Richard Levy – Persistence pays off – Transcript

Tamara Littleton  00:12

This is the Genuine Humans podcast brought to you by Social Element. I’m Tamara Littleton

Wendy Christie  00:18

and I’m Wendy Christie

Tamara Littleton  00:22

in our podcast, we’ll discover the stories of the leaders behind the brands and the trailblazers who are making a real difference in our industry. We’ll delve into how they got to where they are today,

Wendy Christie  00:34

hear about the genuine humans who supported and influenced them along the way.

Tamara Littleton  00:44

Welcome back to the Genuine Humans podcast, and I’m here with my fabulous co-host, Wendy Christie.

Wendy Christie  00:51

She knows I love it when she calls me fabulous.

Tamara Littleton  00:55

How are you doing? Wendy, how’s your weekend been?

Wendy Christie  00:58

Okay? It’s kind of been filled with babysitting. So it’s been full-on, and I’m feeling very happy to be at work. How are you?

Tamara Littleton  01:05

Well, I had a great trip. I went to Dublin, and I feel like I think I got the Last of the Summer in Dublin, and it was fabulous. And karaoke may have been involved.

Wendy Christie  01:15

Good, good, good. Keeping the side up there.

Tamara Littleton  01:19

So, I’m delighted to welcome today another fabulous, Genuine Humans guest, and that is Richard Levy. Richard is the founder and CEO of Sophera Marketing, having previously been brand-side, leading high-performing teams globally for companies such as GE, Santander, First National and MoneyGram. So welcome to the podcast, Richard.

Richard Levy  01:42

Thank you both. Lovely to be here. Thank you for the invite. Very excited.

Tamara Littleton  01:47

So, Richard, I know that you sort of heard our podcast before, you know what happens at this stage. We are going to ask you. How did you get to where you are now, I’d love to know more about your early career. Was there a real plan for sort of getting into marketing? Did you accidentally fall in? Just give us a little flavour of your early career.

Richard Levy  02:07

Well, I would love to say that there was a plan that I’ve been following through, but that would just be totally incorrect and false, there was no plan, and there probably still isn’t much of a plan, but it happened by accident. I went to university years and years and years ago and studied business. And the good thing is that you learn all different kinds of bits and pieces about the world of business. The bad thing, or not bad, but the downside, I should we say, is that you come out and there’s no clear, defined path for you.

So, I don’t know if it exists, but back in the day, they used to be what they call the milk round,

Tamara Littleton  02:08

oh yeah!

Richard Levy  02:08

you applied for various jobs. And they vary from like Glaxo to Rolls Royce to Ford to what is now Santander, and I got the role at Santander. So, a little bit like exam practice was that the more you did these things, the slightly better you got. So, I think I was quite lucky Santander was near the end, and so I got the marketing role there.

I’d enjoyed marketing at university, but it would be disingenuous to say it was what I, you know, was what I was destined for. I fell into it, and I spent about two years there and on the graduate scheme. It’s quite interesting because I’ll come back to this a little bit later, but I think there were six of us. None of us had studied marketing at all, and yet somehow you got into the marketing graduate scheme, which might raise its own questions. It might be different now, but you spent six months at a branch at Swiss Cottage in my example, in North London, which I loved, really loved, because you actually learn what’s really going on, six months then in unsecured personal loans in marketing, which was great, because it was the only department at the time that owned its own P&L in marketing, so I’ve got that P&L exposure.

Richard Levy  02:26

And then six months in advertising, and advertising was a lot less sophisticated then than it is now. We did the coupon codes, where you had to sort of quote, I don’t know, 123, if you dialled in, and we could measure how many people said 123, so it was just, it was, it was a great experience. Looking back, I think I was totally ill-prepared for it. In as much as you move from being at university into moving into a huge company with so many facets, so many different bits to it, I think I was probably quite naive and the way I approached it, and I don’t say that partially. I say that factually, but I think it’s a massive step.

Richard Levy  04:44

And then from Santander, I went to a much smaller company called First National there were only about 60 or 70 of us, and I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed the fact it was small. Everyone did everything. There’s a lot of personal responsibility. You could build up relationships. I really enjoyed that. And then we got taken over by GE, and this was the time when GE was the company to work for. GE was, I mean, sounds astonishing, but it was acquiring businesses globally once every three days.

Tamara Littleton  05:17

Wow!

Richard Levy  05:18

When I was there. So, they were just buying companies in this very systematic manner. And GE at the time was, I think we were like there were 300,000 employees. I don’t know if we were the first or second biggest company in the world, but we were one of the two. And it was just the most incredible culture shock that you suddenly moved from a company of sort of 60, maybe 70 people to accompany 300,000 and I remember they got us all in the room on the day that they made the acquisition, and they said, we bought you for your talent. We’re really excited. We’ve heard good things about you, and I’ve made with the 60 people who were in that room. I think three months later, there were five of us remaining. It was brutal. And the five of us remaining – it wasn’t due to I’d love to say it was due to some remarkable show of brilliance, but I think it was the fact that marketing was in London, and therefore it was just easy to sort of move me across.

Richard Levy  06:11

I spent six years at GE and the advantage is you learn how businesses are run. You learn numbers, you learn to be able to articulate yourself. Elevator speeches, just questions about, if you did not know your numbers, it was just you were sunk.

And so, marketing, I don’t know, you know, when people talk about, oh, is it sort of all creative? And I’m thinking, it was definitely not all creative. It’s about what you’re adding to the bottom line and how much capital we were borrowing against, what we were getting back and getting things through finance. It was an incredible education, and I still maintain that the people working there were the best I’ve ever worked with. It was like going to university every day. It was astonishingly difficult in some ways, but astonishingly rewarding that they did have the infamous appraisal system where the bottom 10% twice a year, there was an appraisal system, and if you’re in the bottom 10% we used to have a saying that they “went to Canada”. Went to Canada meant people just disappeared. It’s like, “Oh, where’s so and so?” “Went to Canada.” “Okay.”

Tamara Littleton  07:15

We’ll never talk of that again.

Richard Levy  07:18

So, it depends whether you’re a believer in competition is better than collaboration, or collaboration is better competition because you were, in effect, in competition with all the people you were working with, because you were desperately trying to avoid falling into that sort of lower, lower echelon. And I stayed there for six years. So, I survived 12 different appraisal systems, as we would put it, and then they resold that element of the business back to Santander, oddly enough. And I, having started there, I thought it was probably a better time to move on.

Richard Levy  07:47

So, I moved to MoneyGram, which is a sort of remittance-based company. And at the time, we were relatively … it was very regionally based. So, the UK, where I was, I was Head of the UK, we had a lot of autonomy to make our own decisions. And again, what was interesting was how much I loved working for those smaller businesses. Again, we were probably in an office of again, 60-70 people. I knew everyone. Everyone knew me, and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that much more than being in a bigger role in a bigger company, where I thought I was in a siloed role. And this is what you do. You don’t go out of that. And if you want to talk to someone who’s managing the website, we’ve got to make an appointment and try and justify it to their diary, keep, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So, I really enjoyed being at a smaller company and having lots of autonomy. The UK region at the time was doing really, really well. I remember sort of my first day there, they showed me these numbers, and I was like, you know, there was double-digit growth going on, which, if you think, this is 2009 we’ve just come out of the global financial crisis, or that was still going on. MoneyGram was doing exceptionally well.

Richard Levy  08:53

And I sort of stayed there 10 years, and I started off in the UK, and then became Head of Europe marketing-wise, had direct reports, literally from the sort of one side, from Ireland on the one side to Russia on the other side, with a number in between. And I thought that it was a totally different experience, managing people, one in a different country too, who come from a totally different culture than you and three who you have this language issue.

I remember one of our main clients was the Italian post office, and I sat in the room with them, and there were 10 people, and there’s me, and you’re the only one that doesn’t speak Italian. So, they have to speak in English, because you’re the, you’re the pain, right? Who they have to converse with. But every time they want to say something, probably about you that they don’t need to hear. They quickly switch to Italian and then go, “Oh, sorry, sorry, come back to English.” Now, of course, you can’t say, “What did you just say?”

But what’s really interesting, and what’s really challenging is you go in there as Head of Europe, but you’re not from their country, you don’t speak their language. How do you win them over? How do you make them think? Actually? This guy is, is okay, and you really need your people on the ground to be supporters of you, to say, look, be excited, because they can make or break you. You know, if the person working from Italy is saying to them “This guy doesn’t really know what he’s doing” yeah, it’s the end of it. If she says, “Oh, he’s really good!” then then do you have to get the respect through them?

It’s really interesting managing people in different countries. And you know, there were the Nordics and the different people group, the Nordics together, but you have separate countries. There were separate attitudes. And, yeah, it’s just this particular France and the labour rules in France, which are totally different from the labour rules anywhere else in the world, right? So, you have to sort of get used to that.

Richard Levy  10:41

It was a fascinating experience, but it became very, very centralised in Dallas. So, what I found was that there was, there was continuous friction, I would argue, of a relatively unhealthy nature, between the centralised Dallas team and the localised team. So I don’t think marketing is certainly uncommon to have friction between central versus local,

Tamara Littleton  11:08

yeah,

Richard Levy  11:08

but I do think that when there’s a misalignment of goals. The region wants A and centrally, who I was reporting to are saying that we have to do it like B, it puts you in actually quite sort of difficult position. You know, I used to go to Dallas two or three times a year to try and build relationships on both sides of the Pond. But it was a challenge. By the end.

MoneyGram, traditionally had been through third parties, Post Offices, Tesco, etc, and then we went direct to consumer. Really interesting channel conflict. How do you price differently when you go on your own? Who owns the customer? How to annoy all the retailers you’re working with who think you just want them for yourself, right? How do you manage that relationship? Really fascinating, strategic projects, and it was great. But I think once you’ve been there 10 and a half years, I think there is a danger that you can become a little bit institutionalised. And I do think that I’ve learned this there is a natural job length. It might be two years, it might be 10 years, but there does come a time when, naturally, you feel my time is probably up.

Richard Levy  12:18

And then I moved to, again, smaller businesses, you know the trend, called OFX which was based in Australia, lovely Australian culture of sort of driven, but laid back at the same time, a little bit difficult to explain, but I like the Australian culture. But again, the small business went from like a team at MoneyGram of like 40-odd people to a team of one really talented individual – loved working with her. But nevertheless, I’d been there, I don’t know, three and a half, four years. And I think again, that just becomes a natural if you’re honest with yourself and the company honest with you, you know that there’s just a natural time to move on for you and for them, and everything’s very amicable and fine, but I think you just gotta be a bit honest about when that time is.

Tamara Littleton  13:01

And when did you get that kind of feeling inside that you wanted to actually go a different path and actually start up on your own? Because it is, it is still a very brave decision, you know, you have, you’ve been down like the corporate route. When did you get that bug?

Richard Levy  13:17

It’s a good question. I think there’s a couple. I think there are two or three different factors. One is that you meet people like yourself, Tamara, right? And you get talking to people, and you say to people, what have you been doing? And you see that actually, there’s a lot of people who have gone and gone on their own. And guess what? They’re still here and they’re still smiling, and they’re still doing podcasts and running businesses, so they survived. So, I think there’s that, I think my sort of network increased quite rapidly through meeting a lot of different people.

Richard Levy  13:50

And secondly, I feel, when you feel you have something to offer, you know, I’ve been doing this 25 years in marketing, and I looked at, I look at marketing as an industry, and there’s so much good about it, like truly good, and there’s so much that we’re not very good at, I think, again, being really honest, and you know that there’s so much misunderstanding of what marketing is. And when you’re a big company with multi-million-dollar budgets, I think all is fine and all is well. But I think when you’re a smaller company, small to medium-sized business, who are just trying to get on their feet, and it’s a bit of a sort, you know, it’s a different environment, then I really felt I could make a difference. So, I don’t know that entirely, sort of answers the question.

Richard Levy  14:37

But one, I felt that I met a lot of people who have done it. Two, I thought I could make a difference. And three, Tamara, I always feel, in the end, the upside is huge. The downside is quite limited. I mean, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But do you go out and try something? I mean, you know what? What advice would you give to family and friends in that situation? With advice, I would go and say, is, go and do something. To go and have some fun. Go and enjoy it. And if it doesn’t work, guess what? You’ll still be able to feed yourself on a Friday night. So, it’s okay, you know? It’s okay,

Tamara Littleton  15:07

Yeah, absolutely. And I know that I’ve got a sort of bad tendency to try and convince people to leave their jobs and start companies based on the fact of, like, what, what is the worst that could happen? And actually, it is a very sort of freeing feeling that – so tell us more about the proposition of Sophera Marketing.

Richard Levy  15:29

Well, I just felt that I had done a lot in marketing. I’ve read a lot. I’ve sort of been fortunate enough to work with super companies, and also be taught by the sort of the Ritsons of this world, and Byron Sharp and all these kind of incredible people. And what I wanted to do was sort of set up a business that said, Look, if you’re a sort of small to medium-sized business (I’m not talking about Unilever or P&G, who you know, have sophisticated marketing departments) and you’ve sort of reached a point where you feel that marketing, you want to do marketing, but you don’t really know where to start, and you don’t really understand it that someone like me could come in and either structure the department properly, set everyone else up for success, which is fine, and put a little sort of framework in there. Or equally, if companies have teams, and I’m working with different companies.

Richard Levy  16:23

And one company I work with, you know, they have a kind of established team, but perhaps they could do the little bit of more experience someone coming in, looking from the outside, and saying, actually, sort of, why are we doing it like this? And, you know, is there a different way? And then the third bit is also the sort of training element, where, to my earlier point about when I joined Santander, I wasn’t trained in marketing, you know, I’d done a bit of a university, and if I can come in and actually talk about stuff that people hadn’t thought about, like segmentation, like targeting, like clear positioning, etc, that this could really sort of benefits people. So there are various different aspects to it. 

Richard Levy  17:04

And then I also do a bit of teaching at Cambridge, which I really enjoy, which has got, obviously, sort of much younger people who just want to learn about marketing in a more academic sense. So there’s quite a lot going on. But again, for me, it’s just about adding a lot of value, leaving people in better places and saying “Look, whether this last two months, two years or 20 years, it doesn’t really matter. I just want to. I just want to make a difference”, and hopefully that’s what I’m doing.

Tamara Littleton  17:31

I think that the sort of fractional CMO approach is really getting a lot of attention, and quite rightly so. I think it fits so well into the way that smaller companies are working now that, you know, they need access to brilliant experts, but can’t always afford full-time. So it’s a great model.

Richard Levy  17:49

It’s been good so far, it’s been going sort of six months. And as you know, I think you always have that founder’s insecurity of what’s going to happen in X amount of time. But you’ve also learned to teach yourself to say, live in the present. Do the best you can, and the future almost needs to be taken care of, but let’s just make sure the present is being done correctly.

Wendy Christie  18:11

I think if only we all knew that when we were a lot younger, I think probably there’d be a lot less worrying going on, right? So going back even further. And thank you very much for taking us through your career journey there, but going back even further, pre-business degree so, and maybe even back as far as primary school. What were you like as a child?

Richard Levy  18:33

Gosh, I had quite a, what I would call a sort of complex background. I mean, no more complex than anyone else, I hasten to add. And you know, I’m a, I’m a really lucky individual who was sort of, who’s had a lot of privilege and a lot of good fortune. So I start off by saying that as context anything else I then talk about, but I was, I was the youngest of three. I have two brothers who are supremely intelligent and successful guys, and we’re really close as a family now, but I was the youngest of three, probably relatively quiet, and there’s been sort of two or three sort of defining moments in my life.

Richard Levy  19:08

The first was when I was 12, and my mum and dad split up. And now it’s actually relatively it’s more common than it was then. Let me phrase it like that, and it can, you know, when you’re 12, I have a 12-year-old daughter, so I sort of look at her now, and I think she’s fantastic, but you’re relatively oblivious to some parts of the sort of wider world, and so I was oblivious to any unhappiness. You know, for me, we were a family that was going to stay together forever. And you know that I still remember my mum and dad telling us they were splitting up and all this kind of stuff, and that had quite a profound impact on me. 

You know, I missed my dad quite a lot. He moved out. It then impacted me at school. Because if you think that was the year that you went from primary school to secondary school, that’s an enormous jump, right? You go from, for me, what was quite cositted primary school to now a big, achieving secondary school, and I struggled a lot at school, which is odd because I now read endless books, and listen to endless podcasts. I love the academic side and watch my documentaries, but at school, I struggled. And the two things I think, were pretty much related, that had this turbulence going on at home, and I don’t, you know, when I remember showing my wife, when we got together, I said, are these were my school reports, and they were brutal, brutal in the way they talked about me as an individual, brutal about the way, effectively, at the age of 12 or 13, I was being written off. And I think if that’s the sense you get as a child from a school, you carry that and you feel I’m probably not the effects from a sort of self-esteem point of view, and how you sort of carry yourself.

Richard Levy  19:12

And the other challenge I had when I was at school was that in the first year when all this was going on, they said maybe it’s a good idea if he repeats the year, which was fine, but I was born in October, so I was old from my original year, where I was pretty ancient, but it kids who were almost like 20 months younger than you were in the same class. Doesn’t matter our age now, but I think at school, that kind of thing does matter. And so anyway, I found school quite a turbulent experience, and the thing that probably helped me was that I was into sport, and I was reasonably good at sport, and that, especially at a school that plays football and cricket, actually is quite an equaliser. But nevertheless, it really taught me about how quick we all are to judge.

Richard Levy  21:33

And you know, I sort of look around, as I say, at my daughter’s friends now, and you never know what’s going on. Just a little bit more understanding, a little bit more compassion, a little bit more kindness, actually, I could have done with and so therefore, you probably look back and think that’s what I can now give back to the world. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t an easy childhood, because all that stuff was going on. Then I was struggling at school, and it was only really when I got to university that I probably found myself again and I could sort of thrive academically and work hard and enjoy it and be a different person. And school was, yeah, school was challenging, just generally speaking, but I think, as I say, I was a sensitive boy, and suddenly my world was a very different place one day after another.

Richard Levy  22:21

And then the other thing that changed my perspective on life generally, was that in 2005 when I found myself unwittingly in the London bombings, if you can cast your mind back,

Wendy Christie  22:36

oh yeah,

Richard Levy  22:38

I was in the carriage where the bomb blew up at King’s Cross.

Wendy Christie  22:42

Oh, wow!

Richard Levy  22:43

So that was, and, like, I was sort of taken to hospital and in hospital for a few weeks and operated on and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I go back to what I said at the beginning, right? I’ve had this incredibly privileged life with enormous opportunities, etc. So I don’t say this for any kind of, “Oh, my God. You know, look how difficult my life has been”. Has been, no more difficult, I’m sure, than anybody else’s. But I use it as a learning experience, just to say that you know, life can change very, very quickly for reasons entirely out of your control, evidently, in something like that. And you know, physically, it can change. And you know people who you were standing five feet away from and their lives are totally changed and all this kind of stuff. One thing I have learned is just maybe, just take one day at a time, one month, one year at a time, and don’t worry too much about the future. Let things just happen. And generally speaking, it will all be right. So I think you try and take those, those two experiences, one from school, one from later in life, just to take a little bit of learning and you then bring that into your work life, where, I don’t know, I tend not to get too stressed by too much stuff, to be honest, I think in the end, it will all be okay.

Wendy Christie  23:53

Yeah, and it’s interesting, hearing you talk about school, and other than the sport that it wasn’t the best experience that you then went on to university. The temptation might have been just to stay away from academia altogether.

Richard Levy  24:08

I’ve missed out a bit, actually, which might answer that question, which was that initially I thought, I was not going to go to university, to your point, wasn’t that into it. And so I spent nine months in a warehouse in East London, counting jeans that were coming in that it was a jean retailer, and my job was delivery would arrive and say there were 800 jeans in this box, and I’d have to count these jeans, and I’d go up and I’d say, Okay, there’s 796, and the guy would look at the delivery note and go. “No there’s not gonna go and do that again.”, so you sort of went back and you’d count these jeans. “And say it’s 800” and they say “yeah, now we run to the next box and then the next box and the next box”. So that year, you then have a decision to make, is this going to be what you do? Or, yeah, to try if you can to sort yourself out. Go back to university. Work hard. And I went to Brunel University, which is a decent university in London, worked, in my mind, a bit stupidly hard. Sort of got First when I think only two people in the whole year did. It was quite a big thing.

Wendy Christie  25:18

Wow, congratulations.

Richard Levy  25:20

Thank you. But if I could, if I could give advice to myself, I would go back and say, “Go and enjoy it. Go out of drinking and do what everyone else is doing. Go to Magaluf for the summer, rather than, I don’t know, extra lessons or something”, right? Everything comes with a downside. So it was good, but I probably went from one extreme to the other, but I thought that experience of counting genes in a boiling hot warehouse in Walthamstow probably traumatised me enough to get me to university and –

Wendy Christie  25:49

Get you to uni. It’s amazing how it works out. I mean, maybe it’s just as well it wasn’t a slightly better job. You know what I mean? if something your life could have been in a very different place now. So coming back to the theme of the podcast, the genuine humans, who are the people who have, you know, given you that bit of extra support, or who have influenced you, where they’re from your childhood, or right up to Sophera, you know, who are the people who’ve given you that support along the way?

Richard Levy  26:17

Yeah, it’s a good question. And there are so many in so many different ways. And it doesn’t have to be I find people that you work with, or it can just be people you meet for an X amount of period in your life where you just think, yeah, you know, you made a really sort of big impact on me.

Richard Levy  26:33

So there was my first teacher, Miss Colgate, great name. Who could possibly forget a name like that, but she was at primary school, you know, she used to say to me, always, always go into things with a degree of enthusiasm. Don’t lose the enthusiasm. Don’t. And it’s amazing that was probably said to me 40 years ago, and yet you still remember it now. And I always say to my kids, do things…if you’re going to do that properly, I throw yourself into it and enjoy it.

Richard Levy  27:01

And then they’re sort of lecturers at university who go a bit above and beyond. But then you go into the sort of workplace, and there are people who, yeah, I remember someone sort of saying to me, just about work, about in the end, you could just do the best you can, and either that’s good enough or it’s not. But the rest of it, of how you’re judged on that may well be out of your hands. There might be other reasons he sort of remembers that.

Richard Levy  27:24

And then more recently, hanging around with people like Tamara, and, you know, I can really name five or six people from that, from that sort of group of folks who have all given me an immense amount of time. They’ve all sort of said, yeah, you know, but to Tamara’s question, when you set it up, you actually sort of link people up who you barely know, who you may have met a week before, and say, “Is there any way I could sort of spend an hour with you?” They have absolutely no obligation to say yes to this, but without, almost without exception, everyone’s saying “yes, absolutely.” And they all give you sort of words of wisdom. And probably because, I think a lot of people say, well, people help me in this way. 

So I think as you, as you get a little bit older, and you get a little bit more sort of experience, then you just learn from so many people, and that might be watching a film, and you just throw a documentary, and you think that’s an interesting way to handle it, or it might be reading a book, or it might be meeting people, but a lot of the people who I try and learn from, or I tend to learn from, they’re very everyday people, you know? I mean, it’s easy to sit there and say, Nelson Mandela, right? Well, of course, but actually, you can probably find inspiration from someone a lot closer to home, doing something in a formal, mundane Well, if you’ve ever been into you know my wife’s a doctor in the NHS. Well, spend a day working in the NHS, and spend a day looking at what nurses have to do and what doctors have to do, the conversations they have to have, and the way they go above and beyond. It wasn’t that long ago we were clapping outside on a was it Tuesday night or Thursday night, whenever it was. And these people continue to do what they do. And I think there’s inspiration all around if you just if you just take a bit of time to look at it. 

Tamara Littleton  29:14

I love that. Thinking about how you sort of have transitioned from working like for really big companies, and you know, sort of some slightly smaller ones, but they’re still sort of like large, large companies. What sort of strategic difference have you noticed now that you have sort of transitioned to running your own company?

Richard Levy  29:32

What’s quite interesting is that what I noticed in the sort of bigger companies, and I alluded to this before, is that you do a role, and everyone can be a little bit protective of their own space, and so therefore getting involved in different things can be misinterpreted as people saying, well, this is what I do. That’s what you do. Never the two shall meet. One thing I’ve noticed about the role that I’m in now is that some people – I don’t really do anything particularly tactical, you know, I’m not sitting there trying to work out where we should advertise, you know, should it be in the Daily Mirror or the Sun, for argument’s sake, because I’m not involved in those conversations.

Richard Levy  30:14

For me, it’s about setting it up, looking at the strategy of business. Where are we going? Looking at the product, looking at our pricing strategy, looking at our customer experience, looking at the market, who should we be targeting? Where do we play? How do we win? What makes us different? What are competitors doing? And I think it’s quite interesting, because I think that for me is marketing, for me is that I find them far more interesting side than shall we be on this platform or that platform? I think that’s the end, that’s, that’s, that’s the end of it, right? That’s the end. That’s the end game. But you know, if you look at it from the iceberg cliche, I guess what I’m doing at the moment is all the stuff below the iceberg. So I’m one of the clients I’m working for is a total look at what our proposition is, and what our culture is internally. How does that tie up to the brand? What new market should we be going into? If this doesn’t excite you, I don’t think you should be doing marketing. I think this is the most exciting this is really changing stuff for the next 10 years of that business or 15 years. 

And I don’t think I say this Tamara but maybe I’m wrong, right? And please challenge back. I don’t think there are many roles in the corporate world where you have that scope, or maybe I’d never got there, maybe a bit of both, but I never really found that I could run things from cradle to grave like I am at the moment for these businesses, and also have really honest conversations and say that’s not going to work, right? And I think in the corporate world, I think the challenge I had was to tend to try and be honest. And I think that can come across sometimes as not the answer people want to hear, whereas I find doing it now, because often the outside, there’s, I have no vested interest in this other than telling the truth and being honest, right? I mean, my career is not going to be here in five years, so I like the fact I feel like I get listened to a little bit more without people thinking, oh, you know, needs to, because our CEO wants to do it. That’s how it has to be done. Well, maybe, maybe we can have a conversation about that. And maybe I’m wrong. Incidentally, I’m just giving an alternative point of view to make people think that’s that’s all I’m trying to do.

Tamara Littleton  32:24

Yeah, I think it’s that, that outside in I think people do want to be challenged, as you say, and and it sounds like it’s a real sort of driving force for you as well. You mentioned earlier about being sort of slightly quieter, and I know that you and I have had conversations about introversion and whether it’s ambivert or extroverted introvert, one of the things that we’ve chatted about is that it’s not always easy running your own business when you’re expected to perhaps be more on the extrovert scale, putting yourself out there sort of doing more speaking to more people. Have you got any advice for someone who is a bit more introverted around starting your own agency or company?

Richard Levy  33:10

That’s a good question. I think you and I have had chats about it. We’ve got we’ve got more to come. But I think look, in the end, you’ve got to force yourself to do stuff that maybe you don’t feel comfortable doing and I think that’s quite a blunt way of doing it. And I’m someone who, honestly, you know, is very introverted. I get my energy from being on my own, right? What? Once I’ve had a day at work, I’m very happy to spend the next three hours reading my book and through my own thoughts or going for a walk with a dog or whatever. But the reality is, is that when you’re running your own company, is that no, no one is saying, “Oh, thank God. Richard Levy is in the world. This is the company we’ve been waiting for. If only we knew right that this was coming.” Well, our problems would be solved like I have to go out and I have to talk to people and understand and network, because also, classically, it may be Tamara that we’re having a conversation, but you’re not in the market now, but you will be of six months, and we have to keep that relationship going. So the only advice I can give is, you know, the cliche, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway, and you’ve just got to do it.

Richard Levy  34:14

And actually, if you’re socially good, and you can maintain a bit of eye contact, and you can talk to people, a lot of people like talking about themselves, right? So actually, he can always start a conversation, asking about the other person, and then warm up.

Richard Levy  34:26

The other thing I did do that has helped me, was I joined an improv class.

Wendy Christie  34:34

Oh, wow,

Richard Levy  34:34

yeah, which is really not me. I promise you, I say something. You walk in and there’s a bunch of strangers, ranging from 20 to about 65 I got the whole age group, and you end up sort of performing on stage in London, in front of, I don’t know, 200 odd people whatever. I mean, they’re all friends and family. So everyone wants you to succeed. But I’m now about, actually on Saturday to start level three. I think there are seven levels. So. On level three. Now that’s about pushing yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone. Go into it. So go back to my talk. We said right at the beginning, what’s the worst that could happen? If it’s awful after week one, don’t go back. No one’s gonna think much of you. And it got and you may enjoy it. That has taught me about listening, the importance of participation, of everybody, and bringing people in total teamwork. So all these skills that actually are really, really essential to running your own business, actually that that that eight-week course on a Saturday morning has been quite essential for me. I’m not suggesting that would be everyone’s cup of tea, but there must be things people can do to he lp them overcome the barriers they’ll find, and none of it is going to be in your comfort zone. But try something, right? And if it doesn’t work, it’s okay. Don’t grab that the next time, right?

Wendy Christie  35:52

Brilliant. I didn’t expect to hear that today. Improv classes sound quite fun. So we’re going to move on to the final section of the podcast now, where we get a bit more sort of quickfire personal questions. So we’ve got improv classes and reading and spending time on your own. What else would fill your perfect weekend?

Richard Levy  36:14

Oh, a perfect weekend would be with the sun shining in the Lake District, walking around Ullswater or something like that, maybe with a couple of other people, where we’re just sort of meandering around. In fact, I’ve just come back from Southwest Wales, Pembrokeshire, that’s pretty cool as well, right? If you know that part of the world, but somewhere where there’s a little bit it is beautiful. It’s just natural, natural beauty of someone who lives in London and coming out of that is quite beautiful. So if you can transport me to the Lake District this weekend, I’d be pretty grateful. Done deal. We’ll all go.

Wendy Christie  36:51

Yeah. So if you were walking on stage and your intro track is playing, what is it?

Richard Levy  36:58

Goodness me, it’s gonna have to be something from my childhood, Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms, right? Loved that song!

Wendy Christie  37:05

Such a good album.

Richard Levy  37:06

It’s brilliant. I love Dire Straits. As I’ve got older, I appreciate the guitar playing, the singing, yes, gotta be Brothers in Arms. It’s fab.

Wendy Christie  37:17

Someone at my other half’s work had tickets for a Dire Straits tribute band, and they couldn’t go, so we came home with them, and I’m okay, and we had the most fabulous night, I was the youngest person there, which probably helped. So it seemed like it, but, yeah, really good. Good choice.

Richard Levy  37:32

Next time, next time, I’ll go with you. Okay, we’ll do a deal. We’ll go to Okay, sold.

Tamara Littleton  37:39

So, Richard, what are you doing when you feel most alive?

Richard Levy  37:43

Ah, that’s a good question, probably, as I talked about my improv before, I’ve really enjoyed that, but probably going to things like the theatre. Love doing that, going to a concert. Love it. I find music is a great connector. So most alive definitely going to an event where there are just people who are supremely talented playing. I didn’t get Oasis tickets, though, so I won’t be, I won’t be when will but most alive is definitely where there’s a little bit of a vibe, something’s happening, and you can, yeah, you could just listen to a little bit of whether it’s the theatre or the cinema or a concert, something like that. You can get really into.

Tamara Littleton  38:29

Yeah, that sounds amazing. How would you fare in a zombie apocalypse? 

Richard Levy  38:35

Not very well. I think that would be the honest answer. I wouldn’t want to be next to me. I don’t know. On the one hand, I’m like, Oh, well, I’d probably keep calm and thoughtful, but I’d probably try to analyze it. And everyone would be like, “Look, this isn’t the time for analysis!” right? 

Wendy Christie

Run! Run!

Richard Levy

Yeah, just start thinking about it and move right. So on that basis, probably pretty badly, I would suggest, right? I probably left, be left behind trying to work it all out. And I’d be like, “No, it’s too late. Now you’re dead.” Okay, sorry.

Wendy Christie  39:03

How would your friends describe you?

Richard Levy  39:05

I asked them because you have to be honest, right? And most of it was, was pretty positive. Look, I think empathetic. I try and really understand people. We talked about the reasons why that’s the case. I’m a real family person, right? I mean, I think the family is ultimately everything, and everything I do is for them and vice versa. So empathetic family. But there’s a little bit of a dry humour there. And I try and sort of, I try and have fun, because actually, and I say this a lot to people, life is great. Life is great, right? I mean, it is right in my view, like life is the best thing around and there’s going to be ups and downs, but try and enjoy it, and try and just try and enjoy yourself, right? And try and enjoy yourself in whatever form that may be, that might be reading a book, or it might be going out with 100 people, but we’re not here forever, sadly, right? So I think they would describe me as someone who actually wants to, wants to enjoy stuff.

Wendy Christie 

Great! Okay, if you could time travel to any point past or future with no consequences, where would, where and when would you travel to?

Richard Levy  40:13

Not only would go back to the day that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, because I gather it was a rather phenomenal global event. That when you actually look up at the moon now and you think, wow, we actually, you know, put people up there. They wandered around, they planted their flag. That’s pretty incredible from a sort of humanity point of view. So if I could probably go back to any time it would be to see that. But if I might slightly cheat and say, I’m always fascinated by history. My mother was a historian. And when, when you wander around places like Pompeii, and you go to these places, and we go to Rome, and you see the Coliseum, and you think it might be quite good fun to have watched how that was being built X amount of 1000 years ago, or how these villages in the Roman times survived, you know, just thrived. I think that’d be a pretty cool time to live. Not if you spoke out, though I think you’d have to be compliant, right? We might struggle with that.

Richard Levy  41:16

You’d be okay because you’d just be booted back to the present.

Tamara Littleton  41:20

No consequences.

Wendy Christie  41:23

Although, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to say to the conspiracy theorists, no, we did what we did.

Richard Levy  41:29

You and I.

Tamara Littleton  41:31

Richard, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This has been so good to get to know you more and to understand your background. Is there anything that we didn’t ask? Or have you got any closing thoughts that you’d like to share?

Richard Levy  41:46

No not really. I mean just to say thank you to both of you for the time, and, you know, a million thanks to when I talk about my life and career with everything, I have so many people and so many things to be thankful for. And I think I did just the last sort of 45 minutes or so made me really think about that as well. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so.

Wendy Christie  42:12

You’ve been listening to Genuine Humans brought to you by Social Element. If you loved what you heard remember to rate, review and subscribe.