What Does a Bidding Career Look Like in the Age of AI? with Julian Henley
In this reverse episode of the Red Review, brought to you by Growth Ignition and Bidscript, the tables are turned. Julian Henley of Drees & Sommer takes over the interviewer’s chair and puts host Jeremy Brim on the spot about his career, his businesses and what AI means for bid professionals.
Asking the questions, his friend Julian Henley of Drees & Sommer takes over the interviewer's chair and puts Jeremy on the spot about his career, his approach to financial freedom, his move into serviced accommodation and, of course, what AI means for bid professionals.
Julian had Jeremy on his own podcast about a year ago, so this one is partly an update on what's changed since, and partly a chance for Jeremy to talk about his own businesses for once, rather than everybody else's.
How did Jeremy get into bidding and work winning?
Like a lot of bid professionals, partly by luck. Jeremy grew up at Mouchel, bidding and winning TUPE transfer outsourcing deals from local and central government, working for a boss he still calls his work dad, Graham Kean. Graham has agreed to come on the podcast, so there will be more stories to come.
Jeremy's view is that many of today's leaders of big bid teams learned their trade at firms like Capita and Norfolk Property Services. If you can bid a big TUPE transfer deal in UK public sector, you can bid and win almost anything, because the market is so constrained, precise and high value.
What does financial freedom actually mean in practice?
Jeremy and his wife Jules have been on a financial freedom journey for 14 years. The aim is to reach the point where your monthly outgoings are covered by investment income, so money keeps coming in while you sleep. Jeremy's caveat: nothing is ever truly passive.
A few things stood out:
They have reviewed their North Star every couple of years, asking what they want life to look and feel like in 5, 10 and 20 years. That is what led to the move from Cambridgeshire to Leamington Spa, with better access to everything and Jeremy home by bath and bedtime from most places in the country
The goal is a life where it feels like being on holiday without going anywhere
They only work with people they like and want to see succeed. They have a no nonsense policy, and have fired some clients over behaviour and integrity
The businesses exist to enable the life, not the other way round, rather than waking up at 65 having made other people rich
What would Jeremy tell himself 14 years ago?
Two things. First, keep paying into a standard pension alongside everything else, because compounding does the heavy lifting. Second, get much closer to the financial freedom number (around £2 million invested) before taking risks. Jeremy admits he has said things on LinkedIn that probably hurt the business, even though he was trying to call out poor behaviour.
He was also quick to point out that all of his problems are first world problems, and that you make your own luck.
What is New Street Properties?
New Street Properties is a serviced accommodation business in the North East, owned 50/50 by Jeremy's holding company and Connor.
The story is a good one. Connor first got in touch nearly three years ago asking Jeremy to teach him bid writing so he could start a small bidding consultancy. Jeremy liked the entrepreneurial spirit and taught him for free, an hour and a half a week for around a month. During those conversations, Jeremy suggested that with his local knowledge, Connor should look at property. A few conversations later, they decided to do it together, funded from Growth Ignition profits and Jeremy's pension.
Their approach has changed since the start:
They planned a big ethical Instagram brand, then realised the faff and ad spend weren't worth it
They now focus on finding investors and landlords who want to exit. Many are in their 50s and early 60s, have held properties for 15 to 20 years, and face more regulation and an unfriendly tax environment
There is a strong link to Jeremy's construction network. Teesside has major regeneration and infrastructure work, and film studios, but not much good accommodation. Properties are let during the week to construction firms, supply chain businesses and film crews
The aim is 20 odd properties running as a semi passive business, with serviced accommodation income paying off the mortgages in the meantime
What did running a property business teach Jeremy about running Growth Ignition?
Three lessons that cross over:
Trust but verify. They have been let down by lawyers, funding agents and others, so good introductions and testing partners matters
Do your due diligence, even if you aren't naturally detail oriented. Jeremy admits this isn't his strength, which is why Connor, who is more detail focused, is so valuable
Build a team that covers each other's weaknesses. Jeremy gets excited, Jules is thoughtful about the ramifications, and Connor is on the ground in the detail. They meet weekly
What does Growth Ignition do now, and why has it changed?
Growth Ignition is a transformation and training business, and it is largely just Jeremy. It's eight years old, and the biggest change has come in the last year.
The core problem, in Jeremy's view, is that around 98% of UK business to business and business to government organisations are still immature in how they win work. Nobody teaches leaders how business planning, market research, targeting, marketing, key account management, capture, bidding and client experience join up. Most leaders have never heard of capture.
Every business Jeremy has worked with is making around 80% of its profit from 20% of its clients, and he has doubled the profits of six businesses or business units in two to three years by cutting the tail and finding more clients that fit their DNA of what good looks like.
The catch is that leaders don't know they have this problem. So Jeremy often has to review bids and run bid training to get through the door, then have the conversation about why the work needs to happen earlier.
Will AI replace bid managers?
Julian's question was whether the traditional bid role is likely to disappear. Jeremy's answer: the role doesn't change wildly, the technology enables you to do it better.
He reckons AI makes you around 20% faster, but the bigger benefit is better depth of insight and quality of content when used well. His take on worrying about whether AI sounds too American is that if that's your concern, you have bigger problems.
Julian raised a fair counterpoint. If everyone uses generative AI to produce excellent bids, how do clients tell them apart? They discussed three possible answers: a more human touch from bid teams, clients getting smarter about how they evaluate, and a move to competitive dialogue and interviews. Jeremy's view is that it's a mix of all of them, and that clients are already asking for more pre-bid engagement.
How should businesses bring AI into bidding?
Jeremy was clear that AI is a transformation, not a tool purchase. You can't just buy Bidscript (he is a board advisor to Bidscript, the season partner) or give everyone a Claude licence and hope for the best.
His recommended order:
Design the bid process for the modern era first, covering capture research, strategy, solution, storyboarding, writing, review and presentation preparation
Then choose the technology to enable it
Then put a communication plan and training in place so everyone knows the benefits case and how to use it
He compared it to CRM platforms like Dynamics and Salesforce, where adoption has always been low because most people use them as little more than a pipeline tool. The risk with AI is the same: people just paste the questions into Copilot and ask for an answer, without having thought through the solution that creates value for the client.
Julian added an important note on risk. Putting commercially sensitive client documents into an unsecured AI tool can cause serious problems, from insurance to credibility with your biggest client. Corporate versions of the tools help, but it is buyer beware. Jeremy agreed, noting that many large firms limit staff to Copilot for exactly that reason, while smaller, faster moving firms care less and are pushing ahead.
What are the three career paths for bid professionals?
Jeremy sees at least three options, and ideally you do a bit of all of them:
Go upstream and become a capture and key account management specialist
Become the best AI person you can, someone who gets the most out of the systems
Go downstream into preparing teams for presentations and competitive dialogue
His reasoning is that effort will move out of the middle. The bidding itself becomes more straightforward, while the value shifts to what happens before and after.
What is the one thing to take away?
The AI will be what it will be, and you do need to understand it. But the rules don't change. Understand procurement, understand what clients are doing and what's important to them and what they value, then come up with the most valuable solution to their problems. In Jeremy's words, if you do that, you will always win, and the rest is easy. Be client centric rather than bid and product centric.
What's next?
An AI powered bid writing training course, built around transformation rather than just prompts
A programme on client engagement and competitive dialogue
A possible community with Bidscript, with fortnightly calls and guest speakers, which is being explored
Power hour coaching calls, bookable through the Growth Ignition website
Quick answers
Will AI replace bid managers? Jeremy doesn't think the role changes wildly. AI helps you do it better, with more depth and quality, and he estimates roughly a 20% efficiency gain.
How should a business roll out AI for bidding? Treat it as a transformation. Design the process first, then choose the technology, then communicate and train people on it.
What career paths exist for bid professionals in the age of AI? Go upstream into capture and key account management, become an AI specialist, or go downstream into presentations and competitive dialogue. Ideally, do a bit of all three.
What is the best way to win bids? Be client centric. Understand what the client values and create the most valuable solution for them.
Transcript
Henley, Julian 7:49
Hi everybody. Today I've come to answer the questions of Jeremy on the Redview. My name is Julian Henry. I'm here, turn the microphone around. So those who don't know me, so I did a podcast several months ago where Jeremy came on, talked about growth ignition.
and you ship properties and this time around is to do an update on that story. Look at what's coming next, particularly for Jeremy, Growth Ignition, the bidding profession. So hi Jeremy, to your own podcast.
Jeremy Brim 8:21
Hello, to my own podcast. Hello, mate. Yes, thank you for doing this. So yeah, we probably should position, which should be that Julian and I are good mates and talk all the time, work stuff and non-work stuff. But yeah, it was probably time I realised that I'm talking about everybody else's businesses and what everybody else gets up to.
Henley, Julian 8:23
Yeah.
Sorry.
Jeremy Brim 8:42
But there's been quite a lot of positive change and some bumps in the road with what we get up to across our sort of group of family of businesses, particularly Growth Ignition and then New Street and things. So we should probably talk through some of that and hopefully some of it's useful to our audience.
Henley, Julian 8:50
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also allows you to reflect on some of the things that we talked about today as well, actually. So you can listen to it back and go, oh, yes, that's what I meant.
Jeremy Brim 9:04
Mm.
Yes, or I forgot to say this bit or whatever, probably.
Henley, Julian 9:08
I...
But.
Yeah, probably. Yeah, we'll do some, we'll do some post editor notes as well, so you can send those out afterwards when you listen it back. So, so anybody's missed our early conversation and probably some of the conversations that you've had with other people. Do you want to give us 60 seconds on how you find found your way into bidding and work winning?
Jeremy Brim 9:17
Yeah.
Yes, so I was really lucky early in my career. I grew up at Moochelle, the outsourcing business, bidding and winning lots of TUPE transfer outsourcing deals from local government and central government. Working for a guy who was my work dad that I call him Graham Keane, who's actually agreed to do an episode actually.
Henley, Julian 9:54
It.
Jeremy Brim 9:54
So we'll expand on this bit a lot more, some of the stories and things, but it was basically a really fantastic grounding. And you do find a lot of the people who are the sort of big dog leaders of bid teams and things did grow up at Capita and Norfolk Property Services and those sorts of firms bidding those deals. Because if you can bid a big TUPE transfer deal,
with UK public sector, you can basically bid and win anything in the world, really, because they're very constrained, very precise and big ticket stuff. And so I was just really lucky to grow up with a bunch of people who went on to be really successful and really good at it, like Graham and a few others, and got an excellent schooling in it.
Henley, Julian 10:35
Good. So, one of the things that we've talked about in the past is, and you've talked on the podcast and also presented on is around financial freedom. So, this thing about...
your walk away financial freedom for anybody who's doing it. So what's that mean to you in practice? Is it like a number? Is it control of your time? Is it choice of doing things you want to do or something totally different?
Jeremy Brim 11:01
So yeah, so when we were on your podcast a year or more ago, we talked about us, my wife and I having a North Star, didn't we? So Jules and I have been on this financial freedom journey for 14 years now. And what that means is that we've got into a place where we pay ourselves 50 grand each.
Henley, Julian 11:10
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 11:22
so that we're under the 40% tax barrier, not just for income tax, but that affects company car tax and capital gains and all sorts of things. So we're tax efficient. So we downsized from a big five bed house that we'd never really needed to a three bed semi when we relocated and things.
Henley, Julian 11:24
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 11:40
But basically what it's about is getting to a place where your monthly outgoings can be paid for passively through income from investments or other passive income, although there's never really, the dirty secret is nothing's ever actually truly passive. So what that means is you're making money when you're asleep.
Henley, Julian 11:51
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 12:00
you're basically hands off. And so everything we've earned over that 100K across everything that we do, we've been investing for 14 years in various things. So classic sort of S&P 500 stuff, stocks and shares stuff. And then we've done more interesting things like
funding supercar purchases, and then I had a partner that would sell those and we'd share the profits until we realised all our clients were Russian and they invaded Ukraine. So that was a bit of a shame. All of our clients suddenly left London. We've done some stuff in carbon offset.
And then more recently, as we'll come on to, we've started to invest in property in the northeast of England, Teesside in particular, which we deploy as serviced accommodation. And we'll unpack some of that in a bit, won't we?
Henley, Julian 12:51
Yep.
Yeah. And then I suppose, obviously, like you said, we recorded my podcast about a year ago. So what's changed most in that time and particularly around what you think about business risk and what success looks like?
Jeremy Brim 12:54
But.
Two.
Yeah.
Well, we've had, I mean, classically along that financial freedom journey, we've had some bumps in the road, a pandemic. Well, you know, we've had Brexit and then a pandemic. Jules and I had a slight change of strategy and decided it'd be a good idea to have a child, which, funnily enough, does change your financial freedom point.
Henley, Julian 13:30
I'll say that's yeah, fine spread gets pushed out to the to the right on that one.
Jeremy Brim 13:30
Um, that's...
Yeah. Well, so the North Star changed A lot. We'd review our team map of what we wanted life to look and feel like in five, 10 and 20 years time every couple of years. And that was what inspired our move to Leamington Spa from Cambridgeshire, because we wanted a better balance of access to stuff. And also just for me to be home by bath and bedtime from pretty much
Henley, Julian 13:42
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 13:55
most places in the country. So there's a lifestyle thing. So the vision really is about what we wanted our life to look and feel like. We wanted to, we wanted a life where it felt like we could be on holiday without going anywhere.
Henley, Julian 14:07
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 14:09
which we've kind of achieved really. And we also only work with people that we like, like you, and people that we want to help be successful. So, you know, we have a no ******** policy, which has been invoked the last year or so, actually. We've fired some clients.
because behaviours, integrity and a bit of fun is important to us. So, you know, that's kind of, we're constantly trying to find a balance of, yes, we've got to make money, although we don't need loads and loads of it, you know,
Henley, Julian 14:33
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 14:45
We've got to have a bit of fun and do stuff that we care about. So I focus on my clients. Jules has launched her self-defense stuff, partly because she wants to get away from a screen. She's been doing loads of marketing stuff. She wants to get out there a bit more human contact. So we've kind of invented a new business for her doing that, which is flying. So yes, it's about that having a vision of what you want your life to look and feel like. And then the business
Henley, Julian 14:48
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 15:10
are there to enable that, rather than waking up when we're 65 somewhere and realising this wasn't where we want to be, probably having killed ourselves a bit, making other people rich.
Henley, Julian 15:12
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I suppose looking back, if you could jump in DeLorean, because you haven't had a DeLorean yet. So if you, let's assume you purchase one next and you went back 14 years, having driven at 70 odd miles an hour and went back to the future, featured back to the past, what would you tell Jeremy
as a one lesson to learn.
that would put them on the right path or a different, I suppose it would be a different path actually if you're changing in the future, but what would you say is your one big lesson? Do you go, I wish I'd known that.
Jeremy Brim 16:01
Well, it's funny, I had a coffee with Sean Bradley, who runs a great big bit of Morgan Sindall the other day, who was client number one for Growth Ignition. He received invoice 001. And he asked me, am I glad I did it?
Henley, Julian 16:06
If.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 16:17
Because I could like you, so you know, you haven't really done your introduction of who you are and what you get up to these days, but you've got a big job at Drees and Summer on the UK board, earning lots of money, having a great time now. And I could have been doing the same thing. And I probably, gross, would have earned more money.
Henley, Julian 16:38
Mhm.
Jeremy Brim 16:39
and probably had a bigger standard pension than I've got. But then life's not all about money, is it? So we've had a really great time along the way. I quite enjoy the business development aspect of what I do and working with clients and being able to chop and change. And so it's not quite like I haven't got a
boss and have sort of relinquished that, although I haven't got a team. You know, my experience at Mace taught me that I'm not a very good line manager. I love developing people, but I want everyone to win and not everybody can. So I guess that the
Henley, Julian 17:14
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 17:18
The biggest lesson actually we've realised recently is we should have kept investing in our standard pension.
stuck a few 100 quid or a grand a month away in a standard pension as well as investing in the other stuff that we've done, because it all just snowballs up. Because we've had some bumps in the road, you know, I've screwed up on some stuff and lost some money and things. So, but generally speaking, invest, invest, invest. Because unfortunately for us and our kids and where the world is going,
Henley, Julian 17:37
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 17:49
you know, sort of compounded money talks.
Henley, Julian 17:53
Yeah, that's what it.
Jeremy Brim 17:54
Um, and so...
Henley, Julian 17:56
It's an interesting one. I think all those, I talked to them the other day, all those little changes and things that have happened in your life, they're all learning, good learning points actually. And just because you've tried them and they don't work, that's not a failure. It's just a learning point actually. And you then do something slightly differently or you would invest in
Jeremy Brim 18:05
Yeah, yeah.
Henley, Julian 18:17
Uhh...
Ferraris instead of Maseratis or something else.
Jeremy Brim 18:22
Well, yeah, probably we shouldn't do, yeah. So, well, the big conversation which, so Sean asked me, was I happy that I've done it? And I guess what I should have done was got much closer to my fire point, my financial freedom number, which is something like 2 million quid invested.
before I started pratting about. Whereas, but there's balances. So, you know, I've had a good time along the way, but I've pratted about a bit, said some stuff on LinkedIn I shouldn't have said. That's probably hurt the business a bit, if I'm honest. But I've tried to be a good person calling out poor behaviour.
Henley, Julian 18:48
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 19:01
and nobody else does it. But yeah, in hindsight, I should have got closer to being at that point where nothing matters and then tackling that sort of stuff rather than trying to do it along the way to a point maybe. I don't know. There's no right answers, though, is there? And we've had a lot of fun along the way. You know,
Henley, Julian 19:19
Costco.
Jeremy Brim 19:20
All of my, as I said to Sean, all of my problems are first world problems. I mean, I'm incredibly lucky. You make your own luck. And that's what I talk to a lot of business owners about that I work with and leaders. But yeah, you know, we've had a lot of fun. We're all right.
Henley, Julian 19:24
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's good. So one thing touched on earlier is round alongside Growth Edition, obviously you now run New Street Properties with Connor. So what is New Street Properties and why do you start choosing to invest in serviced accommodation?
Jeremy Brim 19:45
Mm.
Yeah, so Jules and I, our strategy had never included property actually, because we'd both owned property personally rather than in a limited company. I'd held up when we moved to our previous house in St. I kept my nice flat on the river there and rented that out.
and Jules had a little flat in Birmingham and she'd rented that out. And we'd had some bumps in the road. People tried to break into my flat and stuff, which is a bit of a pain. So we kind of just steered clear of property for quite a while. But then in terms of asset classes and things to invest in, it's difficult to ignore property.
So we've tried to create a vehicle which has the best returns for the least heartache, relatively speaking, and with some mechanisms in place to sort of soften the heartache, I guess, when it does happen. So basically, Connor Robinson, who's my business partner in New Street Properties, he owns 50% of the shares and my holding company owns the other
50% now. He reached out to me nearly three years ago now. He's in his late 20s. He had a job at a company which he wasn't really enjoying. And he's got a young family. His daughter was one at the time. I think she's 3 now.
And so he reached out to me initially for me to teach him how to write bids so he could start a little bidding consultancy.
And I loved that because there's a bit of entrepreneurial spirit in that. So he'd obviously picked up on my LinkedIn stuff or whatever and reached out to me for that. And so I happened to be away delivering a big training programme for weights at the time a lot. I was away from home like two, three nights a week for like 6, 8 weeks, I think it was.
So I said, look, mate, I'm going to be in hotels in Leeds or whatever board. So why don't we just, I'm not going to charge you any money for this because I liked the cut of his jib. And so I said, look, let's grab a call for an hour and a half a week for like a month or so. And I'll just teach you all this stuff and we'll see how we get on. So that's what we did. So I basically taught him
Henley, Julian 21:54
Mhm.
Jeremy Brim 22:06
my bid writing training programme with some bells and whistles on how to run a business and stuff around it. And I've done that recently, actually, for a couple of other young lads, Tristan and Vlad, sort of a bolt on of how to actually start a consulting business in this space, where to focus as well as the actual technical bidding stuff, because they're a year on in their business.
Henley, Julian 22:21
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 22:26
But during the conversations, I said to Connor, look mate, because he lives in Hartlepool in Teesside, and I'd just bought a house in Teesside as my pilot to build a property portfolio, made the classic mistake, I'd got triggered by a Instagram guru.
and invested in a house that was only, you know, you can buy a two bed house in the North East, particularly around Teesside for about 40 grand. So I thought it's a low barrier to entry to test this guy out that I was testing as a partner. I was going to invest in like 6 houses a year, recycling the money, doing them up, doubling the valuation, get your money back out, do it again and again.
Henley, Julian 23:00
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 23:06
And my partner, my Instagram guru partner that I'd selected for that wildly let me down. Classically, they were a bit of a crook, as many of those types can be. And so I said to Connor, firstly, if I lived where you lived, I'd look at this property stuff. You know, even if you just remortgage your own house, get 20 grand out, that's deposit money and some for...
Henley, Julian 23:27
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 23:27
stuff up there. So find, learn how to find properties below market value, you know, landlords looking to get out, etc. And then get the property, do a bit of work to it, refinance it, get your money out, do it again and again. And that's what I would do for your daughter if I was you. That's what I'm doing. And so we got into a conversation about, well, eventually about, well, why don't we just do this together?
So we use the money from Growth Ignition and my pension to buy properties. And then so Connor finds those properties through his network that he's built. So the business is a year and a month old. And it's had its bumps in the road and we've learned lessons as we go, but it's going really well now.
So we went through a phase of thinking at the start that we would build a big Instagram funnel of our own with a brand about being ethical and be the sort of anti-Instagram guru. But actually it's a lot of faff and the ad spend is quite big to get anywhere with it. And so actually we realised we're better off just finding a couple of investors to invest with us and finding the landlords that have got portfolios that want to exit.
Henley, Julian 24:18
Mhm.
Jeremy Brim 24:34
because there's a sort of generational thing coming that there's loads of landlords in their 50s and early 60s that have had their properties 15, 20 years. There's much more regulation now. The tax environment isn't great for them because they hold the properties personally. And so they just want to get out. And so we can help them out.
Henley, Julian 24:34
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 24:54
take their properties off their hands with a smooth transition, no messing about with lawyers and estate agents and things. And we take those properties and that now we realise there's a great synergy with my construction network.
Henley, Julian 24:57
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 25:09
There's lots and lots of stuff being built around Teesside. So a new nuclear power station, a carbon capture thing, perhaps a new football club, all sorts of regeneration going on, just in Hartlepool, really. So, and they don't have, we went for a meeting with the film studios the other day,
Henley, Julian 25:24
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 25:30
and they had like, you know, pretty well-known celebrities filming a new series of Adrian Mole staying in a Premier Inn or travelodge because there's not great accommodation in Hartlepool. So yeah, we're either buying and we're even renting properties from landlords now and putting them out as basically Airbnbs.
Henley, Julian 25:40
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 25:51
certainly for weekends and stuff, but during the week, they're largely let out to construction firms, supply chain, film studios, etc, etc. So we're building a portfolio doing that because it's quite profitable, relatively. Connor is on the ground there to run it. We've got some agents who are specialists in service accommodation that we're working with and learning from.
Henley, Julian 26:01
Nice.
Jeremy Brim 26:14
as well. So they've got all the back office, contact centre, offshored, which is quite interesting. But that's basically how we're going to create a business that makes enough profit in itself where I could not have to do anything else.
Henley, Julian 26:29
Yes, effectively the financial freedom stuff, the passive income.
Jeremy Brim 26:32
To a point, well, we'll hit that in two ways. So one, we should have a semi passive business with 20 odd properties that generates enough profit that we don't have to do anything else. Both families is the plan in like a year or two's time. But even if we don't quite get there, the revenue from the serviced accommodation stuff is paying the mortgages off. So
Henley, Julian 26:46
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 26:55
We've got the passive investment over time, the same as if we've done buy to let or stuff with social housing or whatever. So that's the plan.
Henley, Julian 26:57
Yeah.
Yeah.
As.
So is there anything that from running a property business, those has been, you could cross into running your growth ignition?
Jeremy Brim 27:17
Yeah, a couple of things. So you can't trust anyone on face value with anything. Unfortunately, we've been wildly let down by lawyers, funding agents, anyone we've engaged with, actual service accommodation agents.
Henley, Julian 27:33
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 27:34
There's a lot of ************. And so actually getting proper introductions to good partners and testing them. And so, you know, what is it? Trust, but verify.
is kind of the term we've kind of learned. So we've had some quite big bumps in the road with stuff letting us down. And what else? Do your homework as well. And you do your due diligence on things well, which I'm not naturally a detail orientated person. Unusually for a bidding person, I have to kind of force myself
to do that. And it's helpful that Connor is there and he's got a law degree quite detail oriented or more detail oriented than me. So I guess finding people that fit your weaknesses and all of that. So we're a proper team between me, him and Jules. We, because my wife does has some activity in the business on marketing brand.
Henley, Julian 28:22
Mhm.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 28:33
And try, we, so we have weekly catch up meetings, the three of us, to keep us on beat. And we tend to cover each other's weaknesses, because I get very excited about things. Yeah, let's go and do that. Jules is more grown up and sensible and thoughtful about, you know, ramifications and things. And Connor is on the ground and in the detail on things. So we sort of help each other out. So yeah, think about fit.
Do your homework, trust, but verify, I would say.
Henley, Julian 28:58
Nice, nice. So one of the things that obviously over the last
I'd say six months, maybe a year, you've talked around the proliferation of AI into bidding. And obviously, this is a, I suppose, new ship properties, a slight diversification away from growth, traditional growth ignition. So do you think it'd be quite interesting to explore some of that a little bit more? So
Jeremy Brim 29:12
Mm.
Henley, Julian 29:24
Do you think if you take the traditional bid role, is that role likely to disappear, reduce, and which parts of it will remain?
Jeremy Brim 29:31
Ohh.
So I guess the first building block is what does Growth Ignition actually do? So Growth Ignition is largely me because I don't want to have loads of staff. And it's very difficult to find good people to work with because and if they're any good, they go and get a big job or they have their own business anyway.
Henley, Julian 29:49
Yep.
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 29:59
So one of the things I've reflected on actually through, because the business is 8 years old now. And so we've learned a lot and sort of grown up a lot. It's interesting when you compare us to, you know, John Williams and strategic proposals and the other partners there who are 20 odd years old and
our relationship with Bid Solutions and Martin Smith, whose business is like 25 years old, I think. But there's reasons why some of those businesses were not doing some stuff that I tried, and it's because they'd tried it before. So they're all a bit further along. So we're now that bit further along where we've tried things, made mistakes.
Henley, Julian 30:30
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 30:38
learnt lessons, understood things better, etc. We've been on a real journey. So I guess how Growth Ignition is, so I do bring partners in to work on stuff. I've been, the business has changed a lot in the last five years, but particularly the last year.
because I've realised a couple of things, I guess, in how best to enjoy myself and to grow the business and revenue and things. So
Yeah, so the business is a transformation and training business predominantly. And I wish there were less finance bro terms than transformation, change consultants, I guess. So
Henley, Julian 31:18
Mhm.
Jeremy Brim 31:23
But fundamentally, the biggest problem I have is that most businesses, and I mean like 98% of UK business to business or business to government organisations, are still pretty immature.
Henley, Julian 31:36
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 31:37
in their approach. And I've learned actually in the last year what some of the source code is to that. And it's that nobody teaches their leaders our stuff at any point in their career. So I'm constantly trying to sell to people who have grown up by doing in terms of winning work and growing businesses.
Henley, Julian 31:41
I.
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 31:57
And for many, many years, most organisations, whether it's consultancies in construction like yours, or whether it's the big builders of 1 type or another, traditionally, you just get on some public sector frameworks and just bid most things that come through them and you'd be all right.
And you could scale. But what the problem is, they were scaling fairly mediocre businesses with a bigger risk profile hidden in them by doing that. And the game of procurement has changed as well. So not just with new procurement act, it was kind of coming anyway. But sorry, I've forgotten to turn off my
doorbell noises when people are sending me emails and things. I put my phone on do not disturb, but somehow the computer's not, apologies for that. So, yeah, nobody teaches chief execs, managing directors, commercial directors, etc. what a funnel is or a client journey we should call it now following my episode of AO.
You know, so they don't understand the linkage between business planning, market research, business planning, targeting, dream list, marketing, key account management, capture, they've mostly never heard of capture, bidding, and then client experience and how to loop that round. And, you know, as we've talked about on every episode of the podcast this season, you know, every client that I touch, they're
Henley, Julian 33:07
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 33:19
making 80% of their profit from 20% of their clients. They're highly concentrated. And there's reasons for that that we've talked about in many of the other episodes. So I've needed to change growth. I would love to deal with the strategy stuff all day long, every day, but most people don't realise that's a problem.
Second base would be, I'd love to do capture stuff and cam stuff all day, every day, but most people don't know that's a thing in terms of leadership of businesses. Might the audience for this largely, BD, bidding people, salespeople, etc. know this, but they struggle to get their leaders bought into the sort of construct mostly. So
I'm having to review people's bids and do bid training and all of that kind of stuff in the end game to get access to go have the conversation about, well, actually the reason why you weren't very good at this is because you need to think about this stuff earlier on.
Henley, Julian 34:15
Is is, I suppose, from a...
a business perspective.
AI is disrupting all that now.
So effectively, it is creating, yeah, it's great, well, it's creating some disruption in, well, there's two ways. People are either churning out more mundane, boring bits, you can just do more, or are
Jeremy Brim 34:29
You would think so.
Henley, Julian 34:48
they are writing excellent bids, but then everyone looks quite vanilla, I suppose. And I know you've touched on it a little bit around, particularly for clients where they're receiving this in a year's time where
Jeremy Brim 34:54
Mm.
Henley, Julian 35:08
Generative AI is producing.
excellent bids for everyone, never gets 10 out of 10. There must be something that allows clients to make a meaningful differentiation between those. Is it something that actually, one, is it that actually the bid team needs to put that personal human element on it?
Jeremy Brim 35:22
Mm.
Henley, Julian 35:32
Is it actually clients need to be more informed around how they evaluate and say, no AI and we'll check? Or is actually they need to go to a more, like I think you've said in past presentation, competitive dialogue interview?
Jeremy Brim 35:50
It's a mix of those things. So I'm a bit conscious we've sort of talked about me and the business selfishly from a, I need to make loads of money so I can retire and whatever. Yeah, yeah, but actually that's kind of secondary to, I always say to my clients, and I do need to do what I preach more.
Henley, Julian 35:58
Sure, sure, podcast though, so you can talk about what you want.
What?
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 36:10
which has been a big lesson this year. So actually, it all comes back to what clients value and turning the volume up on that. So what we're very focused on at the moment with Growth Ignition is how do we create the most value for our clients that they value? I've got a slight problem that very often they don't understand it.
Henley, Julian 36:20
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 36:32
but I've got to find ways to opening their eyes to how we can value it. Because I've worked, people don't believe me quite often, but I've doubled the profits of six businesses or business units in two to three-year windows by cutting their tail and finding more clients that fit their DNA of what good profit looks like.
Henley, Julian 36:35
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 36:52
So where they're making money, where their people are happy and the client's happy, it's actually as simple as that. So the AI thing, so you know, because we talk about it quite a lot, I had hoped that my investments and things would mean that I could drift off before AI killed the business.
And I could say, I should say, I'm never going to stop working, I'm afraid. So my relentless LinkedIn videos and all of that isn't going to go away, I'm afraid, gang. Because I've learned lots of lessons from my father, who was exited from his business that he owned with some partners and some PE people abruptly a year earlier than he thought. And he didn't have a retirement plan in place.
Henley, Julian 37:15
And.
Jeremy Brim 37:32
It was quite a sort of disgusting, awful period. Their behaviours towards him were really poor and he took it very personally, sort of hurt him. And so he kind of bumbled into a retirement and stopped working immediately and didn't really give back. Whereas he could, so he was a finance director,
Henley, Julian 37:49
Mhm.
Jeremy Brim 37:52
he could have given back to SMEs and charities and all sorts of stuff. And he was busy fighting his case to get his money out of the business and then sort of the angst from that. And so I've learned a lot of lessons from his experience, my parents' experience, and we've both learned a lot of lessons from Jules' parents, their experience.
They move to Crete but live in the middle of nowhere, a bit of a difficult place to get to. What does that mean for their kids, etc. So we're trying to figure out our own path as to what we want life to look like for us and particularly for Juno later on. But fundamentally, if we try and find the middle of a Venn diagram of where we create the most value for our clients possible,
Henley, Julian 38:14
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 38:36
and we're just asking for a share of that value in return whilst having some fun and working with some nice people along the way. That's what Utopia looks like to me. But that's also how it works for our clients. If they focus on solution,
You and I were talking before we started recording about a capture job that's in the market at the moment, which I blew a bit of smoke up and did a post on, because they've got solution development in the middle of the job description. It's the first capture job I've seen with that at all or that strongly, when that's how you really
Henley, Julian 38:55
Right.
Jeremy Brim 39:10
build fantastic relationships with clients and win deals, ideally through direct award and never have to tender the thing is by, you know, having the most valuable solutions in value that client's value. So you're going to save them money, you're going to save them time or something else tangible. You're going to create more jobs, save them more carbon,
or a mix of those things, whatever it is they care about. So ultimately, if we focus on that first, AI and the rest of it, so I'd hoped I'd been able to outrun AI, but in reality, I'm not. It's come faster and harder than I'd hoped. And our investments aren't where I need to be to be able to just drift off into public speaking or whatever it is I fancy doing. So
Henley, Julian 39:33
OK, so...
Jeremy Brim 39:51
I'm kind of stuck with it for three to five years probably.
Henley, Julian 39:55
Is it fair to say though that as much as...
You've, well, and we've talked around the AI is the potentially death of the bid manager or bid writer actually.
The reality is, it's here, we've talked about, we've shared some learning that we've both done individually. Actually, it can be additive to what you do as a person, you do as a business, both personally and professionally. And actually, it's just understanding how to do it properly.
Jeremy Brim 40:31
Mm.
Henley, Julian 40:34
and embracing it and pivoting a little bit and not going, well, I'm just going to continue to do it. And I think the other thing that you did touch on briefly as well is that there is a, as much as we think that AI and I suppose like when COVID came along and everyone went on to virtual stuff,
Everyone, we always think people are a lot more mature than they actually are. Reality is that people use AI for Google searches more than anything, probably, and actually aren't sophisticated enough. And I suppose this is both a
Jeremy Brim 40:58
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a big thing.
Henley, Julian 41:11
both your clients and their clients, the ultimate buyers. So I think what the interesting bit, and actually I'm teeing this up quite nicely about one, about bidding course that's like AI enabled or something.
Jeremy Brim 41:16
Yes.
Yay!
I guess that's yeah, so I've...
I've got friends that are doing stuff in the AI space. I am a non-exec director for a board advisor for BidScript, who are one of the AI enabled professional big bidding platforms. But then I have friends who are specialists and experts in how you leverage Co-Pilot and even SharePoint more effectively.
like Michelle B, for instance, in that space. I've got friends that are expert in Claude and that environment and how you leverage that, like Jack Strickland is rocketing down that pathway. But you're right.
So I'm not an AI expert and I can't profess to be. I am learning a lot and engaged a lot, but I do, there's two things going for me. One, I grew up in management consulting led consulting businesses that were about proper transformation, of which enabling technology is always a part, but not the answer on its own.
And so first of all, so yes, I've developed a AI powered bid writing training course, but it's not, it's got, you know, you could do these prompts and things. But actually, first point of principle is 2 things. One, it's about a transformation. So you can't just go and buy bid script or
get everyone a Claude license. What I'm finding is the reason why I've done it is clients, my clients have come to me and said, Jezza, we've started fanning around with Co-Pilot or Claude or something, or worse, ChatGPT, and we've started to have some results and then got lost.
in it. How do we actually leverage this effectively? Because we've kind of got, we've just, we just lost. And so part of the reason for that is they've not treated it like a proper transformation and actually designed what they're trying, their bid process and how they want that to work in the modern era first.
and then the technology to enable that and then a communication plan to communicate that and train people in it effectively so that everyone knows what the benefits case is, what it's about and how to use it. So it's only, it's exactly the same as CRM platforms. So the adoption of Dynamics and Salesforce and all of that stuff
Henley, Julian 43:40
Yep.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 43:49
Is heroically low, you know, and always has been, because they are.
an IT person's dream of what a salesperson needs.
They're very, and I know you'll tell me off because they have moved on a lot in recent years and things, but generally speaking still, most people use their deployment of Salesforce or Dynamics as just a pipeline tool and governance gateway stuff. They're not actually using it. I've seen a couple of clients using Power BI as a dashboard over it.
Henley, Julian 44:20
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy Brim 44:22
but kind of getting lost in that and not actually using the insight properly. It's just that they might as well just have a spreadsheet. There's no point.
Henley, Julian 44:28
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 44:30
And we're at big risk of AI being the same in bidding, for instance, as one set of use cases, because people are just bunging the questions. And maybe if you're lucky, the spec into co-pilot and saying, write me an answer to that. And that's cool, apart from they haven't thought through what their solution is that will create the value for the client and how to articulate that. So you need to develop a
Henley, Julian 44:30
Is.
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Brim 44:54
a bid process for the modern era that still represents what we've been doing for 25 years, which is capture research, strategy, solution, storyboarding, yes, write the stuff, but then how do you use the tools to help you effectively review the stuff? And then how do you help
get it to help you prepare for presentations and all of that kind of stuff. So it's how do you string together a series of use cases or procure a platform like BidScript that does a lot of that in one place in an auditable fashion in a proper information security environment, which is a big thing.
Henley, Julian 45:17
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 45:33
lots of people putting client tender documents and sensitive stuff into ChatGPT and then it turns up somewhere else. There's been a couple of firms have some quite big information security breaches in the last month from exactly that. So it's how do we do this sensibly, create the right environment for it where the technology is an enabler and a sidearm to us?
Henley, Julian 45:45
Yep.
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 45:56
So then the...
Where do humans fit in this? The role of the bid manager doesn't change wildly. It's that the technology enables you to do it better. So I'm not sure. I need to get into this stuff a lot more and get some data from clients and things, but I reckon it only makes you about 20% faster or more efficient.
Henley, Julian 46:07
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 46:18
I think it actually just makes you better with a much better depth of insight and quality of content in the end, if you use it effectively. So it is funny, lots of people sort of talk about how co-pilot sounds a bit American and the way that it writes isn't human and all that sort of stuff. I think if you're worrying about that
Henley, Julian 46:26
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 46:38
bit, you've got much bigger problems. Because you haven't, and yes, you can sort of train it. And the other dirty secret at the moment, which is fascinating, talking to Paul Michael from Pegasus about this, I've recorded a podcast with him last week about selling consultancy businesses, how to value them and all that sort of stuff.
And we were talking in it, but around the recording about AI and its impact on business generally. And the dirty secret is the big firms are terrified. So we're finding the biggest businesses, their IT and information security companies are only allowing their staff to have co-pilot.
and maybe not a premium license. So you can only do so much with that. You've got a chat if it loses itself in the chat and blah, blah, blah. I get it that they want a secure 27,001 environment and their people not to do anything silly because, you know, it's big.
brand critical stuff if you did have a big problem. But actually, you know, Claude is a lot better for starters.
Henley, Julian 47:48
Yeah, but Claude, OpenAI, et cetera, et cetera, are, they all do different things for different people. I think part of the, from a corporate perspective,
Jeremy Brim 47:57
Yeah.
Henley, Julian 48:03
is people will try, always try and do what they think is the right thing to be more efficient and more effective. But there's always that danger of a document goes or somebody thinks they're doing the right thing, puts a client document, a commercially sensitive document, commercially sensitive information about the business.
onto Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, and it's out in the world. You can't get it back. It's, and I think there is a...
Jeremy Brim 48:30
Yeah.
Henley, Julian 48:33
there's an insurance risk there. There's a risk around credibility, because obviously if you open up Pandora's box and go, well, if you've done it once, you must have done it again. I don't really trust what your outcome is. So I can see there's a
People use, and I use Gemini and I use Claude in my personal life and use Copilot in my work life. And there is ways of potentially using both, but there is an inherent risk for a business who's got commercial information and stuff of putting that into.
Jeremy Brim 49:04
Yeah.
Henley, Julian 49:09
something which is less restricted. You can, I think you can buy, you can buy Gemini corporate one, you can buy Claude corporate. So it effectively puts it into a barrier, but I agree in terms of that. Co-pilot is good, but it's limited. And they're like all the other ones are as well.
Jeremy Brim 49:25
Yeah.
Yeah, no, they are. And I get all of that. It's just smaller, medium sized consultancies care about that stuff less. And they may well have big hiccups at some point, but they are thrusting forward faster.
Henley, Julian 49:38
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, I agree with that. But you hit one bump in the road and actually a client finds out that you've got their information appears in the World Wide Web somewhere and that's the last job you're going to do with them. And if that's your biggest client, that's a fairly big risk to take. It's just, it's like all these things, it's a buyer beware.
Jeremy Brim 49:54
Yay.
Yeah, it is.
Henley, Julian 50:01
Like everything in life really, there is shortcuts for everything. You can go around speeding up and down the motorways, but at some point you might get caught.
Jeremy Brim 50:04
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's true. So, yeah, basically, we've developed two things to help the bidding community out, I guess. One is an AI powered bid training program, which talks through all of that.
Henley, Julian 50:26
Yep.
Jeremy Brim 50:26
construct and transformation and the different ways you can use tools through a bid process. There's a conversation going on with BidScript about do we spin up a community with fortnightly calls where people, everyone we train and all of their clients can be in one online environment and interact with each other about what they're finding and how to do stuff and then have a sort of fortnightly
We call where we get a speaker to come and talk about the latest we've found with prompts or whatever it is, or SharePoint agents or whatever it might be. And then the other thing is we've developed a programme around how to interact with clients and particularly for competitive dialogue. Because this AI thing is creating, like you say, clients are finding lots of bids are very similar.
Henley, Julian 50:55
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 51:14
So they're kind of asking for more pre-bid engagement. So how do you do that effectively? And then even using the new competitive procedure under the new procurement act, they're designing new slash slightly rubbish competitive dialogue approaches, which is the space. So I guess to answer the question from ages ago, because we've gone around the houses a bit,
Henley, Julian 51:16
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 51:33
What does bidding look like? So I think there's three options at least. So one is that you go upstream and become a capture and a cam person, etc. Another option is you become the greatest AI person ever and understand how to get the best out of the systems.
Henley, Julian 51:42
Mm.
Jeremy Brim 51:52
And then the other option is you go downstream and get into preparing teams for presentations, competitive dialogue and all of that kind of stuff. Because I think the efforts will go out of up and down line. The bidding bit will become more straightforward relatively. But so it's a mix of those three things where you take, you know, you try and do all three.
Henley, Julian 52:02
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You sort of, you sort of, because that was my final question to you is what was one thing you'd give our listeners, our listeners, your listeners, not my podcast, your listeners as a takeaway to build their bidding, work winning, capture career in a
Jeremy Brim 52:13
And...
Henley, Julian 52:31
A age of AI, I suppose it's...
Except it's here, and...
Jeremy Brim 52:36
Mm.
Henley, Julian 52:37
and lean into it, I guess, isn't it?
Jeremy Brim 52:40
Yeah, yeah. Well, the AI bit itself will be what it will be. And yeah, you've got to be an expert in that and understand it as best as we can. But actually, the rules don't change in that understand procurement and what clients are doing and what's important to them and what they value.
Henley, Julian 52:59
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 52:59
and you will always win.
Henley, Julian 53:01
Yeah.
Jeremy Brim 53:02
If you can come up with the most valuable solutions that solve their problems and create more value for them that they value.
The rest is easy.
Henley, Julian 53:10
How hard can it be?
Jeremy Brim 53:13
That is challenging and obviously I can teach you how to do that. I've got a capture course. But and or can do power hour calls. People are very welcome to book a power hour with me through the website and we can coach them through this stuff. But yeah, no, it's being client-centric rather than bid and product-centric.
Henley, Julian 53:14
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Brim 53:34
will always be the winner.
Henley, Julian 53:35
Yeah, perfect. Right, so I think that probably brings us quite nicely to the end. So thank you for being appearing on your own podcast. Hope it wasn't too difficult. Hope my Jeremy Paxman-esque questioning wasn't too difficult. I thought, that's right.
Jeremy Brim 53:44
Open.
Yeah.
No, thank you for doing it, mate. As we said, you've got to come on and talk about what you're up to and teach some people some things at some point as well, or maybe guest in a bit.
Henley, Julian 53:57
Yeah, and I people have asked me if I'm going to do another another new podcast, so I might still do that as well in the future, because it's quite fun. I quite enjoy it. So, but we'll see. So, for every all the listeners, so if anybody wants to know anything more about
Jeremy Brim 54:07
Mm.
His name?
Repeat.
Henley, Julian 54:16
Jeremy, follow him on LinkedIn. Feel free if you're going on LinkedIn, follow me as well or connect with me. I'm like a honey pot server, clicks on my profile, that's it, instantly connected, regardless of whoever you are. Anybody wants to know anything more about Jeremy's courses, a bit more information, then go to Growth Ignition.
www..growthignition.co.uk. Don't get that confused. I know I did have to look on the internet just in case there are some other growth ignitions. I thought that's American. That's not the right one. So I found that right one. Thank you. Bidscript is a seasoned partner as well. And then last thing for me to do is hand back to you, Jeremy.
Jeremy Brim 54:41
You got it right? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Henley, Julian 54:56
to take over the last bit of your podcast.
Jeremy Brim 54:59
Yeah, no, thank you very much, Julian. And like I say, Julian's well worth following anyway for this stuff, because he's, we're getting to that point in life, mate, where we need to give back, don't we? And you've got, like I say, you'll have to come on because you've got a really exciting new role at Drees and Summer growing that business in the UK. I think you've got one of the most exciting jobs in the UK in the world of winning work, actually. So it'll be people
Henley, Julian 55:00
I'm sorry.
Jeremy Brim 55:24
should follow you to see the journey, actually. So we'll talk about that another time. But thank you very much, mate. We'll see you next month. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, bye.
Henley, Julian 55:28
Yeah, that's fine. That's right, no problem. Yeah, cheers then. Cheers, bye.
Jeremy Brim 55:35
Thank you, mate. Yeah, yeah. Appreciate it. Very good.