The Red Review - Where does AI leave us humans in winning work?

Jeremy talks with bid professional and AI enthusiast Michelle Bee about the growing role of AI in winning work and bid writing, exploring what this means for the future of bidding professionals.

Find Michelle on LinkedIn - Michelle bee

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Transcript

[00:00.9]

Welcome to the Red Review with me, Jeremy Brim. The Red Review is brought to you by Growth Ignition, the transformation and capability development business, all in the work winning space and the bid toolkit, its product set in bid process and training videos. Hello and welcome to the Red Review with me, Jeremy Brim.

[00:21.8]

An interesting chat this week. So different to what we talked about before. Everyone's talking about AI in the world of winning work and particularly bids and proposal writing. But a topic that I've tried to prod others on, who are in the space technology providers, consultants in the space, but they don't really want to dive into is what it means for us humans.

[00:48.2]

And the bit that I'm interested in. So, I'm welcoming along my friend Michelle B, who's a bit of an advocate in this space, to have a bit of a chat. Hello, Michelle. Hello. I'm just really happy to be here. So, thank you for having me on.

[01:04.0]

I've been a long time fan of yours, Jeremy, I have to say. Oh, don't start. So I'm wonderful wallpaper by the way. We've had the conversation about, so sorry for the, the audio listeners, but Michelle's got some lovely wallpaper. So, so first of all, Michelle, we just wanted to touch on.

[01:22.6]

Off camera, off recording. We were just talking about the fact that you would never have come on a podcast or something like this a year ago. No. So what's that journey been like? It's been quite. I made the kind of leap to get out of the little box that I'd made for myself.

[01:43.5]

I used to never like speaking in public. Whenever I did kickoff calls, I used to try and just get them out of the way as quick as possible. But I'm slowly learning to, the irony is to come out of Michelle, get it.

[02:01.2]

So, yeah. Oh dear, that was bad. Sorry. So, yeah, I'm slowly learning that something that you're scared of you just have to face head on and get on with it. So I suppose, you know, coming on here, I'd never even have thought about it.

[02:20.0]

I volunteered to do a speech on authenticity in the age of AI for apmp. So that's happening next month. So that'll be the first time I'll have ever stood up in front of lots of people. And so I feel like, you know, the more I do, the easier it gets.

[02:37.5]

So I'm kind of getting into stoicism recently and I've been reading about, you know, you should go to the uncomfortable places because that's where growth happens. So, you know that being on here is a part of that journey for me.

[02:54.9]

It is. Well, I'm glad to play a little part in that because we've become LinkedIn buddies, haven't we? I appreciate the content you put out on LinkedIn and on AI and other bidding subjects from a different standpoint. A vendor agnostic, you know, you're not pushing a product or something.

[03:12.2]

You're just talking about life as a bidding person and these tools. So, now I've appreciated that and it's worth, you know, it's been interesting. We're, we're rebuilding our marketing funnel at the moment, which I think you and I have talked about a little bit. You know, I'm gonna have to do more videos and stuff on LinkedIn myself, but I'm, I'm much less afraid of the sound of my own voice than you are, obviously.

[03:36.6]

And so we do, we're doing more of that kind of stuff and email campaigns and blogs and all sorts of things. And in studying that it is becoming apparent. But personal brand is kind of the future in where AI takes away much of the other workload for us or emphasis for us, your personal brand and communication skills, are, becoming ever more important.

[04:04.1]

And so, I did think of you actually and I, was looking at some of this stuff. There's a guy called Daniel Priestley who was on Diary of a CEO podcast, about a month ago talking about this kind of subject. That's worth a look. I know the Diary of a CEO podcast are a little bit contentious because some of the health stuff on there is a bit, bit ropey.

[04:23.7]

But actually looking into this stuff from Art, it's just quite interesting from a winning work perspective from how you build a business and a brand perspective, it's worth looking at. So for instance, he said, in his book that I've had a look at that you've got to engage people for four hours, across 11 platforms.

[04:50.6]

Sorry, four hours across 11 interactions across four platforms before they'll buy from you or engage with you. So that's why I have a podcast and put videos and stuff like that because I need to hit the four hours before someone will, you know, answer my call.

[05:05.9]

That's just so much work really. You know, obviously I work for a business so I don't have to be concerned by that. You know, I'm just, I Think my focus is I love words, I love writing. I've always been obsessed with how words can change people's minds.

[05:25.2]

You know, I came into bids from, Well, I used to be a songwriter and a poet and then I used to do, kind of temporary contract work in London and I used to work as a kind of standing executive assistant to CEOs in massive companies.

[05:45.8]

And some of that I touched on proposals and I always got told, you're really good at this. So I think that was my route into bids, which is very unconventional, but I don't think anyone has a conventional route into bids these days.

[06:02.2]

No, it's part of our problem or challenge. I know, our association for our Discipline have started some work in this space trying to make it an intentional career path, but that will take a decade. And, their actual penetration or of our discipline is tiny.

[06:19.0]

They, they reach about 7% of the bidding professionals in the world. So it's, you know, it's interesting. I've. I've been, tasked with writing an article for BQ for, Bid Solutions for Martin Smith. I was with him the other day and I said the theme of it is coming of age.

[06:36.2]

And, you know, his challenge to all of the 25 writers of the various articles is that, you know, the article needs to be about how our discipline is going from adolescence to adulthood. And I said to him the other day, it's not, mate. I mean, we'll have the chat about AI and stuff in a minute and it's positive, negative disruption.

[06:54.7]

But, you know, in reality I do at least two maturity benchmarking sessions with leadership teams of businesses a month. And we do a load of work with Department for Business and Trade, webinars for UK businesses, largely SMEs, but bigger ones too, in how they go and win work abroad particularly.

[07:15.4]

But how they generally grow their business, doing stuff with help to grow and things. And the immaturity is still quite, quite worrying, to the point where we're, we're writing a paper to the department at the moment showing them some of the stats we've found, because it's not maybe us bidding people are getting more mature in this, developing ourselves, slightly broad, broadening our sphere of influence.

[07:39.8]

I'm certainly seeing more people talking about capture. It's still tiny, but it's twice as much as two years ago. So the trend is good, but it's, you know, tiny. But in reality, UK businesses are still, you know, their win rates are well sub 40% on average.

[07:57.2]

And sub 20% for SMEs. It's really bad. I've worked for a massive global business and they just understood bids in a way that was just extremely encouraging.

[08:15.7]

You know they had, there was probably about 20 people in proposals and I worked across the EMEA region, but I connect with the US colleagues all the time and they were so far ahead in how well embedded the bid function was in the business.

[08:34.8]

And I think the maturity levels depend on whether there's a massive chunk of the business being won by RFPs or not. If they're still very much just winning business directly and only maybe 20% of the business is won through competitive bidding, then the maturity level is not going to be there because it doesn't maybe need to be.

[08:59.1]

That's a theory that's emerging in my mind. But where you've got a business that, you know, we wouldn't touch anything that would be under 10 million, then RFPs are 100% of how we win business.

[09:14.8]

Everyone is engaged. The process is incredible. The skill and the standard of all the SMEs are you know, all that's there. And the maturity is very much there. So part of me thinks is it a, is it dependent on that as a factor?

[09:33.0]

I don't know what you, you think to that. It is part of it. That's really interesting. So we find on average that the more intelligent the people that are involved, the more qualified they are, the more complex the thing that you're selling is.

[09:50.8]

Actually the worse they tend to be at bidding. Architects rubbish at it, wonderful people. But you ask them for a case study and they send you a picture with a project name and a value at the bottom. Nothing about why that, you know, what the challenges were or whatever.

[10:08.9]

So that's another an aligned dynamic because I think you would win more work negotiated and direct awarded at a, lower value. But that's simple than you would the big complex thing. So I think complexity is another dynamic.

[10:26.5]

I I think level of competition is a dynamic. The more competitive and market the better people tend to be at bidding. It's got to be the top one, hasn't it? Contract value, it's up there but that, that marries in with clients and their governance and therefore needing to bid things.

[10:43.9]

So yeah, I need to do some more, more work on that. I mean certainly we're doing lots of work with clients at the moment. You know, I've got a board meeting of a 1.1 billion pound business at the End of this month talking them through how to grow their business. And they're not alone.

[11:01.1]

I think we're on our 10th client in the last year or so where and I think it's 17 clients in the last two years where around 80% of their margin is coming from around 20% of their clients. And if you sit and think about that for a minute, that's crazy, isn't it?

[11:18.1]

It's a scary proposition that really. Yeah, they have a very long tail of clients that are one hit wonders or smaller clients. But what we tend, what the, the work I've been doing recently is on why and so or certainly what are what's in the clients where we make most of our profits and what we find is apart from the fact they tend to be some of the bigger clients, they also tend to be the clients that engage you early, that have a good, well run procurement process with good collaboration, engagement, perhaps co solutioning, that kind of stuff.

[11:54.7]

But also that our people like working with them and that the work is accessible, they've not got to travel great distances or go to places in the middle of nowhere so much. The health and safety stats in construction tend to be better because you're working with clients that are more collaborative and not forcing you to work on a Saturday morning because you're behind programme or whatever it is.

[12:19.0]

Your staff tend to stay longer if they're working with clients that engage you earlier and where you're doing better. Whereas the opposite is true in the tail. If you get your staff to work with clients that are engaging you late punting out surprise tenders, you're winning those tenders on price, not quality.

[12:39.3]

And then the projects or delivery itself isn't going so well. Well, your people are more likely to leave, they're more likely to have health and safety incidents. Their wellbeing is not going to be as good, the client feedback isn't as good, your staff satisfaction isn't as good. So what we're finding is that businesses are all self fulfilling prophecies.

[13:00.2]

It's all about patterns and analytics and seeing those patterns and directing your efforts towards where you can maximise the return. And it's not just about profitability, profits and outcome. It's what I'm having to coach people is it's about the value you can create for those clients and then we're just asking for a share of that value back in return so everyone wins.

[13:24.0]

If we can do more, more and more deals with that intent you'll, you'll tend to be much more successful. Absolutely. I think it all matters. Oh, sorry. We're going down a rabbit hole, aren't we? We're going down a rabbit hole of trying to. We understand why there's a lack of maturity in bid functions in the uk, but I do wonder whether there's differences between some parts of the US Seem to be really all over it, like much more mature and I have, I do know a few people working in capture who have been working in capture for a long while.

[14:00.1]

In the uk. Yeah. You're mixing your drinks. There's a. I am. There's a. Yeah, there's a few points in that. So to unpack. So there are obviously. So I would argue actually the UK on average is the most mature country in the world at bidding.

[14:16.8]

Really? Yes, because we are compliance driven people, we queue up for things, we follow the rules, health and safety, etc. So we're very good at, breaking questions down, answering questions, etc, on average, although the average point is low.

[14:32.2]

So that we do have in the top 10% of businesses, real high performance in the bidding stage. Yeah. What you're missing, where you're mixing your drinks is the capture stage before the bid comes out. So the Americans, I've talked about this loads, the Americans are far more advanced only on the east coast, around DC, New York, etc.

[14:52.4]

West coast and Texas and stuff like that are fairly immature. But where federal government is involved in potential particular, gov.com or whatever it is, you know, there tends to be quite high levels of maturity in capture and we are definitely a lot less mature on capture in, on average.

[15:10.0]

So, yeah, if it's a green, if it was a greenfield opportunity, if a bid came out tomorrow by surprise and no one knew it was coming, I would back a UK business to be anyone. But if, if it was that deal was going to come out in 18 months time, I would back an American heritage business at least to do a better job of capture position for it and certainly have a higher propensity to negotiate or have direct award.

[15:35.5]

So that's that there's two different dynamics going on there at once. But it is, it is improving. But the surveys that you see from big, you know, some of the big AI or bid platforms talking about maturity and things, it's really warped because they're only dealing with fairly mature companies in the first place.

[15:55.2]

Who would even know that they exist or that it's a thing. The deal with the companies that I work with hundreds of them through Department of business and trade SMEs, or actually it's up to companies with a thousand people, we have found, is the cut off of severe immaturity. If you're below a thousand people, you tend to be fairly immature.

[16:13.4]

Yeah, but anyway, so, but, so where does. So AI is interesting. Yeah. We've done. We did a webinar with Daryl Woodward last year, early last year, I think, about what AI is in our, in our context.

[16:31.0]

And he had some very good wise counsel, around platforms and how to engage them. I did a podcast recently with Javier, about the marketplace and you know, he's. He's got a.

[16:46.1]

He. It was a bit more biassed because he's got his own technology platform, although a very level person with quite a different proposition. So he was talking about private equity money in this space. Yeah, you know, how the big businesses are driven, where things might go. But the conversation that's missing in the context of what we've just talked about in terms of maturity and big teams and our place in the world is what AI means for us.

[17:10.8]

And I think you're the only person I've seen that's talking about this because everyone else is hooked in with a vendor or doesn't want to piss them off, whereas you've been playing around with this, doing some research and then taking it quite seriously recently. So, we're going to do a blog post on this that will go out in, a week's time.

[17:29.7]

But give me the headlines, Michelle, of what you've. Your journey with AI and then what you're finding from a human perspective and what it means for us. Yes. So I suppose I'd be described as, an expert beginner with AI and maybe I'm An early adopter of kind of experimentation with large language models.

[17:56.5]

I think lots of people in the bids and proposal space are, because they're obsessed with language and what it means. So I think these daily experimentations with things like ChatGPT has just kind of helped me, think ahead.

[18:16.6]

You know, my brain is always thinking, what might this mean in two years, three years, five years? And so the other day I sat down and wrote an article about what might it mean for bid professionals in the future once the technology catches up and can do, it's never going to be able to.

[18:41.4]

You're never going to be able to press a button and it write a bid that is perfect and can just get. That's never going to happen. So I think that's reassuring in some cases because some of the vendors that I've spoken to will lead with that as almost a proposition in a way.

[18:59.7]

So bearing in mind that that's not going to happen, we still need humans in the loop. You know, a lot of other kind of trends that I'm seeing is what can we do with the time that these systems give us back? You know, a lot of the time I could spend a day or two days drafting a really good executive summary, whereas probably now I could do that within one or two hours or less.

[19:28.3]

So where do you spend the rest of that time? And I suppose it just made me think of the role of a bid professional in an organisation and what is it that we do on a day to day basis and how could that be applied outside of bids?

[19:48.3]

I'm just, taking a thread and going with it, thinking, actually we measure a company's fitness to work with another business. Right. So in a way we are bids or being in a bid function is like a barometer of the health of the organisation you work for.

[20:11.1]

So you're able to see any gaps, you're able to see. Oh, actually, there might be a bit of a weakness in one area. How could we affect that operationally? So, you know, we can flag to the business that we might get some feedback from a public sector contract and it might highlight an area where we didn't perform as well as a competitor that we know really well.

[20:37.0]

So then that creates and ameliorates how the business can operate. I worked for a small business for five years and within that five years I was seen as a thought partner in how to help the business get up to a certain standard, to be able to perform a different level and win much bigger contracts.

[21:02.9]

They were winning between 500 to 2 million and we got them over the threshold to be able to perform much better. And the business grew and it expanded and I think there's a lot of that consultancy around, that barometer of organisational health that could be really useful.

[21:22.9]

So I suppose I'm thinking outside the box, which is something my brain does very well at, and thinking, how might we be able to evolve the role of bids? But how can we also, tangibly prove to our business the value that they have in a really good bid professional?

[21:47.4]

And I feel that that's not talked about in the conversation with AI, because we're still in that kind of chaos phase. Everyone is trying to figure out where this new technology fits in and how we can adapt to it and what that, might mean. Whereas, yes, it's going to save us time eventually, but I feel like it's just going to go through constant iterative improvements and the people at the higher end of the scale, I would hope, would be able to rise into a more strategic kind of, consultative way to the entire business.

[22:24.9]

Because I've seen it happen in other businesses. It's an interesting kind of viewpoint on our relationship with AI. You know, I'm. I'm hugely ethical in the way I'd like to see that evolution play out.

[22:42.5]

You know, there's lots of people that have, other viewpoints on the fact that it's going to take over. And there's all. Lots of talks about agentic AI, that you can get someone to act as a consultant, someone to act as this, but really what kind of life would that give everybody?

[23:03.0]

I think, you know, we would. We need to focus on enriching human life, not degrading it. So enriching human life would be to see the next logical step as really stepping into that role of strategy and growth and revenue ops and all that kind of wider, function of a really good bid professional.

[23:30.9]

That's really interesting. So there's a few points to unpack there.

[23:43.1]

Because it's. You're quite right in terms of the whole ethical piece, we're into interesting. We're into interesting territory because the US and the UK just declined to sign up to a standard for AI which has ethics roped into it. And I'm sure there's lots of very appropriate technical reasons why that may well be the case that are well beyond me.

[24:06.3]

But there is obviously also a context that shareholders, in publicly listed businesses or pension schemes that own shares of publicly listed businesses won't really care about the ethics. They are all about profit and value of the businesses that they own in the stock market.

[24:25.9]

And likewise private, private owners of businesses, you know, of, of any scale, what in, in the medium to long term, won't really care about, you know, people falling by the wayside because a tool, an AI tool, is doing their job for them.

[24:44.3]

However, net through all the Industrial Revolution. So this is going to be an industrial revolution industry 4.0, some people might call it. Some people will be displaced, but into other things generally. So not just in bidding, but across.

[25:01.1]

So it's something like 60 of jobs will be changed or disappear in the next 10 years or something along those lines, I'm sure I heard. So, but it won't be that 60% of people are losing their jobs forever being made redundant.

[25:16.5]

It's that, that they will gravitate to different things in the value. Yes, yes. So the real question for us is what does that mean for bidding people? So I've been, I've been saying for some time that, and you've kind of catch this, that captcha, is a route for bidding professionals.

[25:38.3]

So yes, we bidding professionals, whether you're a bid manager, sort of propositions type person, whether you're a writer, bid writer, etc. We are if, if recognised we are an incredibly valuable resource in a business.

[25:54.9]

Yeah. Because often where we are recognised as being valuable we are able to ask questions that drive the business to create better solutions that create more value for clients. We get a share of that value, the business is more profitable, can invest in more, innovation grows, et cetera, et cetera becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

[26:16.9]

So Mace who I used to work for, you know the work winning function is highly respected by the business owners. It's at the heart of things they take capture and things fairly seriously. Getting more seriously, they take key account management more seriously but bidding is taken very seriously.

[26:33.4]

They have a massive bid team of highly qualified, fantastic capability. And they, but their focus is on really with their original sort of founding father's intent of what they called pursuit of a better way. Mace is a successful business and has been for 25, 30 years because they focus on doing stuff better, more valuably for clients.

[26:56.8]

Saving the money, saving them time, saving them heartache, saving them carbon, creating more social value. They're always coming up with solutions that are better than everyone else. So hot ticket for anyone who has to bid against base for anything. They're doing a better job than you probably.

[27:13.5]

If you beat Mace it's because you've got a stronger relationship. It probably isn't because you've got, well it's unlikely you've got a better solution. So and, and we, but that is a fairly extreme case. You know most people in bidding.

[27:28.7]

So I had a lady on my bid, right Open bid writing course you can buy a ticket for next one starts on the 7th of March by the way everyone spent 750 quid plus VAT in Eventbrite fees. But I had a lady who bought a ticket for that. She works at a school contractor in St Neates where I currently live.

[27:46.6]

So she was literally two mark two miles away. And I went to see them after the course because they're they're a great little business actually, but they are a bit too sporadic bidding, everything bit last minute and they were treating her, they, they like her, she's well respected in the, in the business as a human.

[28:06.3]

But in reality the bidding escapade was being treated too much like an administrative thing. Yeah. So I've helped them understand, you know, do some market research, fish in the ponds where there's going to be some opportunity that fits your perfect client avatar. Focus your efforts, Focus, focus, focus and treat bidding really seriously and put Chloe right at the heart of this.

[28:28.0]

And you will be more successful. And they will. Yeah. So, you know, most businesses are down at that end at the moment by the lion's share. It's only 10 to 20% that are remotely high performing. So how AI changes things, for us is, you know, it may well get rid of a lot of the grunt work filling in sqs, doing the binary bits of bids that our youngsters would have ordinarily have done.

[28:55.4]

So there is a question mark over, the funnel of people into our discipline. Yeah. Particularly if we try and make it a intentional career path. You know, youngsters. I met a mate of mine for breakfast the other day who's in his early 20s who I helped get his first job with.

[29:13.1]

Morgan Sindel, wonderful business development guy, economics background, very bright. And six years ago when I, five years ago when I met him and helped him get that job, and mentored him a bit, his challenge to me was always, AI is going to take this bit, AI is going to take that bit.

[29:31.2]

What's my job going to be trying to think that through together. And it's as a, as a father of a three year old and I know you've got a little one as well, that's quite, that's quite hard. So we do, ethically, we do need to still create opportunity for youngsters because they won't be at the heart of a big capture campaign.

[29:48.6]

That's business changing for an organisation. Your leaders are going to want more senior people but we're going to have to take the youngsters along with us. But they can learn. So there's two avenues for me. There's capture and going up the funnel. Trying to drive the business to create ever more valuable solutions is a pathway getting ahead of deals.

[30:08.0]

And then there is being a great prompt engineer like you learning how to understand the, get the best out of the platforms, pull the strings, etc. Is, is a thing for me. But it, it does require people to have a bit of vision.

[30:24.7]

Yeah, things. Things will not stay the same. We have to accept that. I've accepted that with my business. We're shaping things in readiness for this. I I, I'm getting older and struggle with change more and have to force myself like you forcing yourself to come on here and talk to me.

[30:40.7]

So talk. Me talking about AI and stuff is a bit uncomfortable. So But I've got, I've had, I've tried, I've kind of ignored it for a year or two whilst everyone else was doing webinars on it and stuff but I've realised got to talk to people like you. So Yeah.

[30:56.5]

What do you think? So in terms of the, the research you've been doing, the tools you've been playing with What does that career path through? What's your view then? I've gabbed on a bit. What's your view of the career path or what does it mean for the. These humans? I would like to see the fact that you know there's all these organisations that do care.

[31:18.4]

I want the ethics to catch up and be at the top line of what we're talking about instead of big tech leading it. You know I think that that, that is very out of balance at the moment and we're being dictated to by the broligarchy and that absolutely has to change.

[31:38.6]

And I'm one of those annoyingly positive people that I truly believe that there is enough good people in the world to affect a change and make sure that that kind of broligarchy to humanity level at some point in the future will probably not ever be equal but it will be better.

[32:03.5]

So you know, I think I've been, I've created my own second brain within a large language model. You know, I've been. I am uniquely neurodiverse, not uniquely but for me and large language models has helped me process my thoughts and become a lot clearer in what I want to say.

[32:30.2]

So I suppose the things that used to take me hours now take me minutes. Something that used to take me a month will now take me a week. So what I'm doing with my extra time is thinking widely and into the future.

[32:47.9]

What else can I be doing with my time to help the business that I'm working with and I suppose lots of that. You know we work to such tight deadlines sometimes we've only got a week to turn something around and so this technology stops us working all through the night, stops us working on weekends.

[33:08.4]

So for now that's what it's doing and it's great. And then you know, think two years in the future and then I think like you, I think capture is definitely an area that I would like to see more UK businesses focusing on and kind of maybe it needs a bit of sales to be a bit more open minded to allow the capture conversation to happen.

[33:35.3]

And part of me thinks that the reason it doesn't is because sales like to own that whole client relationship and maybe feel that in some ways it's almost you're having to share the.

[33:51.5]

The win. Does that make sense? And I do wonder whether there's that kind of that kind of thinking that needs to change. I think with AI everyone has to go through their own dark night of the soul with it and think what does it mean for me?

[34:09.9]

What does it mean for the future? And I think once you've done that then you can start to plan ahead, you know, well I think there's so there's some other use cases for AI that no one's really talking about in this space which it can be a real enabler for capture.

[34:31.0]

So there's some, there's some ground rules that are largely misunderstood first of all, so that we need to be aware of. So first of all the sort of the best practises out in the world around Captcha were developed many years ago in the States by bid writery type people.

[34:50.8]

No offence but they naturally lead towards preparation for a competitive bid and my thinking around Captcha is the opposite. We should be preparing and shaping an opportunity for a negotiation, a direct award with the fallback plan having been that you've written the ITT for the client and are always going to win in a competitive situation.

[35:16.2]

So yes, we need to do bidders comparison matrix and teaming and win themes and all that kind of stuff. But I would much prefer that people figured out what are their top three deals for the next 12 months that are 12 months or 18 months away from tender and have a shot at trying to shape a negotiation for those with the fallback that you so through, particularly through co solutioning which is weak in the general best practise out there if you can get your people in a room with the client's people figuring out how to deliver the thing better, faster, cheaper, before tender comes out you will smash it to bits.

[35:53.2]

You need to get to a place like my clients reds 10 volumetric builder. They're in a place with UK government where any tender that comes out for their type of Stuff it basically says Reds 10 are going to win a place on this alliance. Everyone else has to build stuff like they build it because they're five or 10 years ahead of you.

[36:11.7]

Figure it out. Yeah, that's where you need to be. So that's just a point of principle. But we can use AI to help us with our research and analytics to inform that. So it's not just about but bunging some text into chat gtp and you probably shouldn't be do that anyway because it's public.

[36:29.5]

And getting it to rewrite stuff for you. Yeah. Although that's, that's handy. But it does sound like a robot's written it. It's. And there's all of that stuff to worry about and it will get better and better in time as it learns. I know, but it's. How do we use it for researching stakeholders and what they care about?

[36:47.0]

How do we use it for looking at the analytics of our business and understanding which clients we actually invest, enjoy working with and make money with and which ones we don't? Yeah. Because this should all be about focus, the data driven enterprise that's you know.

[37:03.5]

Yes, that's like the word du jour. But it's. It probably has been for about three years. But you know, getting to a point where every company knows exactly what they're bidding for, why they're bidding, what they've won before and having all that data to give them the insights to know informs the capture plan and you know, in, you know, one of the things that used to take me hours, I've spent maybe two days researching a client.

[37:35.8]

I've custom built a little solution that will get that research done in about five minutes now. Yeah, yeah. Which is a massively gate, massive game changing use of AI but it still needs a human to understand it and translate how it could work into a really good capture plan, into the wind themes into all of that stuff.

[38:04.3]

So you know, I don't think that the people that at the top of their game are going to be set out to pasture or whatever the term is. I just think we've just got to rethink the whole, whole paradigm of work. And it just feels like there's not many people looking into it because we're still figuring out where the technology fits, the ethics, the regulation hasn't caught up.

[38:34.0]

But I hope that it will. Yeah, I think so. And I saw Nick, Clegg, he used to be leader of the Lib Dems, he went off to work for Facebook, didn't he? Until Trump probably asked for him to. Not anymore. And so recently, you know, obviously Zuckerberg's suddenly tried to turn into a bit of a bro, which is quite funny.

[38:56.5]

I just love the medallion. It's brilliant. Anyway, let's not. I'm trying to ignore all of that for four years. Just, I'm just, I'm keeping an eye on the economics, but the rest of it's a bit too sad and scary to be honest. But I did see Nick Clegg in Davos talking about the fact that the best platforms and systems and technology generally, the ones that win out over time are the ones that are open source.

[39:25.3]

The ones that are held onto by companies, tend to get lagged behind because if it's open source, you can get people on Reddit, you know, doing stuff. You can, you know, you can crowdsource the best ideas and move things on. So I'm hoping that it's devolved in its development, and that we try and stick with a pathway that's open source, so that we actual humans can stay in it.

[39:48.6]

But I should say Michelle with my other hat on, because I own another business called Destination Freedom that's all about teaching people, and particularly these days, younger people between the age of 14 and 24, about money, about financial literacy and then about investing for the future.

[40:08.7]

You know, I'm quite open in the social media stuff on that space that we are building a property portfolio and scaling a property business. Not, for my benefit really, it's for my daughters. Because into the future. I did a talk at Coventry University in November, I think it was to a bunch of 19 year olds and ended up having a bit of a set to with them actually.

[40:35.1]

Because they were, you know, they were very excited about pictures of my Maserati, but had no bear in mind these were economic students. They had no concept about investing, about compound interest, about the fact that despite the fact they're struggling at university for pounds and pennies to pay for their probably terrible wine and cheap beer in the student union, they hadn't understood that, you know, cost of living is wildly outstripping increases in income.

[41:07.6]

And the, you know, I, I follow a guy on Instagram and YouTube, Gary's economics, who's well worth a follow, who is a city trader and he does a lot about inequality and the delta between those billionaires and, and the rest of us and how the pandemic.

[41:23.8]

And since it's wildly their wealth is Absolutely mega. So for us with young kids, as I've said to you, you've got privately, you know, we have to find a way to secure assets before they're all gone.

[41:40.6]

And our kids, in effect will be living on the drip as it were. Everything will be leased, they won't own anything and their living standards will reduce and reduce and reduce. So that's fairly dystopian and dark. I hope I'm wrong, but plan for the worst and hope for the best.

[41:56.7]

Right, so as a best and plan for the best but that might be very short sighted. But yeah, I feel like some people never get to the grips with money.

[42:14.0]

You know, I think speaking to people, to young people about it is amazing but I know that when I was 19, I couldn't have cared less. No, I just didn't, didn't ever think about it. But I feel like young people now are a bit more intelligent than we were because they need to be maybe, sort of.

[42:33.8]

So they are smarter and they're more street savvy about certain things. But they're also, they've had the whole onset of social media much deeper and darker than we have and particularly through the pandemic. And they are heavily influenced by Instagram influencers who have a leased or borrowed, you know, Lamborghini.

[42:55.2]

And they think genuinely these kids thought that they were going to walk out of university and get a 250 grand job with a London firm doing something. And I just had to explain the stats that, that the chances of that are like a lottery win, that, you know, you will be lucky to scrape 30 grand in your first job.

[43:14.1]

You'll be pretty high performer if you nail that. And so, you know, you need to effing wake up basically and do your own research and get your head around this stuff because by the time they're finished university, AI is going to be a full onset and by the time they're into the world of work and five years down the line with any CV or credibility, things are going to be very different.

[43:36.5]

That is a good point. It's yeah, like I say, they're much more interested in supercars than actually what I was trying to teach them. So, we need to think about that with our youngsters that we bring into this discipline because it is a great, as I said to them, you know, the world of winning work is an awesome discipline to be in.

[43:56.0]

We're exposed to senior people, we're right at the bleeding edge of the business Winning deals and where it's going and what it's doing. We're innovating, creating solutions. We get to work with the coolest people in the firm. It's an absolutely wonderful job. I've had such an exciting time working with some really cool people, been really lucky and never take it for granted, but hopefully AI makes it easier rather than harder.

[44:19.3]

Yeah, I mean I see AI making our lives easier and supporting us not taking our jobs. But I suppose we'll have to wait and see how all that plays out. But I think bid people are the heart of the enterprise.

[44:34.3]

You know, there's no other function that whose job it is to know about how healthy all the other functions are operating. Right. So I feel like for that reason, we are hugely valuable and I am sure that there is place for us alongside this technology.

[44:59.7]

And I look forward to seeing regulation and ethics be as much as part of the conversation as innovation. And you know, I think sometimes people not signing up to a standard of ethics because it stifles innovation.

[45:20.7]

To me that's like a bit smoke and mirrors talk for we want to make as much money as possible. So, yeah, I think there is a bit of that. We're going to have an interesting four years with Trump in and the influence that has on the rest of the world.

[45:41.9]

So I hope that that changes in four years time and certainly some more, more ethics, come with it because you're right. But we'll. I think the onus is I said this, I went, I got invited to give a speech, a do for a big outsourcing firm a year or two ago, with a room full of some fairly senior people, but also a lot of the kids, you know, grads, apprentices, people early in their career, first five years.

[46:13.4]

And you know, one, someone challenged me about, you know, the business, their business and it giving them training and development. And you know, I said, look out the window. See that black Maserati. Do you think my employer trained me to enable me to make the money to pay for that cash, by the way, that's not least.

[46:34.8]

No, I went and did it myself, didn't I? And so, and it will be the same with AI Those that go and learn, that push themselves, that do something about it, are the ones that will be successful. The ones that sit there waiting for their employer. So because there is an unfortunate thing in our discipline.

[46:53.9]

There is a certain section who, there's a bit of victim culture. Yeah. You know, oh, well, they haven't trained me in this. And people just sit there and, oh, we have all these bids. We've got too many bids. I'm being worked too hard, Hard. It's like, we'll show the data, back to the business.

[47:09.3]

Why do you win or lose? What are you doing about it? Try. You know, we're supposed to be great influencers, as you say. We, we are great bidding professionals, find themselves at the heart of the business, really directing the, the traffic and the flow and the success of the thing.

[47:24.5]

And smart directors, board directors, are the ones that place us there. Yes, it should be us. It should be us that's leading the way in the data analytics, in capturing cam, because we're the best equipped, we understand how to win deals. We just wished we were given longer to influence it.

[47:40.0]

So, yeah, it's important that we, like I am trying to learn about this from talking to wonderful people like you. It's on everyone to go and learn, make the best of it. And many people are, yeah, those are the ones that be successful.

[47:56.0]

It's mindset, effectively. Do you know what, you said a sequence of four or five words to me a few months ago, and it had such a positive effect on what I was already doing.

[48:15.5]

I suppose it just really made me think. And you said, no one's coming to save you. And I thought, do you know what? That's possibly one of the most motivational things that you can say to anybody because that is absolute fact.

[48:31.7]

I think people need to, you know, stop waiting around for things to happen and make them happen. Absolutely. You create the life that you, you're part, you're the main person that should be creating the life that you want, not waiting around for something external to happen because it's never going to happen.

[48:54.6]

So thank you for that because that really did solidify in my mind that I am on the right track in feeling uncomfortable. You know, doing this makes me feel uncomfortable, but by doing it, I'm growing. So, so, yeah, I think that's a good kind of segue into, the mindset that everybody should be adopting in this new world.

[49:21.8]

Yeah, jfdi, just go and learn about it. Do it. Speak up. Yeah, but use your influencing skills to influence the business. Do the right sorts of things, show them the data, make it an undeniable fact, and, you know, away you go.

[49:37.3]

It's not, it's not rocket science, in terms of finding your way in this. It's just, it is a bit uncomfortable at the moment with. It's a bit bumpy with what things are going to win out and how things work. It's. You've got to keep pace with it whilst trying to submit bids and being busy and all the rest of it.

[49:52.6]

It is hard. I'm not saying. I'm not being flippant at all. This is scary. The reason why we're recording this is. It is scary, but you've got to break out, make some space, you know, take a Saturday morning or whatever once a month and make yourself do it. Yeah. Because this is important for us and for our discipline.

[50:11.7]

Very good. Well, it's been good to have a chat. I'm really glad to have you on the show. It's been fantastic to become friends over the last six months or year. I've been dying to get you on. So that's. That's a really good chat. Hopefully people find it useful. Like I say, we will. Michelle's kindly written a guest blog for us.

[50:29.4]

Our emails are going to go out, every week on a Friday with a blog post summing up what we've learned this week and things for me. But we're gonna have guest blog bloggers and Michelle's the first one. So On Friday the 21st, when I'm moving house, hopefully, an automated email will go out with Michelle's article.

[50:47.5]

So thank you very much, Michelle. It was really useful. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me on.