Helping Organisations Thrive Podcast Interview: Developing Young People in Organisations

The Helping Organisations Thrive, hosted by Julian Roberts, aims to provide leaders with insights, discussions and robust strategies to help their companies thrive.  They recently sat down with Mike, Managing Director at Napier, who discusses his passion for recruiting and developing young people at Napier.

Listen to the full interview here, or via your favourite podcast app, and don’t hesitate to get in touch and let us know your thoughts.

Transcript: Helping Organisations Thrive Podcast Interview: Developing Young People in Organisations

Julian: Hello, and welcome to the helping organisations thrive podcast. This is your host, Julian Roberts. This podcast is to provide leaders with insights, discussions and robust strategies to help their companies thrive in these challenging times. We will be interviewing business leaders, owners and experts in the field of business resilience. Welcome to helping organisations thrive. Today I have the great pleasure of Mike Maynard. Welcome, Mike.

Mike: Julian, thanks for having me on the podcast. Yeah,

Julian: It’s good to see you and get to have a conversation with you today. And I just got to tell the audience a little bit about you. You are the MD of Napier Partnership, which is a PR lead full service marketing agency that specialises in the b2b technology sector. And you say you’re a self confessed geek who loves talking about technology. And you began your career as electronics design engineer working for companies ranging from GC, Marconi and DDA developing products from complex radar systems to Kim Wiles mixing this, which is really interesting. Whether we get onto that I’m not too sure. But it’s certainly an interesting thing to talk about, as they ask everybody on the show, because I’m really nosy and curious about sort of why people do what they do. So what do you love about what you do?

Mike: So I wish I could say it’s just so easy, you know, but actually, I think what I love is the challenge. Every day is different, every client is different. And the rate of change, I mean, you mentioned the fact that I’m a bit of a geek, I love technology, I love the way technology influences things, and probably, you know, marketing, and I think particularly b2b marketing has been more influenced by technology than almost any other industry.

Julian: And Have you always been a geek sort of technology wise? Have you always been interested in sort of the aspects of marketing? I mean, what where’s this all come from?

Mike: So that the geek bit Yes, yeah, I mean, I, when I went to school, you know, I did the physics and maths, I did an engineering degree. So absolutely always been a geek, whether marketing thing came from, that’s a little bit of a longer story.

Julian: Because it does feel a bit of a job doesn’t go from an engineer to marketing. I mean, that’s like a quantum leap.

Mike: It’s, it’s not that uncommon. But I can’t really claim it was desperately planned. So I started off as an engineer, I was designing electronic systems, I didn’t really enjoy a lot of the, the kind of bureaucracy and admin behind taking a product from design to manufacture. So you know, clearly, you need to make sure that everything was right, or the parts were listed, all that kind of stuff in it, it wasn’t really my thing. So I looked around what I could do.

And I realised that the technical support engineers were coming to me had a company car, and at the time, you know, 30 years ago, that was a big deal. And very tax efficient way of having a car. So I thought, why quite fancy a car, I could help people. So I moved into a technical support role. I got myself a car. It was a lovely Astro GSI fantastic car, loved it.

And started doing technical support, worked on that for a while, moved to an American semiconductor company, and then eventually realised that really, the route forward in my role was to go to the States. And I didn’t want to do that. So kind of looked around for the next logical career step and decided marketing was the thing I had an opportunity to move to become the European marketing manager for this, this company. And, you know, it had some great insights. So I spent 10 years with this semiconductor company moving really from that engineering to marketing role.

Julian: Okay, that’s interesting. It was interesting. And obviously, you like that you enjoy it. Now, I know you’ve done it ever since?

Mike: Yeah, I mean, I love it. I there’s a lot of similarity between marketing. And, you know, thank goodness, I’m doing marketing now rather than 30 years ago, because, you know, 30 years ago started the 90s. You know, it was almost still the Mad Men kind of era. It was all opinion. It was theory, there was very little data. Today, the world is completely different. You know, all of marketing revolves around data, and understanding whether things work and to be honest, that’s kind of an engineering problem. Hmm.

Julian: That’s interesting, actually. Yeah. And it’s interesting because I’ve known a lot of marketers who’ve come from a science background actually. So it’s very similar sort of logical way of problem solving, trying to work and navigate things through. So today We’ve had a conversation already about this before about, I know you’ve got a real passion for really bringing on young sort of people within the workforce. And, you know, we know that millennials now are becoming some stats that within 10 years, they’re going to become a significant part of the workforce almost will be there now. And then we have the old Gen Zed coming up behind them now. And unlike ourselves, the Gen X slot will be sort of becoming a little bit less in the workforce. So it is changing this dynamic. And I just want to understand, what is it about the sort of younger sort of people that you’re quite interested in and got a passion for? Because you do have a passion for it?

Mike: And that’s a great question. I think that, you know, there’s a few things one is, you know, surround yourself with younger people, you don’t feel quite as old, most of the time until you talk about music, and then you feel really old. But, you know, a lot of that is around helping myself helping me be a better marketer by getting a wider range of views. But I think particularly one of the most exciting things is how fast you know, people can develop at the start of their careers. And I think this is always an interesting challenge.

You know, I remember when I started my career, you know, you leave University thing, you know, everything, you walk into your first engineering job. And, you know, the first thing you get told is right, you’ve got to understand the degree gets you in the position where you can start learning, the first important thing, you know, you don’t know anything that’s wrong, and very quickly realise that you pick up things really fast. And I think that’s, that’s always quite exciting. So we’ve seen, you know, younger people join the company, and really learn and develop very quickly. And so I really enjoyed that. I found that that really useful.

I think clients love to see, you know, people at their agency develop quickly. And it also brings some new ideas as well. And you know, some of them, some of them great, some of them maybe not so great, but it’s great to see different perspective people from outside coming in and having a different approach.

Julian: And it’s just a nature of your business. That is obviously b2b technology. And I don’t know what an innovation or is did you make a deliberate sort of play for bringing in younger talents, or a combination of both?

Mike: I guess, I’d love to claim as a strategy. mean, ultimately, what one retrospectively is no is Yeah, we clearly, you know, looked and analyse the situation and worked out young people or right people to bring in to optimise our business. Although a cynic might say that being based in Chichester, there’s actually very few senior experienced marketing professionals in the area. And that’s honestly the truth. We very rapidly realised that in order to support our growth was we could get some senior people we couldn’t get enough to grow as quickly as we wanted to. So we recognise we had to bring in younger people and had to train them up, it was the only option.

Julian: Okay, and how have you gone about doing that in terms of bringing people on board making sure that they are fits with your culture, and fit with where you’re going as a business?

Mike: So it’s a great question we’ve had, I guess, you know, two real different routes. I mean, one is bringing on people as apprentices. And we’ve had a couple of real significant success stories with people coming in as apprentices who’ve not done degrees, who’ve not got these marketing qualifications. And we’ve worked with just a college who’ve been fantastic in terms of helping us develop those people. And, you know, that’s been a really successful way to bring in, frankly, you know, very young, very green people into the business and make them successful.

And the other, probably more conventional way is through sort of a more of a graduate approach, where we’re hiring and graduates and developing them. And typically there, we might be offering them a CI M. So chartership marketing qualification. Because that’s somewhat more practical than they would have gotten the degree the degrees are still, I mean, to academic to, you know, really let people hit the ground running. I mean, when you really do a degree, and I’ve lectured on some PR courses, you know, you’re asking the students to think about strategy. You’re asked him thinking at a very high level, and actually, you know, if you leave university as a graduate and move to Coca Cola, they don’t ask you to decide the strategy for marketing for Coca Cola on your first day, you know, you’re actually doing a lot of the execution.

So it is about, you know, changing that graduate mindset into execution and delivering tactics. And rather than having this big, overarching strategy, trying to think about very specific campaigns or activities and how to make them work,

Julian: And if you sort of focus, is it mainly our graduates or do you take anybody from a non degree background? I mean, what’s your focus on that, obviously, is a lot to talk about. You don’t need degree or you do need a degree and a lot of negativity towards degrees? I just want to get your sort of thoughts on that. Really?

Mike: Yeah, I mean, it’s really interesting, you don’t need a degree, you don’t need a degree to join napeo, we’ve had people very, very successfully joined Napier, I mean, I’ve got, you know, one of our account managers now Emily joined, I don’t know, five or six years ago, literally straight out of school, no experience as an apprentice. And she’s actually got to the point where she’s running, you know, some of our major accounts. And, frankly, you know, if I had, you know, some challenges around, for example, digital marketing, I mean, she’s the person I want on my account, she’s, she’s brilliant, she’s got some great insight into account based marketing, she’s done tremendously well. But equally, if you look at people who’ve got degrees, they’ve had three years of training.

And as I say, it’s not always what I call directly on the job training, but they actually come with, you know, something slightly different, maybe a more strategic outlook, certainly, you know, they’re more experienced more mature. I think both are great ways to recruit people, I don’t know, you can say one is better than another, they’re just different.

Julian: So what is it you’re looking for when you’re trying to recruit somebody in that sort of sort of the younger people sort of brackets? What is it about them that makes you think, actually, they’ve got something they’ve got this potential that this spark has certain aspects that you sort of see,

Mike: It’s unbelief, I don’t know if any young people are listening to the podcast, but it’s incredible, when people come and talk to us, particularly they come for interview, within two or three minutes, you know, if they’re keen or not, you know, if they’re enthusiastic. And what we’re looking for are, you know, people who actually want to do the job. And that sounds crazy. But literally, that’s what we want to do, we want to find people who are keen, enthusiastic, because they’re the people who put the work in, and they’re the people who develop really, really quickly.

And, to me, it’s really interesting, because you’ll have some, particularly the younger people coming in who maybe it’s their first job interview, I don’t know, it could have been Emily’s first job interview. And, you know, they’re nervous, and they’re not, they’re not performing at their peak, but at the same time, you can still see that sparkle, enthusiasm. And to me, you know, that’s the most important thing is is somebody who wants the job, and wants to make it a success. And I think, as a business, we can give them, you know, what they need the tools and the training, to make it a success if they’re prepared to put the work in.

Julian: And what you know, bringing in younger people, because I know you have to don’t just have younger people, you have a wide range of, of demographics in your organization’s Is there any challenges to other people in the organisation, when you’re bringing in lots of younger talents, so to speak, I mean, or even pitfalls from sort of bringing young talents,

Mike: I hope those challenges, I mean, we’d love the younger people to challenge the older people, and we love vice versa, you know, older people to challenge the younger people. So from that point of view, you know, I guess there’s always an underlying element of competition in any business. But we’re not, we’re not an outwardly competitive business. And one of the great things about running a smaller business, is you don’t have this huge kind of corporate structure to deal with. And if I have someone who’s brilliant, I can make them a job, and I can create a job, I can create a job title, I can, you know, I can even build a business around somebody who’s got a particular enthusiasm for a certain area of marketing.

So I can absolutely, you know, make someone who’s keen, enthusiastic, successful. So it’s not a zero sum game. You know, I love the younger people to bring new ideas to, you know, frankly, push some of the older people on the importance of digital, equally love the, you know, the older people will look at it and push the young people maybe on quality. You know, and it’s a very interesting balance, you know, younger people are perhaps more used to seeing marketing on Facebook, which is a little, often a little raw. Whereas, you know, if you’ve been in business for, you know, 30 years, I’ve been seeing that you’ve seen, like these, you know, pieces of content that have gone through 2030 revisions that have been perfected to the point of, you know, almost utter boredom. But you get to see these these kinds of, you know, really polished bits of content, and that’s what you expect. So, you know, everyone can bring their own perspective and their own perspectives, always valuable.

Julian: And I guess, bringing that diversity readers sort of create that sense of thriving mindset and stimulation amongst the rest of the business isn’t.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’d rather hire someone because they’re good not hire someone because they’re, you know, 45 or they’ve got 10 years experience or anything like that. I’d rather hire someone who’s good. And, you know, the other thing, being a small business, it’s much easier to have a, you know, a much stronger culture and I think we’ve really folk customer, a culture of people enjoying working together, you know, and I really hope people enjoy working with each other because we pick, frankly, we pick people that we as a management team want to work with, you know, that’s what we do at the end of the day.

Julian: No, and I think I’ve talked to a lot of businesses where they’re starting to think a bit more about hiring for attitude as opposed to skill, because you can always teach the skills, the abilities, as long as you got the attitude to, to learn and develop and grow. That’s really important. So in the last 12 months, how have you found your business? Or how you found developing people in that time job or bringing new people on? I mean, it’s been quite a challenge, I guess, was it not in might not be in your business.

Mike: For us, it’s been a massive challenge. And we’re still trying to work through why. But not having that face to face element makes makes training particularly where people are new to the industry or you know, baby have a new to work. It’s really, really hard to do. So we are planning a move back to the office, probably as a hybrid kind of move. But we know, you know, one of the biggest drivers for us we know is training and improving the training. We are doing other things as well to try and make our training a little more formalised. I think this is probably one of the reasons why some people have been very successful. Some people haven’t, we’ve had a very personal, you know, always individual training programme with everybody. And I think some companies that have had very standardised training programmes, have actually found it easier to train people when they’re remote.

And I think the challenge is getting, you know, the benefits of that individual personalised training, people can focus on what they want to do and learn what they need, rather than having to learn everything, and then work out what’s important. So you want to keep that, but you also want to introduce maybe a little bit more formality. So that’s what we’re doing. We, you know, we’ve spent a lot of this year where we’ve done training, it’s all been video recorded, where we’re, you know, we’re building this library. So we’re getting to the point where we’ve got that kind of training built in now.

Julian: Okay, I’ve been talking to a lot of businesses where they’ve liked yourself and a lot of stuff on mind, or they’ve onboarding people. It’s been obviously quite a challenge. And I remember, I was talking to one sort of a CEO, where I think some of his direct reports were, when they they on boarded somebody on in terms of their teams, they would literally put an open room on a zoom. So they could just access them almost like a water cooler. They didn’t need to ring them, it was just on all the time. And then they would just pop in and go Hello, can I assume? Have you done anything like that any ways of trying to create those water cooler moments, so to speak, and try to create that almost almost normality of dialogue without being so forced with a formal meeting?

Mike: Yes, we do a couple of things I mean, with with new people, particularly, we do a lot of like sheduled, one to ones. So that meet people that don’t necessarily even directly work with just so they can get to know the company get to know the people. And then we’ve tried really hard to get some informal kind of elements to the business. So we’ve done the pop quiz, we’re still doing the pop quiz. Not every week, but we’re still doing the pop quiz, which I think is, you know, we must be one of the last businesses still still, I don’t know anybody else is still doing publicly. I think this Friday, we’ve got a pop quiz on penguins, which is terrifying me. I feel I don’t know enough about penguins. But, you know, that’s how far we’ve got down the pub quiz route. So we’re doing that.

But we also do a, like a couple of 15 minute morning calls that are, you know, a little bit of some good news from the business. So this morning, we had someone who’d just pulled in an extra 10,000 pounds of business we didn’t expect. So bit of positivity. And we play a game we call throw and catch, which is we basically have a topic and we talk about that. And last week was jokes this Thursday, I think we need to talk about what are the three apps you really couldn’t live without on your iPhone? I mean, just anything off the wall crazy kind of discussions, and it always is quite entertaining, you get to know people. So I think we’ve tried to try to have some of that, you know, follow on there, but it is it isn’t as fun doing it remotely. I mean, that’s sure.

Julian: Oh, no, not at all. I agree. And just just on that, and what are your thoughts on the sort of future of work? I mean, it’s a big topic in itself, just from your own perspective, but also generally, how do you think people are going to navigate this niche next phase of, of a post pandemic?

Mike: And I think most people are going to navigate by guessing. And hopefully we’ll end up somewhere that’s good. I don’t think anyone knows. You know, and I think there’ll be a I mean, issue where we don’t want to go back to the office full time, kind of, you know, people being a bit reluctant to go back. And you know, whether that’s from safety health concerns, or whether it’s from, you know, the benefits of working from home. And then suddenly, there’ll be like, a bit of a rush back when people go, yeah, sure, I do want to go meet people at work with my friends.

And you know, and then there’ll be a bit of a pullback, and I think it will be like these waves of people coming in and out of the office, and was settled. I mean, I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see businesses go, you know, everybody working remotely, if their office based or everyone working full time in the office, it, you know, it’s this magic hybrid word, which is kind of like a classic British fudge, you know, we don’t know what the answer is, it’s going to be somewhere in between the two complete extremes, which I think is a fairly safe bet.

Julian: Yeah. And if you got any sort of principles, or how you’re going to think that through and put it together, because it is, you know, I’ve talked to many organisations, and there’s like, 5000 ways of doing this. And it’s really difficult. But have you got any sort of thinking other core ways, you’re going to know, we’re going to approach it in this way, and base it on this to try and ensure we bring everybody with us and keep the communication going?

Mike: So think, in terms of principles, there are certain things that we know are more effective in the office. So if you ask people individually, are you more effective and efficient working from home? They’ll go, yes. If you ask them, what about the rest of your team? They’ll go, No. The reality is, is that individuals become more efficient at home, but teams become less efficient when they’re fragmented, you know, and it’s obvious, I mean, it’s gonna happen. And I’m trying. So first thing is to explain that that’s the problem is we’re not trying to bring people back into the office, because we think they’re not efficient at home, or we don’t trust them, it’s that the team doesn’t work as well, if you’re not together.

So we need to find what that means. And I have no clue what that means at the moment. But I just know that what we need to do is do things to encourage people to spend time in the office, because that matters. And ultimately, it increases their contribution to the business, you know, whilst individually, they may, you know, may have a bigger individual contribution. The team as a whole is less effective. And what matters really in the business is how well the team performs, not whether you’ve got one standout individual.

Julian: Yeah, and I think you’re right, I think having that almost principle at the core about team is really important that I’ve been talking to a lot of organisations about, you know, making sure you keep those connections going. And those collaborations and collaboration is part of the team and you do that more effectively, it can be done remotely, because we’ve proved it, but more effectively in person. But through it all, making sure that communication is is is all the way through because there will be moments where how organisations do it where someone be in the office, or somebody at home is how you keep them connected on in the same meeting at that same time. And that people don’t miss out on things that are going on, and almost be an inclusive without really just going back to bringing on young people and and try creating that sort of culture of focusing on that, because that’s obviously where the workforce is going. What are the sort of pitfalls might there be bringing on somebody other straight from university, or from an apprenticeship sort of point of view?

Mike: I think the biggest challenge is not assuming that they know things. And I think that most of the problems we’ve had is we’ve assumed something. And the individuals never said, Look, I just have no clue. And I think we, particularly with younger people, they find it quite hard to admit they don’t know stuff. And we keep saying it’s fine, it’s fine, you don’t know just ask we’ll fix it, it’s fine. And they go where they go a compliment to the boss. I don’t know that, you know. And it’s very frustrating from our point of view, but it’s also very understandable. So, to me, the biggest issue you’ve got is is really making sure that you don’t make assumptions or if you do you validate those assumptions with the individual make it really clear and ask questions in a way that that are not you know, a direct Well, can you do this or not? Because there are definitely people, particularly younger people, not exclusively young people, particularly younger people are reluctant to admit, you know, something they can’t do because they see it as a weakness. And as advice to younger people, it’s not weakness, just be direct. And you know, you’ll get taught it, you’ll learn it and it will all be over very, very quickly. But yeah, I mean, that’s the biggest challenge we have.

Julian: Yes, interesting point actually, because my youngest daughter, I think he works in a cafe and some things she found was found in difficult and I just say to say the only you don’t I do. I can’t do that. I can’t do that. manner, I think it’s okay to say, I don’t I, you know, they’ve been shown, yeah, this works. And it’s that sort of vulnerability, I guess, at the age where you feel like you need to know it all. Because otherwise you’ll lose your job, which is obviously a concern. So what do you do besides that to ensure that there that you’ll get success when you bring somebody in from that perspective, in terms of helping them to be successful through your organisation?

Mike: I mean, that’s a great question. We’ve I mean, we’ve got an amazing HR manager, Debbie, who spends a lot of time talking to people and making sure that they’re happy. I mean, she’s the person we always send, you know, if we feel that there’s a problem with someone not understanding something that she’s the, I guess, the non, in a way than the non managerial person they can trust. She’s, she’s not nasty like us. You know, it’s really about talking to people, and it’s about communication. And I think there’s, you know, there has been a challenge and without doubt, whilst people look at, you know, remote working and say, well, zoom is great, you know, it can replace meetings. Yeah, it can kind of replace meetings, it can’t replace the Hi, how you doing chat when somebody is making coffee?

And I think, you know, it’s those informal chats that we’re trying to trying to develop to find the problems. I mean, to be honest, I think most businesses don’t have an issue with solving problems, you know, if they have people who don’t understand something, or, you know, haven’t been taught something, or, you know, just never experienced it, it’s easy to train people. But it’s really hard to find the problem in the first place, that that’s the real challenge. So, you know, that’s definitely an area, I would love to do a better job on. I mean, I think it’s something we’re trying and, you know, we’ll get there, but it’s pretty tough. You know, and particularly with the dynamics of not everyone wanting to be completely honest about, you know, what they see as weaknesses, and we might just see, it’s our training failure. Normally, it’s, I mean, it’s normally, you know, a lot of these problems are down to issues with training, you know, and we can look at it and go, yeah, I can understand that. Now, when I said to you, I understand that I saw you really didn’t, but you said, Yes, I trusted you. And, you know, I was stupid, it’s my fault, you know, and it often is, you know, the the senior people’s fault for not picking up the issues.

Julian: Do they get assigned, like mentors, because I know a lot organisation work on that sort of mentor buddy system to help them not somebody who’s not their direct reports, or their manager, sorry, somebody they can talk to an offload with and almost ask these stupid questions that perhaps they feel a bit embarrassed to ask their boss.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. So we, we have a buddy system, which a buddy system for everybody, no matter how senior they are, when they come in. I got told recently, we shouldn’t call them buddies, because senior people get offended. And I kind of thought, well, they’re senior people, they can grow out of that. So we call them buddies. And it definitely helps in some areas, I think it doesn’t cover everything. And one of the things is, is because you’re not necessarily matching to somebody who’s who’s doing exactly the same job. I mean, everybody’s doing something slightly different in the agency, because the clients are different.

Other campaigns are different. It doesn’t always solve the problem. It definitely helps. I mean, without a doubt, you know, it’s been a good approach from our point of view. But it yeah, it can be, it can still be a challenge. It’s not the it’s not the fix, you can’t, as a management team, say, right? There you are, you’ve come in, you’re new, give you a buddy, everything solved, we’d have to worry about it, I think you’ve still got to work and make sure you you deliver that training. And to me, that’s the important thing, what we can do is we can we can expose people to far more than they’d ever see in. Even in a university course, we can get them to learn far more things. And it’s obviously highly practical, as opposed to perhaps more academic, but, you know, the range of things we can get people to work on is huge compared to what you’d see elsewhere. So I think that the trainings really exciting and maybe that’s another challenge is you know, the way marketing is going with with this increase in technology, it’s so easy to keep throwing out new things to people who are just starting.

Julian: Not as interesting. And just just on reflection on the last year. What So one thing that you’ve either learnt or done as a business that you’re going to continue to do going forward, whether you go hybrid or not. be interested to know, wow.

Mike: We’ve learned so much over the last year in terms of just all sorts of things from Like being a bit clearer with planning and sharing content and documents all the way through to learning that we don’t have to maybe travel as much as we thought we did, I think I think one of the things we have learned is, and this is going to sound a bit strange, because not directly related the pandemic. But I think as an organisation, we’ve we’ve realised that we’re working with very, very large companies. So we’re working with several companies that are multi billion dollar companies. And sometimes I think being a relatively small agency, you don’t feel confidence pitching to somebody that big, you know, you’re, you’re there, you’re 30 people there 300,000 people.

And maybe it’s a little less intimidating, because you’re not going into the big corporate HQ, and everything, because you’re doing everything we’ve seen, we’ve realised that, actually, we haven’t good at this stuff. And we’re really good at helping these big companies. So I think that’s the one thing I’d probably take overall, and it’s not necessarily a direct learning from the pandemic, but it’s a result of, of perhaps not, you know, no longer being intimidated by these big corporate lobbies, and, you know, all the glitz and glamour that, that surrounds huge companies, because it’s, it’s just that it’s just a bit of glitz. You know, and so, yeah, I think we, we will definitely be more will be more forward about how we approach some of our bigger target companies and a much more directed and when we do, you know, it seems to work really well.

Julian: Perhaps the, the pandemic is created a bit of a level playing field for you, which is great.

Mike: Yeah, I think I think it helps as well, you know, I mean, obviously, when clients, you know, again, go to visit a huge agency that’s got hundreds of people in London, they can afford to have a very nice lobby area. And, you know, you can put the Koi Carp in there and have a waterfall or whatever else, you know, kind of floats your boat. But I think that that kind of has levelled things out a bit, for sure. But it’s made it it’s made it much easier. And we’ve had, you know, several really successful pitches with companies I, you know, I think a very aspirational, you know, company I really want to work with. And we’ve won it and, you know, we’ve actually found that we could do a great job. So, you know, the more we keep seeing that, the more we can keep pitching, pitching those, those very big companies. Brilliant,

Julian: That’s really good to hear small companies doing some good stuff. Excellent stuff. Well, it’s been great and a delight to have you on today, Mike. So if people are interested about what you do, if young people out there young leaders are listening and want to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Mike: Well, absolutely Anyone is welcome to contact me on LinkedIn. Or they can email me Mike at Napier b2b Comm. Or they can listen to our podcasts. We’ve got a podcast that talks about marketing technology called marketing b2b technology, very simple podcast name. And lastly, if there are young people who would like a job in marketing, and like the sound of working in an agency and working on b2b, we currently have two vacancies open. So people can either email me they can go through the Napier b2b website. Or you can probably find, I think we’re advertised them on places like indeed as well. So you can probably find them there. And we’d love some applications.

Julian: Brilliant. Excellent. Well, thank you for your time today. Much appreciated.

Mike: Thanks very much, Julian.

Julian: If you liked this episode, then please do subscribe to share with your friends, and do check out other episodes in the series. If you’re looking for support and help your organisation to create a resilient culture, and please do get in contact with me on Julian Roberts consulting.com Thank you.