Making the Blueprint - Season Finale!

What happens when the people behind Breaking the Blueprint turn the mics on themselves? In this special episode, producer Paul Banks joins hosts Vinay and Iqbal to uncover the story behind one of the most forward-thinking CX podcasts around. From retail beginnings to digital transformation, this honest conversation explores how purpose, vulnerability and human experience sit at the heart of authentic leadership and brand growth.

Together they open up about lessons learned, tech mishaps survived, and how courage and curiosity have shaped every episode. You’ll hear how Breaking the Blueprint began as a simple idea between friends and evolved into a platform that challenges convention, connects leaders, and celebrates what truly drives loyalty – empathy, trust and great storytelling.

If you’ve ever wondered how to build a brand with meaning, deliver customer experience that changes lives, or simply stay consistent when running your own business, this one’s for you. It’s a masterclass in resilience, creative thinking and leading with heart – shared by three people who live it every day.

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Iqbal on LinkedIn

Transcript

Paul 0:03

Hello and welcome to this week's episodes of Breaking the Blueprint or as we're launching it, making the blueprint. I'm Paul, the guy who sits behind the scenes for Vinay and Iqbal on Breaking the Blueprint, and we've decided to launch a, special bonus episode over the festive season this year. Because we want to show you a little bit behind the scenes. I would love you to understand a bit more of Vinay and Iqbal's journey, why they decided to create Breakingthe Blueprint, because I think it's a story worth telling and I love working with the guys on the Show. so this is not about me, it's about you guys. Vinay, what, tell us a little bit about yourself for anybody who doesn't know you. and if you don't like, what, really, why are you watching this? Seriously?

Vinay 0:54

Yeah.

Paul 0:55

I think it's a, I think it's a great story for everybody to start off with.

Vinay 0:59

people that don't know me, what are you talking about?

Paul 1:01

Exactly. Who are these people?

Vinay 1:04

so listen, I've spent I was 18. I'm 50 now, so since I was 18 years old, I spent my life working in customer service and contact centers and all things to do with customer facing and stuff. So I got my first job as a call center agent in a bank. it was HFC Bank, who you might, people? might know from the GM card, goldfish card. Marbles card was the first bunch of these credit cards that came out. So I spent four years of my life there doing various roles. I then went on to work for e.com for 10 years of my life. It's probably the greatest working experience I've had. life. was a greenfield brand new bank built from the ground up, no customers, but just launching something new at an exciting time. The first, the, start of the.com e-commerce world. I'm a 21, 20 2-year-old in this environment. thinking, what the hell am I doing in here? not university, I'm not university educated. I've got very little experience, I've just got a bit work experience on my belt. But gave me the platform to do so much. I got to, manage projects, lead teams, in early digital transformation, working with tech vendors, outsourcing, insourcing, I got involved in all sorts. and it was probably my, the primary education I've had working in organisations, both as a functional leader. And someone who's driving performance and doing all the things I've just said, but also, development as a human being and being a leader and understanding organisational culture and the impact of it. it was just, incredible. and then I spent, was up until 2006. done a couple of other roles in between, with tele performance and Britannic Assurance. And then I started to freelance, consult in 2006. needed a bit of a fresh start. A couple of things had happened in our lives. my wife and my, my life. And then, yeah, I started consulting. worked with different companies, a mix of associate work, direct work, works with lots of different companies, but all very much in that customer experience leadership. type work. and then in 2015, after partnering with customer whisperers, who set the business up and I met back in 2013, 14, I think it was, did a project with UK Power Networks, Boohoo, red Row, and a couple of others that I cannot remember at this stage. And then we partnered on National Express and I went in there with the intention of we were just doing a customer experience session for two hours at the conference. And I really liked what we were talking about. We got invited back in to talk about a project. I ended up doing an interim gig there that was only supposed to be a few months, and it turned into an eight year career where I ended up being customer office chief customer officer by the end of it. And there I got involved in, again, organisational change driving, driving a more customer centric culture, so bringing customer from the app, from the sidelines to the center of the organisation, transforming customer contact and customer service. Digital transformation. So I led the whole insourcing of digital product design and development. So we went all agile and we brought teams in. I started an innovation center. I was in MD for a couple of years, and then in 2003 I left after we had big reorg and it was time to go. Anyway, I'd been there eight years, seven years longer than I planned on being there. and, looked at the market thought, I want another exact role or I, had a bit of unfinished business to do from the last stint of being, self-employed. So I set up then Dhruva star, When you and I first worked together, and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a little while. then April this year, I acquired a majority staking customer whisperers and rebranded, after Nick and I had, who had, we'd always joked over the years about working together at some point. the timing was right. Nick's off doing something else. She's still involved in the business in the background, but I run the business day to day now. customer whispers is my, consultancy business. And I do loads of public speaking as well, so people have probably seen me at events and conferences and stuff speaking from the stage. my whole gambit is all about how do you get customers to come back, tell their friends and spend again. and predicated on the idea that the product to customer experience is memory and it's memories

Paul 5:47

Yep.

Vinay 5:47

our future decision. So I'm very much approaching this from a more. Psychological neuro neuroscience, neurobiology kind of leadership and culture perspective. then during that journey, there was a guy who was running a company called Evolve CX, who asked me to be on his podcast. and so I did. so we met, and then I'll hand you over to who was that guy to talk about his journey. And then we can tell you a little bit about how this all came about.

Iqbal 6:20

thanks Vinay and nicely, transitioned across. so, my background, very similar to Vinay. Actually. My very first job was working in a call center, for a, an up and coming telecoms company based in London Docklands. And my job was to handle customer complaints. Imagine that coming into your first job and your first job is to handle complaints. And, much, it shaped me in terms of, how I then progressed on in my career later on. But being able to help solve their problems is where it all began for me. in terms of my kind of working career standpoint. Outside of that, my love for technology has been there since I was a little kid, graduated, where with a computer science degree and that kind of went on to lots of different types of tech, technology, jobs, my kind of passion. Kind of what I realised when working within that call center and other jobs that I did, I, obsessed by experience and I know our focus is about customer experience, but actually it's about everybody's experience. It's your experience as a user when using any technology to actually a customer, then being exposed to the technology that you are exposing to you, to your customers as an organisation. That to me became a bit of an obsession around how can we use technology to really make lives better for people. that's the ultimate goal. And regardless of what I've done throughout my career, that's, always been a big focus. it just happens to be that I've, leaned towards customer experience as a technology. That, that's because I, love the impact that, that, that actually has on, the bottom line from an organisation standpoint. but more importantly, I just feel like the, we are so behind as, civilisation when it comes to handling. things in life when it comes to solving your customer's problems. so, now over the years, my most recent role at, Zoom, which where I was for about four, four and a half to five years, I built out as a lead, within the leadership team there. I built out, a team of CX solution engineers where actually we, our ethos and culture was all about, let's put technology aside. Let's really understand the problems we're trying to solve here, and genuinely try and figure out how the technology can help. And, again, late last year, I decided to, make a decision similar to what VIN A did. gone, have gone on alone. So that's paved the way for evolved cx. ultimately the goal for this is I'm building out e. A technology focused consultancy to help organisations get, big maximum value out of, investment in technology when it comes to making the right decisions, it comes to figuring out, direction they wanna go in. I think the market at the moment is full of choice. there's so much choice you can, nobody really knows which direction to go in. tend to go with what you know, generally speaking. but wouldn't it be great to just work with somebody who has experience across lots of different technologies and and somebody who takes the time to actually understand what you're trying to achieve first, rather than shove technology down your throat. And I think that's what we are seeing a lot of. something that I'm seeing coming from, working in vendors, working with partners who are selling this technology. The focus is more around. How do we hit our quarter number? How do we sell more licenses? That's the focus naturally, right? With any business. That's got to be the driver. we've got to flip it. this is what I'm trying to do. It is easier said than done. Actually. I don't want it to be about selling more software. let's see if I can fix your problems. And if it means that, we as a business can make money by selling you technology that actually solves your problem, drives revenues, delivers great experiences to your users and customers, that's a huge win for us, here at Evolved.

Vinay 10:30

Awesome.

Paul 10:32

It is a, it's a.

Vinay 10:33

I suppose that leads us nicely onto, I suppose you were gonna ask, how did the, podcast come about? This idea come about? So in a similar way to Iqbal's Drive being about solving problems through technology and completely right about flipping that model in its head of solving problems rather than just banking revenue based upon seats, which of course, businesses have gotta make money. what's not wrong with that? My thing has always been about enriching human experience. And the reason I say that is, is that, things happen in all of our lives, but I had a couple of things in life, it just made me look in the mirror and. life's a one time opportunity, right? And experience that we have and the way that we touch people's lives is what they remember us for. They don't remember us. For all the trinkets and things that we had and the bank account we had, that's what we remember. And the, same. a lot of our time we spend dealing with organisations and companies in our daily lives. And those moments are so poor and they have an impact on people's lives. And I'm just like, if you can improve those moments that people have with the organisations, two things happens. One, you enrich the, life of the individual. You give them a better quality of life'cause they have better experiences and live better. But you also, the businesses do better'cause they're delivering greater experiences and people talk about them in a more positive way, and, come back and refer them. And we've all had those moments around dining room tables, around pub tables, around, tables, any kind of table or anything. When we gather together that we share those experiences about movies, books, we shop with, places that we go. They're all that. And what I found over my career was, is that in many cases that thing that we wrap up as customer experience, two things had happened. One, the term had got hijacked by tech vendors and some, people that were just rebadging customer service and contact centers as customer experience. And secondly, it was being undervalued as a thing that you did on the side that was just about being nice and the fluff that you put on top. And it wasn't really seen the valuable commercial lever that it is in a business. it's part of your growth strategy. do all the hard work of attracting customers through the door in the first place, but then if you don't deliver an experience that brings them back. And, I was saying to somebody the other day, the worst kind of experience that you can deliver is one that you just describe as, okay. I'd rather have one that was shit that somebody writes to me and tells me was really poor that I can learn from and fix. a really great one. But all that effort to just get an okay, that's that's the worst crime. But yet companies are delivering between a five and out, five out of 10 and a seven and a half outta 10 experience every single day. And they're thinking it's okay, but all the effort to get the customer through the door. the kind of the of the backdrop. And then, so where Iqbal and I connected on his podcast, we, had a really great conversation and off the back of it I was like, these are really good. We should do this more. Because we had really good conversation and he brought real good tech angle to it and, I brought what I bring to it. And then the idea of breaking the blueprint was born because we wanted to break out the typical conversation of NPS csat, do this, don't do that. The stuff that we were just seeing, flying up and down LinkedIn. a much more broader, nuanced conversation to bring customer experience into the center. And this idea of customer loyalty to the center, which is, this is much more about the, entire end-to-end journey. This is about, front end backend, the inside, the outside technology people, all of those kind of things. So we just wanted to bring an interesting set of conversations and those people that aren't normally associated with CX and customer loyalty and those to give them a window in and a. way of connecting with the kind of things that we talk about. and hopefully, the profile and raise the value of what customer experience really represents in organisations.

Paul 14:21

I love that. I love all that, and there are so many. Connections between all of us. Iqbal you mentioned your journey starting in computer science. I'm a tech person. I started out in software engineering. I've never, actually, never actually programmed, coded in anger. So I'm a failed software engineer because the irony is when I left, university, I decided that I didn't want to sit behind a desk the rest of my life. That sounds incredibly boring. I wanna go and work with people and to be a people person. And I went out and worked in a call center. I did 11 months in a call center. I worked on Yorkshire Electric right in the middle of their super complaint

Vinay 15:02

Oh

Paul 15:03

that was fun. I can tell you, working on pre-pay meters that, that we going through was super compliant. and so yeah, that was a baptism of fire and I left that role, because my, I met my wife there, right? I met my wife and she's the reason I left that role because we can't work together in that way. I was not at a level of ethics and morals that lived to her standards. At that point, it was okay for us to be together, but not for the working part, right? So I left and I went into retail. And much the same as what you guys have said is I found that I was leagues above everybody else in my capabilities because I dealt with all of these customer service and I'd been trained how to talk to people. I knew what good and bad was in terms of a customer experience. And although I'd only been there 11 months, you take a lot in, you have to absorb, you'd sink or swim in that environment. And then I find retail's very much a similar environment. It's very high stress, very much dealing with things that there's nobody else coming to your rescue, right? You have to be able to deal with it there and then,

Vinay 16:08

Yeah.

Paul 16:09

but you're also in a leadership capacity then responsible for the customer experience within your environment, whatever that looks like. So it's, ironic that we've all ended up on the same path together in and then been joined together. And I love the fact that you guys got thrown together through a podcast. And I see this so often. I love podcasts for their ability to connect, personalities. Paths, experiences and, bring those to the boil so you can see what it is that, that everybody's made of. And time. And I see this time and time again, people connect either because they're a guest on a host podcast, and actually they realise afterwards that, oh, we're really aligned and I didn't realise how close we were until we just had that brilliant conversation. Or you are a member of the audience and you see the, guests or the hosts talking about things and it just sparks your curiosity or your imagination, or it speaks to the real challenges that you have. But what really aligned with me for you guys and the podcast that you have is I, spent, what, four years as sales slash marketing. I was, a, senior solutions consultant straight out of retail. I, dunno how that works, but I was, I was, selling conversation analytics, right? That was, my, role. And it brings together everything that you guys talk about. So the fact that we were all introduced, it's not, it wasn't, look, it was certainly engineered, but it was very serendipitous. is what I'd see is'cause we all get each other and I love the content that you guys create. I get it. And I love the angle that you bring to it because I know, there's a lot of my audience, and when I say the word AHT, a lot of my audience would be like, what? but we've all done the customer service scores, right? We've all had the email, Hey, you've just had your, MOT from us. How would you rate the service that you received?

Vinay 18:13

Yeah.

Paul 18:16

I, my car was okay and it didn't need anything fixing. Thanks.

Iqbal 18:20

Yeah.

Paul 18:22

great. okay. Six. what's. if, you could see, and I'll throw this open to both of you, right? if, you could see an impact from the, breaking the blueprint in a real life example, what sort of things would you hope to be achieving on behalf of your, audience?

Iqbal 18:46

I, I think a couple of things for me may, maybe as an unexpected answer. It's, for me, it's helped, it's helped me build confidence actually in my ability to, talk about subjects which are perhaps out of my comfort zone. Sometimes, I get the technology stuff, you give me a problem, I'll find the technology to fix that problem. Like that, stuff I can talk about all day long. But when it comes to going outside the, that, that. the boundaries of seeing what impact technology really has on the stuff that Vinay talks about. for me personally, I've learned hell of a lot, through stuff that, Vinay shared and the guests that have come on. So it's been a personal journey for me, if nothing else. that's been a great positive for me on that front. on, another point, always, I'm coming across people all the time and they're saying, yeah, saw your podcast, like every, everybody's been very supportive in what we're trying to do as well in terms of trying to being brave enough. And I think that's the one thing that I get the feedback that I always get is, wow, you know what, what you guys are doing is pretty amazing. and obviously to me it doesn't feel that way to me. It's We're just having a conversation and we just happen to put it on, online. If people wanna listen to us, great. If not, no problem. But more importantly, as you said, we'd like people to get value from what we're trying to share. I think we're still trying to shape what this is we're into the first tier. It's not, it's, a little bit imperfect at times. And I think, where I guess Paul, your support's been very useful in being able to us in the right direction as to what we can do really well, what we're not doing so well. some of the technology mishaps we've had along the way. So I think we, we've learned ahead of a lot, like in all honesty to, I dunno, what, do you think

Vinay 20:38

Yeah, loads. technology mishaps. It's normally me that, puts my camera on, what was it that I did when I recorded a

Paul 20:46

lapse.

Vinay 20:47

time lapse and then recorded the whole keynote in Time lapse. and it's one of the best I've done. I was like, damn. And then, fails and all those kind of things. So Yeah. learn absolute loads. I think for me, a couple of things. ever since I was a kid, I've been looked at as somebody that is just never short of ideas come to me. somebody once said to me, you have more ideas in a minute. Than people were having their lifetime. Like you're just, you're full of just great ideas, so many of those ideas get written down on a page, put in a book, and they sit on the shelf here in a notebook and never come to life. So for me, the fact that we got this off paper into something was huge. And I was listening to Brene Brown this morning on a drive down, and she was on a podcast with Steven, ironically, on a podcast with Steven Barlett, and they were talking about, vulnerability and courage. And vulnerability is the emotion that we feel when something's uncertain. we have anxiety and it's, and, it's, we feel an emotion about it, right? it's the feeling we get from uncertainty, anxiety, and the unknown, right? And I think part of the process of this was getting comfortable with putting content out there that you then can't control. You can't control how people look at it. You can't control how people respond to it. You are putting your stuff out there. So when you hit the launch button and you send it out there, there is that level of. what have I done? What have I said? What have I, what's gonna happen? So I think for me, the development of being comfortable with that and using that courage or vulnerability as a strength, has been really, key. I think, in terms of what I want the podcast. So what I, would love the post to do is to move the conversation from CX that I see every year, every January when a report comes out, 65% of executives say CX is a priority, 72% of, and then the buying free is never there. And, CX departments live as a function in the corner of the room away. And I really wanna bring more people to the conversation so that they embrace it and understand that it's a role that everybody fulfills in an organisation. Everyone has an input, a role can get into it, whether you're front office, back office, like I said, it doesn't really matter. But it, becomes part of the thing.'cause for me, CX isn't a function, it's cult, it's your organisational culture. that's what it's, the, it flows all the way through. So it's changing the conversation, bringing it more to the middle. Helping people like me who were CX leaders or like us who are CX leaders in organisations with ideas and ways of framing stuff that help them to get stuff done is the key thing for me.

Paul 23:27

Yeah.

Vinay 23:28

value and viewpoints, helping them to connect the dots between, we've improved satisfaction, but actually it's got revenue impact and how do I express that And how do I talk about it? how, do I get cybersecurity team involved and interested in why they should be thinking about CX and, space and all those things and, elements of it. So bringing that variety of guests different viewpoints together, has been amazing for me. And then the third bit, just as for me. It's the learning. when I once had a friend who was a coach who said, when I'm coaching customers or co coaching clients, I'm often coaching myself. And in this process I'm interviewing guests and asking questions and I have a view and whatever, but I'm learning so much all the time from other people. and it creates new ideas and content stuff. So it's a great process and I love it. It's one of my favorite days in the calendar is when we get into the studio, hit record on those cameras, get the guests sat down, make a cup of tea, and just, have a great conversation. I love it.

Paul 24:35

And I think it's, you, talk about the tech failures a bit, right? oh, you guys keep me busy. You guys are always finding ways to, to give me a new challenge. And I love it. I love it. there's, always a surprise, but I think it's been incredibly brave of you guys to, attempt to do as many episodes as you have in person, right? There's a lot of podcasters out there who will settle for the remote version of what they're doing, and there's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with that remote version, but I do believe you get a higher quality of conversation. Higher quality of output from doing it in person. but I also think there's a misconception out there that a lot of people think, if you go to a professional podcasting studio, there's no tech problems, then it'll be nice and easy and simple. And actually,

Vinay 25:26

case.

Paul 25:27

yeah, a hundred percent. So the irony of all of this is I've helped you guys through doing your in-person podcast, for the majority of these episodes, which I've never run an in-person podcast, so I'm making things up as I go along, things that I know, things that I've learned. And then the irony is for one of my current clients is I've, actually agreed to horse, I was telling you guys before the episode, I've agreed to host on the client's behalf as a one-off. It's a passion project as well as a client. And so I'm going in and, setting up. I don't even have the luxury of a, podcast studio, right? I'm having to set up kit and equipment myself for the recording and everything that's going through my mind is, don't do that.'cause that didn't work. Don't do that m'cause that fell apart. Make sure you've got some redundancy. I'm going in with five cameras.

Vinay 26:16

Yeah. Yeah.

Paul 26:17

I'm aligning five cameras, three different audio sources, and I'm like, yeah, this is, I've got one opportunity to record this and I'm gonna make sure it happens. So I think it's a learning curve for all of us and I've thoroughly enjoyed being a small part behind the scenes for you guys.

Vinay 26:34

what you said just reminded me. I was telling my nephew this story, who's, my nephew just died, DJing. I used to DJ back in the day, and I was telling him about the fact that I used to carry a box of spares fuses, like speaker parts. I remember at one gig we were playing and the speaker blew, and my, mate used still playing and I've got the speaker on its side, opened it up, got a soldiering eye in and trying to fix this speaker in the moment at this party in the back end.

Paul 26:59

I love it.

Vinay 26:59

just, yeah, and you just, yeah. Things like that happen, don't they? You just how you deal with it.

Paul 27:04

But it's even just down to little things like saying, like you would in a normal conversation. Now I get to see the transcript on the back end when we're all edited, right? And the amount of ums I have to take out, so that the words don't have the word, in the middle. It's just those tiny little things sometimes as well. All those. So you'll see when I sit doing my podcast, I put myself on mute or I don't say, I keep my mouth shut. and I still say, and I've had to train myself to do that as much as I can.'cause it makes my life easier on the end.

Iqbal 27:35

Yeah, that's a good tip actually. because it, it's very easy to fall into that track, especially when you're in person. I think it because you, forget the cameras are on and we're, recording a conversation where we're so into the conversation that when you just gotta remind yourself not to do the s and I'm sure I'm one of the culprits, Paul, that you're having to constantly, the ums from. But it's, yeah, it's those kind of habits you wanna ideally remove then, you're not having to, interrupt the audio. for those that are listening, I think it's, these kind of tips, like this are so useful, to adopt and learn. And then, ultimately we want to try and deliver a high quality. Podcast. And that's the reason why we've done the in-person thing. actually it's been in some ways because of the tech problems we've had with mics and, the phone stop recording and things like that. had all sorts of things happen pretty much every episode. I'm sure there's been something that's gone wrong. but that wasn't expected. Like when we went into this, we were thinking, yes, as you've said, in person, we're in control of it. It's gonna be more reliable, the audio's gonna be better. But actually you could argue that doing a video call like this, it's consistent. but you miss out on the, kind of, the engagement you have with the person that you are speaking with. I think

Paul 28:58

Yeah,

Iqbal 28:59

bit that you miss out on. So it's

Paul 29:01

agree.

Iqbal 29:02

that we've been able to do it in person.

Vinay 29:03

Yeah, definitely. And I think the other thing that I've enjoyed is the guest preparation side. we don't script the podcast. It's never about, here are the questions we're gonna ask you, give us these answers. We start with an idea and an angle and two questions, and then we roll from there. So it's, all very, natural conversation, which is what we wanted to, but actually what the, the. bit about the in-person that really works is because we've done that upfront preparation with our guest email or a Zoom call or whatever. When we get into the room, there's chemistry already there, and

Paul 29:38

Yeah,

Vinay 29:38

carries on through to the rest of the podcast. So you're not like warming the car up in the cold, on the podcast. It's already warm and you're, ready to flow. So yeah, I think that works really good.

Paul 29:50

I think it's, I think it's a nice balance for you guys, but I also wonder how hard is it to manage, customer workload, driving a pipeline as you run your own business, right? Like you drive your own pipeline, your market and your sales, all the stuff that comes with all of that personal life. And then managing to get there in person, along with managing two other diaries.'cause there's three people involved in this. It's not even just two, it's, there's a third complication there as well. It's, been tough at moments, right?

Iqbal 30:23

yeah, I think from a, it's, we've been quite fortunate actually, because I think, obviously because we're doing our own thing, there's flexibility there. when you're in full-time employment, it's very, it's, difficult make that time during the day. So I think that flexibility's helped. We've always tried. As flexible as we can with our guests, much as we can. v a's come down to London when I've not been able to go up and vice versa. I've coincided that podcast with a customer meeting. So we just kind of balance things off and as Vinay said, it's for us, it's one one day a month. We try and plan it a couple of weeks in advance. so generally, so far we've not had any cancellations or anything ever even over, I think we've

Vinay 31:08

no. what it does do for me is I think I might, I've shared this story, I might have even said it on the podcast, if I have. I'm sorry, I'm gonna repeat it again, but I'm sure I've spent it. Said it to you too. My daughter, once looked at me and said she went, dad, I figured it out. She said, you're like a Chrome browser. You keep opening up all these tabs. And some of them are still circling and loading'cause I'm constantly everything. cause I kept saying to her, every time you interrupt me and ask me something, it's now another thing on Milia goes, I just open, I keep opening new tabs. So I feel like I have this, when we first started it was like another tab that was open that was called podcast. And so I'm continually thinking about do we get on to talk, what's the angle, what's the idea? And there's always a, thing that worrying around in the background. But I think the nature of running a business is just that you are like a Chrome browser with a bunch of tabs open, director, finance director, your director, your sales director, you're all of those things. So I think it's, it forms part of that. but, doing our own thing has been helpful. I think our flexibility towards each other, I think, and this is where partnership really comes in, that understanding of each other, flexibility to travel up and down, work things out between us. we have a quite a relaxed attitude towards, to that, to, between the two of us, we know, even when it comes to paying invoices, we, we work that out between us and, we've not really, we've not really had to tackle anything too sticky or a bit of a problem. But yeah, I think from the offset, what was really important is we set out from the beginning. Here's how we're gonna approach it. Here's the style that we want to have. And we just set, I guess if we look back on it now, I don't, I didn't, don't think we knew this at the time, but if we look back on it now, what we probably set out was a set of design principles that we've just stuck to and said, this is how we'll approach it. And if I was gonna do this again, and if anyone was looking about doing a podcast again, I would say to them, take the time to just get your, what's the objective of the podcast? what do you want your audience to get from it? What are your design principles? And no non-negotiables about what you want it to be like. And if you don't have that, if you don't have that documented down, then it's, then you're gonna be all over the place. I think getting that documented down at the beginning is really, important. And we spent time backward and forth on a shared Google Doc, just Writing ideas and we'd do this and we'd do that, and then we went, no, we, we always wanted to make it in person. For all the reasons we've described, we're quite happy to be London or Birmingham. it doesn't always have to have a guest, but we'd love to have a guest most of the time. Yeah. and I think we've just split the responsibility of finding guests and stuff. I think I'm, now constantly just looking and listening out for interesting people and conversations and go love them on my podcast. I'd love them to get on my podcast. I've got a list of people who I want to get on. some of them a dream shoot that, I won't never, ever get. but I think a lot of them will be able to get on and I really enjoy talking to them.

Paul 34:15

I think once you've been running a podcast for a while, that does naturally come. I think it's a big worry for a lot of people at the beginning. If you can have guests on the podcast. I remember worrying about it. and I remember having to do a lot of called outreach to people so I could, mine's weekly, right? so it's imagine, what you guys are doing times four. And that's, where I was at. And it was, I, wanted to be like five, six weeks ahead. So I needed to get half a dozen in the bank before I start to release. And I think at one point I was seven months ahead on my release schedule. That's calmed down a bit. Now I'm, probably back to about six or seven weeks again, thank goodness. But, I think what was originally a lot of called emails called LinkedIn messages to the right people has now turned into, oh, I know someone who'd be a great guest on the Show, or You should meet this person over here. Or, my podcast is not, it's not well known. Don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna blow my own trumpet. it's, pretty niche. But like the people who do enjoy it are big champions of it and will actively go and find me guests. So I find them dropping into me and it, I think after a little while, you guys have what, 10 episodes deep now coming up this month, gone.

Vinay 35:27

11.

Paul 35:31

if

Vinay 35:33

There you go.

Paul 35:34

I think, it's now probably for you guys, reached a bit of a perpetual motion, right? Like it, it'll self sustain with the guests a little bit and you'll find people come to you as opposed to having to go and hunt everybody down. But your reputation starts to precede you a bit as well. And there's substance there. You people can go away and go, oh, Yeah. These guys have been going for a while now. Yeah. Oh, actually, whereas some before that there might have been a bit I dunno.

Vinay 36:02

been, it's actually been also a really great I do a lot of speaking, a lot of speakers talk about having a book as a big business card, and it's a way to get stuff in front of clients. This has been great. if I share nothing else with a client or prospective your prospect, or even just somebody I meet at a networking event, I'm like, oh, by the way, I run a podcast. Oh, what do you run it on? Here it is. Take a look at it. And it's a great way of people getting a feel me and for Rick be, and what we talk about a bit of exposure ideas that we have in a really non-intrusive way that they can just get that.

Iqbal 36:36

Yeah.

Vinay 36:37

I think different to a book, like the limitations of a book is when you read text stuff a page, you read it in your own voice, or you imagine the author's voice words can mean different things and different pronunciations, the different way you past it and stuff. a podcast, you've got the full thing, you've got the visual auditory, and you've got the kinesthetic. You've got all three, forms of, emotional connection. And get much more of the, essence what people are talking about and the message, and you're not left down to interpreting what somebody may have written or

Paul 37:09

Yeah.

Vinay 37:10

written.

Iqbal 37:11

I think it's the rawness of it, right? As you've just pointed out. What people get to see is, unedited most parts. but ultimately they're getting to see the real you in terms,

Paul 37:25

Yeah.

Iqbal 37:25

is edited, it's been reviewed, there's a ghost writer, most likely they're not really getting to see

Vinay 37:31

Yeah.

Iqbal 37:31

about. Yes, it, they get your view on whatever topic you are on. But in this kind of conversation, I think it's quite, for me, I feel quite exposed, like in all honesty. that's how I feel like, know Vinay, you are more accustomed to, and being able to speak in front of a, bigger audience. That's, still quite alien to me. I don't do that as often. stepping into this, honestly, it is outta my comfort zone, but I'm pushing myself because I think you've got to. First of all, try different things. As you've said, it's one thing, having great ideas, execution is another. And that's what I think we've been trying to do. the other thing I wanted to mention actually is the guest thing. I, find this really interesting because I, feel like we've approached a lot of people and pretty much everybody's always said yes because everybody loves to be on a podcast. I find, and the most interesting one for me was, I dunno if you know a guy called Mark Sumner who's a, he's a technology recruitment guy. he's got a decent following on LinkedIn. anyway, he met Steven Bartlett at an event and he just said to him, look, would you mind Jo joining me for my podcast? This was last year, by the way. So this was, he was still pretty big back then. And he said, yes. And he said yes. And he is now got a conversation that he's got content around and he's spoken to Steven Bartlett. So I think going back to your point, Vinay, think we can try and aim as high as we'd like because actually most people are open to it.'cause it's, kind of exposure for them as well, isn't it, in a

Paul 39:08

I'd wholeheartedly agree. I'd wholeheartedly agree. There are a couple of guests I've had on my Show who I fanboyed over massively, not, as big as Stephen Bartlett, I must say. but one, one of which was Bob Berg, who Vinay will know definitely. the, instigator of the, famous phrase, all things being equal. And I have to get that bit in'cause that's the bit everybody misses. He gets really annoyed with that. Bob, if you're listening, I got your buddy. all things being equal. People will buy from other people that they know, and trust. And I lived by that for so many years and somebody tagged Bob in my comments on LinkedIn and I thought I was being really cheeky. I was like, Bob, would you like to be on my podcast? And when he responded and he went, yeah, I'd love to. And he was a phenomenal guest. And I've done that a couple of times. I've had people who I never thought, Sarah Templeton, who's now my charity partner for my podcast and we're working together came because I was blown away by the book that, that I was listening to. And I had the audacity to send her an email and thank her for it and ask if she'd be on my podcast. And she said, yeah. And so they're just people like us. They're all, publicity is good publicity. And I think that's, fair game. But I think this leads into a really interesting point. So Vinay, we were discussing before, getting prepared for your podcast and what to have in mind before you get going. And question I ask a lot of people is, what do you wanna get outta your podcast? And for a lot of people the stock answer tends to be, we're gonna get a lot of views and we're gonna get sponsored now. I know you guys started off with a sponsor as well, right? and I know it's great to have a sponsor. it's, it obviously any, revenue that helps pay for the podcast is brilliant. Not to say that you shouldn't aim to get a sponsor at some point, but I, always push people away from that a little bit at the beginning because it's not realistic for most people. you probably, especially if it's a B2B podcast, you're not gonna get thousands and thousands of downloads. You're probably gonna get a couple of hundred eventually. But, that's gonna preclude a lot of sponsorship. So I always encourage people to have a, good understanding of what it is that they want to get out of their podcast for their business and for themselves, as well as just, giving good content. and, I'd like both of you to have a viewpoint on that'cause I would like to know what. What is it that you guys feel like you've gotten out of running your own podcast? From a business perspective and ROI personally, I dunno.

Vinay 41:40

yeah. so for me, it's dead simple. a mentor that I had early in my speaking career, one said to me, Vinay it's not about you. It's about them. And so I've had this mantra since my mid twenties of it's about them. what's the value? What am I, it's not about the views I get. It's not about the applause I get. It's not about the feedback. It's not about me. It's how do I, get these amazing ideas out of this person's head? In a way that adds value to the people that are watching, like questions, the diet, the conversation. What would be an interesting thing, it's never about, oh, this would be a really good clip if we could clip it and then we could put it on social media.'cause I'll get loads of views. that's not the point. So it's always about the audience. When I speak, it's the same thing when I'm constructed a keynote, it's what do I want the audience to feel? Where do I want'em to go next? What value do I want them to walk away from? So that's my overarching design principle. And the second thing is it's about progression, not perfection. in everything we design, Yeah. look, we've talked about the fun, the funny things about tech going wrong, but it's never about having the perfect conversation either. It is just about having a, good natural conversation that people at the end of the conversation feel like it's been a 10 minute podcast, not a 45 minute one. They come away with one or two great ideas and they can actually do something with it. that for me the important thing. And as I said before, the, kind of the, benefit to me or the business benefit is, I just use it as a big business card to me being able to say, I've got a podcast,

Paul 43:17

Yeah.

Vinay 43:18

look at what we do. you don't, know me yet. It's about building trust, you jump onto, answer, in, in, my work, I talk a lot about the, trust equation from David Maister, credibility, reliability plus intimacy over self-orientation. And I think people focus really hard on credibility and reliability. do I believe you can say what you can do? So here are my credentials. Here's the clients I've worked with, here's the experience I've had, And then, demonstrating reliability.'cause they can do the thing. that they often miss out and what organisations also miss or don't spend enough energy on is intimacy, which is, do you really understand me? How do you make the customer the viewer feel like you, I see you, I understand you. I know that you ma I might wanna make you feel like you matter. and the self-orientation piece is, it's never on our agenda. this is not about what we get out of it, and it's not just about purely what you get out of it. There's, we're in that balance between this is a, win-win. that's the framing of the whole thing.

Iqbal 44:22

Yeah. to be honest, I couldn't put it any better. I think just on the sponsorship side, that's an interesting one. When we, as you've said, we into this, we had novel VX who supported us, for the first few episodes. Clearly we were still very new. So I was trying to, still trying to build a bit of an audience around that. And I think we, realised actually what we probably perhaps wanna revisit this once we've we're a little bit better established and also think you can have sponsorship that aligns to the message too, right? So it doesn't, it's not necessarily about advertising for advertising's sake. if we started, being sponsored by, Gillette, not really gonna work for us, is it? not gonna be promote that's not, doesn't really tie in our,

Paul 45:10

Huh.

Iqbal 45:11

yeah, exactly. So it's, so I, think there's, I'm not against sponsorship. I think sponsorship can really help. Take the podcast to that next level because funding can genuinely help maybe, bringing in those, that, that, may cost money to bring on. definitely something for the future that we'll continue to look at, but it shouldn't really shape the message or the vision as Vinay, articulated there. I think that the fact that we're trying to deliver value through this, continues to be the, key driver for what we're trying to do.

Vinay 45:48

the other parallel that I'll draw off just on what you've said there b, is that, social media platforms first launched, when Facebook Wears first came out, when Instagram, it was organic, it was authentic and people loved using it, and the moment that the, those platforms tried to monetise it, it started to lose some of what it is. And I see some of these podcasts where, there's an advert every 15 minutes. the rest is politic. No, nothing wrong with it. obviously it's a business, but you've got Fuse mentioned, hue on clothing, you've got all these different. Things mentioned and, it, just feels a bit forced and unnatural almost. if you had, the TV, and I dunno about you, on Spotify, I just hit the 15 second forward thing and never listened to the advert anyway because it just, it,

Iqbal 46:35

that's the thing, isn't it? if you, even if you've got a, if you got a sponsor, have the option to forward this bet. Like you, you almost ha pre-war them on the, on YouTube that this is actually an advert and then they can just forward it through. I totally get it. But I think genuinely though, if your sponsor can, be linked to the overall conversation, then, it just feels more organic, more

Vinay 46:59

yeah.

Paul 47:00

Yeah,

Iqbal 47:01

to a point where you are, to sell a Rubik's cube or whatever. It just doesn't, that doesn't hit well with the audience. there's gotta, there's gotta be a link somewhere

Vinay 47:09

Gotta be a purpose. It's got a link

Paul 47:11

and I think that's why I went the route of getting a charity partner as opposed to a sponsor for my podcast, is because it's something that I'm deeply aligned with. it's a, great initiative. it's a nice thing to do, which is brilliant. I love doing nice things for change now and again. but also because I'm ADHD and my charity partner is ADHD, Liberty, my son's ADHD, a lot of my clients are neurodiverse in some way, shape, or form. So it, absolutely, and I think, so you've gotta apply that to your sponsor, right? It's gotta be the same cut from the same cloth. but to be controversial, to be really controversial, and I say this to all of my, clients and prospective clients and on all of my network, I don't think the real values in the episode itself, I don't think that's where the value is, because 95% of your audience are never gonna listen to your episode unless you're Stephen Bartlett. I think the value is in the moments within that episode that people would never otherwise see, and that's why. I don't advertise myself as being a, podcast editor. I hate the phrase podcast editor. I do edit podcasts, but it's about repurposing the content. For me, it's about, how can I take that two minutes? The, Vinay and Iqbal were discussing this tiny, this moment. That's genius. And people will never see it if it's hidden in that episode. Or even if they do watch the episode, do you know what? They're probably answering emails at the same time and they've miss it. So for me it's that, that, I'm scrolling because I'm bored. I've just gotten home and we're waiting for the kids to arrive home from school, and I'm gonna have a flick through LinkedIn and, oh, what's this? And I've captured your attention for 90 seconds. Even that, that for me is the real benefit to a lot of people and being able to tag. Other businesses, organisations, and guests in that to rent their audience and merge your audience with theirs temporarily. I think that's beautiful and the amount of great conversations I've seen come out of that practice is just next level. I don't think there's much else out there that, that has the ability to bring people together like that.

Vinay 49:27

Yeah. Yeah. I think, it, it is funny as you were saying that. because I was, again, listening to a podcast, ironically, and we were, they were

Paul 49:35

What now?

Vinay 49:36

yeah, no, not right now?

Paul 49:38

Geez.

Vinay 49:39

I think, yeah, it's Gottman's Trust, trust Revival method. And, about trust happens slowly in small moments. And I think what you described there is, exactly in the same way as if I delivered a 45 minute keynote. Somebody might not remember all of it, but they remember a moment within it that really resonated with them. And it's the collection of those little moments that build the trust. With your audience over time. So you're spot on. that's the gift, that's the skill and the gift that you have of helping us find those small moments because we're just in the moment having the conversation, right? are helping us chop it up and distribute little moments, those micro moments in a way that people can consume then they consume them, and I do it again and again and they build up a picture these little moments rather than listening to one to end episode. So yeah, that's a really nice way of putting it.

Iqbal 50:33

On the short form, I think you're, you are completely spot on. of, that's, those are the bits that people actually see when they talk to us about our podcast. It's because they've seen, a, snippet of a conversation, and then we've seen our guests, replay those back or share those across to their network. because the, listening to an hour long or 40 to 60 minutes isn't gonna be for everybody. we completely get that. it's really trying to fi we're trying to figure out whether there, there's gonna be those moments of spark where, we know that. That's the content that we wanna get across. And, Paul, of course, you, are, you're helping us uncover this because we've done one episode, we're moving on and planning on the next, while you are

Paul 51:19

Yeah. Yeah.

Iqbal 51:20

on, getting the content done. for the one,'cause the one we did recently with Xa, I think there was some really good content there. I've not had a chance yet to look back at that, but you've already made the content. Those short form videos are there. we've just gotta just make sure that we get those distributed. And I think that's probably the one thing that for me personally, that I think we could probably improve on when it comes to looking ahead. starting to build a lot of content now. It's how we can repurpose that and reuse it and then, and make sure we take those golden nuggets and really, use those to our, collective advantage,

Vinay 52:02

Yeah,

Paul 52:02

I,

Vinay 52:03

it's moved from just content creation to distribution now. Like

Paul 52:08

yeah.

Vinay 52:08

got, we've, and that, our, next journey. And it was got, it was Dr. John Gottman's trust that I was talking about. Not Gotham, not as in Batman, Gottman. Don't, confuse that with

Paul 52:19

Oh,

Vinay 52:19

right?

Paul 52:19

gonna love the transcription on this, aren't I? Fantastic. Thanks.

Vinay 52:24

Dr. John Gottman. but yeah, I think that's the next challenge, or the next evolution is distribution. it out to more people, different platforms. So currently it's YouTube, apple, Spotify, YouTube, even platforms like TikTok and Instagram and working out how this, this content works or doesn't work, on those particular platforms. But, certainly. Short form been the real game changer. we were just talking about the views the other day and, you look at the amount of views we have on short form content versus rest, and I think even LinkedIn. tends to like videos that are 45 seconds or less. so real short, sharp of video seems to be the trend, that gets people in. And then if they want the long stuff, they'll go find you.

Paul 53:14

I feel like there's, there was a rant gonna, there was a rant about explored there. Vinay when we talk about algorithms and trends, and I'm not gonna get into that. this is not the, this is not the space for that, but I really reel against algorithms. I, struggle with them.

Vinay 53:29

you

Paul 53:29

I,

Vinay 53:29

on this really great podcast called Breaking the Blueprint to talk about that'cause they'd love you on there.

Paul 53:35

but I think that's relevant, right? because there's a lot of. This is about customer experience, and your customer in this case is the audience. And it's about meeting them where they're at. So most people aren't ready to consume your podcast at the moment they find your podcast. What they need to be able to do is to be able to save it for later and find it easily when they're at a point where they're ready to listen or watch. And some people listen while they're in the gym. Some people like listening whilst they're driving on long distance road trips. Some people get the time to sit in front of their laptop on a train and they wanna watch a podcast episode, so they'll watch it there. They might be scrolling before bedtime. wherever they find you, it's got to be easy for them to, Find your podcast later to, to be able to know where that's gonna fit into their routine and to be consistent with when it's, when it's there. So they know when it's gonna be about. I know that on a Friday night, I can listen to you in the gym on Saturday because it's the end of the month and you drop your podcast on Friday morning. I know that. And then I can use that to my advantage. But people absorb content in lots of different ways. And I, the irony is I edit video for a living, but I don't consume video content much, very much at all. I have to suffer through my son's Minecraft, YouTube videos. I'm trying not to have a breakdown while I process that. But my preferred medium is audio books or text. And actually, I even struggle with podcasts now because I find, I get so many good ideas from podcasts that I actually, I almost avoid. Business podcasts because I'll come away with a row of shiny objects that I need to immediately implement. Then I, can't possibly do, Stephen Bartlett's the worst culprit for this, all of his podcast episodes. I'm like, oh yeah, I could do all of this and

Vinay 55:29

don't talk to me about that. I wish somebody would create a way, like I'll be listening to an or Audible in the car and then I want to say to Siri, open notes, write this idea down. I wish there was a way, because when you have that idea in the moment, and if you don't write it down that second, you know that

Paul 55:44

Yeah.

Vinay 55:44

in its freshest form, like, just capture a voice note or do something. I don't wanna let go of the steering wheel and hit a button and try and do something that I'm not supposed to do. But if there

Paul 55:52

Yeah.

Vinay 55:53

that I could just do that,'cause it, the same thing happens to me. I'll listen to an audio podcast and there'll be like a bonfire night fireworks display going off in my head.'cause I'll go that connects to that and that connects to that and this does that. And that has a really good angle with that. And, if I don't get it right there and then it's, gone. And then I'm onto the next one.

Paul 56:12

Yeah.

Vinay 56:13

Yeah. So if anyone's listening, who's got a, who can invent a product, I'd love to hear from you that can do that for me.

Paul 56:21

I'm gonna, I think we can post that outright as a separate clip and we can, see what comes back. I'm sure there must be something out there. There's gotta be, there's gotta be.

Vinay 56:29

also tm the

Paul 56:30

I,

Vinay 56:31

we've PAtent Pended it now just by talking about it in this podcast.

Paul 56:34

I think he might,

Iqbal 56:35

We'll get the and have chatGPT embedded underneath it.

Vinay 56:42

Yeah,

Paul 56:44

there's, one more, one more story I'd like to leave, you all with, and it comes Stephen Bartlett. I feel like he sponsored this show, right? But it's true. I, listened to the diary of a CEO book and the one thing that really transformed how I, oh, transformed is the right word, underlined what I do and what we all do to an extent, as he talked about, people believe in. In something that they didn't before. Now what he discusses is, and I'm paraphrasing heavily, if you hold a gun to someone's head and ask them to believe in, something fictional, they can't, still can't believe in that thing because it's impossible.'cause they know it's not true. They can tell you they believe in it, but they won't actually believe in it. The gun doesn't make any difference, even no matter how much they want to believe in it. And the way the human brain's set up to work is that we need to believe in ourselves, that somebody is an expert before we'll trust them. And we do that predominantly through aligning what they see with what we believe to be true. So Viner, if I'm listening to you and Iqbala and say 90% of the things that you see, I agree with. I will start to see you guys as experts because I believe myself to be an expert. I don't, but you know what I'm saying. I start to believe you guys to be an expert because you align with what I believe, and I've evidenced this through my life and my experiences, and I've come to know that this is the truth. But then there's this 10% where we disagree. Now, from a behavioral science perspective, that does a really interesting thing'cause it causes cognitive dissonance and it, basically, it makes my brain hurt that you believe something different to me, yet I believe you are an expert and the two can't be aligned. It can't be true. One has to be false. And if I then come to question my own beliefs and start to believe what you believe, because I go and look and realise that actually what I believe was wrong because these things here weren't true, and that's what I built my belief on, then I can now believe you are the expert and believe the same thing as you. And we completely align. And where that aligns to everybody who's listening to this is that's true of every business. If you want someone to come and buy from your services, your products, whatever you do, doesn't matter what you do. You need your customer to believe you. You guys are the experts. Forcing them to believe you're an expert doesn't work. Lowering your prices, for example, is not way for them to believe you're an expert. What you've got to do is chip away at them all the time. Gradually build that trust so that when the moment arises, they know that you are the person that can solve, or the business that can solve their problem entirely.

Vinay 59:37

Yeah.

Paul 59:37

And I think that links very nicely into why you guys started bricking the blueprint in the first place, because that's where we're at.

Vinay 59:44

Yeah, completely agree. Really nice way to frame it. Love that.

Iqbal 59:48

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I think that's definitely, that's gotta be the end goal here, us to work towards and, hopefully we're delivering that level of value to our audience and, hopefully in the future we're gonna start to see this kind of grow into something bigger and better, in the next year.

Paul 1:00:10

I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. You guys deliver incredible value and it's been a genuine pleasure being a part of the journey that you're on so far, and I'm sure we'll have more conversations for the future as well. No doubt. congratulations on passing episode 10.'cause 95% of our podcasts don't get there, so well done. It's a huge milestone. Technically. This is episode 11, bonus episode. guys, we've got anything else to leave people with before we drop off for, the seasonal holidays.

Vinay 1:00:40

just one thing from me. you've talked really kindly about working with us, but we really love working with you, and this genuinely, Paul. This is not because, this is Ray McDiarmid's fault for introducing me and you in the first place. and I have genuinely look, I'm a tinkerer. I like technology and stuff as well, so I downloaded software and tried to do this myself. And I probably could if I had the time, do some of this myself. Not to the same level as you, but absolutely not like giving it to an expert. you're giving your baby and your idea to somebody else to help you with, but when that person gets you and gets you where you are going and understands what you're trying to do, and makes a process so easy that it just takes a headache away, that it's just oh, just Paul, just deal with it. that's magical. don't know the quarter to midnight conversations we're having on WhatsApp where you've gone,

Paul 1:01:33

It's true.

Vinay 1:01:34

not working right. I've just synchronised this, I've changed this, I've done this. And then the next morning we'll have an email with, these are all the videos. that's just. Way beyond anything we'd expect. And you've not paid me to say any of that. This is genuinely, I really love that our, WhatsApp group about this podcast is so funny just because if anyone looked at the timestamps, It would crack them up.

Paul 1:01:59

It is true.

Iqbal 1:02:00

I think just to reiterate that point, I think for us, ha having Paul su supporting us, for me it's there, there's no big or small problem. It's have an issue. Paul's got a solution to it, and he'll just go and deal with it.

Vinay 1:02:17

Yeah.

Iqbal 1:02:17

tell us exactly what he'll do. so I think, for, me, it's not having to think about it. sometimes I know that probably comes across as well, Paul, because, just got so much going on with, everything else in

Paul 1:02:30

Yeah.

Iqbal 1:02:30

and I think you appreciate that, Paul, and we, appreciate you for giving us the ti giving us that time, to solve the. The issues that we've had around, editing or technical problems or whatever, you've always found a solution by hook or crook. There's always a solution at the end of it. So that's been, I think for, me, I'll obviously, I, didn't realise that would be one of the benefits of actually bringing somebody in because Vinay, we thought, we can edit video. the big deal with that? But I think it's, more than just editing video. It's, there's so much more to it. And if you don't follow through on it, it's just pointless content. You're creating content that can't be distributed properly, people that people aren't gonna see. and, having your expertise, around everything around delivering this podcast has been really valuable.

Paul 1:03:22

I.

Iqbal 1:03:23

you can pay me later, Paul.

Paul 1:03:26

With what? but I think that's the, fun for me, right? is I, the challenges that would have you guys cry in is the bits that I really enjoy. Just like you guys do that for your clients in turn, right? And I think we've all got our zone of genius that we enjoy working in and, being part of. And for me, look, there's nothing beats seeing the smile on, on your faces when I send that video over and I get, I get the message in the WhatsApp group, oh, Paul, that, that highlight reel is on fire. Brilliant. I love it. Like that for me is everything. Like the money is it's a nice to have, but that's not why I do what I do. It's, I really want to help people share their journeys and their stories in a way that's accessible to everyone else. there's so much wasted content out there. There's so many good, valuable nuggets of knowledge that people have that will never see the light of day I love working with you guys. Thank you very much for your time today. Really enjoyed the conversation. And, we'll, all, I won't see you in the new year'cause this is my only episode for the time being. but Vinay and Iqbal will see you in the new year. have a fantastic holiday wherever you are. And, we'll see you soon.

Vinay 1:04:37

Yeah. Take care.

Iqbal 1:04:38

Thank You. Take care.