James Lawson on The Realities of Building and Exiting Businesses in Financial Services

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Leadership Perspectives in Financial Services, a podcast exploring the experiences, psychology and development behind leadership in fs. I'm your host, Chris Oxley. And through my long standing career delivering senior executive search mandates across financial services, I developed a unique level of access to industry leaders, psychologists and leadership development professionals. So this podcast is about sharing that access, drawing the veil back and bringing those perspectives to you. The kind of insight into leadership that most people don't usually get to hear. So let's get into today's conversation. James, good to see you.

Speaker B: Morning Chris, how are you?

Speaker A: I'm very well, I'm very well. I'm excited to have you on. Thank you so much for carving some time out to speak with me. I think, uh, looking over your career path, it's quite, quite an interesting journey. So um, one I'm one I'm quite keen to share with people. And look, I'm fortunate enough to have met you a couple of times and we've had some good conversations in the past, but can you just for our audience here, can you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are?

Speaker B: So I think career path is probably as we'll discover, a bit more of, makes it sound a bit more organized than it actually has been. But I've spent the last 20, 30 years in and around professional services, financial services, building things I guess is the, is the kind of common thread that runs through it. So, uh, originally in large institutions, then smaller institutions and now working across a few different sizes of organizations. But yes, so I think I just hit another big birthday, but I think it's probably close now to coming up to 30 years services.

Speaker A: Good, good, good. So that's, I mean in terms of the chapters of your business there, if we kind of have a quick overview on your, on your separate chapters and then we can kind of start at the beginning there. What, what does that look like?

Speaker B: Works like uh, falling into wealth management and then working for UBS, uh, in the late 90s as they were growing their onshore business. Then um, um, moving to build my own business in insights and consultancy and building that and then exiting that, taking the time to reflect, uh, and then going back into wealth management to start the business and then exiting that and now entering into the sort of third chapter, I guess of my m, my career.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So what was it you say you fell into wealth management? What was, what was, what was the trigger point there?

Speaker B: Uh, the trigger was a lack of imagination where I left. And um, having done a degree in economics, thought about accounting Management, uh, consultancy and investment banking applied to every single one that I had ever heard of. That's my, I think my first ever spreadsheet was the, the large number of firms I applied to and ended up uh, going into UBS to their investment or equity sales team and then they tapped a few of us on the shoulder in the final round of that and said have you thought about wealth management? I'd never heard of wealth management and the basic concept as it was explained to me was helping people who have money to invest it and uh, support them on, on their journey. Uh, I think what I quite liked about it was the M meeting the people. And so that was in the late 90s, UBS one of the biggest organizations in the world. And yet in the UK everyone presumed I worked for the parcel delivery service in 1990 because it was such a new time for thinking about what really wealth management was and talk a bit about how that's quite a confusing term in itself. But yeah, I didn't leave university again. I desperately want to work in private world and actually everyone in my intake was on a similar journey and that nobody really left. Lots of people leave education and go, I've got a vocation, I want to do um, law or profession or trade. But I've not heard it. Maybe we should do something like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. And then what, I mean you've probably seen wealth management go through quite significant change in that time. I mean what did it look like back then when you first entered the

Speaker B: industry it was Swiss private banking and M. So you had UPS and Credit Suisse and then there uh, was some more stockbroking and then the investor margin. So there's a lot of different organization, slightly different things calling, slightly, calling themselves slightly differently. Which made it a bit of a mouth but also quite fun.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, yeah, I can imagine. It's um, I mean we've certainly seen the breakup. I mean back then was there so many kind of more SME typed wealth management businesses and was it more dominated by the larger banks? What's, what have you seen?

Speaker B: Uh, I felt at the time it was probably dominated by the large organizations. It's only because I sat in a large organa. Yeah. And certainly at the time, you know, and I was a terrible wealth manager. But you go and the first thing you print out your PowerPoint and page one would be this is how big we are. This is our uh, balance sheet. This is all the services that we offer from you know, investment management and um, structuring product through, through to you dear client. I don't think anyone realized at the end the kind of through to you dear client basically means the client was the end of this great sausage factory. And to be clear, this wasn't specific to QBs. I think it was the industry as a whole. It was only really reflecting when I came out of that large organization that whole narrative of sitting in front of somebody and going, you're so lucky that I've spent some time talking was such a bad way of doing it. And that's much more about me. Ah, not doing well. Institution not doing well.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's an interesting point that you make that. And um, funnily enough a couple of people who have had been lucky enough to have on the podcast who have been incredibly successful with their own businesses, their original roles, they've always said the same thing. I was a terrible, terrible ex, which seems to be a common theme for whatever reason. I remember I had Dr. Rob Archer on who's um, one of the UK's top sports psychologist. I think he was a management consulting before and he said is that the same goes. I was an awful management consultant. And you know it's. There seems to be this um. And I wonder whether that's a feature, uh, for founders there some sort of humbleness within their approach. I'm not sure it's. It's something that I seem to, to come across as almost a bit of a common theme on that. But clearly, clearly there was some motivation and something inside you to I guess almost do something for yourself. And then moving on to Ledbury Research was, was the next step. What was the. I mean you're in an employed role here ubs. You clearly. Were you enjoying the role or was that part of the catalyst? What's the.

Speaker B: I really enjoyed it. I mean I was relatively well paid up. My mother, who'd been a single mum, worked her entire life. My first graduate job, I, I was earning more than, than she was. So I felt desperately lucky to be A in a job and B, being well paid. Uh, and the people there were great and I did enjoy the people there. Uh, what was interesting is that and I observed it and I think it happens in lots of large organizations. People join with a massive amount of enthusiasm, then they're forced to change the way that they operate, they behave to fit in with the culture or the processes of that organization. That enthusiasm kind of shrivels away. And so there was a bit of a pushback to me to kind of go, I feel like there's more from a kind of Very personal point of view. Uh, and at the time it was a land grab in wealth management. In the late 90s it was who do you know who's wealthy? Who can we bring them on board? And that basically meant that once a year there was a annual bun fight over the Sunday Times ritual where people would go through ticking off names going I want them. And so it felt like there's probably a gap around helping organizations understand people a bit better. This whole idea of wealthy are incredibly different and uh, this very rare of high group individuals but actually most of them pretty normal.

Speaker A: So the business itself, what was Ledbury

Speaker B: Research, what was that? I'll see if I can explain it because I'm getting my mother this day. Understand effectively it started off with helping organizations try and understand what that be. And so what that meant is that on the one hand we'd be getting um, uh, customer satisfaction for organizations sold to wealth. Now most of those by value, those projects were with wealth management organizations. But we'd also be working with luxury brands, premium autos, hotels, airlines, drinks brands where fundamentally it's not expected to understand that customer base or potential customers. So whilst a lot of client satisfaction could also be advertising testing, new product testing, uh, anything where any kind of market research, uh, it was focused on wealthy people around the world. And so it's a lot of fun working uh, very quickly in a large number of countries doing really interesting stuff. But it wasn't straightforward. In fact again we got a lot of things wrong at the beginning. Number one thing that we could survey wealthy people, write a report we thought was really interesting and sell it to people who never heard of us and nobody bought it unsurprisingly. Uh, so the first few years most found the stories that were quite a struggle, quite a lot of doing things wrong and. But still both.

Speaker A: Yeah and then working. But obviously that was the first three years there what with the. I think you had the business. Was it over a decade in it?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So we had after years two I think we were in total. But we managed to luck work actually get the scale that we could sell a majority state to um, marketing services, business listed market which was great kind of validate. Another thing that founders often struggle with is people kind of going and um, we know it's hard work. That's why I think peer network important in m that world. And then we went from a few small rooms to sitting around um here with Lord Bell uh, who manufactured uh, and these amazing people in the world of advertising and marketing. And again a lot of Fun. Amazing. And then the global financial crisis. Y uh, and like all listed businesses they looked around at the assets and went what businesses do we need to share? And they to ours and they said what's going on with your business? And we could see that uh, the projects that we had and 2008 were kind of were cancelled so our revenue hit. But we were close enough to businesses that we were consulting that they were saying this is bad but we're going to keep all the budget back next year. So we business owners we could see that the short term was going to be horrible. But the, our clients like us knew they were going to have budget. The weird thing about the global crisis, there was still budget hanging around.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so we went to the board of China and said can we buy the business back off you? And they said yes. And we, we agree the price which happened to be one times forward earnings. So we got, we got information I think which we were able to use and, and so that worked quite well. And so we running it research business which if you're a vaguely curious person it's a great thing to do because you're finding out a lot about how people think.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Uh, and then my business partner and I thought we're running this lifestyle business and join of thought and as an opportunity to build scale and capital event, we can't do both. We have to choose one. And so we plan to get the business to take where we could properly sell it. And uh, that took two or three years. Got a really good deal selling to Insight Ventures who are east coast tech.

Speaker A: A point that you raised there in terms of when the crash happened. Obviously revenue dropped off at that point but there was clearly commitment for that to return. And I just wonder like in that particular moment you as a business leader what's the priority in that situation? Are you looking at your investors? Is it. You have to create the business roadmap why this business is worth saving. What happens in that situation? I think it's quite a unique point to land on.

Speaker B: I think you start with making sure the team are okay because there's a lot that senior management and especially founders of businesses know about the commercial viability of the business. And so you need to make sure that your team know that it's going to be okay. Uh so they have to, that has to be the first bit. You may not tell them that you haven't paid yourself that month because they only asked. And then you know there is a pride in what you build or there should be a pride in, in your work. And then there is, I think at the state that, that time there was a slight, I don't know, bunker mentality where you, you know, if you believed in what you did, that was gonna, you know. Yeah, you have to do that. And that got you through. Uh, it, you know, it was, it was a, it was a really interesting time for a lot of organizations. And there were, you know, you've seen the news at the time. It was very hyperbolic in retrospect. At the time it felt like, yeah, the world is. Every single financial organization is going to fail. And actually there was a bit of Ben Graham kind of Mr. M market was, was very, very overexcited. And so it felt like actually it wasn't just Mr. Market that was very overexcited. It was a lot of them. The whole world was only excited potentially about uh, what was a big reset. But that wasn't probably the Armageddon that people really thought it was.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I wonder because it's um, I can relate a little bit from a search perspective to that type of environment because for us, when obviously Covid hit, that was a real drop off on revenue for us because people didn't know what was going to happen. Right. So almost in most instances it's like, well, okay, like you say, bunker down, got what we got. But we also knew that once, you know, a year and a half, two years of that type of process, it's, you know, after that, the following two years where, you know, I think most search firms experience their highest ever levels of revenue following that, you know, and certainly from financial institutions. I think very few did poorly during that time as well. Um, because I think particularly with the banks, it did incredibly. So I can, I can understand that, but it's because, I guess, yeah, during, oh, it would have been for, for any firm attached to financial services, it was a, a rough, rough ride. But it's interesting to hear how business kind of navigate that from a, a leadership perspective.

Speaker B: We were lucky in a sense. And there's, that's another team at. Certainly my career is a bit of luck in that. What we had built was a business that focused on a consumer. Whilst we're selling a lot of our services to the wealth financial services sector, uh, during 08 we actually pivoted quite a lot towards the luxury goods sector.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So we were able to have relatively geographic and sector flexibility so that we could say, actually fine, we know, we know we probably made more money out of project cancellation fees in financial services than we did through actual revenue during 2008. But we were doing a lot of work for uh, um, the big luxury goods organizations where we did have, you know, wealth coming from places like. Well, we had the bricks ah, emerging. And so there's a real excitement about m new wealth internationally. But yeah, it was hard, uh, and there is a degree of impatience which I have as a toxic trait, but it's hard. Then during those periods I think leader you had to bottle that. And actually it's been the long game. And it was same as we say during co running a particular in Covid, there was a lot of the, uh. I was sitting on a board of a charity in the ch there. Uh, he opened up with uh, this too shall pass. And, and sometimes we need occasionally that sort of, you know, it feels exhausting and terrible. I'm now. But this is, this will pass.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's my role as a leader to help you understand that and to understand what's after Covid or after GS.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think it's interesting you say that. I think I've seen a video clip with Tom Hanks and a few other actors sort of talking in that, in that sense. I don't know if you've ever come across that, but I've heard the saying before and it makes a lot of sense, doesn't it, in terms of where things and matters and events happen within life. But yeah, a very good, very uh, good phrase to look at. And then in terms of, I mean you've built multiple businesses there and just going back a little bit, like what were those, you know, those early days like when you were building that business? What were those like? I mean we got a lot of transition points here and progressing from there and then moving on to today. Is there much differences now do you feel when you're in from the businesses you've created?

Speaker B: I think that the initial impetus of, of moving out of a comfort zone to creating something. Yeah. Is maybe, maybe easier. I don't know because the, the, the costs now of, of either starting a business or even starting out a uh, side hustle are lower than potentially there ever have been. The difficulty ism is first few days it's quite hard to create a moat. Whereas potentially 10, 20 years ago the fact that a. You were doing something was relatively novel but that you could then relatively quickly uh, uh, get up to. We're talking about days one, two and three after that. Um, I think it's a great time for anybody to be, to be doing new stuff. I think that's a really fundamental. We check ourselves out particularly economically but certainly those first few days. I think it's easier now to do day one.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What would you say is a critical factor of that? I mean I think an obvious one is we're so well connected now. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. I do think that the tools to get going are much more easily available. Yeah, you're talking about technology maybe. And I do think that technology is major part. The flip side is that technology made it so easy that uh, it's not as uh, distinctive, it's not quality way to distinguish yourself is much harder. There's also something that you mentioned Chris about working during pre and post M. People are uh, so much more reluctant I feel to pick up the phone or to go and meet. I'll send you an email, arrange uh, you know, team's call. It's nowhere near the same cold calling but you find not going to see people. Uh, and you need that. Ah, we need to encourage everybody getting out and seeing people.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've definitely lost a little bit of the personal touch side of things and um, yeah, it's difficult once. It's almost like its own little culture, isn't it? And once it shifts a little bit it's hard to get through. However, I've said this numerously, we're getting this going a little bit off piste here but just from my own experiences more often than not now I've been asked by sort of senior clients that I work for if I can help kind of guide a few graduate type individuals who are coming into industry. And honestly the number one thing I say is don't rely on applying, develop your network, especially if you're coming into financial services. If you work on that piece and build some, just a few relationships, you would be amazed at where that leads 100%.

Speaker B: We've got teenage children and that's one of the most important skills is the ability to see an opportunity, be brave enough to go and ask for that opportunity. Whether that's a meeting or saying yes to something that's come your way. It's such an important skill. Um, uh, and again this whole idea of post Covid everyone kind of hunkering down and staying within their own safety net. It's a terrible, terrible way to stifle that sense of adventure, sense of excitement.

Speaker A: Something you've said earlier on a couple of times that building the business was fun and again you said there, you know, it's exciting to go out, see new people, get some nerves, some nerves going on you know, you go into a new meeting, somebody you haven't met before, whatever it might be, that can, that, that can actually help propel and, and bring some motivation back in because it can get a little bit dull otherwise.

Speaker B: Right. Uh, 100%. And you know, my wife's always telling the children that the difference between anxiety and nervousness and excitement is such a fine physiological gap between the two. You actually, you know, you should be putting yourself in those, those, those places where you are feeling a bit discomfort. That's really. Certainly. I think m. I think maybe one of, one of the things I have is I really quite enjoy that. Quite enjoy putting myself in a position where there's a very high likelihood of looking like a fool or failing. But, but, uh, yeah, I think, um, yeah, it is fun. Right. And life is hard at the moment. Life is hard for lots of people, but. So we should try and seek fun where we've got any agency in that.

Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. And just, you know, we're talking, we touched on graduates and these types of, um, environments and you know, it's a bit easier to set up a business now and we're certainly seeing more, more entrepreneurs pop up, aren't we? That's, that's quite a key case. And for anyone who's kind of, you know, in that mindset at the moment, are there any key lessons that would take from, you know, maybe selling the business the first time round and opposing that to maybe the second time round that you had? Is there any, any key aspects that you think are worth highlighting?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the terrible motivation for building a business is wanting to make money.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, and I think I got that wrong person. The. Well, I had a revelation with, with Lovebury. I felt, and I probably did sort of want. We wanted to sell it to make some money. And uh, when we sold it, uh, to the private equipment at the end, we went through a proper process and that was really, that was horrible. We had a good advisor, but the process was horrible because it was kind of outside of our control. And at any point, any time of the day you'd get an email that would change your life. And so the, the anxiety was. It was very hard.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and we had some stipulations around deal. We wanted the uh, library wanted, uh, walk away and we wanted all cash. We wanted value for, for it. And in, in people businesses. Being able to walk away with all cash was relatively rare. So it meant that negotiations were relatively complex. And we did a deal which wasn't straightforward because during the process, the Other party walked away I think on Christmas Eve and then came back, uh, on just after New Year's. Um, so it was, it was quite challenging to go through those ups and downs and to the point where, I mean I was well, me particularly and well that uh, process. And then we put the email thing number, uh, you know, really exciting and, and sign the paperwork. I remember leaving the office of the Rather advisor thinking they bought our business relatively small multiple on one multiple. They're going to find a relatively similar business on a single site with a similar multiple. And just by botching those two together, we're going to create a bigger multiple. And I remember walking around, wow, I just do that, fund another business together and just make more money. And I suddenly check myself without saying that again, that cannot be the driver of my life, like make more money. But it had been that he's so conditioned to the deal process waiting for that email to come through with that number. I was, you know, I became obsessed about what the number was and it was the walking away. One of the big parts of that was going to go, that money cannot be on my school. It always might be part of my school, but it certainly cannot be my school card.

Speaker A: Do you think that that's something that develops in entrepreneurs? Is it? Because, you know, if you think about it from a, a pure human aspect, I guess if you're in a life position where money is fundamental at that point, you know, you kind of, you know, you're not. The mortgage has got to be paid and all the rest of it. Do you think that that changes the mindset? And then potentially after an initial exit when maybe resources, if you like financial cash, whatever that might be, isn't quite as, you know, you might have a couple of years Runway now and then is, does the mindset somehow change? Am I making sense here? Did you think there are stages where it becomes, you're able to think a little bit more clearly?

Speaker B: There's definitely so, so with Ledbury, the first business, we, we didn't raise any money. So day one was how are we going to afford to pay, uh, the rent. Yeah, and that's a different motivation from I've got some capital, I've got a long term business plan, I can take a punk on investing this stuff now. And you know, it's a very, very different mindset. Uh, the, the challenges. I think you probably need both. I think you need that slight terror in the back of your mind knowing that uh, I have to make the mortgage, the bills, yeah, the rent. But if you're just relying on that. You make a lot of wrong decisions. And then the other hand, you have to have the ability to kind of go, no, no, I need to plan for this business. I do need to spend money now for something that may not happen, the future. Because otherwise the business grows up very kind of small and scrabbly. Um, and so I think like, certainly my experience that I've learned from both that kind of terror, the whole kind of calmness of I'm going to have to trust in this process that it will work.

Speaker A: And that was from, uh, the second, uh, exit.

Speaker B: Exactly. So as you know, we took it on a little bit of money when we, when we did the first exit, um, uh, to China and then the second exit was a bit like, okay, fine, we're now. And certainly with, um, Next, business was much more around, okay, this is, I'm going to build a business that's going to last for another two or three hundred years. What would it look like? And that's very different from my first.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So that was Libri and then moving on from there. There was some consulting, is that right? Yeah.

Speaker B: So, um, I went around it and had a really fun time just talking to people who I thought I'd met on the journey who are interested in. And I'd said to my, to my wife, he's like, I think I'm going to take some time to work out what next. And, um, I built two or three prototypes of small businesses. One in education, one in investment research, uh, and, um, and helped a few similar organizations. When I say help more from just sitting down with the founder pattern pattern on m back and saying it's going to be okay. There is a need for a bit of that, I think in some, in some cases. But that was really, again, really enjoyable. Just sort of meeting people who I thought were interesting and people were good at taking time for coffee.

Speaker A: There's some really interesting points there with this sort of exposure that you've had from that and a little bit off track here. But I'm going to ask you this. Indirectly. You're sitting down with these types of people, you know, business owners, as you say, passing on the back, what sort of trends were you seeing in terms of the general fears and whatnot?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, and to be clear, I was patting them on the back. They weren't patting me.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Speaker B: In terms of general trends, I think that a lot of businesses face a lot of similar, uh, issues irrespective of scale. And they're around, you know, Communication both internally or most importantly internally rather than externally, uh, around and the product, be that a service or a physical product in terms of getting the product right. Product market fit people is a huge challenge for all the organization governance, where does responsibility go? How do you get individuals to feel like they're the CEO, uh of their task and then you have a longer term strategy and vision and those sorts of things. And so it was really fun to be looking across all these sectors where you'd see people in some really deep kind of research work or in terms of retail products and, and often the, the leaders would be very passionate about the product they were selling. And also a product perspective, an incredible

Speaker A: way to develop your network. We've spoken about networks but it's pretty much the job there, wasn't it by the sounds of it?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. It was, it was really what was great was being had a freezing conversation and Chris, uh, united talking that you would. The ask at the end is not just can we stand up? But is there someone else that we can, you know, that I can talk to about this and that that skill set within financial services on a sales point of view, the ability to reach them a really engaging complacent and make a small ask is a great thing in terms of referrals.

Speaker A: But yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's still, you know, see the cool way of how the world goes around. Right. There's general introductions, referrals, there's so much especially now we mentioned this previously in terms of you know, your Linkedins and the likes of that. It's very easy to connect with individuals. So having that slight level up, those introductions, those warmer sort of connections, the mutual connections if you like. It's a fantastic way to keep developing your career and it's obviously something that you, you did and learned quite early on there.

Speaker B: Yeah. And, and the, the massive advantage of working in the wealth management in the late 90s was they had money to spend.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So the graduate training programs were exceptional. Um, in terms of presentation skills, in terms of all the softer skills through to what color palette I could wear and how to eat uh, lobster with a knife and fork. So it was, it was great to have that for the training. Naturally I'm someone who's often more often than not introverted and so I had to kind of learn the skill set or try and train myself to be more comfortable in positions where I would be sitting, standing in front of lots of people and trying to communicate a message. So yeah, that's something really comes with doing it and falling in the face.

Speaker A: That's changed now, hasn't it? I don't think it's quite that emphasis now. It's much more. A bit more on the technical side of things for graduates coming through. Am I right there or wrong? It sounds like you had some real focus on, you know, the people skills and that element. I know it's something that. That's a bit of a core com. Not complaint, but a concern that. About, you know, generations coming through now.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it was, it was. Uh. The interesting thing is looking back, we probably did six, nine months of training, graduate program and probably six months of that was technical. Yeah, I don't really remember any of the technical stuff. Um, but the uh, the two or three months that was softer skills. Those I think were incredibly important in building my career. And there were things that really out of context maybe even at the time were pretty weird in terms of, you know, literally color swatches going, actually James, you're more autumnal. You can't wear spring and summer, which to this day I don't really understand. Um, the um. But you know, there are, there is bits. They're your blind spots. Right. I know that I don't fully understand black skulls option pricing, but I don't know that I come across as somebody who is a bit, you know, can be a bit in, you know, I don't know, in your face or a bit. Whatever. Don't know that it's softer things. Unless someone can sit down with me and have uh, the conversation will give me that feedback. And you were very lucky to have that training very early on. Wow.

Speaker A: No, that's brilliant. Okay, so that, that moves us quite nicely on now to the next venture which was Tribe Impact Capital. So talk to us a little bit there. What drew you to the idea behind Tribe?

Speaker B: Yes, so I come from spending 10 years basically trying to help organizations understand people and therefore trying to understand people myself. Whilst at Libre, wasn't actually doing any interviews myself. I was often involved in delivering project back to um, to the. The clients and the. The challenge with research. And I think it was David Ogilvy or something like that said that people broadly, they don't think what they. And they never say what they think and they never do what they say. So if you spend all your time m research, you never often can understand really what motivates people.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But across, across all the projects we look at all the sectors, one of the most time was working in philanthropy. Uh, because if you ask somebody why they did you very quickly get to fundamentally the values that drive them. Um and what was interesting for me was that those values don't often change through your life. What does change through your life is your often your personality, your Myers Briggs does change but, but your risk appetite changes through your life. Like lots of these lower order behaviors do change. And um, I spent a lot of time in wealth management and when wealth management was starting a relationship with an individual opening account they would often ask them very low order behavioral questions. If the stock market goes down by 10% to ill woozy and it felt like actually that's going to change a lot or even what do you want to do with your money? That's going to change a lot. And yet wealth management building entire product proposition based on these very temporal features. Whereas if you could build something based around uh what m. The fundamental values of somebody wouldn't that be rich?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Uh and so I was sort of pondering this a bit and one of the people I do I caught up with on my journey of speaking to interesting people is a gentleman called David Scott. And he was coming from a perspective of very successful um wealth management and he built a great business but even within that business he had a bit

Speaker A: of a. Yeah as you say he was Vestra wasn't he?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. He was sort of felt like was another angle which was really hard to do within existing business. And he speaking to another uh lady Amy Clark who accept her background in sustainability uh and um corporate social responsibility. And so we we had this barrier coming together and very quickly joined By Harry spent 1020 years working with wealthy people observing the still that we've observed. And so so the four of us came together and built as it. My motivation is much more about how do we build a thing that is going to last. Um and I think we do that by facing the entire ah knowing relatively stable human traits that you can only get by asking some really deep questions. Yeah a great way of stopping a long term service relationship by really getting by forcing ourselves to go through these questions.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's fair to say you were developing a bit of a legacy there.

Speaker B: Yeah I mean it didn't feel like you know this be about my m. Yeah I get.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: It certainly felt like this is going to be a thing that will last uh for a very long time as in trial and that had an impact on a lot of things that we did on A1. So we looked at how we. How do we capitalize the business, do we take in large amount of external capital on grow dated um situation uh, um, some record in terms of being able to build a business. We looked and everything. Well our uh, sense of the timing is actually that capital will influence the culture. The right. We learned an organization that's still learning.

Speaker A: Does that fall back into what we were talking about earlier on in terms of capital can influence the culture in terms of we can plan longer term now we can actually set the foundations.

Speaker B: Exactly. And so on the one hand do we raise a load of money and be able to invest a load of stuff and see what works. The flip side of that is that you owe a lot of money to a lot of people and if I set up an organization I genuinely think will last a very long time, I don't want day two to meet me thinking I've got to pay back the capital providers of this business. Yeah. So actually what we did is we didn't waste a lot of money and we said actually we are going to talk. We're going to talk to our early clients, explain to them in full transparency this is the journey that we're on and if you're up for that journey we're 100 committed and this is that Transparency again was a complete different way of working than I had done in large organization and even in lebrary where there was a lot of I can't really say but that's how big the organization was and you know how long we've been going. It was quite a revelation for me and go listen M Tribe is new but fundamentally what motivates me and it's what motivates the organization. And that was another really interesting thing with lepry. I'd tell you this a very different. We made tribes the four never met before and so ability for founders to, to work well if you've never met before it's quite high risk. We came from very creators different backgrounds but we had the values which we each which we all ended up the foundation of and that values so important in tribes journey and still does today.

Speaker A: The key bit that stands out for me there was was the early conversations with clients and being able to be so transparent about the journey that you were on because that that falls back into, you know, again it's something we're talking around. Miscommunication is good storytelling but clearly solid purpose behind it. There's no trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. You are genuinely on, on a path and you can just lay the cards out and say this is where we're at and people buy into that. Don't they kind of, they want to be part of the journey.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And um, what's interesting is in wealth management, not everybody wants that. And that's okay because it's a large enough market that you don't have to be for everybody. And that is I think one of the challenges that a lot of larger organizations face is that they have to be for everybody and they end up quite often not really being for anybody. So there was a degree of confidence that we all had that there was this segment of the marketplace that would, this would really work. But it would only work if you were transparent. You, you couldn't and you can't pitch them if, if you rely on ultra slick power day one. Uh, and so it was, it was a really interesting journey. How do we get this authenticity, this transparency right. At the same time it's really important you don't get past go if you make a small admin, we're looking after people's money. It's really, really important. Hygiene back to the way. So there's always a balance, uh, of uh, listen, we are going to be really boring and comfortable about not losing anything, but here are the bits that we're going to lay on top of that or layer around this is the things we're going to do that will make the journey really exciting for you as the client and get full transparency

Speaker A: going back to uh, I mean we're speaking a lot here around that, you know that story, that journey piece. But I can imagine people listening, haven't experienced actually just the bare basics I guess and nothing's basic in this space of setting up an investment management business. And I was fortunate. Uh, the previous guest was Dr. Emma Black who founded GB bank and I asked her to walk us through. What do you do when you start a wealth management or a bank? Are you able just to. I know it's probably very boring for you, but what are the first steps? Licenses and the likes of this?

Speaker B: Yeah, so this is. The authorization process is challenging and we're regulated in the UK by the fca and certainly if you come out for a large organization, the tendency is to think that the FCA is there as a sort of hindrance to business. But actually one of their core fundamental pillars is to encourage competition. So our regulator is really good relatively it's really good at fostering competition, supporting new businesses. So actually if you are starting something new, the regulator is there to help you. And that is a really important mindset to get into. Yeah, certainly if you're going to continue the business because if you see the regulator as somebody on your side rather than someone you've got to, you've got to fill the you know, awkward questions they have. That's going to change the whole way that you operate. And the regulator is a sensible grown up and it's. They're there just to say everybody needs to play by some rules. And so if you can start that initial relationship with the regulator on that open footing. It's not very fashionable but really it is um, your life. So we went to the box. Ah. And they have a number of initiatives around supporting your businesses. To start with that. That does all the forms to put in that. And then you do have to have some pretty sensible business plans and some pretty well thought through financial statements because you, you can't really operate if you don't know if you can exist next month. Yeah. Which is different from outside uh, the non regulated space where we really didn't know next month when you start up looking after people money it's a really important thing that you have to make sure that you've got that V to make sure that you aren't panicking and, and that everyone's money and safe. That's a fundamental. Once that comes to you. Does take a bit. There is a slight anxiety about getting first pound in.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And certainly, you know, certainly to try all businesses you cannot underestimate m the importance of those first five and how much you owe the clients. Because if they're the first that goes in.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: 100% of your book which is a big portion of those clients to make. And so our early clients.

Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. Um. Yeah. The red carpet gets rolled out quite quite extensively for those who no choice. Okay, great. I mean this is coming together so well. So we've got the story element which is great. And then the new clients have come on regulatory piece which I think you know, so important and people have a. I think there's almost um. No that can put people off in some instances like God, you know, the hoops I'm gonna have to go through. I'll just stay where, where I am put. And it's really interesting what you say about the FCA and especially nowadays with the amount of consolidation going off across all of wealth management space. And I'll just ask you a direct question as somebody who's been doing this. Do you feel that the FCA now are trying, you know they're encouraging that competition. They, they want more of this. They don't want big businesses having a monopoly over it as such.

Speaker B: Yeah, I Think they do. They want competition and we all want a healthy degree of competition. Uh, the challenge, I think, and the regulator is quite good at being agnostic as to what market structure we end up with other than the monopoly. The challenge becomes a lot with, uh, when we come to the consolidation is that consolidation businesses looks great on a PowerPoint deck, but actually the plumbing to get these things to work together can be immensely complicated and that complexity can. Um. And we talked earlier about gfc, that complexity in the plumbing of these businesses is a concern because you do then run up to some pretty fundamental things which. Who actually is responsible for this particular thing and who it actually is overseeing this thing and who is making sure that clients aren't being overcharged. So. So I think that. And that's just essentially where governing the business is to make sure you have that power. Uh, which is really hard to do if you're continually bolting on small, tightly different businesses.

Speaker A: Yeah, no abs. Absolutely. And it's just super interesting to hear that. That thought process. Okay. And coming back to the business as such, one thing I really wanted to get into. I remember the first time we met and uh, we were having quite a broad conversation, but we touched on AI and what you'd been doing internally within your businesses there. And I just. I'd love to almost. I wish I could have captured that conversation and just sort of pasted it into our. Into our chat here. But at the time when we're looking at. Because AI is huge now. Right. And everybody wants to, uh. Or is almost trying not to get left behind. I think there's a lot of talk and not quite so much action, but. But you took a step forward with this quite early on and I wonder, you know, what were you trying to solve? What did you, you know what, what was your impact with AI and your experiments? Are you able to give us a bit of an overview?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So I have a personality trait that that ChatGPT was perfect for in terms of. I'm actually quite interested in stuff and happy to go down kind of slightly international casing exercise. And so the ability to have some tool that was able to certainly from an LLM point of view, was able to kind of do some really interesting things was. Was personally fascinating. One of the lessons we learned at ledberry was that lots of things are interesting. Not a lot doesn't mean they're useful.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So what I found, uh, uh, early, uh, with the uh, Sony ChatGPT when it first came out, there's a lot. This is really Interesting. But is it useful? And you know, one of my challenges I. Interesting. So I tend to get taken off a distraction. I have to ground myself. Again, it is actually useful and so I could make it useful for me in my leadership role because there's certainly reading lots of stuff, being on top of lots of stuff and, and then um, what happened is within our organ like I was used to what her simple character looked and actually get it more people using it across the business. It was really interesting first order can you use it. But the second order is are you the kind of person who thinks about their role, about making it more efficient?

Speaker A: It's yeah. And it's fascinating and I think there's so many ways of using it now, but it does become, you're right, lots of conversation, what's useful and what gets actioned. And I do think there's almost, you know, certainly we're looking at it internally. You know, where, where can we use like you say LLMs and the likes of that to create efficiencies. And you're right quite often or not it's a lot of conversation though. Uh, um. And without too much action at the end of it, we're finding it's quite difficult to implement. And it'll be fascinating to see where this journey goes. But it's great to hear of a success story of actually a thought process and something land and then got actioned as well. I don't think we're hearing too many of them really. Apart from you get a lot of the uh, uh, AI businesses who are claiming to completely remap your employee structure and the rest of it. But you know, the realities of these things are somewhat, somewhat different. But um, yeah, no, fascinating to hear your, your take on that. So thank you for that. And then just you know, focusing back on. On tribe for a second there. Looking back, what are you most proud of from that journey? I mean we've had. I've had so much passion coming through as you're talking about building the businesses, but now you've exited as such. Uh, I think you might still have some brief involvement. But looking back on that business now, what, what what's. What are you particularly proud of people?

Speaker B: Yeah, the ability to bring together within the organization some incredible people who would not normally have had the opportunity to come together and work together. And that's really humbling because if you get that people bit right, clients will see the fact that people love working.

Speaker A: Okay. And then obviously now as you say, we, we know that you, you've exited the Business now and I guess, I mean we're always learning. Right? But you're relatively shaped I suspect in terms of your processes. No wonder whether you could describe your approach to building businesses now at all and give some insight into you and how you roadmap things.

Speaker B: Starting a business because you want to make money, it's the wrong motivation. Starting business because you want to solve a problem that sort of start with why if is it's really, really important. And I've learned a lot of that through the work with tribe where if you can get that grounding, you're an operational. There is so much opportunity across so many sectors and I think a lot of that. And we see this particularly in AI great example where the people often working in silos, uh, and are not very good at uh, learning lessons from what other people are doing. And again Libri was helpful in that because quite often wealth managers come to us and say what is it that hotels are doing exceptionally well, that we can lean in our space. And so there's some organizations that were good at that. In 10 years of running local, we never had a project that said what does wealth management do? Well that I can apply to my sector, uh, but that's another story. So there's definitely some sense of being comfortable with moving out of your lane and saying what can we apply here that works in this space?

Speaker A: And I guess again it falls back into that point of what spotting opportunities, isn't it? And I guess you spot opportunities, you having conversations and hearing people's frustrations. Right. Which seems to be such a fundamental, you know, everything that we've spoken about today is you're, you're again that networking element, being able to you know, ask the right questions or just have an open conversation and hear those types of frustrations. So you clearly have uh, an attachment to that or not an attachment. So that's probably wrong way of looking at it, but just a natural affinity to it.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a few. I think really important is people thinking about their surface area of opportunity. Surface area of luck across my life, where are ah, the bits where I can, I can, I can. Opportunities, I can find opportunities. And if I'm just sitting in one organization and I have a small group, uh, a social group and I don't take any risks, my ability to find something, uh, or have an interesting opportunity come over is very limited. Whereas if I've trying lots of things and I'm meeting people and uh, saying yes to stuff, uh, yeah, I mean my surface area of opportunity becomes much broader. And uh, for me, as someone who's never gone down the route of I only want to do this one thing, that surface area is something about quite a lot. How do I find all these opportunities and how do I balance that

Speaker A: with that in mind. And then we're talking quite a bit around AI and whatnot. And I guess, uh, I'm on to the point now, James, around kind of what's next for you and is that, you know, is AI central, do you think, to your next endeavors?

Speaker B: I think it'll be really a core component and I like it. It is a general tool that uh, you can apply to different things. And so if you know a little bit about lots of things, there are lots of opportunities that AI can listen to. There is an enormous amount, uh, and I've certainly been on that roller coaster, uh, hype and slight disillusionment. But that was ever that we were human beings like having things and AI is definitely Chinese thing. So for many at the moment, the bit that I think that those who've gone through that hype cycle where AI becomes really useful is that it's only ever a tool. It's not the solution, not itself. So you need to understand your business to be able to apply the tool for it. And I think a lot of people. Amazing. This can sort everything. Yeah, it might be some good meeting modes and that might save you a few time. Um, um, and if that's all you want. But actually in order for AI to properly support your business, you need really to have that map of all of your workflows. Yes. Where do you need these humans? Where do you need human overseeing automated process? And where can you have IT technology or automated process for it? And you really have to understand the comfortable game to be able to agree. So I think that's going to be the next bit of where AI goes. Once we got over the excitement of automated core monitoring or mot just to go actually, in order to get this properly, big, big change in our organization step change our organization. I have to understand the organization. I can't just buy a point solution and imagine that's going to solve me.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean if we just sort of look at wealth management for a moment there, where do you think AI will genuinely make things different or change change the wealth management industry?

Speaker B: Human beings are exceptional at empathy and judgment and that's what we should be really focusing on for the next 20, 30 years. Empathy. Do I understand the person I'm talking to that I'm working for my client? Judgment of all the ideas from stock broken notes as to what to buy, um through to LLM M outputs. What. What's my judgment of those in order to. To help my empathy judgment. Everything else we can automate. Yeah, that's a slightly reductive view but it does mean that there is a huge future and opportunity for wealth management all sectors through technology. Wealth management technology. It will still because of those currently inherent and valuable features in judgment and then how you deliver. Really interesting.

Speaker A: Okay, well look, getting. Getting bit to the end here but just um. Want to get some final sort of key points out of you particularly for those who are looking to make a similar or tread a similar path to you. Um. A few direct questions really here James. So what have been hardest moments across your journey?

Speaker B: I have not been able to sleep. So some uh. And the things that work wise have not caused me not to sleep to have physical effects on me of being people. And it's where people. Where I've got something wrong and, and where I've done something that. That someone has taken the wrong way or, or has not. Has not landed and somebody's done something that I think is extraordinary and they've obviously got their own reasons for doing it. But the, and I'm speaking to other founders of people in my organizations and the bits that you know are really hard when people. Stuff doesn't work. Yeah. Uh. It's such a visceral, you know you have to say physical impact, uh, that people. And certainly I was speaking to Scott. One of your first things. Money comes and goes, things happen, people and it's really hard.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I uh. Yeah, I think that has the biggest impact, doesn't it? So it's a good valuable point. I mean just on that uh. Is there anything you've learned along that journey with that with particularly with people. Any just Even if it's just one small point.

Speaker B: Yeah. The biggest problem communication is there's something that's happened. So. So I often I'm not very good at it. My wife will tell you but sometimes I uh. I'll say something right. I've said it. People understand it. I'll even say you understand that people will not. And that doesn't mean people. That doesn't mean people have heard what I'm watching.

Speaker A: Like what you said about obligity. Yeah, exactly that point.

Speaker B: So. So yeah that's something I continue. I. I personally need to continue to work on.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Um. So anything that you would do differently if you were starting again.

Speaker B: I don't know if I Would I've. I've not had the straightforward, genuine. Nobody does.

Speaker A: No. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker B: I think that the things I've come to learn, I'm probably stubborn enough that if you told me 20 years ago, I probably wouldn't have believed you. I. I needed to. You know, I was at. I was at school and, um, I've been learning about GCSE electricity, but that didn't stop me from one evening putting my three fingers against the back of a wall socket with the. With A plus back on and wondering what would happen, um, when I came to the other side of the room. You know, that's sometimes how I need to learn. I haven't done that recently. M Personally, I need to learn by. By making mistakes.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think, you know, a lot of founders say the same. You've kind of got to go through and get your battle scars. Right. But obviously, you know, there's going to be people listening to this who are looking at it. And I think I was going to ask, you know, what's your bit of advice, if you like, for someone looking to build something meaningful today? And I'm almost going to guess the first piece will be, you know, that don't do it for money, building some purpose and that type of environment. But anything else to add on that, as a final note?

Speaker B: Well, we talked about it a bit in terms of that, um, surface area of opportunity.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What does your life look like? Are you out looking for opportunities to come to you? Because that's going to you. There is an element of making your own luck. I'm very lucky. I've been very lucky. But. But I feel like I try to arrange my habits and like to be able to at least take opportunity of luck when it's come my way. There is a bit, again, that we talked around, um, around school car. What is it that you want to get out of this? Do you want to be able to have a balanced life where you want to dedicate time to your partner, your children, whatever it might be, or are you prepared to go down a route of single mic and this? And. Yeah, so there's a kind of a balance and perspective that comes with. With, um. With that. Yeah. The overarching thing. And this often happens people at the end of their life. And the regret of inaction. Yeah. Is it's five or ten times a year. Regret of inaction, as in, I wish I'd done that rather than I wish I could done M that I'd always actually gone and done something. And again, we talk to children a lot about this. Roots and wings. Children are root roots, as in, we give you the ground on. Yeah, you are, you are safe, you are loved, you are secure. But as important wings, we want you to go and try stuff and maybe fall, but. But go and try stuff. Which you can do once you've got the roots.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, again, it falls back to that really important point I think you made around that. Getting a bit of excitement, a bit of a nervousness, you know, go to that meeting, say yes. And so much of that has come out during this conversation. So that was fantastic. Thank you so much, James, for sharing your, um, your story with us and your, your insights there. And, you know, the personal piece is, is, is great and that was a fantastic conversation. Thanks for listening and I really hope you enjoyed today, today's episode. If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can find me on LinkedIn by simply typing Chris Oxley. Or visit our website@, uh, oxleychurchill.com to learn more about the work we do across executive search leadership assessment and wider talent intelligence within financial services. I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker B: Sat m.