summary

In this episode of the Raising Expert podcast, Finlay interviews Charlie Curson, a strategy coach with over 25 years of experience. Charlie discusses his journey into coaching, the importance of strategic thinking, and the challenges faced by founders. He emphasizes the need for support in leadership roles and shares insights on the Midlands Investment Forum, a platform aimed at helping entrepreneurs and leaders connect and grow. In this conversation, Charlie Curson discusses the importance of connecting various stakeholders in the Midlands to support startups and entrepreneurs. He highlights the role of angel investors, the innovative potential of the region, and the need for a cohesive ecosystem to foster growth. The discussion also touches on future plans for events aimed at showcasing Midlands businesses and the importance of strategic thinking in leadership, culminating in the announcement of Charlie's upcoming book.

Takeaways

• Strategy is fundamentally about people.
• Success in strategy requires strategic thinking and execution.
• Founders often face unique challenges that require tailored support.
• The journey of a coach involves continuous learning and adaptation.
• Networking and collaboration can lead to unexpected opportunities.
• The importance of communication in executing strategy cannot be overstated.
• Coaching can be informed by experiences in various fields, including sports.
• Supporting founders is a passion that drives many coaches.
• The Midlands Investment Forum aims to foster connections among entrepreneurs.
• Saying yes to opportunities can lead to significant career growth. There is incredible support for founders in the Midlands.
• Connecting stakeholders is crucial for startup success.
• Angel investors play a vital role in the ecosystem.
• The Midlands leads in several key sectors in the UK.
• Many startups leave the region due to funding challenges.
• The event successfully showcased the region's innovation.
• Future events will focus on scaling businesses.
• Strategic thinking is essential for leadership development.
• Collaboration among stakeholders can drive economic growth.
• Charlie's upcoming book will provide a framework for strategic thinking.

Hello there and welcome to the Raising Expert podcast and hi to Charlie.

Hi Finlay, good to see you. I'm very good, glad it's Friday.

Hi, how are you doing? Good, Charlie Curson, thanks for joining us. Listen, why don't you give us a little introduction? Who are you and what do you do?

Sure, thank you. I am a strategy coach. So I develop highly impactful strategic leaders and organizations. That's what I've done for the last 25 years. Just elaborate bit on that. I guess I work in four areas really, one of which very much is about what today's conversation is. But I mentioned the other three.

I'm a strategy facilitator, so I'm the person that regularly turns up in rooms to help structure people's strategy processes. The classic strategy offsite, that's me. So I've done that. I've probably created thousands of strategies for hundreds of companies around the world. I'm a qualified coach, which makes me a little bit different in that world. Why? Because in my opinion, strategy is about people. So I qualify to coach.

about 10 years ago, 8-10 years ago, which allows me then to play those two roles for clients. I do that both for leaders, one-to-one, as we'll go on to that can be from corporate clients around the world to founders and everything in between private and public sector.

Third hat I wear is again around that subject of strategy. I'm not a trainer per se because I'm a practitioner but people talk about capability building. So I guess in layman's terms what I'm a real believer in is teaching to fish. If that makes sense having come from a consulting background teaching to fish. So I think you'd resonate with this. I'm sure your listeners would identify that strategy broadly falls into four camps.

I've polled a question many times, in fact you could even answer this yourself, which of these is the biggest challenge for you as you sit here right now, whatever your role or background. Is it how you think more strategically? Is it how you actually develop a strategy? Is it how you communicate the strategy? Or is it how you execute the strategy?

you probably get us right if you ask that to thousands of people the majority tend to say and you could probably guess it's been the majority tend to say the last one right they tend to say

Yes, it's execution. Yeah, isn't it? You know, I certainly feel that I can sit and stroke my chin and think about it and, you know, working with associates without, you know, a team, you know, in the kind of typical way, maybe, you know, you deal with bigger teams. So then that communicating piece maybe becomes more important to that, you know, for the senior or managers and so on. So, yeah, no, I'm not surprised, but it's nice to break it, break it down into that into that way.

You

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

So I say that because I guess it sort of represents quite a lot of what I end up doing and a lot of how my days are spent. Yeah, so people tend to talk about the last one. And I guess my point here is actually a lot of this is about you work back through those questions. So obviously there's no point having a fantastic strategy if you're unable to bring others on board with that. I think that's, you know, let's say founders raising money. That's going to be a key part of your pitch.

But that's true in a corporation, which I hear a lot of. You're talking to mid-senior level managers, leaders. How well do they really understand the broad strategy of the business? Often they don't. But track right back to what I really believe is, I can teach many people how you go through the steps of the process, as it were, and it's a very iterative process, but for those that like a process, but ultimately you only really get success in this space if...

you know how to think that way too right think and act strategically. We'll talk about that probably towards the end but actually I've just written finished writing my book actually on that subject so about strategic thinking and really actually as a coach learning that a lot of that is taught as it were in a professional world albeit is quite hard to access it's often sort of more tucked away at the high echelons more in business schools but actually if you start to unravel

Fantastic.

strategy and what strategic thinking is about in life. Some of the most high performing individuals I know have a very clear life strategy. So that's a bit what the book's about.

And the last hat I wear is the one that brings us here today, which is supporting, so it sort of interrelates to the one, two and three, but supporting founders, founders and their leadership teams, I think is important. Early stage, from a post-it note, sitting around a table in a bar with an idea, right through to working alongside businesses that I've worked with for over 10 years and are now.

That's cool.

know, hundreds of people, multiple series of investment in Gone International. And that's as much a passion, I think that's as much a passion. So I'm involved in many of those in many ways, actually some from very informally more as a bit of a sounding board, others more formally. I felt to raise money for quite a few early stage seed funding. And yeah, that sort of areas a little bit what will bring you some shorter the conversation we're gonna have.

Hmm.

Yeah, no, for sure. We'll talk about that great piece of work in the Midlands Investment Forum, which I attended, was it November? November 24 in Birmingham. you're right. But what I like to do is sort of unpack the guests, their journey to where they are just now. I think there's usually some really interesting learnings there.

try and connect a little bit with my story. you know, I'm interested in your, in the coaching work that you do. quite a long while ago, I realized that I was in formerly like you coaching other businesses and business owners around me, some competitors actually as it happened, you know, having done a business training. Um, and actually what I did, my

and formal coach training was in the sports domain. So I got to a fairly high level of ski instruction and coaching. And people kind of can be a little bit dismissive of that, but listen, if you can take people and help them develop in what's potentially a dangerous environment in a blizzard, right? And this fairly challenging environment.

sitting here like this or in a training room or something is kind of easy in comparison. You just use the coaching sort of fundamentals. So I still refer to that quite a lot. And I think it's really nice to have other ways of helping people. And then you go to the coaching piece. So I really like that. But if you don't mind, let's go back a little bit of time. I'd often, you know, to even see, you know, what was your original training?

And from there, where did you go? You know, it's an accelerated piece through, I think you said, you know, the 25 year career or whatever it is. And you know, can you unpack that for us a little bit, please, Charlie?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don't know really nowadays when you say it's unusual. I'm aware that even the time I've worked, what is normal or expected has changed fundamentally. So I guess the stepping stones through mine just in a couple of minutes would be I actually, from a big family, I had lots of siblings. remember my parents divorced, so I remember a big argument with my older brother and my dad. My dad was a doctor. He was a...

That's true, that's

doctor in the military actually, and left the military and he went into psychiatry. I remember him and my older brother, my older brother, classic elder sibling, charging the way, doing everything to annoy my father. And this whole argument they had about vocational, doing a vocational degree, and I remember thinking to myself, probably five years younger, just thinking, you know what, I'm going to avoid the argument, I'll just do a vocational degree. So I ended up doing engineering.

which I don't know, still look back now, I've got kids and with my own kids, I'm probably a lot more leaning towards follow your passions, do what you love, because I never really had that as a kid anyway. So I did engineering, I did engineering, I chose an engineering degree with a big management business slump and I certainly excelled in the latter than the former. Working out forces of a bridge just didn't.

care. Right.

quite float my boat. Whereas the stuff around business and management and strategy really caught my interest. I did what a lot of people do. I shipped off around the world for a year. I went to Southern Africa actually and I bobbled around there building up debt. One of my own actually which is probably something that shaped me rather a lot I think. And I came back and I thought what do I do? What do I do? And I just didn't really know what to do to be honest and so...

as people often joke about this, thought well consulting probably would help grab some of those strands together. And so I applied back then, depending on your age, to Arthur Anderson. I joined Arthur Anderson's graduate scheme. I applied to their strategy department, but I was so late applying. I actually applied with only 24 hours to go from there.

Okay, nice job.

cut off. went in for an interview. Little did I know that actually they were doing two, the two interview days in one day. So I remember at lunchtime very clearly they called out names and they made it seem like it was the names being called out with the ones leaving. I went next door and they said, congratulations, you're through to round two. So I did round two. They offered me the job and the guy said, look, I know you've applied to strategy, but there are no spaces in there. But if we put you into technology,

then we'll move you. Little did I know that they were probably just saying that, right? So I was a bit unusual because I sort of did that and it was around the dot-com boom time. So our graduate group, so I ended up joining tech. So actually I had to learn to code and all sorts of things, was not quite, sort of, yeah, well, was sort of, was, I reflect on that now. It was a very useful grounding. It certainly wasn't my forte.

Ha

All right, good skills.

Mmm.

And then I got shipped off to Imperial College to do a post-grad masters in computing. So it really, they really were dialing this up given that it wasn't what I asked to do. And kind of unusually, I guess, if you know that world, it's sort of, there are sort of, actually apparently 20 plus years on the disciplines are largely the same, but I sort of traversed the disciplines and ended up in the strategy space eventually. But as you will probably know, Finley, because you're of a similar age to me, Arthur Anderson rather famously went.

All right, well.

boom with the Enron disaster. So for those who don't know this, could Google Enron and you'll quickly find out the Including a theatre production which I went to watch once. And I ended up at Deloitte and that was a good experience but again, as one partner said to me, I was a round peg in a square hole. And I remember actually one day going to submit. I don't mean to sound...

There's a lot documented about it, yes.

cynical but it was hundreds, no not even hundreds, was probably millions of pounds worth of powerpoint slide that's what it felt to me to a very senior figure and I was very junior in the team and I remember turning to one of the partners as we left and asking whether the client would ever read it and he said probably not which is fair enough for a mar but I remember it landed with me and I resigned actually not long after and I went and joined a brilliant

business called The Foundation. And The Foundation at the time were based on Carnaby Street. And they're still going today. They are fiercely independent. And I was very proud of that. We would sometimes find ourselves competing against the likes of McKinsey and others. In fact, we famously beat them to one project, which was fantastic. then Carnaby. It was exactly. And that was brilliant. I absolutely love that. I learned huge amounts. think I sort of learned.

Alright, that's nice on the CV.

a lot of what formed my latest career in that experience working with the brilliant Charlie Dawson Foundation. So we're a little bit of a sort of consultancy meets agency. If you know the advertising world at all, in fact, we often partnered with some of the advertisers. The really up upfront part around the insight, what I kind of discovered really was the strategy, right? The strategic conversations. And I loved it. And I worked with some really big clients.

Ray.

your Volkswagens, your Audis in this world, your Visas, your McDonald's, people like that. Mostly private sector, some public, mostly large corporates, but also a few charities and social enterprises. The point being, I didn't become a sector specialist at all. It was much more about the discipline of the strategy, but that's actually what got me into coaching because I started to work alongside other people in other worlds, such as some of the Olympic rowers. We were coached by someone who was a former Royal Marine.

brilliant.

Mm.

probably the military connection to myself and my father. And so I kind of that was what to my introduction got me into coaching and opening my eyes to coaching. So I went, yeah, I probably then went and eventually I went sort of independent. I lived my life in chapters a bit. I'm one of those people who sort of, yeah, sort chapters of chapter view of the world. Sort of you do a stint, you just suddenly decide, right, done with that chapter, time to move on. So I decided, I think I was leaving London.

I see. I see.

I've done the same. I've done the same.

around that time and yeah I just sort of I'm compressing a longer period of time but sort of made the move outs out of London out of that world and went independent and so I've spent really the last 12-14 years doing that. One little story as you you'll listen might find interesting I remember at that point I was quite still quite young I think in some ways to go independent I didn't yeah well I guess it was the comment I kept hearing I guess I kept being told that

Well that's a relative term, isn't it? Let's face it, you know.

But I remember having just written this book, a lot of these memories and stories I've had to sort of dig into. But one I remember really well, especially linked to the sort of world of founders and startups and entrepreneurs was the brilliant Simon Demonshire. I believe it's not Simon Demonshire, OBE, if not CB. But Simon Demonshire, went to see, he was a client at the time with O2 and he was unusual at O2 because he was very senior, but he also was very openly involved in lots of other businesses.

Right, that's a bit unusual,

my facts might be in it. And I remember chatting to Simon about the fact that I was thinking of leaving, I was leaving and what advice might he have and amongst many other things he told me to, he said if you're not sure what you want to do, said fill your basket, he said just for the next few years fill your basket, say yes to everything.

said and he said that what you said well when do I know when to stop he said you will just know he said you will reach a point where you will suddenly one day realize that your basket is full and then you will start to take things out of your basket and what you're left with is probably what you have a real passion and interest about and I must admit I'm always very grateful to Simon because that's sort of how my career played out over the following over the following decade or so.

That's cool. You took your basket and off you went.

Yeah, exactly. It probably took a bit longer, but it did mean there's some great stuff, isn't there? Actually, as a coach, I find myself often helping people to say no to things. In this case, it was a case of saying yes very deliberately. Exactly.

Yes, yes, yes, and then, yeah, no, no, that's cool.

But it led to some amazing experiences and actually in many ways led to me discovering a lot more about what strategy looks and feels like in practice and facilitating all over the world. But it also opened doors to a lot of startups and scale ups and early stage businesses and the investor world actually as a result of just putting myself out there and just seeing what I discovered.

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. Thanks for that. Loads of good stuff in there. And I think it does give listeners more of a sense of who you are now. we'll send links in the show notes to the book. Let's maybe just finish up on that project later on. So let's do the middle piece. firstly, there's the consultants lay Mandarin. Again, we'll

Yeah.

we'll signpost people to that. And we actually met, wasn't directly the work that you were carrying out. We met and we're still advising a company. came at that from slightly different angles. So we met each other as kind of board advisors, I think is the sort of formal term on Mr. Gordon Bennett will give them their little name check as well.

That's right, yeah.

And then there's another little clash here, so I'm doing a lot of investor readiness, investment readiness, helping businesses and you've developed a project, how would you describe Midler's Investment Forum?

Yeah, so, I'll go back a step, I guess, because it takes me to what it is and why is and what happened.

The why is maybe important, isn't it? Because just starting with the fault maybe doesn't make so much sense. So you tell it your way.

Yeah, I think having gone independent so early, it also allowed me to I guess I did. I had lot of people around me, Simon Devonshire actually would probably be a case in point. I people I knew socially, I had people around me. I mentioned earlier being a father myself with children, I never really had that, right? I sort never had anyone around me who was all business minded. I realize this more now. I was sort of almost discovering this probably later.

I know friends of mine who are very successful business people, entrepreneurs, and often actually when you dig deeper, they had mothers or fathers or uncles or people around them who probably they got their spark from. A lot of ways, but it's often the case. I didn't have that at all. So I probably was discovering it a little bit later and I had a real yearning to try my hand in that world. Again, the yes I did. So I have had my own experiences.

some to some success, others not at all. I openly say that of raising money for businesses that I was involved in. started, I was co-founder, founder of, some closed out, some went nowhere, some... and I've done that in a variety of ways over the years and fully accepting some...

know what it's as much about just the learning right you take you take from that but i guess my point is i was learning a lot about the world from the inside you know rather than like just advising i was in there i had skin in the game i was putting my own money and time front you know from you know at the front of this and i'll probably allude to that a little bit later so why why if well

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So you said the initials themselves Midlands Investment Forum, it's not the best name, right, but it became one of those things we needed to give it a title and it kind of stuck, right, and I'll come back to that. I think there's two things there. One is combine those various things I mentioned in my background. I just have a real passion and purpose for supporting and developing leaders, right, leaders and those leaders can be lots of things. I work with other people who are purely founder led.

Actually, yeah, I have a lot of clients who are founders and their leadership teams, but I also have clients who are, you know, execs of corporations and also public sector, right? So corporate directors in public sector space too. Again, I sort of look across that, you it's about leadership and strategic leadership and support, but also as a coach, it's about ensuring they're okay. And so my real passion actually in that world was the founders, the people who are running, who are brave enough, I think, to run.

and get these things off the ground but then to continue to run and scale and build them and employ people and possibly raise money and if they are fortunate enough to be in that very rare group of people who exit fantastic I think there's often that perception that that seems to be the way. There are many I know who have had unbelievably difficult times they are very brave people and I think there's maybe it's a bit of a UK thing.

of a UK thing maybe working with some in India and the States, Australia, Japan, others. But I think in the UK we sort of, we like the idea of the underdog and the entrepreneur, but the moment they are successful, we rather knock them on the head, don't we? It's strange.

Yeah, there's some funny cultural differences as you see across those different countries,

as as you make it, know, it's almost like we don't like them anymore. It's a funny thing. so I guess there's a real passion of supporting those people. And that's a passion as a coach, advisor, and even just personally, you know, we mentioned the business that we support, you know, I know, I know those guys personally, as well as the do professionally. And I share that passion with a person I should mention Andy Yeoman. So Andy Yeoman helped.

get MIF off the ground. Andy Yeoman is a serial entrepreneur himself. He's also an investor himself. We co-invest in quite a lot of businesses. He runs an insure tech business called Consiris based out of London. They've got a client base all over the world. But Andy, actually, I've known for almost 20 years. So he's become a good friend of mine. And we share that interest, that sort of passion for supporting these people as much as the business. And I also, through my background, have a real passion for

maybe at times it can be a little bit of a crazy, kamikaze thing to do, I facilitate a lot. A lot of my work is bringing people together, facilitating conversations, different conversations. I run a lot of workshops, whether it's innovation, problem solving, strategy, whatever it happens to be. And I really enjoy the experience of bringing different people together from different backgrounds, different perspectives, different opinions, people who probably wouldn't normally even mix. Yeah, it's lovely.

The unexpected synergy is what I love, you know, yeah.

Yeah, great expression. And even actually within a larger company, actually even midsize, even sometimes very small, you can sometimes just help to create a conversation that wouldn't normally happen. know, listening skills, listening to the problem, are we aligned?

You take a larger company, course, that might be actually just a case of having marketing sat around the same table as HR or the CTO, the CIO, the CRO. How often do they really have conversations where they're really sharing what they really think or challenging what they really don't agree with? So there was a part of it that was about that. And then the third thing, of course, is the M in myth, which is Midlands. So I am actually, I was born in London, parents divorced, dad stayed London, my mother was Midlands based. So I bounced in between London and the Midlands my whole life.

in the Midlands, my mum, my mother, some of my family, my sister, sister still lives around here. I now live up this way. I guess COVID played a role here because I think with COVID where we were all rather locked in and I can't remember the time phasing metals with my head but I found myself, know, when you were suddenly allowed out again and when I was then meeting businesses, quite a lot of the businesses I was with were more local, right? It was sort of helping people on your doorstep.

I guess that's what brings us to where we get to. I can elaborate on what myth was about and what we aim to do.

Yeah, so maybe just in very practical terms, so I attended the event, it's very familiar territory for me in that I run similar events up and down the country, but for those that maybe haven't gotten awareness of that, what did that actually look like? How would you describe it, the core of it?

Yeah, so the core of it was about bringing together some of those disparate stakeholders, if I can use that term, to my point about starting to get a little bit more involved with more businesses in the region.

but whilst also spending time with angels, venture capital firms, in London and other areas of the UK, but those here, supporting founders, supporting their leadership teams.

cross collaborating. Actually I bring corporates in because often corporates of course are interested in introductions to smaller businesses and to understand the trends of what's happening. Interestingly of course you then work with a small business so they're often interested in what the larger companies are doing. So I guess those sort of observations were and as I got to know the founder community certainly much more especially in the Midlands I started to pick up on a few things. Firstly was

There is a lot of support in the Midlands for these founders and startups. And I wouldn't want to dismiss that at all. It's incredible. The more you poke around, in fact, even since the event, I can continue to be introduced to peoples and bodies and institutions that are incredible. But even on a call last week, one of them had to almost apologize because it took about 10, 50 minutes for him to explain how they're all interconnected.

you think okay well if you're a founder looking for support that's not that helpful. There's a bit of a lack of in the Midlands connecting these bodies. mean it's fair to say. So if you are a founder looking for support X or support Y where and what does it look like? I should add this actually Finlay, you're aware this in the build that this was a couple of years in the running and then I'll explain the event and what we did and what happened. But I think this is important.

Okay, yeah.

around the event itself was last November but the in the build-up around March time I said to Andy Yeh and I think what we need to do is just get some of these people into a room together in Birmingham and just so let's just riff a bit and have a conversation which was a little bit of a risky thing to do but we got commitment from some

incredible people who very generously offered up their time a day to come and have this conversation and as I remember very vividly as a facilitator a little bit nerve-wracking when halfway through somebody said Charlie this is a brilliant conversation we're having meeting these people I wouldn't normally meet hearing opinions from public sector private sector hearing from angels and institutions from London who are now here in the Midlands etc etc it's fantastic but what exactly is the aim of today?

And of course a little bit sometimes you don't necessarily have an overt aim. It was as much about helping and then observing people's own assumptions being challenged, right? People recognizing that their own perceptions, blind spots were being challenged in themselves. And I'd probably start with the one which was angels and a lot of angels. So this is less about institutions, more about angel investors. There's a funny thing, isn't there, angels where...

So I'm an investor myself, I've got investments in probably eight, 10 different businesses, but there are serial active angels who have hundreds, okay? And it's quite a professional sport, In its own right, which is different to putting three grand into this, three grand into that because you've got it spare, right? So if you don't mean that, there's a delineation. A few of them said, actually you're right. And you may remember this from my opening remark at the event itself.

Sure.

the comments that came out about things like, where do you, you know, where do you source your portfolio from? Where do you get the introductions? And you hear some amazing stories about that happens formally and informally. Well, what about in the Midlands? What about Birmingham? And hearing this story, I opened the session with from angels, both from London, traveling North, but also angels traveling from the North, traveling South. you Finley, you probably got your own version of this, right? And do you stop in Birmingham? And I heard...

On more than one occasion the repost, why would I get off in Birmingham? Now actually at the event itself in November I opened with this story, it's true story, and I have three people on that day come up to me all a bit slightly embarrassed and say Charlie I am that person too. But that has changed right, I now have learned as a result of this day I've learned a lot more about what exists in the Midlands. Part of that I should add and we'll come to this is I think a bit of a brand problem.

Maybe we're a little bit too close to London. So we'll probably come back to that. So we had this day and the day shone a light on a few things. It shone a light on much more about the public agenda. Now I'm not a political person, but Birmingham was approaching a mayoral election, which is important. So Andy Street, who was a former boss of John Lewis, was being in place for about eight years. No one was quite sure how that would play out. Without any spoilers, he didn't maintain it. So Richard Barker came in.

Mm-hmm, totally, Yeah.

It was a close run thing though, wasn't it? If I remember correctly,

Very close, 200 odd votes. So Richard Parker came in and I should add he was a big supporter of the event we ran. So actually we did get Richard Parker's support, mayor Richard Parker for the event we ran, which is great, but we didn't want to do it as a political thing. It was just being aware of public policy, but also how this might feed back. So you've got a few different groups. You've got the angels from sort of outside the region and raising their own awareness of actually what

this region, what the Midlands regions is famous for, what exists here. That was an important part. Actually kind of not quite by plan, but as I got more involved in this over a couple of years, I got to meet more angels from within the region. And of course you start to discover that there are a lot of them. You know, some of them are in syndicates. Some of them are more probably hobbyists. Some are really professional. Some are very well known. But again, who's orchestrating them? Yeah. And there's a lot of interest in helping to orchestrate them. Angels love to meet angels.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So they are really keen to meet other angels within the region. They're also very keen to meet other angels from outside the region. And you see how that starts to play out. So already you've got a real appetite just simply to make that happen. You've got a supporting ecosystem. So as someone who has stood on stages in the Midlands going back probably 10 years and pitched for money, I also know that sometimes these experiences of incubators, accelerators can be rather underwhelming.

Mm-hmm.

Now actually in this region at last count and I'll be challenged on this I'm sure but I heard various numbers but I think depending on how you define the region which by the way is another problem in itself because you have West Midlands and East Midlands and if you're the outsider looking in you don't really care right you don't know where the boundary is either. You've got sort of wide ecosystem I remember pitching an event about I know eight ten years ago this is for an early stage business and

Yeah.

Mm. Mm.

We did an accelerator, which was rather underwhelming, if I'm honest. The bit we really wanted was introductions to, yes, partners, but finance and capital. I remember at this event, there was a huge disproportionate number of actual angels and active investors in the room compared to people who were much more in the ecosystem as suppliers, suppliers and partners. So when we did MIF,

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

We were really, really sure to make sure we didn't, you know, we didn't want those people in the room. We wanted founders, we wanted business leaders, and we wanted active angel investors as well, and to a degree, institutional investors. So I think that's really important. And of course, the founders themselves. And the founders themselves. So here I should mention a brilliant guy, and again, we'll share details. So guy called John Cook. So John Cook actually is based in the region. John Cook.

I how to best describe Jonkka's actual role, but he was our connector into some of the amazing universities and supporting programs in the region. So often this term spin out is used. There is an incredible number of brilliant universities in the region and supporting programs. It's incredible.

Mm-hmm.

It's quite a concentration isn't it, it really is. I echo you, think John did a great job during that event and obviously a lot of event prior to it to give you that pipeline of the pitching businesses for sure.

Exactly, exactly. so that's yeah, so, you know, that's great. So the actual event itself, you know, to your to your question. So we shaped the event, we had 65 people attend, which amazed us, right, we were right up to capacity. And they were a mixture of those those people, which was in itself amazing. In fact, I think Andy Yeoman, one of our sort of silent objectives, the thing that we said was that you should meet someone today.

who you realize you should already know. Yeah, and actually he asked that question again in the closing remarks with a show of hands and it was unanimous, right? People realized that that's exactly true. So that was successful. The actual shape of the day itself may be interesting to just quickly hear was we had a panel, we had an amazing panel up front with this provocation of what's our problem, as in what is the Midlands problem? And we had a wonderful panel. Great panelist, actually the compare David Davis.

That's nice, yeah.

he of journalism, ITV fame, yeah. So actually, and he helped from a more, some of the sort of political side as well. So I think anyone looking to replicate this sort of thing, I think that was very helpful. He was very useful for connecting into more the political landscape. So he compared a brilliant panel upfront, which really got the juices flowing. Some wonderful insights, especially from Dr. Lisa Smith, who is CEO of Midlands Mindforge. Some great stats to back up.

He was good fun, yeah, really good.

Yeah, absolutely.

event. fact I'll just share a couple of those because they really resonate with me. So she rather dazzled the room I think with some of her insights about, right, know people just don't know enough about this region. So she shared a couple that stayed with me. She said this, as in her point being, this is what the Midlands should be shouting about. So she loved the fact that we had these people in the room who traveled into Birmingham from outside the region. Of the top 10 sectors in the UK, the Midlands leads in five.

Yes please am.

extraordinary. In the UK, The Midlands is the number one producer of new business concepts and it's number two for patents filed, which is incredible, and she shared various others including sadly some of the more sort of

Powerful, isn't it?

things that we would like to stop, which is how many of them when they get to a certain size tend to leave the region. And especially they leave and actually when they see capital, this is a story we've heard and I've heard time and time again, often actually they can't raise the money in the region, they'll get pushed out to London. If they don't succeed in London, where do they go? They go to the US, which is wrong. We need to stop that happening. So yeah, we did that. We had the panel in the morning. Then there was a table discussion where we put

The brain drain, yeah.

four provocations into the room and then we invited groups to discuss these four issues. They were deliberately provocative, but people said they really enjoyed that because it was a great way obviously to meet new people around the table, but then share and listen to perspectives on topics that everyone would have a view on, right? So they were chosen. So the four issues we discussed were the region has a brand and self-esteem problem, which is a fascinating subject to discuss like what the origin.

Yeah, I it seems so soft, but I think it's really critical, you know, and a lot of people kind of dismiss brand as some 80s-80s marketing piece, but I think that was critical, I really do.

Yeah, and it's interesting to say that because it's interesting then, let's say you've got a table where on the table you have someone who is CEO of a business, you've got someone who might be a VC or involved in private equity, you've got a couple of founders, you've got someone from the supporting ecosystem like a patent attorney or someone who runs a marketing agency or a recruiter and you're getting them to share views and of course at that table you have people who maybe are born and bred Midlanders or you may have a lot of people who were born there but then they left the region.

and now they've come back. you get a really, anyway, it was a fascinating discussion. So you got this thing around brand and self-esteem, but confidence, pride really. You've got second one, which is about losing talent and struggling to retain talent. So it was good to get some facts and some sort of counter facts, right? To that, like how much of that is perceived? Third one was the point around angel investors, how limited is...

the angel sort of investor network and support in the region, which again was useful to separate fact from fiction to get some reality on the table. And the other was about quite simply limited access to capital for scaling businesses, which was a universal. Yes, it does. And then as you've already referred to, the afternoon was a was a pitch event where John Cook selected nine.

fabulous businesses from not all universities, think was perception they were all university based, but we deliberately chose them with a range of, to use the phrase probably relevant to your listeners, ticket size. So we had quite a deliberate range of ticket sizes from I think sort of 250, 500 lowest up to 15 mil at the top, which is high, right? But we did have people in the room who were also sort of private equity and things like that.

Yeah.

And also deliberately from a range of sectors which people weren't expecting. In fact, one of our most prolific angels from London, who I've known for many years, he commented, he said, yeah, he's a serial investor. And he said, you know, I've heard thousands of pitches over my 25, 30 years of doing this. He said, I've never heard such a single sort of a single pitch session with such high quality pitches, but also from businesses and sub-sectors that I didn't even know existed.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

which is great to showcase what the region has to offer. And I should add actually on that, even at the end of the session, we had had over a hundred expressions of interest for investment and support and that number has continued to to rise.

that's a really high outcome from an audience of 65, isn't it? So I think you did a great job there of focusing on active investors and not too many intermediaries to get that sort of outcome. So that's great. I'll give you my piece and you've heard me this. I made the point on the day and I've said this to you a couple of times. It was really interesting.

looking at this from a Scottish viewpoint. So as you know, I spent a little bit of time as an economic development officer in local government and that was one of my chapters, but it was a really interesting chapter in my career, seven and a half years. So I was often in these forums as you know, the council guy, right? And there was maybe a few of us and people had a perception of that. And I'd obviously come from being an entrepreneur and dropping into this world.

Not everyone always realized that they put you in a pigeonhole. It's like it's the guy from the council thinking that you've got no idea of what private industry is all about. So that was a really kind of fairly unique viewpoint. And we found ourselves sometimes in these situations. Sometimes we were the driver actually, which was quite unusual of that ecosystem. And it was a term that we were using, which wasn't, you know, an entrepreneurial ecosystem, which wasn't so commonly used. I'm going back to

2012. And we were trying to get all these different players. So the National Economic Development Agency, you know, the regional players, the universities, business schools, private and other public sector organizations, and the third sector, which was important. And you had a great slide with the COGS, right, to represent that ecosystem and

I'm not trying to be provocative at all because I don't really know what the the the grease is that's needed to make sure that they are joined and they're actually doing the job that cogs are meant to do and then it's it's something and maybe it's myth maybe it's this project or organization that you've kind of created to say okay get everyone in the room what is the objective well let's just get everyone in the room and see what happens right

And then, so maybe you, that is the Greece to get the cogs working. Scotland suffered from exactly some of the same problems that you're talking about in the Midlands. Maybe there was actually some of the weaknesses became better strength. So it was a clear geography. There's the border, right? So that's the geography we're talking about. Your Midlands, it was like, right, okay, how far east are we talking about here? That was an issue.

there's the same sort of mindset in that, right, let's hunker down here and solve our problems. It's a longer road to London and it was a clear path, there wasn't the capital to do the deals in Scotland, so the Scottish government made a real explicit play to say, right, let's stop that, let's try and do the deals in Scotland. You're right, by being a bit closer to London it's like maybe, you know, it's easier for people to nip down half a day to go and raise capital or whatever.

But yeah, it's interesting now isn't it that I think you've got all the players there. What is the catalyst or the grease or whatever it is that they do it. So I'll put it back to you and say well what is next? Is it just another similar event this year in November or what are you thinking?

So.

You mentioned this idea of the cogs and the grease, right? So obviously there's a part of the grease which is funding and directly the funding. Now that funding there is...

We have since discovered that, I mentioned earlier about some of the bodies and people I've spoken to since, and we don't want to tread on toes, but there's also a degree of just making stuff happen, right? And yeah, there were some people who were slightly annoyed that we trod into their turf and their patch and okay, so we've apologized, we've moved on, right? But actually it's in the right, the intent is, I like to think the intent is a good one. It is ultimately about growth, right? It's about building the economy, getting these businesses to thrive.

So it is, the cogs is important. So there is a funding side, actually funding from, so we were, at the event itself, we had sponsorship from Forrester's, are patent attorneys. Because of course, if you think about it, it's in their interest, right? It's helpful for them, it makes total sense. There are many, many others. So we've had a lot more expressions of interest about sponsoring future events since doing the first one, off to the wave, right? We also discovered that there were pots of money available with various other bodies, where as someone said, this is amazing, you've just done my job.

So if we do a future event, yeah, a little bit. But in some ways, that's sort of, and so again, without going into detail now about names and bodies, whatever part of that was, you know what, the intent is good, fantastic. So actually we're the grease, we're starting to work out what that grease looks like and where that goes. Obviously.

Right, slightly awkward moment, but well, let's see how we can do that strategically.

I know this as a facilitator as much as anybody. Let's not have a talking shop, right? What matters is action. So with action comes a degree of accountability. Now, Andy Yemen and I, we were supported brilliantly by, I mentioned David Davis and John Cook. There was also guy called Mike Kelly, who just seems to know everybody in the Midlands. And everyone always says about Mike. I've known Mike a long time. He is, yeah. And everyone always says about Mike. I you've got seven a day, actually. He's just the nicest person you'll ever meet.

You need those guys.

Again, he did it all just paying it forward, right? And another was Craig McVoy. Craig McVoy runs a brilliant business called Turnkey, whose focus is to help get early stage startups to scale up and beyond. And all these people were willing to kind of, you know, donate their time and their effort, energy. I think it's a little bit of the grease is harnessing that and keeping going. So there's an accountability from.

not just us and we are proceeding and I will tell you in a moment what our plans are next. But of course you could argue well there's accountability from all 65 people in the room. I have this doing a lot of team coaching right. Actually what are you going to all do? Don't look at your boss or each other to do it. What are you all going to do? What do you leave this room and say we'll commit to? And there has been some wonderful things already happening. Someone spoke to me just the other day and they said after the event, even though probably they're more in the ecosystem, they said they systematically have gone round and gone to meet

all nine of the founders who pitched on that day, which is incredible, right? Just to see if they can help at all. And if you magnify that by even if a third of the people did that, you would like to think that starts to lead to things happening. I know of some great connections that have been made, know, smaller businesses being connected to large corporations or to maybe they do need a leapfrog into venture capital. So that's all happening. The big things next, was there a desire to do this again? Absolutely, universally. Is that our role?

Well, well.

Not all of it is our role. Some of this was kind of already happening, like I said, so we didn't want to turn toes, but that's, you know what, if nothing else, if it's helped make those connections, we're aware of them, they're aware of us, That helps us to be more focused. Our focus is definitely going to be on scale-ups more than it is early stage. There's quite a lot of support for early stage. Exactly which sectors and spaces is being discussed at the moment. What we are definitely going to do is this. We are taking MIF on the road.

So one of the sort of easier things to do, I say easy, it's still gotta be done, is we are going to, we are running a version of MIF in London on March the 26th. So we are taking again, possibly with a couple of the same businesses that were pitching at the event, but John is now working his way through a whole nother range of.

All right, be great soon. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

marvellous Midlands miracles as was coined on the day into London. So we're going to be running a similar event in London with a whole load of

Yeah, yeah.

again, focused on angels really, but there may be a few institutional investors in the room too. we're just, that's in play at the moment. We will definitely aim to do another version of MIF back in Birmingham, probably late Q3, Q4. And there's also a lot of conversations going on about international investment, whether that is taking those same Midlands businesses out on the road internationally, North America, Middle East, forest in particular.

Brilliant.

or vice versa, bringing those people in. So there were people in the room, some people I know, some of the organizing team know there is a lot of interest in that. I think the key is it continues to wear the, as long as it wears the Midlands hat, it doesn't really matter where you go or how you do it, right? It's about helping those businesses to grow and securing that funding.

Mm-hmm.

going to be benefit. Brilliant. Listen, not for the first time. We've chatted extensively. There's more to unpack there, and hopefully you'll keep us posted on developments. We've touched on your book project a couple of times. And I want to at least make sure, I'll put this in the show notes, but tell us when is it in the shops? Where can people go and find this?

time.

Yeah, give us the kind of synopsis if you like. I know you've maybe started that a little while ago.

Yeah sure, I'll give you review. So over the years of working with people, thousands of people, I've been very lucky to work, support, train, upskill thousands of people around the world. This thing a lot of people say of being told job interviews, performance reviews, even just personally, I need to be more strategic. So it's certainly not a book about strategy, there's many of those. It's about being strategic and it's a...

It's a sort of 10 part framework that I've used over the years to help develop strategic thinkers, strategic leaders. So breaking it down, making it very accessible, very personal. So the book itself is currently with the publishers. We're looking for a probably spring summer launch date, but I will include the link if that's okay and people can register their interest. if that is something that sparks your interest, then register using the link we'll provide.

Right, that's what you're doing.

That's brilliant. Charlie, thanks for that. We'll look out for that. We'll try and send a few people to sign up to that for you. Thank you very much for your thoughts, for sharing your journey and what you're doing around myths. That was great. Right. Thank you very much. Cheers.

Thanks, Finlay