Revving a brand by association with an international sports franchise, with Paul Teasdale

Welcome to The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. This show will tell you how to get the recognition you and your business deserve. Our guests share their practical insights and tools which you can use straight away. Your host is international entrepreneur, podcast host, and author Jim James.

And welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me here, Jim James, in actually the rather slow seat because I'm going across to Woking to talk to Paul Teasdale, who used to work for McLaren F1 team. So he's going to rev us up. Paul, welcome to the show.

Thanks for the introduction, Jim. Pleasure to be here.

It's my pleasure. Apologies for the slightly cheesy introduction about revving us, but you're going to be on the show and talk about how you've been building your own brand, but by bridging from the F1 and the excitement around the whole franchise of F1 and McLaren as a brand specifically. And we're also going to talk about some of the incremental high-performance teams techniques that people can use and about a new one you've introduced, which is about— is it infobesity? Paul, we're going to talk about that.

Yeah, managing infobesity indeed.

Yes, we've got a lot of great things to talk about. So, Paul, share with us first of all about what you do and how you help entrepreneurs to improve the performance of their business.

Oh, thanks, Jim. Well, I bring my insights from the world of Formula 1 and McLaren in particular and help make them accessible and applicable to different people in different organizations. And that's what I do. I take my experience that I've had working 7 years with McLaren. I've also had a previous experience with other really high-performing teams around the world, but the McLaren brand and the Formula 1 environment in particular attracts a lot of people and they associate it a lot more with high performance than maybe some of the sausage-making or dairy export companies that I've worked with, no matter how high performance they have been in the past. So, that's what I do. I point people towards this high-performance world that they are aware of and often feel is way beyond their reach. And I help them to understand the principles and the ways of working, the methodologies that are in play there that make it accessible so that they can apply those principles for themselves so that they can then accelerate their own performance.

Paul, just give us a definition of a high-performing team.

Well, I think it's always an interesting one because you've got an easy way of viewing it in the world of F1, in that, are you performing well against your competition? By definition, if you're in the F1 world and competing in F1, you are high performing. You're one of the top teams that are out there, and very few teams manage to, first of all, make it in, and secondly, stay certainly as long as McLaren or a certain Italian team who drive in red have been involved, whose name we've rarely mentioned. But it's about that context of where you are. And you can compare yourself to competition. That's a good way of saying, am I high-performing? But it's also about what is your day-to-day operation? Are you allowing people to be performing at their best and performing at their best together? And those are some of the things that you can start to look at no matter what your context is. Are my individuals performing at their best and having the ability to perform at their best? And then, are they coming together as a team, either in my department or sales team, whatever it might be? And are they doing as well as we think they possibly could be? And then as soon as you start doing that, your level changes, your view changes as to what's the standard for high performance, and then you move that up. And I think the real high-performing teams are constantly pushing that bar. That's the thing.

Okay. And I've got to ask you, because you're the expert and you've worked at McLaren, what is the secret? If you can distill that into, if you like, one sentence, what is the secret of a McLaren when it comes to them being a high-performance team?

Distill it into one sentence, that's it. Focus, I think, is the critical piece. What you've got in that world in general, but within that team, is you've got a singular focus for what everybody is driving towards. If what you are doing today isn't driving towards getting that car to be as fast and as easily drivable and as maximizing the points that it can possibly get, if what you are doing doesn't relate to that, you don't do it. And I know you've talked to my good friend Faris Aranki in the past about FQ and focus quotient. That allows them to have a real razor-sharp view on focus, which is if it isn't focusing on driving the car to be better, we're not going to do it.

That is fantastic and well done because I didn't prep you for that. So you answered that on the fly and I was worried because you gave me that look of like, we weren't going to talk about that. But Paul Teasdale, that's a great answer. Focus. Now, you work for McLaren, but you have your own business now. How have you managed to bridge from a big company like McLaren, which has got brand recognition, let's face it, and with all due respect, your own personal brand, which is on a journey, which I'm sure will become very successful, but is currently less well-known than McLaren? Tell us, how have you been doing that? Have you been using the McLaren name to your own purposes?

Yeah, I mean, it is very much a case of, as any solopreneur, anyone who's going out there, you've got to recognize, and maybe it's something I didn't really recognize until I got into this industry myself, is people don't know you. And if people don't know you, like you, and trust you, then they're not going to do business with you. So the first point of call is to get them to know you. And so I want to use my experience and the lessons that I've learned in order to help people to accelerate their own performance. And in order to do that, I can use the value that has already been built in the world of F1 and the brand of McLaren without being disingenuous. And that's the bit that's critical for me. I'm not McLaren. I'm not bringing McLaren to you. I'm bringing Paul Teasdale's experience of working in that world. But that's what I've done my whole career is bring different experiences and different expertise, different angles and perspectives to allow people to access performance that they weren't necessarily thinking of. And so that's how I will always talk about my experiences from working with McLaren or working at McLaren. I'm not ever positioning myself as McLaren or F1, but people are interested and intrigued by F1 and McLaren. So that gets them at least starting that conversation.

Yeah, and I think you've raised a really key point there about not being disingenuous, about being authentic, which is a topic that's come up on a few shows about the need to show up as you promised.

Yes.

So that's really good that you're completely transparent upfront with everybody about that. Once people have, if you like, gone down that, oh, that sounds interesting, that chap used to work for McLaren, he must know things that The rest of us don't know yet. What do you do next, Paul, in order to get people to be interested in working with you? Because it's not enough just to say you used to work at McLaren. You then have to have some deliverables of your own, don't you?

Precisely. And there's a couple of things really. And one of them, the main thing is just talking to people. And it's talking to people. My focus is always about performance. So I talk to them about the performance that they're trying to drive, the performance that's in front of them, the opportunities there. What are the results that you are looking for? And it's not just profit, it's what are the results? What's the context of those results? Are you an organization who wants to have good profitability while still being incredibly sustainable or ethical or something like that? Whatever the real strategic drive is that cuts you apart from the rest, you've got to make sure that you can drive to results in different ways, but actually the how you want to deliver that is crucial to making sure that you are not only setting yourself the North Star, you're also giving yourself some guidelines to say, I'm not going to go out of those lanes. And also, it's aligned to your values. So, it's really about those values. So, I talk to people about their results and their values. And that is often through initial conversations, but it might also be through a speaking event. It might be through a workshop or activity, but generally, the speaking events is a kickoff point for a lot of these engagements. And I like to make the titles of the— you got to entice people in as well. And the F1 angle gets a certain number of people involved, but there are people out there who aren't interested in F1 and that actually turns them off. If it's all about F1, I don't want to hear. So you've got to position things correctly and give people a bit of intrigue as to what they're going to be hearing about or what they could potentially be hearing about. I've got one of the talks, for instance, or one of the topics I'll talk about is If you want to change tires, then bring in the ballerina. And so I'm bringing those expertise and that interest and that experience from that world of F1 and the changing tires, and also the ballerinas, funnily enough, but that's a different story. But you're putting something in there that's getting people interested.

Yeah. Okay, I'm interested. So how do you get ballerinas into the pit lane?

I mean, that story in itself was all about how do you continually focus on improvements? And look externally for different ways of doing that. And one thing that was recognized in the McLaren team was that the people who were doing the pit stop, it's efficiency of movement. It's almost a flow, a dance. When you're looking at the pit stop and you're trying to do something in about 2 seconds, you've got to be really precise with your movements. Who else is really good at this? Let's bring in the Royal Ballet. And so that in itself is a whole different topic about how do you think outside the box? in order to bring in external expertise and open your mind to different ways of thinking.

Yeah, I love that. And my daughter, by the way, who is quite high up in her ballet levels, also loves F1. So she would have come to your talk, Paul Teasdale. Now, you also are wearing a Paul Teasdale polo shirt. For those people that can't see, it's very nice. It's black with silver lettering embroidered on saying, helping people perform. How important is the sort of personal branding merchandise being for you? Because of course it's tax deductible if you wear clothes that are branded, it becomes a uniform, right? And you can offset tax for that.

It is. I've got 2 of these polo shirts that I have on rotation. One's getting washed while the other one's being worn. It has its advantages and I've started to see the advantages from a brand recognition piece. And when out and about, people see your name, that's great. It started off more practical for me in the classic sort of Mark Zuckerberg, what am I gonna wear when I'm out there? I don't have to make that decision anymore. I've got my uniform already sorted out. And it also brings consistency when I'm recording podcasts, when I'm doing podcast hosting as well, all that sort of stuff. So people get consistency of that brand as when they see me, they tend to see me online anyway, wearing this in this background. That you start to get to know and trust the brand on that front.

Paul, that's a great idea. I should definitely take a leaf out of your book with that one. You've worked with big companies that also work with other big companies. Can we just touch on— I hate to go back to McLaren, but just because of your experience there— how do companies like McLaren structure their partnerships and marketing, if you're allowed to share with that? Because it's a unique insight that you've got. Can you give us some ideas about how big companies that are very focused on going faster and anything else you said they don't do, but they have huge commercial operations, don't they? So how do they get those sponsorships and those partnerships going?

So the part of the organization that I worked in for the majority of my time there, it did switch a little bit towards the end, was called Applied Technologies or Applied as it's now known. Applied in itself was set up in order to create a new revenue stream, because recognizing that your revenue stream, your marketing income is only directly related to how well you're performing on track. And if you're performing well, brilliant. If you're not, you're stuck. So how do you actually get some more revenue coming through? And that was how the Applied Technologies arm came about. And we had a smallish team. So, we're relatively small in terms of the people who were sort of client-facing, like myself, only 2 or 3 of us who were doing that work. And then we would bring in specialists in data analytics, modeling, simulation, predictive analytics, the wonderful stuff that was the technical aspect of the expertise that McLaren had driven over the years. But in order to get the big clients and to work on the big clients, That's a lot of work to do that business development, to go out into the market as McLaren and say, we're McLaren, we're doing this. There's gonna be a lot of questions as to why would I go and work with McLaren when I could work with a different consultancy? And so what McLaren did really well was they partnered up with, I mean, firstly, when I was there, it was with KPMG, and then the relationship switched to Deloitte. And as part of that sponsor relationship, which is sort of in the racing side of the organization, they had an agreement that that would be a working partnership where Deloitte would bring in the big clients, for instance, and then we would work together with some of their consulting expertise. We would come in with our sort of experience, people and performance expertise, which is what I would bring, and some of our technology expertise, which would be the sort of pick of some of the simulation and modeling team. And then we would work on a client issue, typically developing a proof of concept to help them with some form of decision support. So it might be in airport operations, you know, how can you develop a bit of software that predicts if you move one plane here, what are the knock-on impacts over the rest of the day or the week, whatever that might be? Or interestingly, the first project that I did was modeling supermarket shelf stacking, which, why would a big supermarket ever come directly to McLaren? But because we had a relationship with KPMG to bring that, and it worked for them because that KPMG or Deloitte partner would say, we've got something else that other, you know, our competition doesn't have. The other Big 4 don't have this shiny state-of-the-art modeling and simulation team that we can bring through McLaren.

So the technology transfer, I think it was McLaren also, they got involved in using its fin technology to help with the air conditioning.

That was actually Williams, but who do a similar thing.

Yeah, right. Okay, I better edit that out. But great, this technology transfer. So the key point is that they managed to keep focus on their core objective.

Yes.

But by marketing through, if you like, value-added resellers, they could leverage the technology that they've got in-house. So that's a really smart strategy. Paul Teasdale, you've left the hallowed halls and now you're an entrepreneur, which is brilliant, and you're building up your own brand. Can you tell us what has not worked? It's always slightly edifying and reassuring to hear that not everything's going 100% for everybody all the time. It's useful to learn and share so other people don't make the same mistakes.

Yeah, the thing that hasn't worked or hasn't worked as well as I would have hoped, or I've taken the most lessons from, might be another way of saying it, is in the early stages of going independent and bringing all these thoughts As to what messages can I get out to the wider world. I've heard this mentioned by some of your other guests as well. I took the build it and they will come approach. So I built an online course around the Rapid Performance, which is the sort of main framework that I use to help clients with their performance, and put that into an online course, spent the time developing the materials, recording it, putting it all together, and then said, right, Let's put that onto LinkedIn and speak to some people and then everyone will want to buy it, right? Yeah, it hasn't done too badly, but I haven't paid off the mortgage yet, put it that way. But one of those things of, I mean, and it's a great asset to have and lots of learnings that went through it, both from a technology perspective, my early video recording, my speaking, everything that went along with it. There's always ways which you can improve, but I took that approach of if I build it, They will buy it, and there are lessons to be taken from that.

Yeah, thanks for that, Paul. You're not alone. I also did the lockdown course building exercise, but you still have it as an asset. That's the main thing. Paul, we talked earlier on about this term infobesity. Yeah. And how does that sort of impact a business, and especially when it comes to getting noticed, which is this shows remit. What do you think about that? Infobesity, what is that and what does it mean?

So, it's a term I came across a while back which relates to essentially people gorging on data and information in all of its different formats. So, it's the social medias, but it's also internally within organizations. It's the excess reports. It's the report that has 50 lines of data instead of the 2 or 3 that you actually need. It's all of these assumptions that if I provide people with more data, the decision will be better. Interestingly, whenever you're generating data, you tend to think that that's going to be the case. Whenever you're consuming data, it tends to be the opposite. And if you look at a report and go, why have I got all this? I only need that. But if you're creating a report, you tend to give them everything and give them more and more. And it's just about that lack of communication between the 2 channels as to what are you actually using this for? How are you using that data? And I love the term because, you know, firstly, it's intriguing and it brings people in, but it also speaks to a challenge and a problem that we all have individually and as organizations as well. And it relates to this Rapid Performance Framework that I developed, which is all about putting data last on your list. So, just to give you a brief overview, and this is what the online course is all about, by the way, so all the details are in there. Brief overview, it's about putting results first. And the background to this is in a Formula 1 car, there's lots of data coming off the car, huge amounts of data coming off the car in a race weekend. But the more data you want to generate comes at the cost of sensors and telemetry, which adds weight to the car, which has a negative impact. And so I relate that to people's headspace. The more data you put in, actually the negative impact on headspace has an impact on the performance that you're trying to drive, which is better decisions. So I help people understand first and foremost results, then actions, people, insights, and data. And that's the RAPID framework. And I love a good acronym, so I had to do that. And it speaks to the Formula 1 space.

And yeah. No, that's very nice. Infobesity. So we must think about that as well when it comes to like production of social media content and so on, that actually volume, as we're finding when I'm working with Simon Chappell on the LinkedIn Safaris, volume is not key. It's the value, definitely, and the engagement that are key. Paul Teasdale in Woking. If you want to find out more about you and how you help people perform better, how can they get in touch with you?

So the 2 main channels, one, LinkedIn, very active on LinkedIn, but probably the best one is to go to my website, paulteasdale.co.uk. And one of the first things you'll see there is a button, there's a pop-up as well, to set up a free 30-minute chat with me. And that's Yeah, no obligation sales piece. It's not trying to sell you anything. It's just about understanding how I can help you add value to your situation. So get in touch, please do through there. And I'd love to hear people's challenges and how they can relate this world of high performance in F1 to their own organization.

Paul Teasdale, thank you so much for sharing. We've only had 20 minutes, so it's been a bit of a race to the finish. Thank you for joining me on the show.

Thanks so much for having me, Jim.

So you've been listening to Paul Teasdale. He's over there in Woking in the UK, not far away from me here in Hilberton in Wiltshire. If you've enjoyed the show, do please share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur and also review it on the All Player. All really helps. And remember that this conversation is one of a number that we convert into text and make them into articles, and then we put those into books, the first of which, Volume 1, published by Wiley, is available on Amazon and Barnes& Noble, and also in selected outlets including Kinokuniya in Singapore. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.