The Age of the Entrepreneur

Episode Transcript

SB S1 E13 – Anthony Impey

Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. I am your host Kelly Ryan Bailey. Each week, I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills that make them successful, how they develop those skills and their innovative approaches to improving skills based hiring and learning around the world. Come learn what skills help you live your best life.

Today, we’re joined by Anthony Impey. Hello, how are you?

Anthony: Very good. Thank you. Very good. Very pleased to be with you here today.

Kelly: We’re very pleased to have you. I want to do a little introduction for Anthony. So Anthony is a serial entrepreneur and experienced business leader with a track record in starting, building, and operating businesses and nonprofit organizations in the tech and skill sectors.

He is also the founder of Optimity, which he built into one of the leading providers of wireless internet. He launched and [00:01:00] successfully exited Touch Base Networks, a telecoms business. He also founded Tech City Stars and Tech Up Nation, which are nonprofit organizations that helped disadvantage young Londoners kickstart their careers in the tech sector.

I love that. He is chair of the Federation of Small Business Skills Policy Board, the UK governments Apprenticeship Stakeholder Board, and the mayor of London’s Apprenticeship Advisory Board. And I want to mention this great award. He was awarded an MBE in the Queens 2018 New Year’s Honors for Services to Apprenticeships and Small Businesses, what an honor.

And he was just, Anthony was just telling me about that day when he received that award. And I was like, what, Anthony just say it again because I’m like, I think I’m sure everyone has these moments in their life. And I’m sure there’s more than just this one, but that one really stands out.

Anthony: Oh it was a very cool day.

You end up, I went to Buckingham Palace. I drove through the [00:02:00] front gates of Buckingham Palace parked in the the middle of the Palace and and received my medal. You receive an MBE. I received it from Prince Charles and had a chat with him about the work that I do with small businesses and apprenticeship. So yeah, an amazing day, once in a lifetime opportunity and I’m very honoured to.have recieved it.

Kelly: Definitely. It must’ve been, I’m a little jealous. I’ve obviously visited many times, but that’s never an experience that I’ve had. So.

Anthony: It’s quite something to be on the other side of the gates of Buckingham Palace, that’s for sure.

Kelly: I can only imagine. I can only imagine. So, I’ve given the highlights here of your life, but what I would love is for you to talk to us a little bit about what led you here a little bit about your story, your journey, whatever you want to call it.

Anthony: Okay. Well, at my core, I’m an entrepreneur. And I’ve [00:03:00] wanted to be an entrepreneur all through my career.

I remember coming through school and wants to be an entrepreneur. I set up my first business, one of those school selling stationary from my school locker. And I’ve never really thought about doing anything else. I’ve never thought about getting a a proper job because entrepreneurship is in my blood.

And my whole career has been a feature of being an entrepreneur. Sometimes I’ve worked in organizations and in an entrepreneur, an intrepreneur I suppose, my first business, when I left university was as an entrepreneur, I joined a small telecoms business called Touch Base.

And when I joined, I said look, I want to start my own business, but I didn’t have any money to be able to do this. And they said, well come and join us. We’ll give you a little bit of equity in this new venture we’re thinking about, go and start here and see what you can do with that.

And yeah, that was an amazing journey from, I left university[00:04:00] here in London, went and joined this business. And nine years later ended up selling my division for a significant amount of money to the UK listed business. And so it was great journey from startup to exit and to see public limited companies and how they operate and sort of spend some time in that, and the company that bought us.

So it was a pretty interesting journey that first experience, and really my whole career has been characterized by being an entrepreneur. And so I think I enjoy being in environments with high degrees of uncertainty, but actually moments where you can really change things and mold things and have a real impact on your environment and the world at large.

Kelly: Definitely. Now, I feel like when you say things that might be risky, I really feel like you see that opportunity for growth as opposed to the negative of it. You’re like, no, [00:05:00] I really want those moments where I can spread my wings.

Anthony: Yeah, absolutely.

It’s interesting, I think we are all in these very challenging times of COVID at the moment and the outlook for our respective national economies is not good. And the global economy’s in a real state at the moment, and I know a lot of people are experiencing a lot of hardships.

But I do think in times of immense uncertainty, there are also times of immense opportunity because all those conventions that we had four or five months ago, have all disappeared. All the rules have changed. And that that’s really exciting that there’s now time to build things, build new things.

I keep using this phrase of build back better. And I genuinely believe that there’s so much that needs to be done, that can be done. [00:06:00] And to some extent, I think we’re entering an age of the age of the entrepreneur. Over the next, like maybe 10 years, entrepreneurs are going to be material to the recovery of the economy, the global economy, the national economies. Entrepreneurs is going to play a really, really important part in this because we’ve got the skillsets that deal with environments of uncertainty.

My whole career, I look at my career and think, wow, there was some. You never know whether you’re on the right track or you were doing the right thing, but you can cope and you know how to operate in those times of uncertainty.

And you understand how to measure risk and respond to risk. That’s the level features of what we’re all facing now in the economy. I think the times that we’re entering now, there’s lots of uncertainty and I understand that lots of people are having a hard time with it. [00:07:00] But I think there’s a real opportunity to do some really exciting things and to have big impact on the way things things are done.

I think we’re in this age of the entrepreneur, I think it is a very, very exciting time to be an entrepreneur.

Kelly: I love that. And I love the build back better. I’ve been using the statement move forward better. So similar concept, but I can’t help but agree that this is a time, yes of course there’s things that we wish didn’t happen, but when we say, and I’m sure you’re thinking the same thing when you’re saying build back better, these were issues that were happening already.

And so that concept of being able to see how else we can make adjustments that we knew the problems were there. This just amplified it.

Anthony: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And I think all the rules have gone out the window. How things used to work, they don’t match up anymore because actually [00:08:00] we’ve all got monumental challenges that we’ve got to face and monumental challenges caused by the fact that we’ve had to respond in a particular way to this health pandemic, and it’s resorted all the cards.

 And it’s that that makes this a time of doing things differently. And I think there’s two schools of thought really. One is the free market economics school of thought, which says that actually what has to happen now is that all governments have to back off businesses and they have to let businesses go and do what businesses do, which is make money.

And if businesses make money, then the economy will recover and everything will be fine. I’m not sure whether that’s going to happen this time. That’s happened in previous recession. Knowing that in the financial crash if you look at the the economic downturn in the nineties [00:09:00] and the eighties, government stepped back and businesses stepped in and rebuilt. Rebuilt their businesses and economic recovery for it.

I don’t think that’s going to happen. So I think what’s actually going to happen now is that businesses are going to say we need to do things differently because what pandemic has done is shone a light on some of the injustices that exist in our society. Massive. Black lives matter as a movement has been going for years.

And yet it’s at this point in history that actually everybody’s being able to sit up and say, actually, this is really deadly serious, and this is not something that we can just dismiss this. We’ve got to really drive long lasting, meaningful change. And I think that sentiment is going to really shape what we see in the future. So I think that’s exciting. I’m very optimistic about what [00:10:00] the future holds for us.

Kelly: I agree. I think this time, it’s like a stronger pivot than we’ve had to make. Like maybe before we’ve just sort of like turned a little bit, but now it’s like total 180 that is maybe necessary, but just like you said, you could look at this negative, but I really feel like there’s this opportunity for us to come out of this better, assuming the right mindset, which I really love that you mentioned this sort of like it’s the age of entrepreneurs. So I want to take us back to your early comments, you selling stationary, I’m imagining you, and you mentioned like this entrepreneurship is in your blood. But I would love to know number one, like why do you think it’s in your blood?

I’m curious if you were raised by entrepreneurs. But also I feel like I know what you mean when you say entrepreneurs, and like this mindset and like the way that you go through life, but it would be great if you could maybe describe a little how an entrepreneur handles things slightly differently when it comes to you? I’m [00:11:00] thinking of course, in terms of skills that a person might have, that they can sort of hone in on to handle these challenging times.

Anthony: I mean, there’s a few things there. First of all, I think the origin story of entrepreneurs is always very interesting.

I would attribute my love of entrepreneurship from two things. One was the fact that my father owned his own business and both my parents worked in it and I saw what it took to build a business. And so I think that was very informative to me.

And also my grandparents who were Poles in the second world war, were displaced, spent time in Siberia before going to the middle east and then arriving in the UK at the end of the second world war. Their struggles with adversity I think have been watered in my own psyche [00:12:00] and my preparedness to take on challenges. Ultimately, I look at some of the challenges that I have to take on and recognize that what I’m dealing with is nothing compared to the challenges they had to endure. And that’s two generations ago.

I’m not talking about history, a hundred, 200 years ago. So, I think that they were my influences. I also think, I talk about entrepreneurship being in my blood, but actually I think entrepreneurship, and I’m conscious that I’m overusing that term now, but that process of being an entrepreneur, I don’t believe it’s an innate skill.

I think it’s something that some people towards. It attracts a certain people, but actually I think on the skills that you need to be an entrepreneur [00:13:00] have to be learned. They are learned skills, they’re not skills that you’re magically born with.

I know I use the phrase in my blood, but actually that’s not the case. Entrepreneurship is something you have to learn. You learn it through doing and experience. Learn it through success and you learn even more from failure. I talked to lots of entrepreneurs and unless you’ve had failure, unless you’ve had lots of failure, you’re not really an entrepreneur. Because entrepreneurship is all about pushing and encountering failure. If you’re not encountering failure, you’re not pushing hard enough.

But I think there’s also a piece around the traditional form of learning, reading, learning from others, being mentored by others and coached by others.

And there’s so much material available now that you can learn online. I’m doing this great course at Harvard Business School at the moment on innovation. [00:14:00] It’s a great program and it’s free, which is fantastic.

Kelly: Okay. Now you need to tell us what it is because I’ll need to look it up. I’m writing it down.

Anthony: I’ll have to, let me have a look. It’s called Invention Is Not Innovation, is what it’s called.

If you go into the EdX website, you find it there. Entrepreneurship is about continuity.

It’s really interesting. You read about Bill Gates, he might still think he’s a great entrepreneur, he’s gone from for-profit business to not-for-profit business. And I think his success as a philanthropist is because he’s just using everything he knows about building businesses and building successful businesses.

I really like all of what the Gates Foundation have done, but Bill [00:15:00] Gates is a prolific reader. I think he talks about reading one book a week, which is a lot, but I listened to a book, I read a book on my phone when I’m queing up at a shop.

Kelly: Exactly. I heard someone say it’s like using the time you already have. Again today, no one’s commuting, but like in the day when people were commuting, use that time because you’re already spending the time. If I go for a walk now, there are definitely times where I’m like, okay, let me listen into nature, but I typically listen to a podcast or an audio book.

Anthony: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you’re right. It’s just using that time, using that dead time to learn stuff. And I think that’s really important. If you want to be an entrepreneur, that want is very important. But also you got to learn.

Learn [00:16:00] as much as you can. There’s no magic to being a successful entrepreneur. There is a lot of skill and a huge amount of amount of hard work, it requires a level of dedication that very few jobs, I think. You talk to lots and lots of entrepreneurs, and now they might be entrepreneurs who run small businesses, that are important to the local community, or they might be fast growth tech businesses, and they all talk about the amount of, and some talk about personal sacrifice, but all talk about the level of personal investment they make into their businesses.

So I think that’s an important ingredient as well. And then if I unpack what I mean by entrepreneurship, because it’s quite a far reaching term. I think it incorporates skills like creativity, and problem solving, [00:17:00] and innovation. And innovation of an entrepreneur is not about innovating a brand new product or service.

They’re those micro innovations that you make in every part of your organization to make your organization just better. I think that’s an important aspect. And I think there is also a piece around really understanding your customers, your users, and building your business that’s highly responsive to your users.

I think the one unifying objective of every business is that it’s about making your customer’s lives easier. You apply that to any organization, if you can make your customer’s lives easier, they will buy from you. A really important part of the entrepreneurs skillset is to recognize that [00:18:00] if you want to make your customers’ lives easier, you’ve got to stand in their shoes and look at their perspective.

You’ve got to be able to make the changes. And you’ve got to have problem solving skills in order to respond to those challenges. I think there’s a whole range of skills that fit into the entrepreneurs skillset. Very often as well, when you’re running a business, you’re doing everything. There is not a job that isn’t part of your kit bag and you doing finance one morning, talking to a client or an investor in the afternoon. Whole breadth of skills that you need as an entrepreneur.

And that willingness to get involved and you always have that no mountain is too high outlook.

Kelly: I feel like what you’re describing is you don’t need to know it. The great thing about [00:19:00] this type of, and I know we’re using this word, but it is like a mindset as opposed to a type of job. You have to be okay not knowing and just going in there and figuring it out. And if you’re wrong, it’s not the end of the world. Cause I know that that can happen, but it’s really just going in there with the open mind. If you need to talk to an investor and you’ve never talked to an investor before, you’re going to figure it out.

It’s okay.

Anthony: Nobody else is going to help you other than yourself. It requires a level of self-sufficiency that maybe other jobs don’t require. Interesting, coming back to my idea of, this is the age of the entrepreneur, I think these skills that we’re talking about are going to be really important, whether you’re running your own business school.

And I think employers are gonna [00:20:00] start saying, well employers are already people with entrepreneur skillsets. I think it’s really interesting how there’s lots of really smart people coming out of universities at the moment, and they’re shunning the Goldman Sachs and JP Morgans and even the Googles and the Facebooks, and they’re going and their first job is starting a business because they know.

And that’s going to give them this really valuable kitbag of skills that they can take anywhere. And that people will know will hold in real value. That becomes really important in this post COVID world, because the post COVID world, nothing that existed before, exists now. All that uncertainty, as I said before, that’s the fuel that entrepreneurs [00:21:00] thrive on.

Kelly: I’m just excited about this time because the things that will come out of this, the changes and I think what can make true impact in people’s lives, it’s just really going to be fascinating. I guess it’s exciting.

Anthony: Well, yeah, it’s interesting. I think there’s a really important lesson that COVID has taught everyone, which is the moment that you have one big huge problem, one big hairy monster in your pathway, which is what COVID is, a monster. The moment that you have that single objective to overcome it, the convening power of that problem and the way that people step up to help fix that problem, I think is astonishing.

There’s lots of talk about how businesses have pivoted [00:22:00] quickly and the pace of digital transformation. There’s a McKinsey paper out that said I think we’ve done 10 years worth of digital transformation. But that’s only happened because actually everybody’s gone okay, we’ve got a problem here and now we have to get on with this.

We can’t wait for perfection, we just have to crack on. And that’s going to create momentum. I think there’s real opportunity that momentum is, people see that massive changes, that fast, rapid action to one particular problem is crazy. And I think it’s going to create a lot more momentum to adopt a whole range of technologies that maybe we haven’t even thought about. In the interest in education, certainly certainly in the UK.

And I don’t know what it’s like in the US but [00:23:00] certainly in the UK, I would describe the education system, not controversially, but I’d describe it as very analog. It uses a model that’s tried and tested, that works with students of right of ages, classroom, and learning. And that is a model that works. But what COVID has forced us to do is actually that’s suddenly not possible. And suddenly there has to be an adoption of digital tools, and suddenly the education system has taken this massive step forward in okay how do we make technology work for us and how can we use it, not just to supplement, but how can we use it to make education that much better?

And I think we’ll see in sectors like education, not just a little bit more progress, I think we’re going to see really big step changes in how people think about education, how people think about [00:24:00] skills and developments of skills over the next few years.

Kelly: I completely agree. And it’s the same in the US , this has been going on for a while. There’ve been a few sort of out in the front trying to tackle that. For the most part, it wasn’t a really big force. And now of course, the big force. But the things that they weren’t really, they were thinking about digital learning, again, not in the respect to like now our whole life is potentially going to need to be virtual and how are we going to tackle that? But also what I think they didn’t know, and I mean I feel like this is globally, not necessarily in any one particular country.

But we haven’t really tackled how people learn so differently now. We’ve got people and I don’t even like to use the word learning disability, most people are familiar with that word, I say it’s someone’s gifts. But basically everyone learns differently. I’m a visual person.

If I read a report, I then need to be in something and interact for it to really stick in my mind. [00:25:00] That’s just how I work. And everyone works differently like that. So you throw in a virtual environment with someone that doesn’t have like the hands-on capability for that to set, you now need to think about when you talk about those customer needs, that’s the same thing they’re doing. I mean, but they’ve got a whole slew of various needs that they’re trying to figure out at the same time.

Anthony: Yeah. Yep. I think also it’s interesting, some of the challenges around not just how people learn, but the resources they have available to them. The challenge that I think a lot of pupils have had in the UK is lack of availability to computers.

Kelly: I was just going to say that, I was like I bet it’s the same.

Anthony: Digital poverty and addressing it is really important if we’re going to have an inclusive society.

And so I think there’s definitely that, but at the same time, I think [00:26:00] there’s also a piece around how maybe the education system needs to think about mobile devices. Because, actually mobile devices have got a much wider reach than laptops or desktops, let’s say. How do you take content so that it works better in a mobile environment?

And mobile environment is obviously very different. You’ve got a much less screen real estate. People have much shorter time spans, but it’s that how does the education systems on to this changing environment? Because it’s not just about converting a classroom into an on-screen experience. You need a bigger screen, but actually, how do you alert an immersive, valuable, relevant, rigorous learning environment?

How can you do that on a screen that’s a fraction of the size of a laptop, and on a mobile screen, and how do you make that work? Because if you [00:27:00] address that problem, then the opportunity to educate, not just our nation’s young people and older people who wants to learn, but the ability to reach into populations where education is not as widely available is transformative.

These are the kinds of products that could come out of COVID and lead to this better place that we’re heading towards.

Kelly: Yeah. And I’m so glad you brought that up. That was something well before COVID I know that was always on my mind.

I would talk to these universities around the world and they’d say things like, again, that whole like, well, we need to be online. And then well, what’s the percentage of people in your country that have internet access? And then that conversation would start to happen. Even here in the US , people that might be struggling, typically are able to get a phone and have phone coverage. So that always leaves like that as a [00:28:00] potential platform. But this was again years ago.

So I’m just glad that this is something that’s starting to be on people’s minds. And I hope they sort of take this moment, that fast forward 10 years and just be like, okay, let’s not solve what we were trying to solve five years ago. Let’s just get to the point here.

Anthony: Yeah.

I think there is one piece though, around technology not always being the answer. I think there will always be in every society, a group of people that just don’t feel comfortable using technology for good reasons.

And I think good user centric design doesn’t say, well this works for 80% and tough luck to the other 20%. Good user centric design and good societal behavior should be saying, okay, what can we do to make sure that whatever we do is a hundred percent [00:29:00] inclusive.

And that might mean that there was a small percentage where you have to do analog, right? ’cause that’s just what works for those people that you should never be –

Kelly: Yeah, not a forcing to. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Anthony: Digital shouldn’t exclude people. Digital should just help make people a broader community around which quality experiences can be delivered.

Kelly: Oh, that’s great. That’s a really good point. So I know we didn’t really get a chance yet to dive into some of the work that you’re doing.

Anthony: I haven’t really answered your first question yet, I’ll be honest.

Kelly: We could go on forever. Now that you’re describing some of these things, I’m wondering if that’s filtered into some of the work you’re doing right now.

Are these some of the problems that you’re trying to tackle? Or what are you really seeing as sort of points that are possible?

Anthony: Yeah. I think [00:30:00] there’s there’s a number of challenges that have been been thrown out. I’m very worried about how the jobs impact of COVID is going to disproportionately impact some people more than others. All the research and some of the stats that are already coming out, certainly within the UK, point to the fact that people were in lower paid work, are the ones that are suffering most from the fallout from COVID.

And helping and supporting that group of people, and it’s a significant number of people, helping them I think is really important. And one of the grand challenges that I think is important for entrepreneurs to respond to. It does come down to skills and helping people develop their skills and develop new skills so that they can continue being economically active. [00:31:00] Because if we don’t get this right, then we’ll end up with long term scarring in our communities for a very long period of time.

So I think there’s a real call to action for entrepreneurs to address this challenge, particularly for those in low paid work. I think the other challenge that I’m really interested in is the skills that are needed in small businesses in particular. I think small businesses, they’re going to be one of the key elements to the recovery of the economy, right?

The speed at which small businesses can recover, is the mark of those countries that get back on their feet faster than those that don’t. And again, I think this is some research that came out of McKinsey, I read a lot of McKinsey articles, but some research from McKinsey, I think points to the fact that in previous recessions it’s taken about two years for large [00:32:00] enterprises to exit a recession. It would take small businesses between five and seven years. So the disparity and some of the challenges that have been thrown up by COVID again, disproportionately affecting smaller businesses.

If I look at London, where I am at the moment, and I look at what’s happening in the economy. So round where I am, I’m in Emslington, she’s just outside of the main business area of London and everything is really busy and it’s almost back to normal, if it wasn’t the people queuing outside shops and wearing face masks. But then, if I go into the city or into the west end, which is in the central business district, it’s completely dead.

There’s nobody there, very little very few people in the streets, very few businesses open and that’s all having this terrible impact on small businesses. They’re dependent on footfall. And when the [00:33:00] footfall might be 10% of what it would be normally, in the financial district and the city, there’s over over half a million people commute to the city every day.

It’s down to about 50,000. So big, big changes that’s really having an impact on small businesses. And I think a lot needs to be done to help small businesses recover from this shock and recover faster than this five or seven years.

Kelly: Because if that’s five to seven years and those recessions were nowhere near what we’re dealing with here today.

Anthony: Yeah. I think the last counts in the UK, the current recession is more than twice or is going to have an impact on the economy that is twice as big, more than twice as big as the financial. This was about 4.7% in 2008 and the Bank of England have just announced that a fallout [00:34:00] from Corona virus in 2020 will be just shy of 10%.

So, these are tough. And it’s really important to help small businesses recover. That’s another area that I’m really interested, how can we help this recovery process? Particularly small businesses and the economy. And one of the things that I’m working on, which is a not-for-profit that I’m involved with is to create a think tank called the Big Ideas Group.

Kelly: I love it.

Anthony: The thing that the Big Ideas Group is doing as part of the Federation of Small Businesses, what we’re doing is thinking about, what are the big challenges on the horizon? How can small businesses prepare for those challenges and turn the challenges into opportunities?

The opportunity is only the other side of the coin to the challenge. So how do you get businesses ready? How do you get them into the mindset that they’re not in a point of terror in some instances, [00:35:00] but not really knowing what to do in the current circumstances, how can they, can you turn that negative energy into positive energy of right actually, how can we change, re-engineer what we’re doing in order to be able to respond to this new economy?

That’s amazing.

Kelly: So are you looking for people to get involved with that particular group or how might people find out more information if they’re interested?

Anthony: So if if they connect with me over LinkedIn, I’ve got some information on there. I’m more than happy to provide information. I think it’s a really, really important. It could be a really important template of bringing small businesses together in order to address some of the big challenges that we’re facing. So yeah. So LinkedIn is the best way to find more information about it.

Kelly: Yeah. And I’d love to keep tabs on that too, because obviously what we’re experiencing, the US being just such an enormous, we have sort of things that are happening in different states, but for [00:36:00] me, I’m in the Northeast, close to New York City.

I’m seeing what’s happening, very similar just as you described in London, with like the commuters, the small businesses. My family actually owns a couple of small business in the city. And yeah, that foot traffic is-

Anthony: How are they finding it?

Kelly: Actually the bar that that my brother has, they haven’t been able to reopen yet. It just doesn’t make sense. But they did open the restaurant and they sort of built like an outside area, like most restaurants are doing. But this just happened within the last couple of weeks. So far so good. But the description is that like the people in the city. I mean, no one’s really going in and there’s this mass, I don’t know if this is happening for you too.

There’s this like mass Exodus that’s happening. A lot of people are deciding, I’m not going to live in the city anymore. And so we already are having a challenge right now, but like could this actually still continue for a little while with less people [00:37:00] being in the city?

Anthony: Yeah. I mean, it’s very strange. It’s exactly the same as happening in London, and very similar conversations. Is the center of our cities and the core of our cities, are they can be hollowed out by, by what’s happening?

I am not convinced they will be. I think without a shadow of a doubt, there are going to be really, really tough times ahead for them for the next 12 months, maybe 18 months. Because there’s a confidence piece. Confidence and trust. But I also think there’s a behavior thing and behaviors are ordinarily very, very difficul to change.

Actually what we’re seeing is and again, I’m describing the UK story, but we were going along and you heard the news on about Coronoa virus. I remember speaking to someone at the beginning of February at a conference in London, and [00:38:00] they were like this coronaviruses is really bad news, it’s going to impact your supply chains. I was like it’s going to be fine, eternal optimist, and then 23rd of March, our prime minister comes on TV and says, I’m locking the country down. And overnight we had a behavior change. Overnight people went from being a bit concerned and aware that things were going, to being okay I’m staying inside.

I’m not going outside. I’m not going near people. And thats created a new type of behavior that it’s going to take a bit of time for us to change. But at the same time, I think humans are social creatures, there’s technology that can deliver a whole stack of benefits.

The fact that we’re doing this conference call, I mean, you are in the states, I’m in London and was doing this great call. But [00:39:00] actually, if we were together in London, would it be a slightly different experience? Almost certainly it would be.

And I think that’s the thing, is that humans are social creatures and that interaction with one another is really important. And there are certain things that are very difficult to replicate using technology at the moment. There might be a point where he can provide us a much more immersive experience.

I suspect that we’ll see city centers come back to being very important in our societies over the next 12 or 18 months, I think. And maybe sooner if a vaccine develops, confidence returns very quickly, and then the page has changed very quickly. I think we’ll be returned to the system very quickly, but just because of the nature of people.

Kelly: I’m sure there are plenty of people and [00:40:00] I felt it too, I mean, this is not for me, I already worked from home, so this is not the worst thing in the world by any means. But there are times where I typically would travel.

And so there’s times where I prefer to meet people out for dinner or. I’m handling it well, but everyone, like it would be nice to just have a get together and not worry about you sitting over there and.

Anthony: Yeah, I think there are always priorities for people and I think it will come as soon as that confidence and trust is rebuilt. I think you’ll see our city centres coming alive, but I think we got a bit of a journey ahead of us before that comes back. And in the meantime, you’re seeing businessesresponding really quickly to opportunities.

You mentioned your brother’s restaurant opening outside, and just getting on with stuff and doing stuff. And [00:41:00] when I see businesses do that, I think that is true entrepreneurship.

Kelly: It really is. It’s just those little movements to figure out, right? Like okay, challenge. What are we going to do?

And I mean, just because I’m so ingrained in restaurants, I’ve seen it. My family also owns a bakery and we immediately were just like, no one can come in the bakery and we were doing pick like curbside pickup delivery. And quite honestly, it did really, really well. And now we’ve picked up another facility because we realized this is like a huge growth potential for the business.

But again, unless we were forced. It was funny because I’m the one who was always like, let’s do this. Until we were really forced to try it, we didn’t know if it was going to work or not.

Anthony: It comes back to the big, hairy monster. COVID. The moment you have a big monster, everybody says, okay, we’ve got to do stuff differently.

And that’s bread and butter for an [00:42:00] entrepreneur is defeating the monsters and addressing the challenges they face, I think is crucial. I just love the fact that so many small businesses have responded to the challenge and reinvented themselves. If you want a source of optimism at a time of difficulty, just look there at how small businesses have responded to the challenge.

Kelly: Yeah. It’s been really amazing to see what people are trying and none of it perfect.

Like you said earlier, I’ll throw that back in there. I mean, this is not the time to be like, okay, let’s really make this plan and it’s going to be exactly how we wanted it to be. No, you just have to go and, and you’ll figure it out and you’ll iterate and it’ll be fine.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Perfection. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. I think that’s Winston Churchill or something.

Kelly: It sounds like something we would get from him.

Anthony: For sure. I can’t take credit for that. [00:43:00]

Kelly: Although a lot of the quotes that you’ve given here today are, will be ones that I remember. So I know we’re getting close to the end of our time here, Anthony.

When I have these, I always say I’m like, we could probably go on forever and I would love to always continue, but the time for people that are listening, I’m sure they want to have us wrap it up. But one thing I do want to ask and I feel like I can ask you this open ended question is, if you were going to leave based on our discussion today, just some parting words for our audience on, I mean, especially because we touched on this age of entrepreneurship, but really any thought that you’d like to leave them with today that might give like an inspiring push for them?

Anthony: Not wanting to steal Nike’s phrase, but it is about just do it. It is about getting on with it because [00:44:00] until you start talking to customers and selling things to customers, you just don’t know. There’s never a perfect time to start a business.

There’s never a right time to start a business. Just get on and do it. Lots of people say, I’m going to set up a business, but I’m just waiting for the right time. That never happens. It just never comes around. So, I think that’s the first piece of advice.

And I think the other piece is, being an entrepreneur is one of the hardest jobs that you can do. It’s all absorbing, it takes every ounce of energy to do it. And the reason why so many people do it is because one, it might be the toughest job or the job that requires you to really commit with both feet. I think it’s also the most rewarding job out there. And so, I would encourage [00:45:00] anybody who’s got that little spark that makes them think they want to run their own business, to go out there, be an entrepreneur, and put in want to takes, but also getting that sense of reward from it because it really is quite rewarding.

And, I think the best career that you can do.

Kelly: That is fabulous. I think most people will really appreciate those last comments, Anthony. So for anyone that wants to keep tabs on Anthony, check out what he’s up to, or reach out for that Big Ideas Group, which I love that concept. You can follow him, you can reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter @impmister.

Am I pronouncing that right? I M P M I S T E R. And if you’d like to be in touch with me, my handles are right here. Kelly Ryan Bailey on all the socials. You can listen or watch, actually, Let’s Talk About Skills Baby on iTunes, Spotify, [00:46:00] or YouTube. I’d love to have you give me some feedback as well.

So you can subscribe, you can leave comments, you can leave a rating. Would love to hear it. But I thank you all for listening in today, Anthony, thank you again so much for joining us today. I really loved it.

Anthony: Great experience. Thank you everyone for listening.

Kelly: Hope you all have a great day.