To celebrate Black History Month, we partnered with Ulster Bank to put on a special live version of the podcast. With special guests David Levin and Charmaine McConville, this episode was recorded live at Ulster Bank’s head quarters in Belfast.
This is the second episode in the 2024 Black History Month mini series.
Listen on Spotify, Apple or YouTube.
In this episode we discuss:
- The early days of social media
- The challenges of growing a start up
- Acting on advice from loved ones
- The best petrol station in Ireland
- Whether Bradford or Leeds is better (hint: it’s Bradford)
- How race and identity overlap
Charmaine McConville
Charmaine is COO at PLUGINMOVE, a start up that revolutionises portable device charging by offering portable battery charging stations that cater to the modern necessity of staying powered on the go.
With over 20 years of experience in the finance sector, Charmaine has consistently pushed the boundaries of innovation, combining financial acumen with a passion for driving transformative ideas. As a key player at PLUGINMOVE LTD, Charmaine is at the forefront of revolutionizing the way people stay powered in our fast-paced, tech-dependent world.
Find Charmaine on LinkedIn.
David Levin
David Levin is a writer, tone-of-voice specialist and agency founder whose career took off after he set up a Twitter account for his local pub which gained a cult following, won Time Out’s Twitter Account of the Year and led to him accidentally becoming the UK’s first professional tweeter.
His social agency, That Lot, which he co-founded with renowned actor/comedian, David Schneider, hired platform specialists and ran feeds / created content for the likes of Spotify, Channel 4, National Geographic, Amazon and Have I Got News for You. David is a regular speaker at Social Media Week, previously ran The Guardian’s social masterclass, recently led content inspo sessions at TikTok HQ and even more recently did a TedX talk about creative community management. He has also written race related articles for the Metro and The Guardian.
He has twice been a judge for The Drum Awards as well as being named one of The Drum’s Top 100 in UK Digital, and was one of the featured creatives in Cannes Lions’ #ThankYouCreativity campaign.
This year, David returned to freelance life after That Lot was acquired by Weber Shandwick, and is currently managing socials for a sportsperson of the legendary variety. Prior to agency life, David was a scriptwriter for YouTubers, wrote features for publications such as Metro and GQ and toured the world in a signed band you’ve never heard of. Find David on LinkedIn
Recommendations
- Ronnie by Ronnie O’Sullivan
- Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters
- Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson
- David’s LinkedIn post about his favourite petrol station.
Strategy Sessions Host – Andi Jarvis
If you have any questions or want to talk about anything that was discussed in the show, the best place to get me is on LinkedIn or Instagram.
Make sure you subscribe to get the podcast directly or sign up for it here to have it emailed when it’s released.
If you enjoyed the show, please give it a 5* rating.
Episode Transcription
This transcript has been done automagically using Happy Scribe and hasn’t been checked by a real person, so there may be some hilarious mistakes where the AI can’t work out our accents – I’m sure they’re trained on just the American accent.
[00:00:00.14] – Andi J
Eyup and welcome to the Strategy Sessions. My name is Andi Jarvis, and it’s a little bit different today. I’m here at Ulster Bank’s headquarters in Belfast to record a live version of the Strategy Sessions. Give us a wave. There you go. I got a cheer from a rabble, a Mottly crew who’ve come to watch the recording. Thank you very much for coming. I’ve also got two guests today, not one. So I’m joined today by Charmaine McConville. Hello. Hi, everyone. And I’m also joined by David Levin. Hello. Hello there. Right. So why are we here and what are we doing? It’s Black History Month. As you know, this is episode 2 in the Black History Month mini-series. You know that because you listened to Miracles episode last week. Of course you did. But we’re here raising awareness, really, and discussing different perspectives of marketing, of business, and of life. The theme this month is reclaiming narratives. Over the last couple of months, across the summer, there’s been some interesting stuff happened, let’s put it that way, where maybe the narrative of migration and ethnic minorities in the UK and in Ireland has been owned by people that, well, it’s just not us.
[00:01:02.19] – Andi J
So this is a little attempt by me and by the guests on the strategy sessions to just start reclaiming the narratives and telling our stories of what it’s like to be in business here and what it’s like living here as well. So it’s just a normal episode as well. Well, is it normal? How can it be normal when you’ve got two fantastic guests? But I’m going to shut up and I’m going to throw questions at them now, just as we do in every other episode, just live, and anything could go wrong. So here, wish me luck. Right. Let’s get on with the first question. David, what one thing do you wish you’d have known 10 years ago?
[00:01:35.21] – David L
Well, I’m going to do two.
[00:01:39.09] – Andi J
Two? Oh, I’m greedy.
[00:01:40.00] – David L
I’m a rebel. What a star. Coming straight out of the blocks not answering the question that you did. I’m going to say, I wish I’d known to appreciate every minute of having a meal before you have children. I don’t know how many parents are in the audience, but just like, I love my children dearly, but I think now just being able to sit and have a meal and then get in more sleep, I probably would have gone for that.
[00:02:03.24] – Andi J
What I heard there was you love your children dearly, but you also love chips more. Absolutely. That’s what I heard.
[00:02:08.19] – David L
Yeah, that’s okay. Then maybe slightly more seriously, I wish I’d known that being different isn’t the problem that it felt like years ago. Growing up, for me, in Leeds with different parents and looking different to most other people that I grew up around. It was quite confusing. Often I felt compelled to try and look like the other people. And generally, I confuse people because I’m mixed race, but I’m quite light skinned, and I often get cute. My mates, mum still thinks I’m Mexican. No one really knows what I am. Everyone comes to speak to me in Arabic on holiday. I can’t speak Arabic. But I think as life has gone on and as my career has gone on, I’ve realised actually that difference tends to be a bit of a superpower, and it has worked quite well for me when I’ve learned to understand that.
[00:03:05.22] – Andi J
Absolutely. Now, we will get into that as well later because you grew up in Leeds, which is the second best city in West Yorkshire after Bradford, where I grew up. Definitely. Yeah, there’s certainly some interesting experiences. We are of a similar vintage as well. I think I might have a maybe V80 on top from where you are. But certainly growing up in the ’80s as mixed race was an interesting time and an interesting thing. For sure. Okay. Charmaine, what What one thing do you wish you’d have known 10 years ago?
[00:03:35.05] – Charmaine McC
Well, being a second-generation immigrant, I think I’m still surprised that 10 years later, even though I’ve been here about a little over 20 years, I’m still the only one in the village. Having moved from England to Scotland, now to Northern Ireland, I’ve been in so many spaces, especially in the corporate world where I’ve been the only black person in the room or in the entire building. It’s still the case today with everywhere else I have worked. I’ve worked for quite a few companies, to be honest. I wish I wasn’t. That’s what I wish I knew, that I haven’t come from a country that was quite diverse and gone to schools that were mixed and everything else in between. That would be the same up here.
[00:04:28.24] – Andi J
I’m not going to name names or companies or people or anything, but I worked with somebody a few years ago who was close to retirement. He was mid to late ’50s. We got along famously. He was a cricket fan. I’m a cricket fan. But over a coffee one day, he said to me, he was like, Do you know We were talking about something or other. I can’t even remember what it was. He said, You’re the first black person I’ve ever worked with. We’d done 30 some years working in Belfast and never worked with a black person before, which growing up in Bradford, I find… My It’s been blowing entirely, but it’s the nature of the beast around here, isn’t it? Although it is changing, which I think is part of the reason we’re talking about what we’re talking about today.
[00:05:08.16] – Charmaine McC
No, it is changing. When I first moved to Scotland from England, I was around 2005. I could count on one hand how many black people were in Paisley, because I was at the University of Paisley at the time. Then I moved, and then slowly, but surely, Scotland became quite diverse and quite open. They had a massive campaign on inclusion, which I think helped a lot. Then so I found more people who were like me and it was more comfortable, but it took a while. Then nine years ago, moved to Northern Ireland. I had to start all over again. Start all over.
[00:05:45.06] – Andi J
Brilliant. Well, while you’re talking, tell us a little bit more. Introduce yourself to the room. Obviously, we know your name, but we’ve not talked about Plug & Move. Tell people about your company and just give us a couple of minute overview of the company and where you are, what you’re hoping to do.
[00:05:58.16] – Charmaine McC
So Plug & Move is the brainchild of my sister. She got stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time without a battery in her phone. So her frustration basically bore our business. We are a company that provides rentable portable charging stations in high footfall areas. We’re currently lucky enough to be in Castle Court and recently moved into Victoria Square. So if you do see a little station, there are two I would say they’re lucky to have you there.
[00:06:32.01] – Andi J
It’s not the other way around. They’re lucky to have you in their premises. Okay. It came out of a problem for your sister, and then here you are.
[00:06:38.04] – Charmaine McC
She was travelling from Dublin to England, and she got stuck, bought a battery pack and wanted to charge it on the plane. Got onto the plane, opened the box, the battery pack wasn’t charged. She ended up landing without any charging her phone. Thankfully, you know how it is. Fifteen years ago, everybody knew everyone’s number by head. Now, nobody knows anybody’s number. We rely on our phones for absolutely everything, tickets, cards.
[00:07:06.22] – Andi J
I love that your sister took the rage because I know how I’d be feeling if that was me. The effing and jeffing on that plane would have been horrific. I love that she’s taken that rage and actually done something with it. I’d have just winged about it, probably started a podcast about it, but that time.
[00:07:20.17] – Charmaine McC
No, she was very, very annoyed, and she went on and on about it. Then she’s like, You know what? Let’s fix it. I’m like, Should That’s a big ask. She was like, No, it would be fine. Let’s just do this. She did all the research. I’m sitting there and I was looking at what she had put together, looking at the numbers, and I’m like, That could work. Then it built From that could work to why wouldn’t it work?
[00:07:48.21] – Andi J
Then literally, six months later, here we are. You’re in full startup mode. What’s your role in the business?
[00:07:56.23] – Charmaine McC
I basically Being a person who is a finance background.
[00:08:07.08] – Andi J
I mean, it’s a startup, so you’re doing everything, obviously.
[00:08:09.06] – Charmaine McC
We’re doing everything from talking to clients, networking, doing articles, live podcast, putting the business name out there, joining at the Accelerator programme through Ulster Bank, just trying to get ourselves out there. You have to wear quite a lot of hats, and none of them fit at the moment.
[00:08:29.19] – Andi J
The joys of the startup world. We’ll come back to that in a moment. David, what do you do? I always feel like royalty asking that question. What do you do?
[00:08:37.13] – David L
What do I do? Well, I, for the past 10 years, I’ve been running a social media agency in London. Well, I’ll go back before that. Before that, I was… Oh, yeah, I’ve been a writer for about 20 years. Started at MTV, used to write there, then wrote for lots of terrible magazines, then started writing for YouTubers back when they were on the rise. Then I won’t tell the whole story because it’ll take up your full podcast, but set up a Twitter account for a pub in East London for a joke that got very popular in the early days of Twitter, when Twitter was more like TikTok now on the rise.
[00:09:18.22] – Andi J
Before it was assessment.
[00:09:20.02] – David L
Yeah, sure. I made it assessment. But no, yeah. Then I started getting asked to tweet for lots of brands and a few celebrities and stuff, and then accidentally I eventually became the UK’s first professional tweeter. Then when Twitter got me to speak at one of their events about being a tweeter, I met a guy in the audience, a comedian, an actor called David Schneider, and me and him set up an agency in London doing what I was doing as a freelancer. Then we started doing the other platforms as well. Did that for 10 years, and then we got acquired by a bigger agency. Then me and my Irish then-girlfriend, now-wife, moved over here with our then-one kid, now two kids, and now we have babysitter’s in the garden.Life.
[00:10:04.20] – Andi J
Comes at you fast, eh?That’s my whole life story. Very briefly, yes or no question. Does being a professional tweeter make you a twat? Is that what- I’m not going to dignify that with a response. That’s okay. I didn’t ask Ulster Bank if we were allowed to swear in their premises. Chuck him. Search his life security on the way. Sorry, no, we’ll move on from that. The pub, just briefly, it was the Dolphin, wasn’t it? Yes. Which if you are listening in London, you will know the Dolphin, East London’s finest establishment.
[00:10:33.12] – David L
Well, definitely not finest. It’s like the Iron Apper of East London. It’s a pub that has this bizarre 5:00 AM late licence where hipsters go and drink Jägerbombs till 5:00 in the morning.
[00:10:45.22] – Andi J
Has anyone else been to the Dolphin? There’s hands going up in the room. It’s quite the place. Somebody said to me, We’ll get a taxi from here to the Dolphin. I googled it and I was like, It’s a pub. We’re going to get a 30 quid taxi across London to a pub that will shut at midnight. I left at 5:00 AM, the sun was shining, the birds were singing. I questioned all my life choices at that point, but it was incredible. I think I might have even done karaoke at one point.
[00:11:11.23] – David L
You probably did. No, it’s not like a normal pub, but it genuinely changed my life, that place, because I did it as a bit of a joke. That is one thing I think when I get asked about any work-related advice, which is often… Well, in my experience anyway, I think that It’s the things that you don’t spend too much time thinking about. I did not set up an agency or even really to move into social media, but I did this thing for fun.
[00:11:41.22] – Andi J
Career’s advisors are stabbing dolls of you right now listening to this. They’re like, Oh, don’t plan it, just do it. Just doing things.
[00:11:46.01] – David L
No, I know. I was lucky, but yeah, it is quite an interesting place. Although that account, unfortunately, because it got a bit of a cult following, I keep getting asked about it, recently got this part of Twitter, we’re coming up the suspect that it is, it got hacked by a Chinese pharmaceutical company, and I can’t get it back. Now the Dolphin Pub account and all its followers is just tweeting about drugs in Chinese.
[00:12:11.12] – Andi J
Yeah, so that is basically you just on an affiliate scheme That’s what I’m doing now. I’m not really into that Chinese account, isn’t it?
[00:12:15.24] – David L
Yeah, it’s just my side hustle.
[00:12:17.13] – Andi J
Side hustle, yeah. Excellent. Now you are freelance and doing similar, maybe not Twitter, but still doing writing for-I’m still mainly writing for brands, but then it happened by accident.
[00:12:29.10] – David L
Again, I now find myself my main job is running the social media for… I’m speaking slow because I’m trying to remember what I’m allowed to say. I’m running the social media for a famous tennis star from a part of the… A part of the world.
[00:12:45.24] – Andi J
A part of the world that isn’t this one.
[00:12:49.00] – David L
Yes. I think I’m actually allowed to. I don’t know why I’m being so cagey about it. It’s just they said I can talk about it.
[00:12:54.19] – Andi J
Both listeners of the podcast will know who you’re talking about now.
[00:12:58.03] – David L
Yes. But anyway, that is my main freelance job, and I still do bits of writing for brands and stuff.
[00:13:04.13] – Andi J
Excellent stuff. Excellent. You are now based in Hollywood?
[00:13:08.07] – David L
Hollywood, yes.
[00:13:09.20] – Andi J
Hollywood County down.
[00:13:11.04] – David L
Shout out to the Hollywood crew.
[00:13:12.13] – Andi J
Hollywood, Los Angeles.
[00:13:13.06] – David L
No, yeah, 1 L.
[00:13:14.14] – Andi J
You rather bizarrely have a favourite petrol station.
[00:13:18.15] – David L
Yeah, I don’t think it’s bizarre. If anyone in the room who has been to Hollywood will appreciate. The Max Hall garage on, I think his full name is Max Hall, Kinnega. I don’t want to say it, pronounce it wrong. Yeah, the one on Belvast Road is more than any… Maybe it’s just because I’m from Leeds and I’ve spent most of my life in London. We would not… Anywhere that is a petrol station or anything related to petrol station in London or Leeds is somewhere you don’t want to be. Whereas this, it’s the best bits of waitrose mixed with… Yeah, it’s an experience. Waitrose?
[00:13:53.00] – Andi J
Somebody was doing well in London.
[00:13:54.11] – David L
I could spend three hours in that Maxol garage and I wouldn’t do it.
[00:13:57.07] – Andi J
When my little one was young, I used to take her to pets at and told I’d taken her to the zoo because it was cheaper. Is that what you do with your kids? Do you just take them to the garage at Kinnigar and tell them it’s a day off?
[00:14:06.20] – David L
Yeah, no, our five-year-old does look like it in there. It’s got everything. Rather than just most shops that I know have a bread section, this has a whole bread aisle. You can spend an hour on the bread aisle. They know you in there and they listen. Yeah, it’s a whole new experience. I love it.
[00:14:24.17] – Andi J
I’ll put a link in the show notes if somebody reminds me later. But David wrote a love letter to this, this Max Olin Kennegar on LinkedIn, so there’ll be a link in the show notes.
[00:14:34.08] – David L
Or just add me on LinkedIn. I’m relatively new. I’ve been talking about LinkedIn before and I am late to the LinkedIn party, but I am now obsessed with it.
[00:14:42.23] – Andi J
It’s the new Twitter.
[00:14:44.09] – David L
It is the new Twitter. Yeah, no, it’s really… I think from a writer’s perspective as well, I’m finding that it’s just… There’s so much good stuff on there. When I was on there years and years ago, when I first had a little dab on it, it was mainly just people showing off about themselves, and I found it quite a boring place. I didn’t really look at it for ages. That’s all I did. Now there’s people showing off, but in a quite entertaining way. No, it was great. But I know there’s some LinkedIn gurus in the audience, so I won’t embarrass myself talking about it.
[00:15:09.11] – Andi J
Well, we’ll come back to social media shortly as well. But, Charmaine, do you have a favourite garage, petrol station? Don’t worry, it’s not weird if you don’t. No. No. I think that makes you perfectly normal.
[00:15:21.24] – David L
How can I take you to that one?
[00:15:23.15] – Charmaine McC
Well, there is one just down the Ormo Road. It’s quite nice. They have a an attendant, so you never have to leave your car.
[00:15:32.11] – Andi J
Has it got a deep fried?
[00:15:34.21] – David L
Has it got a chicken picking mix there?
[00:15:36.20] – Charmaine McC
No, it’s just a guy.
[00:15:38.12] – David L
If you know, you know.
[00:15:39.22] – Andi J
There’s a magazine published in Northern Ireland, actually in Hollywood, called Fourcourt and Convenience Store Monthly. If anybody from there is watching, we are available for sponsorship. But yeah, this maybe is the answer. We’re not talking about petrol stations and garages. We’re talking about startups. That’s what it is. Is this your first startup that you’re involved in?
[00:16:02.01] – Charmaine McC
For me, specifically, yes.
[00:16:03.20] – Andi J
How’s that journey so far? Six months in?
[00:16:07.02] – Charmaine McC
Yeah. Well, what month are we? October.
[00:16:09.14] – Andi J
So 10 months in. Ten months in?
[00:16:11.22] – Charmaine McC
We started in January. You know when you start a business and you’re thinking, Oh, this is a brilliant idea, everyone’s going to jump onto it. Everybody’s going to get excited about it with you. Everybody’s going to buy into you. Yeah, we quickly learnt it’s the complete opposite. Then on top of that, because our product is shipped into the country with everything else that’s going on around the world, politically, the goods were supposed to arrive within 35 days. They took six months. That slowed us down significantly. But it was a blessing in disguise in two ways, because whilst we didn’t have any clue what we were doing, it gave us a chance to regroup, figure out how we were going to promote it and to to spread the word. That gave us enough time to get our business plan organised, get our funding, and things like that. It’s hard. I’m not going to lie, but when you wake up thinking, Oh, yeah, let’s start a business, you think, I’m going to be off all day sitting in the sun, especially because this summer wasn’t actually too bad. Sitting in the sun, drinking your Mamosas while everybody else is doing the red race, it’s not even close.
[00:17:27.18] – Charmaine McC
I’m up at 2:00 in the morning trying to talk to our suppliers, and half the time there’s a language barrier, so you can never find… It takes forever just to get a simple request through. So yeah, quite tough.
[00:17:41.19] – Andi J
Startups sound like hell a lot of the time. But there’s got to be some plus points of doing it, surely, and not just the memosas by the pool.
[00:17:50.13] – Charmaine McC
Well, yeah, no, I don’t have to rush around. I don’t have to join the rate race. That’s about the only part that’s exciting because it’s all hours of the day, every day, Monday through Sunday, and any other extra days you can add in there. It’s like there’s never enough days in the week, but there’s also too many at the same time. It’s a constant battle between work-life balance and trying to be successful and make money, which is what everybody gets into business to do in the first place. When that doesn’t happen, it’s like, Okay, so what are we going to do? We’ve just put on all our life savings into this thing, and it’s not going anywhere fast.
[00:18:41.23] – Andi J
It’s okay. There’s always that thing as well. When you start, it doesn’t matter what business it is, you always know someone who started something, maybe not exactly similar, but starts something at the same time. And six months down the line, you’re looking at your bank balance going, Right, well, I’ve got enough to last till the end of next week. And then you see them as they pull in their Ferrari and go, Great run in a business, isn’t it? Yeah, congratulations. But it can be really hard not to compare yourself with the journey that other people are on, can’t it?
[00:19:11.04] – Charmaine McC
Yeah, it’s very difficult. I mean, even when I join the Accelerator programme and I’m watching some of the people in the cohort getting contracts, doing talks, people are offering them work and things like that, you go, So what am I doing wrong? Where is It’s my turn.
[00:19:33.08] – Andi J
It’s hard, isn’t it? What’s the phrase? Comparison is the thief of joy. But there’s probably an end to that, which is, But it’s still bloody hard to not do it. It’s something like, he’s still always looking going, Oh, that’s interesting.
[00:19:43.20] – Charmaine McC
I know.
[00:19:44.11] – Andi J
But when you ran an agency in London, which is a hotbed of lots of agencies, and it doesn’t matter how big you are and how well you’re doing. There’s always somebody else with double the number of people who’ve just won the Nike account or taken it off you or something like that. How did you manage to avoid that longingly looking over somebody in Soho and going, How have they managed to do that?
[00:20:04.14] – David L
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think we avoided it because there was three of us at the start, confusingly all called David, but the third one, he was more businessy and business-minded. He was probably thinking more like it. But me and David Schneider, we’re both creative people, and neither of us really had ever planned to start an agency and hadn’t thought too much about it. We were more just excited about the work. Obviously, then you start thinking more like that later on. But also, I think it helped that when we started the agency, there weren’t that many other social agencies. Now, you can’t move for them in London and over here. But we were a little bit early in terms of particularly ones that were specialists, and we were hiring people who were doing what I was doing, so tweeters and Snapchatters and Instagramers and stuff. But yeah, I think we were just so excited about just doing it. It was growing organically and people were wanting to come work for us and it was getting bigger. I think the comparison stuff more came late data, particularly once you get into pitching, which is a whole universe that I’d never known about, and it’s a tricky world.
[00:21:22.21] – David L
By the nature of pitching, then you have to convey yourself because you’re up against other agencies and you see them on the way in and you want kick each other. Yeah, it’s tricky. But no, generally, I think I haven’t been too bad for that. But as an individual, definitely what you’re saying is you’re constantly looking what other people are doing. Like you just said, why haven’t I got that? I think it’s part of getting older, maybe. I think when I hit 40s, someone said to me, The great thing about 40s, when you get to your 40s, is you give about 20%, you care things about 20% less or whatever. And that has been true for me and that has helped the not comparing myself to other people so much. Or maybe I’m just more tired. Yeah.
[00:22:09.08] – Charmaine McC
That comes up in the car. You stop caring too much.
[00:22:12.13] – Andi J
You got all the other things are more pressing. You get home and your kid doesn’t care whether you’ve won the pitch or lost the pitch. They’re just like, mommy, daddy. It’s something really, I was going to say disarming. It’s just really lovely, isn’t it? It really helps keep you grounded and keep you focused on what comes next. Did you have any other names in the running? If you were all called David.Names for the A to Z.Yeah, instead of that lot. Was it David Cubed or something like that?
[00:22:38.14] – David L
3d, we talked about a few. In hindsight, when we started, it was more other David’s We did that lot. We thought it was funny, but actually, just when you’re signing into places, it’s just always quite a practical nightmare. But yeah, 3D would have been better.
[00:22:55.14] – Andi J
In your early days, you said it grew organically and people were coming to you because they just didn’t… Well, nobody really knew. Early days of social media were a bit Wild West. Nobody knew what was going on. But as you started to grow and develop, what marketing activity worked for you to help the business keep growing?
[00:23:14.05] – David L
Another good question. To be honest with you, when we were growing, a lot of it was word of mouth, really. We started out as a small agency being hired by the bigger agencies. A lot of them were good at winning big contracts. They’ll go, I’m just looking at my Red Bull because I’m tired. They’ll win a big Red Bull contract, part of which was social media, but actually, they didn’t really know how to activate that stuff. Then they’d hire agencies like us sometimes on the quiet. I think using social media itself. We were starting to, actually, I think even more than social media, doing talks. Again, was something I never planned to do. The first one I did was the one at Twitter’s event, which I had nearly I was so nervous. I was so terrified that I wasn’t going to go on stage. My girlfriend, now wife, and my flatmate gave me a glass of wine and said, You have to do it. Because there’s hundreds of people who was at the Tate Modern and Twitter were like, You got to do it. You’re going to get so much work out of it. I was so nervous.
[00:24:16.21] – David L
But then I did it, and then it became fractionally less nerve-wracking every time I did it. But as an agency, we were getting a lot of work out of doing that type of thing because we were going and we found a good way to get up there, talk about social media, show some examples of what we did without being too salesy, and that was enough to attract more work coming in. So yeah, talks was good. I suppose now, like I say, LinkedIn as a freelancer, I’m finding is invaluable, but I’m quite new to the point.
[00:24:48.15] – Andi J
What is it about LinkedIn that you’re enjoying? The slightly longer form content as a writer?
[00:24:52.06] – David L
I’m enjoying it partly because it plays to me, because I’m a writer and I love writing, and I think from what I know from LinkedIn, it helps if you can write content that people are interested in or make content now. It’s very video-focused as well. I genuinely learn a lot from it. I think that’s how it seems to have evolved as a platform in terms of, yes, there are still lots of people saying, Hey, I’m brilliant, but they’re doing it in interesting ways, and a lot of people’s stories and things and experiences that they’re sharing on there. I think it’s a much more wholesome way to spend your time than on Twitter nowadays. I love Instagram, but that if you talk about comparing yourself, a friend of mine recently described it as digitised jealousy, which is very profound, but I really think it’s true. Instagram is just constantly putting out the best version of yourself, which is maybe not so healthy.
[00:25:43.02] – Andi J
As someone who posts three or four times a week on LinkedIn, finding new ways of saying I’m amazing is really quite difficult. But just write about the Max Hall garage is near you. And then people love it. Absolutely. So one last question before I come to you and start ask about your marketing, Charmaine. What’s your view then on on AI. This is someone who’s just spent two days at a conference and I thought, if I hear the letters AI again, I’m going to explode. But there’s a button now on LinkedIn that just says, Use AI to write this post. So what’s your view?
[00:26:12.23] – David L
Really tough one to answer. Here’s someone to ask about sometimes. It’s tough for a few reasons. One, because I’m definitely not qualified to… I don’t know much about AI. I know I should spend more time getting to it. Most of the people I follow on LinkedIn are writers, and it seems to be a divide of, I’d say about 70% of the people I follow are writers slagging off AI and really terrified of it and it being a real negative thing. Then there’s this 30% that are using it in smart ways and making a fortune out of that. I’m neither, really. I’m definitely not… I think it feels like I remember, I’m just about old enough to remember in the start of the dot com boom, the way people talked about some of that. I think it’s It’s crazy to be trying to fight against it, but it’s definitely taking work from people in my world, so it is tricky. I had an interesting experience because I know I’ve been making myself spend some time trying to learn it. I went on ChatGPT. I thought I would just give it a brief that I was given as a freelancer recently, writing for a car brand and said, Can you write 10 lines of copy for out-of-home billboards, but also I might be using Instagram?
[00:27:31.10] – David L
Gave it the brief, and it came back within 10 seconds or 30 seconds, whatever it was. Of those 10 lines, six were terrible, unusable. Three were not bad, but if I’d spent a few minutes, I could have tweaked them, which I think that’s probably the area a lot of people talk about. But the other line was my line that got signed off, and that was terrifying to me, but also quite interesting. I need to chat some people who know about AI to explain whether… I still don’t know whether that’s a line Because it apparently could have been scraped from… Because by that point, the work had started going out, so it might have been just giving me my line. But the terrifying thing is it might have just come up with my line that I thought was really clever. I don’t know. But it’s a tough one. But I know it’s something I’m planning to spend more time getting good at.
[00:28:18.09] – Andi J
Well, a good place to start might be the last episode of the last season of the strategy session.Strategy sessions.Oh, really? It’s easy for me to say. Dave Burze, who is an AI expert, talks about it. Well, the whole episode about where AI is going, what’s it used for, that type of thing. He’s a believer in that the way it’s used at the minute is just giving adequency, and people are then passing that off as genius, and he’s like, It’s not. But he’s a fan, but he said, You’ve got to use it right. So maybe I’ll send you a link.Thank you very much.Chalmin.Yes. What marketing are you doing to help push Plugin Move out into the market?
[00:28:53.16] – Charmaine McC
I am a tech novice. I say I don’t use social media, I use social media, but mostly just to play, watch other people do their gardens, and some people clean their homes and things like that. But my sister, Shantelle, she did brand management at Uni, hated the course, and then taught herself how to use Canva. So she’s a marketing strategist. Everything you see on any platform, that is her work. And it has been a bit challenging because sometimes when you’re working with people, a creative and somebody who’s being and always so serious, and you’re telling her, you can’t do that. She’s like, but it looks amazing. And you’re like, yeah, but you can’t put that on there. And so there’s a little back and forth. But yeah, she did the website, she did Twitter, she did Instagram, Facebook. And to be honest, half the time, I don’t even know what our page looks like on Facebook because I’m never on it, which is really, really bad as a business owner to say something like that. But I’ve been trying to get into it. I prefer LinkedIn. I hated it, literally two years ago. I don’t know how it happened, but I accidentally managed to sign myself up to the paid version of LinkedIn for two years, and I had no idea.
[00:30:16.14] – Charmaine McC
They’re like, Oh, thank you for your payment. Do you want to try this since you pay for the service? I’m like, Why am I paying for the service? And literally, the only company that was on there was a company that I’d been working in when I was in Scotland. It was about 15 years old. Everybody who was coming through going, Oh, yeah, so you’ve been with this company 15 years? I’m like, No, that’s not the case.
[00:30:38.03] – Andi J
You must be LinkedIn’s best customer. You signed up to give them money every month, and then did nothing with it.
[00:30:42.16] – Charmaine McC
I did nothing with it. I didn’t use it at all, but now it’s quite invaluable.
[00:30:45.20] – Andi J
Do you want to be your customer and make some more marketing? I love customers like, anybody wants to just give me some money and they’ll do nothing in return for it. That sounds like a great business model.
[00:30:55.09] – Charmaine McC
She’s the one who does most of that. Interestingly enough, when I write I wrote a post not too long ago, and I gave it to my husband to read. I was like, I’m going to post this because it’s been such an exciting week and it’s been so inspiring. And he’s like, Yeah, you can put that on there. I’m like, Why not? It’s too preppy, it’s too excited. And people in Northern Ireland won’t appreciate it in the way you’re trying to deliver it because we’re very conservative here. And anybody who goes… And my husband’s Irish, by the way. So He basically said, Well, tone it down because they were not an excitable people. If you say that, it’s going to be seen as you’re bragging. I’m like, No, but I really was inspired and it was really exciting. He’s like, No, you have to tone it down.
[00:31:47.06] – Andi J
I’m clearly not a marriage guidance counsellor, but your husband’s also wrong.He’s just right.I will let him know. Yeah, just tell me, what’s his name?
[00:31:54.16] – Charmaine McC
Martin.
[00:31:55.09] – Andi J
Martin, you’re wrong. There you go. Is he a big lad?
[00:32:01.06] – Charmaine McC
6’4. Oh, shit.
[00:32:02.18] – Andi J
Anyway, I actually think you’re quite right, Martin. Keep going. There’s a guy in the audience here who’s looking for a LinkedIn consultant. No, but I do think, David, sorry, go on. I think you were going to say something. No, I’m just going to…
[00:32:13.09] – David L
Something with LinkedIn that I’ve, and I don’t want to try and pass this off as a tip, especially with LinkedIn gurus in the room. But what is working for me is, I need to think of a snazzy name for it, I haven’t got one, but writing, well, hopefully entertaining content that is the way that I would write if I was writing for a magazine or a blog or something. But then just having this one bit in there, which is the plug or the thing that I’m trying to… So that’s what’s working for me. Like the example you gave of the Maxwell garage thing, did all right on there. People seemed to quite like it. I wrote it as this love letter to Maxwell Garage. But just the one line that the reason I mainly did it was to let agencies in Hollywood know that I am now freelance and available and write stuff. It worked. With him, by the next day after I posted this thing and I tagged in, one was called Smart and one was called Ardmor. About 10-15 people from those agencies had added me. Then I went in and did a talk at one and I’m freelancing at one.
[00:33:14.01] – David L
I’ve done that a few times now. It’s almost just subtly inserting the sales bit into a load of entertainment. That needs a better phrase, but I’m getting nods from the LinkedIn experts.
[00:33:26.05] – Andi J
So that currently is something that works. But I think the other thing as well is that LinkedIn, as I understand it, is getting busier as a platform. As people are migrating from Twitter over there, maybe more frequently posting, different types of posts. There’s a whole sea of content out there that is easy to drown in of people being delighted that they’ve done something or that type of thing. So writing something in your way and in your tone of voice is the only way I know you can stand out, isn’t it? Just be you. Everyone else is taken. So tell Martin, you’re wrong. Yeah, you say that He’s not here, so I can keep telling him he’s wrong. So you’re getting into using a bit more social media. And do you talk to the shopping centres and people? Is that who you’re targeting with your social media work? Or is it the people who go to those shopping centres to tell them that you’ve got product there?
[00:34:16.19] – Charmaine McC
To be honest, we weren’t planning on getting into shopping centres at all. The product was to specifically targeting tourism and tourists. We went to a few organisations looking for assistance, and they basically said, We can’t help you. It’s not something we do. But when you speak to somebody and go, As a tourist, how often do you take pictures or call your family, use your phone for everything? How many times do you go, My battery’s almost dead, and there’s no way for you to actually charge it?
[00:34:50.24] – Andi J
The number of times I’ve walked out of pubs or coffee shops in foreign countries with my phone behind the counter and you get out and you go, Can I? Yeah, exactly. All the time.
[00:34:59.10] – Charmaine McC
We They thought, This is going to be exciting. Let’s do that. Then so when they said no, it was quite a blow because you were thinking, Well, so what are we going to do? We had no idea. I happened to be reading something online, and I noticed that you can do commercialisation. I went to my business partner who is my husband and my sister, and was like, Shopping centres? And they’re like, Yeah, but that’s not what we’re doing. What if we water down the product? And what if it becomes something that we are not planning it to be? And how are people going to perceive it? And I’m like, To be honest, I think it’s just put it out in the market, and then hopefully the more people see it, the more people will use it, the more people will understand its value to their lives.
[00:35:47.14] – Andi J
There is something to be said about what you’d call emergent strategy. The number of times you sit down and say, Our plan is to target these people, tourists, and we will find them this way, and you go, Perfect. Then the companies you want to work on now can’t do that. You’ve either got to kill the business or you’ve got to look at what’s emerging in front of you and find a new way to go. Small businesses are brilliant at that. Bigger businesses are terrible at it because the structures and the processes don’t allow them to move and adapt.
[00:36:14.05] – Charmaine McC
Thankfully, we didn’t have a lot of red tape, so it was like… Exactly. At the dining room table, so what are we going to do? Shopping centres. Oh, okay, cool. Perfect. Let’s try that. Thankfully, it’s working. Thankfully, it’s working.
[00:36:25.02] – Andi J
Excellent. And David?Do you know?Yes. My name is David. Yes. I thought you were going to add in on the back of that.
[00:36:30.17] – David L
No, I was just listening and enjoying it.
[00:36:32.19] – Andi J
That’s okay. Well, I’m going to take you back to your childhood now. Let’s go back to your childhood. You grew up in West Yorkshire, in Leeds, which is a place, and I grew up in Bradford, which for those of you, English geography isn’t great. They’re right next to each other. Slight rivalry. I would say Bradford’s a better city, but the reality is, Leeds is the bigger-It’s a rivalry in the same way as you could compare, I don’t know, David Beckham to a bowl of porridge.
[00:36:58.10] – David L
Yeah. You can’t compare Leeds and Bradford.
[00:37:02.12] – Andi J
Exactly. Leeds being the bowl of porridge. Sure. Yeah, something like that. There’s certainly a local rivalry, but very many similarities in terms of what life would have been like growing up there. So your parents, your mates’ parents thinking you’re Mexican. What was mixed race life like in the late ’80s, ’90s for you?
[00:37:23.21] – David L
Yeah, it was interesting. I guess when you’re that age, you don’t really the concept of what being mixed race is, other than seeing that your parents are different colours. For me, I would contextualise a lot of it around hair. Growing up, most of my friends had one type of hair. It was all quite a mixed school. I had white friends, I had black friends, but I was in the middle of the two. You can’t really tell now, but my hair grows out, it goes bit like an Afro, but more Bob Dylan than Bob Marley. You know what I mean? Yeah. But it was a bit confusing. I remember getting my hair when I turned 13. My mum took me to the Dalser soon. It was a big life thing. They like it. I had very… But it was a big exciting moment to get my hair straight.
[00:38:18.21] – Andi J
I was going to ask about because I remember being a similar age and all the cool kids had blonde curtains when I was growing up. I’m thinking, how do I make my hair do that? Was something that young Jarvis went through.
[00:38:31.09] – David L
I hope you didn’t do it because I did do it. I’d been looking forward to this thing all year. My mum took me there. It’s probably quite expensive haircut. They straightened my hair. It takes about an hour. They looked up and then burst into tears because I looked terrible. But I suppose the point is, the more serious point, is it just I spent a lot of time trying to look like these people and then these people are not quite fitting in. Yeah, it was confusing.
[00:38:59.07] – Andi J
My favourite My favourite hair story. I’ll just very briefly and then come back and ask you a similar question to what I’ve asked David, but Demolition Man, Wesley Snipes, probably 94, 95, maybe. He had blonde hair. I decided, I’m going to have blonde hair. Obviously, I’m not going to pay to go to the hairdresser to do it. My mate Katie Simpson will do it for me. We did it round at Katie’s house without enough dye or bleach or whatever it is that you do. It ended up going like different shades of blonde. I looked a bit like a cheater. We decided the only way to to shave it was to shave all my hair off. We took it down to a number two. First time I’d ever shaved my hair, didn’t work. Took it down to a number one, took it down to a zero where you could just about see what was left. I went into school the next day and shaved heads were banned in our school. So this is the mid ’90s. The skinheads were still banned. There was just a blanket ban on having a shaved head. I turned up at school and was sent from the classroom straight to the Deputy Head’s office and sat down there.
[00:39:58.21] – Andi J
The Deputy Head was fuming. And then she was like, We’re going to have to suspend you. I was like, I’ll temporarily exclude you. So then my mum got brought in and I wasn’t happy about this. I’d probably spent the three hours waiting for my mum to turn up because she had to get two buses back from work, just basically kicking off about being suspended. So there’s been a bit of a back and forth between me and the teacher, by which point I think she’s a little bit annoyed. So my mum comes in and sits down. She was like, What’s going on? Barking at me. And my mum is 5’2 and an absolute terrier. And you always knew if you were wrong, you were going to get it. But if the teacher was wrong, she was going to give it to them. It was just black or white for my mum. And the teacher was really annoyed at this point. And she was like, And he can’t have a shaved head like that in school. He looks like a neo-Nazi.
[00:40:46.21] – David L
At which point my mum just turned to me and went, Andrew, just gone wet outside.
[00:40:53.01] – Andi J
I just went, empty. And all you could hear from through the school door was just my mum I’m ripping into this teacher. It felt like it lasted an hour. It probably didn’t, but the teacher didn’t say much back, at which point my mum came out, dragged me home, and she was like, You’ve got two weeks off school. I was like, Off school? Suspended. But because the teacher had just made an absolute mess of this, I didn’t get it in the neck from my mother. So that was my attempt to blonde hair, my only attempt to blonde hair.
[00:41:25.09] – David L
Well, it’s a good look on you now.
[00:41:26.16] – Andi J
Thank you very much.
[00:41:28.04] – David L
I think we’d I mixed-I don’t know if you find it-If you could just go to the high shot, Allan, and so maybe everyone can see the… I find with a mixed race thing is, when you have to fill out these forms and say what you are, and I’m always other. But life, particularly growing up, was It feels like that. Sometimes you’d be in a room where… Actually, it still happened even in professional life. I’ve been in rooms where I have been the blackest person in the room, and it’s confusing that way. But then when I visit family got family in the Caribbean, quite often they’re in one of the small islands called Nevis. I will often be in the whitest person they’ve ever seen. It always just not quite fitting in can be confusing. I think it’s learning to navigate that. But yeah, it’s definitely. Every, like I say, always being the one. I don’t think it’s like one in 100 times going to an airport that I would not be randomly searched.
[00:42:24.23] – Andi J
I think it’s just because they don’t know where you’re from. The random selection is wild, isn’t I need to check the definition of random because it’s not when it comes to airports. As I said to you when we were prepping for this, I’m as white as I am black. I have a white mum and a black dad, but it’s interesting society’s view on that because I said, No one’s ever called me White Andi. You’re only ever seen in one way. As you start to work that out as you’re a kid, because it’s just life, isn’t it? Your mates don’t see that. But as you get older, people start to point things out to you or chase you home from school as used to happen in Bradford at some point.
[00:43:01.13] – David L
Yeah, I think my experience is probably different because I’m lighter skinned. I think sometimes I would confuse people. I’m the other way around, so my mom’s black, my dad’s white. Sometimes my mum would come pick me up from somewhere and people wouldn’t quite understand who’s that black woman picking up. That’s my mum. Yeah, no, it is tricky, I think. But generally, I tend to get more either like my mates when they think I’m Mexican or Middle Eastern is where people normally tend to.
[00:43:28.06] – Andi J
I’ve also got two half brothers twins and they’re both white, and the number of times you’d be sat in a pub and say, Oh, so who’s your mate? That’s my brother. Yeah, good one. No, he’s actually my brother. No, genuinely is. Oh, that used to happen a lot. Yeah. Sorry, shall I mean? Enough about Bradford and Leeds. You said you’re a second-generation migrant.
[00:43:51.04] – Charmaine McC
I am, yes. My mum came here in the ’70s and then went back home and then came back again and then brought us. So second generation.
[00:43:59.14] – Andi J
Got you. And did she go back? I’m just trying to think of it compared to the Windrush migration, which is what my family came. Did she come to work for a little bit and then come back to get you to come back? Or did she just like, I’ve had enough of that place, I’m going home and then decide, Maybe it wasn’t that bad, and I’m going back? No.
[00:44:15.21] – Charmaine McC
She came over because my mum is a nurse and very opinionated, 4’9 woman.
[00:44:27.09] – Andi J
There is something about the smaller the mum The stronger the opinion, isn’t it?
[00:44:32.14] – Charmaine McC
Exactly. She went to boarding school, was basically raised by nuns who were exceptionally strict. But then because she has that stubborn strict in her, she said the wrong thing to the wrong person and she couldn’t get a job. For a long, long time, she kept applying for jobs in Zimbabwe, and she couldn’t get anything. Then one of the priests at the school she had to basically said, Well, I think you should go to the UK. She was 17, 18 at the time. Coming from a family of 14, being the eldest daughter, and the only one who actually went to school is she got on a plane by herself, landed in Heathrow, and had an address, and she had no idea where she was going to go after that. The resilience and the ability to forge through comes specifically from my mum. But when I then had children, it was quite an interesting dynamic. When you say you’re not the whitest, or you’re the whitest person in the room at the time, or you’re the darkest person, so they’re starting going to school. They come home and they’re like, Yeah, so we start to… I don’t know how the conversation started.
[00:45:49.19] – Charmaine McC
I think they were saying that the children at the school were going, Well, you have a better tan than so and so. I’m like, It’s not a tan. That’s your skin tone. I’m like, So what do you think mommy is? They go, So mommy is brown? Then I was like, So what are you? It’s like, Well, we’re white. Then I was like, So what is daddy? They’re like, Daddy’s white-white. I’m Because my husband doesn’t tan and he’s very, very light.
[00:46:20.16] – Andi J
Classic Irish tan.
[00:46:22.03] – Charmaine McC
Yeah, classic Irish tan, freckles and all that. It’s like trying to… That’s the first time I love I learned about the inability to blend in as a mixed person. Now when I get forms from school, like the flu jab, tick a form, I’m like, They’re not on the form because they’re not just mixed, but they’re also not black and they’re also not white. It’s like, Are they mixed African? Are they mixed British? It gets quite confusing. It’s trying to navigate and teach them how that To teach them how to identify themselves and to get an identity because it can be quite daunting to not belong to either side.
[00:47:13.00] – David L
Yeah, for sure. I think maybe compared to… If you look at role models, I think as a kid, there were lots of white role models and heroes, and maybe coming a bit later, but there are also some black role models, but there weren’t many I found then a writer called Hannah Curriachi, but generally, there weren’t that many mixed-race role models, which in itself is… But I think one thing, maybe for your kids, one thing I found is as you get older, It feels, creatively, I think it’s a really… To be able to tap into more than one type of person is a cool thing. It’s an advantage.
[00:47:53.17] – Andi J
I think you’re right. I spent my early years, similar to you, looking for belonging and trying to fit into groups and only realising as you get older that actually, yes, being able to navigate that, but also being able to stand out is probably the way to go, and it’s actually really powerful.
[00:48:10.09] – Charmaine McC
Because being raised African, we were told never to stand out. Yeah. Just make yourself small, make high.
[00:48:16.17] – Andi J
And as a teenager, standing out is… When you’re a younger child and a teen, the last thing you’re going to do, you want to be in the cool group, and all the cool group, they all look like clones. They’re just all hair’s the same, jackets the same, shoes are the same. You don’t want to stand out. No.
[00:48:31.12] – Charmaine McC
Because it’s weird. I think there is a history attached to not standing out because I had been watching something during the Black Lives Matter riots in 2021, too. Somebody was talking about how… But then this is more… Weirdly, they were American, but they were talking about how parents of black children tend to downplay their children’s abilities. So even your child is like a straight A student. Someone’s like, Oh, my God, you must be so proud. They would turn around and go, Of course not. I mean, he’s silly. He doesn’t know how to do A, B, C, D, and he’s funny that way. He’s not. He’s just nothing special. So they’ll downplay you in front of other people. Apparently, the reason for that was because if you did turn on and boast it about your child, your child was then during slavery, would then be taken away from you. So it was a way of trying to protect your child by going, they’re not anything special. Then it’s interesting that that was in America, but it’s actually the same at home in Zimbabwe. But then probably because we were colonised until 1980, where we got our independence.
[00:49:42.08] – Charmaine McC
That train of thought was pretty much ingrained in. It was like, Don’t try and stand out. Be good. Don’t be too good.
[00:49:50.07] – David L
That is fascinating.
[00:49:52.09] – Andi J
Let’s reclaim that narrative, by the way. My daughter Keira is fantastic. Unbelievable. Brilliant. Great and netball, smart kid, almost as good as a dad. She’s fantastic.
[00:50:02.20] – David L
That generational thing, though, is really interesting. One area where I do agree with your really big tough boyfriend that’s going to knock Andi out is husband. Sorry. I’m in more trouble. I’ve downgraded him.
[00:50:17.23] – Andi J
A boyfriend’s not here. A boyfriend’s at the back, but a husband’s not here. Sorry.
[00:50:22.16] – David L
One thing I find from my experience of Irish people here is that I think there is There is a similar in terms of people… The bragging thing is, I think, it’s not as common. Compared to London, I suppose, where I spent most of my life, and LinkedIn, I suppose, is what we were talking about before, it’s just much more normal for everyone to be like, This is me. I’m the bet. These are the reasons why you need to hire me. I’m brilliant, all this. I find that here at all levels, from people who are junior to the most senior, it is a bit more frowned upon to be like, Oh, I’m great. It’s like, Oh, yeah, I’ve done that. But it’s like you I wonder how much of that is a similar in that generational thing.
[00:51:04.02] – Andi J
I once heard two guys in a pub discussing Rory McElroy, who’d just gone back to world number one. He was literally the best golfer in the world. He’d done a TV interview where he said, I’ve put a lot of hard work in and I’ve got back to the top of the rankings and it’s paying off. And one guy said, He’s lost the run of himself, bragging about it like that. He’s literally… There is no competition about this. He’s the best person in the world at the thing that he does. He’s allowed to say, I’ve put the work in and I’ve got back to that position. And to this guy, it was the biggest crime, lost the run of himself. That’s the one. That’s the one. That’s the one. Well, look, the time has flown by, so I’m going to pull up stumps to use a cricket metaphor at the moment, but I’m going to finish with one question for you. If you could recommend a resource, a book, a podcast, a social media account other than your own, that people should dive into, what would you recommend to people listening?
[00:52:02.17] – David L
Other than my own LinkedIn page that you could add on. Link in the show notes? I’m not going to put it in to plug, really. To be honest, I should have thought of something better than this, but the first thing that’s come to mind is I I’m obsessed with Snooker. I don’t know if there’s any other Snooker fans. Tough crowd, but I want one.My favourite playerIt’s a Dutchman. All right, okay. Snooker is a big fan. We should go and have a pint after. But my favourite player is Ronio Sullivan, His autobiography that I think is just called Roni, he didn’t spend too long coming up with the title for it, but it’s all about… Even it’s not about business necessarily, but I learned a lot from it in terms of imposter syndrome, but also this whole thing of getting out of your own way, which I think is a phrase people talk about now. He is the classic example. In the sport, he’s known as the greatest genius ever. He’s incredible. But a lot of the time he wasn’t winning because he was just in his own head and a lot about self-sabotage.
[00:53:01.12] – Andi J
Roni did some work. I’ll put the link to this in the show notes as well with a guy called Professor Steve Peters, who wrote The Chimp Paradox, which is a brilliant book about getting out of your own head, effectively. He worked with Chris Hoy and various other people and helped them go from being good at what they did to being the best in the world by getting round to that. We’ll put that in the show notes as well. Thank you. And Shalmaine?
[00:53:23.16] – Charmaine McC
I put it years and years ago, and it stuck with me. It’s called Surrounded by Idiots. By Tomi Erichson.
[00:53:31.15] – Andi J
Pertinent.
[00:53:33.15] – Charmaine McC
Well, the thing is, it’s more about personalities. The reason I bought it because the title was interesting. But then when you actually get into the book, it talks about how to deal with different personalities. You have your reds, your greens, your yellows, your blues, the impats, the leaders, the clowns. I think it’s a good book. For me, it was really good I needed to learn how to navigate the corporate world. I still refer to it quite a lot because I personally feel like I have constantly have to wear a mask. My mask is always constantly on. When I’m in public, when I’m at home and people see me at home, they’re like, You’re so different. I’m like, Yeah, there’s the home me, and then there’s the work me, and then there’s the public me. So that was like 15 million personalities.
[00:54:26.23] – Andi J
What are the secrets you kids see that you don’t show everybody? You can tell us in room and the tens of thousands of people listening. I promise we won’t share that.
[00:54:35.03] – Charmaine McC
The things that you don’t… Well, my sister says, Because I’m very unserious and I don’t try to take myself very seriously, I like to do cartwills and all sorts of random stuff.
[00:54:49.23] – Andi J
We need to go back to the wife, Charlotte. With my kids and all that.
[00:54:55.16] – Charmaine McC
When you see me and I’m all dead serious, it’s because I’m trying to just not I’m trying to make you think that I’m a serious person, to make you think that I’m actually, I know what I’m talking about. This sounds exhausting. No, it is. It is. But then, so this book basically taught me how to pinpoint what a personality type is for a specific person and then communicate with them that way. So I would definitely recommend that book. It’s quite good.
[00:55:25.02] – Andi J
Surrounded by Idiots, Chimp Paradox, Ronnie. Wonderful. There you go. What What a trilogy of books they are. So thank you very much for coming along to the podcast recording. Thank you for listening, watching at home. Can you put your hands together for David and Charmaine?
[00:55:39.21] – Charmaine McC
Thank you very much.
[00:55:45.15] – Andi J
It’s great doing it live. The energy is wonderful having an audience here, but you can’t have a podcast these days without asking people to leave you a five-star rating and review it. And if you loved it, go and send it to a friend. If you didn’t like it, send me a message and tell me why. I know it’s the guests. It’s usually their fault. Tune in next week. We’ve got episode three of the Black History Month mini-series coming out next Tuesday. See you later. Thank you. Thank you.