S1 Ep1: Ben Askins Reveals the Worst Bad Boss Stories, Job Interview Red Flags & How To Ask For A Pay Rise!

I had one, like, he had a team of 10, 7 had quit, and he was trying to blame his team. I'm like, how can you possibly think that's not your fault?

Ben Askins is known globally as the guy that talks about bad bosses. He is a successful entrepreneur and content creator, and he is fast becoming the voice of a generation. 500 million views in just one year. Why? Because he's giving a voice to people who feel beaten down by toxic work environments. Think about it—getting fired on your wedding day, or 22 missed calls from your boss on your day off. These stories are shocking, but they are real. But here's the turn. This isn't just about complaining. It's about recognizing the bigger problem with the modern work culture and finding ways to change it. Ben talks about how Gen Z isn't lazy. They're playing a completely different game. They're choosing flexibility, side hustles and freelancing over the traditional 9 to 5. And maybe that's not laziness. Maybe that's a smarter way to live. So are we working too much or too little?

I mean, too much. What I always find weird about that is people think of it as a constant question. I think there are times when you want to work too much because you want to prioritize your career, or you feel like if you put a couple of years shift in, you can get to that next point and all of that. And there are times where literally it's the lowest priority, whether you've got exciting stuff going on in your personal life, whether you've got things that are much more of a struggle, you've got tough things happening. So for me, I don't like this, are we working too much or too little? I think the honest question is, it's completely up to you. I think that's where the pressure comes from is this sort of, there's a lot of people impose, oh, I think you should be working this much. I totally disagree with that. But actually, I really don't like the idea that people feel like, you know, if you're happy with the amount you're working, then great. I really don't see it as more of a question than that.

Do you feel like hustle culture is putting too much pressure on people? And do you feel like the opposite might also be true, that people are too prescriptive?

Yeah, I mean, I like to think of it as hustle culture 2.0. Do you remember all those LinkedIn states you see? It's like, I get up at 4 and then have an ice bath and then I meditate and then I have a breakfast of nuts and berries and then I have— and you just think, well, you just read all— and everyone would do that. And then it'd be like, I'm posting a clip of me working on my birthday or at Christmas.

I still see that stuff every day.

But I do think it's less, right? I think you're seeing much more of like a virtual signaling sort of entrepreneur now where they sort of know you're not meant to do that. And so there's a lot of LinkedIn status around how it's important to give your team freedom and then the behind the scenes they're doing like the opposite. Well, exact same they were doing 10 years ago. They're just sort of hiding it a little bit better.

Do you remember that, um, and it's like throwing it back, we were like 22 or whatever, we saw a meme of like Don Draper and the meme was, I remember my first 40-hour work week.

Yeah, I remember working part-time, wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember like at that age, this is like, you know, over a decade ago, uh, we were, we were those people. We were like got to work as many hours as physically possible. Like, let's drive, you know, people who don't work hard are losers, all that sort of stuff. And you're right, like now the young 22-year-old entrepreneurs aren't doing that.

Well, they're not doing that. But I also think like, take us. So we would sort of go, yeah, like we'd really like be really proud of ourselves for working so late. We never spoke about how efficient we'd been or like, I think about the hours we wasted just doing nonsense tasks or like kidding ourselves or like, do you mean thinking that we're working hard when we weren't really, we're just in the office a lot. Like, do you mean? So I have a lot more admiration for people who can do— because basically, like, if you've got someone who can do the same job in 5 hours instead of 10, they're better, right? Yeah. So I always find it weird, this sort of emphasis on hours.

But do you, like— I do think now, so like, I think back to our young selves and I think there's like a, there's like a place in time for working hard versus working smart. Like, when young people, new people to work, say to me, I work super smart, I often think to myself, you haven't fully realized yet how to work smart. I feel like it's something that you almost have to earn through effectively like pattern recognition of things. Like you, when starting your newest business, would have seen so much shit from the 10 years we built our business together that you would know to avoid, to hire instead of doing it yourself. And that becomes a sort of foundation for working smart. Whereas now, like, you would never, you know, congratulate yourself for working late. You'd always think to yourself, something's going slightly wrong if I'm working late.

I'm livid if I have to work late these days. Exactly. I get a lot more frustrated about it now.

Yeah, which is nuts. So should normal people still be focused on a normal 9-to-5 career? Yes, obviously.

Well, we all have bills to pay. Everyone needs a job and needs to earn income and all of that. I think it's weird, right? I'm a big believer in encouraging people to earn secondary incomes. Like, I encourage all my team. I don't love the phrase side hustle. I don't think it's a particularly helpful one. I like the concept and I do encourage that. I think for me it makes complete sense for so many reasons. I do think we are more of a 9-to-5 culture now because people have these opportunities elsewhere. People are less inclined to sort of make the company they work for the be-all and end-all. I think we're just society, we've moved on. Whereas like used to where I remember, like, I mean, we grew up in the agency space where it'd be like a source of pride if you'd like worked the 48-hour club. You'd hear things like that where people would have basically stayed in the office for 2 nights in a row to finish a project. And these weren't like the founders or the business owners. These were like, just like this.

Yeah, just the people working.

Yeah. Yeah. And like, they would be celebrated as like the heroes of the business. And I look back at that now and just said, well, why don't you get your work done in the normal hours? Like, why did that take you? Just, I mean, like, it's weird how we've changed and work's changed. And so when I look at side hustles and 9 to 5, I just think society, people have changed their minds in regards to there's not that brand loyalty to the business you work for and people are putting themselves first, which is probably the right way to do it, if I'm being honest.

So if your team member comes to you and says, let's say they contracted 40 hours a week, comes to you and says, I want to start a business on the side, I'll do my hours for you. What do you think then?

I'm all for it. So I tell you why I'm all for that, right?

Yeah. But there's nuance here as well, right?

There is nuance. And obviously, right, I pay them for the 40 hours. I don't want that job to be encroaching on the work they do for me. Like, no job's perfect. So often people would love if their job was a little bit more creative, for example, or they had a little more opportunity to talk to clients, or they might— like, there's loads— no, even like, if you really like your job, no job is perfect. So if they have an opportunity to kind of scratch the itch of where they're not getting from your current job, an opportunity to kind of make a bit of money elsewhere, but do that thing they want to do, they're much more likely to stay with me as a business because they're getting that release of what they're looking for elsewhere. And so I have no, there's no downside to it. Like this idea that I, and look, if I want someone to work more than 40 hours, I very much view that as my job to motivate them to want to do it rather than that. That's the bit I really, the disconnect I see a lot. Of entrepreneurs complaining about how no one wants to work, all of that sort of thing. It's like, well, what are you doing to make them want to do it? It's very possible. A lot of people do work more than 40 hours a week for companies that they love and bosses that they love. If you haven't found anyone who doesn't want to do that for you, that's kind of on you, not them. Yeah. And so that's the— there's a sort of a lack of ownership, I think, in regards to people who complain about that sort of stuff.

There's that quite famous phrase that entrepreneurs will say I wish the team worked as hard as I did. And you sit there now at the age that we are and going, why the fuck would they?

Yeah. Do they own shares? Do they own equity? Are they getting dividends? Are they getting bonuses based on that? Like, what would you pay them really well at baseline?

Like, if they're paid average for the role and the role is an average role, it's like a junior to mid role and you pay them average for it. What's the expectation that they work?

More than 40 hours. If you, I would say if you went to your team and said, I will pay you 20% more, but I want 20% more hours, a lot of them would say yes to that. Totally. A lot of them would. Yeah. So do that. If you want to do that, amazing. Crack on. Create an environment where people work really hard and you kind of reward them for working really hard. But don't, don't do this sort of, oh, I pay this much, I expect loads more for free. I'm not going to do apps. I'm going to do jack shit to kind of help you out a little bit more. and then kind of throw my toys out the pram and write some fairly passive-aggressive tweets about how no one wants to work. Like, you're kidding yourself. You're just kidding yourself. Like, that's not how the world works.

So, so true. I think what I'm trying to do with my business these days is not pay people what they ask for, because when someone asks for a salary, often they are shooting for the stars. You know, like, people will be, people will be like, I will ask for this thing over here, which is so much more than I'm on. But I will always try and make sure that they're paid well for the role. And therefore, in the interview stage, I will say, at our company, we have huge goals. We work incredibly hard here. I try and give people freedom as much as physically possible, but at the same time, I expect incredible work to set the tone. Because the new modern work era is like, we're a lovely, amazing company, like, come on in, in the interview stage. And when you get there, they expect you to work 60-hour weeks. Yeah, it's—

and, you know, there's so many so many examples of that. I think it's okay to be— just have demands and say, look, this is what we want, and if you achieve the highest, you'll get paid the highest. As long as you're consistent and have that as trackable, it makes complete sense, right? Because then people— if you give people a motivation to work hard for you, they were more likely to work hard for you. It really is as simple as that. And yet there's this— why this clueless expectation sometimes of just people genuinely who don't seem to understand. And also, like, often you're kind of squibbling over from a business perspective, a very small monetary amount, but for that individual, it means the absolute whole world. It's the difference between I don't have to worry about bills, which gives me more freedom to focus on my work. Do you mean like it's entirely in your benefit to not be completely cheap? Because if you do pay people well, they are more likely to— and you say things like that sometimes you go, well, well, duh, like, like, how does that need to be voiced? Obviously, if you pay someone more than they want and pay them, they're going to do better work for you. And if they're motivated in it, it's why I don't understand the disconnect sometimes. And I think it comes from a sort of, yeah, like a very old school, slightly grew up with like tricky, you know, it's passed down trauma from previous bosses these entrepreneurs had back in the day. Yeah. And they're not recognizing that times have moved.

When we first started our business, I remember, but the thing at the time was you had to stay in a business for a year. Or 2 years so that your CV wouldn't look shit. Whereas now I think that is a thing of the past. I think people are more okay with being— with leaving jobs quicker. Like, so how do you think that pans out now?

I mean, I still think there is an unfair perception that if you've got lots of jobs on your CV, like, you're automatically a bad candidate. There are— I'm sure there are examples where it does mean Context is important, right? Like, people cut jobs pretty quickly, and if you've just joined a company, you're the first in line to be cut. So it's extremely harsh, especially if you've, like, wooed someone to join you. You've then— I had someone the other day, like, they'd been wooed by this company, like, said, oh, you're amazing, we would want you. They came, they interviewed, they gave them the job, and then they fired them within, like, 2 months because the business starts to do poorly. Yeah, it's like, look, that's a shit situation for so many reasons, but to add to that, suddenly a sort of perception that that person is no longer a good candidate because they're only there for 2 months. Like, come on. Like, you've got to— it's just very lazy recruitment that misses out on a lot of good candidates.

I always think there's like a part of the whole equation that's never spoken about, which is like, if entrepreneurs will justify often paying people less and treating people worse because the business needs it, but I would counter and say you're running a bad business. Like, you either have understood the fundamentals of like the demand and supply of a product, the margin you can ship your product for, the scalability of your business, And if you nail all those things, as we know now later in life, like if you think of our business in the first 5 years when we were younger, it was an awful business. Terrible margin. Like we let the clients walk all over us and therefore the impact on our staff was significant. As we got older, we learned you have to be upfront and have hard conversations with clients. And that will set boundaries. It will allow you to achieve better results for the client, but also better boundaries and therefore more margin so you can pay people more. And so when entrepreneurs are like, oh, the business can't afford it, it's like, It's bad business. Yeah.

And also, like, I mean, we've run motivated teams and very unmotivated teams. Which one do you think we preferred? Like, no entrepreneur sits there going, well, I really want an unmotivated, unincentivized, like, downtrodden team. Like, everyone— if you say— no entrepreneur has ever looked me in the eye and said, no, I really prefer that. I'd much rather they just weren't up for it. You go, no, I want the motivation. I said, well, then fucking motivate them. Like, it's on you. They're not— why would they motivate themselves? Like, what's the— I just don't understand this sort of like default expectation that everyone comes ready to give 110%. It's like, no, that's not how anything works. You need to get them to buy into what they're trying to do. And to do that, you have to make it worth their while. And that kind of comes back to some sort of reward system, incentivized monetization, like whatever it might be. But this sort of default expectation, people are just going to show up and do an incredible job for you and you do completely jack shit to kind of earn that. It's just a level of delusion I've not quite been able to crack yet.

I'd say one of the biggest things in early entrepreneurs is they are, without knowing it, they are insane micromanagers. And so they assume that they themselves are so brilliant and so great because that they're an entrepreneur. And I think it's hard when you're a young entrepreneur and you're new to it. You do think you're amazing. Yeah. To an extent.

To an extent, you kind of have to, otherwise what are you doing? Like, if you don't think that, you're not going to start the business in the first place. So I do, I do, I do respect that attitude.

Like, if you knew how painful it was, you wouldn't do it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, honestly, I'm much more afraid now of being an entrepreneur than I was back when I was 22.

I'm terrified now. Yeah, yeah. Always terrified.

Yeah. And that comes from experience, right? You have to have that slight self-delusion, otherwise you just never get going, right? You need that idealistic, I'm going to build the next Facebook, I'm going to— even though obviously that very rarely happens. But you've got to go from that transition of early, like, the business is you. Yeah. Into the business is the brand. And that's a really tricky barrier because That's where you need a good team. And if you're, if you're the boss is causing havoc, which they often are, because by default entrepreneurs are famously tricky to manage. Like they're a nightmare to work with a lot of the time. They come with a lot of pros, but there's a default entrepreneur look, which is really tricky to work with. If you can't shake that, your business is going to platter sort of 5, 10, 15 people very quickly.

And I think that the one advice like I always try and give young entrepreneurs now is like recognizing that 80/20 thing. Like, where is my time? In the company best spent for the best outcome. Because it's— most entrepreneurs actually aren't amazing managers. And so if early on you are running a good business, I would say one of the early hires— like, my second hire in my new business is a managing director, so that I'm not the managing director. Yeah. I don't even think I'm awful at management. I just think that you play to the skills that you have, and if you design a good enough business, you can afford to make those hires. And so yeah, I think that's That's a challenge for all young entrepreneurs, basically. So in the last year, you've received 500 million views across your content. Why do you think people are resonating so much with what you're saying?

The honest truth is, is like, I think the thing about my content is I'm not part of it. And what I mean by that is I make the content, this kind of start of the— because what I don't— I don't do anything special, right? I'm in a flat, I've got a terrible background. I'm usually just wearing like quite a scruffy t-shirt. I'm just reacting to things off my phone. Like I'm not doing anything creative. I'm not reinventing the wheel. I've not got any clever sort of gimmicks or— but I don't put myself under— I think a lot of people think people want to hear from you a lot more than they actually do. Whereas for me, I think one of the things I've done almost accidentally quite well is I've made the content the star of my own content. And so it's all about the bosses or it's the reacts or it's the questions that people are asking me. So it's contribution to them. So I think that's probably why. And then I think it's just, there's just something going on in society where a lot of people are pretty unmotivated about work in general. And I think I've kind of caught a bit of a wave in that sense where a lot of people are pretty frustrated with their jobs, um, are unsatisfied with their careers and where they're at. And I think for whatever reason, I seem to have sort of tapped into a little bit of that.

And it's amazing as someone that knows you well, but you are fast becoming like a voice of a generation of people who feel super disheartened with the outcome in life. And I feel like you're a safe space to go and have those conversations. Like, I heard someone the other day say that on their commute home, they just watch your videos because it makes them feel happy. Like, how does that make you feel? Well, happiness—

I often get— the problem I have now is when you type in my name into Google, like, worst boss pops up next to it. So I think from a self-branding perspective, um, I've got a few issues. It— my content is weird. Because there's no real other side to it. And what I mean by that is very few people will listen to my story and be on the side of the boss. I really do mean this. I'm not doing anything special because I'm not coming up with some clever line or a clever spin on it. I'm basically pointing out that behavior which everyone thinks is terrible for so many reasons is terrible. That's all I'm doing. And so when you say it like that, you think, well, why, why, why do people, you know, some people just like to kind of see that sort of, I'm not going mad, because it can be quite isolating if you're especially if you're slightly younger and you've not got a huge amount of experience of the working life, you can, you start to gaslight yourself and thinking maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just thinking this is just normal and how it works. And I think it helps people to see my content because actually when you look at the videos that do best, you get some wild stories. Yeah, yeah. And they do pretty well. But actually the stories that do best are like the really mundane challenges of work that everyone deals with, you know, pay rises, annual leave, um, feedback, you know, just stuff that everyone can relate to no matter the industry, white, blue collar, no matter the geographical location. Like we can relate to that. And so I think there's something about the relatable element to it alongside the fact that it's nice to know you're not going mad and that other people have gone through similar things.

I think that a lot of those people are being gaslit by themselves, but they definitely are being gaslit by bosses in a lot of these cases as well about, you know, the expectation from you is much higher than you perceive it to be, or, you know, you're letting us down, or other people find this really easy. When people have those conversations behind closed doors, you can— you could— that becomes very, very, you know, punitive for you personally. Whereas I think your channel shows that we all deal with this thing at some point in our lives. Like, the relatability of your content is— yeah.

And I think it sends the message of you don't actually have to put up with this, that you don't— you can't— it— I said this the other day, I don't like the word quitting. I think there's an element of giving up to it. Like, I think leaving a job, something— and I'm not a big one for sort of arguing like the semantics of words and phrases, but I do find the word quitting a job unhelpful because it can be one of the hardest things you ever do. Like if you are in that absolute depths of an under an awful human being who's going out of your way to make life where you just wake up and you just have that horrible like chest tightening moment of like dread of going to work, leaving that job or handing in your notice is one of the bravest things you can do. I really do mean that. Like it's incredibly hard thing to do. And I do find like quitting an unhelpful phrase every now and again. But yeah, I think just understanding that there are good companies out there, not that my channel is necessarily the best representation of that. I do think that's helpful. And just understanding that actually you don't actually have to put up with that. Like, yeah, what they're doing is not okay. And like the broader point I always say about my channel is, look, I call out this reprehensible behavior because I think it's reprehensible. And I think that's important. And I like to think I have some sort of moral compass around stuff like that. But the second thing I always say is, look, if you want to run a successful business, my channel's worth following as well. Because if you do want that, you know, going back to talk about like motivation and stuff like that, like there are basic things and a lot of entrepreneurs and bad bosses come about through carelessness rather than intentional. Like very few bosses try and hack their team off. They just do it by default and don't realize they're doing it or think it's not a big deal. And so actually I do think if you want to run a, manage a successful team and run a successful company, following my channel is not the worst idea either, because there'll be patterns of behavior that you'll notice in yourself. You think, oh, okay, it might not be as bad as that, but like, I can see how— yeah, I can see over the next 6 months, like, how that could compound quite quickly. Because most things start like— it's very rarely one big thing, it's just lots of little things that start to just eat away, eat away, eat away. You don't need much of a percentage effort to drop from a work perspective for your team to start underperforming. Um, and so yeah, it's, it's, it's a very interesting space for sure.

These are some of the titles of your videos. Oh, good. My boss called me 22 times on my day off. Another one: this woman was fired during her actual wedding day. Boss fires employee over getting pregnant. Um, these are just some of the titles of your, of your videos. What is the worst bad boss story that you've had sent in? And I suppose from those stories, what, what happens to the people afterwards?

Like, do you actually talk to them? Yeah, good question. So though The two of those you flagged actually were what people I spoke to directly and recorded the conversation and played that out. So I remember the woman who got fired at her wedding day. I just remember— On her wedding day. On her wedding day. And she was literally the most heartbreaking. And I really remember this really well because I remember it's such a heartbreaking moment. She said, the only reason I checked my phone. So she'd had the ceremony. She was then about to have the sort of dinner and the celebration and she thought she'd check her phone. And she said the only reason she wanted to check her phone was she knew there were a few family members who couldn't attend and she wanted just to see if she got messages from them and all that. And like sitting there in her WhatsApps was this boss who talked, told her she was fired. Oh my God. And I just remember like, just how dare you? That was the phrase. I think I might have used that. Like, what's wrong with you? Like, it was a weekend. I mean, it wasn't like a— not that there's even remotely an excuse, but like, they knew. And it wasn't— and I kind of pushed her on this. I sort of said like, did they just forget you were getting married? Is it just like one of those? Or they knew and they just didn't care? And I just thought, yeah, I can't imagine doing— I have made a lot of mistakes, right? Of course I have. We all have. No one who's ever run a business done that. But like, I wouldn't— no one's ever like that. So like, that's just unacceptable. And I remember, um, because she told me directly, so this was a, a voice, and it got picked up by a lot of the sort of news publications and stuff as well. Um, and that one really did stick in my mind actually, because I just thought, you've taken what— you've taken one of her great days of her life and ruined it. And like, you didn't— you didn't have to. You had a choice there. You didn't have to do that. Like, you could have wait for the honeymoon. You could have done that. Look, there's no great time to fire someone, but there are better times than your wedding day. So that one always stuck out for me as just like, genuinely, what is wrong with you? Like, what's your benefit? What's your goal there? That's what I'd love to ask the boss. Like, do you think that's going to help your business, like, being known as that person? And like, call it an element of they want to inflict—

I, I don't know. Like, or do you think it's carelessness?

I have to think it's carelessness, otherwise I start to despair pretty quickly. Because otherwise, so otherwise, what the hell is going on? Like, I'm not saying there aren't bosses out there who truly are just trying to make their life difficult, but like, there's usually monetary benefit to people doing that, right? When you see like awful things happen in the workspace, you can almost sometimes— you don't approve of it necessarily, but you can understand like if there's a financial incentive as to why they've done something, you can start to see why they might try their arm at that. But when you have something like that, you go, there's no— like, what? There's no financial benefit of doing that, right? Like, there's no— so you really struggle to understand. So I just— I have to think it's carelessness, otherwise it starts to get quite bleak quite quickly. I don't know if you remember.

Uh-oh. Yeah, I, I don't know why I haven't thought of this for so long, but I suppose context is really important here. Both of us talk about bad bosses quite a lot. Yeah. Um, do you remember what happened the night before my wedding? I do. Yeah, I do. Which, which I haven't heard— I haven't thought about this for so long, and I really haven't had many bosses in my life. As you know, like, out the gate I was pretty much an entrepreneur, and so I had various different roles. Um, I had some pretty awful roles in hospitality. Uh, I had a pretty cool job at Red Bull. Um, but other than that, I never really had proper jobs until we sold our company. And when we sold our company, for the first time ever, we got a boss. And it just so happened that we got someone who either is super careless or is a little bit vindictive. And the night before my wedding, when I'm sitting with my wife at home, like, talking about the next day. Like, I think we were talking about getting her grandma to the wedding because, uh, she lives— she's in a care home and, like, it's quite hard to transport her and stuff. I look down at my phone, I've got messages from my boss being like, asking me about the work and, like, where it is and have I finished it. And I've told this guy 100 times that I have, uh, my wedding the next day. It's in his calendar and he's still sending it. And so you do as a human being sit there and go, if that's intentional, that's the worst thing ever. Because that meant that the night before my wedding, I was anxious, annoyed, frustrated. My mind was off my wedding and on— even if it was, even if it was, I was annoyed with them, it was just so careless and so inconsiderate. And I think that, I do think that sometimes entrepreneurs they just become so blind to people's feelings and outcomes that they just act like that.

Yeah, I agree. And then you see the start of the line, there's no loyalty these days, and you go, okay, yeah, fine, but like, we're not in the feudal age anymore. Like, we don't swear oaths to our employees. Like, this is a two-way relationship. You're not my army. If there's no loyalty, yeah, that's probably something you're doing as well. So like, I do struggle with this idea of like loyalty and And you see like quite militaristic terms thrown around. You go, okay, you're just— okay, I get it. You have this thing where you like to think yourself at war and all that sort of stuff. You're fine. But like, don't pretend that this is just something that you just get to demand because of like right of blood or God-appointed sort of anointation or something like that. Like, you employ someone, you've got a professional relationship. How well that professional relationship goes is just as much, if not very much more, on you than that person. Yeah, yeah. And so you earn loyalty. Like, when did we stop trying to earn loyalty? When did, when did, when did people just start thinking, I just get that as a default expectation? You just go, that's not like, that's just not how any relationship works. Like, if you just make constant demands of your friends, for example, and never give anything back, they're not going to be your friends for very long. And that very much applies for employees as well. So I do get frustrated with this sort of just like, we're sitting here in a very cool podcast room, but like, there's a lot of people who sit there in podcast room just ranting and raving about how no one wants to do a hard day's work. And I always just say there are plenty, and if you can't find them, that is definitely on you.

Yeah, but the expectation that someone is going to work themselves to the bone for £45k in London when you're asking them to work 60-hour weeks and you're crushing them, I just think that's too much.

Yeah, I mean, it's much—

either provide a job that's flexible and fitting and, you know, is right for that person, and be understanding that that person can set their pace. Or pay them loads and expect quite a lot.

Or incentivize them. Say, look, this is the default, this is the minimum, and that's what you get paid your salary for. If you want to go a little bit further, amazing, this is what I'll give you, but it's up to you. I promise you that works way better than just this sort of, oh, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And I do think like how we talk to people as well, like in the introduction of WhatsApp, blurs the line between personal and professional and all of that stuff. I just, yeah, you just have to start, just start taking responsibility. I don't know, I do get frustrated when I see bosses and managers blame everyone but themselves. I had one cretin, like, he had a team of 10, 7 had quit, and he was trying to blame his team. I'm like, how can you possibly think that's not your fault? Like, if I'm managing you and you've lost 7 of your team, I'm not blaming the other 3. I'm obviously having a chat with you. Like, what do you think's happening? Like, how do you not think of that? But how do you not have the glimmer of self-awareness if 7 people have quit, quoting management as the reason that you don't think it's something you're doing. Like, I just, I can't get my head around that sort of stuff.

And I think, I think one of the funniest things nowadays in like workplace culture is obviously Glassdoor exists. Yeah. And so you get, you get, uh, I remember we, we were very focused on making our Glassdoor as good as possible, for sure. But, but with all the right ways of doing it, like spending time with people if someone was upset, trying to reconcile and bring them back and those sorts of things. Whereas we were at a company where the Glassdoor was so bad, and rather than dealing with the things that were said in the Glassdoor, they were like, it's a lie, it's a lie, they're lying.

And then coincidentally, 4 good ones popped up the next day.

And you're like, you're like, the problem is you, you're not seeing what the problem is. And the problem is a symptom of how you behave towards your team. And so like, if you can solve that, you will have happier people. But Stephen Bartlett said on his podcast with Simon Sinek that Gen Z are the least resilient generation that we've had. What's your take on that?

I don't know. It depends what we mean by resilient because the counter I would say to that is firstly, like, every generation ever has always thought the next generation doesn't work as hard. Like, there was a really funny clip which I shared where basically it just went back 150 years and like you found newspaper clippings of basically you know, how no one wants to work and no one wants to work, no one wants to do all these sort of things. But like Gen Z is also the most entrepreneurial generation we've ever had. The 64% or 62%, sorry, have said that they want to start their own business or in the process of starting their own business. That's so cool. And you and I both know, I would argue entrepreneur is probably the hardest. You need to be the most resilient in order to do that. So I kind of, I think Gen Zs are really interested. They are a different generation. They like the code. Like I don't think we can underestimate how much COVID fucked with them. And their careers. Um, but essentially you kind of got— they want to work, they want to put themselves first. That is how I would— I wouldn't say they're less resilient. I think Gen Zs just want to put themselves first a little bit more than perhaps we were. And I think as a combination of things, I think they sort of run the numbers and say, right, if I put in 10 years of loyal service, where will I be? Probably won't be able to afford a house, won't be able to like achieve certain things. Secondly, if I look at the effort versus say options like start your own content channels, for example, that can be way more revenue generation than say just working on a traditional salary. I think they're also just putting up with less. I think they're just sort of saying that they are prioritising other things in their lives, perhaps a little bit more than their work. So I definitely wouldn't say less resilient. I think we're failing them a little bit more, if I'm being honest. I think we're not giving them the best working experience. And because of that, they're looking at options elsewhere. And because of the tech and internet age, they have more options. Whereas I would say, our parents' generation, like much harder to start a business because I mean, our business was started on a couple of laptops. Like we were like, we kind of caught that wave even, even easier. I'd say in a lot of ways, like with social and stuff. And so I would say they've got more options and they're choosing to utilize those options if they don't like what's presented to them.

I think when we were coming up, millennials were being branded as entitled. And I do remember that being like a very, very common theme. Avo on toast vibes. Yeah, exactly. And so I suppose we're a step further now. Like, Gen Z is being branded as lazy, and, you know, millennials are being branded as, I suppose, entitled. But like, what is the comparison that they have to our parents' generation? Like, what are we dealing with? Because I feel like the game has changed.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, because obviously, like, you know, the running joke for our generation was we can't afford a house because we're just buying too much apple on toast. I'd argue Gen Zs can't afford the apple on toast. Like, things are getting really, really expensive. And so I think the challenge we're seeing now is like Gen Zs are saying, right, you know, like, Gen Zs are saying, right, I know I need to get a 9 to 5 to kind of get going, and I'm cool with that, and I will do good work. I'll work hard for you. And they work hard for those hours. They're just less willing to kind of, without genuine compensation, they're less willing to kind of do the additional hours around that because they're using that time to start their own business, to kind of monetize hobbies, to do all these sort of amazing things that we're starting to see, which were not possible in our parents' generation. You know, the obvious argument is parents could, yes, they could buy a house and for, you know, $499, but they, they could, they didn't have that option. They didn't have the internet where, and for us, the barrier to starting our own business, to monetizing a hobby is there for Gen Zs even more than us and certainly more than our parents' generation. So it's just different. And I think I do think businesses have forgotten what it's like to run motivated teams. Like, I really do mean that. I do think like the, the lack of sort of, you know, and I see these in these awful grad schemes where, you know, like the big four, they'll hire 90 people knowing 45 will make it through to like the— and I think, and I think like when you think about that, you say, right, so you're going to hire 90 because you know 45 are going to get through. So you're saying 45 of their first ever experience of working life is failing. Like, for like, and these are supposedly some like our higher end, you know, done all the, you know, to get into those sort of grad schemes, you need superb grades, have worked really hard. And by default, half are going to feel like a failure. Like, I just didn't— that can't be okay. Like, that can't. So I do think brands and companies have just forgotten what it's like to just try and spend a bit of time of like building a vision and getting people to feel part of it. Um, you know, and sort of motivating them that way.

The thing I always think is like quite fascinating is for our parents' generation, they could go and get a 9-to-5 job, and because they didn't have phones and laptops in the same way that we do, when they left work, they left work. Like, they left work behind. Yeah, yeah. And then if you think that they have university for free, they have a situation where after 5 to 10 years of work, they can buy a house and they're not beholden to that house for the whole of their lives because the price is comparatively so low. Whereas if you think about a Gen Z in work now, their boss can contact them at all hours. Yeah, yeah, like literally all hours.

WhatsApp snuck through the gap of like personal and professional. Um, it's really like snuck into that space. And what I mean by that is like Bosses really know you can't like DM people on Instagram for work and you can't like Facebook Messenger and things like that. Whereas if you had a work phone, you could obviously like turn it on. I remember like your point, like that my dad's, you say like you go on holiday for 2 weeks and you'd come back and there'd just be like a pile of written messages for you to start like going through, like, because you just can't get hold of them, right? And that is a lot healthier in a lot of ways. And so I do think like the sort of, and the problem is, right, bosses know they shouldn't be contacting the employees at work. So whilst they're on annual leave, And so they'll be things like, by the way, do you have a quick sec? Or like, I'm really sorry to bother you, but— and you go, I get you're caveating that and saying you're still doing it, right? You're still kind of— you're not sort of allowing people to sort of switch off. And I do think that's contributing to the overall just sort of feeling of, well, what's the— like, this is just pointless. Like, I can't even get a week to myself. Yeah. And I don't think people understand the damage those small messages on annual leave or out of hours have on morale because you think you're just asking for little things, but like, It's not just, it just gets your head back into work when you're trying to switch off. And that is, it is. So although it might have taken like 5 minutes to respond to it, you're suddenly back in work mode. And that's the bit I think a lot of bosses misunderstand. I definitely contribute to sort of generation. I get frustrated by the housing thing in particular. And I think the housing thing for me is one of the big problems in regards to why people don't want to work for other people anymore because they run them like you, you could suffer. Like our parents' generation had some awful bosses, like awful. For sure. But they could have— they did have that light at the end of the tunnel. They said, well, look, it is shit. This guy's an asshole. He's not even pretending it. Like, you know, there's no other way. Like, this is just absolute hell. However, if I do my time for 5 years, I'll be able to afford that house and I'll be able to do all of that sort of thing. So it's worth putting that time. When you get presented with the same choice now, the house has always been like the ultimate purchase, right? The ultimate adult move. Even if you go through that, go through those awful 5 years, you won't be able to afford that house. Nowhere near.

Because if you're renting, you're losing all your money.

Exactly. Which brings you to the very real question of then what's the point? And companies haven't answered that question effectively. And that's why we're seeing a lot of Gen Zs looking to alternative revenue streams, doing their job, but doing the— I don't want to say the bare minimum because they're doing what they're— it's not a fair phrase doing the bare minimum. They're doing what they're paid to do. A lot of entrepreneurs and bosses aren't then thinking about how they can motivate them to do extra. And so they're using that other time to focus on themselves, whether that's additional revenue streams, or just enjoying it.

I actually talk about this in my book, but I have a chapter called The Lies We Were All Told, and it's the idea that I suppose when we were younger, and I don't think it's necessarily the case now, but like our generation, the generation above us haven't acknowledged that, you know, that whole game has burst, as it were, which is when you grow up, you're told like go to university, get a degree, you know, get a corporate job, work your way up the ladder, buy a house, get a mortgage. Whereas like you realize now that the 21-year-old getting the job is not saving any money in their first year. And so unless they have significant support, they aren't buying that house. And so like you say, they're trapped working up and up and up the corporate ladder, but with very little leverage in their life. You know, they end up in a situation where they're probably living paycheck to paycheck. For a company that probably doesn't value them really, because if they quit, they get replaced within a couple of weeks. And so to your point at the start, like, I would say to most people, the ability to join a great company is one thing, and they do exist. Of course they exist. Like, you're doing something at the moment with, with great bosses, which we'll talk about. So they do exist. But if you're in a relatively dead-end job, like, I don't know why you would work more than the hours you're contracted to when in your spare time you're working on yourself. Totally. And like, I don't know if I necessarily buy anymore that we should be encouraging people to go to university, to get into loads of debt, and to find themselves in a situation where off the bat you're like 22 in a major city, serious debt behind you with very little prospect of security.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with the motivating side of things because this idea that you know, they should just default do it when there's no value for them. The education one's interesting. It is. I'm seeing a lot of like university bashing, school bashing, and to an extent I understand, right? Because I get it in the sense of like, I do agree there are some subjects, especially around the finance side of things, where we don't seem to prepare people particularly well. I have a lot of sympathy with schools because tech's moving so quickly. It must be really hard to design curriculums on the fly considering how I think how just AI alone has just caught up with stuff. Um, that must be an absolute nightmare. It's like mark homework and stuff. But I, I'm less keen on just saying don't go to university, don't go to school, because what I'm very aware of, right, is you start at school as a child and you end up as an adult in the working life. And at some point you have that transition, right, where you go from a child to an adult. And like, I think the thing about education— I do include myself in this— I think about education, you miss is, yes, of course you learn stuff, but you learn like how to go from a child to an adult. That's kind of what school and education, university does. And like, I think you're a great example. You in a lot of ways probably shouldn't have gone to uni because at 18 you were, you were an adult, like you were just an adult and you'd already started your first business and you were just so ready for the working world. I wasn't in that. I was a very young 18-year-old. Yeah, yeah. I was a very young 18-year-old. Um, and I, I need those. Look, I did, I did classics university, right? So Latin and Greek.

Like, I know you now use your classics degree a lot.

I'll be very honest, I have never used that degree ever. You haven't? No. But I wouldn't say university was a waste for me. And the reason I say that is because I needed those 3 years to— I think mature is different, but I needed those 3 years to kind of grow up a little bit. And like, I think me at 21 versus me at 18 would have been a very different induction into the working life. So I'm very hesitant to be like, don't go to university, don't go to school. I definitely think it's an option. There's also still a lot of numbers where a degree will absolutely get you better, like you'll earn more over the course of your career if you do have a degree. That's still the case. A lot of people are starting it's like higher on skills rather than degrees and education. But for now, very much the case. And I know it's a lot of money, so I'm not saying it's something you should default for it, but the way the debt's structured is really good in a lot of ways. I do think we forget, and it's why I don't join in the school bashing and the university bashing, is because we are taking kids, they are taking our kids and they're turning us into adults. And people get to that bit a little, you know, some are super mature for their age, some are a little bit immature. And like, but at some point you go from a child to an adult and like you need that sort of safety net to kind of work your way towards that. And so I'm not a huge fan of just this sort of constant, you know, school's terrible and universities are con. Like I know there are, I know, and I know there are some things where people get caught up and stuff. And so yeah, it's just—

I just think that the commerciality behind education became ridiculous. The idea that a degree would guarantee the success of your life, which became the mantra of a whole generation of people. The degrees became ridiculous. I mean, on the fringes, they became unbelievable. And so I don't dislike university. I don't dislike education at all. But I think that the promise that once was, if you get a degree, you will get a good job. I don't think that's the case anymore. Yeah. I don't think that exists. And I think that laden yourself with debt, well-managed or otherwise, for the sake of growing up could be an argument, but I feel like if you were to get a job quite early on, I think you would grow up quite quickly and you would learn some serious life skills, um, which, you know, might be less comfortable. Like, a lot of the people that I work with nowadays, I would say that I don't know— and this might just be me— I don't know if they went to university. I certainly have no idea what they studied at university, and I've hired them exclusively on skill.

So yeah, I, I've never looked at university degrees in regards to hiring. I'm not that interested. I could be a full credit if you do it and all that sort of thing. Um, for me it's not a hiring factor. Um, but I do understand why people still want to go to uni and why some people get a lot of value out of it. Um, but it is great, like, you people have a blast. Like, don't underestimate just going. I mean, it was fun. It's a lot of fun. Like, you know, you meet, you meet a whole new group of people. You have friends for, like, don't underestimate that, especially if you've grown up in a slightly sort of smaller area where you've had like the same close— like a lot of school friends have been friends since like the age of 3. Like, you've not— do you mean that there is— there are adult learning elements of university and college which, you know, if you get thrown straight into the working life, like, so don't underestimate, just it's fun as well. So yeah, it's an interesting one.

So a minute ago we were talking about, uh, you're okay with people working the hours and not working more. And obviously we had this emergence of the phrase like quiet quitting. So what is quiet quitting? And is quiet quitting a bad thing?

No, I mean, this ties into like so much again, like quiet quitting, I really find an unhelpful phrase. It's basically, look, I'm not feeling this job for whatever reason. I'm going to do the minimum and that's it. Like that's what it is. And again, I say to like the people who complain about it, I say, well, what are you doing about it? Boss, manager, CEO, founder, you know, you who spend your life posting on LinkedIn about how you've got to take responsibility for your actions and how, like, what you doing about it? Like at the moment, all I can see is you just bleating about it on Twitter. Like, yeah, with the greatest respect, like take some fucking ownership of your own company. If you've got loads of people quiet quitting, that's your fault. Like you obviously aren't motivating your team at all. You've not got the right vision. They're not feeling part of it. So I kind of understand it, right? Because otherwise it's a lot, especially juniors, a lot of jobs are pretty dull. So if you're not feeling like you're part of the greater mission, you can feel quite incentivized. So I have no issues with quiet quitting. I just see that as a sign that you're the boss or the manager or the leader or the founder is just not very good at running a company.

Like another way of looking at it is people just aren't working for free. Yeah. You know, because often, you know, I think always, and there's a nuance to all of it, as an entrepreneur, you're always like, I wish people did work a bit harder, but to your point, give them something to work for. Um, what have you done?

Oh, uh, yeah, we got pissed last Thursday together. Okay, fine.

Yeah, I put drinks on once, of course.

Yeah, yeah, fine. Like, you know, we've done— like, you know, it can be a lot of fun. And yeah, I'm a big fan.

For everyone listening, Ben and I have made all these mistakes, 100%. Yeah, over 10 years building a company, we made every mistake you could possibly make. Yeah. And I feel like that was quite an education growing up together in making all those mistakes and thinking that culture was Friday night drinks. And then actually realizing that culture is much more about the individual and what it means to them.

Yeah, like, people are allowed to be selfish. Like, founders by default are selfish because they're trying to grow a business and make loads of money. And I'm in that boat, right? That's what I'm trying to do. But the idea that you then think other people aren't selfish, not going to put themselves slightly first and only going to put you first as some sort of like, you know, you are amazing, I'm gonna do everything you say, it's just, you're like, that's just not how humans work. So Yeah, like again, quite quitting. It's just one of, it's just another example of how people just don't want to do the hard yards to motivate people. Because words are incredibly cheap and we're seeing a lot of those cheap words across all sorts of social. Again, like the personal brand element, again, like me saying that it's like the most hypocritical thing because, you know, you and I both do all of that. So again, I'm fully aware that I'm one of the biggest hypocrites in the world when I say things like that, but it's easy to talk about how you value your people. It's much harder to do it because valuing your people actually means putting them first occasionally ahead of the business for the longevity because the way I think about it, right, because everyone wants someone to work for 10 years, like show that loyalty. But if you have someone work for you for 10 years, there will be moments, weeks, or even possibly months within those 10 years where things happen in their personal life and they'll need extra support. And that could be an illness, that could be a breakup, it could be something amazing, it could be like honeymoon or a wedding. And like how you treat them in those moments, that kind of sets the tone for the whole thing. And if you are just going to choose and you have a choice, right, you can either help like you always say you did, like all your Marketing collateral says you do, and all your LinkedIn messages say you do, and all your website, all of that sort of stuff. But that's very cheap. But when that moment happens, do you help or do you hinder? And that is where culture is built. That is where you finally see, does he actually walk the walk or does she actually say, I'm gonna put my hand in my pocket? Is it, you just go sort your life out and whatever I can do to help, don't worry about work at all. We will handle it. When you're ready, you'll come back. Do you say that or do you call them whilst in the waiting room to find out if they're going to be in work tomorrow? Or do you just message them on holiday, say, oh, just a quick one, do you mind? Like that, that, those moments is where you kind of really see the sort of true elk of someone. Um, and a lot of people fail, and the people who fail are inevitably the ones who bleat about quiet quitting and how no one wants to do a hard day's work and how Gen Z is useless. And that's why I just go, you are delusional.

And I'd add just one part, which is The counter is always, the counter is always the business needs it. And my counter to that is you're not running a good enough business. If you cannot survive without that one person for that short life and personal experience, you are not running a good business.

Yeah. You're like, your job as a business is to mitigate risk, right? Totally. If your risk, if you've got one person who, if they got hit by a bus, your business falls over, you've not got a business, right? Yeah. And so like your job is like, I saw this, you know, this, this clip the other day that got shared with me, and basically this woman had got stranded at a, she was in charge of the shop. She was the only person. Someone was coming to replace her and the person was late and the woman then missed her appointment. And there was this huge thing of sort of, she was kind of complaining her coworker and all that sort of thing. And I said, well, look, the bit, like at some point someone's going to be late. So why has the business left themselves open to the fact they've, they've cut staff, right? They've understaffed their operation that they only have one person managing the whole thing. And of course, if you've got one in, one out, there is that small window of opportunity where at some point something is going to happen where someone is delayed and that puts the business at risk. So I 100% blame the business at that point because you just haven't mitigated it. You have to assume things are going to go wrong because it's life and things are going to go wrong. And the idea that in doing so you then have to blame the employee, I just, I find it really pathetic if I'm being honest.

Yeah, it is.

Because these are the same people being like, yeah, I take ownership. No one's helped me. I'm bootstrapping myself. You go, fine. Prove it.

Amazing, isn't it? So obviously nowadays we have this huge work from home situation, remote work, flexibility. Do you think work from home is a good thing? Do you think that's having any negative connotations on people?

I think flexible working is a phenomenal thing. I think if there's one good thing that came out of COVID it was that.

And what do you mean by that?

The ability to work from home, work from the office, to kind of take the taboo out of like working from home, basically. I don't think full-time work from home is the ideal setup. I think there's a lot of— there's some— BBC released a lot of stats recently in regards to like, it tracked how many people out of 100,000 had mental health issues directly linked to work. So not like mental health issues in general, directly linked or exacerbated by work. Up until 2020, it was around the sort of 500 mark. Since 2020, it jumped up sort of the 1,000 to 1,500 mark. Wow. But it's still going up. And I find that quite significant, right? Because COVID was awful. Like, what happened during— I don't think you can ever underestimate the impact COVID had on a generation of— I mean, obviously everyone directly involved in it, like people who lost people and all of that, but actually the working life element of it was the biggest upheaval to work we've probably had since the invention of the email. It's damaged people, and people haven't recognized that damage, and we're still dealing with the repercussions. And, you know, people look at productivity issues, there's so many numbers that suggest we've got real issues. Um, I do think working from home probably isn't the right setup unless you really want it. I think for me, flexible working is the best because the option to say, look, if you're just somebody who likes the routine of coming to the office every day, amazing. Yeah, you do you. You do you. If you want to kind of work from home, love that and just crack on. Amazing. I'm all for that. I do like in my business, we have 2 days in the office a week compulsory and we have to, we all come in on the same day. So at least you kind of get that feel. And then around that, you come in every day, you can work from home for the others. My gut feel is that is the best approach. I get very frustrated with this sort of old school leader who just thinks working from the office is just essential. I get very tired with the, you can't train people. You can't, it's like you've had 4 years, like, come on, like, learn how to do it. Learn how to just be a little bit like, you can't, like, you can't, like, you're at that point. It's, it does my head in because at that point you're literally telling me you're so uninnovative as a business now. You cannot teach someone remote. Like, are you joking? Like, Every piece of tech is available for that. If like, just because you've learned sitting with someone right next to you, you're telling me you're so inflexible, you're such an innov— and it's the tech businesses that are worse. It does my head in. Like, these are phenomenal companies about incredible stuff and they get to a point and they just lose interest in innovation. I do struggle with that a little bit and it's probably another topic for another podcast. But yeah, it does my head in those sort of lines. But I do think there is definitely something to say about some FaceTime for sure.

Yeah, I feel I do feel really bad for that cohort of people who they were meant to go to work when COVID happened because they, as much as work from home sounds amazing and I, you know, as you know, I love it more than most.

You liked it before as a thing?

Yeah, no, I loved it way before. And if I could do it now, I would, you know, if you would have come to mine, we would have done this there. But I think that the challenge for that generation is that I don't think they built relationships in the same way. And as a result, I don't know if they learned the same way.

Totally agree. And also I think you've got to bear in mind as well, like, you know, we had the sort of, we had our sort of young juniors at our company when COVID happened was London flats are not equipped for 4 or 5 of you working from home. Like there's a huge difference between like, you know, a house, you know, where you got your nice office and like, you know, as opposed to like cramming on like a really crummy kitchen table with like 4 of you all trying to do calls, like flat shares, like awful. Like you think about your first flat in London and now put work from home in that, and that should give you a pretty good example of how bad that must have been. So that's why I mean like COVID was awful in so many ways and we're still seeing the repercussions of it. Um, but that doesn't mean I don't think there's a strong case for flexible working.

I think one of the most important things about jobs is actually understanding interviews. Like, I think that if you're looking for a great job, you will find most of what you're looking for in the interview process. And you talk about this a lot. Yeah. What are the biggest interview red flags?

Yeah, so there's a few. Chris, the interview is great, right? Because it's the one chance you have power. And what I mean by that is like, you get— you're obviously worried about getting a job, and totally fair, but they need the people, right? So it's as much opportunity for you to interview them as them to interview you. Like, do you remember like And this going back to your point, which is brilliant, which is around like things we're told that were just lies. Do you remember being allowed to say you can't talk about money in an interview? Wild. Like, are you joking? What are we talking about? What are we doing here? Like, what are we doing here? Like, it's just stuff like you just think like, and we were so convinced that was totally legitimate advice. And you look back at that now and you go, are you joking? It was a negative to ask about money because it shows you're not keen. It's like, What do you do? Like, we really bought into that. Like, we were conditioned, and so was the world.

But I still think half the world is conditioned that you can't talk about your money at work. Yeah, yeah. Like, don't do that. Yeah, yeah, that's not professional.

Yeah, yeah, you're not allowed to. It's like, well, one, you legally can't ban people from talking about it. Two, like, it's such like a— well, don't tell anyone. It's like, well, why not? Like, because there's no benefit. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, there's no— exactly. Why not? The only reason you could possibly want that is because something dodgy is going on. Like, one of the best things you can do, right? And this is a good tip for everyone is publish your salary bands. Look, you do, you get to this level, we'll pay you this, you get to this level, we'll pay you that. And you'd have to give the exact, put a sort of range in depending on where you are. That's a really good motivating tool. We say, look, you want to get paid this, this is what I need from you. And so they go away and go, okay, well, if I work on this and I do this, I can then get paid from that. Look at that, you suddenly have a motivated individual working towards something that they actively can see that they will get monetarily if they do these things for you. Welcome to the motivated workforce. Like, yeah, yeah. So there's no benefit to it.

That is like, it's so simple to say, but the clarity around telling someone, you know, let's say once someone's done their probation, for example, afterwards you say to them, at the end of year 1, this is what it looks like. At the end of year 2, and these goals being hit, this is what it looks like. That person now has clarity because there are a lot of people, and you know, I have a lot of close friends who say this, and it always makes me laugh a little bit. They go, I would rather quit than ask for a pay rise because they're so, they're so anxious about asking for a pay rise.

It's just, it's, we're conditioned to like not talk about money. And I think that's a very British thing as well. Like, it's, you know, you, we don't talk about that. Like, we had obviously had our American office. Like, doing business with America is wild compared to Britain. Britain, you do everything but talk about money. America, you talk about it within 8 seconds. Yeah.

Um, and if you have a, if I have a UK entrepreneur onto one of the shows, yeah, like getting them to talk about their own achievements. Yeah. And the incredible things they've done in their lives. Yeah. Yeah. Is so hard. You've got to like draw out of them. You get an American on—

oh, they've got Piccadilly billboard.

I sold for 100 million.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, and, and they'll bring the money with them just to really show it. Like, yeah, yeah. And I say that with this here, and I, I don't— I like— I say that with the greatest love of the American entrepreneur series because I think we can learn a lot from it, but we're very different, um, cultures for sure.

So Ben, what are the things that people should be watching out for in the interview process? Like, what are the red flags that we want to avoid?

So some of the questions I always like to ask or encourage people to ask is firstly, one of the best questions you can ask is what happened to the person I'm taking the job off? Yeah. So like, you know, for example, what do you think they should ask that? Yeah. Yeah. Like why, why is this job existing? Why is this job open? Because it could be the business is growing, which is positive. It could be this person's been promoted. That's amazing. Because you're showing this internal.

It could be, can I speak to them?

They worked here for 3 years. We loved them, but they got this amazing opportunity elsewhere. That's phenomenal as well. Like you want to sort of say, because if it's like a 'Oh, you're the fourth person and we've just not found the right person.' And you suddenly go, 'Oh, okay, that's a little bit of a red flag.' The second thing I would always ask is like, 'Is there anything that might happen in the business in the next 6 months, um, that might change this role?' Because that's important. Because at the very least, you'll get an idea of like what the vision might be and how sort of abreast they are with sort of markets. And the third one is ask for the margin. Say, 'What, like, are we profitable?' Step one. If not, if they say no, 'What's the burn rate?' That's a really easy follow-up because Anything below 12 months I would think is a bit of a red flag. If they say yes, say, what sort of margin are we operating at? You'd have to ask for the amount, right? Because amount doesn't help. Because if it's $10 million profit at a $1 billion company, you think, well, that's vaguely terrifying because that's the tiniest margin ever. Whereas if you ask for a sort of margin of profitability, that gives you a really good example of how secure this business is. I like people asking those questions. I think it shows someone who's really switched on, fundamentally gets this.

I'd want to hire them more than this.

I'd be much more inclined to understand that. When they say, are there any questions, really use that to get the answers you know. Like, that's the best piece of advice I can give, because don't ask the question you think they want you to. Like, just don't. Like, we're beyond that. Like, we're way beyond that. Someone asked me an amazing question.

I was hiring, like I said earlier.

Yeah, what is the best question someone's asked you?

Someone asked me— this happened like days ago, but I'm hiring my managing director for my new business, CD Limited. So super fast growth company. I know I need to come up with a name for it, um, but for context, like it's made millions of profit in its first 100 days. Doesn't happen very often. And I've gone, okay, I need a managing director. He said to me, what is like your worst behavior with employees? Oh, I was like, oh, spicy. Yeah, yeah. I said, it's, it's assuming they know what I know and then berating them for not. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I don't do it that much. It's not a huge trait of mine, but I sometimes assume that the people around me have the same life experience and work experience that I have, even though I've been doing this now, the sort of media game, for 15, 16 years at an unbelievable fast pace. Yes, I know a lot about content creation, a lot about digital products, and so sometimes I assume that someone is going to be an absolute fucking rock star at the thing, and then I get a bit annoyed, but they're Um, and I said that to him and he was like, yeah, I can get on board with that. Yeah. And I was like, fine. We talk a lot about bad bosses.

Like, most of it comes from a self-awareness of being like, we shouldn't have done that. Do you mean like a lot like being self-aware and just being self-deprecating? I think people take themselves far too seriously at work. Like, people really, really, really think they are so important to the world, and you just think very few people know who you are, even less care what you have to say about some sort of things. So yeah. Just a little bit more self-awareness, I think, could go a long way in the world.

And what do you think about employees who want that work-life balance? Like, what do you think about employees that genuinely want to work an okay job? They want to say, I want to do these hours, I want to get the salary I'm paid, but I don't want to think about work when I go home. I don't want to think about it on the weekend. I want to have great holidays. And I'm not, I'm not overly ambitious. I just want to do what I'm doing. And it might be seasons of life. They might have a season where they work really, really hard, and a season where they don't. And like you said, life experience is key. So like, what do you think about the desire for work-life balance in that sense? I mean, that just sounds—

that's a job. Yeah, that's— that you're talking about. Like, no one wants to work 24— do you see what I mean? Like, it's just— that's just a job. There's nothing like that. That's what most people want, and that's what most people are employing, and that's obviously fine. Like, if— as long as— like, there's an interesting clip that Cody Sanchez did, a clip, and I got tagged in. I get tagged in a lot of clips, right, where people want me to respond to them, and I got tagged in this one a lot. So I kind of thought this might be quite spicy. And Cody, she basically said, like, I'm very upfront with interviews and say, look, I am going to mess you at weekends, I am going to mess you after work, and all of that sort of thing. And I sort of said, look, I've got no issue with that because she's being honest. The worst companies, the ones who say all the right things in regards to we support work-life balance and all that sort of stuff, and then completely abuse that from the word go. That, that, that for me is the absolute worst thing you can do. If you want to set up your business as a culture and say, look, I am going to ask you to work weekends, we are going to work insane hours, I'm going to reward you well for it and all that sort of thing. You as the employee could say, look, that's not for me. I don't want that. Well within your right. And that is, I would never judge someone for not wanting that because that can be quite tough. But equally, if you are going to be honest about your business culture and then you kind of stick to that culture, fine, great. You attract people who want to do that and you want to kind of work those hours. Amazing. Crack on. Best of luck for you. It's the people who just virtue signalers, like as I said earlier, like who just sort of pretend they vaguely think that and then just completely take the piss. I lose a lot of respect for that, for those people, because they are also the same. It's amazing the correlation between people who do that and then also take zero responsibility for why their teams are unmotivated and their business isn't doing well. You know, when their business is doing well, it's all about them and their heroic thing. And then as soon as something happens, like, and I see people going, oh, like, so true. Like people go, oh, like the markets. It's like, yeah, welcome to the real world. If you run a business for 10 years, there are going to be tough economic moments. Like, and either you, like, you can't take all the credit for when it's going well and then zero responsibility for when it's going badly. Like you have to own both sides of it. Right. And the idiots are the ones who take all the credit and don't credit their team when it's going well and then blame their team and take zero responsibility when it's going badly. And it's amazing how often, despite the markets, those businesses seem to fail quite a lot.

So earlier we spoke a little bit about how you're all for people generating income. You're not a huge fan of the word side hustle, but I suppose in the context of it is quite easy to spin up some form of side income. Like, what do you think about the evolution now of side hustles? Like, is it going to change the fabric of work?

I, I going to make a prediction over the next 10 years. I suspect we're going to see more of norm of people having 2 to 3 jobs rather than 1 job. Yeah, I think we're more likely to see people say, right, I'll work for you for 2 days and I'll work for this person for 2 days and I'll do 1 day on my own thing or something like that. I really do think that's where working life's going to go. Um, I think they'll be much more nomadic in the way they kind of approach work. I think they'll be much more like hired for doing a specific thing rather than like a sort of job, if that makes sense. And I really do think that's where we're going to end up. What that means, I don't know, but that's kind of where I think it's going to go because I just think it's much easier to start. Yeah. Like the internet and social, like it absolutely allows you to monetize things easier. And best of all, it allows people to monetize hobbies, which I really like. I really, when I sort of say to people, you should start something on the side, they always, there's two things. I can't afford it and I don't have the time. And like the time thing's easily solved by monetizing something you enjoy doing anyway. Right. Because you would do it anyway. So you might as well try and make a bit of money out of it. And because social and the internet is so readily available, It's really easy to do that. Like, there's one guy I follow, just all he does is build Lego. He creates like these unbelievable creations.

And I hope he's well followed. He's incredibly well followed.

And obviously he's got like sick brand partnerships and he makes loads of money and he's now sort of doing it full time. But like, he would have done that anyway. He just loved building Lego and he sort of, that was his thing as a childhood. He loved it. And then he just started filming himself doing it and voilà, you've got a business. So I love that. Like, I have so many issues with social. But this is one of the pros. It's like people getting to share their expertise, their knowledge, and their joy and love of the world with everyone. Like, that has to be a good thing.

I was talking to someone the other day who had a really great job. She's a product manager at a big company. I think actually she's a product manager maybe at Greggs. And she reached out to me and she was making money online from teaching people about how to manage their finances. And she was working at Greggs and she got to a point where after a year of making content about how to, like, save money, how to, like, buy things responsibly. She was making her product manager salary from her content. And then she left her full-time job and she suddenly was like, I'm working 2 days a week for the salary I used to get. I don't have to travel anywhere. I'm doing the thing that I really am quite passionate about. And so I suppose the advice for people is I don't think it's like one or the other. No. Like you don't need to like handbrake your career and do the side hustle. You can ease into these things. Sure. And that's the best way.

And that goes back to what is quiet quitting and like, what about working 60 hours? You go, people just don't want— like, people are doing other things now in their lives. And so, yeah, totally agree.

I suppose I never want people to think that I think that hard work is a bad thing. I think working hard for yourself is the best thing, you know.

But hard work, right, is still too linked to long hours in my head. Do you know what I mean? Like, when we would work 14-hour days, we probably would waste a chunk in the middle, right? We weren't that— for sure, because we knew we were going to be in the office till 11. We'd almost do a little bit less, do you know what I mean? We'd do less during the day. And so, like, I do think you can, you can still work incredibly hard in those 7.5 hours you are in the office or working for someone. Working hard's an interesting phrase as well. Obviously there are people who do 40 hours a day and work incredibly hardly, but—

Can you tell us how practically and strategically someone in their job can ask for a pay rise? What are the steps they should go through? How should they think about it? Okay.

Um, okay. Step 1, um, do your research. Like, find out what your market rate is, whether at existing company, like if it's a big company, there'll be other people on similar salaries. Um, equally like look at competitors, like Glassdoor is really good, like LinkedIn Jobs will have a salary listed against it and all that sort of thing. Work out what you're worth because that's yours. Because the thing people understand is, I, I want a pay rise because I would like more money isn't a request, right? Like, everyone would like more money. You need to justify it. And so start off with your market rate, work out basically, you know, are you being underpaid or what your case could be. Second, like, put a list of accomplishments you've done to kind of prove your case. So, and that has to be tied to revenue a little bit. It can't be— I, I don't want to undermine this role because it's so, so important, but everyone likes working with me is obviously a great trait and they will know that. But like you've, in this sort of very professional commercial discussion, you need to say I helped grow this account or I work with this client, so I did this that brought on this revenue and like show your worth. Um, third is take what you want and add 10% because they're always going to come in under. Like if I ask you for $100K, say you will come back, even if you have $100K, you would like come back saying I can't afford $100K, let's go with $90K or something like that. So always ask for a little bit more. And when you ask, this is the big thing, don't fill the silence. That they kind of bank on the fact that often they will, because there's such an awkward conversation, there'll be a pause. That pause will feel incredibly awkward and you'll feel the need to jump in. Say, this is what I would like and this is, you know, exactly why. And then let them speak. And the final piece of advice is give them a heads up before you go into the meeting that you want to talk about pay. Don't ambush them with it because actually Um, they might need to get signed off internally. Like, you don't want them to just say, oh, I'll look into it, you can come back, because then you kind of cut that conversation off at the knees. Like, give them a heads up a couple of weeks, say, by the way, I would like to have a chat about pay in regards to where I'm going and what I could potentially get. Um, and then finally, um, like I said, just make sure you sort of be very clear in regards to what you want.

I think one of the things that people confuse the most nowadays, and I think a lot of it is due to like Silicon Valley super funded companies is like the difference between like company culture and just perks. Yeah. And I've seen you talk about this a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So what's your view on, you know, company culture?

In not having a culture, they sort of try and say perks are a culture and like they misunderstand, like perks are used, meant to enhance a culture rather than just be the culture itself. And like some of the perks, like I see some people like get away with stuff that are just absolutely outrageous, like just like I mean, that would be funny if it wasn't so tragic in a way. Like I've, I've seen like some of the perks I've seen. So, uh, there was this company shared with me where they basically said, um, what we'll do is we'll send you on a Dave Ramsey course to learn how to be more efficient with your own money rather than give you a pay rise. And that counts as a pay rise. What? And so they tried to claim that because they sent you on like a course that allowed you to like do slightly like manage your money a little bit better, you would get paid better. Um, I had one the other day where they, um, charged for water. but then they sort of said, we'll waive that charge as the benefit. So like they had like the water coolers and that they said, we should be charging for that because it's expensive, but we'll waive that as a benefit, like water in London. Do you know what I mean? Like that, that's like having an oxygen credit. Like it's just that sort of idiotic. And then the worst one I heard the other day was, um, it was a cut, this big company, they had their own car parks. They owned the building and the land and the car park. And they charged $100 a month for employees to use the car park. That's wild. But then they said, don't worry, we'll give you $50 off. And then tried to claim that that was a $50 equivalent to their, like, sort of cultural benefits package. We give you $50 a month towards car park. It's like, no, no, it's your car park. Like, you are, you are choosing to monetize your employees parking at your land. If you want to do that, fine. I think that's a pretty obnoxious thing to do considering, and I, I won't name the company, but they do okay. Like, this seems like a pretty abstract, yeah, few hundred quids worth of revenue compared to what they make. But the second part of that, it's like, The fact you're trying to claim that as like a benefit, as though you're not just charging $50, is fairly, fairly spectacular. So you do get some absolute horror shows.

I think that we, we went through like a weird phase ourselves. And I actually think by the time, you know, from 21, you and I probably thought culture was Friday night drinks. I think by 25 we understood it wasn't, but I don't think we understood fully what it was. I think we thought at 25 maybe it was a plethora of different Variety of perks. But I do believe by the time we were 29, 30, by the time our company was a big company, we knew that culture was about providing the person with the best life possible for them. When we sold though, we sold into a company that believed culture was pizza party. Yeah. And I remember being like, whoa, like such a culture shock that they would applaud their own culture. For like how much free booze you got. And I remember being like, that's not, that's not culture.

That's not— yeah, yeah, I just— yeah, you're right. Like, you've got to make a little bit more individualistic. And I think the idea that just because you have a few flashy toys, that means you have a good culture, I do think you're kidding yourself a little bit. Yeah.

One of the accusations is obviously that Labour is a socialist government and that's going to be terrible for business. What's your take on that?

Right, um, I— so I struggle with the word socialism because it's become such like a— people fundamentally don't understand what that is. And so people kind of use it as like almost like an insult to business. I think there are some very good examples where socialism, for want of a better phrase, is probably the right option. My view, because I talk about this a lot, I talk about like making money the right way. My view is this: capitalism and competitive and free markets are always the best approach when there's fair and legitimate competition. The second, where there's no competition, you take away the most important part of running a company, which is the competitiveness of trying to outdo the other private companies who are trying to do the same thing. So when that happens, you've got innovation, you've got like competitiveness on price. But if you end up with these situations, and we've got the best example in the world, right? We've got our water companies here in the UK.

So give us some flavour on that.

Yeah. So basically there's, it's been a real scandal where we have the worst water in Europe. Um, in regards to basically we've just got millions of gallons of sewage and water leakages. Of course, flight infrastructure. And the main reason why that's happened was we sold off the assets.

Um, so the UK government owned them, was that?

We built them, we created them, we then sold them off as assets to private companies.

But taxpayers paid for that?

We paid for that. So we did all the infrastructure. This is a good example, right? The companies who take the risk and build everything, amazing. It's really hard to do. We know this. It's really hard to build something, start something. You absolutely deserve the monetary award. Where I start to struggle is when you haven't done that bit. You've swooped in, bought the asset, and then you just start ripping money out with no innovation. So what's happened with water companies is they didn't build them. The people who own these water companies, we did. We built them, we sold them. Fine. Was that a good decision? Probably not. But it happened sort of back in the sort of '80s, early '90s. Now what's happened since then is there's two lines in a business, right? You've got your revenue and you've got your costs. The difference equals the profit. Now, when you've got something like fixed, like water prices, you don't want to increase them too much. They do go up and they have been going up, but you don't increase them because people notice that. So the easiest way to increase your profit is to lower the operating costs. So you downgrade maintenance. So what these companies have done, and the reason why they've been allowed to do this, and this is where competition becomes— I'm a big capitalist. I like competition. We were agencies. I'm all for competition. It's the best way. But if there's no competition, because you can't compete, I can't set up a rival water company because they kind of dominate an area. Yeah. And so what they've done is they've just ripped out operating costs. They doubt they, instead of maintaining things once every 6 months, they'll do it once every 2 years. And the problem is that's causing issues and leaks and sewage. And the reason why people get so frustrated, right, is they then changed a lot of shareholder agreements where it became profit focused, not performance focused. And I think that's a great example of when I say we're making money the right way. If you run an amazing water company, everyone gets good water, it's clean. We're not pumping shit, literal shit into our rivers and lakes. Yeah, make money. I have no issues with that. Genuinely. I know a lot of people do, but I don't have an issue with that. If you are— build your booze. If you're fundamentally— we had two of the heaviest rainfall months and there was a water shortage because so much of it leaked out. We had, there was at one point there was over 70% of our beaches we couldn't swim in the seas and lakes because we're just pumping shit in. That is not a good business. Like a water company, your product, everyone requires it. They need it to live. It falls for free from the sky and you have zero competition. How do you run a bad business? How are you? And then what they did, right? They, because they're such stable assets, they borrowed debt against those assets, then ripped that out as profit. And now we have to bail them out. So at some point you just have to say, well, look, that was a bad example.

Is the solution to that, that in my mind anyway, when you have a natural monopoly on a product, you should get entrepreneurs to bid for a license to run it and make as much profit as they can within the margin.

Break it up. Have rival water companies send Jimmy, that would work, right?

But license it. Don't sell the asset.

Yeah, don't sell it. But we've already sold it, right? And this is where people go, oh, we don't want state-owned. It's like, well, hang on, Australia own a lot of it. China own a lot of it.

I'd rather own our water than whoever owns it right now.

Who owns it? Well, Australian private equity houses, a lot of China state companies, there's Canadian pensions. And they don't care about our water. Well, that's the point, right? They're in Australia. Drinking the Australian government-owned water. And we're literally at a point now we say, well, we can't swim in our seas and lakes. What are we doing? And so at that point you sort of say, well, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? Like, what's the point of this? And that's not entrepreneurial. That's not skillful. I argue it's some of the worst entrepreneurs I've ever seen. And so that's why I get frustrated. Whereas actually I'm in the green tech space now. And like, we work with the government because it's like new policies and stuff and they're incredibly slow. So I totally, this is what I mean. I totally like companies taking the lead. I think things can happen way quicker. People can move faster. Like that's how innovation happens when lots of little companies are trying to grow into a space. That's where the best of businesses come out. When you've just got rail companies or water companies who just own nothing and do nothing, have no innovation whatsoever, and just keep downgrading, I just think, come on, like, that's just ridiculous.

I feel like small businesses and big businesses are treated exactly the same, and I feel like that in itself is very challenging. Whereas I think that more, more tax breaks and more advantages should be given to small businesses, much more than they are. Than big businesses. And yet I feel like it's very easy for a big business to avoid tax. Like the amount of companies that get themselves based in other jurisdictions becomes very challenging.

It's less big and small and it's more domestic versus international. If you're a British business operating in Britain, it's really hard to kind of— not that I'm advocating for that, but it's really hard to like get out of paying tax or reducing your tax bill. Whereas if you're an international company, it is depressingly easy. Like the stat that I— do you remember we used to get bugged by this? We paid more, our little agency paid more corporation tax than Amazon. Yeah. Which is just objectively crazy. And Amazon, and this is true, is still classified as a warehouse business. It's not classified as a shop. Amazon is not a shop. Like it's the shop. It's the only shop I swear these days. Do you know what I mean? So like, I don't like this sort of like it's big versus small. I do think there's a bigger problem with like international versus domestic. I think British businesses get squeezed pretty hard versus international companies who make a lot of money in Britain, then manage to sort of extrapolate from that. So yeah, I think that's the—

that's an issue. Obviously we were talking about the benefits of being an entrepreneur, of starting a side hustle. Do you remember why you became an entrepreneur? Like what's the thing that drove the lifestyle? And you've done it now multiple times. You obviously committed to it.

Yeah, I mean, I always describe myself as an accidental entrepreneur. I would say I was very lucky and it was circumstance that allowed me. So obviously we had our first business together, but I was all set to do maritime insurance. Right. I was doing like internships during university.

What would the world be like without Ben Askens these days?

Yeah, I know. Thank the world of maritime insurance. Thanks to them, I suspect. But yeah, so I had a job and then that job fell through because the company I was about to join got bought. So I sort of, sort of was sort of loafing around London. Then I met you and I always describe you as like the most, like there was no scenario where you were never not going to be an entrepreneur. Like I just, you're just so obviously that geared towards that mostly because no one would ever want to employ you. But I just got proved years later as well. Exactly. Yeah, we got literal proof. But I think more importantly that you were so obviously down that route. And I think I very much like got very lucky meeting you when I did. And I think we were, we were talking about this, like, business partners, such as like a tough relationship. And I always think we're like the perfect combination of very similar and very different in like a really nice, unique way. Um, and I would just say we just got on and had a lot of fun. Like, you very much drew me into that world, and then I was fortunate enough to find that I absolutely loved it and thrive in it, and, and it went from there.

I think it's such an important point for people is that I sometimes think that for me, I had it done by my older brother and by my dad. So they were entrepreneurs, they are entrepreneurs, and therefore I believed it was possible. Like, I believe that was a route that I had in front of me that I could choose. And I feel like maybe I facilitated that a little bit for you. 100%. But like, I do think that one of the reasons I make content, and I think— I hope one of the reasons you make content, is to show people that you're not limited to the life that someone else set for you. Like, you can take complete control of your life and the outcome that you want.

And one of the nice things I had the other day I was playing hockey and one of the people I was playing in hockey came up to me and said, oh, you know, you're the guy from TikTok. Um, and he sort of said like, actually, you are the reason I realized my boss was awful. Yeah, I've quit that job and I've started my own business as a sort of, you know, and I thought that, that's awesome. Like, I can only imagine, right?

Because I get, I get a lot of messages like that and people will stop me, but I can only imagine how many people message you to say you've had an impact, a positive impact on my life. It must, that must be must be one of the rewards of doing it.

For sure, for sure. And, and look, I, again, like, I, I really want to re-emphasize the fact that I don't think I do anything that special because no one really disagrees with my story. 500 million people a year disagree with you.

For sure.

And that's what I mean, like, there's, there's something, there's something very ludicrous about my viewership because I don't do anything special. I don't offer any unique insight or anything like that. Um, but it is, yeah, it feels very nice if I I'm helping people in some small way, even if it's just being like a voice of reason amidst kind of the insanity of like you're sort of locked in of this weird boss or something like that, or you realize to kind of give you the courage to get— that's awesome. I've got so much time for that and long may it continue. And it's definitely the most important part.

Well, Ben, thank you so much for coming on Wake Up and being my first guest.

Thanks for having me. What an honor.

Thank you so much for watching Wake Up. We have some unbelievable guests coming. I'm so thankful for Ben. For joining me on the show today. Please like and subscribe the channel and give us 5 stars on any of the podcast channels.

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