Making Conversations about how to keep up Count transcript

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You are in for a sparkling conversation because I've got the how to keep up expert Speaker Alistair Frost joining me, right NOW!!

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I'm in the room!

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It's so good to have you here, Alistair. I know that I've been waiting for this conversation for a while because you're just such a busy chap. What have you been up to lately?

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I'm always busy because I've got lots of different clients and I've got speaker bureaus who booked me in to do talks and things like that. So I'm always juggling one job or another. But, yeah, I've been busy talking at events, but delighted to be getting off of Zoom and other platforms every once in a while and getting into a real room and the stages are reopening. And I'm glad to be taking full advantage of that.

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Well, it's something that we've all missed, isn't it? It's that little bit of interaction.

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Yeah. I've always been a huge fan of the online world because it does allow incredible things like this to happen and we should never take that for granted because it is a wonderful thing. But I think it also the last couple of years has shone a light on the importance of what we used to take for granted.

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Oh, you're sounding just like my mom and dad and my NAN and granddad... they'd never take it for granted back in the day.

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But I think that's true. You hear it from audiences and they're talking about how nice it is just to see people and have a coffee and there's free biscuits and stuff like that. In the past, that was how the world was. So we just did it and we went home at the end and we didn't really comment on it. It was not remarkable, but it's lovely that to some small extent, some of that stuff is remarkable again, and I hope people will continue to enjoy it for many more years.

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I do believe that we've got a bit of a hybrid working going, that's gonna be staying as part of the course now, because we've realised, haven't we, that we can be so much more productive and we've got all these different tools that can help us. And I think it does actually make for that sensation when you do get into the room with people is because you've saved it up as a special occasion and it's going to be remarkable.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah, I think it's a wonderful thing. It is lovely that so many jobs, not all jobs, of course, but so many jobs can be done from wherever you happen to be and that we can take full advantage of that. And there's so many problems in society, like the congestion on the railway system, on the roads, during commuter time. There's things like that that actually if we're good at this, we can resolve those things. We don't need to build more roads. We don't necessarily need to build more Railways. We can actually just spread the load in a much more intelligent way, because we have the option finally. The option has been there actually for probably 20 years, and not everybody's been able to take advantage of it.

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Look at choice when it comes to certain age groups at school will come out at different times to others. The youngest have a shorter day, and that gives Mum and dad or whoever the chance to pick them up and then go and pick the others up at a later stage. So that staggered working can be really helpful. And if you've got less people in the office sometimes, don't you find that you just actually get a bit more done without the distractions of it all sort of heading in the funnel all at once and then waiting for it to sort of settle down, you lose time.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah. Presenteeism is a disease. I mean, it's a nonsense. It's something of a bygone age where we feel like we have to be there. And some bosses in the past felt like the staff had to be in the room. Some bosses still think that way, and that's a sort of challenge for them to rethink their models of working. But if they want to attract the right talent to their organisations, it's not just parents. Of course, parents is an obvious one, because schooling and things is hard to coordinate. But whatever life stage you're in, you might be middle aged and the kids are flowing the nest, but you might have a hobby, you might be taking up sport, you might be spending more time on your health, and you can then fit those things in around your work in so many more ways. The opportunities are beautiful. If only we're ready to seize them.

{( speakerName('B') )}

That's it. It is about being flexible of mind and nature, isn't it, Allister?

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That's a nice little phrase, isn't it?

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Yeah, just made that up. I'm going to write that down.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Too late. I've got a copyright sitting on it already.

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It's because you're so good at all this tech stuff. So tell us a little bit more about Alistair and what you do and how you help people, because I got introduced to you and you were talking about AI. And now AI normally sends me to sleep because it's one of those... Well, it's just a topic that I think it's not very exciting and it can be very fear led in as much as AI in the Hollywood movies. They're going to take over the world and replace us as humans, and then us humans are going to be the slaves to the machines. It brings up those kinds of headlines, doesn't it? But actually, it can be our friend. So tell us more about that.

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We met at a talk I was giving and I use AI. I do talk about it, absolutely not from a fear point of view, but it's a good illustration of where we need to go. So my background is in. I'm a marketer. I spent ten years at Kimberly Clark, which is a company nobody has heard of, but they make amazing paper products. I spent ten years pretty much selling toilet rolls. Andrex... and I rose through the ranks, and I was the marketing director for those lovely, adorable Labrador puppies, which was fun for a few years. And then I went to Microsoft, and that's where I really got into tech. And I found tech interesting, more as a tool to better myself selfishly than wanting to be a technologist itself. But being surrounded for ten years by these really smart people who could make things happen in ways that you couldn't imagine possible, they sometimes struggled to connect it to your usable feature for human beings. I found my role in there. And actually, for the last ten years, I've been running my own business where I help other companies to think about the future, think about how do they evolve and how do they embrace technology. And so to bring it circle back to the AI question. I talk about AI because artificial intelligence, if anyone's thinking, what the heck is AI? Often referred to as machine learning. It's basically this thing where computers are given some degree of autonomy and some freedom to think for themselves rather than just following a set path that's been coded by somebody there, they're allowed to use different stimulus to figure out what needs to happen next. But it's a really important topic for all of us because we've got it in our lives already, whether it's in.

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This is what I didn't realise. Yeah.

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It's everywhere. It's doing so much. It's looking after all of your stocks and shares and things like that that might be in your pension fund, if you're lucky enough to have one of those. The vast majority of the investment decisions being made today with your money and your future being made by a computer, it's not humans, because it turns out those expensive stockbrokers are no better at it than the average computer. So you can teach pattern recognition, artificial intelligence do a lot of things much better than human beings. But this is only the beginning, and it's going to go through extraordinary evolution in the next few years. And so whether we like it or not, we need to think about that. We need to try to reflect on, well, that's the world that I'm going to be living in. Unless I can be Elon Musk and go and take off to another planet, I'm going to have AI around. So what's my relationship with that? How do I want that to play my life? What's that going to do for me and my family and off it goes?

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Well, this is where we're not just having a conversation with Rishi Sunak. Now we're having a conversation with Russia cynic. Hahahaa I just made that up! Did you like that? How do you have these conversations with, effectively, computers that can't have a conversation with you? It's only what we put into them, isn't it, that we can get out? It blows my mind.

{( speakerName('A') )}

But computers are kind of pretty dumb instruments, but basically they process things incredibly efficiently. That's what they do using electricity, and they take set patterns and they can make sense of them, they can order them, and so on. They can only follow the path they've been given. That all changes as we go forward into artificial general intelligence, which is the point probably within the next 10 to 20 years where computers are, they pass the Turing test. You really cannot tell the difference. I could have a conversation with a computer and I would be struggling to tell the difference. I really would. It would be that good. And then it would go on to artificial superintelligence, potentially. And that's the point at which computers, before they get there, they enter this spiral of self improvement because they don't need a computer human being, rather, to help them get to the next stage. They actually start learning from themselves and then they go off into places that we can't even conceive. And that's the possibility in our lifetimes. Most computer scientists will reckon that will happen in the next 100 years or so. Some people say it will never happen. But given the way that mankind evolves with technology, it's likely to happen for many of us in our lifetime. Certainly any child born today will likely live to see artificial superintelligence where there are computers that frankly have the ability to look down on us, mere humans, as if we were a cat or a dog, like a family pet.

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Do you think that there's resistance for that to actually escalate because of that scenario of being looked down on as a superior race?

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Yeah. It's got to be controlled like anything. It's like the nuclear arms race that if it gets out of hand, then it just destroys us all. And it's the same with artificial superintelligence, potentially, yes, if the robots computers get out of hand and they decide that they don't really need us around anymore,...

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So it is about not sensationalising it like the Will Smith films that we've seen, isn't it? It's about then looking at the practical applications that are going to be only for our benefit. So what will they look like? What sort of tasks will they be doing then Alastair?

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There are lots of good things already. I think I always start from the point of positivity. There are lots of things that computers can do much more efficiently than humans. And you can eradicate lots of repetitive low skilled jobs because we can get more out of human beings. People do low skilled jobs because we need people to do low skilled jobs. It's not because the people aren't capable of being skilled.

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They don't want to do those low skilled jobs either, do they?

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No. Very much so. The low skilled jobs, a lot of them can go away. And that might be everything from sweeping roads to buildings, creating construction, all sorts of things, manufacturing, production lines, things like that. Those jobs can go away. That frees up more human capital to actually apply itself and do something useful. And what we have to do is to try and focus on the utility that we can get out of those computers and work alongside them in a friendly relationship where it's beneficial for us and for them. And obviously what we want to avoid... and this isn't anything for you or me to have to worry about.... We want to avoid that point where the robots take over and destroy us all.

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Of course, we want the robots to actually be part of our farming, really, don't we? Because that's an area that we need more...

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Everything. We haven't got enough food. We haven't got enough money. We haven't got enough water, enough energy. Actually, computers, advanced forms of computing may hold the secret to that. We have renewable forms of energy. We've learned about wind and sea power and stuff like that. But robots, when they apply their minds, actually, they might uncover something completely different. They might find a cure for cancer. We have to learn to live alongside these things. And I remember in the talk I did, I talked about my robot vacuum cleaner. I don't know if you remember me talking about that. So I just get people's heads around this and you can go out and buy fairly cheaply if it floats your boat. One of these robot vacuum cleaners.

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There are lawn mowers that do it as well.

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And lawn mowers as well, of course, yes. No, I'm English, so I have to have stripes in my grass. So I actually quite enjoy cutting the grass, but I don't enjoy vacuuming the floor. And we got cats and it's always hairs everywhere. So it's good to have this thing going around at least once a day. It's very basic artificial intelligence in that they users LIDAR to map the room and to make sense of the space that it has, and then it goes off and it maps out the most efficient path to go and cover every square inch of the floor that's available. And that's all it can do. And it does very well. When you get to artificial general intelligence, you've got to imagine this next phase where that robot vacuum cleaner is at parity with humans. So not only will it do the vacuuming, but actually it might spot that there's a dent in the floor and that needs repairing. It might spot that actually there's a certain part of the floor that seems to get more wear and tear or in my detect that my daughter's been in the room. So it needs to do a super deep clean because it's almost certainly...

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Going to just follow the cat all day.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Exactly. It could follow the cat around. We will learn from what it does. And actually, this is the weird thing you have to wrap your head around. Artificial general intelligence at a point in time, that computer might derive some rudimentary form of pleasure like we do from seeing the room clean, from having completed its task. So it starts to develop more of an emotional state almost so that it feels the reward of doing what it's doing. And that's the learning path that they're on. Of course, when you get to artificial superintelligence, we have no idea how you might clean floors.

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Well, I'm just wondering why there's so many humans that don't get pleasure out of the reward of cleaning (Laughs)

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It's not the greatest achievement of that. But if you're like me and you can put stripes in your carpet,..

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Yes, there is that. And, you know, when somebody's walked on it. Fast forward then from the talk that I heard you out where you were talking about the vacuum cleaner, and it did. It conjured up such an imagination and cartoons that I used to watch that I could actually imagine this happening. It wasn't just a possibility. This could become a real reality to me. Where are we today in what is coming about that we may not have noticed that it's going to become more in our fabric of life?

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For almost all of us. And this is what I spend my time trying to help people with. We have no awareness, really, of how much change is coming. We don't also appreciate how much change we've gone through because we get through it, and then we've just become a new person. When the pandemic happens, everyone starts talking about the new normal, which, of course, is nonsense. You don't get to a new normal and then just stop in stasis and not change. Just the next normal and the next normal and the next normal, it moves on, it rolls on. And so we're really bad at anticipating change, many of us. Those who work in the technology industry, it's the bread and butter. We're thinking about it all the time, but most of us are just drifting along. And then a new IT system will come along at work or working from home ability, and we'll scrabble around and we'll figure it out and we'll get through that change. The pandemic has been great because it's taught us that we can change because everybody did. On the six months we all suddenly started working from home. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't easy, but we all got on and did it and actually did a pretty good job of it. Many of us, we sort of got by and it was okay. So we can change. What we have to do, though, if we want to remain relevant and useful in the workplace, to our families in life in general is we need to be thinking more about the type of change that we could bring into our lives. You don't have to be a futurist. You don't need a Crystal ball. But you could be looking around and be more curious about the possibilities that exist today than many of us are, because we live in our comfort zone of, well, this is my world, this is how I do stuff. And we don't always push ourselves to explore what else might be possible.

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Those opportunities of practical enhancement, then, isn't it?

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It's about recognising that your comfort zone, the sort of safe, easy life that you created for yourself. It's nice, it's cosy, but it won't exist in the future because things are going to change. Now, you have a choice. You can wait for change to happen to you and you'll kind of have to roll with it. Or you could be more Proactive in your life and try to explore those changes that would be beneficial to you and your family and the lifestyle you wish to have. So you make your comfort zone, your discomfort zone, I suppose. And you deliberately go out to break some of the habits that you've fallen into because you recognise that those things ultimately are likely to hold you back, because there will be another way of doing almost everything in your life. Now, this can be exhausting, because if you really think, oh, gosh, everything, yeah.

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Just break it down for us Allister and give us maybe the top 3.

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Bill Gates, and I was at Microsoft and he's very fond of a Marshall McLuhan quote, which was, if something works, it's obsolete. It was the flip side of the old saying, which was, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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Now, many people are still in that. I ain't broke, don't fix it. So I live my life in this way. I sit on this sofa, I watch the telly, I go to bed, I drink something, whatever. I do these things in my life now, that's very comfortable, and that's how you've made your life to be. But there may be a better way of living your life. And a really simple thing is you might actually prefer sitting in a different place on the sofa, but I bet you never tried it.

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Or not watching the TV.

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Let's not watch TV. Let's actually play a game of cards or whatever it is. You just don't know because you get stuck in this rut of this is my life and how it is. This isn't a big technology argument at all. It's just a recognition that the world is changing fast and you have an opportunity to change more about your life if you choose to do so. If you choose not to change things about your life and you actually choose to entrench yourself into the way you are in the set modes of thinking that you have built up of your life, then they are going to become redundant and obsolete at some point. And that's the point at which you might just say, I can't keep up, it's too much, I'm going to retire or do something else with my life, which is, okay, that's fine. Not everybody has to keep up. But if you want to keep being relevant, to have meaningful conversations with the grandchildren, to play a part in society for a bit longer than it is, I believe your duty to apply your curiosity to what else you might be capable of doing.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Yeah. Just because it's been that way all that time doesn't mean it's going to be the only way of doing things, is it? Which is kind of what we've all just been through with, like you mentioned there, with grandparents having to learn technology. This is where portals and FaceTime and all of those sort of video calls has played its part in keeping us connected, even though we're not together.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah. And we've got to be careful here because it's not always an age thing. But that is a good example of what can happen here is that as we get older, we get more set in our ways. That's quite a natural thing. It breaks my heart when I sort of have people who have retired and they don't know how to use a computer or they can't use contactless payments or they haven't got a smartphone and they don't want it and they've just got no space for that in their lives. And we have to recognise this maybe slightly younger generation that's going to happen to us if we don't try to keep up. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to our families to try to keep up, to try the new things. And so that's an example of that thing is that you will reach every one of us as long as we live for long enough, we'll reach a point where we are. I'm going to say obsolete. It's a horrible word, but, yeah, we can't really make a meaningful contribution to society at all. Not as purposeful. Yes. That's probably a nice way of putting it. However, we can suspend that, we can push it back, and then we do that by being more curious about the world, by being prepared to try something and not saying, oh, I don't want one of those new fangled phones saying, okay, well, let me have a look at it. Maybe I can add a conscious decision. If it's really not for you, don't do it, but don't just cross it off, because I don't think that's for me.

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Well, it's like anything that you learn new, isn't it? It doesn't matter if you're forced to. You have to. You're never going to be good at it. Straight off, it's going to take some sort of practise. But you've just made me think of another conversation that we've had on the show, actually, which was led from a kind of personal point of view, and that was about staving off dementia, using music, dance, drawing, art, you name it, the art of doing something or making something. You've just made me think, well, actually, technology actually needs to be playing a part in that, as well as either separately or integrated into that.

{( speakerName('A') )}

It's an inescapable part of our world, technology and a lot of people. And I always think of my mum, she's in her 70s now and of course, I'm the technical support, so she doesn't actually need to learn anything, because I'm always at the end of the phone and I can probably sort out most things for it. But I also feel saddened that she never had the courage to have a go earlier on in her life, when her brain would have been more elastic, she would have been able to take things on. She could have done so much more. Not so with her life, but just to be freer, to be able to realise it more fully.

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I've pressed that button on the remote control and I don't need to do that next time. If I just press this button, I can get back to where it was.

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Yeah, really simple things,

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But that's how we were when computers.... I mean..., I'm of the era that my school had a computer room and we were lucky if we got them to turn on and stay on and blink off. And then it was like, well, make sure you shut it down properly. And we're like, Is that it?

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We weren't the computer up to turn it off again.

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It didn't actually do anything because it never really worked. And you were scared silly that you were going to do something because it costs this vast amount of money as well. It's fear, ultimately, that will drive most of us, won't it, to avoid doing something?

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yes. There's a degree of fear. It always comes back to what is our comfort zone. And we don't want to do things that are risky, that are unknown, that could make us look silly. And so we tend to sort of stick to what we are comfortable with and are quite happy to turn a blind eye to some of the other stuff or just turn away from it, because it's not really our thing. Now, that's okay. But with technology and with new ways of being and thinking of doing, if you choose to turn away from those, you are electing to stay the way you are and that may not be right for you, that may not be the best choice you can make. But I work with organisations to help them to think about change, to develop a more healthier relationship with change, to not see it as a bad enemy, a thing to be afraid of, but to see it as an exciting set of possibilities.... change is going to happen whether you like it or not. So you might as well choose to make the change and choose which changes are better for you. And that's something that every organisation I speak to can relate to, because some people are busy pulling up trees, doing amazing stuff, trying the bleeding edge of whatever they happen to be doing. And there are other people who, quite frankly, would just wish everything would stay the same. And you can't work in an organisation with that mix across it. You need people to all be on board and say, okay, yeah, we'll give it a go. I don't need to be a technologist, I don't need to be an expert, but I've got to be open to the possibility that this might be better.

{( speakerName('B') )}

When you're working with clients, Alastair, what typically are they looking to do?

{( speakerName('A') )}

Well, this is the thing. This mindset actually is very universal. It doesn't really matter what the changes. And somebody might be an organisation might be thinking, we need to change the way we run our pension scheme or we need to change bringing in a new IT system. Flexible working, of course, has been a big thing recently, hasn't it? Doesn't matter what the change is, you need to take people with you, you need to move that thing together so that we can actually all benefit from it and the resistance from some people and reluctance to try things and to be able to move forward, that's the thing that I try to tackle by helping people to see that it is beneficial to try. If we don't like the outcome, we can always revisit it, but we can't just say, no, this is not right, because that's what we think, because that's the resistance that's going to stop us from being relevant in a few years time, because technology and everything moves so quickly.

{( speakerName('B') )}

So in lots of ways, you're the voice that goes into an organisation where the boss goes, Right, we're having a new It system because we are. And then you come along and go, well, actually, we're having a new IT system because this will mean this and this will mean that. And everybody goes, well, that makes sense.

{( speakerName('A') )}

It's putting it into a relevant context so that people can feel comfortable with the typical resistance to change. It's just, no, don't like it. I'm not going to do it and I'm going to make everybody's life as difficult as possible to try to keep things the way they are. Because I'm in my comfort zone. I didn't get around today by using new fangled IT systems. I know everything I do. And of course, it is experience that kills our curiosity because we learn stuff and we stop needing to learn new stuff because we seem to be quite successful doing what we're doing. And I go in and try to challenge that, to say, actually, you know what? Maybe you could be even more of a leader. Maybe you could even, what if? And you start to show that to people and then they will open their eyes to it, then you can make the change happen. And of course, just like going through the pandemic, we will get through the change and before we know it's, our next normal. And all that hullaballoo about how bad the changes are going to be was rather a waste of energy, wasn't it?

{( speakerName('B') )}

I can only say yes to that. I've been working from home since 2010. Everyone's going, oh, and I was like, I've been doing this for years in lots of respects then it is about different people being on boarded with the ideas at different stages. Sometimes, like you say, you just need to keep up.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah, I think so. I try to break it down for people. I try to give them some sort of practical tips and ways of thinking. I talk a lot about. You may remember this one. I talk about Shoshin, which is a Zen Buddhism principle of having a beginner's mind. Shoshin. And it's very simple things, because in the experts mind, there are very few possibilities. So that way we've tried that before. No, we can't do that because X Y did. Experts can see lots of reasons why things are not possible. The absolute beginner is saying well, that might work. We could give that a try. And I wonder if this would happen. And actually, sometimes that's deeply inefficient. To have a beginner's mind, you need the expertise as well. All of us can benefit. And just being prepared to say, Actually, I'm going to bring a beginner's mind to this. I'm going to be open minded enough to explore any possibility, because I'm fairly sure that I don't have all the answers. And it's having that humility just to recognise you might be the big, big boss, but you don't know everything, you're bluffing it the same as everybody else. So Shoshin's, that beginner's mind, it gives people permission to actually surrender their expertise and to bring more of their capacity to solving the problem.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Yeah, I remember that vividly because I'd not long done a Nicky Guy process. Oh, it's just hitting me from left and right and hitting me overhead and going, look at this. And I was just like, that's such a cool way of looking at things. You can really just boil it down to the simplest of view.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah. It's a principle that allows people to practise their religion, to continually learn every day, to revisit things and to see it with a new eyes and to continually challenge their assumptions. But we can bring that same attitude to our work and not just get into the rut of thinking, well, I've been here long enough, I know what works. And the other one I talk a lot about is the sense of wonder. And of course, the technology world has been a source of wonder for me for many years, because I'm constantly astonished by what you can do and how possible with new tools, with new robots, whatever it is, we lose our sense of wonder very early on as children, because it's not really the done thing as an adult to be impressed by simple things, but reconnecting with it. Also, it feeds into the Shoshin thing. It allows you to come to terms with how little you know about the world. And I always use soap and bubbles as an illustration of that in my talks. Soap is just magical. We all love soap now because of it ability to kill the coronavirus on our hands. So we all use a lot more soap, I hope, in the last couple of years than maybe we had.

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You know who you are.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I know I was one of those people who washing their hands long before it was trendy, but I've kept it up,

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Happy Birthday to you!

{( speakerName('A') )}

Sing along now, Boris. The soap works, though. This is the magical thing. At the molecular level, the molecules kind of got two ends. It's got a hydrophobic end and a hydrophilic end. So hydrophobic means phobic, Hydro, water fear. So it keeps away from water. And hydrophilic means it attaches itself to water. It's drawn to water. So when you put soap and water together, the molecules, the soap molecules, if you like, kind of one end attaches itself to the water and the other end tries to get as far away from the water as possible. So when you blow a soap bubble, this magical, because what you end up with is an outer layer of soap. Some of the molecules are pointing in with the ones that are pointing out the hydrophobic ones. They're trying to get away from the bubble, if you like, then you've got a layer of water, and then on the inside you've got another layer of soap. So it's kind of a soap sandwich or water sandwich made soap. And that's why it works to kill coronavirus, because, of course, the water hydrophilic end attaches to the water. The other bit, it doesn't try to get away. It will attach to anything other than water or coronavirus. I love that. Or dirt on your clothes or on your body and mud, whatever. It will attach itself to anything else and release that from your body. So it's a silly example, but how many of us have stopped to wonder, how does a bubble work? Always a bubble. But when you're a kid, they're great far and you can pop them. But when you're an adult, you're not allowed to grow around blowing bubbles and popping them and jumping around for joy. But you still can, because when you realise the miracle of the bubble, the humble bubble, you start to think, wow, what else could I know? What else could I learn about the world, and that's another little bit of muscle that you've got in your curiosity.

{( speakerName('B') )}

I'd say that's an invitation, Alistair, for listeners to tell us what we should be learning about other than bubbles. But let us forever be blowing bubbles.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Blow bubbles, enjoy life. Have a sense of wonder about what's going on. Stop taking stuff for granted. Start thinking a bit more deeply about it and then applying that. So curiosity is one thing, but we call it applied curiosity. So this point is where you're actually making a deliberate, it's very purposeful exploration of the world because you think this area might be of benefit to me in my work, my life, my hobbies, or whatever. And that's when it starts to bring rewards, because you've gone beyond what you know, into somewhere else and you found something better.

{( speakerName('B') )}

I love it. Thank you for sharing all that about what you do and how you do things and how people can keep up. It sort of speaks from an intellectual, emotional and spiritual basis, which appeals to me, and I'm sure it will appeal to the listeners.

{( speakerName('B') )}

I ask everybody that comes on the show for that one conversation that created a turning point. This is where I go... and drumroll.... please over to you Allister.

{( speakerName('A') )}

My defining conversation. I reflect on it very often, so it's one that I should talk about with you. I was at Microsoft. I'd been there for ten years. I knew I was leaving. I was attending an event in London, a very good speaking event. I was interested in becoming a speaker. So I was listening to some speakers and I chatted with a guy outside, if I remember writing, he was quite drunk and he was smoking a cigarette. And I thought, all right, what are you doing here? And chat. And he was an entrepreneur and he started several businesses. So I explained, I'm going to leave the car for a while. I might start my own business. He said, all right, I've got some advice for you. How's all ears. He said, there's only three things that you need to do to have a successful business, the sort of thing you want to do. And as I know, you've got many entrepreneurs on your listeners. So then this may be helpful for them. He said, three things you need to do with this. First, you need to get the business. Then secondly, you need to do the business. And thirdly, you need to get paid for the business. That's it. That's all you got to do. And he took another big drag of his cigarette, sapped a bit more of his beer. And I was thinking, is that it's pretty easy. Get the business, do the business, and get paid for the business. Then he said, problem is, if you're sitting out on your own, you're doing your own thing. You will only be able to do two of those three things. Promise you why? Because they all take about the same amount of time, but you'll die. You're trying to do all three of those things. You're going to need to get some help because you can't do all three of them. And this is where the clever thing was. I hadn't factored in after years in the corporate world, how much work you have to put in to get the business, to get a new client, to land that client, to convert it into something meaningful. That's good for both of you. I had no idea. Doing the business is all I'd ever done. Boss gave you a task or a job, came in, you were doing the business. That's all you do in the corporate world. And then the third one get paid for the business. I again had no idea how long it can take sometimes to get money out of a client and to close the job if you like, and get the business. Also the accounting of that all of the stuff that you have to do. So get the business, do the business, and get paid for the business are three equal things. And I get help mostly on the last one, getting paid for the business. So accountants and my wife helps with the books in the business and things like that. I generally try to focus on getting the business and doing the business, but they are equal things. And any time my business is going slightly off the ball, it's not quite working. It's because I've neglected one of those two things. I've been focused on one or the other, and I find it so true. I my business have to put equal amounts of focus on each of those three things, and I need help to do all three.

{( speakerName('B') )}

There's a quote that goes, if you can accomplish everything you want in life by yourself, your dream is too small.

{( speakerName('A') )}

That's nice.

{( speakerName('B') )}

So I'm guessing that is that you do need help.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah. I think a lot of us are very reluctant to do that, particularly when you're starting out because somebody else's help is going to cost money. I'm here. I've got nothing to do. So I'll ever go being a Jack of all trades is a disaster, really I think for many business owners, if you need some photography, you'll always get better results from using a photographer. If you need some writing, you'll get better results from a writer. And so it goes on. And you have to really be prepared to work with other people and to use their skills when it will benefit you. It will always give you better results.

{( speakerName('B') )}

It's a misconception, isn't it, to think that you're going to be leaving a corporate world where there are the sum of all parts, doing all of those things, just being on your own and doing it. It's the same formula, it's just made up differently, isn't it? The landscape is just a little bit different.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I think my advice to any listeners who are in a business or running a business or thinking of doing it, is to really be prepared to work with other people, try to collaborate, try to find smart ways to do it and really to focus. If you've got those three things, get the business through the business, get paid for the business. Where's your heart at. What do you enjoy? Some people really, really love the admin and the accounting and the numbers and the business planning and stuff and great crack on with that. But you're not always going to be able to get the business. You know, you're going to need some help from some business development people or you're going to have to social media team, I don't know. You're going to need somebody to handle some of the other aspects of the business. And that was a hugely important conversation for me because it made me realise that, actually, yes, running my own business can be profoundly simple if I want it to be, but I've got to go into the right mindset. I can't do it all on my own.

{( speakerName('B') )}

And to do all three, it's a stretch of your time and abilities, isn't it? So if you can get somebody else who loves doing the bit that you don't, then all three bits are singing.

{( speakerName('A') )}

The more time you spend doing the one or two things that you really enjoy, the more you bring in.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Right.

{( speakerName('A') )}

And you can afford to pay somebody to do other stuff. It's a really hard lesson to learn in the early days, particularly for someone like me, who had been closed to in the corporate world for 20 years, frankly, had it easy and suddenly had to do all of this stuff and work it out.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Yes, it is a big learning curve. So the one question I have to ask you then, Alistair, is did you buy him another pint?

{( speakerName('A') )}

I think I did, actually. I think I bought him a bottle of beer and we carried on the conversation. But it was those early words, those first words that just echoed in my mind that day and so many years afterwards, and they've really stuck. And, yeah, that's well over ten years ago, I had that conversation, the best and most succinct bit of business advice I ever got.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Well, I can't thank you enough for coming and sharing that with us today. It's been delightful, it's been full of spark this conversation as we promised. So if anybody wants to carry on the conversation with you, Alastair, Where's the best place for them to find you?

{( speakerName('A') )}

Well, if they can spell my name, which even I struggle to do, they can find me online@allisterspeaks.com. And the problem is my parents gave me an Alistair that's spelled A-L-L-I-S-T-E-R so allisterspeaks.com and you'll find me online. If you can type in Allister Frost on a website, you've got a pretty good chance of finding me as well.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Well, we're will make sure that we put all the details in the show notes and on our own website too. Do carry on the conversation with Allister.