Melissa Chapman (Jungle Creations) - Spanish road trips, Yorkshire pudding lasagna, leading a social media powerhouse

Speaker A: Welcome to A Little Bit Radical, a, ah, business podcast from Standing on Giants. I'm Rob, your host. Join me as I meet people and organizations who are doing things differently, challenging the status quo and yes, might just be a little bit radical. How do you cater to an online audience of nearly 150 million people? Today I'm speaking to Melissa Chapman, CEO of Social Media powerhouse Jungle Creations. Mel, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Hello Rob. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: So Mel, if you are a little bit radical and you're on our podcast, so we know that you are, what, in your early life set you up for that?

Speaker B: So actually it was being invited onto this podcast that made me think, oh, am I a little bit radical then? Because you don't really self reflect in that way, do you? And I thought, yeah, do you know what? I probably am, I guess early life for me, I didn't have a traditional family environment. Uh, this isn't like about to lead into a really dark story, don't worry. But yeah, like lots of siblings, a very loud household. My mum didn't grow up in the uk, so she was like an expat. Lived in Hong Kong and abroad. So we weren't sort of accustomed to normal family cultures. I think it wasn't that 4.1 cereal box environment which I found super fun. Like, it wasn't something that I was like, oh, I wish I had that. I wish we all sat down and had dinner together. It was like, oh, this is wild, this is crazy, it's fun. So that probably paved the way from a young age to being perhaps a little bit rebellious, being very high energy, not really following an established set of rules from society at points went too far, definitely in the youth. I've refined that a little bit. Yeah, I think it was just a very open, um, unchallenged, um, sort of environment in terms of being a bit bold and being a bit different.

Speaker A: I remember hearing things about like, children who grew up in big families, big noisy households like that they develop a whole different set of skills from like the way they use their voice to their confidence or the opposite, their kind of introversions. They withdraw from it all. Do you recognize any of that? Like, do you think that you have a certain level of kind of, I don't know, confidence or self assuredness because you were growing up with having to kind of compete with that all, all the time.

Speaker B: Such a really interesting question. I was the youngest as well. So I think when you're the youngest you sort of have to get louder. And this is not, I can't talk for everyone. It's just specific to me to get your voice heard. And also I think my mum's sort of personality is she rewarded humor. So if you made her laugh, if you were funny, that got a good reaction because she's funny.

Speaker A: Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker B: So I think our, uh, sort of the economy of our household was laugh, like laugh a minute. So I think naturally having to develop my character to be a bit tongue in cheek, make a joke, probably making a joke when sometimes you shouldn't make a joke or it's a cover up for something else. But yeah, I definitely think the environment shaped my personality and I do think that that helped me through school, that helped me in terms of my social life and friendships and probably inevitably in the work environment as well. But I think what I need to be conscious of with that is not having that as my value mechanic for everybody around me in my life. Like it's not just about who's the funniest. And there's probably either an intrinsic leap between what is deemed as confidence and funny, when perhaps actually internally there's a little bit of insecurity there. I'd say there's a credit to your theory there, Rob, or whoever's theory that was that shared it with you.

Speaker A: Probably multiple theories being appropriated there. Yeah, I'm sure. Apologies to everyone who spent their lives researching that, but no, I remember that very strongly. So, you know, for listeners, Mel and I worked together for a short time, Mel being in the leadership team of Jungle, and I was, I was there running a crazy project, trying to launch a restaurant from social media that I remember your company presentations were always very funny and seeing like the stark difference between leaders who'd come from a more, uh, shall we say corporate, you know, background. I think it was very effective. You know, I think it's a great way to land a message and motivate people. But like you say, I'm sure there's a time where, you know, I don't know, you don't necessarily want your CFO to be Michael McIntyre.

Speaker B: You know, I think it's about right place, right time. It's context, isn't it? You know, if it's a, an internal town hall and it's just, it's about the people experience and we're motivating. Yeah, let's sort of keep it a bit light hearted. I don't turn up to the boardroom with a red clown nose on and a wig. So it's just about right time, right place. And I also think the Age of the business. Like um, when you were with us for old, what was that? Five, six years ago?

Speaker A: Yes, that's right.

Speaker B: Maybe about four or five years old at the time. I think we hadn't done our sale yet to private equity. So no, that's still sort of VC backed, scrappy in high growth, launching restaurants out of Facebook pages, all sorts of uh, fun stuff. A lot of fun. Yeah. And it's important to keep that energy and spirit in the DNA of our businesses. We've grown, but when we exited and we're private equity back now, you also do have to grow up a little bit and start thinking about structure and writing down a strategy and executing against it to a. To yeah, all of that fun stuff.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely perfect segue actually. As an adult, do you think you've become more radical or less radical and what do you think's been behind that?

Speaker B: So again thinking about this, it's sort of radical relative to the time that you're in. Right. So as a teenager I was definitely pretty radical. I was banned from all school trips, I was pretty rebellious, you know, wow. No, I'm not going to say I was, you know, bunking off school all the time and stuff like that but you know, there was a little bit of misdemeanor and you expect that from teenagers. Not all, but that sort of normalized behavior you have in your rebellious years. So in truth I've become less radical because I've grown up, matured, got responsibilities, have to pay a mortgage, you know, have two dogs that need me to feed them and so on. But actually in the context of being a CEO and becoming a CEO before I was 30 and leading like a multimillion pound business, I think actually I'm quite radical still in context of the environment that I'm in, in the, I guess the way that I behave, my approach to it. I don't like hierarchy. I'd say I'm still quite radical, but removing the context, I'd say become less radical as I've got older. I feel sad to say that because you feel like you're letting something go there. But I'm still quite proud of my bold, challenging approach to what people might expect uh, uh, a CEO to look like.

Speaker A: Well, uh, talking to you five, six years after we worked together, what is clear that hasn't changed is your down to earth approach. And if you wrote down those achievements that you just kind of offhandedly said, you know, like CEO before I was 30, multi million pound business, you could deliver that information in A much more, I don't know, uh, arrogant way. But you don't know. You're very, very, very down to earth. And I think that's clearly quite important to you, would you say?

Speaker B: Oh, thanks, Rob. This is, like, quite heartfelt. I'm feeling it. Yeah. It is important to me. I get quite uncomfortable with ego, uh, and arrogance and even, like, humble brags. So I wouldn't even want to be it, to be dressed as that, because I don't feel ultimately responsible for where I am. Like, there's always been a business of people, a team of people. I haven't generated every single idea that jungle has come up with. I may have been part of it or in the room or encouraged it or helped enable it, but I'm very much only where I am because of everybody else that's got me on that journey to lord it up. Like, it's me, me, me. Um, yeah. Makes me really uncomfortable.

Speaker A: It's a little bit radical because I do think we kind of fetishize a bit like the whole sort of Forbes 30 under 30 thing, don't we? And like, this kind of ridiculous success at young age. And there is something quite weird about that, I find. You know, this is sort of, I would call it, like. Yeah, fetishization of youth and achievement. Does it matter? You know, what do you think?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I was actually, uh, before sort of coming onto this pod, as I said to you, before we started recording, it was quite thought provoking for me. The. The shape of this pod, I think it's really different. And I think that's reflective of the work that you guys do at Standing On Giants, which I think is super interesting. And it got me to thinking about, like, what. What does success mean to us as an industry, as a society, as a person? And so often success, you write success down and you put a bubble of words around it. It's like salary, title, seniority, achievements, house. How quickly you did it, was it better than anyone else? Were you the first? Were you the biggest? And that's great. And I've been fortunate enough in my career to meet lots of very successful people who are doing amazing things. I think, wow, you're super smart. That's amazing. Good for you. But the most interesting people I've met in my life are those that are really content and happy and have found, like, a peace within themselves. And I go, how do I do that? That, to me, feels much harder than joining a list or whatever else is. So I think if the world sort of valued success in a Different way into empathy rather than economics. I think it would make it a much more interesting place.

Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. Talking my language there, because I think to be. To be content is almost a little bit of a radical act, because you have to stand strong against the biggest forces in our world and our society. So consumerism, you have to stand against the idea that you need to consume more, need to buy more. Yeah.

Speaker B: Like, it's that hedonistic treadmill, isn't it? Of like, okay, you get here, you earn more, you spend more, then you need to make more people get stuck in it. And I think, for me, I've obviously been fortunate to grow in my career. I never set out to be. I want to be a CEO. I just love what I do. And I'm also quite happy to put my hand up in a room and take responsibility and say, I'll make the decision on this, or I'll carry that on my shoulders if somebody needs to carry that risk, which I think is probably one of the reasons why I got here. But I've also been very mindful that as my career has grown, I've never moved house from the house that, I mean, I don't try to spend more money, so. Because I want to be able to be free so that if one day this doesn't work for me anymore, I don't feel satisfied by it. I can step away without that sense of being trapped. So that's what I try to do for myself, I think, which hopefully is a little bit different, a little bit radical.

Speaker A: Yeah. I wondered when Tottenham were going to, uh, uh, rear their heads in this podcast. So Mel is a massive Tottenham fan and we're recording just after they've won the Europa League against my beloved and much forlorn Man United. You were saying that you drove to Bilbao to go. To go and watch them. And again, like, when you would look at someone like CEO or whatever, and if their, you know, team were playing in a final, you know, we'd be expecting you to get, like, chartered jet or something. Like, you drove to, uh, Spain. M. To Zulu.

Speaker B: I did, I did. It was me, my sister, my auntie and my two nephews. And we hired a motorhome. Motorhome.

Speaker A: Amazing. Even better.

Speaker B: Yeah. Gets better, doesn't it?

Speaker A: No fancy hotels.

Speaker B: The flights were ridiculous. The hotels were ridiculous. It was astronomical. I couldn't justify it. Uh, and also I thought it's probably more fun to do it this way. Like a bit of an adventure driving through France. It would have been an awful drive back if we lost yeah, there was that risk there. I think if we lost, maybe I'd have booked a flight. Maybe I'd have. I'll meet you there.

Speaker A: Commiseration. Yeah, commiseration flight, exactly.

Speaker B: Um, yeah. And I think I would feel quite embarrassed by that. I think like some people, you see that become quite showing. I could never be one of those people that, you know, across Instagram stories of I've got a new car, I'm flashing up. Oh, no. Makes me feel super uncomfortable. Yeah, I mean, this has taken a bit of a tangent. It's not like this is, you know, a core part of my personality. But I think to your point earlier, I appreciate that you, you still see it that way because obviously my career's shifted since we worked together and hopefully I still seem like the same person.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well. And, uh, again, a good segue into your work now, I think, because when we talk about those values that you have and lots of people have, and then we talk about the world of social media and then I imagine it's constantly a balancing act between that sort of authenticity and bringing real values and purpose to the storytelling that you're doing for your media brands and your clients versus, you know, a big wave of a lot of content and personalities that are the opposite of that. Right. It's inauthentic, it's showy, it's, you know. So tell us about Jungle Creations and about the journey so far and what it looks like in the future.

Speaker B: Yeah, Jungle Creations, we launched out, uh, 11 years ago and we started life as a social media owner, publisher. So we launched a collection of, uh, passion led brands so twisted in food and drink, 4, 9 and female lifestyle, crafting, entertainment, et cetera, predominantly producing video based content in our studios in order to grow and nourish, I guess, those communities around a shared love. Whether that's food, which is quite a nice one because everybody sort of loves food by and large, or crafting or family, et cetera, as you very kindly did in the intro. We've scaled that really successfully to 150 million followers and we started working with brands, integrating them into our communities. How can they, I guess, leverage or borrow or rent some of our brand on for a period of time? By bringing themselves into our environment, we've done some. What we've always tried to do is sort of transcend the online world into offline. Rob, that special project you reference, you know, a big part of our story that people find interesting is that twisted. Started as a Facebook page, became a restaurant network across the uk. We Even did some stuff overseas for a period of time for a campaign. We've now got over 50 restaurants in Twisted London. And actually, Rob, that was part of what you, you helped us launch. Um, beyond that, we've done things like, ah, personalized pet socks, we had a beer in the Co op, we launched a Yorkshire, ah, pudding lasagna in Iceland. So, uh, innovation and doing things different has always been a core of what we do. And I guess it's sort of like you've got the audience now what, you've got the love now what. And then around five years ago, we launched our agency business, which was ultimately taking everything that we know and what we've done for ourselves, building online communities, getting them to actually not be passive and do stuff offline and buy with you and spend time with you. And how we can help brands do that in their own environments is, I guess brands stop thinking about social as a billboard and more as a forum and a community to, to nurture, uh, the relationships with their customers. And we're lucky to work with the likes of Red Bull and Disney. So that's sort of the corporate speak in a nutshell, where Jungle's at. And we sold to PE in 2021 and now we're sort of on our next phase of growth, but always trying to keep that sort of scrappy, innovative part of the business alive. Because when I was the sort of in the first three employees, none of us knew anything about advertising, none of us knew anything about marketing. And I think that's probably perfect because it meant we weren't following a rule book and we weren't going. This is how it's always been done. And we probably didn't have the ego that you might expect from the advertising industry. So, yes, it's been super fun. I'm really proud of where we've got to.

Speaker A: And when you look back now, like you say, were you employee number three, did you say?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, I say what? There was two co founders and I was the first non co founder.

Speaker A: Oh, I see. So employee number one. Really? Yeah, yeah, employee number one. And then 10 years later you're the CEO. Well, I think there's something quite lovely about just that as a story. And it's not common for someone of our generation to stay in one place for 10 years. Do you reflect on that very much? Presumably, like you say, you obviously still love it, otherwise you would have had plenty of opportunities to go and do something else.

Speaker B: Yeah, I do love it. And I think it's credit to Jamie, who founded the business that no day, uh, honestly in 10 years I don't think a day has ever been the same. And we have never tried to build a. Just a polished machine that's just generating something out of the back end. And it's like everybody's a nut and bolt. It's always been like, what if we go off over here and do this? And rather than asking why, I asked why not like, let's give thing a go. So I'm still finding it interesting, I'm still finding it challenging and finding it fun. And those challenges and the shape of the business has reinvented itself over those 10 years. And uh, that's given me an opportunity to still learn and grow in this environment. I think the day that I feel like I'm not learning anymore and not growing might be the day to move on. Or also the day that I feel I'm not serving the business as well as somebody else could with perhaps more experience in a different area. I love it enough to also let it go at that point if necessary as well.

Speaker A: Mhm. And you know, an industry, a world that shifts almost every day. Well, I remember when I was working there with you and there were a couple of people like junior employees who were messing around on this new platform called TikTok. Right. Do you remember that? And it was like a side project. It was side gig for like some of the team who were working in licensing or something.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And uh, yeah. And it was all about Facebook at that time, you know, and Facebook was where all the revenue was coming from and that kind of thing. Talk to us about the social media world. How do you talk about that now as an expert in that industry?

Speaker B: I think an important part of our business is being as platform agnostic as we possibly can from a revenue perspective, as you said. I think in the, in the days that we worked together at Facebook was huge earner for us and then sort of it switched to a bit of a Snapchat era and we maybe became a bit dependent on that. And really my strategy since becoming uh, CEO has been diversification. So how can we appear in a different way on different platforms to serve different needs and different audiences? So uh, we're very much across all of those now. TikTok is no longer a side project.

Speaker A: There's very much a team for that, surprisingly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but however when Fred's popped up, that became a side project. We like to sort of not over invest in things because we've seen it across the course of sort of 10 years in social things can pop up and then they don't work and they disappear. So you need to be careful not to over invest, over build. So we like to sort of test dip our toe in, see that's effective and then build around it. I think social media, I'm definitely not gonna be the first person to say this, I don't think, but inherently became anti social, uh, it very much became about, less about talking or connecting with your friends and more about this billboard of just viewing content, um, brands. I, I sort of find it really quite distasteful when I go into a viral video on Tick Tock and I see 75 comments from different brands who have no relevance for the conversation whatsoever. And I still can't actually find anything from someone who's not administrative.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So I think a little bit brands sort of forced their way into the social environment and made a little bit less social, which sounds ironic as a social agency, but our responsibility of our brands is finding their right communities and where they should show up and why they shouldn't just trend hop. And I think there's been a bit of a uh, revolt with Gen Z and younger uh, audiences that they want social to feel more social again. Which is why I think we've seen community driven products, broadcast channels, WhatsApp groups, except Discord sort of emerging over time so that people can find their people again uh, and connect with them in a slightly less interrupted way. So I think it's the responsibility of brands and agencies like ourselves to really consult with our clients on where should they be and where shouldn't they be and how they should show up on social as well.

Speaker A: Completely. And in our world, I mean as standing on giants of the kind of traditional online forum, you know, which I think we've been expecting to die for the entire length of the businesses, that 13 year old business and they never died and now they're having such a resurgence for the reasons that you talk about. Yeah, where a brand can set up its own space for its own customers and they really can have that social aspect with each other around that product or service. So that's growing. It was so interesting hearing you talk about that conversation piece online because that's really where we're being asked to do more and more now as well that brands are saying to us, can you bring your expertise in how to just how to talk to people online, to our comment feeds ultimately like to our inbound messages. And this is a, this is a really exciting area. You know, our new purpose is creating richer, healthier online Conversation. Cause like you said, has become.

Speaker B: So It's a bit insipid, didn't it? I like it when it's clever. I like it when it's clever. I. E. There's a real tearjerker video on whichever platform you want, and then Kleenex appear in the comments and then I've got one for you all, or something like that. It's witty, irrelevant. It's acknowledging the shared emotion that we're all having in watching this video. And it's like, yes, you've entered into this conversation in a way that you didn't need to be there, but you can be there and people will probably give you a life and think about that and find it funny here on

Speaker A: LinkedIn the next day with someone saying, absolute genius.

Speaker B: Genius. Best bit of marketing I've ever seen. It's become a bit of an echo chamber, hasn't it? But, yeah, I think the Dane and it, uh, probably is coming from a lot of boardrooms of where they go. I saw on LinkedIn this brand got 75,000 likes and this comments just immediately go into the social team and going, comment on everything. What we say to our partners is like, what's your actual business goal? What's your objective? What are you trying to achieve? And how can we build you a strategy that's actually helping you with that and not just hitting vanity metrics, which I think a lot of us can sort of get lost in.

Speaker A: Oh, of course. Well, it's just easy to say you got 3 million views on this video, isn't it? Or you've got 20,000 likes and it's nice to just end the conversation there because it doesn't need to get any more complicated.

Speaker B: Yeah. Until people start going. And then.

Speaker A: And then how many sales did we get and how many.

Speaker B: Yeah, did we sell more?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, we didn't. Okay. Yeah. Well, it's probably coming.

Speaker B: Yeah. Attribution's difficult.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Over 20,000 likes were in Kazakhstan and you don't sell there. But, you know, probably still good. Yeah.

Speaker B: We sound a bit skeptic here, Rob.

Speaker A: I know what's happened to us.

Speaker B: I'm a fundamental advocate, rightly so, for social media and its effectiveness as a marketing channel. You have to show up where people are like it or loathe it. The days of people, as much as we'd all like it to be turning up to chat and share with each other in community groups or town halls, isn't happening anymore in the town hall and the community groups are sort of happening Online and if you can find those interesting environments. So there is a massive opportunity there and brands should be showing up there. But I think it's just important that they do it in the right way and not in a trend hoppy bandwagon y way because people won't really remember. They might have liked to comment but they'll move away and are they really going to remember so cut through, uh, which is easier said than done, of course, but that's our approach.

Speaker A: Of course I have to ask you about AI now because, uh, like with many industries, it's set to disrupt in good ways and bad. So how are you thinking about AI for the work that you, you produce, your people, your clients, the way that it's going to affect these online communities?

Speaker B: Personally, uh, I'm fascinated by AI. I spend a lot of my own time playing with AI, uh, and experimenting with AI. I'm not ready to run an AI workshop. I'm not a, you know, a genius on AI, but I, I, I certainly find it really, really interesting. I also see the risks of AI and the pitfalls of AI. I think there needs to be at some point sophisticated regulation around AI and its usage. Uh, I think it would be a shame if it wasn't always clear what was AI and what wasn't. If I'm following an AI channel and I'm seeing AI content and I'm happy with it and I press that button and I signed up to it, great. But if I, if it's disingenuous, I think I, that's super problematic. I think it's still as good as its prompts. So I think the skill that you need to foster amongst your teams becomes much more about strategy and you only get out what you put in. So how do we make sure we're putting the best stuff in? And I don't think it should replace people, I think it should elevate people so that you can sort of support what you perhaps don't need to do down here with an automated model and then that gives you more time to be more free thinking. Again, easier said than done. Um, we use it in parts of our business for efficiency. We've got our own podcast with Four Nine, our ah, female lifestyle channel called K4. You might have three or four cameras running at a time. A year or two years ago we'd have all four hours of footage an hour from each camera and you've got someone flicking through, going right which bits to up which. Can you now put it into Autopod? No advert here. I Think it's free, uh, and it will do that cut for you based on following and tracking. Think it's the interesting conversation. It's about 80% accurate, but that's about a day. So, yeah, we're definitely playing with it. Uh, we've got an AI policy that we've put into our, uh, employee handbook about proper usage of it. If anybody wants to start using AI in the business, it has to go through an AI committee. We have to just check that it's, I guess, like, got the right principles in place and it's ethical. But, you know, I actually use ChatGPT as my personal therapist.

Speaker A: We're all waiting for the bombshell.

Speaker B: You can ask IT things when you talk to it a lot. You can ask it things like, based on all of our interactions and so on, tell me about my flaws, like, what do I need to improve?

Speaker A: What am I missing?

Speaker B: What do I really need to improve on? It's not always pretty reading, but, yeah, I found it quite interesting. Um, so, yeah, I mean, how do you feel about AI?

Speaker A: Uh, I also use AI a lot and use it a lot in my spare time and I haven't done the therapy thing with it yet. I'm still on, still maybe after this, still on humans. What's so fascinating about it as a piece of technology, I think, is how it's going to disrupt different parts of society to how technology has traditionally disrupted society. So technology has traditionally disrupted the working class. And I think AI is more going to disrupt the middle class because I've used it for things like when I have to do contract reviews as part of, you know, client negotiations. I can pop clauses from the contract into ChatGPT and get it to explain it to me in ways that I can understand because I'm not a lawyer. And then I can get it to draft counterclauses in legal, in the correct legal language. And that is a job, uh, that is typically done by a lawyer. And we still have lawyers, fantastic lawyers, who it all has to go through.

Speaker B: Every lawyer listening to this now is panicking.

Speaker A: They're stressful, don't worry. But, uh, in a world where we're still quite dominated by what we would call shareholder primacy capitalism or neoliberal capitalism, where ultimately it's about growth and it's about profit as the main motivator, and it's about shareholder value, I think AI is going to be used to generate higher profit margins and that will mean disruption to society, sadly, because I think that will happen before those safeguards that you're Talking about that we so desperately need get put in place, sadly. So I suppose I am a bit of an AI pessimist, having gone through that.

Speaker B: Well, this is it. That's sort of a much more eloquent way of summarizing how I stand on it, personally. Like, I find it very interesting for certain use. And if you start thinking about AR as well, and AR in education and learning and how you sort of play with that, you can see so many positive potential outcomes and benefits. Because also, if you think about your legal case, we live in a world now that some people could get better legal advice based on their means and their right economics.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Does it. Is it a bit of a level up? To some extent. So it really. Glass half full, glass half empty. For me, it probably changes by the example. Uh, but there's definitely, I guess, an overall nervousness of what does this mean for industries and some workers. But you like to think that there's enough of us. There's enough of us that think, okay, what about the overall humanitarian impact of this? That we will be a bit sensible.

Speaker A: But I hope so.

Speaker B: I don't think that's going to be decided by us too, unfortunately. Maybe.

Speaker A: Probably not. You know, probably talking about. Yeah, probably not. And while we're talking about jobs, you know, our jobs, the jobs that you and I are now doing didn't exist when we were at school. Right. Head of a social media company didn't exist when we were at school.

Speaker B: Interestingly, I actually thought I was going to be a lawyer. I was training to be a barrister, so. Thank God.

Speaker A: Thank goodness you didn't. But, yeah. Uh, also, I completely support our ability to be able to spot breast cancer three years earlier than we can at the minute. You know, that's the upside of AI as well.

Speaker B: You know, through the cause of history, technological advancements have always terrified everyone. Yeah, it's true, you know, at first. And then we find a way to reinvent ourselves and create new industry. Um, so I'm fundamentally optimistic about the future of the world, maybe to some specs.

Speaker A: I love that you've been a master of the Segways, because as you know, our last section of our conversation is a little bit radical world, where we ask that if there is a little bit of a radical change for the world that you would like people to get behind, what would that be?

Speaker B: So, um, I'm gonna go for two, because I think we've sort of covered off earlier, accidentally, my sort of broader one for the world, which was the sort of the empathy over economy how we view success. If Forbes wasn't 30 under 30 and it was 30, people are just, like, really happy with themselves and have got, like, low blood pressure. Yeah, yeah. They haven't got gray hairs. Fantastic. I think that could be an interesting shift. I know in pockets, though, those lists do exist to some extent. But instead of asking, sort of when you meet someone new quite quickly, it's like, what do you do then? What you do? Your job. If he started with, like, what are you proud of?

Speaker A: Like, what.

Speaker B: What really sort of motivates you, what makes you feel good inside? That would be lovely. But given we've sort of covered that off, I'll go for something completely at the other end of the spectrum. And I don't know how radical it is, but there's two things in life that I can't work out. Bearing in mind, we're talking about AI being a lawyer, um, whatever. How do printers still not work? Like printers and escalators? Every time I go to a train station, escalator's broken. You have to walk the stairs or walk up the stairs. That's always more painful. We're talking about AI and, um, robot cars driving themselves. And I still can't get a printer that works reliably. So there's quite a grand difference there. If somebody can fix that, I'd, uh, massively appreciate it.

Speaker A: Do you know what? I predict that's going to be our most popular, little bit radical change for the world. A working printer company. Yeah.

Speaker B: You could argue maybe they're not investing in building printers out anymore because do we print stuff? But I still do.

Speaker A: Still. You do still need to. Yeah, exactly. And maybe the whole model relies on them breaking because they can't sell enough of them. So maybe Conspiracy theories we're getting into.

Speaker B: Yeah, here we go. God, this is. It's been some pod bits, Rob.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, I also would like to dwell a little bit on your point about, you know, when you meet people, wouldn't it be great if we talked about, you know, some other things? I've had so many, uh, interactions recently. In fact, it was a. It, uh, was at a wedding, actually, and I had some really good conversations with some complete strangers. And every single one of them had started off in their adult life doing something completely different to what they now do for work. And all of them had got to a, like, really impressive level in something, you know, creative, whatever. Like, one was a DJ and had been touring with all the, like, biggest DJs in the 90s and was, like, on the cusp of that and had this wonderful life around the world. One of them had been a stuntman for his 20 whose wedding was this great. It was quite. Yeah, like, yeah, but like there's so much like, under the surface. I went to a party for our mutual colleague Dickie, amazing video producer and his company.

Speaker B: Oh, yes.

Speaker A: Spoke to a guy who like, ran a studio that he used. And it turned out that this guy was, um, Graham Coxon from Blur's guitarist when he did his solo project, like in the 2000s and I played at Wembley and stuff. Like, there's all this hidden magic in us, isn't there? And all this hidden experience. There's just so much more than what we're now doing for money, 100%.

Speaker B: And even in our business now, so many of, uh, our teams have like, side hustles and passions that they're really excited about. And we have what we call an inspiration fund, where once a quarter we actually just give people money funded by us from the business to support them on their side hustles. And because I think, uh, uh, happy people are more effective people. Happy people are people who are pursuing the things that they really care about and passionate. And I think it's sort of ignorant for any business leader to think every single employee that works for you once, this is what they grew up wanting to do and this is what they want to do forevermore. So you shouldn't stifle their creativity if it sits outside the lane that you're asking them to be in right now. Um, and hopefully that breeds in there and ultimately better culture and uh, better work.

Speaker A: I think that's a great idea that can go on the list of little bit radical suggestions for the workplace, extra funding for side hustles. And I was going to ask you about this actually, because there's lots of people at Jungle, uh, who have taken one job, then moved into something else, have ended up in front of the camera presenting like really popular shows when they were initially kind of like social media managers or video editors or working in licensing, as I said before. So it is clearly part of the culture that you're happy for people to move around. But I imagine that many leaders might be a bit scared of that. How do you approach that whole thing?

Speaker B: Uh, I think like, well, if it came to like, move them or lose them, like, I don't want to lose people who are talented and you have ideas. So if we can accommodate that, that's 100% try. You can't promise it's always going to work, but I think we have a sort of a view that good ideas can come from anywhere. Like, uh, recently one of our team said, I'd really like to start like an AI based channel or, you know, future tech channel. Can I give it a go? And it was like, okay, yeah, let's think about how we make that happen and try and make it work. And some of these things are now things that, you know, TikTok was actually employee. This was before TikTok was massively on anybody's radar. Very, very early days. Oh, there's this tick. Do you mind if I give that a go for our channels and see what happens? Now look at it. So, uh, thank God they do. Right. So we want that culture because it means that it's not just my responsibility to think about where the business goes next, but also through the passions of our people. It can help drive where the business goes next, which means the way more opportunities arise.

Speaker A: Very cool and worth noting, I think, for anyone. Ah, sadly we must come to the end of our, uh, conversation. Mel, sorry, the last question is always the same, which is that if there's someone out there listening who has a little bit of a radical idea for their own business or their personal life or a side project or whatever it might be, but they don't know where to get started, what advice would you give them?

Speaker B: Put it into chatgpt.

Speaker A: Not bad advice actually.

Speaker B: Well, I was thinking about TikTok shop for our business and okay, if I was going to launch, um, a commerce line from one of our channels that live in different passion points, which place should I start? Which has got the highest margins, where are most products moving at which rate, which I can produce economically? It gave me a whole business plan. Yeah. I needed to stress test it quite extensively, of, um.

Speaker A: Course. Yeah.

Speaker B: But it gives you that confidence when you don't know who to ask, where to ask. So that was an off the top of my head answer and I probably in an hour's time, wish I answered it differently, but that's one you've got.

Speaker A: You'll be like mood. Board it with your nearest and dearest people you really trust now.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: well, I think it goes to an answer which a lot of people give, which is share. Share the idea. Like don't hold it inside. It's never going to happen if it just exists in your head. Right. So you need to share it to develop it. And whether that is. Yeah. With ChatGPT or with your friends or with colleagues. Or whatever.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, because to be fair, sometimes ChatGPT is overly optimistic I had to teach mine. I said, look, you're a bit fluffy. Come on, get real with me. Not everything's this positive. You need to realize the world is. Say it out loud. Yeah. Shout it out loud. Say it out loud. Run it by people. Stress test it. And.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, and then start in a small way and see where it goes.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, Mel, it's been an absolute pleasure to, um, interview you. Thank you so much for coming on A Little Bit Radical. And, uh, let's not leave it six years until we speak again, shall we? Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please follow us on your podcast platform. If you'd like to appear on A Little Bit Radical or have an idea of someone we should speak to, please email podcastandingongiants.com or get in touch with me on LinkedIn. You can search Rob Faulks or search Standing on Giants and you'll find me there. Thank you very much and speak to you next time.