HVF002 – Barnaby Wynter

Tony Winyard 0:01
Happy versus Flourishing Episode Two. This is the podcast where we explore the difference between happiness and flourishing. And whereas happiness is a kind of fleeting feeling, you can have a flourishing life where your content most of the time, where there's very few people are happy most of the time; genuinely anyway. So that's the theme of the show. And in most of the episodes, we are going to explore that. This particular episode, not so much. We're with a guy called BarnabyWynter who is a bit of a marketing genius and we go a lot more into the business side of things then I think we're probably going to do in most of the upcoming episodes, but as I said, Barnaby is a marketing genius. He's got a impressive track record as we're going to hear once the episode starts. And so we're hear a lot more about that in just a few minutes. If you do like this episode, please do share. with anyone who would get some value from it, why not subscribe to this new podcast? And leave a review? Let us know what you think about it that really helps to for more people to get to know about the podcast but right now it is time for this week's episode. Welcome to Happy versus Flourishing and my guest today on the first actual episode with a guest is Barnaby Wynter. How are you gonna Barnaby?

Barnaby Wynter 1:30
on very well Tony on very well thank you very much for asking.

Tony Winyard 1:34
Well, you know, I've been meaning to invite you for quite a while when I was doing the previous podcast exceeding expectations I kept think and I need to invite Barnaby I need to invite him and for various reasons that I never got around to it. And then the other day I was thinking why haven't I invited Barnaby yet? So here you are

Barnaby Wynter 1:51
Thank you. I'm so pleased it's taken only 100 episodes for you to invite me.

Tony Winyard 1:58
For those people people listening who have no idea who you are gonna tell them a little bit about your amazing history.

Barnaby Wynter 2:07
Yeah, so I'm a, I suppose classed as a serial marketer. But I did psychology as a degree at university way back in the early 80s and settled on going into advertising as a career and psychology doesn't naturally lead you into that. So I went and did a postgraduate diploma in advertising and then I got a little bit bored of that. I also did a postgraduate diploma in marketing as well and ended up in a small agency. In Faringdon, where I launched the fit to cart Oh the fit theory, no Weber carburettors, RJ Hall, car leasing, moto Saab Scania trucks account. So I took on my first mentor then as I've been in business, maybe about eight months and set him you know, how to apply my career and he said, let's have a look at your CV and he said, Oh, you have great CV if you want to work. In the automotive advertising world, and I said, Okay, it's the second largest purchase anybody will ever make. You'll always have a career in automotive advertising. So Okay, that sounds really good. Yeah, that sounds exciting. What else is there? Well, the other option you can do is you can become what's called a generalist. So you work across lots and lots of different types of clients, and therefore, you can advise people on business and be more robust. And I said, Oh, that sounds exciting, too. So I said, Well, which one should I do? And he said, Well, is it Am I right in saying that you own a Vespa scooter and a VW Beetle cabriolet and I said, Yes, that's correct. Yes. And he said, he said, to be honest, by the way, you are not a Motorhead. You want to live in the world of Formula One and fast cars and supercars? I said, Okay. So I settled on becoming a specialist generalists as they now called. And as a result, after 18 months in my first agency, I moved to an agency called Ogilvy and Mather, which is one of the world's largest advertising agencies, oddly enough to work on the form. account to relaunch the Ford Sierra launched for Grenada. Whilst I was there, over a six year period, I managed to get myself off for that I launched our Goffs. I launched Rajon washing detergent and before I left over is I think Lipton ice iced tea worldwide. So had a great great time there probably my favourite agency of all, but they moved across to Canary Wharf and it was practically empty. And so I didn't really like it over there having been working over in Britain and house on Waterloo Bridge. So move back to Soho where I launched Eurostar boots, opticians red stripe lager. And my career's progressing fairly rapidly at this point. So again, three years ago, three years later, I got headhunted into another agency to launch Toshiba home cinema work on sunexpress single first telecom so you can start to see that and they're just the sort of headline accounts. There are lots of other little accounts in between. So they're all there. Quite a wide portfolio and then I got headhunted to join an agency in Clark well, to launch a thing called e trade. And the reason for that was I kind of discovered the internet in 1987. That's two years before HTML was invented. Tim berners Lee, and I'd always worked on the kind of Webby side of brand building. And so I ended up there in 1999, becoming then the youngest Managing Director of a top 200 advertising agency. So very exciting bit a bit of a stellar career. And I bought that company in 2001. In June of that year, and some eight nine weeks later, people flew aeroplanes into buildings in New York and really changed world order for me. And as a result, I had 30 staff we pulled together and decided we will come up with a new formula for marketing for clients and we set in early 2000 to a target of six months to relaunch the agency with this new formula for marketing success based on a methodology called the brand bucket. And rather disconcertingly, that project took seven years. And so we'd completed that in 2009, just as a new recession was taking a hold. And one of the outcomes of that was we realised that we didn't didn't need a big fancy building in central London with six floors and studios and meeting rooms and libraries and all that sort of thing. Because I've moved my business from a PA ye business to a freelancer on the business side, the two employees as people retired or left or move change jobs, we replace them with freelancers so we have 30 freelancers working in the building, plus three employees. And I started to to shut the building down the close up, particularly company and I've pushed everything to the cloud took a year and today I Sit here talking to you from kind of a control centre, where I have a huge freelance community or working on my client work. And what I do now is I provide big corporates with the marketing strategy for their former for marketing success. And then I help them implement that through various resources. And 2007. I became a speaker in 2009, and became a professional speaker, and just moved on from that. So I'm really enjoying my career right now.

Tony Winyard 7:31
Well there's so much to dig into, in what you just said, I mean, one of the first things that comes to mind is, what is marketing?

Barnaby Wynter 7:41
So marketing is the discipline of pricing, every experience that affects the relationship between a product or service and its buyer. So it's the discipline of doing that. So you're the role of marketing has fundamentally changed where when I came into the industry, it's predominantly led by Advertising everything else was kind of a poor relation. Whereas now actually the way of business systems and processes functions should now be influenced by marketing thinking because actually marketing is a is the discipline of creating these commercial relationships between what you're selling and the people who are buying those things.

Tony Winyard 8:27
Marketings changed quite a bit over the last 10, 20 years? How do you think it might change over the next few years?

Barnaby Wynter 8:36
Well, okay, so let's talk about how it has changed. And then let's, let's reflect on how that might go forward. So, what we saw from our research when we put in the form of marketing successes, there was a real kicker in in the way marketing works. So if we start with boxing 1.0 This is when we were agricultural as a country. See we would make grow things and we would rear livestock and we take that to the local market and we stand around and we shout at people and people will come and they buy our goods, that was kind of marketing 1.0 .Marketing 2.0 was then really about creating this idea that you could build factories and the Industrial Revolution starts and selling the things you were making to other people. And then what that led to was kind of a broadcast mindset where essentially, we got to a point where people were creating things like USPs unique selling points, we found that those died in 1995. There is not really been any such thing as a USP since 1995. And the reason for that was because of the internet. And what the internet did is it empowered us as buyers to get far more information for more quickly from the comfort of our own armchairs. Using browsers and various things, which, you know, didn't really take hold until 98, when Google came along, although there was AltaVista, and all this and AOL and all these other browsers prior to that, but so that led to kind of marketing 3.0 where we started to see the buyer taking control, we're in kind of marketing 4.0 now, where actually the brand owner has very little say, or sway over decisions that people are making, in the way that they did originally, simply because what happened was, people go online now. So 88% of all buying decisions start online, and therefore by the time people contact you for the very first time, they're more likely to buy from you than they're not, when they contact you and then that's backed by research 57% then 57% more likely to buy from you than not buy from you when they contact you for the very first time. So that's really changed marketing. We talked about that as marketing 4.0 so and then essentially what's happened is marketing has become an inbound strategy, not an outbound strategy. So we moved from shouting at people and broadcasting USPs to now people finding out about us and buying from us. That's where we're all right now, where that's going now of course is because technology underpins the relationships, the brand owners have realised that they've lost control. So what they're doing now is They're digging into the data. So we've got this thing called machine learning going on at the moment and machine learning is not AI a lot of people confuse AI, a lot of people using the phrase AI. But in fact, where we're at at the moment is with machine learning mode. And the difference between machine learning and AI is that AI uses machine learning to present information but when it presents information, it is not discernible to you or I that it is not a human being. That's what characterises AI. That's the definition of AI that you can't tell it's not a human being doing it. And there are very, very few examples of that right now of you communicating with a system where it feels very, very human, but there's no humans involved. So I think where marketing is going to go is this AI thing is going to start to come in and you and I will not know, whether we are talking to a human being or not talking to a human being. And as a result, the data feed that will come from our lives will feed the AI and the AI will talk to us in such a way as we think we are making decisions. But in reality we're being marketed at based on what we're doing from a from a data set point of view, so for example, one day there will be a delivery to your door, and it will be all of the food to go into your fridge because your fridge will have communicated with with the retailer that you've chosen and the shelves would have weighed the fact that you've run out tomatoes and cucumber and you need some more marmalade and butters getting low and bread bin is empty and all of that sort of thing. And effectively it will simply send an order down the line and send it to you. And therefore marketing will have to have changed then, because how would you select the type of of foodstuffs, brands whatever that you would want want to eat in preference, that's all going to be data led in my opinion. And so I would imagine that in 20, 30 years time, marketing will look fundamentally different. Because we will be looking at a much more emotional engagement, much more inbound, much more collaborative using the data that we create.

Tony Winyard 13:49
So what changes will the average business person need to start making to take advantage of that?

Barnaby Wynter 13:55
So I think there is a real key strategic thing that business owners have to do and they have to understand that brand is not your logo, it's not your look and feel it's not a fancy website, it's not something, it's not something that designers create for you. Actually, what a brand is, is a relationship that people value more than the relationship they have with the money in their pocket. And if you can convey that relationship, then people will give you the money in their pocket in exchange for that relationship because it will seem worth more than the relationship they have with their money. And as a result, what we're going to what businesses have to realise now is that in fact they are they have built a machine that commercialises relationships. So therefore where back in the industrial revolution, people with the money built machines, factories, systems, and when we moved to a service economy in the 50s, here in the UK, it became a service thing, what most business owners do is they build systems and processes around making their lives easier. So they can scale so they can employ more people so they can get more goods and services out of the door. The reality is that we now have to apply marketing thinking to those systems and processes and design them for the buyers rather than for the business owners. So what business owners have to do right now is they have to go through literally line by line, almost in a coded way, everything in their business system and process and orientate it towards the buyer, rather than towards the staff or towards themselves. And that's a huge challenge. I sit with many business leaders and they really struggle with the idea of actually they're in business for their buyers and what they should be creating a system and so what they're doing is commercialising relationships with their buyers. So if you start with buyers and actually, Tony If you look at all the brands that have sort of come from nowhere in the last 10 years, Airbnb, justeat, Alibaba, Zappos, even things like Amazon, Google, eBay, if you look at those, you will find that they are systems that have been built and designed around the buyer. And they are and and that, yes, it's easy to say, Oh, well, they're all online and I'm not an online business. But actually, the reality is, that's not the key differentiator. The key differentiator is none of the brands that I've just mentioned, produce any products or services, they use other people's stuff. So if you're a product producer or service producer, you run the real risk of becoming a commodity and you're having to go through the same sort of distribution channels as product producers used to do when when the Tescos and the Sainsbury's and the ASDAs arrived. Because they became the gatekeepers of the relationship between the buyers and the brands. So I think for business owners have to really sit down now and look at every element of their systems and process and say, how do we make that marketing live?

Tony Winyard 17:16
Something occurred to me when you were speaking and I seem to remember and I could be wrong, but hearing you speak a year or two ago, I think you had a different take on the "know, like, trust" phrase that people often talk about?

Barnaby Wynter 17:29
Yes. Very much so it's nonsense, actually. Because the order is wrong. We only buy from people we like. And actually, from our research, we found an extra dimension to that, which is not only do we buy from people we like what we buy from people who are like us because there's so much choice And so there is no way that people will invest their life energy, or their time and their money in getting to know you, and then decide whether they like you or not. It's absolutely the wrong way around. So the order should be like, know, trust. So in other words, what happens is I hear your story, kind of like the cut of your jib. I say actually do you know what, tell me more about what you do, because I think I can use what you're doing. And then what you do is having engaged emotionally and then engage rationally, and the trouble with know, like, trust is it's rational, emotional leads to trust. That's the wrong order. It is absolutely emotional, rational, and then trust emerges from that, and it's really important to understand that and that's why know, like trust is the wrong way around it should be like, know, trust.

Tony Winyard 19:05
How important in your life are habits?

Barnaby Wynter 19:12
Okay, so I'm going to throw that back to you, Tony, if that's okay, what do you mean by a habit?

Tony Winyard 19:21
We were talking about artificial intelligence and machine learning and so on. And something that came into my head was algorithms and the connection between algorithms and habits which essentially to stop yourself having to make decisions regularly you just habitualise certain things. So it could be that after I wake up, I'm going to go for a run and after I go for a run, then I'm going to have breakfast and after breakfast, then I'm going to do that, you know, so people insert different habits into their lives to save making decisions every day. And I just wonder if you have habits that you do consistently every day or I wonder what habits means to you?

Barnaby Wynter 20:11
I'm gonna interpret your question if that's okay. You see for me a habit is a subconscious piece of behaviour. And whereas I think you're asking me how important is routine in my life routine, which is which are behaviours, which I repeat regularly, are critical to purpose. And I think purpose is about understanding where you want to go, understanding where you are, and then creating a set of routines that help you get from from A to B. And I don't think I don't see that as a habit. a habit to me is something where it's because it's subconscious I have less control over it. And therefore, whereas I think being in business is effectively what you're creating is a set of routines that you use test and fail on and when they work, you lock and load them and put them into into your business machine because you know that every time you do A, B results, and every time you do B, C results and so on. So I suppose psychologically I will be classed as anal when it comes to routine. So, I have some very specific things that I absolutely do all the time from business point of view, I, I put my car keys in the same place. And the moment I don't put them in the same place, my whole world collapses simultaneously. So, there's an inherent danger in that. Habits for me, I don't see those as habits. I just see those as a routine, because what it allows me to do is you're right, is to create a lifetime algorithm. Where I can not think about as much as I possibly can so that I keep momentum and in fact that that comes from a when I was at Ogilvy, they, they identified that I was very good at being sent on courses, for which they paid a lot of money for me to go on, but then I would teach everybody else in the organisation. So I would run workshops following the courses for people. One of the courses we did was a personal efficiency programme. PEP it was cool. And it was a three day programme on on how you work very efficiently, and they had it there. The heart of their philosophy was a do it now principle. And what you had to do is you had to activate absolutely everything in your life in such a way as it automatically fed back to where you were. So you didn't have to think about it. So you could run a clear desk policy, but everything was active. So you'd have bring forward files and files and notes and systems which then came back said Don't forget You got to buy flowers for mum, write that contact report, issue that invoice, collect the payment, all that sort of thing and they helped me understand how you build a system where that's all working. So it's kind of like a machine learning principle and there is an algorithm to the way they work but I don't see those habits I see those as, as routines, procedures and systems and processes.

Tony Winyard 23:28
Do you see yourself as being unconventional in any way in your life?

Barnaby Wynter 23:38
It's a really interesting question, Tony, because I clearly I cannot answer that question. Because my life is my own convention. And I think if you were to ask other people, including my children, I think they would absolutely affirm that I am deeply unconventional. I think I'm normal. And my life is quite conventional. So, because it's who I am what I am, and I'm, as the title of this podcast, I'm very happy being who I am. But I think probably if there was a normality or, to say I'm not probably not sitting in the centre of the bell curve of society now, I'm probably more on the edges.

Tony Winyard 24:34
Well, and part of the reason why I asked that because I get the impression that, you don't feel that you have to do what everyone else is doing. And you're quite happy just doing your own thing if it brings you results.

Barnaby Wynter 24:46
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think more than many that I know I have a very clear sense of self and So therefore what that that facilitates is resilience. It facilitates confidence, which can be perceived as arrogance at times, but it's not meant to be. It's just,, I'm very comfortable in my own skin. And I think the more comfortable you are, the less you worry about what other people think. And therefore you end up doing more what you want to do. So I absolutely agree with that. Yeah.

Tony Winyard 25:27
One of the things about this podcast, the idea behind it is in each episodes to give people small little ideas of how they can make small changes in their life. And you referred to that before we started speaking, about every day, you're looking to improve something every day. And so what do you mean by that, what kind of things are you looking to improve in your life?

Barnaby Wynter 25:58
I'm completely taken by the concept of what makes the boat go faster, so I think Redgrave and Pinson I think it might have been Redgrave was asked how did he win four gold medals in rowing it's one of the most challenging sports and he said it was very simple he said, that you know literally after we won the first gold medal we had a break and then we sat down and then we said, okay, let's just spend time working out one thing per day that make will make the boat go faster we'll then give that a go. If it works, we'll keep it and if it doesn't work, we'll move on to the next thing and he said and then four years later, we ended up being the fastest boat because we consistently did what makes the boat go faster. And I was really taken by that. So what I do is I sit and I look at the kind of business I want to run. I look at the kind of life I want to lead and I go Okay, how do I, you know, if I want to spend more time not working, then I have to find ways of achieving the same work goal, but by saving five minutes and you know, if you think about it Tony, if you find something that saves you three minutes a day for 10 days in a row, you've just found yourself half an hour a day. Yeah. And so my mind is very much at that level, I think, Well, okay, how can I... so stupid things like, one of the things I've done during during the last few months is I've reordered the way my files are filed on my computer. So that I've started to rank files that I access more often ahead of files that I don't access. So rather than treating them all as the same, and the outcome of that is it probably saves me two or three minutes a day. So I've found one of the things that the personal efficiency programme said is that every time if you if you have things on your desk, every time your attention is taken away from your desk and you come back, you spend scientifically in the region of two to three seconds reading everything on your desk, you just do it as a mental thing. So if you've got if you're the kind of person that has lots of yellow stickies and stuff and reminders and all that sort of thing, or just documents lying about, bits and pieces, what happens is you scan your desk every time you suddenly take a phone call and put the phone down, scan your desk, then you get up go to the loo and you come back to scan the desk, go and get a cup of coffee, you come back and scan yoiur desk and one of the things they demonstrate is you can literally find 20 to 30 minutes in a day just by having a clear desk policy. Now once you start to do that you go okay, but if I take it off my desktop, I remember to do it and then they teach you how to do it So, this this idea is literally how does a spreadsheet work? what data do I need? What data have I been slave to that makes no difference? What data do I really need? What's my GVA, my gross value added? so what I'm looking for all the time is how do I maximise the profitability of every hour I spend on my business. And then because I've set a figure of what I want to earn every year, I then find that I work less and less and less so when I keep timesheets, for example, and I analyse my timesheets every week to make sure that I'm spending the right amount of time on the right things every week, and if I found I've gone slightly out of balance the following week, I actively redress that balance. So there's always this balance going on between the three drivers of the business and and making my Business boat go faster and therefore my life go faster because it's business. I don't believe in work life balance, I think it's complete nonsense. You just get one life, you can spend some time working in it you spend some time playing in it in sometimes sleeping in it, you know, whatever, you know, that's your life.

Tony Winyard 30:19
Let's explore that. One of the things you mentioned was about to spend more time not working. Are you looking for ways to reduce your hours because you want to be doing things that help you enjoy life more?

Barnaby Wynter 30:37
No, so I actually love my life and I actually love my work. And actually if you told me I had to work 23 hours a day and I get one hour sleep and I'd be quite happy with that because I've become my work of course. So, that that isn't that isn't part of the objective. Actually. I'm an only child and I'm the son of an only child. So actually, I'm very, very insular, in my mind, in my mindset. So if, actually, if nobody spoke to me for a month, I probably wouldn't worry too much. And there's an inherent danger in that because there's an inherent danger. And so, you know, I've been married a long time, we've got three beautiful daughters who start to generate their own lives as I know you do. And so I have to kind of make time for them in the way that I have to make time for everything. So I have to actively consciously have systems and processes that get me away from my work, which I really enjoy. But if I can be more efficient, in generating the right profits, then I get more time to read I get more time to write I get more time to research and what you know. And the more more I read, write, research, the more profit I make, because when I then go back into the client facing situations, I'm more of a subject matter expert than I was before. And so they value me more, so they pay me more. So, there's this really weird cycle going on, the less I work, the more I earn, because I'm becoming more valuable as a person. Because I'm spending more time with my family. My, my home is, you know, the DIY list isn't isn't monsterous is much shorter. It's you know, I get out I go meet people or under normal circumstances you would but but not so much at the moment but and you just share in life, you go to art galleries, you go to museums, you go to Disney, you know, just all of these things and so your life becomes enriched by other people's energy.

Tony Winyard 32:53
Do you think you're good at relaxing?

Barnaby Wynter 32:57
so I am brilliant. at sleeping so I once I climb into bed I'm asleep within 20 to 30 seconds and then all being well I'll sleep a full 8 hours without any problems. So the rest of the time absolutely not a hope in hell of relaxing in any shape or form. No. So if you mean by during the day, I hate beach side summer holidays, I absolutely hate them, love skiing, because it's an active holiday. And what that does is probably it relaxes me mentally and activates me physically. And that has a contribution to relaxation, because it's a way from... because you kind of become a slave to the purpose and the systems and the processes in your lifetime algorithm. So actually when you step off the algorithm and not do the algorithm that's very relaxing.

Tony Winyard 34:03
What do you think about health? What does health mean to you?

Barnaby Wynter 34:06
It is an area that I have divided into two. intellectually, I believe there is a mental health and then there is a physical health and I have been acutely aware of my mental health and I have no awareness of my physical health whatsoever. So, so I'm, I am of the opinion that if the brain is active and alive and functioning, the rest of the body which is going to decay, whatever you do, will hang on longer. If the brain is active. I think once you start losing your brain functionality, then then the rest of the... because it's at the top of the whole neuro system, and everything in your body runs as a result of the neural system, the moment you lose control of the central computer, I think the rest of the body starts to decay. So I have to say, Tony, unlike you, I am I'm not in the physical domain, but I don't look anywhere near as good as you. And so, you know, that's okay.

Tony Winyard 35:27
You're not helping your mental health much by being actively being engaged in football so much are you?

Barnaby Wynter 35:35
I think that's rich coming from you. My team was higher than your team!

Tony Winyard 35:42
No, that's not a dig at your particular team. But I mean, I just think for anyone in football, it's mentally it's crazy if you were to kind of analyse what football fans put themselves through on a regular basis.

Barnaby Wynter 35:56
Yeah, actually. It's a really great question. people often ask me why football, and for those people listening in I've been a season ticket holder at Chelsea Football Club for 38 years. I've missed very few games usually because of 4 weddings and a funeral, that kind of thing, but my experience of football it is it is the only time where I genuinely experience unconditional emotion. I think as a sport you know a goal can come from nowhere. For me rugby is quite predictable, the team push forward, push forward, push forward and then eventually get it over the line. With football it can be a goal can come from literally any any, any quarter any any player any situation is very, very dynamic. And I find the spontaneous emotion of celebrating a goal or now a VAR decision or you know, actually it's not the same now actually, funnily enough, it's very difficult to they've changed the game without noticing. It's been an unconditioned, a unintended consequence of introducing var which is actually the pleasure sensor or have a goal now has been removed. And of because you feel stupid. So what what happens is you you celebrate the goal, and then it goes to VAR, and then it's, it's, it's cancelled off and you just feel stupid that you celebrated it, because you realised you weren't watching the game properly, because the technology has said you weren't watching the game properly, because somebody was, one inch off side. And I think there's an unintended consequences that they have, they are in the process of destroying the sport, to a point where in the end, you can get robots to play it because you won't need humans to play. And that's downside of the money and sponsorship and all that sort of thing I think they've got that wrong. I think they should have left some human judgement in there and left it as part of the game because it was equal for everybody. Now it's created a new equality for everybody but it's technically not... so I hate this can celebrate a goal and then they go to var and then you wait for two or three minutes and then they say it's not one or is one and even if it is one, all the players have run back and they're hanging around the centre spot to take a kick and you know, it's just because they know it was a goal and it's just it's all a bit flat now so they removed that, but for me, over the years football has represented this you're just sitting there you're chatting with a thing and it's suddenly out of nowhere your team has scored a goal and that is just that the spontaneous emotion is something I do not experience in any other walk of life. To be honest, everything else has a different type of build up to it.

Tony Winyard 38:55
When you were talking about VAR, one thing it made me think about is mistakes. And that led me on to thinking about failures. What what do you think about and not obviously just related to football but in life and in business? What do you think about mistakes and failures and people's attitudes towards them?

Barnaby Wynter 39:14
Well, I think if you if you're not failing, you're not going fast enough. And I think it's an absolute fundamental of, I'm sounding a bit like a stuck record, of building a system and process that is designed to to create, that in building that system and process you must fail. And it's an imperative that you fail. And, actually, I think the mindset is, you should wake up in the morning and think you're going to fail all day. Because what happens then is when you're successful, it's that much more exhilarating. Rather than saying, I'm going to be successful today. And then what you do is you find that to get there, you've got to fail a lot of time and that just erodes your confidence, your emotions, I have a completely different attitude, which is, I go into work to fail with an objective on arriving at my goal. So you have to have a clear stated goal, don't just go into work and fail and not have any goals because that's just... But if you have a clear, stated goal, and that goal can be a financial one, it can be an emotional one, it can be a pro bono work, whatever it is, as long as you're always focused on the goal, you're always you're, if you're, if you're aiming to get to Mars, as we are now, as a humanity, you know, as long as you always keep, we're going to Mars, we're going to Mars we're going to Mars, you have to fail along the way. Otherwise, you're never going to get to Mars. Because you'll be 10 miles away from Mars, and there'll be a failure and you weren't expecting it and the whole thing ends. So I absolutely believe failure is a critical Ying to the Yang of success and Again, you know, philosophically, I think everything's about energy. And energy is neither lost nor gained in the universe, there's a kind of a finite amount of energy, but there is positive and negative energy and you have a choice of whether you're going to use... You've got to recognise there's negative energy, you've got to know you're seeking positive energy, but you need the negative to define the positive. So actually, you need failure to define the success.

Tony Winyard 41:36
Two questions? Why are people so afraid of failure and what's a good way for someone who is like that to maybe try to change that?

Barnaby Wynter 41:51
I think if if you enter into a system without purpose without a goal Then failure, you run the risk of failure being seen as a negative. Because it just means you're not competent. You're You're no good at what you do. You haven't done the homework, you haven't become a subject matter expert you haven't, you know, and you've done something and therefore, you worry that the outside world looks at you as just being somebody who just does stupid things. And therefore, they, they step away from you. You know, if you if you're with someone and they keep making mistakes, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're going to move away from them slightly because you're going to think I don't want to be encumbered by their mistakes. So I think there is inherent fear amongst people that if they are seen as failures that people won't want to know them won't want to be friends with them. Conversely, if you have a very clear vision, purpose, goal and you share with everybody around you, they, they support you when you fail, because they know you're trying to get to that place. And and, and so therefore they work with you. It's like this, okay? Don't worry, you know, to keep going, you can see the movement towards your goal towards your purpose towards your vision, keep going, and they support you and it completely reverses the polarity. And I think my observation of people who are in fear of failure is because they haven't created the support infrastructure around them, which is led by purpose, and lead by goal and actually, often I see. mindset affected by fear of success, far more than fear of failure, insofar as people say, but if I get this right, I'm going to be really good at it and they almost build failure into it because they're a bit challenged by that. And I might have even experienced a bit of that myself when I ran this this top 200 advertising agency you know, I I kept seeing I wasn't really good as a manager and I didn't really want to grow a big company and I didn't want to sell to WP P and these demons kept going in to my mind, it was almost a fear of success thing. But having said that, you know, my life now is is so much more enriched by not being a slave to landlords and councils and various other authorities.

Tony Winyard 44:42
On the whole kind of failing thing I know you mentor a huge number of people on a regular basis, would you say many of your mentees have a problem with failing?

Barnaby Wynter 44:55
I think, what seems to be consistent amongst nearly all of them is a sense of imposter syndrome of doubt, rather than failure in the sense that the thing that has always astonished me about about every human being I've ever met, is they're always they've always got something that they're brilliant at. And for some reason, whether it's the education system, and I hold the education system to blame for a lot of this, that brilliance is dulled by the education system. And we're all told to, unify and flat pack our qualifications and go on and if you don't do that, you're you're you're a failure, and and many people's brilliance is dulled by that, and I think what I, what I find my, where my mentoring works best is to find where that dull brilliance is and then just help polish it. And once you start to polish that and it starts to shine, then it feeds confidence feeds energy, it feeds mindset. And so what I do with my mentors is I just, I just really push them into the place where there's a dull place and say, you know, there's some brilliance there you really ought to be making the most of that because if you don't, you are you are, you're failing me, not you you're failing me because I'm not getting your brilliance. And that that is a philosophy seems to be working really well as a as a mentoring philosophy. So in other words, I spend a lot of time listening, seeing what they where they feel stuck, why they're not doing what they're really good at. And then I just unblock all of those things and kind of to polish up and shine their brilliance.

Tony Winyard 47:05
You're a very experienced mentor working with so many people over quite a long time. Would you say it's quite easy for you to see when someone's lying to themselves?

Barnaby Wynter 47:21
Tthat's such a weighted term; lieing! Yes, it's very easy to see when they are, applying imposter syndrome fear of failure a mindset which is stopping them doing what they should be doing? Yes. And you know, you don't you don't want to talk personally. But often there's there is somebody else in the mix, who's saying you know, stop doing that you're not good enough. That sort of thing. So there are often outside factors which I don't get into But you can kind of see that. There is an investment strategy if you actually if you ever, I mean, I've done a lot of of M&A work, I've done a lot of investors raising money for companies and everything, there's a kind of a similar process that you investing in yourself, you need to really identify what's really good about about your bit, and then and then build confidence into that and then tell the story in such a way that people go actually I'm going to help you with that story because that's a cool story. And often they're surrounded by people's naysayers who are saying, don't do that or and there might be some particular person or maybe something in the background. Something happened to them earlier on in their life or something like that. And it can be quite profound, the impact of a life experience early on in their lives on their ability to do things. I don't thinkit's lieing, I think it's just it's fear. I think you were right to touch on fear before

Tony Winyard 49:08
Do you get a buzz from mentoring people when they start to achieve what they were hoping for.

Barnaby Wynter 49:15
No not in the same way as when Chelsea score no I don't think I do to be honest i think... it's what I do Tony and I've got seemingly very good at it and a lot of people are really appreciative. I think I have a big, pro bono altruistic part of me. So I think maybe rather than getting a buzz, I think I probably feel very satisfied and I feel very contented that I've done a good job. I don't think it's a buzz in that way because I think the thing about buzz is that feels addictive. And then what you might spend your time looking for the buzz rather than looking for, for contentment and just say actually, so yeah, there are many times where I put the put the... so what I ask my mentees to do is to send me a "what they heard" after a session and I'm just when I read through that, I think you know what, I've done a really good piece of work, but that's good, I hope. I hope it has an impact on their lives and make lives better I think.

Tony Winyard 50:41
I know you've got quite a few causes that you believe in quite strongly and you do a lot of work for different causes

Barnaby Wynter 50:48
I do. Yes. So when I became youngest MD one of the first pieces of business that I was introduced on was the children's society and I'd never worked On a charity client before and I was introduced to the client and we then re helped rebrand the children's site as was there not in their current format and it losted something like 14 or 15 years the brand, which is very unusual in the brand world to last something and that kind of kicked off immersing myself in a community of people who are brilliant at utilising their willingness to help others as well as money, whereas I've always been in the money so I was quite taken by that. So I've now subsequently rebranded 14 charities and then I've come to realise that I'm a very, very privileged in what I've been able to achieve, and therefore I'm very much in giveback mode. So yeah, so So currently, I'm close to raising money to build a school in Uganda for primary children and I'm very actively involved in the Guild of entrepreneurs as a Freeman there and supporting very young entrepreneurs who are entering into the business arena to help them not make the kind of mistakes that we all make as business people but actually we shouldn't somebody should have told us don't do that. You don't need to do that I want I want the next generation of business owners to make mistakes nobody's ever made before ie go for the failure. Fail in ways that nobody's ever failed before because that moves society on it moves humanity on it moves the planet on. So I I'm very willing to teach anybody who asks all the things that I learned and were avoidable mistakes or somebody said don't do that.

Tony Winyard 52:58
When you were just talking about that, a few minutes ago we were talking about failing and the education system and so on. And I know one thing that seems to be common with many people is that their children don't necessarily listen to them. They're more likely to listen to other people than their own parents. So it made me think about your daughters How are your daughters about failing? Do they really listen to you when it comes to that kind of stuff or are they "no I don't listen to dad, I listen to other people"?

Barnaby Wynter 53:30
To be honest, I don't really have these kinds of conversations with my children. The thing that they picked up both from their mother and from me is if you work hard, the results follow and I'm very proud to say that my all three of my girls worked really, really hard and, and have seen positive results as a result of working hard. So they really have a strong work ethic. So although although, you know, they want for nothing, they, as far as I can see, they they know that they have to kind of work for that and, and that work involves both being kind to people and physically doing work, so I'm very proud to look at them. At that point. one has become a doctor, one has got a job after she finishes university this year and is going into the property sector and the other ones at university as well, they've done really well as a group of girls, and I'm really comfortable with the majority of the values that are important that I would want them to have. They have Have failure isn't really because that none of them have really talked about going into business or starting a business. So they don't need to understand failure. I think failure is where, but having said that, my youngest daughter was very, very good at gymnastics. And, you know, there is a cabinet full of medals and prizes from nationals, national events and things like that. And there were times when when they didn't win, it was rare, but they didn't win. And that those kinds of failures I think, are are important to understand. My, my eldest was very good ballerina and again, same sort of thing. And, you know, got good enough to go to the National Ballet, in Covent Garden, but went and decided it wasn't for her, you know? You know, so they deal with that I think will turn away I think I don't. So we've never really talked about failure as such. Partly because but they we have talked about what, what how you get success, which is you just work, and you do all the due diligence and you keep at it. And that's something that I think they do they do seem to have. that.

Tony Winyard 56:22
We've run out of time before we finish, what are your thoughts on and I know you're active in so many different areas, what are your thoughts on retiring and as you get to those later stages of life?

Barnaby Wynter 56:36
So I've done my best not to swear on this show. But the R word is definitely a swear word. In retirement, and there you go I've sworn now, is a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy. that was set up by the manufacturing industry and the land owners and government. It is a way I worked on it on a brand called NPI national provident Institute which was based in Tunbridge Wells many years ago and did some great commercials with with the squirrels and things like that for them. And I remember going to a meeting with them and I said, you know, how does your business model work? How do you how do you how do you do this? And they said, well, it's very simple. We said, We people, we work all our our metrics out on people retire at 65 and die at 68. And I said, Okay, what you mean, you expect people yeah, Ithey said, because, yes, because when you actually stop what you're about, it kills you. I said, okay. And then what's happened since then, because I'm talking, 25 years ago. what's happened since then. Because medicine and technology and all that sort of thing has meant that people now are not dying on average at 68. They're dying in their 80s. And of course, that's completely blown the economics so that we're all having to work longer because we need more people in the workforce to pay for the people who aren't in the workforce, all that sort of thing. And it was it was a conspiracy to really sort of, to, to, to control society. So my view on that is you must, you must create a life that you just love living. And that can include work. It can include gardening, it can include holidays, it can include being a family person, a grandparent, whatever, all of those sorts of things. So my view on this is that I will not use the word I I sort of wrinkle a little bit when when The word pension is used but I realised that's actually how you fund the third part of your life which is, which is you know, you're going to start off as a young person, and you're, you're dependent and then you go through the education and then come out and then you you, you generate the wealth that you you're going to generate financially and build goods and chattels around you. And then you get to a point where you then enjoy those goods and chattels for a lengthy period. And I think we should think about life in a much more holistic way of you know, your, you should be looking for quality of life. So don't do a job you don't like, why would you do and don't you know, you know, do something you love all of the time. And actually, that may involve being responsible to other people because you're selling them goods and services or may not. And so my view is that and a lot of people who know me, I say, Oh, yeah, when I stop work and people just look at me and they stop and they just go, "you, stop work! I just can't see it". and maybe that's that's the truth. Or my pro bono work takes over entirely when I'm not having to to you know bring the mortgage down and all that sort of thing and that's all done and dusted which should be done fairly soon. And I don't actually have to generate that much income to to live then I think maybe I go closer to the top of the Maslow's hierarchy of needs than than I am even at this time. So one, one and you're go in to give back mode, I think. I think you want to wake up every morning and know you have a purpose or a goal or something like that. And then you will want to go to bed and wake up the following morning and every time the moment you remove that, which are for a lot of people, you know, they get the gold clock. And then that's removed instantaneously on a Friday on Monday, they wake up and go, I've got nothing to do in my life anymore. My friends... and it kills them. And so I know, that's not, that's not how I want, I want to move on to the next next phase of my energy. I'd like to feel alive all the time. So, so I don't use the word don't think about it. The life will present itself as as and when it does.

Tony Winyard 1:01:35
Something I heard you talk about a year or so ago was the fourth sector and I know you're quite passionate about it. and most people don't seem to know anything about it

Barnaby Wynter 1:01:48
So. I am very clear that business as a concept has to change. And where business, as I alluded to earlier, industrial revolution was all about making money for the few. For shareholders, the whole system is reliant on making money for the few. So using using the majority to make money for the few, I think we need to reverse the polarity on that, and have the few making money for the majority. And so what I what I believe is that the generation that's coming through are the generation to take ahold of business and say, Okay, we're going to create a business where 50% of our profit goes to social enterprise to go to improve the world, 50% of the profit, not all of it. I'm not sure I mean, the not for profit world. I think that's too demanding it needs a certain type of mindset. You know, I think you can still have A business that has a purpose to make money, because by doing that, it's always looking for efficiencies and costs and, you know, providing value to people. And but but and it doesn't matter whether that's whether it's a Bitcoin currency or whether it's a, you know, physical coin in your hand currency, I don't really care, you need some currency exchange because it enables us to value our contribution to society in a particular way. Once again, that's that's too wide and too unequal. At the moment, I'd like to equalise that up as well, a little bit, but I don't have a particular philosophy on that. But I think you know, if if 90% of the wealth belongs to less than 1% of society, I think that's got to be wrong. But I think businesses should have a clear, dual purpose which is going to make profits for the people who are going to commit to stay up and worried about staff and come up with big ideas and make investment and put the families on the line. I think they're entitled to a reward for that. But actually the function of the Fourth Sector is about enabling the new wave of business to come in and say, actually, our stated purposes are going to spend 50% on these causes. And I don't care whether... in fact that there was a brew dog I think were on on the news yesterday or the day before. And they they are they are claiming now to be carbon negative, not carbon, neutral, carbon negative. In other words, they are they built their businesses such as they're going to put carbon back into the ecosystem as a result their business. Yeah. Now, I think there's some arguments about this carbon offsetting and everything but what they've done is they bought 2000 acres of land in Scotland, and they're gonna pile a million trees and stuff like that, that I love the idea of that, that smart people who start businesses contribute a significant proportion of their... not 1% for, one percent is nothing. Yeah, I want it to have a dual; 50% goes to social enterprise 50% goes to the shareholders. So the shareholders can create their own personal wealth and be rewarded for the risk that they take from being business owners. But the significant proportion and that I'm really, I'm both fascinated by that passionate about it, if we can make that work, I think it can make a real difference to to the planet as a whole, which is going to get a tough is going to be a tough place to live in very soon because we're going to mess it up with with, there's going to be more plastic gloves and visors floating around in the sea than anything else. So there's gonna be you know, we've got big methane problem. It's not necessarily just a carbon dioxide problem, you know, so that there are lots of things going on that science is sort of either keeping from us or not being ... we know that we're accelerating the melting of The ice, things like that. So clearly the climate is going to change. And we need businesses to be actively enabling us all to have great quality of life, but at the same time making sure that we're not we're not completely destroying the planet with

Tony Winyard 1:06:19
Barnaby if people want to find out more about you and get in touch with you. Where would they go?

Barnaby Wynter 1:06:23
Well, they should contact you Tony; they're welcome to visit my my website, www.BarnabyWynter.com Clearly, I'm always happy to have LinkedIn connections. So looking up Barnaby Wynter so look me up on LinkedIn is another great way can you type me into Google, you should find some bits and pieces about me. There seems to be quite a lot there. So and just please make contact you know, and I'm more than willing to to explore any of the ideas that maybe we've touched on in this in this podcast and see where it goes.

Tony Winyard 1:07:15
Just before we finish is there a book you can think of that you would recommend people to read for whatever reason, whether it be about life or business or whatever.

Barnaby Wynter 1:07:25
One of my favourite books is a book called "Lessons from the mouse". And it's the guide for applying Disney's world secrets of success to your organisation your career in your life. I know we haven't talked about it, but I'm a massive Disney fan and have to go every two years to Disney park somewhere in the world in the last 30 years. It's just such a great expression of good parts of life, but it's by Dennis Snow. I'm attracted to it because I'm Barnaby Wynter and it's Denis Snow! Each chapter is quite thought provoking.

Tony Winyard 1:08:24
Barnaby thank you for your time and it's, it's flown by, I really appreciate all the wisdom and the little nuggets you've given to the listeners over the last hour or so.

Barnaby Wynter 1:08:33
I really enjoyed being your first guest and if you're ever inclined I'd love to do it again.

Tony Winyard 1:08:43
Fantastic. Thank you. Next week episode three On, Happy Vs Flourishing with Steve Sims and do you know anyone that's worked with Sir Elton John or Elan Musk? Or anyone who's sent people down to see the wreck of the Titanic on the seabed? Or maybe anyone who's closed museums in Florence for a private dinner party, and then had Andrea Bocelli, serenade them while they ate their pasta. Well, we're going to hear more about this and a lot more. Steve Sims is quite a colourful character, and he is our guest on next week's show. Hope you've enjoyed this week's episode with Barnaby Wynter, please do share the episode with anyone who maybe needs a bit of help with marketing or would probably benefit from some of the interesting concepts that Barnaby was talking about. do leave a review for us, and please subscribe as well and I hope you have a great week.