Joanne Lockwood: Foreign.
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Joanne Lockwood: And this is episode 177 with the
Joanne Lockwood: title Empowering Through Routine. And I have
Joanne Lockwood: the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Ed Johnson. Ed is a
Joanne Lockwood: tech entrepreneur and the CEO and co founder of URoutine,
Joanne Lockwood: driven by a passion for empowering people through structure, goals and
Joanne Lockwood: inclusive design. When I asked Ed to describe his superpower,
Joanne Lockwood: he said it is being fueled by purpose. He builds
Joanne Lockwood: systems that help people thrive to self motivation and
Joanne Lockwood: meaningful accountability. Hello, Ed, welcome to the show.
Ed Johnson: Thank you very much. Wonderful to be here. Excited about our conversation?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And we were just chatting away in the green room before we pushed the
Joanne Lockwood: record button. We first met, we reckon about 2018
Joanne Lockwood: sometime IBM South bank and it was an EDI DEI
Joanne Lockwood: recruiter type conference, if I remember rightly. And you were one of the
Joanne Lockwood: keynote speakers on that day? I was. And I
Ed Johnson: have to say I felt at that time I was very early on in my
Ed Johnson: previous company and founding my previous company. I felt at the time like I had
Ed Johnson: no idea what I was talking about and I was trying to
Ed Johnson: perfect the elevator pitch and some days it was really eloquent and
Ed Johnson: sounded professional and other days I'd hear myself saying
Ed Johnson: it back and think even I don't know what I'm trying to do.
Joanne Lockwood: Or sometimes it sounds so crass, doesn't it? Sometimes you lift back and go, oh,
Joanne Lockwood: that's a bit cringy. And oh, did I really say that? Exactly,
Ed Johnson: yeah. And I think that IBM day was probably one of those
Ed Johnson: days where I was one of the keynote speakers and didn't really
Ed Johnson: know what I was talking about. I sort of mumbled and rumbled through it.
Ed Johnson: But I met some wonderful people, you included, so that was
Ed Johnson: a great point. I will say you winged it well and you did create a
Joanne Lockwood: lasting impression on me and your belief because the product you were involved with
Joanne Lockwood: was Pushfile, which is a mentoring platform. And I'm a great believer
Joanne Lockwood: in the people space around the power of mentoring, formally or
Joanne Lockwood: informally. And Pushfire Platform was about trying to formalise,
Joanne Lockwood: creating accountability within mentoring, wasn't it? Absolutely.
Ed Johnson: The main objective was for us to help people to find and form
Ed Johnson: mentoring relationships that worked and give that a bit of
Ed Johnson: structure, give people the ability to track their progress with their
Ed Johnson: mentor or mentee. Yeah, we seemed to have managed to
Ed Johnson: achieve that when we went on that journey and started engaging with
Ed Johnson: lots of people who were interested in mentoring, which was great to see. It
Joanne Lockwood: became quite a big hit in corporates. I saw
Joanne Lockwood: some of your client lists and it really did get traction and still is, I
Joanne Lockwood: guess. Absolutely. It's continuing to grow. It's really
Ed Johnson: a wonderful thing to see it continuing to thrive and
Ed Johnson: incredibly proud that my co founder and I built this, you know. Yeah.
Ed Johnson: Organisations really were engaging with and continue to engage with the power
Ed Johnson: of mentoring. I think it's such an important part of one's
Ed Johnson: professional development, access to a mentor, but also
Ed Johnson: the opportunity to be a mentor. I think that's very empowering for
Ed Johnson: individuals as well. So who was your mentor? Did you have many?
Ed Johnson: I have had a number of mentors through the years. The one that I
Ed Johnson: always cite is our chairman at the time, Martin
Ed Johnson: Sherwood, and he was a wonderful mentor. Mentor to me. He would
Ed Johnson: advise me on the things to do, but often things not to
Ed Johnson: do in running startups. He's been involved in and on the
Ed Johnson: board of a number of startups and he's fantastic at what he does, gives me
Ed Johnson: really good advice and is also honest. I think that's really important
Ed Johnson: too. So I can ask questions and he'll give me
Ed Johnson: a really honest answer. I've seen and had interaction with some
Ed Johnson: mentors who will just tell you what they think you want to
Ed Johnson: hear and actually that doesn't really serve as very valuable. I'd
Ed Johnson: rather hear the truth, even if it's, that was terrible or
Ed Johnson: that was awful. I'd rather hear that than someone say, yeah, that was great, when
Ed Johnson: it really wasn't. So, yeah, he was a very good, very good
Ed Johnson: mentor to me. Yeah, I agree. I've
Joanne Lockwood: mentored a few people and I'm sometimes thinking, sitting there when I'm talking
Joanne Lockwood: to them and saying, I'm in danger of being very brutal here, and
Joanne Lockwood: that's what you're there for, is to really hold the mirror up
Joanne Lockwood: and say, look at yourself. You're saying this. Do you really believe that? Or you're
Joanne Lockwood: just going through the motions and you need people to really cut through that
Joanne Lockwood: BS that you're hiding behind
Joanne Lockwood: and face up to those realities. But, yeah, as someone who's
Joanne Lockwood: mentored others, I have found it quite personally challenged to
Joanne Lockwood: balance that own objectivity with personal
Joanne Lockwood: opinion. That's a real challenge as a mentor, isn't it? Completely. And I
Ed Johnson: think the best way to overcome that fear is to be really
Ed Johnson: transparent and honest with one another. When you're having the initial
Ed Johnson: conversation about, will you be my mentor or mentee? But also then
Ed Johnson: reminding one another at the start of every mentoring conversation and saying, look, I'll be
Ed Johnson: completely honest with you. I'll tell you what I. What I think. And I'm doing
Ed Johnson: that because I want to be helpful. And if at any point you'd rather I
Ed Johnson: didn't, please just say can change. Change the conversation. But actually, if you're
Ed Johnson: setting that as an expectation at the beginning, you'll find that 99% of
Ed Johnson: the time, the individual being mentored will say, yes, I do want that. I
Ed Johnson: want you to be honest with me. If I was looking simply for
Ed Johnson: a bit of an ego boost or a pat on the back, I could go
Ed Johnson: to my friends for that. And actually, a mentor is there when they're slightly
Ed Johnson: removed, and they can give you that honest response.
Joanne Lockwood: So, first of all, you mentioned you founded it with a co founder. So there
Joanne Lockwood: you are, two people developing on this thing. You've got maybe a.
Joanne Lockwood: Maybe a shadow board or an informal board to start with, or some business coaches,
Joanne Lockwood: but you grew to a sizable employee base.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm guessing 20s, 30s, 50s, over the course of
Joanne Lockwood: months, maybe years. How did you find that
Joanne Lockwood: challenge of growing from 2 to 4 to
Joanne Lockwood: 8 to 16 to 32. You know, that exponential growth that you did. How did
Joanne Lockwood: you find that challenge of growing? Actually, you
Ed Johnson: say that we grew the team. Actually, the team stayed fairly small. What
Ed Johnson: grew was the client base. And because it was software, it's
Ed Johnson: scalable. And that had its own challenges where you have to become a bit more
Ed Johnson: professional, not in the way that you do necessarily when you have employees, but.
Ed Johnson: But you do it to a lesser or greater extent within the client base that's
Ed Johnson: growing as well. I think the big challenges were
Ed Johnson: things like process for us. And, okay, we were used to having
Ed Johnson: conversations with maybe 10 clients, and we could talk to them all and
Ed Johnson: invite them to lots of things and really understand their
Ed Johnson: own unique position and situation and therefore adapt the technology
Ed Johnson: and the software to those 10 clients. When you have 50 clients,
Ed Johnson: that becomes more of a challenge. When you have 150, that becomes a
Ed Johnson: real challenge. Because what we found was, whilst there were some core
Ed Johnson: components to our software that everyone wanted, every organisation
Ed Johnson: is unique. Every organisation has different mentoring programmes that have different
Ed Johnson: requirements, and building software that can be
Ed Johnson: customised to all of them becomes quite
Ed Johnson: tricky and quite a challenge. And it's setting the expectations that this
Ed Johnson: is out of the box software. There are loads of customizations
Ed Johnson: and features within it that you can change, but there are always going to be
Ed Johnson: some limitations. And those early on,
Ed Johnson: clients who were used to saying to us, can your software do X, Y and
Ed Johnson: Z? We would go back and say, not at the moment, but give us a
Ed Johnson: couple of weeks and we'll develop that. It got to a point where we simply
Ed Johnson: couldn't say that and we had to actively change those goalposts and say,
Ed Johnson: well, look, we're with software as a service and
Ed Johnson: we'll try and factor that into development. We have another
Ed Johnson: client who is asking us for a feature that is completely
Ed Johnson: opposite to what you've just asked us for. So that presented some interesting
Ed Johnson: challenges along the way. So being able to say no, being able
Joanne Lockwood: to manage expectations, otherwise you say yes to everybody
Joanne Lockwood: and it becomes too stressful, I guess,
Joanne Lockwood: completely. And I always wanted to say yes to everybody. I want to
Ed Johnson: help people to get the best from their mentoring
Ed Johnson: programmes and see those thriving. And it was a
Ed Johnson: shift that we had to make in how we
Ed Johnson: positioned ourselves. But we got to a point where we were good at doing
Ed Johnson: that, but it took us the best part of two years probably, to make that
Ed Johnson: shift and transition, but we were able to. You are a completely
Joanne Lockwood: virtual business. So you didn't have big offices and people were
Joanne Lockwood: working all over the world. Correct. We were totally virtual. We
Ed Johnson: were virtual before COVID in fact. So my co founder is a
Ed Johnson: chap called Gabriel, he is based in Romania. So we were
Ed Johnson: definitely virtual and we were
Ed Johnson: working remotely together. And then when
Ed Johnson: the pandemic hit and lockdowns were enforced,
Ed Johnson: it was then a case of doing what
Ed Johnson: we'd always been doing. There was not really any change for us. The
Ed Johnson: only change was that actually organisations were suddenly saying, okay, we need
Ed Johnson: our employees to still be learning, let's give them virtual mentoring.
Ed Johnson: So actually we saw an uptick in demand as the pandemic struck
Ed Johnson: and I think that remote working that we'd always been doing put
Ed Johnson: us in a really good position and also enabled us to be a global
Ed Johnson: business very quickly as well. So we had clients all over the world and
Ed Johnson: mentoring. It doesn't really change from one country. To another when we think
Joanne Lockwood: about the culture of an organisation. Some of these, when we look
Joanne Lockwood: at big corporate, global companies, they're so massive, it's really
Joanne Lockwood: hard to create a culture that seeps into every
Joanne Lockwood: corner. But you were able to grow a culture
Joanne Lockwood: from day zero. How conscious were you of
Joanne Lockwood: the fact that you were effectively driving the culture based on
Joanne Lockwood: your personality and your style? Did you ever consciously think about the culture of your
Joanne Lockwood: organisation and what its internal values were? I
Ed Johnson: absolutely did. The reason, one of the reasons why I did, aside from it being
Ed Johnson: incredibly important and something that I think is so powerful and really does
Ed Johnson: shape a business, is I remember one of my first jobs where
Ed Johnson: the CEO of the company said, I know that you won't work in this
Ed Johnson: company forever. He said this to everybody. He wasn't singling me out. He said to
Ed Johnson: everybody, I know that you won't work in this company, company forever, or you're very
Ed Johnson: unlikely to, but wherever you go in your career,
Ed Johnson: the one objective I would have is for you to always look back on your
Ed Johnson: time at that company, at our company, he said, and
Ed Johnson: know that you enjoyed your time there and feel like
Ed Johnson: it was the best company you'd ever worked for. And I always thought, what
Ed Johnson: a cool thing to say and aspire to, you
Ed Johnson: know, it's not about revenue, it's not about growth, it's about the
Ed Johnson: one place where you really enjoyed working. And so I always
Ed Johnson: wanted to build businesses where people felt like that when
Ed Johnson: they were working with me and for the companies that I was co founding.
Ed Johnson: And so that was very much in the forefront of my mind. And then you
Ed Johnson: start to look at, well, how does one achieve that? And you think, well, what
Ed Johnson: would I like from an employer? What would I like
Ed Johnson: to know that I can talk to them about or that I can get from
Ed Johnson: the company and that they will give back to me? And it really starts with
Ed Johnson: honesty and trust. I think that has to be implicit from day
Ed Johnson: one. And so I would always talk to new hires. There weren't a lot. We
Ed Johnson: were a small team, which makes things obviously easier when it comes to culture. But
Ed Johnson: it was that total honesty, total transparency, and it was saying,
Ed Johnson: if you ever have any issues or challenges or you ever just want to talk
Ed Johnson: about anything, please don't hesitate to do so. And
Ed Johnson: also then instilling that flexibility early on. So if it was
Ed Johnson: a sunny day and I knew that people were in London or
Ed Johnson: in the UK and the weather was Great. I'd say, look, it's a Friday afternoon,
Ed Johnson: if you finish your work, just log off. And it wasn't that we had a
Ed Johnson: formal policy of a four day working week. It was actually, I
Ed Johnson: understand what's going on and I remember a colleague who was
Ed Johnson: really into football. I have to confess, I'm not, I'm not a
Ed Johnson: huge football follower and fan. But England had got into the, this is
Ed Johnson: going to show how little I understand football. They got into the quarter or semi
Ed Johnson: finals of a big tournament, I can't remember which one. And I said,
Ed Johnson: I said to this colleague, look, whatever the outcome, I know you're going
Ed Johnson: out with friends tonight, don't worry about logging on tomorrow. Because I knew
Ed Johnson: chances are I'd probably be having a few drinks and probably wouldn't feel very fresh
Ed Johnson: in the morning whether England won or lost. So I said, look, just have the
Ed Johnson: day off. And I think, you know, little things like that where
Ed Johnson: actually as long as it doesn't affect work and doesn't
Ed Johnson: affect the, you know, the experience that clients have or anything else and then you've
Ed Johnson: got to obviously make those judgments, then actually you should be doing that. And
Ed Johnson: he said that that really resonated with him and was something that he will always
Ed Johnson: remember. So it's that building that sort of. Culture based on
Joanne Lockwood: trust, does that scale easy for startup, easy for small team, but can IT
Joanne Lockwood: scale to 50,000 employees globally? I think it can if
Ed Johnson: you have the right managers of teams and that they have it instilled in
Ed Johnson: them early on. I've always questioned whether it can scale but in questioning it I
Ed Johnson: always come back to if you have the right team leaders who are aware of
Ed Johnson: the team, who are aware of the challenges and the tasks and what's going
Ed Johnson: on for the team, then I think it can scale. I think obviously
Ed Johnson: you have to be mindful of if you've got a big project with a big
Ed Johnson: deadline, then you can't say to people, well, you can take Friday
Ed Johnson: afternoon off or I know that that's going on for you, but I think
Ed Johnson: actually if those things happen then then when
Ed Johnson: you've set the right culture in the first place, then actually
Ed Johnson: the individuals who are in the team, the employees will think, well,
Ed Johnson: I know I was given last Friday off or I, I, you know, was given
Ed Johnson: time off and we've now got a deadline, I've got to work towards it and
Ed Johnson: I'm, you know, more willing to work for
Ed Johnson: longer hours on a Friday afternoon to hit a deadline. And I think when
Ed Johnson: you've got that Mutual respect and mutual understanding from the employer to the employee and
Ed Johnson: vice versa, then it can scale. The mantra I would probably use is the
Joanne Lockwood: Ying as an entrepreneur is you work when you want, but
Joanne Lockwood: the yang is you have to work when you don't want.
Joanne Lockwood: So both are true. You can take the swings, you can take the roundabouts, but
Joanne Lockwood: you have to balance it out. There are times where you're. I think actually I'm
Joanne Lockwood: not feeling it today, or today's not going to be a good day. It's sunny,
Joanne Lockwood: I need to clear my head, I need to get some creative thinking going and
Joanne Lockwood: I just need to switch off and do something else. Other days you go, as
Joanne Lockwood: you say, there's that deadline, the buck stopping with me. I've got no choice. It
Joanne Lockwood: has to happen. No matter how sunny it is, no matter how rough I feel,
Joanne Lockwood: it's got to happen today. So if you have that personal accountability and personal
Joanne Lockwood: responsibility, then that can work, can't it? And I think
Joanne Lockwood: what we don't always breed are artisan employees or artisan
Joanne Lockwood: colleagues who have that creativity and that self management,
Joanne Lockwood: if you like, self leadership, completely,
Joanne Lockwood: definitely. And I think a good manager or a good leader will
Ed Johnson: understand how everybody, how everybody in
Ed Johnson: their team functions. They'll have that emotional intelligence to
Ed Johnson: understand their team and how they, how they work
Ed Johnson: and how they work best. And you know, I think I'd rather
Ed Johnson: if someone wasn't producing very good work because they were
Ed Johnson: exhausted or they just weren't feeling it that day, I'd be more inclined to say
Ed Johnson: to them, look, take the afternoon off. You're not, you're not doing very
Ed Johnson: good work because you're exhausted or because you're just not feeling it. And that's absolutely
Ed Johnson: fine. We're all human. And hopefully in giving them the afternoon
Ed Johnson: off or giving them an hour or two's additional lunch break, that they'll
Ed Johnson: then come back feeling more motivated and therefore be far more
Ed Johnson: productive. I think where some organisations get it wrong
Ed Johnson: is they align productivity to the
Ed Johnson: number of hours worked and they think the more hours you work, the more
Ed Johnson: productive you are. And I just had never bought into that. I'd rather someone was
Ed Johnson: really productive in three days. Yeah, we know the stories
Joanne Lockwood: in the city where people would put the jacket on the back of their chair.
Joanne Lockwood: So where's Frank? Oh, his jacket's here. He must be around somewhere.
Joanne Lockwood: And they get lost in the system and really they're outside having a cigarette or
Joanne Lockwood: gone to the pub or at Balls brothers having some champagne for the afternoon or
Joanne Lockwood: something like that. And they sneak back in at half six in the evening when
Joanne Lockwood: everyone has to gone home, pick their jacket up and go home. But that was
Joanne Lockwood: kind of rife in the city. Maybe, maybe not recently, but
Joanne Lockwood: maybe in the 90s and the noughties when I was up there. But
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, we have to breed
Joanne Lockwood: cultures where people are self accountable and trust is
Joanne Lockwood: there. But we still find that many managers and leaders have been brought
Joanne Lockwood: up the old way with lack of trust where they're micromanaged, they have to
Joanne Lockwood: have to sit at their desk and that can't be the blocker that we're not
Joanne Lockwood: really nurturing a new generation of leaders. We're just more of
Joanne Lockwood: the same. Totally. And I think one of the other
Ed Johnson: really interesting things is that there are some individuals
Ed Johnson: not who like micromanagement per se, but who
Ed Johnson: actually appreciate a bit of clarity around what
Ed Johnson: accountability looks like. And I think there's a danger that
Ed Johnson: organisations can go the opposite way and they can say, well this is the big
Ed Johnson: picture, this is where we need to be in 12 months time, make sure it
Ed Johnson: happens. And for some employees who've maybe just come out of college
Ed Johnson: or university or school thinking, okay, what do you want me to do today? I
Ed Johnson: don't, I don't have any clarity around what's going on. I'm not
Ed Johnson: saying I want to be micromanaged but I would like a bit of structure and
Ed Johnson: I'm working from home so I know I've got a call at 9am but
Ed Johnson: well, I can roll out of bed at 5 to 9 and then I'll be
Ed Johnson: on that call from 9 till 9:30 and then what? I'll check my emails
Ed Johnson: and actually they probably want
Ed Johnson: to be a bit more productive. They want to have that clarity but don't really
Ed Johnson: know what they're doing or will think, okay, I've got five
Ed Johnson: things to do, I don't really know how I'm going to do them. They haven't
Ed Johnson: got the discipline at any age but may be
Ed Johnson: particularly prevalent in people who've been used to the education system
Ed Johnson: and the structure of a timetable and you know, bedtimes and
Ed Johnson: that routine to go from that to then a 9 to 5 job where you
Ed Johnson: kind of log on in the morning, you go right, I've got these tasks, how
Ed Johnson: am I going to do them? You know what, what am I doing really
Ed Johnson: is, is the opposite, which can be
Ed Johnson: a danger as well. So I think there's that, it's really important that there's that
Ed Johnson: self accountability but it's also important that an organisation
Ed Johnson: presents Their employees, their team, with
Ed Johnson: clarity around what accountability actually looks like. There's a. There's a book, I don't know
Joanne Lockwood: if you've ever read it, it's called Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and
Joanne Lockwood: Ashley Goodall. And they have this list of eight
Joanne Lockwood: insightful questions to ask, how to measure belonging.
Joanne Lockwood: And one of them, I can't remember if it's two or three, is at work.
Joanne Lockwood: I know what's expected of me and what you just said there is I need
Joanne Lockwood: to know how I win, how I lose and how I please
Joanne Lockwood: you. If I don't understand that and you say, I can't work in a
Joanne Lockwood: vacuum. I need parameters, I need goalposts, I need edges
Joanne Lockwood: to my world to know where my interfaces are. So by having that
Joanne Lockwood: expectation about when I'm doing great and when I'm not doing great,
Joanne Lockwood: I can then manage within those frameworks and depending on the person,
Joanne Lockwood: we can either shrink that down to a cage or we can create a safari
Joanne Lockwood: park and people can wander more freely within their safari
Joanne Lockwood: park because they know what the parameters are. So about trying to find the right
Joanne Lockwood: size of guides, if you like, when you go bowling with the kids, you put
Joanne Lockwood: the guides up there and stop the bowling ball go down the galley. It's just
Joanne Lockwood: putting those little nudge points in there to say, right, okay, we're still trying to
Joanne Lockwood: hit the first pin, get back in there completely. And
Ed Johnson: there will be some people in an organisation and in their job who know
Ed Johnson: already exactly what's expected of them and they know how to do it and when.
Ed Johnson: And then there will be other people who will need a bit more.
Ed Johnson: It's going to be very rarely going to be a one size fits all as
Ed Johnson: well. So it's giving people the tools and the resources to be able to
Ed Johnson: have that structure and support should they want or need it. And then there
Ed Johnson: will be inevitably some individuals who say, do you know what? I'm good, I've already
Ed Johnson: got this covered. I know exactly what I need to work with. You said earlier
Joanne Lockwood: that one of the signs of a great organisation is
Joanne Lockwood: that you will always think it is the best place you've ever worked. There's that
Joanne Lockwood: tear in your eye and you reluctantly have to move on to develop
Joanne Lockwood: your career and find something else. You've done that recently
Joanne Lockwood: with pushfar. You had an exit plan, VC investors,
Joanne Lockwood: or however you sort it out. Was it the best place you've ever worked?
Ed Johnson: I think that's a really hard thing to say about a company that you are
Ed Johnson: the founder of. I Suppose it definitely was in that it was seven
Ed Johnson: years of my life and previously I'd only been at jobs for a year or
Ed Johnson: two at a time before moving on. So it was probably the best and the
Ed Johnson: worst, if that makes sense. And as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you all know this.
Ed Johnson: You know, you have days where you think, oh, my gosh, this is really hard,
Ed Johnson: I don't know what I'm doing, or it's all going wrong. And
Ed Johnson: then you have days where you're on top of the world because you've just won
Ed Johnson: a brand new contract with a multinational company and you suddenly think,
Ed Johnson: wow, my software is going to be rolled out to tens of thousands of people.
Ed Johnson: How cool is that? We're working with some incredible brands.
Ed Johnson: The cherry on the cake is it's not just software, but it's software that
Ed Johnson: makes a difference to people. And that's a really cool thing. I would
Ed Johnson: say it was the best and the worst place that I've ever worked
Ed Johnson: as a founder. And, yeah, I'm incredibly proud of what
Ed Johnson: we've done and it was wonderful and I hope I can do
Ed Johnson: that all over again. The day
Joanne Lockwood: after they changed your password, took your email address off the system, took your
Joanne Lockwood: security badge back, did you wake up the next morning going,
Joanne Lockwood: I miss it? I woke up the next morning and set up
Ed Johnson: a new email account for the, for the new business. So I sort of
Ed Johnson: thought straight out of one and into another. But obviously when you set up a
Ed Johnson: new business, you don't have many emails coming through.
Ed Johnson: I'm still in the habit of checking my inbox every five minutes and going,
Ed Johnson: oh, no new mail, there's nothing. And
Ed Johnson: then I sort of think, that's because no one's heard of you. And that is
Ed Johnson: a sort of, you know, cold shock to the system.
Ed Johnson: You know, the cold reality and the cold light of day, it's a bit of
Ed Johnson: a shock to the system where you think, right, I've actually got to build this
Ed Johnson: brand now. I've got to get people to hear about it. So
Ed Johnson: it wasn't, it wasn't that I missed it because I, I'm, I,
Ed Johnson: I was ready, I think, to move on, but it was very much a case
Ed Johnson: of ready to move on, but aware that I'm not very good at sitting around,
Ed Johnson: doing not a lot and relaxing. So I was ready for the new
Ed Johnson: challenge and the new chapter. And it was quite literally the next day that I
Ed Johnson: started doing that with my, with my same co founder, Gabriel. We both exited
Ed Johnson: at the same time and have gone on To a new adventure.
Joanne Lockwood: I remember when I sold my IT company back in 2017.
Joanne Lockwood: I woke up the next day and I felt a little bit lost for a
Joanne Lockwood: while. Even though I was embarking on a new journey,
Joanne Lockwood: a lot of who I was or am was tied up in an
Joanne Lockwood: identity of technical director of IT company,
Joanne Lockwood: business partners, staff, customers. I knew who I was. And
Joanne Lockwood: as you were saying, the phone stopped ringing. People weren't talking to me, they were
Joanne Lockwood: talking to the business. And I happened to be the business. Suddenly the world goes
Joanne Lockwood: very, very quiet and you talk about this new employee. If
Joanne Lockwood: there's too much vacuum of. Of what to do now, you sit
Joanne Lockwood: there going, well, nothing's happening. What do I do? Do you gone from a position
Joanne Lockwood: where you're. You're looking at a bank account going up and up and up and
Joanne Lockwood: up and stuff happening. Bat bills, corporation tax, all the things you
Joanne Lockwood: have to worry about as a business owner and suddenly you're sat there watching your
Joanne Lockwood: bank account go down and there's no revenue coming in. In fact, it's worse than
Joanne Lockwood: that because you're spending money on stuff completely. It's one of those things
Ed Johnson: where I think the only solution for me has been to
Ed Johnson: create a list of all the things that I know I need to do now
Ed Johnson: for the new venture, for the new business, and not distract
Ed Johnson: myself because I don't think it's necessarily that I need
Ed Johnson: distraction because it felt like the right time to leave pushfar. But
Ed Johnson: it's more a case of needing to stay busy because I'm not very good
Ed Johnson: at not doing much. I get immense satisfaction at the end of the
Ed Johnson: day when I reflect on the day from knowing I've done good work
Ed Johnson: or created something or worked hard on something, even if it hasn't gone right, I'll
Ed Johnson: think, well, at least I've spent 8 hours doing something as opposed to 8 hours
Ed Johnson: reading a book and staring out of the window. So for me, it was a
Ed Johnson: case of keeping busy. And it's something I really enjoy, I think, as an
Ed Johnson: entrepreneur, creating new ventures, creating a new brand.
Ed Johnson: That's the most exciting part. That was certainly the most exciting and in equal
Ed Johnson: measure terrifying part of Push for. And I'm certainly
Ed Johnson: finding that again with URoutine. So we
Ed Johnson: shall see what happens. But I'm really enjoying it at the moment. I have two
Joanne Lockwood: children and I remember when we had our second child thinking,
Joanne Lockwood: we've done this before, we kind of know the game. And you bring the second
Joanne Lockwood: child home and you think, blimey, that was three years ago. I forgot Blimey. They
Joanne Lockwood: make a noise, you've got to feed them, they're suddenly dependent on you. And all
Joanne Lockwood: this stuff that you think, I could have forgotten all about that. Has that
Joanne Lockwood: happened again? So, you know, you've given birth to a new organisation.
Ed Johnson: Absolutely. Is it. Did you have sort of Groundhog Day or was it a case
Joanne Lockwood: of, oh, my God, I've forgotten all about this stuff? A bit of both, I
Ed Johnson: think. There are certainly quite a lot of things that I've forgotten from the seven.
Ed Johnson: You know, that seven years have passed since we started Pushbar.
Ed Johnson: So there are definitely some things I've forgotten. And there are also quite a lot
Ed Johnson: of things that have changed in the tech landscape. You know, AI wasn't
Ed Johnson: really something that anyone knew about or knew much about seven
Ed Johnson: years ago. And now we've got AI tools and software at, you know,
Ed Johnson: the push of a button that are very easily accessible. So
Ed Johnson: there are certainly things I've forgotten. There are certainly things that I remembered which
Ed Johnson: is good. I've remembered some of them and been able to do them and
Ed Johnson: adapt and adopt them quickly. And there are some things
Ed Johnson: that have changed since last time. So it's a combination of the three, I would
Ed Johnson: say. But interestingly, the ones that I've forgotten
Ed Johnson: are probably not, unsurprisingly, the more
Ed Johnson: mundane tasks. The things like, oh,
Ed Johnson: remind me of, about articles of association and company
Ed Johnson: memorandum, or I was dealing with HMRC when we were
Ed Johnson: getting our first investment round in what on earth was I supposed
Ed Johnson: to send them? And kind of reminding yourself of the more mundane things that,
Ed Johnson: that are, you know, important and take quite a lot of time.
Ed Johnson: Yeah, those are the things that I forgot quite quickly.
Joanne Lockwood: And yeah, you, whilst you can duplicate the
Joanne Lockwood: processes, you know, copy and paste what you had before, you don't necessarily have the
Joanne Lockwood: people around you either the process, you know, you say, I've got an idea, fire
Joanne Lockwood: off an email and someone makes that idea happen. Or you got, you know, suddenly
Joanne Lockwood: you go, but everything stops with me if I don't. You know, if not me,
Joanne Lockwood: then hope there's nobody else completely. The perfect example.
Ed Johnson: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the perfect example I would give of that is social media.
Ed Johnson: Jesse, who is our content marketing manager and did an amazing
Ed Johnson: job at Push Far and continues to do an amazing job at Push Far,
Ed Johnson: was in charge of everything social. So all of our social
Ed Johnson: media content on Pushfar and there was a lot of it. There were a number
Ed Johnson: of channels, we had a number of our clients following us and
Ed Johnson: now I'm going, okay, we've got Social channels that URoutine
Ed Johnson: because we need to get the brand out there. What are we going to post
Ed Johnson: on there? Okay, we need to create some articles and when I say we,
Ed Johnson: it is just me. So I'm stumbling around on Canva going, is this
Ed Johnson: how you create a social post? Or we should probably
Ed Johnson: be on TikTok or what do we need to post on there? And what are
Ed Johnson: the ad formats? And so, yeah, it's all the
Ed Johnson: things that I now need to know how to do that. When I was at
Ed Johnson: Pushfar, pick up the phone to Jessie and she would do an incredible job
Ed Johnson: of just. Learning again, I find some of
Joanne Lockwood: that really fun because it allows you to slice your day up
Joanne Lockwood: into different bits. And I can have a social day or I can have a
Joanne Lockwood: newsletter day, I can have a content creation day and I can have a business
Joanne Lockwood: day. Quotes and conversations and networking and it
Joanne Lockwood: makes every day different, doesn't it? I think as an entrepreneur, as a single
Joanne Lockwood: solopreneur myself, I can pick and choose what I want to do, but
Joanne Lockwood: I come back to that. I work what I want and I also work what
Joanne Lockwood: I don't want. The times I actually think, okay, I can't do the fun stuff
Joanne Lockwood: today. I've got to put down Canva for five minutes and actually crack on and
Joanne Lockwood: deliver a bit of work completely. Yeah,
Ed Johnson: it's great that you've got so much variety at the start of a venture
Ed Johnson: or as an entrepreneur. But then as you say,
Ed Johnson: a, there are going to be times when you don't feel like you have to
Ed Johnson: or like you want to, but you do have to. But B,
Ed Johnson: there are always going to be tasks on that list of things that you know
Ed Johnson: you need to do which are less exciting. So social media posts
Ed Johnson: and creating things on Canva is probably quite an exciting
Ed Johnson: thing. Cash flow, forecasting, VAT returns, all
Ed Johnson: of those things, not so exciting. I'm sure some people find them exciting.
Ed Johnson: Not for me though. And so you've always got to
Ed Johnson: do those things. So it gives you variety, but you then
Ed Johnson: you always have to do things you don't necessarily want to. I've
Joanne Lockwood: noticed that the posts, I've seen your new posts on LinkedIn and I
Joanne Lockwood: can't say I've looked on other platforms, but I certainly on LinkedIn you have a
Joanne Lockwood: different Persona than I've seen you before. You're more human,
Joanne Lockwood: you're more relaxed, you're more fun, outwardly fun
Joanne Lockwood: and there's a lot more depth to you and personality at
Joanne Lockwood: these, which maybe when you have big customers, big
Joanne Lockwood: corporates you have to kind of tone down
Joanne Lockwood: who you are and become socially acceptable to everybody and that you're being
Joanne Lockwood: judged in different ways. But at the moment you've got the luxury of just being
Joanne Lockwood: you and having a bit of fun doing this. It's really interesting you say
Ed Johnson: that because it's not something I've consciously thought too much about. But
Ed Johnson: I'm sure you're right that subconsciously when I was at Pushvar,
Ed Johnson: particularly in the latter three, four years, I was
Ed Johnson: very aware that we had clients of all shapes and sizes. We
Ed Johnson: worked with public sector organisations, we worked with police forces
Ed Johnson: and NHS trusts through to then huge global
Ed Johnson: brands like Sony and Samsung. And there are certain things that
Ed Johnson: I wouldn't necessarily have felt comfortable posting and also
Ed Johnson: I think you have less time when you've got all those clients.
Ed Johnson: So actually I'm now really enjoying having that time
Ed Johnson: back again, feeling able to be myself again, where I'm
Ed Johnson: creating something new and fresh and
Ed Johnson: I suppose I am being more human about it but not thinking
Ed Johnson: too much about it, which is probably why it's coming across as more human. And
Ed Johnson: that shift is something I'm really enjoying. I'm really enjoying
Ed Johnson: connecting with people again and in a way that I just didn't have either the
Ed Johnson: time to or didn't feel able to in the latter years as a business goes
Ed Johnson: from being a startup to a scale up and having more clients. You
Joanne Lockwood: mentioned one of the things, significant things that's changed in the last seven years
Joanne Lockwood: is AI and its impact across the board. You know, We've just
Joanne Lockwood: seen AI OpenAI ChatGPT launch, image generation.
Joanne Lockwood: They came for the coders, they came for the copywriters, now
Joanne Lockwood: they're coming for the graphic designers. And we can see the trajectory where AI in
Joanne Lockwood: its various forms is becoming part of our everyday lives in the
Joanne Lockwood: same way the Internet became part of our everyday lives in the noughties and the
Joanne Lockwood: iPhone put it in our pockets, everything else. How
Joanne Lockwood: hard is it for you to keep human? Because it's very
Joanne Lockwood: easy to let AI take over your business and do everything with AI.
Joanne Lockwood: But you've got a human platform, how can you stay human? Really interesting
Ed Johnson: question. I'm not sure I necessarily know the answer
Ed Johnson: in a very eloquent way, but I will try and answer it. I think the
Ed Johnson: most important thing for me to do is to be
Ed Johnson: present in my business. And the example I'll give is I learned
Ed Johnson: so much at pushva by being the
Ed Johnson: customer support representative at pushva for the first three, four
Ed Johnson: years a because we couldn't afford to hire anybody else. But B,
Ed Johnson: because actually, more importantly in this case, back to being human and being
Ed Johnson: present rather than letting AI take over. You learn so much from those
Ed Johnson: conversations that you have. You learn so much from picking up
Ed Johnson: the phone to a client or a client picking up the phone to you and
Ed Johnson: saying this part of the website isn't easy to
Ed Johnson: use. Or I was doing this and I thought this was how you interacted
Ed Johnson: with this software. And actually all those things
Ed Johnson: that if AI was talking to the customer, they wouldn't feed that back in an
Ed Johnson: effective way, or you'd miss that and. Or
Ed Johnson: you'd hear something in a conversation where you think it's really interesting that you've just
Ed Johnson: described our platform as this, or maybe all of the
Ed Johnson: markets would describe our product or our software as this and maybe
Ed Johnson: we can then use that in marketing. So I think being human is really
Ed Johnson: important and I think the way you do that is by
Ed Johnson: talking to people. I know it sounds obvious, but not letting AI
Ed Johnson: take over those conversations. And then there are
Ed Johnson: smaller things that shouldn't make a difference, but I think
Ed Johnson: and probably don't make a difference to anyone else. But I try not to
Ed Johnson: use AI on any of my social posts. It's really
Ed Johnson: easy to think I'm going to ask ChatGPT to create a social post,
Ed Johnson: that it's engaging and talks about X, Y and Z. But on a personal
Ed Johnson: level, I take more pride when I get a like or it's
Ed Johnson: reshared if I think I've written that and no one necessarily
Ed Johnson: knows other than me, but I feel better about myself
Ed Johnson: as a result of that. And so I think that's important to continue to
Ed Johnson: do. I completely agree and I have a blended approach.
Joanne Lockwood: I write a good chunk of what I do, but I also use AI to
Joanne Lockwood: augment that or take what I have written and spice it
Joanne Lockwood: up a little bit. Sometimes I always put me in IT first. It does help.
Joanne Lockwood: I wouldn't consider myself a competent programmer, but I'm a
Joanne Lockwood: competent systems analyst and I can pseudo code. I can spec
Joanne Lockwood: stuff out of what I want. ChatGPT has helped me write
Joanne Lockwood: stuff that I would never have embarked on. Some of this
Joanne Lockwood: stuff I'm looking at going, wow, that's brilliant. I can do this.
Joanne Lockwood: It's helped me create WordPress plugins and
Joanne Lockwood: modules and stuff. I could have probably downloaded it cheaper, I could have
Joanne Lockwood: probably paid someone 30 pound a year for it. But I've got immense satisfaction by
Joanne Lockwood: being able to build my own tools if you like.
Joanne Lockwood: And I guess when you're looking at your platform, which is SaaS platform, it's got
Joanne Lockwood: code in it, lots of HTML5 and JavaScript and other things are probably in
Joanne Lockwood: the back end. It allows you to maybe prototype things
Joanne Lockwood: quicker and then put the human design on top of
Joanne Lockwood: that. Definitely. And I think the AI, definitely.
Ed Johnson: And I think the power of AI is that you can generate things quickly
Ed Johnson: and the things that don't matter as much whether they're
Ed Johnson: human or AI generated, such as
Ed Johnson: basic code, as long as it's obviously secure and everything else and you've done a
Ed Johnson: code review on it, those sorts of things, AI is really powerful and really good
Ed Johnson: at doing. I think where
Ed Johnson: things were obviously human before, it's important that they
Ed Johnson: continue to be, Such as social posts
Ed Johnson: that you're putting out there, not necessarily the business. If you wanted to sort of
Ed Johnson: speed up your social media content and using AI to generate those sorts of
Ed Johnson: things I think is fine, But I think when it's your own brand and your
Ed Johnson: own personal articles or content, then
Ed Johnson: yes, absolutely, using AI to help speed up that process
Ed Johnson: is really valuable, but making sure that it's got
Ed Johnson: your touch on it is, I would say, still really, really important.
Joanne Lockwood: So we touched earlier about the fact that when we're looking
Joanne Lockwood: to create a team, that everyone has to understand what's expected. Your
Joanne Lockwood: new venture, URoutine is about creating
Joanne Lockwood: personal expectations, personal accountability, isn't it? And across various
Joanne Lockwood: aspects of your business, do you want to just talk a bit more about
Joanne Lockwood: the idea, the goal? Yes, certainly. So
Ed Johnson: URoutine is a social network that really is
Ed Johnson: aimed at helping give people a bit more structure and a bit more accountability
Ed Johnson: to their life. And it's about those things that we all
Ed Johnson: want to be achieving, but either don't get round to or don't do as much
Ed Johnson: as we want to, Whether those are personal or professional goals. So a professional
Ed Johnson: goal could be, I'd love to get down to a zero inbox at the end
Ed Johnson: of each day. And people talk about doing that, but either never do or
Ed Johnson: do it once a month. They feel great about it and then they let it
Ed Johnson: slip. And a personal goal could be,
Ed Johnson: I'd love to eat more healthily, I'd love to eat five portions of fruit and
Ed Johnson: vegetables a day, whatever it is. And when we tell ourselves that we're
Ed Johnson: going to do something, there's a chance we will. But the psychology of accountability is
Ed Johnson: when we start telling other people what we want to achieve, There's a lot more
Ed Johnson: of a chance that we will. It's the same psychology behind why people will have
Ed Johnson: a personal trainer 99% of the time. It's not to show them how to use
Ed Johnson: the gym equipment, but it's to get them to the gym in the first place.
Ed Johnson: And so URoutine really is about digitising habits and
Ed Johnson: goals and a routine and because it's a social network,
Ed Johnson: it is by its very nature social. So your friends, family and
Ed Johnson: or the wider world subject to your privacy settings, can then see what you said
Ed Johnson: you want to be achieving. They can comment on it, they can like it, they
Ed Johnson: can also copy it. So they can say that's a really good idea, I'm going
Ed Johnson: to add that into my own routine or even that whole routine with all those
Ed Johnson: goals and objectives looks great, I'm going to copy that whole routine. So it becomes
Ed Johnson: a bit like a playlist for routines and goals. And the idea really is
Ed Johnson: to just help people to achieve more of the things that they want to be
Ed Johnson: achieving. And I relate. I mean I have
Joanne Lockwood: disparate apps that create my routine. I've got my Apple watch
Joanne Lockwood: and I'm looking at my rings. I think attend to the hour if my
Joanne Lockwood: wrist vibrates and it's all if to stand up. So go and stand up and
Joanne Lockwood: have a cup of coffee and I look into the day. I'm thinking it's told
Joanne Lockwood: me if I, if I do another five minutes worth of work, I'm going to
Joanne Lockwood: close my red ring. Right, okay, let's get, let's go run up and down the
Joanne Lockwood: stairs a couple of times. So there are, there are nagging type
Joanne Lockwood: accountability apps I'm using already. I'm, I've lost 8 stone in weight over
Joanne Lockwood: the last 18 months using a food diary which
Joanne Lockwood: I account for everything I eat and I've got a digital
Joanne Lockwood: scale that bluetooth to my phone and logs my weight
Joanne Lockwood: whenever I stand on it and my blood pressure monitor does the same. It logs
Joanne Lockwood: it straight to my app. So I can now build up a metrics of my
Joanne Lockwood: life, of my intake, my blood pressure, my weight.
Joanne Lockwood: And I've got these graphs now and so that gives me a target, something to
Joanne Lockwood: aim for rather than before maybe I was drifting going
Joanne Lockwood: about this, about that. I know exactly that I'm 96.4
Joanne Lockwood: kilogrammes this morning and I know that that's the lightest I've been
Joanne Lockwood: ever since I've started using app which is at least eight years and they think,
Joanne Lockwood: wow, I've now got telemetry, I can map my life and I
Joanne Lockwood: say my goal weight is 80 kilos and I can tell you that on
Joanne Lockwood: the 10th of October, if I keep doing what I do, that's where I hit
Joanne Lockwood: my goal weight. So I've now got. I know what's expected of me, go back
Joanne Lockwood: to that belongingness. I know what's expected of me. I've got accountability. My
Joanne Lockwood: wife, I and our daughter, we all share the same calorie app
Joanne Lockwood: so we can see what we're all eating and say, oh, I saw you had
Joanne Lockwood: that last night and you had that last night and we're trying to get my
Joanne Lockwood: mum on it as well. So we're already doing what you're suggesting here
Joanne Lockwood: in this other app, but you're doing is you've got to bring
Joanne Lockwood: all of this together outside of just maybe a single, a single
Joanne Lockwood: function here and give me that telemetry on my, on my life.
Ed Johnson: And congratulations, by the way. I mean, you're, you know, you're doing fantastically well.
Ed Johnson: You're looking very well as well. So, yeah, it's obviously working and
Ed Johnson: yeah, think. I think that's absolutely. What we're trying to do is trying to give
Ed Johnson: people that support and that structure across health, fitness, well
Ed Johnson: being, financial goals. You can kind of use it for anything and that's what's really
Ed Johnson: wonderful. I've spoken to so many different people who've thought about how they might use
Ed Johnson: it in different ways in the last two or three weeks alone. I was talking
Ed Johnson: to someone who said, oh, this really great for working parents for the school
Ed Johnson: holidays to give their children a bit of routine or give themselves routine so they
Ed Johnson: can manage that, manage their children. This would be great for students
Ed Johnson: for study, study leave and routines around study
Ed Johnson: time and study revision. This would be great for people who've
Ed Johnson: recently retired, who have a load of hobbies and interests, but don't really have the
Ed Johnson: discipline to kind of get on with them. So there's so many different
Ed Johnson: areas where I'm hopeful that this is going to really have
Ed Johnson: a positive impact. And as you're talking now, I'm thinking, this is where AI
Joanne Lockwood: can augment this for you because suddenly AI can help
Joanne Lockwood: you ideate on ideas for kids in school holiday or
Joanne Lockwood: help supplement your thoughts and go, I don't know what I'm doing next week. It's
Joanne Lockwood: 10th of August, what can I get my kids to do next week? Poof. Here's
Joanne Lockwood: 10 ideas and you go, ah, great. Can you map out number one for me?
Ed Johnson: Poof. And you've got a routine. And I think you're ideally placed now to be
Joanne Lockwood: able to augment human and automation
Joanne Lockwood: to help people Ideate, I think that's time is right, I
Joanne Lockwood: think for that. Fingers crossed. Yeah,
Ed Johnson: I think so. But I mean at that point where you never really know until
Ed Johnson: you launch it and then there'll be lots of iterations, I'm sure along the way,
Ed Johnson: but it's certainly an exciting point in time where I think it's the right
Ed Johnson: time. What do you do when you're not ideating and building companies?
Joanne Lockwood: What's your downtime? What sport do you enjoy or hobby?
Ed Johnson: I go running a lot. I love running. I also love the fact that running
Ed Johnson: gives me time as well, whilst I'm running to think about things
Ed Johnson: and to recalibrate my life and work out what my
Ed Johnson: goals are and what I would like to be achieving the next day or the
Ed Johnson: next week. Try and go running. Most days I spend
Ed Johnson: quite a lot of time reading, but not reading professional workbooks.
Ed Johnson: So I've been invited to a number of entrepreneurs events
Ed Johnson: to speak on them. And the question I always get asked is what books would
Ed Johnson: you recommend? And I sit there and think, I have so many books that I
Ed Johnson: recommend, but none of them are professional, none of them are related to entrepreneurship.
Ed Johnson: They're my downtime where I throw myself into a
Ed Johnson: fictitious world with these amazing characters. And so I
Ed Johnson: love reading, I love fiction and then yeah,
Ed Johnson: yeah, walking, running, socialising, seeing friends
Ed Johnson: or travel quite a bit. I love the south of France.
Ed Johnson: I've got a real passion for the art and the history
Ed Johnson: and the culture in that part of the world and
Ed Johnson: then really the rest of the time is just thinking about and building a business.
Ed Johnson: I suppose it comes back to that time and time again. It can be tough
Joanne Lockwood: to find a life work balance and not a work life balance.
Joanne Lockwood: Do you battling with that yourself or do you think you've got it nailed?
Ed Johnson: I used to battle with it at Push Far. Looking back,
Ed Johnson: I like to think I've got it nailed. But maybe I'm only saying that
Ed Johnson: because we're at the early stage of the business and it's very easy to feel
Ed Johnson: like you've got a work life balance when things aren't busy, you know, ask me
Ed Johnson: again in a couple of years time when hopefully we've got lots of
Ed Johnson: clients and we're busy. And I
Ed Johnson: think there are certainly things that I'll have learned from Push Far that I will,
Ed Johnson: that will help me in my work life balance. We'll probably hire a few
Ed Johnson: more people at an earlier stage, but it's easy to say that now and then
Ed Johnson: when you look at cash flow forecasting and you Think, well, we didn't hire an
Ed Johnson: additional person and instead I did that job as well. Then
Ed Johnson: we'd have X amount more in the bank. So that's easy to say, but
Ed Johnson: to actually do it, we'll see. Well, we're almost midway through
Joanne Lockwood: 2025. I remember five years ago we were saying,
Joanne Lockwood: trying to project 2030 by looking back on
Joanne Lockwood: the previous decade. We said
Joanne Lockwood: earlier, Facebook became very ubiquitous. IPhone, we've now
Joanne Lockwood: got AI coming out the mid decade. Where do you think the world's going to
Joanne Lockwood: be in 2030? What big changes are we going to see in terms of the
Joanne Lockwood: world of work and society? That's a question. Sorry
Joanne Lockwood: to chuck that on you out of the blue. No, no, no, it's
Ed Johnson: a really good question and it's probably quite good that it's out of the blue.
Ed Johnson: I think there'll be a lot more autonomy in technology,
Ed Johnson: so there'll be a lot more. The obvious things like driverless cars will
Ed Johnson: be the norm, or certainly more of the norm than they are.
Ed Johnson: I think everyone will have more of a structure with
Ed Johnson: a routine or new routine. But of course, I would say that I think that
Ed Johnson: flexible working will continue and organisations I would
Ed Johnson: hope will be better at dealing with that and
Ed Johnson: across the board, better at dealing with that. There are some organisations that are already
Ed Johnson: brilliant at it, but I think other organisations are still struggling to work out
Ed Johnson: what their position is, let alone how they then adopt that. And I think that
Ed Johnson: technologies will help them to do that and help them to go along with
Ed Johnson: that movement. I think the content creation side of things and
Ed Johnson: content creators economy, the gig economy there will continue to
Ed Johnson: grow. I think we'll see a lot more
Ed Johnson: entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, freelancers than
Ed Johnson: we are even now. And we're seeing more and more people go into that line
Ed Johnson: of work, but I think that will continue to grow as well. And then
Ed Johnson: more globally recognisable brands
Ed Johnson: that have a very small workforce.
Ed Johnson: So at the moment, generally speaking,
Ed Johnson: the larger organisations that larger in terms of brand
Ed Johnson: have a larger workforce. So the big companies that we all know about
Ed Johnson: have a huge workforce. I think what we will see in
Ed Johnson: 2030 is there'll be huge companies in terms of brand,
Ed Johnson: but they'll have maybe five or 10 employees. And this isn't
Ed Johnson: necessarily new, but I think it will become more acute.
Ed Johnson: So one example is, you know, Instagram, when it sold to Facebook for I think
Ed Johnson: it was $20 billion, they only had 20 employees. And
Ed Johnson: actually arguably they could have continued to grow with maybe 30 or 40 or 50
Ed Johnson: employees, but not Hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands. So I
Ed Johnson: think AI will make that more possible
Ed Johnson: to a lesser or greater extent. What about you,
Ed Johnson: what do you think? Yeah, I think it's very interesting. I think I agree with
Joanne Lockwood: you and I think I've seen those stats. I was at a LinkedIn
Joanne Lockwood: conference last week, week before, and one of the keynote speakers there was
Joanne Lockwood: talking about the evolving age dynamics of the world and the fact
Joanne Lockwood: that we're. In order to sustain population growth, women need to give
Joanne Lockwood: birth, something like the rate of 2.2 children per
Joanne Lockwood: woman in order for the population globally to grow. And we're currently
Joanne Lockwood: reproducing at 1.2. So the populations globally
Joanne Lockwood: are shrinking. Every country, every country is globally shrinking in
Joanne Lockwood: population. What we're seeing is Gen Zs Gen Alphas
Joanne Lockwood: being the smaller demographic than millennials and Gen
Joanne Lockwood: Xers and boomers. Millennials turn 50
Joanne Lockwood: in 2031, 2032 or something, and the over 50s
Joanne Lockwood: will suddenly become the biggest demographic in the workplace. And I found this really
Joanne Lockwood: insightful that most people will not be able to retire
Joanne Lockwood: until they're 80 odd because just by the way, the
Joanne Lockwood: economy's work, we don't have the money, we don't have the resources. My parents are
Joanne Lockwood: probably the last generation that will leave a legacy to their children because we're going
Joanne Lockwood: to be spending it on nursing and ageing, healthcare and whatever it may
Joanne Lockwood: be. So I've got to prepare for a world where I'm working till I'm at
Joanne Lockwood: least 75, 80, to be able to afford to carry on living in the
Joanne Lockwood: way I want to live. So we've got to think about how we're adjusting our
Joanne Lockwood: outlook towards a more 50
Joanne Lockwood: dominated employee base, customer base,
Joanne Lockwood: lifestyle base. And whilst we've spent a lot of time looking at Gen
Joanne Lockwood: Zs, Gen Alphas and what the emerging technology needs to be
Joanne Lockwood: forgetting about, there's a huge great legacy of older
Joanne Lockwood: people. Having listened to that, I thought, wow, you're right
Joanne Lockwood: and I'm 60. So I thought, hang on a minute, I'm right in the
Joanne Lockwood: sweet spot. I'm starting to look more into this ageing population
Joanne Lockwood: and I think we've got to adapt to a world where we will have people
Joanne Lockwood: in the workplace into their 70s and 80s and that's
Joanne Lockwood: the reality. And we've got to look at these transferable skills, retraining,
Joanne Lockwood: career pivots, whatever phrase you want to use to allow people
Joanne Lockwood: to continue to be productive and not be
Joanne Lockwood: aged out of organisations. So I think that would be my hope.
Joanne Lockwood: We start to really see the Growth of the vintage worker
Joanne Lockwood: or the classic worker, whichever. I like that vintage
Ed Johnson: worker, absolutely. But I think with that, lots of exciting
Ed Johnson: opportunities as well. Yeah, I'm. I'm looking forward to. Yeah, I'm still living my best
Joanne Lockwood: life. You know, I've had multiple parts of my life and done different
Joanne Lockwood: things and pivoted and wiggled and waned between them. And
Joanne Lockwood: I think wanting to be useful and productive and
Joanne Lockwood: creative is important to me. Other people want different things, obviously,
Joanne Lockwood: but yeah, I. AIs given me another lease of life to
Joanne Lockwood: be able to ideate differently and to explore stuff. And I go with you on
Joanne Lockwood: this content creation gig economy around content creator, multiple
Joanne Lockwood: different income streams. I think that's really powerful
Joanne Lockwood: when you are a free spirit, a solopreneur, and you can start
Joanne Lockwood: slicing yourself up into different areas which either overlap or they can
Joanne Lockwood: be completely different. I've just got myself a drone, so I'm going to start doing
Joanne Lockwood: a bit of drone photography and go out there. And it's of course between
Joanne Lockwood: a hobby and a business. I want to do more content creation
Joanne Lockwood: where I talk to the camera while I'm out for a walk and I can
Joanne Lockwood: have the drone follow me and spin around and take some different shots and
Joanne Lockwood: I can try and create more humanity around some of my speaking and some
Joanne Lockwood: of the videos I create. So again, it's an opportunity to do
Joanne Lockwood: something different. Fantastic.
Joanne Lockwood: Ed. We've been. We started yakking about an hour and a half ago in
Joanne Lockwood: the green room and I can't wait when we get a chance to have a
Joanne Lockwood: coffee sometime in London and have some more time to catch up.
Joanne Lockwood: How can people get hold of you? Just give us a. Give us a bit
Joanne Lockwood: more of your URoutine pitch if you like, and
Joanne Lockwood: how to sign up or how to, how to stay interested. The best way
Ed Johnson: at the moment is LinkedIn, so connecting with me on LinkedIn. I'm certainly posting regular
Ed Johnson: updates about URoutine. We do also have a URoutine company page on LinkedIn
Ed Johnson: that you can follow as well as the other social channels that we're on. So
Ed Johnson: Instagram and TikTok, and then URoutine.com
Ed Johnson: will be where you can sign up and at the moment you can, you can
Ed Johnson: register your interest and then we'll hopefully be launching the first version.
Ed Johnson: Yeah. Later this year. Wow. Later this year. Fingers crossed.
Joanne Lockwood: High expectations. Well, I'm going to go and put myself on that list. As we
Joanne Lockwood: said at the beginning, we've known each other seven or eight years now and I've
Joanne Lockwood: always enjoyed following you, having conversations with you and I'm really excited to see where
Joanne Lockwood: this goes for you and the world. And the world.
Joanne Lockwood: Ed, thank you. As
Joanne Lockwood: we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my
Joanne Lockwood: deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your
Joanne Lockwood: ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
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Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with
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Joanne Lockwood: and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world
Joanne Lockwood: one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.