On Bwb Extra this week is Robin Butler, head of Impact at Sturgeon Capital, who we get to know a little better, both personally and professionally.
Robin tells us about how he came to be working in emerging markets, the challenges he faces around bridging the gap.
Between the perception and reality of countries that Sturgeon Capital are investing in, as well as hearing about his charity work with Horatio's Garden, who build bespoke gardens for spinal injury units.
All of that plus more.
This is where we wind the clock back a bit.
Okay.
Um, and sort of find out a bit more about you again.
How did you end up doing what you're doing?
More by luck than more by luck than judgment.
So, As I said, always really interested in history when I was at school and, but history at school in the UK is mainly European, Anglo-Saxon, um, uh, maybe the US if you're lucky, a little bit of Europe if you're unfortunate.
And, uh, they, um, I, I'd never really sort of studied any kinda Middle Eastern or, or, or Asian history.
But then took a year out after, after school, before going to uni, which I'd got in to do straight history and lived in Jordan for three months.
Learning, learning Arabic and loved it.
How did you, I mean, Like, did that just fall into you?
I mean, how did you That was through someone, uh, my dad knew from the Army.
Okay, okay.
Who, um, uh, is, is Jordanian and, and said like, does Rob come and come and stay?
Yeah.
Does he wanna come and sort of spend, spend three months here and we have a bit of a sort of, kind of job to keep him busy and he done a bit of Arabic and might be good for him.
Like, yeah, that sounds, that sounds pretty cool.
Um, so went there for three months, learn from Arabic, but also kind of got a, a taste for Middle Eastern history, culture, language, religion, and thought it was fascinating.
It just seems so much more interesting than European, hang on, religion, which Middle Eastern religion, Islam, I mean, is, uh, just something I'd never really, this is more than one Exactly.
I, uh, I grew up in, um, Shire, so, uh, a long way away from, uh, the Middle East and, and really much, much variety.
It's a wonderful place, but, uh, not exactly very, Cosmopolitan, but then so lived and then came back.
And when I got to university, I was like, actually, maybe this straight history thing isn't so interesting.
Added in me mid Eastern studies, added in Arabic.
Did that for three years.
Loved it.
Studied a lot of Iranian history.
So I thought, well, I can wanna go and live in Iran, um, and learn some Farsi.
And this was when the sanctions had been lifted before Trump was elected.
So went to Iran for a year, learned Farsi Trump got elected that killed the, uh, kind of opportunities there.
But after nearly a year, Was kind of looking for jobs and that's how I met the company that I work for now, because at the time we were investing in Iran, um, and that's what we were doing.
It was a nice path that life took you, I mean, I, is it planned or do you have a long-term plan?
I guess it's easy once you get to, to the point where I'm now and I can sort of say all.
Lived and worked and studied in and, and whatever in, in, in emerging markets for the last 10 years, but there wasn't some kind of grand plan that by the time I got to where I am now, I could, I could say that it, I was kind of doing things that I enjoyed and that I was interested in, which I think at that kind of university stage and, and just after I was, I was fortunate enough, fortunate enough to have, to have the ability to do, I mean, it's lovely if you have a, a job.
Yeah, interest you to that extent, and, and, and I'll get paid to travel to the parts of the world that I want to go to on holiday anyway.
So I really, I really, I really can't often that is, has a huge part to play in 20 year old job decisions, isn't it?
Yeah.
This job involves also flying on around the place, you know, but the time he hit 40, that's like, oh, nightmare.
What's the most misunderstood thing about what.
I mean on the, on the one hand of maybe this more general thing we can come onto it is, is the, the countries that we invest in are incredibly misunderstood, which I think is primarily because they only really make it in the news in the UK when something bad happens.
So Pakistan's in the news when there's floods or Bora for Kazakhstan or Bangladesh is sort of readymade garments and sort of fires in factories.
But actually, if you look at Bangladesh, Since that there was a terrible fire around 10 years ago.
Since then, they now have some of the leading safety in their, uh, garments, factories in the world.
But that's not in the news cuz No, no one, no one cares about that.
Well, to be fair to Bora, they initially tried to ban him.
He then, and then all these tourists started turning up and then tourist industry went through a 700% explosion.
But you're right, it's the mis mis, you know, the more we can get to know each other, the better and, you know, not lose identities along the way, I guess.
Yeah.
And it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's the lack of sort of, General, not, not, doesn't even need to be positive, but just sort of the, the, the realistic, uh, understanding of what day-to-day life is there.
Yeah.
What day-to-day challenges are.
I don't think if you said to any of us, describe what you know your life would be like if you lived in anywhere as Stan Kazakhstan and, you know, We'd have any clue at all.
No.
But if you, if you go there and you spend time with people and you realize that everyone's kind of, uh, ambitions and, and desires are pretty similar, that you want to have kids a, a family, uh, secure job.
It is trying to get more people to, to meet with and engage with people from, from those kind of countries and, and that, that helps bridge that divide.
And we do a lot of trying to take investors, uh, to these, to these c.
Speaking about it on, on podcasts, writing articles about it because it helps to bridge that gap a little bit.
Um, which is, which is one of, definitely one of the biggest challenges we face as a business is, is bridging that gap between people's perception and the reality.
Do you take investors out there and.
Stuff.
Yeah, we do.
We took, we had about 60 people in, in Oz, Stan in Wow.
You manage to get that many people to come out.
So some, some of them were our, were the founders of our portfolio companies.
Right.
Including from other countries.
And then the others were, um, investors from, from Europe, us, uh, middle East.
So kind of from all over the place and saying, look, come there.
And no matter how, how, how eloquently I talk about it or, or how persuasive I am, five minutes in US Pakistan is a hundred times better than me.
What's the biggest problem facing your.
One of them is that, that that sort of gap between perception and reality of the countries that we're investing in and trying to bridge that, I think that's become more difficult recently.
So the last couple of years, um, the sort of VC market was, was red hot?
I mean we're all sort of yeah.
Seeing, seeing from a public markets perspective, tech stocks doing phenomenally well and that was trickling down into, into private markets.
A lot of money flowing in a kind of, uh, lack of.
Diligence and discipline from a lot of investors in terms of the companies they were investing in and the, the, the valuation they were investing at, and that, that trickled through into our markets.
Unfortunately, there've been a few companies, which we always felt had kind of fundamental problems with their business models from, from day one in terms of their, their monetization models and their, and the unity economics.
Uh, but they were able to raise money because it was hot globally, or they, they had a kind of charismatic founder.
They now haven't worked out and it's created, it's sort of worsened that perception of, of, of these markets and that, so that's a challenge of saying, look, hang on the, the fundamentals haven't changed.
You still have young populations, high smartphone, internet penetration.
You have a lot of people coming online.
They want, they want to move shift from offline to online.
And that is a huge opportunity cuz even if these economies don't grow, they're multi-billion dollar tens or hundreds of billions of.
Economies that are entirely offline.
Yeah.
If in online becomes 10% of that, that could be a 10 billion opportunity.
And that's, that's what we're trying to, to try, trying to capture.
That hasn't changed, but perceptions in some ways have, have worsened.
And, uh, it, it is understandable.
I mean, they.
People were moving away from investing into the US because it was very expensive.
Now it's become cheaper to invest in the US and valuations have come down so I can understand.
It's like, well I was never really that keen on emerging markets.
I was just doing it cuz it seemed cheap.
Okay.
That person's a kind of tourist investor.
Then come back, sorry.
I like the description.
If we could tell, we talked a bit about how investors approach you, but you know, some, some artists would be thinking, What, what's the best way I should approach you?
Like, you know, and also what should they be sending you, like, um, you know, if, is it just to not waste your time?
So this is sort of founders looking, looking to raise money.
I mean, it's, um, much the same as anything in life.
The, the best way of getting in touch with someone is through some kind of warm connection because that warm introduction, and I literally had someone today message me, a friend in, um, Stan, who I know well.
And I, I like and I respect, messaged me to say, oh, have you seen this business from Kazakh?
I have actually seen it before, but because they just sort of reached out cold through LinkedIn and Allen wasn't really entirely sure what they were doing.
They didn't really sort of look at it in too much depth.
Um, it was also very early stage.
Now they've done a bit more, but it's coming from someone that I know, I'm sort of inherently biased.
This, this, listen to it, this filter system, and we have a filter system and we are not even really that aware of it.
But, you know, whether London and Partners or us as a brand or the clients we have, it's a very specific filter system and the quality.
Things it gives you is very good.
You know, almost always they're good quality, but not touchy.
No, you, you, you approach a cold message from somebody you've never heard of before in a very different way because you're immediately, Suspicious and immediately like, well, it's unsure.
Well this, and the reason you're unsure is there's a volume issue, especially in a market that's huge like Bangladesh, is that I have it.
So if you as simple as answer, if you advertise, advertise something, and then deal with the inquiries, the qualities.
All over the shop.
I mean, it's, it is, so much of it is a complete waste of time.
Or they've misunderstood or they're just like, no way.
They are be, you know, ever gonna be able to afford us.
Or, and so you have this problem, you're suddenly having these meetings cuz there's no way of making those meetings any shorter than like 20.
Even if you work it out in the first two minutes, you're stuck for 15.
You know?
And so that, and so filters in our lives are so important, you know, but the, the, the challenge then also, If, if you are purely kind of network driven, is the biases that, that then become embedded?
I mean, if you have a certain group of, of clients or a certain type of founder that you've invested in for the first 10 businesses you've invested in, and then you rely on those companies or those clients to bring the next 10 or 20, it's.
It's likely that there'll be, whether it's from a similar sort of economic social background or a similar business models, and you may, I dunno, maybe in, in your case it's only fine, you have a real concentration risk in a particular industry.
Mm-hmm.
And if that industry goes downhill for whatever reason, you sudden, oh crap, half half of our clients are, are now, are now struggling.
No, that happens to accountants.
Yeah.
Very kind of concentrated.
But on the other hand, you obviously want to.
If you become known as being the best people for a certain industry, then that's not necessarily a bad thing.
That means the the best companies come to you and you can build a significant business.
What are you doing about climate change?
Presumably traveling to all these places means that yeah, you know, planting some trees, motherfucker, there's, there's a bit of offsetting that, uh, needs to be and does, and does and, and does get done.
I mean, the sort of businesses we're investing in are not really directly focused on climate change and, and addressing those solutions.
Now, some of them may be businesses that operate in the logistics space, for example, and help.
Companies optimize their, uh, trucking movements on a niche example of a company we're invested in.
They're reducing the number of trucks that company has to send.
So they are having, but it's, it's not the sort of first, but the first step is they get the economy.
Yeah.
I mean, for a certain, it's not the core focus of the business.
It's, is one we're saying, actually, look, this is a good thing.
They're actually, we're doing on, we're doing on top.
Yeah.
But it's.
The reason why we're doing it in the first place, the reason we're doing is to make it more efficient so these companies can actually operate better and, and, and, and help them grow.
And actually, the way we're doing it is because it is more efficient.
It is, it is producing fewer, few fewer emissions.
Yeah.
I suppose sometimes I could be argued that thinking about.
Greenish issues is a luxury of the first world.
It is.
But then the, the ones who are most threatened by it are people in emerging markets.
And, and they also pollute far less.
I mean, but by and large, I mean, okay, China's now apart from China.
Yes, China, China's now an outlier.
But you look at the sort of African countries that are most affected by climate change, and they're also the ones that historically have omitted the least, um, and have the least capacity and capability to actually do anything about it.
Um, so it's, yeah, it's a, a incredibly com complex.
What are you most excited about for your business?
So we're in, we're in the process of raising, raising a new fund at the moment, um, which should hopefully be closing in the next, in the next couple of months.
And I think what's exciting about that is sort of talking about that, that downturn that you've had in, in sort of global funding availability and it's, it's sorting the wheat from.
Both in terms of people who wanna be investing in these markets, but also the founders that are building businesses.
But as I also said that, that the, the, the fundamentals haven't changed.
The size of the problem hasn't changed, and the ability of technology to solve a lot of those problems has hasn't changed.
So now's that kind of prime time.
Where the companies that do have capital that can attract the best talent, can really build significant businesses, which will have a meaningful impact on people's lives and, and ultimately become big businesses.
And, and the the intention is that, uh, we make money for ourselves and for, for, for, for our investors from that.
So while it's, while it's a difficult time, I think it's also a, a, a good time to be, to be investing in, in companies.
I think that's true anywhere in the world.
People say it was, oh, it was a great time to, to raise money and invest money the last couple of years.
I don't, I don't think it was, and this is, I'm, I'm sort of parroting so.
Uh, red on red on LinkedIn, but with such readily available capital, so many businesses were being founded and flooded with so much money that they weren't really building long-term sustainable, high quality businesses.
There was a lot of bullshit about, yeah, there was a lot of bullshit about it, and we, we all knew it.
Uh, or we still know it, you know, but, but the thing is, you always peddling hot air as a startup.
I mean, I've seen, I think we've all seen people manage to raise money and get there when it was just them.
You know, they've lost everything.
That business partner left and the bank, you know, and they've managed to persuade someone.
It was all dicky boo.
You know what, what you're, I guess what we're looking for as an investor is, is how are they thinking about the problem they're they're facing because, oh, you say, I was like, the minute they may have nothing and in six months the problem's.
Problem set will almost be entirely different.
Whether it's because of their business, they're evolving, or the economy and the, the, the environment they're operating in changing.
But it's that ability to adjust to those changing of problems, to to, to build the business or think about building the business in the, in the right way.
That's, that's what's going to make them successful in the long term.
And, and you can tell.
When you're speaking to a founder, if they have that kind of mentality, if they have that sort of attitude, or if they're really just sort of focused on the kind of here and now, and they're quite sort of narrow minded about things and they're dismissive of, say, competition or things that you bring up, and it's like, no, no, that, that's not important.
It's like, well, okay, I am pretty sure that it is gonna be important, but you shouldn't just be kind of dismissing things.
Offhand because you think you'll, it's your way or the highway.
Business Without Bullshit is brought to you by Ari Clark, straight Talking financial and legal advice since 1935.
You can find us@ariclark.com.
Yeah.
Have you mucked anything out big as fuck up?
Uh, a few years ago as, as, as a company, we, we tried to launch a fund, which, uh, didn't, didn't work out.
And it, it really didn't work out because we, we thought we had a very good idea, but we hadn't really sort of spoken to the investors, uh, about it.
And they were like, no, it's about it.
This is about it.
This is a bad idea.
And that was, It was pretty tough at the time.
We put like nearly year's worth of worth of work into it.
It didn't work out.
Soda.
Wait, when you delivered this, did you just deliver it all at once to all of them?
No, we'd, we'd been sort of trying, but we hadn't really, we hadn't listened just to pick 'em off one by one, you know, make them all think that no one else knows and then deliver it to all of them.
It's like, that's Machiavelli.
But yeah, it just, and it just didn't, it didn't work out.
I mean, the lesson was, And it's, it's true for, for any business if you try and your ideas may seem brilliant to you, but they need to be shapes and, and evolved in contact with the people who actually want to use them.
Whether that's investors for us or founders or clients or uh, potential buyers, whether there's are consumers or businesses.
Building something in isolation will almost certainly never work out.
I also think that's a really good argument for having co-founders in a business rather than just one founder.
Yeah, because you just get.
Tunnel vision and you can end up going down a random rabbit hole that's completely wrong.
Yeah.
But nobody's there to say What the actual fuck.
This is stupid.
But there's on this weird thing on the flip side, where actually sometimes that ability to ignore the sort of consensus view is what's actually required to build something that really changes how things, how things work.
So it's how do you balance the need to take on board feedback and, and adapt what you're doing and the inspiration versus actually just staying true to what you think is, is, is the right way of doing things.
It may not turn out to be that way, but a lot of the kind of bigger, bigger businesses that, that have been successful have taken an approach, which I mean, the sort of Teslas of this world, the idea of building a sort of significant new car company was, was crazy.
I mean, no one's done it for, for, for decades, but there, there was that kind of single-minded determination and, and that ultimately has led to it to a very large.
What's your passion outside of business?
Passion outside of business, I play a lot of sport.
Um, and then kind of link to that, do a fair amount with, uh, a couple of charities.
Uh, there's one that's sort very close to my heart, which is called, um, Horatio's Garden.
They, they build gardens in spinal injuries units.
It was set up in a, set up a memory of a friend of mine, so pretty involved with that.
And, uh, it's an amazing charity, like the impact they have on people's lives.
You spend, you spend a minimum six months in hospital, uh, with a spinal.
So these spinal injury units is where you are recovering from.
This is where you're recovering.
So you, you tend to have your injury.
You are the treated in a, in a, in a, in a hospital.
And then you go to spend six, 12, potentially 18, 24 months in one of these spinal injuries units.
There are 11 in the uk, um, spread out over the uk and that's where you go to spend 6, 12, 18 months.
And to begin with, you're almost certainly stuck in a bed.
Um, unable to get up to get around.
Potentially you're stuck in that bed forever or in a wheelchair forever.
And historically, these.
Didn't have any outside space, um, because you need to be on a perfectly flat floor and so you can't have cobbles or whatever.
And the, a friend of mine who was, he was killed when he was, uh, 17, his father was a spinal spinal surgeon in Salisbury at one of the units.
And he went and did a bit of work experience, uh, while he was, uh, because he, because he wanted to become a doctor himself and did a survey of the patients to see what, what it was that they, they most wanted and almost the universal responses.
We'd love to have somewhere we can.
Side because we're stuck in this ward with the beeping machines and the crying patients.
And our friends don't want to come and see us, and our family are upset every time they come in and it smells and all this sort of stuff.
And he did that survey and then he was killed, uh uh, about a month later, tragically and, and.
Not long after that.
I think it was his mom remembered this survey and him talking about it and thought, well, look, this, this is what we, this is how we'll, uh, remember him set up, uh, Horatio's Garden.
They built the first one in Salisbury, I think it was 11 10, 10 or 11 years ago now.
There are now six built, they, they're building the next one in, in Belfast at the moment.
So that's, we've got a few more to.
A few more to go.
I, I did a bike ride last summer between all 11 of them in 11 days, which was, uh, it was pretty cool.
Saw some bits of the UK that I'd never seen before.
It was, uh, but that's, that's something that, uh, outside of work that I really care about.
What's the worst piece of advice you've ever been given?
I think any and anyone or the sort of advice that, that some people would give at, at university, I dunno why this sort of come, comes to mind, that you used to do, you had to go and do one of those kind of grad schemes.
So you had to go and get, get on, get on the ladder, get on the ladder and, and sort of whatever.
And it's, I don't know.
Now, now when I look at sort of hiring people, if, if someone's been off living in a, living in a different country or, or doing something a bit different, I'm way more interested in meeting them and interviewing them than that person who's sort of gone and ticked the boxes and done whatever because it's like, okay.
And I know they're gonna be able to do the job, but I don't think they're gonna come up with anything new or innovative or be willing to, to fly overnight to another country and go straight into a meeting because they're kind of comfortable.
And I totally understand.
Like, I don't think it's sums up to getting hammered in Thailand that was,
but it's, it's, it's like a.
Maybe it's the rational thing to do is to find that sort of stable job nine, nine to five kind of thing, which, which I wouldn't, would never sort of say that that's a bad thing to do or it makes more sense.
But, um, I, I think to think that that's what everyone should go and do is, is incorrect.
I think if you have an interest in, in, in doing something a bit different.
Go and see some, some other part of the world or maybe just even a different part of the uk.
You've grown up in London the whole time.
Go and live in Bristol.
Go and live in Edinburgh.
Go and go and live somewhere else and, and put yourself out of your comfort zone and you're usually find you can do a lot more than you thought you could.
And what's the best piece of advice you're given?
Uh, come to people with solutions, not problems.
Oh yeah, please.
No, please.
Yeah.
But sometimes you only need to speak to people cuz you've got a problem.
Yeah.
And this is my wife, which I guess in the evening it is.
Um, don't tell.
Yeah, just don't answer me while I give you my problems.
Oh my God.
What is it with men in there then?
You know, men have this real thing that they have to solve it for you though, like late, you just want to have a bitch about something.
Yeah.
That's not like that.
Maybe you didn't understand that person properly.
Maybe they were just trying to be helpful.
Just let 'em get it off there.
It's taken me years to learn this and it's.
Starts in the evening.
It doesn't happen in the morning.
This starts in the evening.
Just as I'm gonna bed, this thing starts, you know?
And if you interrupt it or go, cause you like, oh, this will knock it on the, he, you know, you don't need to worry about that darling, cuz I've done X.
It's like, stop interrupting me.
What advice would you give your younger self?
I guess it's sort of linked to that thing of what, what was the bad advice, but like, just, just make sure you're enjoying what you're doing.
Like I, I dunno.
I think I've been pretty lucky that I have over the years where it's been sort of studying or working or traveling, been able to do things that, that I really enjoy.
But I guess it's maybe not just for younger self, but generally for people is make sure you're doing something that you're enjoying and that's challenging you.
Cause I think if you stop being challenged, then that's when you kind of go into this sort of, Well, I was about to say that.
Define enjoyment.
Enjoyment.
Like it's, that's quite a hard one to pin down.
I mean, you, you then said challenge, so challenge is more like, which except for me is, is, is, is what I enjoy for, for, for, for, for other people.
They don't want that.
And, but I think it's, it's trying to make, make sure you understand when you are younger, people are always fucking saying to you, you know, you don't regret the things you.
You did, you, you know, you regret the things you've never done.
And when you are like 25, you think, what the absolute fuck?
That's stupid.
But frankly, when you're 50, you think about it a lot more.
Anything we need to read, watch, listen.
Actually listening to a really good, uh, a really good podcast at the moment called Acquired.
And they, the latest one they've done is about L V M H and the building of it and, um, uh, Arno and how.
15 million, uh, initially, and that's now worth over 200 billion of his own money.
Um, that's his own kind of personal wealth, but fascinating how, who did that?
Bernardo?
The, the government, uh, the guy who bought, bought behind lvmh.
So it all stems from kind of France in the sort of, He, he was originally an engineer.
The family money was in engineering.
He then spent time in America and, and then sort of started putting together this conglomerate of luxury brands.
It's fascinating.
It's sort of three and a half hour podcast.
They really go into depth about each character and aspect of the story.
It's fascinating.
Really, really good.
Okay.
On the list now.
You always just wonder if they're all bastards, really.
You know what I mean?
No, but like, is it, is it, part of it is like, you know, do you, it's almost that you could do a test for how successful you're gonna be by working out how much psychopath you are because it's, there's a ruthlessness you often require, or.
Uh, a developed or ability to turn your emotions off because you're gonna, you, if you, if your emotions are switched on, you'll get stuck in your own jelly trying to make bold decisions.
Do you know what I mean?
Like what I may have upset Tim, with that last sentence.
I better back down a bit on that one.
That's, that's not gonna fucking serve you well if you wanna take over the world.
So that brings us to the favorite part of the show, the business versus bullshit.
Quick, far, round.
Deq, the music.
Robin, are you ready?
Ready.
Uh, this is where we're gonna reel off some key terms, and all you have to do is tell us whether you think of it's business or bullshit and you get one Bishop if you really must.
Uh, hot Desk King.
Sorry, baby.
Bullshit.
I hate, I think it's, I think, I think you Hot desk.
No, no.
And why is it bullshit?
Um, it, it's just like having, having your own space hang.
Just so much nicer.
My dog is just being hit.
Like, I'm so sorry.
Rome me over.
I still socialist and Oh, I know.
I think dogs are bullshit, but I'm so sorry.
What were you just not thinking?
You weren't thinking?
Uh, Bitcoin bullshit.
No, Bitcoin.
You don't own any Bitcoins?
I don't own Bitcoin.
It's Bitcoin.
It's the same question with each, do you own Bitcoin?
The underlying technology is fascinating and has a lot of uses, use cases, I think as a sort of store of value or whatever.
People, even in emerging markets, Bitcoin, where, you know, the local currencies could be, uh, unstable.
They just all use the dollar.
You don't, you know, yeah.
The moments sort of stick to dollar or stable coins.
I, I just think Bitcoin has a particular sort of hype, hype, hype.
Working hours.
Business MBAs learn, uh, business if you wanna build connections.
Bullshit.
If you actually want to learn anything useful.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, there's more fun ways to build connections.
I would vote than doing a load of really annoying American exams.
Yes, yes, there is.
Start with Tai Chi at your local, uh, think tank.
You were in one.
Well, you mentioned think tanks.
I did.
I did at one point, but they kind of flirt between the two.
There are some, there are some business ones, but there's also a lot of bullshit ones that, uh, are not really doing much thinking, asking favors, uh, business, uh, breakfast meetings.
Oh dear.
More breakfast meetings.
I, I really like breakfast, so if someone's gonna piss, someone's gonna take it off for breakfast.
Do you know us think he's gonna be a breakfast eater.
These breakfast eating motherfuckers, were never having breakfast.
Uh, microdosing.
Um, I guess, uh, bullshit.
Yeah.
Do, do, do something properly.
Uh, good answer.
Although moderation is meant to be good for you.
But, um, I think we've already established that that's not, yeah, that's not your No.
Uh, everything in moderation, including moderation.
Everyone forgets the last two words.
Flexible working.
Oh, business.
I, I'm a big fan of that now.
But you, like he's still getting your work done, but, um, just, yeah.
Uh, being able to have a bit more flexible about flexibility.
Hang on.
Your job involved flying around the world like James Bond on various time zones.
I mean, he's telling you what time to work, you know.
Is, is anything changed in your life?
No.
I mean, it's still, it's always been a case of just getting things done.
Yeah.
But that's, they notice if you didn't do it.
Yeah.
That's eventually, that's kinda the fortunate thing the company have, which I think is the right place where it's like, it's not like you have to be in the office for a certain amount of hours.
You have to get the work done.
Now, if you get that work done in six hours and versus eight hours versus.
At home on a Friday versus in the office the rest of the week.
It doesn't matter.
As in the end, if we're getting what needs to be done, done, that's what matters.
Okay.
Team outings.
One more.
It's kind of bullshit.
Most of the time.
Usually not well organized.
Haven't been on one of ours.
Uh, going viral.
Uh, bullshit NFTs.
It's bullshit.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And and they're, they're a nice kind of thing.
You get some cool ones, but they're the ones which are purely sort of digital things.
I, I, I think are, are are cool.
Whereas when it's sort of something that still exists physically, that's, that's bullshit.
Universal income, uh, was the other one you didn't wanna do first?
No, I was the microdosing.
I, uh, it's quite outrageous that one, I think the principle.
Business, the practical application of it's so difficult.
Is it half the beauty that we get away with all these complicated systems and just give everyone some money?
That that not the actual practical application, you mean the practical impact maybe?
Or, yeah.
And then, and the sort of nuance and, and how it would actually play out.
That's, uh, maybe it's a sort of aversion rather than bullshit.
Sort of, it's kind of the question in some ways is a fundamental thing of how, uh, much you.
Yourself or how much you trust humans to be like, okay, they've got this money now they're gonna be more productive.
And it's like, we probably trust everyone in this room to do that.
But, you know, it's hard.
It's it, it's hard to extrapolate it when.
You don't need many people to take the piss for the whole thing to fall apart.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
No, that's very true.
But, but I think it's what, how, how, how could that money be used elsewhere as like if you invested that money in education and increasing sort of access to opportunities and infrastructure such that actually you didn't need to provide so much support because people had the kind of skills and ability that, for me, is a long term more sustainable solution.
Whereas you shift to kind of.
Uh, that sort of universal income, well, I think in the short term can create some very positive impact.
What, what, what happens in sort of 20 years time?
Do you have to keep increasing that universal income because you're not actually increasing efficiency or capacity across the rest of the economy in society?
Business plans, uh, bullshit.
I mean, hell, I mean there, it's nice, it's nice to write things down, but how often do you actually stick to.
Okay, that's the end of the quick, far round.
You've got, uh, 312 points.
Oh, excellent.
Out of, out of 5,000, isn't it?
Uh, also, if anyone wants to learn more about Horatio's Garden and, and how they can get involved, whether that's, that's supporting it or, or volunteering at gardens, raising money for it.
Please get in touch about that as well, um, uh, with me or, or the charity.
It's really phenomenal the work that they, that they do and the impact they have on people's lives.
So, uh, either, either one would, would, uh, make me happy.
So that was this week's episode of BW b Extra, and we'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday.
Until then, it's goodbye.