The BIG Question

Carly OsmanSo I'm going to start this by saying, Rich, before we dive into probably the most important, I suppose, question that people need to ask themselves, who are you?

Richard RobinsonBut no Oh, great question. So I ask myself that many times, especially at the start of the year. So I am Richard Robinson. I am the executive director of Ingenuity Plus and also sort of the Exco, the Ingenuity Group. So we are the largest pitch consultants in the UK. So we have lots of brands, I would say, marketing directors who are senior enough to ask for help, who know that they have a problem and who normally can't articulate what that problem is, come to us and we will help them find hire and stay with the best agencies in the UK and beyond. We help people come together, stay together and grow together. Outside of that though, I'm a husband, I'm a father and I spend an enormous amount of time, my five to nine time, powering the industry across diversity, inclusivity and equity. So i'm involved in most of the communities and networks that you could find in the industry that help people just be better.

Carly OsmanAmazing. And that's how I met you many, many moons ago when I won a scholarship for the Creative Equals program. And it was about how you help women step into their power and step into roles so they're not feeling afraid. And it was there that I learned how good your questions were. And there were many things that you said over that time that really stuck with me, but it was something you said and you asked me the other week that I really want to delve into today.

Richard RobinsonCourse.

Carly OsmanAnd this was a question that everyone should be sitting down at the start of the year and framing everything around. So what is that question, Rich?

Richard RobinsonSo the question that I, lots of people get stuck, if you think about it, in, they might get stuck in a relationship, they might get stuck at work, they might get stuck in an agency partnership, an agency might be stuck with a marketing director. And people just exist in these environments. And the thing that I always ask people to think about is a very personal question, which is, will I give one more year of my life to these people?

Carly OsmanOkay

Richard RobinsonAnd I'll just run that fast because there's a lot going on in that question. took me a long time to work this question out for myself. It's like the ultimate self-evaluation question that I ask myself every year. Will I, I'm in charge, will give one more year of my life to these people? The reason why the question is important is it's a yes, no. It's a binary yes or a no. You can't have a maybe. You can't have a think about in the future. can't be on both sides of fence. You have to decide if you are going to give. You are physically giving. This nothing to do with money. This has nothing to do with promotion. It's got nothing to do with power. It's just to do with you as a human being thinking, will I give one more year of my life to these people? And once I worked this question out about eight or nine years ago, i have used it with hundreds of people who have been thinking about maybe moving jobs or maybe switching agencies or maybe switching partners even, just thinking that how long are you willing to sort of just exist in a situation when you're stuck, rather than taking charge of the situation and then turning it into position of strength for you.

Carly Osman. I want to touch on now what happens if the answer is no? I've asked myself that question and I'm going i'm I'm fundamentally miserable, I can't do this for another year.

Richard RobinsonYeah.

Carly OsmanIs that a oh my gosh i need to quit everything now, run away leave my partner, leave my job?

Richard RobinsonAnd And it's great. It's great. And I love it because at which point everybody instantly, because we're all, you know, I think everybody is quite action orientated in our industry. You know, we're all desperately trying to, you know, we work in a customer service industry, it doesn't make if you're brand or the agency, you know, so you're you're hardwired to be helpful, you're hardwired to make things happen. And when you when the answer is no, I'm not going to give another year of my life to these people, you have a kind of an innate, power all of a sudden where only you know until you tend to tell somebody else but only you know that you're going to be leaving and you don't need to rush in on the first day or let's say for example you did this between Christmas and New Year and the famous Blue Monday is coming I think that's the third it's like the third Monday of January i think where more people resign on that day than at any other time of the year. But you know this piece of information that you won't be there in a year's time. You don't need to share this with anybody. You don't need to share it internally, but you know but that your future is going to be outside that organisation. It might be that it takes you 11 months and 30 days to exit. And that's OK, because you're almost your KPI yourself over the course of the 12 months is that you will be departing. You're going to be doing something different. And it might take you time to work out what is it that's going to be different. On a personal level, in January 2020, I asked this question myself and I said, no, I'm not going to be there in a year's time. I think as most of us said though, in February or March 2020, COVID came.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Richard RobinsonSo I knew i was leaving in 2020 and then suddenly events overtook me and I had to change my plans. And then I stayed in the company I was working for through 2020 and then surprisingly 2021 and then surprisingly through 2022 we all lockdown. But I knew in my heart that the minute we were allowed out of the house of our houses and we were back out on the playing fields, at that point I knew what the answer was for me, which was that I needed to be true to myself and I couldn't give another year of my life to these people, at which point I was making plans and I was making tracks to get out. Small things happen when you know this piece of information. You have to ask yourself questions such as, is it okay if I fail my KPIs? Not my personal KPIs, but my work.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Richard RobinsonIs it okay if I've been set you know targets for, I don't know, for sales or for attribution or for value creation? Is it okay if I miss those goals? Because maybe my... intensity and my energy is going to be focused on something else and that something else will be getting another full-time job or moving into being a consultant or starting an entrepreneurial startup. And so if for high performers it's quite a difficult thing to do because high performers are hardwired every year to think about how they're going to get more money and more power. They're hardwired to achieve their goals and then move on to the next thing. So it's, I find it fascinating, especially when i'm dealing with the very senior marketers who are thinking about what to do next. And i i sit with them. And you can see that they're just really struggling with the whole concept of, you mean, I might fail my goals. It's like, well, what's the worst that's going to happen?

Carly OsmanThe

Richard RobinsonYou're going to be made redundant. And if you were made redundant, maybe, arguably, that could be a win, because that's going to speed up you moving into next role, and you might have some money for gardening leave at the same time. So when you say no, it puts you in the driving seat. You are... Maybe for the first time you can take charge of the situation that you're in and then really work out where you're going to drive your car to.

Carly OsmanOkay, so I'm in my driving seat and I have no map. What do I do first kind of practically? And especially if I don't actually know where the destination is, I just have an inkling. Something isn't right. I'm not happy. What advice would you give?

Richard RobinsonSo, and you used the right word there, which is advice. I have long believed that the most powerful six words in the entire lexicon of thinking about what to do next is, can I have some advice, please?

Richard RobinsonAnd so you ask this question, i always get so much more powerful than I'm thinking about getting a job. Can you help me? which point most people run to the hills or i or even I want some help. And people kind of go oh, God, this is going to like take forever. There's something powerful about asking for advice. I think it massages people's egos. You know, I get. found out by people, I kind of think, oh my God, it's like these these are like amazing marketers or agency folk and they want my advice. I sort of have to pinch myself at times and thinking, God, I can't believe they're asking my advice, but they are. And so how do you get started? My sense is that I can only tell you how I do I have a board of directors. My board of directors are mainly inside my head. I don't necessarily tell people that they're on my board of directors. But I think about people who are diverse in the way that they think, act and do, but people I know are going to be honest with me. There is no more than eight people on the board directors. I had to write about some management today. Hilariously weird story, which was Will Smith and I, yes, the Will Smith and I, were both contributing to an article in Management Today. I'm not actually sure Will Smith actually contributed to the article.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Richard RobinsonI think I just lifted a whole load of his text. And I didn't know they were doing it, but they anyway, you can find that on Google somewhere after this. But so the board of directors concept enables to find people who you can ask advice from. And if those people are the right people you thought about and quite hard, they will then give you the advice that you need. And so I will naturally just sit down with people and I say, can I get some advice, please? and you know nine times out 10, people are immediately up for giving you advice. You always work around their schedule, so beginning of the day, end of the day, buy them lunch, buy them a tea, buy them a coffee. But I will go in and I'll ask them some advice. And so i have to I have to know that I trust them, that they're not automatically going to phone my employer. I have to know that they've got advice actually I value. And I have to know that you know that they're people who have got my best interests at heart because I'm giving them a you know a pretty weighty subject to think about, which is what do what do i do with me and and and how can you help? So only I'm a perpetual believer in, spending time at the beginning of any project preparing. there's no point diving into action. I think when I was but i's very young, my father was a chartered accountant. We all talk about four Ps of marketing and maybe the six Cs of marketing. And he had the he had the six Ps of being a chartered accountant, which always just loved. And the six Ps of being a chartered accountant was prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.

Carly OsmanOh my gosh.

Richard RobinsonAnd he just, he always used to be, but that was his point because he was thinking about spreadsheet, calculator, numbers. As in you needed to get all the data on the table in front of you first, and only then could you actually then get into it. Because if you're, you know, chance to count, you know, as you're working, there's no point in starting with calculations if you don't know what the data is that you were dealing with in the first place. Yeah.

Carly OsmanAnd do you find this data as you go? So quite often I'll go into something.

Richard RobinsonYeah

Carly OsmanI i don't know what to ask you because I don't know where I'm going. Is it a case of having a conversation, something will ignite something in your mind, which will make you think of it in a different way. And then you start building these different data points that all will wonderfully merge together.

Richard RobinsonYes. So I'm, and you know, my my entire day job is connecting, pivoting, engaging, solving problems. Most time, the reason why i say that, you know, all of the clients that I work with, i always just describe them as senior enough to ask for help. They are in a reverential position in marketing where it might be the chief marketing officer, it might be the chief executive, it might be the head of marketing, but it's somebody who's got to a point in their career where they can put their hand up and say, i don't really understand what's going on anymore. i did AI is like ripping a hole through my brand and we haven't really kept place. And that's okay because when you get to a stage where you can say, don't really know what you know I don't really know where we are. you know The chief executive of Google yesterday was just talking about this all instantly aged this podcast, but he was talking about the fact that, i mean, my version of what he was saying was that AI can't be trusted. Now, he didn't quite say it in that blunt, pithy tone. was saying there's certain things you can't trust AI with yet. That's a senior person who's asking for help in not so many words about, so we all need to, think about how we're using AI and what we're going to use AI for. And there are areas where it works really well, and there are areas where it could maybe be could be could be even better if. So I think that the that starting i suppose starting at the start, thinking about the people that I can connect in with, and then that helps me shape it helps me anyway she shape the problem first and then when I've really understood what the problem is can I then pivot into what a solution might be

Carly OsmanNice you've mentioned an analogy to me that I loved in the past and it was to do with the spider's web and I'm going to do a terrible job of trying to explain this back to you but having little bits and pieces out there and the kind of connective tissue bringing it all together can you explain what that was and and why it's so important to think like that

Richard RobinsonYes crack on Yeah, so so i took a lot you know i talk a lot about connecting the marketing world. So if anyone's read Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, or remember that there's a whole section in it on connectors. And it took me a long time to recognize you know the the two things that I know I am good at. I'm very good at connecting people. I'm very good at making things happen. There's lots of other things that I do. you know I've clearly worked in marketing, clearly worked in agencies, been an intermediary for you decades But it made me, I'd never never understood the value of connection at all until I read Tipping Point and it literally hit me in the face like a brick. that there is value in being a connector, as in somebody who can bring everything together. And it wasn't until I met my former business partner, Suki Thompson, that she was really clear that connectivity is something that has value and therefore is something that could be sold. Because for the average person, it's not something they really think about. Why is that? Because they head down in their actual job going after their KPI, so they aren't the person that connects everything up. So the Spiders Web analogy was because I know that there are 225,000 people that work in marketing and advertising in the UK. I know that there are 25,000 agencies trading in the UK today. So what that tells me is that there's a finite edge to everything that we're doing. There's a finite number of agencies, there's a finite number of people.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Richard RobinsonWe're on about 45 billion pounds worth of investment for 2025. you with... if you go with the advertising association walks. Again, finite number of money, finite number of people, finite number of agencies, finite number. And so the minute you start thinking in terms of finite, it means that you can think about a web, a connective spider's web that holds everything together. you know The reason why I'd always say to people, it's like, be nice, do good work, generally, all those people that you're working with, you're going to be working with for the rest of your career. And so there' you know the the people I was working with on day one, I still see those people today. And I'm always quite bemused, I think, you know agencies that are incredibly rude to their clients or clients that are incredibly rude to their agencies, thinking, this is... you know they will get it you you will You know, the brand logo will change, the agency logo will change, but you guys will see each other in the next 10, 15, 20 years. This is really the the way in which you want to know one another. So I think about the market in terms a spider's web. Everything is interconnected. And there can be more than one spider in the web, clearly. But what you need to have done thrown your net as wide as possible so that when something is happening left of center that you can't quite see, there's just a vibration or an oscillation which happens in the web and it comes back to you. and so therefore if you have a if you believe in power of connection and connectivity if you believe in being nice and doing good work if you believe in longevity of the relationships that you might find around you then it's important to know that people will instinctively because i believe in their hearts of hearts everybody is a helpful person everybody's a good person everybody wants to help other people people will just hold up their hand say, this thing is happening over here, Rich, you need to go over and and help them or get involved. And so the web for me is a way that I just, I i can visually look at instead I could have you maybe used the analogy of the matrix, we can all think about Keanu Reeves. And it's the same thing, when you when you can see the matrix, when you can see the cobweb, what I do, the world of connectivity becomes very, very easy because I can see how brands and agencies are connected and I can see the communities and ley lines that operate between all of the people are people that we all see and speak and integrate with on a daily basis.

Carly OsmanDoes that also involve a degree of putting your head a above above the parapet, so to speak? Because when I was in, I suppose I'm going to say corporate land before I went out and started doing my own thing, and I was very head down, focus on the work, don't do work as hard as I could.

Richard RobinsonYep.

Carly OsmanMy networking was non-existent for me. I wasn't putting myself out into this web or this universe. So people weren't understanding this. So are you kind of saying you need to be thinking about this web long before you get to a no in that question. So by the time you're asking, no, you need to have been planting little flies everywhere the spiders to go and find.

Richard RobinsonYep. and said ye So i kind of I talk about people laying digital breadcrumbs all over the internet and all over your LinkedIn profile because LinkedIn, I don't believe that anybody, Carly, when you get to, makes me sound quite pompous, but when you get to our level, I don't believe that you're ever gonna get a job by applying to something on LinkedIn.

Carly Osman. Thank you.

Richard RobinsonI don't know anybody who's marketing director or CMO. I mean, I hope that people would automatically disagree with me. who have applied to jobs on LinkedIn and got a job on LinkedIn. I know people who have been approached on LinkedIn, who have got job on LinkedIn. I know lots of people who are account director agencies, marketing managers, brand managers, heads of marketing. But it's important that your LinkedIn profile is representative of you. If you were a brand, you'd invest a lot of time and energy in it. When I do lots of training with people who say, I'm rubbish at personal branding, I'll go, oh, that's really interesting. Do you have an online dating profile? At which point, but the answer I get back is, yes, I do. Why were you asking this question? I said, okay, let's talk about the amount of effort you put into your online dating profile.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Richard RobinsonYou understand the photographs through A-B testing that really pull or not. You understand what a return investment looks like. You know how many hours a day you're going to You are working, tweaking, thinking about the words, thinking about the present yourself. Your brand through online dating is sensational and you know that because people are swiping onto you and asking to have dates. Why is it that people can't put the same effort into their LinkedIn profile in the sense of really thinking about how to make it sing in a way that is reflective and representative of the brand that you want to choose. And the only time that people think about it normally is when they don't have a job.

Richard RobinsonSo I think Carly's, you know, I run a quite large community called the Inbetweeners. I've sort of been doing that for five or six years. It's a group for brand side, marketing directors and above. So in the last 12 months, had look for a camera and helped 176 people. And that sounds like a scary large number. But in reality, 176 people, 15 them now decided that they're marketing consultants and 89 of them are back in full-time work. And saying I helped them, that might have been as simple as a chat, it might have been a cup of tea, it might have been sorting out their CV, but what is sort of universally applied all of them is this sort of theory that their personal branding isn't good enough, the way they present themselves isn't good enough, and they kind of need, the majority of just a bit of a kick to say, you are the product now, you are but yeah if you know how to make amazing campaigns, you know how to create incredible brands, you know how to Light a fire under your mission. We're just going to make you the thing that you're trying to sell and you're trying to you're trying to get out there. Most incredible, but a lot of people people don't think about custom running. So when you talk about, do you have to put your head above the parapet? Yep, and you don't have a choice. And as with the CMO last week, he was an in-betweener 18 months ago. He then got an amazing job. He's now an in-betweener again. And I said, great, so walk talk me through everything you've done in the last 18 months. on your personal brand as in speaking at conferences, turning up at events, doing some community work, getting involved in a charity. He said, yeah, I didn't do any of that for the last 18 months. and i'm I'm starting again. it was like, God, so he's starting at a minor's position and now he's got to try and accelerate his way forwards to make him interesting, to make him

Richard RobinsonI think it was if you've ever seen the History Boys, either the play or the film, it's an Alan Bennett play. There's a really beautiful moment. It's about six boys from Leeds Grammar School who who the head they had a new headmaster who came in. It's true story. And he didn't understand why boys from Leeds Grammar School couldn't go to Oxbridge. So he, you know, because he said that they, looked at, he looked at children from let's call them private school backgrounds who seem to be getting in and he said no we are going to change the way that we think about Leeds grammar school and he brought in a particular teacher and in the film there's this beautiful moment where he's talking about you know you need to make yourself interesting when in a world where the table stakes are okay we're hiring for a job you're all a chief marketing officer you've all had some sales success you've all led teams these are just table stakes because you expect that

Carly OsmanYeah.

Richard RobinsonFor the people that you're interviewing at that level, or maybe any interview. The stuff that makes a difference is where you actually then start making yourself interesting. It's the stuff that I call the five to nine time that people need to do. We all get paid to work from nine to five, nothing wrong with that. Five to nine is where you can decide how much of that time you're gonna invest in your future self. It might be a day a month, it might be half day a month, it might be a day a week, but what I do know is that people at, invest five to nine time in themselves, not to be confused with trying to work 24 hours a day, are the people who never seem to have a problem when it comes to getting another job because they're out the blocks much quicker, their network is ready for them, their board advisors are already prepped, they know what they're thinking. and When they think about this question around, will I give one more year of my life to these people, they're already up and running and moving because they're five to nine time is propelling them forward. It's not for everybody. I we all have stuff that we have to do. And so at the start, a father and a husband, and you know I have responsibilities outside of mucking around being a connector. but there's There is a clear correlation between the people who invest some time in themselves, maybe thinking ahead, and the people who seem to walk out of one role, walk into another role on the other side.

Carly OsmanThat's incredibly valuable. How do you get started? Because it's very, very scary proposition when you've never grown up in a world where networking was seen as something that you should be doing.

Richard RobinsonYeah?

Carly OsmanYou're not active on LinkedIn. The thought of even posting makes you cringe. What are the baby steps you can take to start ramping yourself up to get ready?

Richard RobinsonSo the great So I always go, the great baby, LinkedIn is brilliant, I love it because, and if anybody wants to just follow Laura Fox on LinkedIn, she's sensational, she calls herself the LinkedIn Fox, and frankly, she's she's box office. The thing about LinkedIn is, I know that we all think we're gonna post something on LinkedIn it's gonna go viral tomorrow, it's not, okay?

Carly OsmanThanks.

Richard RobinsonYou know I mean, even, I don't know, the most wildly bonkers thing that I've written, whether it be good or bad, it never really sort of goes anywhere. it's just start posting. There's a brilliant there's brilliant thought leader who just calls he himself the chief post-it officer. And I love that because their entire shtick and mantra is just fucking post-it. As in, we all sit there worried about it, about how this can see. If you're an in-betweener, you've got nothing to lose, clearly, because it's just putting stuff

Carly OsmanAnd

Richard RobinsonAnd it's a really great way of A-B testing what are people interested in. So things that LinkedIn is interested in the moment, so you have to remember, are you writing things on LinkedIn for the benefit of people? Are you writing things on LinkedIn for the benefit of LinkedIn's algorithm? So LinkedIn's algorithm at the moment is looking for demonstrative signs of success. So it's looking for quant data when it goes through your profile to demonstrate that you moved more boxes from A to B than the next person. It likes, weirdly, photographs of animals over photographs of people. I can't tell you why, but it does because i don't understand the algorithm. It much prefers people talking to camera right now.

Carly OsmanThank you.

Richard RobinsonSo as if you were actually video film, maybe even if you had a talking chinchilla talking to camera, better. And so there are some rules that the algorithm you know moves and emerges. You hear lots of people saying, God, LinkedIn's coming a bit like Facebook. mean, frankly, I think LinkedIn's coming a bit like TikTok, if I was really going to suggest where we're going to end up quite quickly. And the people who are harnessing things like short-form video content to put onto to LinkedIn are the people the algorithm is liking more than someone who's just doing a like or a reshare. So to get what would I do to get started? I would spend some time at home having a really good think about Who are you? What I mean by that what is your purpose? What is your proposition? make Make yourself a brand. Become your, what was the line? When I was at to the Coca-Cola company, was a really, really powerful way that they, the theory, when you're at Coca-Cola, no one's expected to leave Coca-Cola. When I say the Coca-Cola company, i mean the mothership. I was Atlanta, not to be confused with the local teams or CCE. So no one's ever expected to leave the company. And there was a mantra that they had there, which is the most powerful brand you will ever manage is yourself.

Carly OsmanOh, that's good.

Richard RobinsonOkay And I love that because it really made me stop and think, because obviously in an environment where no one leaves the Coca-Cola company, okay you're not they're not worried about you leaving, but they need you to think about the most powerful brand you ever manage is yourself. So therefore in that world, your personal brand is powerful in how are you going to enable your value to be at its greatest on behalf of the Coca-Cola company internally and externally. when i leave When I step outside the building maybe at 5.30 and I head to an event in the evening, I'm going there representing the Coca-Cola company. And when I talk to people, I say, hello, you I was, I'm Richard Robinson from the Coca-Cola company, worked in international marketing.

Carly OsmanThank

Richard RobinsonAnd I had to be a powerful brand in my own right to be able to represent this phenomenal thing. Because the minute you said to somebody, what do you do for a job? I work for the Coca-Cola company. 100 people out of 100 people had instantly known your company, and they instantly have an opinion of what they think about the company that you're working for. so When it comes to then where do you get started, think about yourself as a brand. You need to think about what is the campaign you're going to create, what are the tools and assets. Basic things like we know that LinkedIn needs to be powerful and important. I mean, I'm going to go with the real basics here. Do you have an e-signature that has your mobile phone on it? I mean, just go with the basics.

Carly OsmanAll right.

Richard RobinsonDo you have business cards? Do you have an approach when you walk into room you actually thought through the mirror signals maneuver when you turn up at an event? thinking through who are the people in this room that I want to talk to, because you can ask normally any event beforehand to have a look at guest list. What am I going to leave them with? What are the two or three things I'm gonna say? doesn't matter how senior you are, because you know you're on sell mode, and sell mode is you're trying to forget. We run these incredible events called the CMO of the Future. they're targeted at heads of marketing and junior marketing director. You know normally get about 60, 70 people turning up. And I love that there were three quite senior chief marketing officers who were in between us at one the last events. I was like, what are you doing here out of interest? as it yeah It's lovely that they'd come. And all three of them had the same idea at the same time, is they were going around talking to the heads of marketing, going, so, oh, really interesting. So you don't have a chief marketing officer at the moment. they were basically probing, and they were pitching themselves, probing, kind of going, well, this is great.

Carly OsmanYeah.

Richard RobinsonFinding out where the gaps were in the market, and I thought, this is really quite clever. And then also, obviously, early on, then they were using the heads of marketing as coaches for how would be the best way that I could go and talk to your company.

Carly OsmanYeah.

Richard RobinsonI thought, God, this is clever.

Carly OsmanThat's really smart.

Richard RobinsonI mean, they'd they'd taken the whole brand management aspect and just, you know, gone way higher than anything I'd ever thought of.

Carly OsmanAnd I love that because that's, oh, what's the term? Oh, Rich, what's the term where, oh, I love that because it's, no, it's first principle thinking because you go, okay, that's what I need.

Richard RobinsonSerendipity. Yes.

Carly OsmanHow about, how do I go and get that?

Richard RobinsonYes.

Carly OsmanAnd again, it's the same with the spider's web.

Richard RobinsonIt's It's a spider's web.

Carly OsmanIt's going, yeah.

Richard RobinsonSo they're they're literally walking in going, And each one of them had said to me independently of each other, what happens as a CMO of the future? And I said, well, I'm i'm going to run a killer panel. So the the next I've got one on in a couple of weeks time. And here we've got i've got the chief executive of Rated People. I've got the e-commerce marketing director of La Prairie. I've got the UK and Ireland marketing director of Wise Finance House.

Richard RobinsonAnd I've got the chief marketing officer of Fulham Football Club. So deliberately diverse panel of categories, et cetera. And then the people that really the heads of marketing are there because they their their goals are in their five to nine time because i' we only do these after working hours because very different type of person turns up to an event after 5.30. It's people who want to invest in themselves. So these are people who will, they're looking at the paddle game, we want to be like these people and then and then I'm digging out the way that they can make that happen. But the Spiders Web works strongly because Some of the in-betweeners see it as great. This is all interconnected tissue between the way that we're all operating and working. And maybe a head-on-to might tell them where the gaps are, but they're out there finding the gaps of themselves and then off they go the next day and, you know, get on the phone.

Carly OsmanI love it Well, thank you, Rich, for this.

Richard RobinsonThank you.

Carly OsmanAnd I think this is a question that I'm going to be asking myself this next week and sit down there and not just think about my job and the portfolio career that I'm building, but also relationships, friendships. business partnerships that I'm in really thinking about, do I want to do this for another year? and if not, what am I going to do about it?

Richard RobinsonAnd And as somebody who who is always happy, and when say that, there are times I get miserable as well, but but I generally, I come into everything with positive intent. The question we haven't touched on, what happens if the answer is yes, I am going to give another year of my life to these people, because people think about it in terms of negative.

Carly OsmanYeah

Richard RobinsonAnd I'll thinking, it because if it's yes, that means, you know again, you have an amazing power in that situation, because that means you are full tilt full speed ahead to absolutely blow the doors off in your job because you have made a commitment to yourself that means you're gonna smash your KPIs, you're gonna be the single greatest person that that company's got. so I feel that people at the beginning of the year sleepwalk into the job that they're into not knowing what the year is going to look like. And then they sort of accept things happen them that are outside the job. But I want people walking into into you know this company, the Ingenuity Group, at the start of the year, going, I want to give another year of my life to these people. I want to absolutely own it. i want i want to be, almost my frustration is because i've I've got more to give. And, you know, why can't you see that and then be pushing? Because they want to do more things. They want to get promoted. They want more power. They want more authority. They want more. think it's not And again, it's not it's not a money thing per se. it's a This is where I want to be and I'm going to drive the hell out of it so that I get to a great place.

Carly OsmanAmazing. but Thank you so much, Richard.

Richard RobinsonThank you so much, Carlo. I've really thoroughly enjoyed it

Carly OsmanIt's been brilliant.

Richard RobinsonLoved it.