparison with the recent fine levied against HSBC.What's that got to do with a King, his cleaner and a thirsty aspidistra? You'll need to listen to find out!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/TDMF)
In this episode we bring you the second part of our deep dive into the criminal prosecution of NatWest through the lens of the Statement of Facts which accompanied the guilty verdict.This time, amongst other things, we cover smelly banknotes and bin bags full of cash.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/TDMF)
In this episode we bring you part one of a deep dive into the criminal prosecution of NatWest through the lens of the Statement of Facts which accompanied the guilty verdict.No matter where you are in the world, given the ubiquity of AML regulations, this will be relevant to you and your organisation.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/TDMF)
Money laundering.....taking dodgy, illegally acquired funds and 'washing' them clean using the financial system. Natwest bank was recently fined £297m for its role in the money laundering activities of Fowler Oldfield, a UK jewellery firm. In this edition of the podcast, Ben discusses the case and uses it to illustrate the 3 phases of money laundering.
Claire Flint is a Senior Business Leader and a Non-Executive Director for a number of organisations including the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Claire lives in Oxford and enjoys walking in the countryside and grows vegetables in her garden. Claire's favourite subject was History whilst she was at school, so after school she went to study History at Queen Mary London University. After she graduated, Claire went to B&Q as part of the Graduate management scheme before moving to Natwest Bank where she did her training alongside in Diploma in Labour Studies. After three years, Claire took an opportunity at the Bass Group, where she developed and delivered a structured management training programme and succession planning process. She then later moved to Diageo plc where she was responsible for HR and Organisation Development for Head office. Claire then joined Oxford Instruments as Human Resources Manager on the executive. Claire was the first HR lead on the executive team of a division of the business and Introduced performance management, and performance related pay. Claire became an industrial member of the campaign board for the Institute of Physics and then through the women in boards joined NNL. For more information please visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-flint-9707a34/
Today Jo Wood & Zoe Whitman were joined by Nicola Fallon, owner of VA&T, as part of Bookkeepers' Bootcamp week. You can get involved by joining The 6 Figure Bookkeepers' Club on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/6figurebookkeeper/ After spending 30 years working in corporate finance roles for companies such as NatWest Bank, BOC, ITV and Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), Nicola decided to set up her own business, so that she could share her knowledge and help more people. Nicola's aim is to support and guide individuals and business owners with their accounting and tax compliance requirements and to provide support and advice to help small businesses grow using the latest technology and software available. Outside of work Nicola love's music and football, which are passions she shares with her husband, 3 grown up children and her parents (you could say it's in the blood). She is a born and bred Salford girl and was a teenager in the "Madchester" days, so that's where her musical taste lies. Jo and Zoe asked Nicola; About her background. Why she decided to start her own bookkeeping practice How she launched her practice The most stressful aspects of starting alone How she finds new clients What running her own practice means to her Advice she would give to someone thinking of leaving a job to start their own practice To receive further updates on Bookkeepers' Bootcamp register here: https://www.6figurebookkeeper.com/bootcamp
【2021/08/13國際新聞】 ．英國普利茅斯發生嚴重槍擊案！議員：認為與恐攻無關 ．阿富汗局勢危險英美派兵撤離大使館人員 戰爭後的代價 ．BIGBANG前成員勝利遭控九項罪名 被判3年徒刑 ．阿根廷遇上嚴重乾旱 恐將影響糧食與飼料出口到明年 ．用紙條搶銀行三次 揭密失敗原因竟然是因為字跡太潦草！
This week Anna Collard, founder of Popcorn Training and an all around brillant person, talks through the stories of the week and shares her experience taking a doodle, and turining it into a great company. You don't want to miss it! Like, subscribe and share! About Anna: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-collard-606817/ Twitter: @AnnaCollard3 Stories from the show: Majority of employees take cybersecurity shortcuts, despite knowing risks: https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/95722-majority-of-employees-take-cybersecurity-shortcuts-despite-knowing-risks Scam-baiting YouTube channel Tech Support Scams taken offline by tech support scam: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/27/youtube_channel_tech_scam/ ICO ends its involvement in dispute between NatWest Bank and data breach whistleblower: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252504531/ICO-ends-its-involvement-in-dispute-between-NatWest-Bank-and-data-breach-whistleblower South Africa port operations halted and workers reportedly put on leave after major cyberattack: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/transnet-halts-port-operations-in-south-africa-after-major-cyberattack.html Show Content: 00:00 - Intro 02:52 - Majority of employees take cybersecurity shortcuts, despite knowing risks 10:16 - Scam-baiting YouTube channel Tech Support Scams taken offline by tech support scam 18:35 - ICO ends its involvement in dispute between NatWest Bank and data breach whistleblower 26:02 - South Africa port operations halted and workers reportedly put on leave after major cyberattack 33:50 - Anna talks about starting Popcorn Training 43:07 - Tech sector and the value of professional relationships in South Africa 48:53 - What people can do better to communicate 54:18 - What is next for Anna 56:34 - Outro
In this episode we talk about the recent criminal charges brought against NatWest Bank and liken the underlying issues to boiling a frog. Of course. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/TDMF)
Welcome the Driven Female Entrepreneurs Podcast! The weekly show that helps you dream bigger and achieve more in your business, by learning what works from successful female entrepreneurs. In this episode In this episode of the Driven Female Entrepreneurs Podcast, I speak with Public Relations specialist Fiona Johnson, to learn more about where female entrepreneurs can start, when it comes to being featured in the media. As soon as Fiona discovered Public Relations (PR) she fell in love. Having spent a long and happy career working for a variety of companies and industries, she decided to take a career break when she had children. As her kids grew, Fiona started to feel a need to re-find her passion. She started a small retail business as a start point. But when a local small business needed help raising awareness, Fiona discovered that her love for PR was still very much alive. Today she provides communication and PR consultancy and support to small businesses. Listen to this episode to discover more about Fiona's journey, and her incredible advice for how you can start to raise awareness of your own business and brand through the media. Highlights In this value-packed episode you'll learn: Why PR is a highly effective strategy for small businesses, not just for large companies. People buy from people. Which is why PR works better than advertising for most businesses. How PR can build your business reputation extremely well, and quickly. The importance of building relationships with media contacts and influencers. The role of traditional media versus new digital opportunities. What to include in your media content. How to make the most of and repurpose your PR and media appearances. How to start with your own PR, even if you feel you're not a great writer. Why you need to collect case studies and testimonials and use them in your PR. How to give yourself the space to create your own business, your way. ...and much more! About Fiona Johnson Fiona Johnson describes herself as a reputation builder with a nose for sniffing out a great story. A much needed skill for a public relations professional. Her career has seen her working across both marketing and PR for household names including IBM, NatWest Bank and Coleman's mustard. A few years ago, after a career break to raise a family and pursue other business interests, Fiona came back to her instinctive roots to share her experience with fellow small business owners where she could really make a difference, helping to get their business noticed and create an impact with their communications. When Fiona is not working directly with her B2B and B2C clients she can be found delivering PR training. Helping marketing professionals and business owners to use PR as part of their marketing mix to grow and develop their own reputations. Whether working on a media campaign for a new product or service, advising on a communications strategy, or creating social media content Fiona brings her unique brand of honesty and warmth believing every client is remarkable and has a story to be told. Connect with Fiona www.piggygoestomarket.co.uk Twitter Linkedin Join the Driven Female Entrepreneur Community Come and join like-minded women in the FREE online community for Driven Female Entrepreneurs. You can expect many more tips, tools and insights to support you as you build and grow your business to 6 figures and beyond! > The Driven Female Entrepreneurs Club About Your Host, Melitta Campbell Since 1997, Melitta has been using her ability to spot gaps between a company's goals and its strategy and positioning to help businesses become profitable and achieve growth - in as little as three months. By combining the insights gained from working directly with senior leaders for more than 20 years, her unique blend of art-school and business-school training, and her restless curiosity, Melitta has helped her clients identify new opportunities and develop creative solutions that add value in profitable and purposeful ways, that are straight-forward to implement and result in a clear competitive edge. After witnessing too many talented and passionate women fall short of their vision to make a profit and a difference, more recently, Melitta has brought her business, leadership and marketing expertise together with her personal experiences, to become a trusted advisor and coach for female-led businesses. Book your Free Business Clarity Call: www.melittacampbell.com Get More Clients with your FREE Listener Gift The number one question I'm asked is: How can I get more clients? To help you market your business and attract more of your ideal clients, download your free eBook today: Download your FREE Gift: 100 Ways to Market your Business for Free!
#bitcoin (22/03/2021) SpaceX, Tesla AND Elon Musk could be holding as much as $5B in Bitcoin, Morgan Stanley is eying up a Bitcoin Exchange, NatWest Bank in The UK facing money laundering charges, Manchester City FC launching their own token, the first Canadian ETC already holding more than 14k Bitcoin within a month of being approved, Skybridge Capital applies for an ETF… and more companies should be holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets says Scaramucci! Some great tweets as always too. Support The UK Bitcoin Master Brand: Leave a Lightning tip: https://tippin.me/@UKBitcoinMaster Leave a BTC tip: 3AQfQDVxz7Nyz68tJjwS44D7McvaWZvL2L
A conversation about Sally's life which took her from a successful twenty-year career with Natwest Bank on Merseyside, where she eventually became manager of a branch. At age 36, the death of a friend and a cancer diagnosis for her mother was a moment of epiphany. She handed in her notice and decided to make her long-held passion for amateur theatre into a professional career. Twenty-two years later, Sally has achieved great success on stage and screen. We talk all about how she did it and highlights which include working with her hero Victoria Wood, appearing on Coronation Street and Little Britain and working with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Upcoming TV appearances for Sally: Moving On https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vt2q1 (airing the day after this is released, Tues 9th March 2021) Angela Black https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13288904/ Close to Me https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6831266/ Guest: Sally Bankes Host and producer: Donal Gallery Recorded using Zoom between North London and Southport, Merseyside. Artwork by Anna Obert https://www.instagram.com/annaobertillustration/ Music by Donal Gallery Twitter: https://twitter.com/PathsPodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PathsPodcast Get in touch with stories of people who've had dramatic changes in their lives at pathspodcastpeople@gmail.com Thanks for listening Support this podcast
In episode 32, I'm joined by James Dunlop. James is the Head of Decisioning and Digital for the Wealth division in NatWest Group. Before joining Natwest, James has worked for financial services brands including AXA and Lloyds in various data and analytics roles. Plus, like two of my previous guests (Andy Sutton & Harry Wilkes) James previously worked as part of my leadership team at Lloyds Banking Group. As well as exploring James' career history & why working in Financial Services is far from dull, we explore his focus on decisioning . James shares why this branch of data work appeals & the biggest challenges he sees today for decisioning (or database marketing) leaders. Along the way there are also tips for leadership development & for those newer in their careers. So, sit back and enjoy this data leader wisdom from the West Country (with some very well behaved guinea pigs in the background). It might just persuade you to either work for a Bank or focus your career on decisoning.
jQuery(document).ready(function(){ cab.clickify(); }); Original Podcast with clickable words https://tinyurl.com/y6wqe6s4 Ulster Bank departs from the Republic of Ireland. Banc Uladh ag imeacht as Poblacht na hÉireann. Ulster Bank has confirmed that it intends to discontinue its business in the State and close its branches for a number of years. Tá sé deimhnithe ag Banc Uladh go bhfuil siad lena gcuid gnó sa Stát a scor agus a gcuid brainsí a dhúnadh as seo go ceann roinnt blianta. Ulster Bank is owned by NatWest Bank in Britain. Is le banc NatWest sa Bhreatain Banc Uladh. The bank has indicated that its services in the Republic of Ireland will be phased out in an organized and prudent manner. Thug an banc le fios gur de réir a chéile agus ar bhonn eagraithe agus stuama a chuirfear deireadh lena gcuid seirbhísí i bPoblacht na hÉireann. Ulster Bank has 1.1 million customers in the Republic and employs 2,800 people in 88 branches across the State. Tá 1.1 milliún custaiméir ag Banc Uladh sa Phoblacht agus tá 2,800 duine fostaithe acu in 88 brainse ar fud an Stáit. In a statement, Ulster Bank said it will continue to provide services until the retirement process is completed. I ráiteas, dúirt Banc Uladh go leanfaidh siad orthu ag cur seirbhísí ar fáil go mbeidh an próiseas scoir curtha i gcrích. Ulster Bank has agreed to sell a € 4 billion portfolio of commercial loans to AIB bank as part of the process but this arrangement has not yet been formally confirmed. Tá sé aontaithe ag Banc Uladh portfóilió €4 bhilliún diasachtaí tráchtála a dhíol le banc an AIB mar chuid den phróiseas ach níl an socrú seo deimhnithe go foirmiúil go fóill. It is also intended to transfer staff working on this portfolio to AIB. Tá sé i gceist an fhoireann atá ag obair ar an bportfóilió seo a aistriú go AIB freisin. The statement also indicated that Ulster Bank is in talks to sell a number of other assets to Permanent TSB bank. Tugadh le fios sa ráiteas chomh maith go bhfuil Banc Uladh i mbun cainteanna faoi roinnt sócmhainní eile a dhíol le banc Permanent TSB. Ulster Bank chief executive Jane Howard said NatWest 's decision to discontinue the bank' s business in the Republic was disappointing. Dúirt príomhfheidhmeannach Bhanc Uladh Jane Howard gur údar mór díomá cinneadh NatWest gnó an bhainc sa Phoblacht a scor. She argued that customers need not have any concerns and that the decision will not affect services for much longer. Mhaígh sí nach gá do chustaiméirí aon imní a bheith orthu agus nach rachaidh an cinneadh i bhfeidhm ar sheirbhísí go ceann i bhfad eile. It was announced today that NatWest lost £ 351 million last year compared to its £ 4.2 billion profit in 2019. Fógraíodh inniu gur chaill NatWest £351 milliún anuraidh i gcomórtas leis an mbrabach £4.2 billiún a rinne siad in 2019.
On this week's episode of The New P&L, we speak to Bayo Adelaja, CEO of Do It Now Now - an open innovation organisation committed to bringing social empowerment to Black communities and entrepreneurs across the globe. Bayo Adelaja founded Do it Now Now in 2016 in response to gaps in the support available to Black innovators building tech companies and social enterprises in the UK and across Africa. The initiatives Bayo developed for Do it Now Now have led to awards from both Harvard University and Oxford University's Business Schools for her work to create and foster opportunities for under-served communities through technology. Three of the initiatives Bayo has designed to support underrepresented people in tech, have also been named "Top in Europe" by FT-backed digital news platform, Sifted. In 2018, Bayo was named one of the ‘Most Influential Women in Social Entrepreneurship' in the UK by NatWest Bank, and she has designed the UK's first-ever enterprise support program for women of colour, the BAME Female Founders Incubator for Hatch Enterprise. Over the last six years, Bayo has worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and many other international organisations and global brands, offering her wealth of experience and knowledge on open innovation, mentoring, educating business on diversity and inclusion, and delivering crucial social impact programs. Today we discuss with Bayo her own entrepreneurial journey and what led to her establishing Do It Now Now; the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech innovators from underrepresented communities in terms of access to support, funding and investment; the importance of building innovation accelerators and incubators that are fit for purpose for all entrepreneurs; the definition of Open Innovation and why it is fundamental to Do It Now Now's operational model; as well as inspirational examples of some of the young Black entrepreneurs Bayo is working with in The UK and Africa who are playing their part in building a better world. You can learn more about Do It Now Now and the range of initiatives it offers to support entrepreneurs and technology innovators by going to: www.doitnownow.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/principlesandleadership/message
Justin Mortimer (b.1970) is a British artist whose paintings consistently invite us to question the relationship between subject matter and content, beauty and horror, and between figuration and abstraction. While the imagery is almost exclusively pitiless, the texturing of the paint, the play between light and shade and the passages that lead from photo-realist definition to near-abstract formlessness are so sensitively handled as to make the work at least partially redemptive as well as to indicate a key philosophical dimension: the oblique relationship between evidence and interpretation.(ocula.com) Justin Mortimer graduated from the Slade School of Art in 1992 and lives and works in London. He has won several prestigious awards including the EAST Award (2004), NatWest Art Prize (1996) and the BP National Portrait Award (1991).Recent solo exhibitions include BREED, Parafin Gallery, London (2019), HOAX, The Armory Show, New York, NY (2018), "It is Here" Parafin, London(2017), "while the worst" The Factory, London(2017), Haunch of Venison, London (2012), Mihai Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2011) and Master Piper, London (2010). Recent group exhibitions include How to Tell The Future from the Past, Haunch of Venison, New York (2013), Nightfall, MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Debrecen, Hungary (2012), MAC Birmingham (2011) and the 2011 Prague Biennial. His work is in numerous private and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, London, the National Portrait Gallery, Canada, Royal Society for the Arts, Bank of America, NatWest Bank and the Flash Art Museum of Contemporary Art in Trevi, Italy. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jeremy-jirsa/support
Never miss a show, get notifications direct to your inbox. http://bit.ly/TheLoveldaShow Covered in this Episode The power of relationships There's no self-made person The journey to becoming authentic How to be truly focused in such a rapidly changing period About Your Host: Entrepreneur & international MC, Moderator & host, Lovelda Vincenzi has been speaking and performing on stages since the age of 13 (www.lovelda.com). On a mission to unleash authentic powerful female voices, Lovelda runs World Class Female Speakers supporting women to get found, booked, and paid as speakers. As an MC and Moderator Lovelda has been trusted by organisers to introduce and facilitate conversations with political figureheads such as Margrethe Vestagar (European Commissioner for Competition) & Toomas Hendric Ilves (Former President of Estonia). Connect with the show: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LoveldaVincenzi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loveldashow About our Guest: Kubi Springer is an award-winning International Brand Consultant and Trainer with 24 years experience in brand marketing. Starting her career in 1996 she has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world including Nike, L'Oreal, Blackberry, MTV, Rio Ferdinand, Diddy, Justin Timberlake, Rolls Royce Motor Cars and Aston Martin. A dynamic and well respected brand expert, her training clients include Facebook, Vogue, The Guardian, Stylist Lux, Labour Annual Business Dinner, NatWest Bank, Deloitte, Santander, Jamaica National Bank, New York University, London College of Fashion and Oxford University. In 2018 Kubi won the BWB 'Best Marketeer of the Year' Award and became a regular contributor for BBC Radio 5 'Business Hour. She has delivered brand commentary for Red Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Forbes and most recently Business Insider. In 2019 Kubi secured a book deal with Bloomsbury Publishers (same publishers as J.K Rowling - Harry Potter). Her 'I AM MY BRAND book was officially released on the 3rd October 2019 in the UK and on the 28th January 2020 in the US. I AM MY BRAND sold 4,200 copies in its first 12 weeks and in February 2020 she was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards, Best Marketing Book' category. Connect with Kubi Springer: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shebuildsbrands LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shebuildsbrands/about/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shebuildsbrands/?hl=it Links shared in this episode > > > FREE Speaker Marketing Blueprint: https://www.worldclassfemalespeakers.com/speakermarketingblueprint/ > > > 30% OFF Nail Your Speaking Niche: https://www.worldclassfemalespeakers.com/speakingniche/ > > > 15 MINUTE 1-2-1 Brand Coaching: BE ONE OF THE FIRST 4 PEOPLE TO EMAIL nicola@shebuildsbrands.com
Your Business Needs A Podcast: podcasting for lead generation, brand growth and sales
Are you planning on just posting your podcast episodes once they're recorded? Uh oh. You'll find that might not work. There's a lot more to it when trying to get listeners to your brand's podcast. Thankfully, this episode is all about how to do it the correct way. During this episode you'll discover: Why it's important to figure out your title. The importance of starting with the best equipment possible. Choosing the right podcasting host - (Duh! The Libsyn powered Podknows Productions Podcast Marketing Network of course!) Figuring out your show's 'why'. The channels you'll need to use to promote your show. This week's surprising podcast is "Adopting To The New Now" - a Natwest Bank podcast!
In this episode, we talk to the passionate Colin D Ellis about one of his books and best sellers Culture Fix - How to create a great place to work, and the importance of culture to project professionals, projects and organisations. Colin D Ellis is an expert on workplace cultures and an award-winning international speaker who works with organisations and individuals around the world to help them change the way they get things done. You won't find a list of qualifications on his LinkedIn profile because school wasn’t his thing. He didn't go to University. He just wanted to start working, which he did for NatWest Bank in the UK in 1987.That's not to say he hasn't committed to ongoing professional development. Of course he has. And He's read, listened to and witnessed great people doing great work for many years. While being the best version of himself, grabbing every opportunity within reach, never shying away from a challenge and always being willing to fail and learn. Through his work - as a permanent employee for almost 30 years and now self-employed - He's been able to help individuals and organisations to create cultural legacies and deliver successful projects. He's extremely proud of, and personally invested in, every one of these successes. Without working with some great people and committed clients he wouldn’t have been able to deliver successful programs, publish four best-selling books, speak at conferences around the world, host a podcast or create an online community. So he doesn't come to you with a theory - he comes to you with his proven practice, things that he's seen work time and again. It doesn't matter if you're a cool clothing retailer, government agency, FMCG team or an under-the-pump energy producer - the steps taken together will define, articulate and set in motion an amazing, evolving culture that delivers great work, time and again. You can reach out to Colin D Ellis here : The Culture Fix - Book - Buy HereColin D Ellis - Website Colin D Ellis - LinkedIn#PAYITFORWARDSubscribe today at https://www.projectchatterpodcast.com/ or check out our free slack chat community - simply subscribe to our website to get invited. Don't forget to buy some Project Chatter merch on our charity store, where all profits are donated to our charity partners. Charity ShopOur socials:Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTubeThis podcast sponsored by:JustDo.comPlanAcademy.com
Is the back office function moving forward?In this CFO e-Lab session, we examine how the role of the private fund CFO has evolved and how their position enables them to play a pivotal role in leveraging and managing data to drive financial performance and create value.Leading the masterclass are:· Shaun Collins, CFO for Europe and Asia at Apollo Global Management, one of the world's top 10 private equity firms. Shaun joined Apollo in 2013 as European Chief Financial Officer before taking on his current role. Before Apollo, he spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs, latterly as a Managing Director and European Corporate Controller. He also previously spent four years with NatWest Bank focused on statutory and regulatory reporting for global financial markets, after qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1992 with Ernst and Young.· Barnaby Piggott, Founder and CEO of Holland Mountain, a leading European consulting firm that delivers operational improvements and maximises efficiency in the private equity, private debt, real estate and infrastructure sectors. Barnaby is a highly accomplished PE project specialist with more than 15 years' experience working with PE fund managers, administrators and investors throughout Europe and the US. He has completed over 50 client engagements with leading industry names, including Coller Capital, Bridgepoint, UBS (now MUFG), IK Partners and Octopus Investments.
Barbara DavisI grew up in Leeds always knowing I wanted to work with, and help those younger than myself. So after leaving school teacher training was the only possible career choice. However 3 years later there were no teaching jobs to be had so I joined NatWest Bank as a junior clerk. Over the next 7/8 years I worked up to a grade 3 clerical level covering all duties including the foreign desk, standing orders, records, senior cashier. Some of my duties also included training other colleagues in those areas. After leaving the bank to start a family I did various ‘party plan’ work selling Tupperware, Children’s books and toys and ended up teaching Fabric painting and selling Trichem fabric paints. When the children were at junior school I started working part time at Asda as a checkout operator and quickly working to become a supervisor which at the time involved training other new operators, a part of the job I loved. Then within a year the Company decided to completely restructure and remove the supervisor level, reincorporating the role into the responsibilities of the checkout and shop floor duties. I was trying to come to terms with the anger I was feeling at having my hardwon role suddenly taken away, not to mention the pay being taken too. Fortunately I was ultimately given the role of Trainer and able to resume doing the things I loved doing- teaching and helping others. In 1997 I took the opportunity to take the job of Customer Service Manager at another Asda Store for what I hoped would be a more rewarding role and a little more money. Sadly the job did not live up to what I had hoped. No training for the job was given and no real support from the senior management meant that as time moved forward over the following 2 years the long shifts and the 40minute commute contributed to the stress that I now know I was suffering from. I was not seeing my family or able to support them as I wanted to do. After a 2 week stint of night shifts I came down with flu and larangytis, losing my voice which didn’t come back for 3 months. something had to change. I couldn’t go on in this job but didn’t know what to do until 3 months later when a small ad in the Watford Observer caught my eye, ‘Train as a driving Instructor. All training given. Fit it in around your Job’. I arranged an interview on my day off and made the decision there and then to do the training. At the moment I made that decision my voice came back! I made arrangements to transfer back to the Asda in Watford as hourly paid checkout operator for the hours I wanted to do so I could complete the training. In the January 2000 I was able to start working as a driving instructor and finally qualified and have been working for myself ever since. Not that its all been plain sailing. I’ve had to adjust the way I worked from time to time. When the number of students dropped off I started doing intense courses for the military which paid a lump sum each week so helped pay the bills. I’ve since found out that my life purpose is to make a positive difference and teaching is the vehicle I use to do that. The only time that I wasn’t teaching or training others was the time that stress and illness took over. So thats a life lesson learnt!!!For some years (8-9 years) I have wanted to take on and train new instructors and have been on various courses and events in order to have the appropriate and best tools to do that. The last 3-4 years have been the most challenging as my Husband was aproaching retirement in 2016. In order for him to retire we were going to have to move and downsize. The 2 things went hand in hand, we had to move to retire and retire to move in order to pay off the mortgage and other debts. His health had also started to decline in that year. We moved from Watford to Chatham in Kent(to be nearer the yacht moored on the Medway) just before the Christmas 2016. I continued to work in Watford, 3 days a week(Monday to Wednesday) as that is where my students are. I stayed with my Father in Berkhamsted until he went into a home, then with my Daughter. It was har as my Husband’s health was continuing to decline and he was becoming very unwell. I did take on 1 or 2 students in Chatham but did not continue or pursue that as when at home I needed to help and look after him.During this time I started looking into getting educated about different streams of income generation, namely property and business as only working 3 days inevitably led to a drop in income. When my Husband died suddenly and unexpectedly 2 years ago, even though he had been unwell it gave me the opportunity to really step up my education in both the instructor training, and property and business fields. Reducing to 2 days working in Watford. Now the main focus is to recruit and train new instructors both for my driving schools and others.Since the death of my husband I have been able to do lots of education and gain a great deal of knowledge in all areas but it is only in the last 7-8 months that I have been emotionally able to take the actions to implement.My ultimate goal is to be financially free enough to be able to travel to ski and see family in Canada, US and Europe and help my children with their projects.The last 4 months have seen adaptations to both working and leisure activities but has allowed me to discover my life purpose. Even as a child I always wanted to teach but it turns out that teaching is just the ‘vehicle’ that I use to follow my purpose of making a positive difference.https://www.facebook.com/Barbaras-School-of-Motoring-548869728458407/davisbarbarajean@gmail.comSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/barbara-davis-barbaras-school-of-motoring-brilliance-business
Barbara DavisI grew up in Leeds always knowing I wanted to work with, and help those younger than myself. So after leaving school teacher training was the only possible career choice. However 3 years later there were no teaching jobs to be had so I joined NatWest Bank as a junior clerk. Over the next 7/8 years I worked up to a grade 3 clerical level covering all duties including the foreign desk, standing orders, records, senior cashier. Some of my duties also included training other colleagues in those areas. After leaving the bank to start a family I did various ‘party plan’ work selling Tupperware, Children’s books and toys and ended up teaching Fabric painting and selling Trichem fabric paints. When the children were at junior school I started working part time at Asda as a checkout operator and quickly working to become a supervisor which at the time involved training other new operators, a part of the job I loved. Then within a year the Company decided to completely restructure and remove the supervisor level, reincorporating the role into the responsibilities of the checkout and shop floor duties. I was trying to come to terms with the anger I was feeling at having my hardwon role suddenly taken away, not to mention the pay being taken too. Fortunately I was ultimately given the role of Trainer and able to resume doing the things I loved doing- teaching and helping others. In 1997 I took the opportunity to take the job of Customer Service Manager at another Asda Store for what I hoped would be a more rewarding role and a little more money. Sadly the job did not live up to what I had hoped. No training for the job was given and no real support from the senior management meant that as time moved forward over the following 2 years the long shifts and the 40minute commute contributed to the stress that I now know I was suffering from. I was not seeing my family or able to support them as I wanted to do. After a 2 week stint of night shifts I came down with flu and larangytis, losing my voice which didn’t come back for 3 months. something had to change. I couldn’t go on in this job but didn’t know what to do until 3 months later when a small ad in the Watford Observer caught my eye, ‘Train as a driving Instructor. All training given. Fit it in around your Job’. I arranged an interview on my day off and made the decision there and then to do the training. At the moment I made that decision my voice came back! I made arrangements to transfer back to the Asda in Watford as hourly paid checkout operator for the hours I wanted to do so I could complete the training. In the January 2000 I was able to start working as a driving instructor and finally qualified and have been working for myself ever since. Not that its all been plain sailing. I’ve had to adjust the way I worked from time to time. When the number of students dropped off I started doing intense courses for the military which paid a lump sum each week so helped pay the bills. I’ve since found out that my life purpose is to make a positive difference and teaching is the vehicle I use to do that. The only time that I wasn’t teaching or training others was the time that stress and illness took over. So thats a life lesson learnt!!!For some years (8-9 years) I have wanted to take on and train new instructors and have been on various courses and events in order to have the appropriate and best tools to do that. The last 3-4 years have been the most challenging as my Husband was aproaching retirement in 2016. In order for him to retire we were going to have to move and downsize. The 2 things went hand in hand, we had to move to retire and retire to move in order to pay off the mortgage and other debts. His health had also started to decline in that year. We moved from Watford to Chatham in Kent(to be nearer the yacht moored on the Medway) just before the Christmas 2016. I continued to work in Watford, 3 days a week(Monday to Wednesday) as that is where my students are. I stayed with my Father in Berkhamsted until he went into a home, then with my Daughter. It was har as my Husband’s health was continuing to decline and he was becoming very unwell. I did take on 1 or 2 students in Chatham but did not continue or pursue that as when at home I needed to help and look after him.During this time I started looking into getting educated about different streams of income generation, namely property and business as only working 3 days inevitably led to a drop in income. When my Husband died suddenly and unexpectedly 2 years ago, even though he had been unwell it gave me the opportunity to really step up my education in both the instructor training, and property and business fields. Reducing to 2 days working in Watford. Now the main focus is to recruit and train new instructors both for my driving schools and others.Since the death of my husband I have been able to do lots of education and gain a great deal of knowledge in all areas but it is only in the last 7-8 months that I have been emotionally able to take the actions to implement.My ultimate goal is to be financially free enough to be able to travel to ski and see family in Canada, US and Europe and help my children with their projects.The last 4 months have seen adaptations to both working and leisure activities but has allowed me to discover my life purpose. Even as a child I always wanted to teach but it turns out that teaching is just the ‘vehicle’ that I use to follow my purpose of making a positive difference.https://www.facebook.com/Barbaras-School-of-Motoring-548869728458407/davisbarbarajean@gmail.comSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/barbara-davis-barbaras-school-of-motoring-brilliance-business
Lisa Bentley (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-bentley-bb953684/) left University with a History & Politics degree working initially in a valuation agency office, while at the same time studying for a further degree in property valuation and management. She subsequently worked for NatWest Bank, Ford and most recently GE, having developed her career with a small number of well-known companies. In this podcast Lisa talks about the importance of resilience at work, having a family and balancing that with a career, as well as being well prepared, knowing your facts and being curious.
"Imagine being THAT type of accountant or bookkeeper. How often do you think they would be trying to replace you?...because the relationship is so solid!" GBD68. Director of the Financial Gym, author and speaker Georgette Rowland Osborne, is a former financial sector IT outsourcing contract-manager who specialised in working with leading UK financial institutions. Now author of the book “Firmer Figures, Fess Up or Mess Up”, she reveals how today's finance professionals can develop the skills of 'client-whispering' and digital 'bridge-building' to deepen their relationships with their clients. The result: they become irreplaceable even as everything around them is becoming just another commodity. GIVE FEEDBACK. How did you discover our podcast, where do you listen, and what would you like to hear more of? Finance pro or not, we'd love to know what you think. Email us here. TALKING POINTS. * You can't add value and become a better partner to your clients until you understand them and their REAL business situation. * What do you need to know when advising non-digital clients to leave pen and paper behind? (Do they even HAVE a scanner?). * What does this mean in practice? Where does the typical small business start on their journey to the cloud? * The importance and techniques of 'discovery' conversations. OUR GUEST. Author, speaker and financial independence-advocate Georgette Rowland Osborne entered the cut-throat world of IT and Finance in London when it was not the easiest place for females, let alone one from an ethnic minority. She became manager of a bespoke IT outsourcing company in the City and specialised in dealing with banks. Her clients included the Bank of England, Merrill Lynch, NM Rothschild, NatWest Bank, Ministry of Defence and the Inland Revenue. Connect with her on LinkedIn. LINKS * Discover our 3-part "Human Intelligence" Learning Programme * See our CGMA Store for more on this topic. * Visit our guest's website at Financial Gym For Business MORE ABOUT OUR PODCAST. The Voices. These conversations with expert guests are recorded by different members of the AICPA & CIMA team from our offices around the world. While the sound quality may vary, the insights will always be consistently useful. Hear more. Get our shows every week automatically and free. Share them easily with colleagues and friends by using the icons on your app or media player. Skill Up. Find related CPD/CPE resources at the AICPA Store and the CGMA Store. Connect. #GoBeyondDisruption @AICPANews @CIMA_News Share: Know someone who'd enjoy this topic? Click on these links to share this episode with colleagues and friends. Let your network know on LinkedIn here. Send to Twitter here Auto-share on your Facebook page here. Let someone know via email here. ©2019 Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA & CIMA). All rights reserved.
Chris Brindley MBE started his career in banking and eventually became the Managing Director of the North of England for Natwest Bank. After a long and illustrious career with the bank he went on to work with British Gas and subsequently became Managing Director of Metro Bank. He has won many customer service and leadership awards during his career, with the ultimate honour of an MBE awarded in 2018 for his services to sport and charity. Today, Chris has several non-executive roles. He is also a speaker and presents all over the world, and is also head of several sport charities. There are so many gems from this podcast, you will learn: Chris's definition of Leadership and his unique three-step approach to being a successful leader The importance of coaching your team and how to develop your people to the next level How to create a world class environment in your business and the importance of creating raving fans How to diverge from industry norms and the success it can bring How to create win-wins when you negotiate And much more...
Have you got a clear picture in your mind of what your ‘perfect life’ looks like? My name is Christian Rodwell and today I'm talking with John Kettley. In John’s own words, he’s just a regular fella who’s worked out exactly what he wants from his life, and through blinkered focus & hard work, has achieved extraordinary success. John Kettley is a well-known expert on the subject of cultivating the ‘mind behind success’ and he has graciously consented to this interview to share extensive knowledge and experience to help us stay on track in this area so that all of you aspiring Entrepreneurs listening can understand the rules of how to build a business that creates wealth. I first met John back in 2015, very early into my own journey as a business owner, and it was John’s down to earth manner and no bullshit approach to business and sales training that instantly attracted him to me, so much so that I asked John if he would be my personal business mentor, to which I’m extremely grateful that he agreed. It was John that pushed me to launching the very first 12 month Business Mentoring Program at Escape The Rat Race at the start of 2016, way before I felt ready to do so, and that in itself show’s the value of having a great mentor who will know when to push you, and when to pull back. I can’t wait for you to hear some of the nuggets of wisdom that John has in store for you today, so let's just jump right in, and head over to my interview with serial entrepreneur and trusted Escape The Rat Race business mentor, John Kettley. In this episode you’ll learn… Why you absolutely must figure out what ‘winning’ means to you before you even begin to build a new business Self awareness is the starting block to creating anything great; find out who you really are, and what you really want The story of how one man who had spent 28 yrs working for Natwest Bank, 15 of those as Business Manager, realised that he knew nothing about business...until 2 years after taking redundancy and actually running his own business. The biggest thing that holds people back from starting a business The #1 thing that most people do not do when starting a new business The key points that you need to include on your one page business plan Why peer group mentoring is the fastest way to achieve a solid and positive mindset The morning ritual that John uses to start every single day with gratitude Quotes: ‘You absolutely will come across challenges on a daily basis. That’s the way it is for Entrepreneurs’ ‘Any successful Entrepreneur will tell you that they are a prolific failure’ ‘The biggest thing that holds people back from starting a business is their risk aversion’ ‘Too many people start marketing before they’ve worked out the brand and the core offering’ ‘Don’t be afraid to learn how to sell. it is the art of communication’ Links & Resources mentioned in this episode: Alan Watts ‘What If Money Were No Object’ Video - WATCH THIS! Guest Details: John Kettley LinkedIn Profile John F Kettley Official Website Connect with Escape The Rat Race...within 12 months: Official Website Private Facebook Group Thanks so much for joining us this week. Have some feedback you would like to share? Send us a message If you enjoy listening to our show every week, please leave us a review on iTunes! (It really helps spread the word ;)
Chief Executive of Constructing Excellence South-West Andrew Carpenter talks to Nathan Waller from NatWest Bank who fund around 30,000 houses a year. They discuss the current housing climate, the bank's strategy for housing in the future and what the bank looks for when considering a new project.
Is George's laugh recorded??... Kim Kardashian's new perfume... guy calls about George's laughing... George's outside furniture problem... Pharrell's 100 year old song wait... PodFasters... should George get a dog??... Hala dude is ill... Hyperglo T-shirts (remember them??)... the podcast Got Money winner... crazy woman who thinks Robin is someone else... iPhone X talk... key to real happiness... Netflixing in public toilets (!!!???)... who gets the armrest on a plane??... real doctor who sounds like Dr Nick from The Simpsons... artist psychos like... Robin's Glade plugin problem... George's radio mate sends her a picture... the joke no one in Oman will get... Natwest Bank and their new slogan... story that reminded George of when RB pretended to be a top racing driver... AND MOOOORRRREEEE!!!!
Dr. Linda Sharkey and Morag Barrett, co-authors of The Future-Proof Workplace, share their views on how the industrial revolution left us with the broken and toxic workplaces we see today. Virtual enterprises and aspirational millennials do not thrive under command-and-control leadership. Linda and Morag talk about how a culture of curiosity, learning, diversity, growth, and purpose can future-proof the workplace to lend purpose and power to individuals and teams. Key Takeaways [5:40] Linda explains that the rules of industry were designed for an era with different values and beliefs, such as the belief that people need to be controlled and managed to achieve their goals. The manual manufacturing environment is replaced by automation. ‘Command and control’ is still seen in the office. Linda would rather see ideas put in place to help people be the best they can be, and contribute fully. [9:59] Linda comments on command and control. She considers the pressure to produce and sell, which has been present since the Great Recession, causes leaders to revert to the default style of command and control to meet high-pressure deadlines. [16:09] Linda says more books are written on leadership than any other topic. Leadership has been an issue for thousands of years. The style of leadership that is engaging, focused on development and on the individuals you are leading, with heart, has always been successful. People have tolerated command and control, but changed conditions and technology have made it unsustainable for this century. [17:41] Linda considers how current massive changes may cause us to step back and ask how can we really get to that place we’ve all been talking about for the last 50 years, of belonging, of diversity, with a culture that values people, and makes them feel they can participate and innovate, and feel appreciated. Things will never be as they were in the 1960s, so embrace the change and transform along with it. [20:11] Morag studied authors Christophe Morin, Sebastian Junger, and Robin Dunbar for her first book, on the importance of professional relationships. Technology gives us an illusion of connection, but social media friends are not friends to call on in an emergency. The neuroscience of what makes us human — how we work together, is important. Morag cites Daniel Pink on autonomy, mastery, and purpose. [23:02] Linda stresses the importance of purpose. Purpose needs to be the rallying cause. People get much more excited about what they’re doing, when thinking from a purposeful perspective. Deep down, people do want to help other people, and want to make and do things that will make a difference and leave a legacy. [24:56] Connection and empathy are basic principles. Morag suggests pausing to check in, and connect, before you dive into the project. Relationships are critical to success in the 21st century. Linda says technology gives us information very quickly, but the emotional connection, and feeling of a relationship is what makes a difference to people. Google research shows that the best teams care about each other. [34:18] Morag says leaders today need to have these conversations: what culture do we have on this team, what are our rules of engagement, and how are we working together? Start creating a language and framework that effects change, at your level of influence, if you are not in the C-suite. There will be a ripple effect to the rest of the organization. [39:17] Deal humanely with people that don’t produce. But saying that a certain percentage will be cut is toxic. Look at your strategy, and look at your people. Who has the skills now to move the strategy forward, who needs development, and who would work better in another area, or at another company? Keep the workforce vital, to deliver on the strategy. Dump the rules, and grow people with the company. [43:49] Morag shares case studies. They helped someone pivot from the mindset of a treadmill career track to a portfolio career, where the same skills performed a different role, and provided empowerment and fulfillment. Linda and Morag helped a team move past the way it has always been done, to an innovative, influential solution. Linda and Morag helped an organization find hidden talent in-house. [47:18] Linda shares a cultural transformation story of a Canadian division of a global company. With six months of serious effort, they really changed how leadership acted, and how they were interacting with the company. They measured the results with psychometric tools. Over a year, they were able to turn the culture around to become a star division in the company. Use science, not hunches, to make changes. Book: The Future-Proof Workplace: Six Strategies to Accelerate Talent Development, Reshape Your Culture, and Succeed with Purpose, by Linda Sharkey, PhD. and Morag Barrett Website: FutureProofWorkplace.com For a special 40% discount on the book. Website: LindaSharkey.com Website: SkyeTeam.com Twitter: @TheLindaSharkey Twitter: @SkyeMorag Twitter: @SkyeTeam LinkedIn: Linda D. Sharkey LinkedIn: Morag Barrett Facebook: The Linda Sharkey Facebook: Skye Teamn Bio Dr. Linda Sharkey is the author of The Future-Proof Workplace and a trusted transformational expert, author, speaker, and global leadership development coach. Through her programs and no-nonsense approach, she helps create high-potential leaders and shapes company culture. Linda has deep experience working with Fortune 50 companies, and held senior human resource executive positions at Hewlett-Packard and at GE Capital. Her co-authored book Winning With Transglobal Leadership was named one of the top 30 best business books for 2013. Dr. Sharkey is a founding member of the Marshall Goldsmith Group, and an inspiring keynote speaker at many global events, including the Global HR Academy with the Conference Board and the World Human Resources Development Conference, where she was honored with the “Super Women Achievement Award.” Bio Morag Barrett is the author of The Future-Proof Workplace and Cultivate: The Power of Winning Relationships. She is also the founder and CEO of SkyeTeam, an international HR and leadership development company. With a background in corporate banking, Morag brings a pragmatic perspective to her work with forward-thinking organizations, from start-up to FTSE 100 and Fortune 100 companies. She is a regular contributor to Entrepreneur.com, CIO.com, and the American Management Association. Prior to founding SkyeTeam, Morag held leadership positions at Level 3 Communications, and NatWest Bank where she advised international organizations on their corporate strategy and growth plans. Originally from the UK, she has experience working with more than 3,000 leaders in twenty countries on four continents. Books Mentioned in This Episode Insight: Why We’re Not as Self-aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and In Life, by Tasha Eurich Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer's Brain, by Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, by Sebastian Junger How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks, by Robin Dunbar Cultivate: The Power of Winning Relationships, by Morag Barrett Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink "The Five Keys to a Successful Google Team," Google work article by Julia Rozovsky Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman Reinvention Roadmap: Break the Rules to Get the Job You Want and Career You Deserve, by Liz Ryan The Future of Management, by Gary Hamel The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, by Peter M. Senge
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