February 17, 2021 • 37 mins
Were you one of the companies metaphorically slapped in the face by 2020? In this episode of the ROI Online Podcast, entrepreneur John Philpin talks about unlocking human potential and how embracing the future of work can benefit your business and prepare you for unexpected situations.
John is a marketing consultant, entrepreneur, and author. He’s the founder of People First, where they help organizations struggling to deliver on their mission. They believe by unlocking human potential you can accomplish greater things.
Every organization is made up of people; they’re the ones who make it work. When your people are happy the whole corporation works better. Find out what a difference it really makes for your business to prioritize the humans that work in it.
Among other things, John and Steve discussed:
- How People First started
- The fact that we’re all users, leads, consumers, or customers
- What John’s new book is all about
- How to face this world’s inevitable changes come out on top by putting people first
- John’s different platforms and how can he help your business thrive
- Humanizing the way we work and grow the value of our business
- The future of work
You can learn more about John here:
Follow John on LinkedIn
You can learn more about People First here:
Follow them on LinkedIn
Read the books mentioned in this podcast:
The Golden Toilet by Steve Brown
For Business Leaders Slapped in the Face by a World They Thought They Knew by John Philpin
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John Philpin (00:04):
Customer First is been my focus, that we need to
give people a reason as to whythey should give a damn about
this stuff that you're producingthey're going to part with
money. So it's naturally in meand I guess the dawning on me
sort of came to play maybe six,seven years ago now, as I
started thinking about this ideaof I've always hated the
(00:25):
expression being a user,customers and client, what's the
difference between a customerand a client? I just kept on
thinking it was something jellyin me, I just said, we're all
goddamn people. Why are we, wecategorize it because we need to
subdivide and create markets,etc, etc. So just treat people
intelligently as people.
Steve Brown (00:46):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI OnlinePodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown and thisis a place where we have great
conversations with winners justlike you while we laugh and
(01:09):
learn together.
John Philpin, welcome to the ROIOnline Podcast.
John Philpin (01:23):
Steve, thanks very much for the invite, very much
looking forward to thisconversation.
Steve Brown (01:28):
So John, you're doing this radical thing,
everyone that's listening tothis podcast are wondering why I
need to lean into thisconversation and hang around a
bit. And so you're doingsomething really radical and
it's called people first. Like,what got into you man? Why
(01:49):
people first?
John Philpin (01:52):
I don't know, there's just something that's
been sitting badly with me formany, many years. I'm from the
corporate world, and I've mademy living in there. And I just
increasingly find myself sittingin a world that seems to be
corporate first. And you know,people can pick up the pieces
behind that. So I'm very muchinto the idea of people first
and natural fact when you putpeople first, the corporation
(02:14):
ends up being a whole lotbetter, curiously enough. We
talk about people so it's aboutmaking businesses work better.
Steve Brown (02:22):
That's crazy thinking, man. No, I love it
because, you know, I've been apart of cultures that weren't
people first. That made you feellike, yeah, like, you're there,
like a horse that needs to berode 'till you need to be
(02:43):
putting them out to pasture andlet's get someone else in here.
And it's like, not realmotivational.
John Philpin (02:49):
That's absolutely right. And it just goes deeper
and deeper into all kinds ofthings. I mean, just just
picking up on very, veryrecently, right, the Reddit
attack, if you will, on thehedge funds. All they've done is
come together and said, We don'tagree with what you're doing
when I push the stock the otherway. And guess what? Everybody's
so upset about the corporation'slosing billions. Nobody ever
(03:12):
thinks about the people whenthat happens the other way. So,
you know, it's on, it's alwaysthere, it's apparent in front of
our eyes but we don'tnecessarily think of it in the
terms of well, if you thoughtabout people first, this might
not be happening.
Steve Brown (03:27):
It's a theme that I've been preaching as well as
that, you know, marketing isbroken, because the marketing
message is designed for what Icall the Dillards Mannequin,
that faceless, nameless thingthat you just you can hang boys
clothes on, or girls clothes on.
But the one common thing is,it's got a credit card. So let's
design our messaging to thatfaceless thing that has no name
instead of humans that havedreams and hopes. And I believe
(03:49):
the pendulum is swinging backfrom this industrialized, just
minions, just use the minionsand throw them out the door to
now it's like, we're not gonnatake it anymore. I have a name.
John Philpin (04:09):
I absolutely agree with you. It's like, we're not
customers, we're not consumers,we're not employees, we're not
users, we're all people and bythe way, with people on both
sides of the equation, wecontribute into the value of a
corporation. And with thatmoney, we buy things from that
Corporation and indeed, othercorporations. Businesses are
(04:29):
nothing without people.
Steve Brown (04:31):
So you have a book coming out. And I'm gonna let
you say the title because I'mgonna mess it up. But I've got
an alternate title for it. Like,go ahead.
John Philpin (04:42):
Okay let's go for it. We could do that. It's
called, For business leaders,slapped in the face by a world
they thought they knew.
Steve Brown (04:50):
Yeah. So mine would be like, what do you do after
you get that big bitch slap fromthe world like that. I turned
around, and wham, where did thatcome from? But what's going on?
Why is the world we thought weknew different than we think?
John Philpin (05:11):
So the book, I mean, I've had many books in my
head for many years. And this isthe first of a series of books
that will be coming out and it'sbeen accelerated for just with
the odd time we're living in.
It's nothing to do with theCOVID issue. But it's definitely
to do with how businesses havereacted to what's going on
around them. So COVID is a sidething as far as I'm concerned.
(05:32):
But the fact is that businessessay, expect the unexpected. Did
the unexpected happen, and werewe so unprepared, it's
extraordinary. So the bookdoesn't offer a solution for
you, because everybody'sdifferent, I can't give you a
template saying if you do thesethings, but the book really is
(05:53):
about making sure that the nexttime this sort of change slaps
you in the face, that you can beready for it, you can define the
world on your terms, and nothave to react to what's going on
around you. That's what thebooks about. And it really is, I
see it more of as a workbook orjournal, if you will, to help
(06:13):
you start asking yourselfquestions because what the
butcher, the baker, thecandlestick maker need to do
with their business is going tobe a little bit different to
what a business dealing with theservices industry, or the call
center or the banking industry.
But they've all got the sameproblem that they've just been
slapped in the face by a worldhey thought they knew. It's
(06:36):
bout change, change is alwaysccurring, it's going to get
aster. So let's do somethingbout it on our terms on
eople's terms.
Steve Brown (06:45):
You know, and the makings of a really good story.
That's, you have this hero thatrealizes that the status quo is
changed. And they struggle withaccepting it both externally and
internally. And what makes itgreat action or great story is
(07:10):
to see the internal struggle ofnot feeling confident enough to
actually make it through anddoubting whether they have what
it takes. And I think that whathas happened in the past year or
two has really, really slappedeveryone in the face and made us
realize that whether we like itor not the status quo has
(07:32):
changed. It's really revealedall the areas that weren't
prepared. But in my case, I'mtelling you, the people in my
organization, they were the onesthat really made it worthwhile
to stay persistent and stayfocused in the march through the
fire.
John Philpin (07:51):
Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt when the
conversations we've had in thepast, I've always enjoyed
talking to you because you comefrom a very human perspective, I
can only imagine the people inyour business, but also what I
call the stakeholders thatsurround you that sort of
basically allow you to have thesuccess you do, that comes from
a human perspective, thatthey're not doing it to make
(08:13):
Steve Brown a multimillionaire.
It might happen as a side thing,but they're doing it because you
all have a good relationship.
You're working together. Andit's extraordinary what happens
when you do that.
Steve Brown (08:24):
Yeah. If there was one thing that, I told you this
last year is I didn't feel likeI was succeeding, I didn't feel
like I was winning. But thenwhen I sat down toward the end
of the year and did an audit,it's like, wow, we have
accomplished a lot of greatthings. And it's because they
circled up the wagons and reallydug in and we pulled off some
(08:48):
really cool stuff. Even thoughit didn't feel like it.
John Philpin (08:52):
Yeah, it's interesting. I can't remember
the exact quote, name, but I'lldig it out for you. But it is
something like the idea thatchange never happens until it
happens all at once. Right? Andthe fact is, you forget when
you're going through the year ofwork, you go, Oh my God, oh, my
God, and you go back and lookback. It's like the, if you
(09:12):
think about years as one level,but also months, also weeks,
also days, and just startmeasuring at those levels. It's
amazing, actually one of thechapters in the book is exactly
about this. Don't be thinking,don't think of life as
checklists and tasks, thinkabout your strategic plan and
actually check in with yourselfon a regular basis because
(09:34):
you'll be amazed what's goingon. And sometimes you sit back
and think nothing's moved. I'velost that deal, or that
conversation didn't go well orI've had to, in fact, just today
that this is one of threeconversations I'm doing through
Zoom today and the other two,basically one Cancel to accept
to postpone till February theother one postponed to later on
(09:56):
in January and you know, so Isuddenly got free time. Some
people were thinking Oh my god,you know, people don't love me.
I think no, now I've got time togo and do there's other things I
want to do. There's always anupside. And don't feel so just
check in and think, okay, it'sall a steady process. It's like
the overnight success of thatsinger, you know, because he'd
been working or she'd beenworking for 10-15 years without
(10:18):
anybody knowing about them. Andthen suddenly, they were
discovered overnight successes,there are amazing things.
Steve Brown (10:25):
Amazing things, yeah. Lots of backstory to that
overnight success. So atpeoplefirst.vision, what are
some of the resources that youoffer that would help people
start to embrace or feel alittle bit better about
approaching? Yeah, this changethat we're having, too?
John Philpin (10:45):
Yeah, so at core, I'm a sales and marketing dude,
that's where I've lived my life,in the software industry very
specifically. And a long, longtime ago, long before I was
born, even. There's a guy thathad this idea of breaking the
marketing story down intogarnering attention and
interest, creating desire,moving to actions called the ad
(11:07):
model. And there are manyversions around this. And what
I've been doing over the pastcouple of years is really at
that first part, the attention.
So when you go to the, I have arange of sites,
peoplefirst.london, the visionsite is my blog, it used to live
in a different world, I'verecently moved across that, it's
the blog, and very soon we'llhave a certain amount of
information about what's goingon there. But I also have a
(11:29):
newsletter that goes out on aweekly basis, that's called
peoplefirst.news, I have my bookcoming out will be
peoplefirst.pub, I have apodcast, which is
peoplefirst.fm. And all of thisis that garnering attention and
getting interest is it's being alittle bit provocative. And all
I write and do you know, addanother thing? What about this?
(11:51):
And have you thought about that?
Raising questions and buildingcommentary. In the past six
months, I then start to think,Okay, so that's great, you're in
broadcast mode, how do you nowstart, you know, building a
community around you? And forthat, I've built a network,
guess what it's called, it'scalled peoplefirst.network. And
(12:13):
if peoplefirst.network, you'llfind the start of a community
that I'm beginning to build,where people who can see what
I'm writing, and indeed, I'm notthe only person there are many
people in my space, writingabout this kind of stuff at all
have different opinions that arebeginning to congregate in
different spaces andpeoplefirst.network is it purely
(12:33):
a space for anybody to come in,or listen to the words of
wisdom, some very interestingpeople that are building
software solutions, that arebuilding their own communities,
offering courses, whatever itmight be, within that space, as
well. I will be offering coursesat the moment, it's not there,
it's all completely free tojoin. It's simply trying to
(12:53):
build engagement and find outwhat's interesting to other
people, because at the end ofthe day, if this ends up as
being the John Show, it's notgonna work. This is about
bringing everybody together,even to the point that one of
the site domains I have iscalled peoplefirst.community,
which once this takes offproperly, I will then be using
(13:14):
the community site to link outto all my friends running other
businesses in this space. So ifyou read a guy called Doug
Rushkoff, who has somethingcalled Teen Human, Professor out
of NYU, he will be on thatcommunity list. And Digi Me,
which is an application a pieceof software coming into the UK
will be on that space. So thecommunity world is the extended
(13:35):
everything right? So I'm nottrying to be Oh, guess what,
I've just had this great idea.
Tons of people are working onthis, what I want to do, my
observation is that this isgoing on inside the bubble
almost. And the people were thatit can really help aren't that
aware of it, because you don'tread about this in mainstream
news. You hear something likethe future of work. You hear
(13:57):
people talk about it, and it'sin such abstract crazy ways that
they talk about it, that youthink well, this is ridiculous.
Yeah, stop being a coal minerand start coding. Really? That
is not a solution. Right? And wetrain people, we don't educate,
and we train people to be a coginside a corporate machine. And
(14:18):
now the corporate machines aregoing automated and people are
unemployed. We say well go be anentrepreneur. How?! When do we
ever train people to do that? Sothat's my conversation. It's
about understanding that whenyou talk about working from home
because you're a knowledgeworker on this, that's great for
knowledge workers, that's how Imake a living. But it's not
(14:40):
great for a lot of people haveto go to a factory or create
some hair or drive a tech,whatever it might be all these
things. People are beingaffected by what goes on around
them. That's the space I'mcreating now.
Steve Brown (14:54):
We're listening to John Philpin, he's the author of
For Business Leaders slapped inthe face by a world they felt
they knew, People First is hisorganization and we're talking
about the humanization of theway we work, the way we treat
(15:15):
people, the way that we grow thevalue of our businesses. So
John, where did you get thisinspiration even really started
beating the drums on this topic?
John Philpin (15:30):
Well, I mean, I've always been in the industry that
I come out of the softwareindustry. As I said, I'm a
marketing guy, and I'm known forthe guy that puts his hands up
and go, Wait, wait, wait, wait,it's all very well, you saying
that but what about thecustomer? Why do they give a
damn? Right? So in my businessworld, Customer First is been my
focus, that we need to givepeople a reason as to why they
(15:53):
should give a damn about thisstuff that you're producing
they're going to part withmoney. So it's naturally in me.
And I guess the dawning on mesort of came to play maybe six,
seven years ago now, as Istarted thinking about this idea
of, you know I've always hatedthe expression being a user, and
customers, and clients, andwhat's the difference between a
customer and a client? I justkept on thinking it was
(16:15):
something jelly in me, I justsaid, we're all goddamn people.
Why are we, we categorize itbecause we need to subdivide and
create markets of why etc, etc.
So just treat peopleintelligently as people. So
having gotten that position, Iwas happened to be working in a
software business at the time soI started getting involved with
different organizations. Andwhen I left that organization, I
(16:37):
thought, I'm just gonna turnthis into something, I'm not
gonna join something else. Let'stake this out, I started doing
that about four years ago that'show old the original blog was,
newsletters about two and a halfyears old now. So it's been a
slow, steady progress. Again,I'm not known for what I do. I'm
known for a whole pile of otherstuff. So plenty of people call
(16:57):
and say, John, could you dotdot, dot? And so as I've been
making this transition, we stillhave to make a living. So we
make that living. But trying tomove now into this space and
bring everything that I'velearned, because you don't learn
bad things in the corporation,you learn very good things, you
must do. So all I'm saying is,that's great, how do you now
(17:18):
apply all that learning you hadin the corporation to you? How
do you bring what Citibank doeswith his hundreds of marketeers
to a baker? How'd you do that?
And a lot, again, going back tothe book, it you know, the book
is based on methodologies andapproaches I've used in
(17:39):
organizations for years, largeorganizations, I've just broken
it down to a way that anybody,an individual can now pick that
book up, read through it, andgo, Ah, yeah, I can do this. So
it's just yeah, it's been a slowprocess, a slow journey, but a
great journey, meeting lots ofgood people on the way through.
Steve Brown (17:58):
Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you
about a book that you need toget today. It's the funniest
book on marketing. It's calledThe Golden Toilet, stop flushing
your marketing budget into yourwebsite, and build a system that
grows your business. And guesswho wrote it? That's right. I
wrote it. And I wrote it justfor you because I want to help
(18:20):
you get past the last hurdles ofsetting up your business and
getting it squared away. I wroteit so that you can avoid time,
wasting time, wasting money,wasting frustration, get the
book on Audible, you can get iton Kindle, you can get it on
Amazon, but get the book, takeadvantage of the insights in
(18:42):
there and let me know what youthink. And now back to this
excellent episode.
You know, we're having thisconversation and I would love to
kind of like, think of all thevocabulary words that dehumanize
the other side. Okay, so I, youknow, so you said users you said
(19:08):
consumers, clients prospects,but another one is like leads, I
got a lead, right? And so weought to design a vocabulary
with the old dehumanized waysand then human side of it, and I
got rebuked a little bit and itwas like, really good review.
You said, why in your bookSteve, you do a great job of
(19:31):
arguing about humans, but thenyou go "a lead". And he goes,
it's a relationship, not a lead,and I'm going, Oh! He's got me!
But that was like, excellent.
John Philpin (19:44):
No, you're absolutely right. I mean a lead
is what you basically put on adog to make sure it doesn't run
into the road. But it'sinteresting, you bring that up
so within People First. It's avery, very broad tent but very
quickly, I have eight pillarsthat I hold in head about the
thinking of this, the work sideand the commerce side of
creating the business equation,then I have three pillars that
(20:07):
are called identity data andtechnology. And on the other
side, I have language learningand value. And all my thought
process run around those, thoseeight pillars, as I call them,
and I'm bringing that up now,because language is one of those
pillars, exactly that what youjust said, the dehumanizing.
It's like, Listen to what alarge bank or any large
(20:33):
organization will say about therelationship they have with you,
how they want to partner withyou, that you are their most
important person, and so on andso forth. Cut now to the inside
of the building, where that'scoming from the marketing war
room, where they talk abouttaking the Hill about maximizing
(20:53):
share of wallet, I mean, whatlanguage do you believe? I
personally believe the languagebehind closed doors. So to me,
we live in this world oftransparency, but it's only
transparent if it suits you. Andanother example, I've got a
personal war on the wordcontent. Right? You wrote a
(21:13):
book, I wrote a book, you writearticles, you run podcasts, you
do great things, and I'm tryingto do great things. It is not
content, content is what you putin a silo, it's homogenized
stuff. If you can't fill thatsilo with that content, you
throw it away and put some othercontent in. What it does is it
(21:35):
reduces the price that thecorporation has to pay for the
homogenous content, because it'sall the same. If you can't write
the article for me, Hey, I'llget the article done by somebody
else and they'll do it for free,because they want to make their
name big. And you think, okay,so whose benefit is it to write
content for free? I write books,articles, blog posts, I do
(21:56):
podcasts, I never do content.
And if you want content, then Iunderstand why the corporation's
call it content, because theywant it for cheapest they can
get it they're about maximizingprofit. But why do we as
creators, as artists, aswriters, as presenters talk
about our intellectual property,that we make a living off as
content, it's a strange thing,but we get sucked into this
(22:20):
corporate vocabulary. And that'sanother, you know, again, that
in itself is just one pillarinside the People First tent.
Steve Brown (22:29):
That's excellent, vocabulary can be very damaging
if you're not recognizing it. Solet's talk about some of the
other pillars, what was like themain pillar that really
motivated you to write the book?
First, set the story up on, whatfinally convicted you, oh, I
just got to write a book.
John Philpin (22:54):
Well I've wanted to write a book since I was
about eight as far as I can workout, I remember the conversation
with my mother very well, I justnever sure what the book was
going to be. The book that I hadin my head is still not this
book. But this particular bookcame from this, you know, we
always talk about change, andchange is always happening. But
(23:16):
what happened in 2020 was such avast global, hit you in the
face, what you're going to dokind of change, that I just
said, Okay, this is a message,this is what I've got to get
out. Because change managementis what I've done, right, I'd
say sales and marketing, butessentially, I translate what
(23:36):
pesetas saying to what the otherside is saying, and explain how
things are going to change tomake that work to the better. It
might be talking between thesales and marketing team
explaining to sales whatmarketing does and vice versa.
But it's all, essentially it'schange. So that's what prompted
me to write the book aroundthis, but it's not really the
(23:57):
whole People First cannon. ThePeople First whole idea, i've
always been interested in thefuture of work, but but the
original thing that startedtaking me into this was actually
identity. And this idea, again,coming out to the software world
ID is what everybody talksabout. How do you how do you
prove who you are? Whatcredentials do you use to log in
(24:20):
all this kind of stuff? The wordback to language identity has
two parts, ID and entity, theentity of who you are, your ego,
your self, your inner voice,everything that makes you you is
your entity. id is not youridentity. And this has been
something I've banged on for along time now, but that's what
(24:42):
got me into this thinking, howdo we break this stranglehold of
the tech industry? Talking aboutthe idea of users, right? It's
like, no, what's their identity?
How do we bring this, and listenvery interesting and clever work
going and that's a deeptechnical level where people are
trying to to reconcile what howthis problem works and how you
do it, how do you bring identityin a human way into technology?
(25:06):
And another part of this thatmakes it very interesting is
that you know, on the fringeside of what I do, I look a lot
at the underprivileged,unrecognized people of the
world. You know people as a sextraffic's people, people that
have, you know, some refugeestrying to get out of place. They
(25:28):
have no papers, they have no ID,but they do have an entity they
are people. So, there's a workagain, going on how do you? How
do you bank people can't provewho they are? And if you can't
bank people, then where do theyput their money? Oh, it's in
cash. Oh, they get robbed, it'ssomething about that, that sort
of, you know, hits the spot andagain, lots of very bright and
(25:50):
intelligent people doing workaround us that sort of says, No,
we now have to work if you gofor a cashless society everybody
has to be banked. By the way,why is the bank allowed to hold
your identity? Why am I notallowed to hold my identity? My
identity is mine, I should letyou know who I am through
(26:11):
independent validation that I amwho I am and I can afford to do
this. No single institutionshould be allowed to, so that's
what drove this originally,that's where the identity came
from. One of my recent stuffcomes around work and the future
of work, because I see centralrubbish being spoken about it, I
actually talk about the futureof income. And it's a much more
(26:31):
interesting conversation to mymind, who really wants to work?
Right? Who wants to get up andempty garbage cans? Or get up at
three o'clock in the morning toclean offices? Or to bake bread
so that somebody can eat it? Orto, you know, drive a taxi or
whatever? There are definitelysome people that enjoy that but
most people work to get money sothey can afford to live. Now, if
(26:54):
I can give you a different wayof making money, that wasn't
called work, and you justconcentrated on the future of
income. Is that a little bitmore interesting? Now, when I
talk about income, I'm nottalking about UBI, universal
basic income, governmenthandouts, I'm talking about when
you look at a very rich person,they're not paid by the hour,
(27:16):
they're paid by utilizing theirassets, let be those is worth
the billions he is has some veryexpensive assets that he can
control of. But we've all gotassets, why can't we monetize
that? I own an expensive lawnmower? Why can't I monetize that
in a way that can be loaned outto people and pay to offset that
(27:37):
cost? Why can't I buy a selfdriving car and send that out
and being a taxi? I don't haveto work it, it'll just round it.
That whole idea is what I thinkis a much more interesting
conversation. Because really, atthe end of the day, most jobs
are going to be automated out.
And the answer is not to be acaregiver, plenty of caregivers,
(28:01):
if we actually rewardedcaregivers in the way that they
should be, if we actuallyrewarded teachers in the way
that they should be, then they'dbe a lot more interest in going
there. But we don't. So that'snot a future work, if you've
just lost your $200,000 jobrunning in some bank as a middle
manager somewhere, becausethey're flattening the
organization, good idea for thecorporation, that middle manager
(28:24):
can't earn that money elsewhereas a caregiver, or a teacher, or
whatever else it might be. Sohow do we fix that? That's the
exploration that I go down within that particular color, and so
on and so forth. But it depends,if I read things I go, well
that's not right and get on theold keyboard.
Steve Brown (28:48):
What I find very interesting is that there's this
dilemma there from the IT worldwhere we're implementing
software because of obviousupsides to utilizing software
and the efficiencies of beingable to filter data and put data
in front of you to help you makebetter decisions. But the
(29:11):
dilemma or the challenges, howdo we keep it still where it
feels human on the userexperience, the human experience
side or what I call HEO, humanexperience optimization. I think
that's where the future thependulum like you and I started
this conversation is swingingback to how do we take this
(29:32):
unhuman part of the world andpackage it to where it feels
very human, fells veryrespectful.
John Philpin (29:41):
Yeah, I think it depends which particular company
we're talking about. I thinkthere is good work. I think one
of the key things is not for us,as individuals as people to feel
that we have got some kind ofdependency on a corporation to
prove who we are. So thisidentity thing I think, is
(30:03):
pretty fundamental, why, I waslooking at a website and they
asked me to review theirwebsite, they're selling some
kind of video things for it. AndI looked at the shopping cart, I
had to pass across to them 20pieces of information about me.
Before I could buy, and I wasclicking on the PayPal button, I
know that I need a single clickon PayPal, I can buy it. So why
(30:26):
are you wanting these 20 piecesof information about me? Why do
I have to jump through the hoopsand what you're going to do with
that information? So the workthat I look at was, again,
there's plenty of them, but I'llname engineers, the UK company
that seems to be the leader inthis space, this idea of people
talking about digital wallets,but holding the information to
yourself, when I'm applying fora mortgage, then the mortgage
(30:49):
company says, Okay, I need this,this and this about you, that's
great. My digital wallet opensup, it passes the information
through and at the same timethat information passes through
a contract is instantiated. Thiscontract is says that you can
use this information to give memy mortgage, the information is
not going to be stored to younot moved off to a third party
(31:10):
is going to return back to mywallet. Right? So it's deep
technology to actually make thatkind of stuff work. But the
curious thing is thatcorporations have spent billions
in these data warehouses, by theway, warehouses, lakes,
mountains, all these naturalthings where they keep data
because they want to make youfeel nice and greener. It's a
(31:32):
natural thing, a data lake andthe data mountain. It's not.
It's not natural, it's notnecessary. So stop calling it
that. But because they'veinvested these billions, they
want to, they don't understandthat they'll get much richer
information. If I give you myinformation that I need right
now to you, you won't have totriangulate information and
(31:55):
check up it'll be there andvalidated by a third party. So
that is to me the start ofhumanizing, putting me back in
control. Micropayments isanother one, I used to be able
to go to a news, newsstand andbuy a newspaper. It might have
cost me 10 cents, 20 cents thesedays, it costs a couple of
(32:15):
bucks. Why do I have to sign upfor a year, online to read an
article? Why have you got agiant paywall? Why can't I just
pay you a buck to read thatarticle? Why don't they
implement those kind of models?
Because they want you lockedinto their world. And 'till the
corporation's understand thatthere's rebellion against that
(32:35):
lock in, then we're going tohave this eternal problem. So
answering your question, justtreating us as intelligent
humans, and we are intelligenthumans, will actually allow,
I'll buy stuff from people orsend me about something a buck a
time. If I don't, I'll findanother way around it, there's
plenty ways around firewalls andpaywalls to get to what you
(32:59):
want. So their choice.
Steve Brown (33:05):
We're having a fascinating conversation with
John Philpin, and he's theauthor of For business leaders
slapped in the face by a worldthey felt they knew. People
First is his company. So John,what's the one question that you
wished you can answer that younever get asked?
John Philpin (33:27):
What Wow. Well, that's one question that never
been asked. Never answered. Theone question that I'd like to be
answer and to be able to answer,I always do get asked, is to
just reduce this down to asimpler thing. I'm very aware
(33:49):
that my elevator pitch is notsuccinct, partly because it's so
broad, right? So if somebody isinterested in identity, I can go
down that. But this idea ofpeople first is a big piece of
pie to bite. The thing that,gosh, you tripped me up, the
other way around, though? Ican't think of one. I think, why
(34:16):
should I join your, I guess,give me one good reason why I
should sign up topeoplefirst.network. Why should
that be? And the answer is, it'snot about me. It's not about
what I'm talking about. It's theidea that you become part of a
community of people that havesimilar concerns as yourself,
what I'll be trying to do, ifyou're a small business in Ohio,
(34:39):
will be able to link in withother small biz from Hawaii and
share experiences, that's whatI'm trying to get to. So joining
the network is the one thingthat people can do to learn
more, again, not just from me,but from all other people as
well. I think that answers yourquestion about I'm not sure.
Steve Brown (35:01):
No, I like it. You know, I was thinking though we
could work on your your oneliner for what you're trying to
do. Okay. So here's what'scoming out, is that people want
to be acknowledged as a humanand feel safe and understood.
(35:22):
People First has a process tohelp your business, accomplish
that, to help connect betterwith your relationships that
support you, that buy from you,and for the employees that help
grow the value of your business.
John Philpin (35:39):
There you go, you got it, absolutely. When the
podcast comes out, I'll makesure I stand by that and start
using it. Yeah, but that'sexactly right. It is about
bringing humanity back. Andrecognizing that corporations
are simply made up of people.
Corporations are a set of laws,it's a business, business laws.
And the things that it does arecreated by people that are rules
(36:01):
made by people. And nothing isabsolute. I drop an apple on the
floor, gravity says boom, I cando nothing about that. The rules
of business are absolutely upfor grabs, they can be changed.
And that's what I'm trying toget across. Change them for the
better and that is byunderstanding that we are all
people.
Steve Brown (36:26):
Excellent. John, you've been a awesome guest on
the ROI Online Podcast.
John Philpin (36:32):
Well thank you, Steve. It's been absolutely fun
and a real pleasure to be hereand so great to catch up with
you again. Thank you for theinvite, once more. It's been
real pleasure. Absolutely. Andwhat I'm seriously impressed by
is you listened, and that littlesummary at the end definitely
says to me, you get it. And youdo. Thank you very much for that
(36:53):
interpretation.
Steve Brown (36:54):
My pleasure. We want to get it. And that's what
people get when they listen toROI Online Podcast. They get it
too.
John Philpin (37:02):
There you go. It's brilliant.
Steve Brown (37:05):
Thanks, John.
John Philpin (37:07):
Thank you very much, Steve, talk to you soon,
be good.
Steve Brown (37:09):
And that's a wrap.
Thanks for listening to anotherfun episode of the ROI Online
Podcast. For more, be sure tocheck out the show notes of this
episode and feel free to connectwith me on LinkedIn where we can
chat, and I can help direct youto the resources you're
searching for. To learn moreabout how you can grow your
business better be sure to pickup your copy of my book, The
(37:33):
Golden Toilet at surprisethegoldentoilet.com I'm Steve
Brown, and we'll see you nextweek on another fun episode of
the ROI Online Podcast.
Customer First is been my focus, that we need to
give people a reason as to whythey should give a damn about
this stuff that you're producingthey're going to part with
money. So it's naturally in meand I guess the dawning on me
sort of came to play maybe six,seven years ago now, as I
started thinking about this ideaof I've always hated the
(00:25):
expression being a user,customers and client, what's the
difference between a customerand a client? I just kept on
thinking it was something jellyin me, I just said, we're all
goddamn people. Why are we, wecategorize it because we need to
subdivide and create markets,etc, etc. So just treat people
intelligently as people.
Steve Brown (00:46):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the ROI OnlinePodcast where we believe you,
the courageous entrepreneurs ofour day, are the invisible
heroes of our economy. You notonly improve our world with your
ideas, your grit and yourpassion, but you make our world
better. I'm Steve Brown and thisis a place where we have great
conversations with winners justlike you while we laugh and
(01:09):
learn together.
John Philpin, welcome to the ROIOnline Podcast.
John Philpin (01:23):
Steve, thanks very much for the invite, very much
looking forward to thisconversation.
Steve Brown (01:28):
So John, you're doing this radical thing,
everyone that's listening tothis podcast are wondering why I
need to lean into thisconversation and hang around a
bit. And so you're doingsomething really radical and
it's called people first. Like,what got into you man? Why
(01:49):
people first?
John Philpin (01:52):
I don't know, there's just something that's
been sitting badly with me formany, many years. I'm from the
corporate world, and I've mademy living in there. And I just
increasingly find myself sittingin a world that seems to be
corporate first. And you know,people can pick up the pieces
behind that. So I'm very muchinto the idea of people first
and natural fact when you putpeople first, the corporation
(02:14):
ends up being a whole lotbetter, curiously enough. We
talk about people so it's aboutmaking businesses work better.
Steve Brown (02:22):
That's crazy thinking, man. No, I love it
because, you know, I've been apart of cultures that weren't
people first. That made you feellike, yeah, like, you're there,
like a horse that needs to berode 'till you need to be
(02:43):
putting them out to pasture andlet's get someone else in here.
And it's like, not realmotivational.
John Philpin (02:49):
That's absolutely right. And it just goes deeper
and deeper into all kinds ofthings. I mean, just just
picking up on very, veryrecently, right, the Reddit
attack, if you will, on thehedge funds. All they've done is
come together and said, We don'tagree with what you're doing
when I push the stock the otherway. And guess what? Everybody's
so upset about the corporation'slosing billions. Nobody ever
(03:12):
thinks about the people whenthat happens the other way. So,
you know, it's on, it's alwaysthere, it's apparent in front of
our eyes but we don'tnecessarily think of it in the
terms of well, if you thoughtabout people first, this might
not be happening.
Steve Brown (03:27):
It's a theme that I've been preaching as well as
that, you know, marketing isbroken, because the marketing
message is designed for what Icall the Dillards Mannequin,
that faceless, nameless thingthat you just you can hang boys
clothes on, or girls clothes on.
But the one common thing is,it's got a credit card. So let's
design our messaging to thatfaceless thing that has no name
instead of humans that havedreams and hopes. And I believe
(03:49):
the pendulum is swinging backfrom this industrialized, just
minions, just use the minionsand throw them out the door to
now it's like, we're not gonnatake it anymore. I have a name.
John Philpin (04:09):
I absolutely agree with you. It's like, we're not
customers, we're not consumers,we're not employees, we're not
users, we're all people and bythe way, with people on both
sides of the equation, wecontribute into the value of a
corporation. And with thatmoney, we buy things from that
Corporation and indeed, othercorporations. Businesses are
(04:29):
nothing without people.
Steve Brown (04:31):
So you have a book coming out. And I'm gonna let
you say the title because I'mgonna mess it up. But I've got
an alternate title for it. Like,go ahead.
John Philpin (04:42):
Okay let's go for it. We could do that. It's
called, For business leaders,slapped in the face by a world
they thought they knew.
Steve Brown (04:50):
Yeah. So mine would be like, what do you do after
you get that big bitch slap fromthe world like that. I turned
around, and wham, where did thatcome from? But what's going on?
Why is the world we thought weknew different than we think?
John Philpin (05:11):
So the book, I mean, I've had many books in my
head for many years. And this isthe first of a series of books
that will be coming out and it'sbeen accelerated for just with
the odd time we're living in.
It's nothing to do with theCOVID issue. But it's definitely
to do with how businesses havereacted to what's going on
around them. So COVID is a sidething as far as I'm concerned.
(05:32):
But the fact is that businessessay, expect the unexpected. Did
the unexpected happen, and werewe so unprepared, it's
extraordinary. So the bookdoesn't offer a solution for
you, because everybody'sdifferent, I can't give you a
template saying if you do thesethings, but the book really is
(05:53):
about making sure that the nexttime this sort of change slaps
you in the face, that you can beready for it, you can define the
world on your terms, and nothave to react to what's going on
around you. That's what thebooks about. And it really is, I
see it more of as a workbook orjournal, if you will, to help
(06:13):
you start asking yourselfquestions because what the
butcher, the baker, thecandlestick maker need to do
with their business is going tobe a little bit different to
what a business dealing with theservices industry, or the call
center or the banking industry.
But they've all got the sameproblem that they've just been
slapped in the face by a worldhey thought they knew. It's
(06:36):
bout change, change is alwaysccurring, it's going to get
aster. So let's do somethingbout it on our terms on
eople's terms.
Steve Brown (06:45):
You know, and the makings of a really good story.
That's, you have this hero thatrealizes that the status quo is
changed. And they struggle withaccepting it both externally and
internally. And what makes itgreat action or great story is
(07:10):
to see the internal struggle ofnot feeling confident enough to
actually make it through anddoubting whether they have what
it takes. And I think that whathas happened in the past year or
two has really, really slappedeveryone in the face and made us
realize that whether we like itor not the status quo has
(07:32):
changed. It's really revealedall the areas that weren't
prepared. But in my case, I'mtelling you, the people in my
organization, they were the onesthat really made it worthwhile
to stay persistent and stayfocused in the march through the
fire.
John Philpin (07:51):
Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt when the
conversations we've had in thepast, I've always enjoyed
talking to you because you comefrom a very human perspective, I
can only imagine the people inyour business, but also what I
call the stakeholders thatsurround you that sort of
basically allow you to have thesuccess you do, that comes from
a human perspective, thatthey're not doing it to make
(08:13):
Steve Brown a multimillionaire.
It might happen as a side thing,but they're doing it because you
all have a good relationship.
You're working together. Andit's extraordinary what happens
when you do that.
Steve Brown (08:24):
Yeah. If there was one thing that, I told you this
last year is I didn't feel likeI was succeeding, I didn't feel
like I was winning. But thenwhen I sat down toward the end
of the year and did an audit,it's like, wow, we have
accomplished a lot of greatthings. And it's because they
circled up the wagons and reallydug in and we pulled off some
(08:48):
really cool stuff. Even thoughit didn't feel like it.
John Philpin (08:52):
Yeah, it's interesting. I can't remember
the exact quote, name, but I'lldig it out for you. But it is
something like the idea thatchange never happens until it
happens all at once. Right? Andthe fact is, you forget when
you're going through the year ofwork, you go, Oh my God, oh, my
God, and you go back and lookback. It's like the, if you
(09:12):
think about years as one level,but also months, also weeks,
also days, and just startmeasuring at those levels. It's
amazing, actually one of thechapters in the book is exactly
about this. Don't be thinking,don't think of life as
checklists and tasks, thinkabout your strategic plan and
actually check in with yourselfon a regular basis because
(09:34):
you'll be amazed what's goingon. And sometimes you sit back
and think nothing's moved. I'velost that deal, or that
conversation didn't go well orI've had to, in fact, just today
that this is one of threeconversations I'm doing through
Zoom today and the other two,basically one Cancel to accept
to postpone till February theother one postponed to later on
(09:56):
in January and you know, so Isuddenly got free time. Some
people were thinking Oh my god,you know, people don't love me.
I think no, now I've got time togo and do there's other things I
want to do. There's always anupside. And don't feel so just
check in and think, okay, it'sall a steady process. It's like
the overnight success of thatsinger, you know, because he'd
been working or she'd beenworking for 10-15 years without
(10:18):
anybody knowing about them. Andthen suddenly, they were
discovered overnight successes,there are amazing things.
Steve Brown (10:25):
Amazing things, yeah. Lots of backstory to that
overnight success. So atpeoplefirst.vision, what are
some of the resources that youoffer that would help people
start to embrace or feel alittle bit better about
approaching? Yeah, this changethat we're having, too?
John Philpin (10:45):
Yeah, so at core, I'm a sales and marketing dude,
that's where I've lived my life,in the software industry very
specifically. And a long, longtime ago, long before I was
born, even. There's a guy thathad this idea of breaking the
marketing story down intogarnering attention and
interest, creating desire,moving to actions called the ad
(11:07):
model. And there are manyversions around this. And what
I've been doing over the pastcouple of years is really at
that first part, the attention.
So when you go to the, I have arange of sites,
peoplefirst.london, the visionsite is my blog, it used to live
in a different world, I'verecently moved across that, it's
the blog, and very soon we'llhave a certain amount of
information about what's goingon there. But I also have a
(11:29):
newsletter that goes out on aweekly basis, that's called
peoplefirst.news, I have my bookcoming out will be
peoplefirst.pub, I have apodcast, which is
peoplefirst.fm. And all of thisis that garnering attention and
getting interest is it's being alittle bit provocative. And all
I write and do you know, addanother thing? What about this?
(11:51):
And have you thought about that?
Raising questions and buildingcommentary. In the past six
months, I then start to think,Okay, so that's great, you're in
broadcast mode, how do you nowstart, you know, building a
community around you? And forthat, I've built a network,
guess what it's called, it'scalled peoplefirst.network. And
(12:13):
if peoplefirst.network, you'llfind the start of a community
that I'm beginning to build,where people who can see what
I'm writing, and indeed, I'm notthe only person there are many
people in my space, writingabout this kind of stuff at all
have different opinions that arebeginning to congregate in
different spaces andpeoplefirst.network is it purely
(12:33):
a space for anybody to come in,or listen to the words of
wisdom, some very interestingpeople that are building
software solutions, that arebuilding their own communities,
offering courses, whatever itmight be, within that space, as
well. I will be offering coursesat the moment, it's not there,
it's all completely free tojoin. It's simply trying to
(12:53):
build engagement and find outwhat's interesting to other
people, because at the end ofthe day, if this ends up as
being the John Show, it's notgonna work. This is about
bringing everybody together,even to the point that one of
the site domains I have iscalled peoplefirst.community,
which once this takes offproperly, I will then be using
(13:14):
the community site to link outto all my friends running other
businesses in this space. So ifyou read a guy called Doug
Rushkoff, who has somethingcalled Teen Human, Professor out
of NYU, he will be on thatcommunity list. And Digi Me,
which is an application a pieceof software coming into the UK
will be on that space. So thecommunity world is the extended
(13:35):
everything right? So I'm nottrying to be Oh, guess what,
I've just had this great idea.
Tons of people are working onthis, what I want to do, my
observation is that this isgoing on inside the bubble
almost. And the people were thatit can really help aren't that
aware of it, because you don'tread about this in mainstream
news. You hear something likethe future of work. You hear
(13:57):
people talk about it, and it'sin such abstract crazy ways that
they talk about it, that youthink well, this is ridiculous.
Yeah, stop being a coal minerand start coding. Really? That
is not a solution. Right? And wetrain people, we don't educate,
and we train people to be a coginside a corporate machine. And
(14:18):
now the corporate machines aregoing automated and people are
unemployed. We say well go be anentrepreneur. How?! When do we
ever train people to do that? Sothat's my conversation. It's
about understanding that whenyou talk about working from home
because you're a knowledgeworker on this, that's great for
knowledge workers, that's how Imake a living. But it's not
(14:40):
great for a lot of people haveto go to a factory or create
some hair or drive a tech,whatever it might be all these
things. People are beingaffected by what goes on around
them. That's the space I'mcreating now.
Steve Brown (14:54):
We're listening to John Philpin, he's the author of
For Business Leaders slapped inthe face by a world they felt
they knew, People First is hisorganization and we're talking
about the humanization of theway we work, the way we treat
(15:15):
people, the way that we grow thevalue of our businesses. So
John, where did you get thisinspiration even really started
beating the drums on this topic?
John Philpin (15:30):
Well, I mean, I've always been in the industry that
I come out of the softwareindustry. As I said, I'm a
marketing guy, and I'm known forthe guy that puts his hands up
and go, Wait, wait, wait, wait,it's all very well, you saying
that but what about thecustomer? Why do they give a
damn? Right? So in my businessworld, Customer First is been my
focus, that we need to givepeople a reason as to why they
(15:53):
should give a damn about thisstuff that you're producing
they're going to part withmoney. So it's naturally in me.
And I guess the dawning on mesort of came to play maybe six,
seven years ago now, as Istarted thinking about this idea
of, you know I've always hatedthe expression being a user, and
customers, and clients, andwhat's the difference between a
customer and a client? I justkept on thinking it was
(16:15):
something jelly in me, I justsaid, we're all goddamn people.
Why are we, we categorize itbecause we need to subdivide and
create markets of why etc, etc.
So just treat peopleintelligently as people. So
having gotten that position, Iwas happened to be working in a
software business at the time soI started getting involved with
different organizations. Andwhen I left that organization, I
(16:37):
thought, I'm just gonna turnthis into something, I'm not
gonna join something else. Let'stake this out, I started doing
that about four years ago that'show old the original blog was,
newsletters about two and a halfyears old now. So it's been a
slow, steady progress. Again,I'm not known for what I do. I'm
known for a whole pile of otherstuff. So plenty of people call
(16:57):
and say, John, could you dotdot, dot? And so as I've been
making this transition, we stillhave to make a living. So we
make that living. But trying tomove now into this space and
bring everything that I'velearned, because you don't learn
bad things in the corporation,you learn very good things, you
must do. So all I'm saying is,that's great, how do you now
(17:18):
apply all that learning you hadin the corporation to you? How
do you bring what Citibank doeswith his hundreds of marketeers
to a baker? How'd you do that?
And a lot, again, going back tothe book, it you know, the book
is based on methodologies andapproaches I've used in
(17:39):
organizations for years, largeorganizations, I've just broken
it down to a way that anybody,an individual can now pick that
book up, read through it, andgo, Ah, yeah, I can do this. So
it's just yeah, it's been a slowprocess, a slow journey, but a
great journey, meeting lots ofgood people on the way through.
Steve Brown (17:58):
Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you
about a book that you need toget today. It's the funniest
book on marketing. It's calledThe Golden Toilet, stop flushing
your marketing budget into yourwebsite, and build a system that
grows your business. And guesswho wrote it? That's right. I
wrote it. And I wrote it justfor you because I want to help
(18:20):
you get past the last hurdles ofsetting up your business and
getting it squared away. I wroteit so that you can avoid time,
wasting time, wasting money,wasting frustration, get the
book on Audible, you can get iton Kindle, you can get it on
Amazon, but get the book, takeadvantage of the insights in
(18:42):
there and let me know what youthink. And now back to this
excellent episode.
You know, we're having thisconversation and I would love to
kind of like, think of all thevocabulary words that dehumanize
the other side. Okay, so I, youknow, so you said users you said
(19:08):
consumers, clients prospects,but another one is like leads, I
got a lead, right? And so weought to design a vocabulary
with the old dehumanized waysand then human side of it, and I
got rebuked a little bit and itwas like, really good review.
You said, why in your bookSteve, you do a great job of
(19:31):
arguing about humans, but thenyou go "a lead". And he goes,
it's a relationship, not a lead,and I'm going, Oh! He's got me!
But that was like, excellent.
John Philpin (19:44):
No, you're absolutely right. I mean a lead
is what you basically put on adog to make sure it doesn't run
into the road. But it'sinteresting, you bring that up
so within People First. It's avery, very broad tent but very
quickly, I have eight pillarsthat I hold in head about the
thinking of this, the work sideand the commerce side of
creating the business equation,then I have three pillars that
(20:07):
are called identity data andtechnology. And on the other
side, I have language learningand value. And all my thought
process run around those, thoseeight pillars, as I call them,
and I'm bringing that up now,because language is one of those
pillars, exactly that what youjust said, the dehumanizing.
It's like, Listen to what alarge bank or any large
(20:33):
organization will say about therelationship they have with you,
how they want to partner withyou, that you are their most
important person, and so on andso forth. Cut now to the inside
of the building, where that'scoming from the marketing war
room, where they talk abouttaking the Hill about maximizing
(20:53):
share of wallet, I mean, whatlanguage do you believe? I
personally believe the languagebehind closed doors. So to me,
we live in this world oftransparency, but it's only
transparent if it suits you. Andanother example, I've got a
personal war on the wordcontent. Right? You wrote a
(21:13):
book, I wrote a book, you writearticles, you run podcasts, you
do great things, and I'm tryingto do great things. It is not
content, content is what you putin a silo, it's homogenized
stuff. If you can't fill thatsilo with that content, you
throw it away and put some othercontent in. What it does is it
(21:35):
reduces the price that thecorporation has to pay for the
homogenous content, because it'sall the same. If you can't write
the article for me, Hey, I'llget the article done by somebody
else and they'll do it for free,because they want to make their
name big. And you think, okay,so whose benefit is it to write
content for free? I write books,articles, blog posts, I do
(21:56):
podcasts, I never do content.
And if you want content, then Iunderstand why the corporation's
call it content, because theywant it for cheapest they can
get it they're about maximizingprofit. But why do we as
creators, as artists, aswriters, as presenters talk
about our intellectual property,that we make a living off as
content, it's a strange thing,but we get sucked into this
(22:20):
corporate vocabulary. And that'sanother, you know, again, that
in itself is just one pillarinside the People First tent.
Steve Brown (22:29):
That's excellent, vocabulary can be very damaging
if you're not recognizing it. Solet's talk about some of the
other pillars, what was like themain pillar that really
motivated you to write the book?
First, set the story up on, whatfinally convicted you, oh, I
just got to write a book.
John Philpin (22:54):
Well I've wanted to write a book since I was
about eight as far as I can workout, I remember the conversation
with my mother very well, I justnever sure what the book was
going to be. The book that I hadin my head is still not this
book. But this particular bookcame from this, you know, we
always talk about change, andchange is always happening. But
(23:16):
what happened in 2020 was such avast global, hit you in the
face, what you're going to dokind of change, that I just
said, Okay, this is a message,this is what I've got to get
out. Because change managementis what I've done, right, I'd
say sales and marketing, butessentially, I translate what
(23:36):
pesetas saying to what the otherside is saying, and explain how
things are going to change tomake that work to the better. It
might be talking between thesales and marketing team
explaining to sales whatmarketing does and vice versa.
But it's all, essentially it'schange. So that's what prompted
me to write the book aroundthis, but it's not really the
(23:57):
whole People First cannon. ThePeople First whole idea, i've
always been interested in thefuture of work, but but the
original thing that startedtaking me into this was actually
identity. And this idea, again,coming out to the software world
ID is what everybody talksabout. How do you how do you
prove who you are? Whatcredentials do you use to log in
(24:20):
all this kind of stuff? The wordback to language identity has
two parts, ID and entity, theentity of who you are, your ego,
your self, your inner voice,everything that makes you you is
your entity. id is not youridentity. And this has been
something I've banged on for along time now, but that's what
(24:42):
got me into this thinking, howdo we break this stranglehold of
the tech industry? Talking aboutthe idea of users, right? It's
like, no, what's their identity?
How do we bring this, and listenvery interesting and clever work
going and that's a deeptechnical level where people are
trying to to reconcile what howthis problem works and how you
do it, how do you bring identityin a human way into technology?
(25:06):
And another part of this thatmakes it very interesting is
that you know, on the fringeside of what I do, I look a lot
at the underprivileged,unrecognized people of the
world. You know people as a sextraffic's people, people that
have, you know, some refugeestrying to get out of place. They
(25:28):
have no papers, they have no ID,but they do have an entity they
are people. So, there's a workagain, going on how do you? How
do you bank people can't provewho they are? And if you can't
bank people, then where do theyput their money? Oh, it's in
cash. Oh, they get robbed, it'ssomething about that, that sort
of, you know, hits the spot andagain, lots of very bright and
(25:50):
intelligent people doing workaround us that sort of says, No,
we now have to work if you gofor a cashless society everybody
has to be banked. By the way,why is the bank allowed to hold
your identity? Why am I notallowed to hold my identity? My
identity is mine, I should letyou know who I am through
(26:11):
independent validation that I amwho I am and I can afford to do
this. No single institutionshould be allowed to, so that's
what drove this originally,that's where the identity came
from. One of my recent stuffcomes around work and the future
of work, because I see centralrubbish being spoken about it, I
actually talk about the futureof income. And it's a much more
(26:31):
interesting conversation to mymind, who really wants to work?
Right? Who wants to get up andempty garbage cans? Or get up at
three o'clock in the morning toclean offices? Or to bake bread
so that somebody can eat it? Orto, you know, drive a taxi or
whatever? There are definitelysome people that enjoy that but
most people work to get money sothey can afford to live. Now, if
(26:54):
I can give you a different wayof making money, that wasn't
called work, and you justconcentrated on the future of
income. Is that a little bitmore interesting? Now, when I
talk about income, I'm nottalking about UBI, universal
basic income, governmenthandouts, I'm talking about when
you look at a very rich person,they're not paid by the hour,
(27:16):
they're paid by utilizing theirassets, let be those is worth
the billions he is has some veryexpensive assets that he can
control of. But we've all gotassets, why can't we monetize
that? I own an expensive lawnmower? Why can't I monetize that
in a way that can be loaned outto people and pay to offset that
(27:37):
cost? Why can't I buy a selfdriving car and send that out
and being a taxi? I don't haveto work it, it'll just round it.
That whole idea is what I thinkis a much more interesting
conversation. Because really, atthe end of the day, most jobs
are going to be automated out.
And the answer is not to be acaregiver, plenty of caregivers,
(28:01):
if we actually rewardedcaregivers in the way that they
should be, if we actuallyrewarded teachers in the way
that they should be, then they'dbe a lot more interest in going
there. But we don't. So that'snot a future work, if you've
just lost your $200,000 jobrunning in some bank as a middle
manager somewhere, becausethey're flattening the
organization, good idea for thecorporation, that middle manager
(28:24):
can't earn that money elsewhereas a caregiver, or a teacher, or
whatever else it might be. Sohow do we fix that? That's the
exploration that I go down within that particular color, and so
on and so forth. But it depends,if I read things I go, well
that's not right and get on theold keyboard.
Steve Brown (28:48):
What I find very interesting is that there's this
dilemma there from the IT worldwhere we're implementing
software because of obviousupsides to utilizing software
and the efficiencies of beingable to filter data and put data
in front of you to help you makebetter decisions. But the
(29:11):
dilemma or the challenges, howdo we keep it still where it
feels human on the userexperience, the human experience
side or what I call HEO, humanexperience optimization. I think
that's where the future thependulum like you and I started
this conversation is swingingback to how do we take this
(29:32):
unhuman part of the world andpackage it to where it feels
very human, fells veryrespectful.
John Philpin (29:41):
Yeah, I think it depends which particular company
we're talking about. I thinkthere is good work. I think one
of the key things is not for us,as individuals as people to feel
that we have got some kind ofdependency on a corporation to
prove who we are. So thisidentity thing I think, is
(30:03):
pretty fundamental, why, I waslooking at a website and they
asked me to review theirwebsite, they're selling some
kind of video things for it. AndI looked at the shopping cart, I
had to pass across to them 20pieces of information about me.
Before I could buy, and I wasclicking on the PayPal button, I
know that I need a single clickon PayPal, I can buy it. So why
(30:26):
are you wanting these 20 piecesof information about me? Why do
I have to jump through the hoopsand what you're going to do with
that information? So the workthat I look at was, again,
there's plenty of them, but I'llname engineers, the UK company
that seems to be the leader inthis space, this idea of people
talking about digital wallets,but holding the information to
yourself, when I'm applying fora mortgage, then the mortgage
(30:49):
company says, Okay, I need this,this and this about you, that's
great. My digital wallet opensup, it passes the information
through and at the same timethat information passes through
a contract is instantiated. Thiscontract is says that you can
use this information to give memy mortgage, the information is
not going to be stored to younot moved off to a third party
(31:10):
is going to return back to mywallet. Right? So it's deep
technology to actually make thatkind of stuff work. But the
curious thing is thatcorporations have spent billions
in these data warehouses, by theway, warehouses, lakes,
mountains, all these naturalthings where they keep data
because they want to make youfeel nice and greener. It's a
(31:32):
natural thing, a data lake andthe data mountain. It's not.
It's not natural, it's notnecessary. So stop calling it
that. But because they'veinvested these billions, they
want to, they don't understandthat they'll get much richer
information. If I give you myinformation that I need right
now to you, you won't have totriangulate information and
(31:55):
check up it'll be there andvalidated by a third party. So
that is to me the start ofhumanizing, putting me back in
control. Micropayments isanother one, I used to be able
to go to a news, newsstand andbuy a newspaper. It might have
cost me 10 cents, 20 cents thesedays, it costs a couple of
(32:15):
bucks. Why do I have to sign upfor a year, online to read an
article? Why have you got agiant paywall? Why can't I just
pay you a buck to read thatarticle? Why don't they
implement those kind of models?
Because they want you lockedinto their world. And 'till the
corporation's understand thatthere's rebellion against that
(32:35):
lock in, then we're going tohave this eternal problem. So
answering your question, justtreating us as intelligent
humans, and we are intelligenthumans, will actually allow,
I'll buy stuff from people orsend me about something a buck a
time. If I don't, I'll findanother way around it, there's
plenty ways around firewalls andpaywalls to get to what you
(32:59):
want. So their choice.
Steve Brown (33:05):
We're having a fascinating conversation with
John Philpin, and he's theauthor of For business leaders
slapped in the face by a worldthey felt they knew. People
First is his company. So John,what's the one question that you
wished you can answer that younever get asked?
John Philpin (33:27):
What Wow. Well, that's one question that never
been asked. Never answered. Theone question that I'd like to be
answer and to be able to answer,I always do get asked, is to
just reduce this down to asimpler thing. I'm very aware
(33:49):
that my elevator pitch is notsuccinct, partly because it's so
broad, right? So if somebody isinterested in identity, I can go
down that. But this idea ofpeople first is a big piece of
pie to bite. The thing that,gosh, you tripped me up, the
other way around, though? Ican't think of one. I think, why
(34:16):
should I join your, I guess,give me one good reason why I
should sign up topeoplefirst.network. Why should
that be? And the answer is, it'snot about me. It's not about
what I'm talking about. It's theidea that you become part of a
community of people that havesimilar concerns as yourself,
what I'll be trying to do, ifyou're a small business in Ohio,
(34:39):
will be able to link in withother small biz from Hawaii and
share experiences, that's whatI'm trying to get to. So joining
the network is the one thingthat people can do to learn
more, again, not just from me,but from all other people as
well. I think that answers yourquestion about I'm not sure.
Steve Brown (35:01):
No, I like it. You know, I was thinking though we
could work on your your oneliner for what you're trying to
do. Okay. So here's what'scoming out, is that people want
to be acknowledged as a humanand feel safe and understood.
(35:22):
People First has a process tohelp your business, accomplish
that, to help connect betterwith your relationships that
support you, that buy from you,and for the employees that help
grow the value of your business.
John Philpin (35:39):
There you go, you got it, absolutely. When the
podcast comes out, I'll makesure I stand by that and start
using it. Yeah, but that'sexactly right. It is about
bringing humanity back. Andrecognizing that corporations
are simply made up of people.
Corporations are a set of laws,it's a business, business laws.
And the things that it does arecreated by people that are rules
(36:01):
made by people. And nothing isabsolute. I drop an apple on the
floor, gravity says boom, I cando nothing about that. The rules
of business are absolutely upfor grabs, they can be changed.
And that's what I'm trying toget across. Change them for the
better and that is byunderstanding that we are all
people.
Steve Brown (36:26):
Excellent. John, you've been a awesome guest on
the ROI Online Podcast.
John Philpin (36:32):
Well thank you, Steve. It's been absolutely fun
and a real pleasure to be hereand so great to catch up with
you again. Thank you for theinvite, once more. It's been
real pleasure. Absolutely. Andwhat I'm seriously impressed by
is you listened, and that littlesummary at the end definitely
says to me, you get it. And youdo. Thank you very much for that
(36:53):
interpretation.
Steve Brown (36:54):
My pleasure. We want to get it. And that's what
people get when they listen toROI Online Podcast. They get it
too.
John Philpin (37:02):
There you go. It's brilliant.
Steve Brown (37:05):
Thanks, John.
John Philpin (37:07):
Thank you very much, Steve, talk to you soon,
be good.
Steve Brown (37:09):
And that's a wrap.
Thanks for listening to anotherfun episode of the ROI Online
Podcast. For more, be sure tocheck out the show notes of this
episode and feel free to connectwith me on LinkedIn where we can
chat, and I can help direct youto the resources you're
searching for. To learn moreabout how you can grow your
business better be sure to pickup your copy of my book, The
(37:33):
Golden Toilet at surprisethegoldentoilet.com I'm Steve
Brown, and we'll see you nextweek on another fun episode of
the ROI Online Podcast.
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