Chewing the Channel: In conversation with Paul North

 Exploring altnet consolidation with Paul North, Managing Director at Zen

Will’s latest conversation is with Paul North, Managing Director at Zen about his journey from technical support, to sales, to channel leadership.

A seasoned channel champion, Paul also had a lot to say about the rapid evolution of the industry and what it means for businesses and partners alike.

Listen now to hear Paul’s insights on topics such as: 

The consolidation of telecoms and the rise of altnets

• Wholesale growth strategies and the professionalisation of the channel
• The challenges some altnets face in becoming fully wholesale-ready
• Exciting innovations and transformations shaping the next five years

Plus, first-hand insight on driving wholesale partnerships, balancing leadership with life and shaping a business ethos that puts people and the planet first.

Website: www.elevate.uk/wholesale

LinkedIn: Will Goodall

Phone: 0330 058 9530

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:11

Hello everyone, I'm Amon. Um, excited today. Well, really excited, I have the honour of channel royalty. So uh Sir Paul North is joining me. It's his first podcast since making the move to Zen as the MD of their partners at Wholesale Division. So really excited to talk through his journey. He started working in a hotel as training manager a number of years ago. He's progressed. I don't think there's a role in wholesale that he's not done. Um be comfortable, uncomfortable is probably how I would uh focus on um when we're going through what he's gonna say. So it's an absolute pleasure. Hope you enjoy it. Um available, usual suspects in terms of Spotify, YouTube, various forms on there. So hope you enjoy. Uh thank you very much. So Paul North, knighted king of channel, in my humble opinion. I've been I'm really excited for this because your first podcast since your new role. It is indeed, yeah. Which is a exclusive. We rarely get exclusives on during the channel, so um, I'm absolutely delighted with that. Also, our paths crossed a number of years ago when I was the best ever account manager you've ever had when you were at internet. But I'm really excited to get you on because whenever we talk about or I think about channel, invariably you come up in terms of either businesses you're working at or your view on the wholesale market, resellers, MSPs, and all that kind of stuff. I think your entire career by a little bit of working in a hotel has been spent fully in the channel, so you're not like lacks me that's done a bit of direct bit of this, you've always worked with partners at every level. So I'm really interested to tap into that. You're from Costa del Telford, um, which is I fell in love with that place uh a number of years ago. Um you've worked in an environment where probably unusual to be in a tech business within Telford, where most is kind of your Manchester. Yeah, I'd agree with that. London, Leeds, or now Rochdale, I suppose. Yeah. Give that big up. But before we kind of get into that, grew up Telford sort of area, I did Shropshire.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Take a step back and say thanks very much. That was a very kind introduction. Uh really appreciate it. And yeah, we've known each other for what the best part of a decade now. Yeah, coming up for yeah, yeah. Since your time working at Virgin when I was at Internet.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

So uh you were sales manager at Internet. Yeah. And for those that don't know, Internet at the time was a fully wholesale business, but not you didn't have network as such, obviously incorporated into City Fiber, but it was very much thousand partners, salespeople, marketing, your own NARC. Um, and you started as in technical answering. I did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

But yeah, well we did that. We did, we were our claim to fame was that we were the first to do BT's WBC network, the 21st century network, when ADSL2 was launched, so up to 24 megabits per second. Um so we had 20 super pops across the UK, as we referred to them as. Um, but yeah, anyway, I think yeah, in terms of the journey, um I'm working with yourself. Great to be here. Thank you for inviting me to the podcast. Uh, I've been really looking forward to today, it's been a while coming, I think. So we've flirted about the idea.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

So I've been stalking you ridiculously, and then I managed to speak to your PA who spoke to their PA, and then we've got old of you. We got the deal done. He's like, Yeah, yeah, it's cost me a fortune, but you know, I'm happy with that. So thanks. Growing up, yeah, formative years, because you are probably one of the most energetic people on the channel. I'm assuming, might be wrong. Join your sign of high school sort of stuff. What, if any, sort of entrepreneurial business things did you do? Because I'm pretty sure there will be some snippets within uh I did lots of things, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So here we go. Yeah. Um, yeah, I was quite an enthusiastic uh young person, I think. Um probably some of those flares that showed in the early years. Uh I used to, on the way to school, go to the market and buy sweets and yoghurts and things that were going out of date and buy them in bulk and then sell them on the playground at school. I love doing that. I used to um what prompted you what prompted you to do that?

SPEAKER_03 4:18

So is that you're kind of looking at it going, there's an opportunity here. Was there a demand from people? Was the school a ripoff in terms of the cost of stuff? Uh where did you see that sort of it was that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

I mean, you could buy uh things, snacks, biscuits, cakes in the uh the school canteen. And I thought, well, I used to have to get the bus to school. I got off at Wellington Market, which was in Telford, and then it was about a 15-minute walk to school from there, and I thought, wander through the market, used to buy myself some sweets in the morning, and then thought, oh, I can buy you know 50 fruobs that are going out of date for a pound and sell them on the playground at 10 or 15 pence each. Uh so that was something that I did, and I also um I used to hire out my Game Boy games as well. So I used to like have like a little rental service where I'd hire them for the weekend or for the week. See that?

SPEAKER_03 5:01

So uh we had James Drake on the the owner at Eclipse, and he had a a rental but rental of books. Yeah. Um so you're renting out Game Boy games.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah. And so you knew would you have a little book and you were like, right, you've got Super Mario? I did exactly that. Yeah, I had a little book and I'd lend something out for like a week or a week and a half or a weekend. Uh, and then yeah, I used to do the selling like food and drink.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

Did you have late fees?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

I didn't have late fees actually, no. But it is really interesting because when it went when I went on to do IT at college, um, one of the parts of the coursework was in um development, which back in the day was Visual Basic. And the first project that we had to do was create a VHS and DVD rental software. And I thought, great, I can use my uh my prior knowledge of engine at my game again.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Get my uh my illegal business and I can I can turn it into something something greater.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

It was art as well, wasn't it? Art and tech. I did, yeah. I did um yeah, I did multimedia. Yeah, so that was really good. Um at the time that was actually creating um videos and games in Flash, which yeah, RIP Flash. Uh Apple killed that off.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

So But then you didn't go to university. I didn't so my my stalking of of your you was that a conscious decision where you said I I because a lot of time when people do anything tech related, etc., they'll go to a university of some sort or a large multinational business where they'll kind of learn those skills and and add that in. Um and you know, particularly like some of me from a Norfolk background, or from you from Telford, they'll invariably get pulled into a big city. Was that like what was the reasoning behind you kind of going, I want to start working and earning my stripes? And what what drove that?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Uh so at school when we had to choose GTSE for year 10 and 11, I chose uh business studies and IT, and I also did uh cooking as well because I'm really into cookery. I thought about that separately. I did food tech as well. Yeah, food tech, yes, I did that. Um, and I always really wanted to get into IT, so that was a career path that I wanted to do. And at the time I was really into tinkering on my PC at home. Uh my stepdad would often go to we'd go to computer fairs together and buy parts and build PCs and things. Uh so I always wanted to get into IT, but it was primarily into either kind of network engineering or software development, is what I was really interested in at the time. So I went on to Telford College to do an AVCE, it was called at the time, uh, in IT and multimedia. Really enjoyed the uh networking side, really enjoyed the software development side. I I I enjoyed most of it to be honest. However, at that time, I got a part-time job at a hotel and started to earn a little bit of money on the side doing you know evenings and weekends, and then uh probably quite similar to some of the other podcasts I've listened to where people every day start to earn a little bit of money and you get quite excited by it.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Because you're and I mean no offense at all to people who have a real software technology love, but in my experience, and I know this isn't always the case, is sometimes they are not the most outgoing and personable characters, so with the your interests and your personality to my ignorant brain, they don't typically line up. Normally it's they like that stuff, but they don't want to be meeting new people, networking and stuff. So so you you're kind of talking there in where you've got the technical side that you love, but then through the hotel and cash and that other part of you, the outgoing entrepreneurial side, is starting to come to the fore, if you like, as well as the technical bit. Is that kind of fair to say?

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah, it was absolutely the the hotel that I worked for was a small family-run business, 12-bedroom hotel. Uh, had a really nice restaurant at Rosetta Awards, and so I worked there for a period of time, and then I got the opportunity to do a kind of training manager course with them and live in the hotel for a short period of time for well, for about six months, uh, which was great because I met all sorts of manner of people, uh, great social skills, learnt an awful lot about, you know, I had to do everything really because profit, gross profit, exactly that. Yeah, working with the chef on buying things in, yeah, helping with menus, just all sorts of different things. So it gave me a really kind of nice um broad experience of of different things. And running, I say running the IT, they had one PC behind the uh behind the check-in desk and a phone in each room. And but I think yeah, I I did that for probably a year and a half year, and but I really wanted to get into IT, and I think you know, that that point of the sliding doors moment in my life, and I've spoken about this before in just in general conversation with people, is I uh wanted to get onto the ladder, so I saw two roles advertised at a time in technical support, one at Epsom, because they've got a huge HQ in Telford, still there today, uh massive complex, and one at Internet, and uh applied for both roles and got offered both of them at the same time. The internet one was actually a little bit less money than Epsom, but I thought I really liked the idea of supporting internet services, and it was quite a broad product set, domain names, hosting, servers, rather than printers didn't seem as exciting to me.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

And a smaller environment, I guess, in terms of the business itself.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

It yeah, it was much smaller at the time when I joined Internet. I can't remember how many staff there were now, maybe about 30 or so, 40 at most. And so I did, I did when I joined Internet, I did that technical support role for a year and during that period engaged with both the head of our network operations centre at the time and the head of development, and was quite keen to understand what would I need to do to go into one of those roles. And I think that there was a couple of things that probably put me off as I started to read some of the books, which at the time was a lot, it's a lot different to how I'm sure it is nowadays, and it's 20 years ago. Yeah, yeah, that's it. And there was a lot, there was a lot, there was a lot of a lot of reading to do on PHP and different languages or on networks on doing Cisco, CCNA, etc. So started to read a little bit of that, but I just found that actually I wasn't as interested in it as I I thought I was going to be. And then it was just by chance opportunity, I got offered a uh secondment in sales for three months and did that and thought, wow, really enjoyed this, and it was kind of a bit of a light bulb moment, really.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

And also, is there a little bit of an element of you're looking at the salespeople making commission and that financial side's kicking in a little bit where you're kind of you're drawn to that world a little bit as well as the the sort of um moving away from the if you like textbook of coding and things or whatever that may be?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

I I think um the part that I really liked was just being able to engage and talk to lots of people. I I probably I don't think I was actually as aware of the sales people at the time when I was in technical support because they the office was kind of partitioned off. So you had technical support on one side, sales and what was customer service and billing in the other, and the network operations was just in another room um on the like on a different part of the building. So um I think probably what was more exciting was I got offered this opportunity and how it was shared with me. So at the time, internet was part of a bigger group called Enter Technologies, which was a hardware distributor, and was turned over over £100 million a year, and they had uh literally a gold mine of contacts in a CRM called Goldmine, and they were all different small IT companies, uh the you know, everything from your kind of family-run PC shops all the way up to you know large retailers and detailers. And uh the task that I was given was can you you know speak to these uh IT businesses and look to try to get them to sell resale broadband services? And for each one that you do, we'll get £10 for doing it, you have a trial for three months and do that. So I thought it's quite exciting, got this big list of literally thousands of IT businesses and just got to sit there and pick up the phone and try and get it.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Are you the only one doing that?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

So there were there was kind of like desk-based account managers at the time, but they were mostly working the small partner base that we already had and leads that were coming over from Enter Technologies for the ones that wanted to sell. So they didn't have anyone in a cold calling role.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

That's what I mean. So the what was because a lot of resellers, the challenge I when I speak to the the owners have is is is opportunity creation and winning either new customers or new wholesale partners, and invariably it requires that proactive bit of picking up the phone and um some people will say numbers games, some of these are all different people that'll go, it's not a numbers game, you need to do this and this, and the leads come in and it just pay me ten grand a month. Um what drove you to just repeatedly pick up the phone and to work through that because it's so hard as a salesperson starting out in those roles, yeah. Gives you the values, in my opinion, that that propel you, but it's very hard to sit there cold call, cold call, cold call while you've got particularly in wholesale, people around you whose partners may be ringing them up, saying, Oh, yeah, that's coming in. Can I have that? Yeah, and they're obviously you know, I've got this order, and you're kind of starting at the bottom rung. Were you aware that you know people call it uh Andy Tatlock, our COO calls it shit eating as as disrespectful or as respectful as that is, because both of me here and me have been through them roles, yeah. Where you have to earn your stripes, oh yeah, get told no a lot, have that inner discipline. What drove you through that first period where you sat there and it's bang, bang, bang?

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yeah, well, I think I think you've hit on a couple of good points there. So earn your stripes is something that a couple of my best mentors over the years have always said to me that they think it's important to come through the ranks in uh in that respect. So that's something that I uh have followed through as well throughout my career and and do believe in. But I think it was the it was genuinely the adrenaline and the excitement of speaking to these businesses, talking to them about the product set, getting them engaged in the idea of selling broadband as a service. Some of them actually did sell broadband already, but with another uh wholesaler, which there wasn't that many at the time, uh, and some didn't do it at all. So I think it was when you got them to do it, and we had this really archaic uh CRM that was built in-house that was like really basic, and you'd see their name come through in their first order place, and you just it was like it's it's like a hit. It's I really like adrenaline, and you'd just be really excited, and I think, oh, got £10 for that. And I'm like, right, ring a few more, ring a few more.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

And like is the bus of achieving winning versus the money.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, absolutely. So um like listening to some of the other people you've had on here as well. I think for me, the one thing that always drives me is I I am quite a competitive person, but it's more achieving than winning, and that's the thing I've always carried from my career. I just I just really like to achieve in all things in life, really, um like in hobbies and everything else. It's not it's not necessarily about being the best or competing and winning against everyone else, it's more so achieving and being better tomorrow than I am today. And I think that was where and as well, it was a cold calling role, but it was relatively warm because they'd bought some hardware off enter technology. Some of it they might have not bought any hardware for a year, so there wasn't lots of painful rejection. I think that might have been very different if I was you know speaking to a hundred businesses a day to try and sell them broadband directly, and only one of them went ahead with it, then perhaps that might have been that'd be be a bit a bit bit more stoic there. Um whereas this was you know, you were getting multiple successes a week, quite a lot, actually. I think nearly 70 in the first three months. Uh, and then you know, but mad how you know that you can remember that.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

How many eight I did actually, but I thought how many years ago were we talking there? Uh so that was 2007. 2007. So 19 years you can remember the first quarter, and I think that's it's always a important lesson I always say to salespeople that first role, that first discipline, nailing that can really propel and give you a lot of core values that you you lean back on.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Oh, it really can. I remember a lot of those key milestones throughout my career. Another one that really stands out to whilst we're on it, uh, and you might listen to this, you never know. First ever lease line I sold was to Thomas Bibb, Tom Bibb, who runs Exascale. Yeah, yeah. So he lives in Exascale are based in Telford. And that was when I was I I was only allowed to sell broadband in my initial role, but when I got promoted a couple of times and I was on the team that was allowed to sell Ethernet, which was a big deal back then. Uh, I again did quite a bit of uh cold calling and managed to speak to Tom, who worked at a company called Premier Software at the time, and that was my my first Ethernet deal. And again, I still remember how I felt getting that first deal. Yeah, thinking I'm I'm part of the they were called sales consultants at the time, the team were, and we we we were sales executives, so I thought, oh, I'm one of one of them now.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

I mean I'm in that it's that stage up, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. When I was working at Virgin, you had kind of the men in suits, if you like, at the time with the field sales enterprise, and aspirationally, when you're desk based, you look at those people and go, that's where I want to go.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

I want to achieve that.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

I want I want the BMW or whatever, or I want to actually have that status within a business where I'm achieving those things.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah, we uh we only had, I think there were two desk-based account managers, so they at the time wouldn't have been called that, but just account managers uh in internet. But we had a few field-based who were called like sales consultants, so they would sell uh crikey back then, it would have been like entry like early MPLSIP VPN, co-location, transit, uh, and lease lines. And you know, this is when you were still selling two meg lease lines for 900 pounds a month or 10 meg lease lines for about the same price, and uh that there was quite a mixed bag across that team, but there was one who's still one of my closest friends now, uh, and see him very often, who was uh had a similar personality to me, he was quite enthusiastic, and he was really passionate about sales and about customers, but he was really hungry and ambitious, but he just wanted to achieve as well, and so uh I I really really looked up to him at the time, and he would often, you know, we'd go out for a beer together, or he'd say, you know, this you could do really well in this industry, here's how it can work, etc.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

What were the biggest lessons you learned in those early days in terms of because going into kind of a sales environment and some of the guests we've had have had, and you've you've mentioned a few kind of the mentor sort of figures, yeah. Was there anyone that kind of took you under their wing? And because you know, you you'll you'll probably cut this bit out, but the the Paul North I heard about in those days was really enthusiastic, but really kind of fiery.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Fiery. You don't have to cut it out, it's fine.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

There's a glass of water there that I think I know someone that will ventured that. But uh were there any points during those years where you've kind of someone's kind of helped refine or opened up because you've because looking at your time at internet and probably every role you've had, to be fair, has been continuation and progression within those roles. Um, unfortunately for for Richard at Zen, this is potentially I think the next step for you there is, but um every role you've progressed and we've been there. So what's kind of is it do you always want to achieve and progress, or or is it some sort of uh someone's kind of taken you under the wing and seen a skill set and gone actually you could do this?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

or yeah, I've always wanted to achieve and progress, but I think no, there's been there's been numerous people throughout my career that have been great in terms of giving me the right direction. Uh so think about that um guy that I mentioned in sales. So he worked at internet, his name was Jason McManus. He's now left the industry um and set up his own business, which is great. Uh, but he was very inspirational in terms of what a good uh salesperson can look like and that hunger and ambition and you know how to manage complex uh contracts and customers, so that was really good. Um I probably then had uh had some sales managers in in a quite a short space of time within internet, but a real turning point for my career was when Steve Barclay joined the business. Love Steve, yeah, he's a great guy. Um, and so you know, and he he was brilliant in terms of he's a he's a true leader in the sense that he always just wanted the best for his people, and you know, we'd sit in one-to-ones together and he would you know give me great feedback on some of my strong points, but also on here's where you can be a bit tighter.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

And he can he said to me once, and I I've always thought of this, he said he's like a little bit of a mantra. I know there was a few, probably a few, you probably remember you'll recognise this praise publicly, yeah. But if someone needs um resetting or if there's a criticism or anything like that, do that privately, yeah. So that that individual you can really cement their learning and you're not kind of demotivating them in front of people, yeah, and you're trying to create that environment, I guess, for a team.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

I think it's hugely important. I think that's just yeah, that is good leadership. I mean, I I made that mistake early in my sales management career where I I I didn't criticise someone, but I think I pulled someone up on something uh in in what was an open plan office at the time, and probably just you know, there were there were people around that then heard it, which then embarrassed that individual uh and upset them. And quite quickly I realised, crikey, I've made a huge mistake there. And how would I have felt if someone had done that to me and Steve would never do something like that? And I look at some of those great, great leaders that I've worked with and I thought, hmm, okay, I need to I need to have a think about that, and that's that was quite an important point. But I think I took that first management role on when I was twenty six, twenty seven. Uh I've I think I've come a long way in the last manage that sounds like you'll have managed people and and I know the people that are still in the industry.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

I mean zero offence with this, but they were a a fair bit older than you with greater sales kind of achievements just purely because they've been in the industry longer. How was it managing people that you're 26 going right? We want to do this, want to put my stamp on it, and they're maybe 40 plus years old, they've worked in the industry a long time, set ideas on how they want to operate. What how did you kind of approach that?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

I think that I was certainly uh apprehensive going into it as well. So I think uh two five actually. I think when I first went into the sales management role, I'd been chasing that for years and I'd gone from you know that account exec account manager, lead account manager, you'd left a chainie hotel manager job, and you wanted that power back, yeah. Yeah, and well, so then I got to the sales manager role because I think probably I just saw that as the the pinnacle of where I wanted to get to in achievement. And then when I went into that role, I think that probably in my first couple of months I just wasn't a great sales manager, and I had be it's like probably that classic thing of where I'd been a great salesperson but then didn't really make that transition immediately into sales management. And I made a couple of mistakes, like I just said, in terms of the um that one in uh in front in in front of others in the office. But I think also on that point of I was quite nervous about that around people being older. I think I I went through a lot of life where everyone just had to look really young all the time. I've never always had like a young face, so I think that's always been something that people always think, oh you do you know. I have the opposite face to you.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

I've aged like a pear when you're Benjamin Button.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Oh well, I I I think I I definitely have now, especially like last last few years working in um high intensity alt nets and things, which we'll get onto that later. But um it's flipping through that, so it's quite a bit. No, it's all right.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

They kind of go into the management and that yeah, you know, management and that. But obviously, kind of you fast forward for your other roles, you've gone from kind of a manager to director roles within a number of businesses into boardrooms and things like that. Is that was that similar feeling to your first managerial role in terms of do I belong here? Am I saying the right things? Uh how do I fit in, or are they totally different in your experience in terms of going into a sales manager role to kind of board positions, etc.?

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah, I think the I think going from sales manager to head of sales, I didn't have much of as much of that apprehension because it was almost a natural progression. I'd done it for quite a while and I'd refined my leadership style and my management style, and uh went on actually a fantastic course um called The Aspiring Leader with a uh like an external company that uh internet brought in, and that really helped change some of my mindset on things. I think the then the I went into the kind of head of regional sales role again. That was quite similar to what I'd done. Uh, I think the biggest thing was when I joined GigaNet as head of channel, and it was taking the experience from the last you know 16 years in in internet, city fiber, etc., and going and being on my own to go and create a channel from the ground up. That I was I was nervous but excited going into that because I thought, uh, right, okay, I I really feel like I can do this, but it was it there was that I was um looking at your career on the outside, and when you made the move to GigaNet, you had to you didn't relocate as such, but you relocated Monday to Friday pretty much to the South Coast.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

So there's and and for those listed, Paul is Paul, a legend who instead of getting a hotel, you rented someone's cottage. Yeah, yeah. So they they were they were in London during the week, yeah, and you went there during the week. That was it. So I mean I see you you changed the bedding, but um such was you could but what were the biggest lessons you saw? Because we're seeing in the altnet sector a number of altnets who are and we have seen where they were essentially a direct business who hired 50, 60, 70 direct salespeople, yeah, and that was their route to market, yeah. And then the advent of investor cash and needing more connections and realizing that consumers want choice, they're then looking, going, right, we need a wholesale function. Um my personal experience of that has been to see businesses and they say, We now do wholesale, great.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

When you went into that role, what sort of lessons did you learn that you perhaps didn't think you would learn going into it? Because you went into launch wholesale, build it, sales function, marketing. What other bits did you kind of that became this these need to be within my sort of thinking that perhaps weren't before?

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Uh so previously uh all my experience had mostly been in sales, so uh internet and city fiber. So then joining GigaNet and taking on that header channel role, whilst I presented you know a plan to the CEO at the time, uh I joined the business and he said you've got three months to you know create a strategy for everything that it would have involved the channel section and present it to the investors in London with me. Uh so that was then you know going from just having to own sales targets, sales commissions, sales budgets, to then having to own in the marketing budget to having a look at how we need to resource it for service, uh, for delivery, etc. And actually I joined the the business when I joined it at the time was a vertically integrated ISP as part of an altnet. So wholesale, there was only gosh, half a dozen people in the business that had any experience with wholesale, if that. So for me it was really difficult because going in there, I thought I felt a little bit alone, I would say, in the first couple of months. And I'm happy to admit that because it was quite um I heard someone say before, it can get it can get lonely the more further up you go and like the more the higher you get to the top because you don't have as many people to share things with because you're also expected to have a lot of the answers and things like that. And whilst I had a strong plan for a vision for what I wanted the channel to look like, trying to then go and get everyone on side within the business, well not necessarily on side, but to get them to give time and effort into what was my plan uh and the vision for the channel strategy was uh it was a hard yards in the first two or three months. And I I had a couple of nights where I thought, oh crikey, this is more than I thought.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

Because you haven't got the when you're launching something, you can't turn around and say, I need your time because we are producing these results business. You need to invest this cash if you're doing this. You're kind of saying, Here's my plan, it will produce this, but I need you to buy in and take that, and and you've kind of it was interesting as well when you talk about it in a lot of businesses when they're looking at wholesale side. You've come from a business in obviously we've kind of skit it over a little bit, but internet acquired by City Fiber, scale and everything changed overnight as a as a business, but but still fully wholesale, as uh Mr. Wilson would would get pain to tell me to a business where you're almost a lone voice at the start, where it's you're wholesale, but business doesn't really care, they have their kind of direct selling connections. So did you what what sort of resilience did you lean on there? Because because you're used to being in a city fibre where it's wholesale business.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

You used to be in the business where you've got a few hundred people around you all working wholesale as well for a lot of their career and especially at internet.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

You're not having to justify the concept of wholesale.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

So what whilst it was quite challenging in those first six to eight weeks, and I did, you know, sometimes I'd go back to my little Airbnb in the evening and think, right, I really need to think about this next step. Uh where it started to come together, I thought I I I approached it a bit sales, really. I've got to go around the business and get people on side to this idea. And so I did a uh an all hands presentation where I presented on my vision for the channel strategy and what it could look like for GigaDet over the next three to five years. Got everyone in the business onto that from all over the UK, and uh just essentially went through what started right from the start. You know, what is the channel, how many businesses are in the channel, what do the different sectors look like, what um, you know, what was an MSP, what's a telco, what's the opportunity for us, and went through the who, what, where, why, when, how, uh, and what the strategy would look like and what it meant for GigaNet and how people's roles would uh kind of contribute towards it. And that did wonders. That was brilliant. After that, I got quite a few teams messages from people saying, This is really exciting, how can I be involved? What can I do to help? And the one person that was uh really uh really good in it all, well, two people actually. So one was um somebody who went on to become the camp manager of mine, a guy called Dale, he was great, and then there was also We love Dale, yeah friend of the pod. Yeah, and there was also a chap called Mike who ran the software development team at the time, and so he had lots of ideas around how we could create a channel portal quite quickly utilising some of the API work we'd done into City Fibre and our own infrastructure, etc. So we we built uh a very good friendship, I'd say, in partnership, and so he would work alongside and say, What feature do you want next?

SPEAKER_03 30:43

Were Giganet aware of the sort of asks that you would need, or was it a case of your kind of opening their eyes a little bit as as you joined and growing the role going actually I need some cash for a portal, I need this, yeah. Were they uh were these sort of things you've had to justify with internal stakeholders as well as fully had to justify, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

I had to build a business case for it all, um, which was again had full support from the CEO and the CFO at the time. So I had to build what was the business plan to say, you know, in where year one, this is what what we need for headcount for sales and for how much money for service and what we need for the marketing budget, this is what year two will look like, this what year three will look like.

SPEAKER_03 31:20

Was it frustrating working in a at the time a direct business? And when I say direct, I guess people are saying this is the business primarily added customers through contracting with them, yeah. End user. Was that frustrating for you from coming from wholesale, or were you were you it's just another challenge to overcome and it was just another challenge, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

I wouldn't say it was frustrating, it was uh it was more so how can I get some of this resource? I've got all this great, you know, uh to your point before, it was at a time when there was lots of um money going into altnets, especially on things like marketing and awareness. So I thought, oh, if I can just get a little bit of this resource, the time and the money to help build what the vision was for the channel, then that would be great. But uh yeah, it wasn't frustrating, I just saw it more of a challenge. And what I would do is just go around the office, you know, spend half an hour people who have booked one-to-ones with them to just look at how we can start to build a bit of relationship, get them on side, get more of their time and resource to invest in.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

You've learned them lessons through being in the tech desk starting there and seeing how good salespeople interacted, I guess, with the function you were because you're making that move from City Fibre, and if you look at City Fibre leadership positions, they're still the same leadership position. It's not a business that lops and changes people at a senior level. So it's probably a fair assumption that I can say that you would still be in that role now if you'd wanted to stay there, but you've kind of wanted to push yourself and progress up into you know getting the head of role prove yourself and they're not common roles that come about that.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

They're not at all, and they've yeah, the industry gets smaller, and then funny.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

You have to catch your food first, don't you, before you eat it, it's not given to you.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Yeah, and hopefully, um I think I mentioned to you earlier, I was listening to Andy's Wilson's one again yesterday, good friend of mine. Uh, and he'll probably laugh if he listens to this because I sat down with Andy, he joined the business as sales director at City Fibre, I was head of sales at internet, uh, I then became head of regional sales for City Fibre, uh, which is great. Loved working with Andy, learned a lot from him. And I remember sitting in the one-to-one saying, I want the next thing, I want to achieve the next the next step up. And he's like, Well, that's kind of my job. Uh he said, Sometimes you have to leave to go up, and that was exactly what he said.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Well, he did he did exactly that. If you look at an Andy Wilson, he was a head of Virgin, yeah, wanted to do what you did, but he couldn't do that within Virgin at the time, so he's made the move to City Fiber and you know he's still still smashing it.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

That's it. Well, then when I saw that uh there's quite a few of the old a couple of my old contacts, Mentornet were working at GigaNet at the time, and then this opportunity came up, and we at City Five we were working closely with GigaNet and I thought it's a great opportunity to join that business on a really exciting trajectory, and uh they were looking to go into the wholesale market, so uh I put myself forward for that head of channel role. Then when I got it, and then I went back to Andy and I said, Right, sorry, here's my resignation. I'm joining GigaNet and he said, I didn't mean you'd take it literally for it replaced you now, it's the nightmare.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

People will think that it's my fault. No, uh and so that journey there, and obviously you kind of touched on it there. So we had probably at that time you had GigaNet, there was I mean, people talk about the market now is lots of different wholesalers, lots of different altnet fiber providers. Um it was really funding-wise, wasn't really difficult for businesses to get funding. Then GigaNet had a few hundred million at least, maybe more. Um and then you had other businesses saying funder, all that kind of fun stuff. At what stage did you kind of get exposed to the financial element of the alt nets where you're seeing funders go, right? We need this many on-net connections in order for that return. Um, we've got three altnets that we fund, we should maybe put them together, or is there you know, at what point did you start thinking, Craigy, this is a bit different to individual connections or this is the politics, I suppose, to a higher level, on it?

SPEAKER_01 35:18

It's a really good question because I think that going back to that piece around you you learn a lot more when you go to different businesses and you gain more experience, you know. So, um, and this might be a slightly long answer to the question. I think, and it's probably important to it though. I used to always say I would would have stayed at internet forever because I loved it. I had a great career there, had a lot of friends there, um, knew that knew it inside out. And but then when the news broke of City Fiber acquiring internet, I was quite upset at first because I thought that's the internet that I've known and love for all these years. But sat down with Elsa who taught me through what the opportunity was, and then straight away just saw the sales opportunities there, right? Okay, right, I'm really excited about this now. But then starting to get exposure to you know internet, it was very much we want to grow a little bit each year, we might launch one or two big products in a year or make a launch a new monitoring platform, whatever it is, to then working in an environment where it's about um building and filling a network and driving penetration and looking at you know the paybacks over 10-15 years, and it was very, very different uh model and metrics was really eye-opening for me. And I thought, oh, this is really quite exciting and very interesting. And my brain was lit up with with kind of all of that information. And then going to join GigaNet, which back to your earlier point, a lot of those altnets were quite similar at the time, all got around 300 million pounds funding to build to about 250,000 homes and businesses. GigaNet was part of three with Jurassic Fiber and Swish under uh Fern. So I think then joining GigaNet, because I then sat on that like senior leadership team, I was even more exposed to things like you know, the cost per premises passed, uh uh how many homes we need to pass each week. And there was very much it was more so a focus on homes passed back then, like we've we've touched on before, rather than on take up as much. And so it was it, I felt like I worked very much at an infrastructure business as well at GigaNet. I think uh City Fibre felt like that, but because we had all of the 900 partners of internet still, and then the original City Fiber launch partners, I still felt like I was working at a wholesaler. Whereas when I was working at GigaNet, it felt more like I'm working at an infrastructure company that's now trying to do service provider and wholesaler on the top, which was which again was great because it just gave me more experience and exposure to um to different types of business models than than I'd seen before.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

I think a lot of these businesses um who were infrastructure kind of first, from a sales point of view, yeah, how much did they need to learn quite quickly to function in the channel if you like, as coming from a core, well-established channel machine that has marketing sales, account managers, and all that kind of good stuff, versus someone that's built something that's amazing but needs to kind of go out to market? How what was that sort of when you're looking at it now or looking back at it? Do you think they were on the money straight away? Do you think there was a lack of sales focus? Do you think what what bits would you if you could go back in time and advise some of the altnets for getting the funding? Was there any sort of key bits you'd you'd use?

SPEAKER_01 38:18

It's a really good question, and I think this there's there's quite a variety, you know. I think we're we're starting to see the consolidation happen in the market, and we have done for the last year, but it's starting to accelerate a little bit. Uh, but I think if we go back a few years to when there was, you know, maybe at the peak 100 alt nets, I think varied styles there. So I think you know, City Fibre had a very clear strategy from the start, which was wanting to go wholesale and they've all they've only ever been wholesale, you know, and then wanting to get the big ISPs on onto the network as well. And it was a leadership team made of people that had worked in wholesale, worked in wholesale previously, uh, and and combination of infrastructure and investment funds, etc. Uh, and then I think looking at the other alt nets, you've got a combination of different ones. So some altnets very much had you know were run by people that just all their experience had been in infrastructure, some where they've been a little bit in wholesale, some where it had been in marketing, sales, marketing and consumer brands. So I think the absolutely for me, one of the biggest challenges is a lot of altnets were not are not wholesale ready and still aren't today. You know, we we we see that in the ones that we engage with at Zen. Um some are more along that journey than others, uh, but others you know went with the kind of that vertically integrated ISP, but actually the were just primarily just selling on being having to be cheapest and you know really compete in in that market without um kind of looking at the the broader sales and marketing strategy. So I think that it's but it was interesting again because most investors were just measuring on premises past, and it was a race to get written fibered up.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

So I think we started, didn't we? We went kilometers built, yeah, and then someone came in and said no, that's a bad metric because we we've got our investors' money. Yeah, let's go past premises past, because then at least we can work on a assumption that gives us a revenue that gives us a justification for the spend. Yeah, and then it's probably I don't know if this is fair, probably last year to year and a half, where businesses are kind of saying, actually shit, we need to monetize the network, yeah. Monetize the network now, as opposed to premises passed and uh kilometers built and stuff. So that's been an interesting move, I think, in the market.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah, uh yeah, I completely agree. And I think I I saw something on LinkedIn uh six months or so ago from from someone that's relatively vocal on there. And whilst I didn't agree with some of what was in the post, the the I know who it'll be. Uh well, but a part a part that I did think was quite interesting was I think probably some in in some of the ornaments, and it not all at all, but I think in some uh they were almost built and designed to be like a corporate from the start, or people have been brought in who had extensive experience in those environments, and so they um perhaps became a bit too bloated too quickly, whereas it should be a little bit more of a start-up and a uh kind of a bit more energy around it rather than having the bureaucracy and the red tape that's involved in some larger organizations and you know wanting to go and challenge OpenReach and BT was a big part of the altnet mentality, but some ended up falling into what would have been seen as that mentality.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

I I I did it's my personal personal view that you'll disagree with or agree with, but I think a lot of the time when you the when I look back on it, uh if you're a funder, you want leadership assurance in terms of I'm gonna give you this money, yeah, and you're yeah, you've got uh credibility. So you saw someone who's done 20 years of engineering, managing or whatever in engineering at Virgin or um any carrier, and coming over to an altnet, yeah, yeah, you've got 20 years credibility, here's here's a load of money, and they'll they'll build a structure that they're used to, invariably, and and the layers in there and and the sort of focuses on engineering as opposed to maybe the the sales and marketing bit because that's and it's not a criticism of them at all, it's just that's their uh focus. And I think we're seeing or I'm seeing is I suppose comment or uh commentary on it businesses now looking at actually we need uh a chief revenue sales officer through our own net who's gonna monetize it and who's got the control of it, or you know, talk touch on your appointment at Zen. You've seen businesses like Xen who are saying actually we need to be more prominent in the wholesale function, so we need a established wholesaler who understands the world and his known and that is gonna go out and push us into market that perhaps in the past we were more happy being in the background a little bit. So we're seeing a lot of those moving parts that probably when you made that move into GigaNet, there wasn't really there's Andy Wilson going into City Fiber as a sales director, other business, other alternates didn't really have your sort of uh role in that alternate sector. It was boshed into a hop spotch of you know, one wholesaler.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Yeah, yeah, I I completely agree with that, and I think it's back to that um the infrastructure mindset as opposed to monetising it to your point just now. And uh it's it's probably hurt some in that, and that's why we're seeing some of the challenges that we do see today. Uh I you know, I'm I'm a huge advocate of what's happened in the industry in the last five, ten years. I think you know the the alternate thing has been uh fantastic for the UK. And I remember at City Fibre back when would it be maybe seven or eight years ago, you know, the the presentation that we rolled out when we'd go and launch new cities was you know the UK had less than 10% coverage of full fibre, and this was the vision. This is where we were against Spain and against other countries who were at 80%. Once in a lifetime thing, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. So for me, I think this has been a hugely exciting moment for all of us in the industry, for Britain in general, and you know, and for me in my career, it's been great, and I've really enjoyed working at a few of those altnets and having different um experience of each of them as well. Uh, but yes, I think that the in terms of that driving uptake and actually having a chief revenue officer or chief sales officer. having a uh a plan to maximize the addressable market as well. I think that's what some some lacked. So it's just very much, okay, we're going to build to 300,000 homes and then all we're going to do is try and get to you know 30% penetration of those homes without then considering there's the businesses that are passed, there's the diff there's you know s uh different sectors, there's education, it's like how do you then go and leverage that as public sector? So I think where City Fiber were great is from from day one had that you know there was Dart Fibre asset that they sold to mobile and carriers um enter public sector there was the Ethernet product set there's the FTDP product set and you know they had a a sales director or a leader for each of those different addressable markets so they're able to go and maximise that from that within your I guess formative higher leadership years where you're kind of regionally you're kind of seeing that structure but then obviously you're parachuting into a an environment where you're a senior figure but a lonely senior figure in terms of the structure of the business and then to to make things really straightforward for you in your career you touched on there fern trading owned um uh giga net jurassic and twish yeah um decided to we're in the consolidation stage now people talk about it but we were probably a year ago year and a half funders were saying well I've got three separate businesses that pretty much do the same thing three different lots of everything I'll put it together it makes more sense in which all points fiber was launched so you found yourself going from giga net into all points the accumulation of three alt nets covering similar areas still the the South England but obviously a bit a bigger network yeah going into wholesale again uh I think there was an acquisition as well of Cuckoo Residential ISP in the mix how are you not as grey as me is my first question well I do think it is has been really funny actually working so going back to that piece of working at internet for a long time it was like eight minutes from my home worked it worked it was not it was a nine to five job you do a little bit of extra time here and there but then going into these high investment altern environments and and being in that now for best part seven or eight years until I've recently joined ZEM uh was a real change but I'm a bit of a workaholic and absolutely love it so you know doing long nights and weekends and things just became part of the job but you feel like your personal I mean tell me to start off but it's it's a challenge sometimes isn't it with with your work ethic evenings weekends obviously you've got outside commitments you've you've you're massive into your music run businesses on that side you've got your dog that you've adored long walk married uh idiot friends like John I go to go walking with all that kind of stuff how do you put that together with the fact that you are more than happy working seven in the morning till ten at night and you would do that all the time if you could yeah I would I would I would up until I would up until last year and I think um interestingly again you know sometimes when people say things to you that stick with you in your life I met someone at an event which was I think it might have been the CNA's uh a year and a half back two years back and uh he said to me you seem you seem different you've changed you seem more serious and I think that was at probably the peak of you know we'd we'd gone through the consolidation of APFN as well and there's just loads going on like late nights all the time working weekends another another thing that we need to deliver and don't get me wrong really exciting and I was really enthusiastic about it all and I think we're working to building something exciting here and special so it's it's kind of driven me uh but I when they said that I took us I did it did reflect and it it played on my mind actually for that evening at the dinner because I thought am I more serious and then I remember speaking to my wife about it when I got home and she said well yeah because you you you kind of obsess over work now and you've kind of you've gone up a couple of times quite quickly in the last few years but uh you look at some of what's cost you personally and then I think it actually came to yeah and this is this is this is why it's quite nice to come and do these things and you can talk a bit openly and personally probably came to a head really about a yeah uh last Christmas so yeah yeah last Christmas uh where um I thought I've been working away from home now for every week for the best part of four years you know living in uh just well staying in Portsmouth for two and a half years then staying in Reading which actually was still four hours away from me and my wife said to me you know we and at the time I'd moved from Telford to Shrewsbury and we'd gone from we'd lived in the same house the whole time we'd been together which was you know very very relatively small kind of basic house and just been trying to save money pay off as much of the mortgage as I can and then we'd moved to quite a nice area of Shrewsbury but bought bought a nice house it was it was big step up we kind of take missed a step really in the in the housing ladder and she said to me what's the point in this having this nice house and all these things and having like a nice life if you can't enjoy it and I was like all right that really it it cut deep a bit because I thought you know that's um and she like having to walk the dog three times a day by myself and do all these other things and I reflected and I thought yeah my life has changed quite a lot actually I I love where my career's at and I'm really excited about it but actually I don't want to do it to the detriment of then not enjoying all of those things that you just said because I'm very passionate about all those things a lot of resellers as listen and owners and senior buds will will massively relate to that because as as as important a role we do in work if you know there's very few people that if if they left that job the business would would collapse whereas with your family and all those things they're a constant and they're probably the first thing that gets neglected yeah in the pursuit of of of a career. I couldn't agree more and I think yeah and it's something that I've I've learned a lot recently and you think oh we're doing great things here and I'm earning more and I want to get this nice house and I want to do more and I can maybe retire a bit earlier and do some of these great things um but it it it you're right you know we're not saving lives in this industry you know we are we're we're it's it's an exciting industry and I love it and I want to stay in wholesale for for my whole of my career but I am more aware I think now in the last year because of some of what I've been through and you know probably working too much to the point of losing sight of some of those other things. Yeah like hiking something I absolutely love. I've done it for years and years and years but I recognise that in the last two or three years I'd hardly been out much into the mountains whereas it used to be when I was at internet every weekend out in the mountains because I'd been in Reading or Portsmouth all week and then was doing some work at the weekend so I think um I really reflected back today you're looking back going right Sunday I've I got my stuff packed I'm going to work Monday I need to do this I need to yeah so then your weekend becomes not two days one day yeah and then Friday you're traveling back so actually it's Saturday and then you've got all this stuff that people you haven't spoken to and seen you need to do.

SPEAKER_03 50:39

So Saturday's a blur and it's eat sleep rave repeat and exactly that's go by.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Yeah and not and not spending as much time with my my mum my family and my sisters um and unfortunately one of my sisters has has an illness and I haven't spent as much time I didn't recognize I hadn't spent as much time with her in the last few years as well. So actually I was quite fortunate that when I left APFN I had six months off before joining Zen and during that time I I kind of wrote a list of all the things that I wanted to do during that period. Some of it kind of personal and professional development but but a lot of it was make sure I spend a day a day a week with my mum and my sister do these things and we went for some really nice days out to like country manor estates and went away for a couple of nights took my sister and my niece towers did like really nice things together and actually I think that now coming out of that for six months and starting at Zen and having a much better work life balance at Zen. How have you controlled yourself joining Zen so I guess my question should have been why did you join Zen but before that how do you control yourself that you've had that six months and that you're starting something new exciting that you want to build and your personality is go, let's go how have you what mechanism have you learned to go right I'm not gonna go into my trap and suddenly move to Rochdale I'm doing Rochdale Monday to Friday I'm doing this stuff um how have you been able to manage that so yeah it's a really good question because it is interesting because I've been at Zen now I celebrated three months a week and a half ago um or two weeks ago sorry and congratulations yeah thank you very much lasted two months longer than I thought you would hey cheers mate but no it's gone really well and I think um so for me joining Zen gosh what a business it's great so I think it's really exciting because I've joined it and it's a very successful business. You know we turned over £126 million last year and the partner division's really successful um they're incredibly well known in the industry so I wasn't joining that business thinking there's there's lots of going to come in and change or whatever else um but joining it I've I've why did they bring you in then? Well I think they absolutely want the dedicated focus on on wholesale and partner. So the previous MD was across both consumer and partner. But you know one of the things that I thought to myself before coming in is want to come and really understand everything about this business, lift up the bonnet, see what's going on and uh I've got quite excited quite quickly about things we can optimize, things we can do differently you know how we could um like how we can support partners a bit a bit differently and lots of different things across the business that I'm spotting the more time I'm there. So I have found myself getting quite enthusiastic and excited and working the you know late late night and being on but the difference I think is I'm I'm doing it now because at the moment because I'm really enjoying it and it's exciting I can see it's I don't is that what you're telling yourself to justify it. Yeah I am but well I but I haven't been no the weekend hard stop haven't been on it I have stayed in Rochdale a couple of days a week and so when I stay over I'll do a little bit of work on my laptop a little bit late um but I feel like it's there's there's not uh because we're not um investor led and you know we're not having to make decisions for the next three months or the next six months that Zen's got uh one of the things that's really stood out to me sitting in the the kind of exco meetings is the decisions that we're making are more long term around you know things that will impact the Zen for the next five 10 15 years you know it's it's it Richard will keep that business forever and it's it's in his will that it will go off to a trust. So there's the decisions that are being made aren't well we need to go and do this thing because we need to pivot for the next three months because we've got this fire here or whatever else. And I think for me it's quite nice to feel like you can go ah like you can just chill and just actually take the time to think about things and it it's it's very much that Rome wasn't built in a day and it's a little bit cheesy but we're not I I don't feel like a different pace with a privately owned business as opposed to a private equity business wanting return on investment when it feels more like I'm back at what internet was like um but but better because uh you know Zen they've got a fantastic network who we've got the fiber hub and the APIs and I'm not gonna sit here and pitch Zen because I appreciate this is a bit more of a an agnostic podcast but genuinely I've been thoroughly impressed and be like well done I've got to get it in the marketing manager that's for but I think no but I think genuinely being really impressed with like you know the people the systems the network just everything um that I imagine but it it is that uh but I think also people have a perception of Zen from the outside that we are quite Zen.

SPEAKER_03 54:57

So so my my perception you've kind of my ignorant perception yeah is the amazing customer service costs reflect that yeah um owner led yeah and no commission for salespeople yeah yeah yeah that's a big one and I struggle with the sales bit yeah because of the commission and the getting out of bed and it's not to say that you know in wholesale you will push people down certain routes or things but um I I've grown up in sales all my life people as much as the I know the most money motivated people are are also the most customer focused as well because the two kind of go hand in hand so I've always thought with Zen that's quite interesting and and I imagine that's the first sales leadership role you've gone into well I say sales leadership but obviously innovative but particularly the sales element where it's not commission based you can't go in and go suddenly sell a Joe Blog's this it's worth this or I'm gonna change this scheme I'm gonna manoeuvre this and it's it's more longer term thinking.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Has that been it is have you adapted to that um very well actually and very quickly and and and I'm a convert actually I really am you sceptical like me before that I was a bit I was I um before you know but when reading about the the the role and applying for it and which is really exciting in itself I did think that's one thing that I thought wow that's really unfamiliar for me and and and different territory as much as I say like like to achieve and I have liked to achieve of course you know owning over your OTE is great and overperforming and things because it allows you to do those great things in life. But I think the one thing that with Zen is you know we're incredibly ambitious and driven and the the people within the business are very passionate about the success of Zen which I think is um is great. There's there's there's not there's no egos really in the business it's um everyone's just kind of pulling in the same direction the the whole thing our mantra around for the people and for the planet is felt across the business you know and I think Richard does video vlogs to the business kind of every couple of weeks which are really well received and he's really close to the day to day in the business that's great.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

And I think in you know just looking at the sales side itself why doesn't Richard retire or live in a mansion and private jets and holidays and stuff because he's such an interesting character that he owns the business 128 129 you'll have people ringing him up all the time can we buy you can we do this can we do that obviously you said there he's made assurances that you know the long distance future goes into a trust but when you're coming in working for someone like that I don't know anyone else in the industry from a um an ownership leadership perspective like that. I don't think there is another person who's very um not driven by that everyone else wants to exit make a load of cash if they start a reseller business they want to grow it and maybe acquire other businesses or if they're in um our world they want to you know go through funding again or an event and make a load of cash.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

He's the only person that that doesn't have that in his ever very yeah very unique character like a leader in our business and I I feel really fortunate to to work for him and for Zen actually it's I think you know his uh his passion for doing right by people and planet is as I say it's felt across the business and it is so genuine he he really does care about making a difference to people's lives. We have a thing called Zen in the community which is where we give back um around to different charities across the UK we do we have lots of different things that we run throughout the year. We you know it's interesting even that so some of our uh like board sessions that we have an ESCO sessions it's talking about ways that we um we can uh impact the environment more and how we can improve on on things that we're doing and how does a business because I'm uh I'm probably a cynic because I'm on the outside so I'm I'm a you know give me that Grace um how does a business that has those core aims grow in a marketplace where normally it's um a little bit doggy dog certainly you've seen with the altnet where you've got overbuilding stuff going on in London um where there's lots of different fibre providers there's uh G networks who unfortunately are um administration and and and all that kind of stuff this other way I'm not gonna pay people commission as a business we're not gonna pay people commission we're gonna look at charities we're gonna do da da da da da but we're growing and we're acquiring customers it's an impossible question to answer in the in like less than three hours but yeah if you could kind of distill that down because it's it's every logical element in my brain yeah is saying this should not work but then the reality that I see is it does work. Yeah. And I think there'll be some you know every different businesses will align in different ways. So you know we we at we we're a B Corp and we work with other other B Corp organizations and we work with you know some of the resellers that we work with are also you know really passionate about the environment and things like that. But that's not to say that we're not also a commercial entity you know we in the last year and this is one of the reasons why I was really excited to join join Zen in the last year we've I think we've made more noise in the channel than we have in in the last three or four and that's something that we speak about because of things like the Fibre Hub the uh wanting to become the alternate aggregator of choice in the wholesale channel uh so we we understand that uh it's not that the Zen message isn't just about some of those things as well there's there's there's the commercial side of it there's the proposition that we offer there's the fiber hub there's the we we can be very commercially exciting and and competitive in the environment sometimes we'll get a bit of um a lot of the because I've had kind of insight into the sort of commercial expertise you don't scale a business without being commercially really astue exactly really aggressive in terms of acquiring customers do you think sometimes that goes under the radar having now you've been into the machine as as opposed to my sort of ignorant view or is that a bit unfair? No no no and I think it's a good view because I think you know speaking to some others in in the channel is yeah that is a view others have and I think you hit it uh hit the nail on the head before that like great customer service great tech support and these are all the things that when I joined the business I thought a knack for innovation however I think since since joining the business what what I see is that back to that point of everyone's really passionate about it like genuinely got some of the most driven people in the industry that I've worked with you know the product and portfolio team and the uh the network engineering team the devs they're all really and like the technology teams are all really passionate about innovation and what's the next big thing that we can do. We're thinking about lots of great things but we're doing some really exciting things of AI at the moment um and then in the sales team as well there is there is a lot of that hunger and ambition there. So I think that I think probably just what I I see part of my role and just what we're doing in in the next year is is how we express that to the to the channel and to um to the market and you know how we shout a bit more about some of the the great things that we do. And I think you know there are some some brands out there that are fantastic at marketing and talking about lots of great things they do but they don't maybe do them all not going to name who um but I think I think I think the thing with Zen is we can do so much that people probably still don't know about um and I think yeah we it's almost a different challenge where you've got some businesses now that have adapted and focused on the sales engine yeah they're not focusing on the customer as much as they're refined at the front end. Whereas you're seeing Zen is amazing structure but you saw some elements at the front end as well as well that you're thinking actually we do all this great stuff we can we can push that and that's giving you that excitement it really has yeah there's a when we've got as I say we've got a huge amount of capability we've got a fantastic network and we've got 700 locally enabled exchanges with open reach across why why aggregate all of the altnets why why do that I well it's you know one it's a it's a great differentiator I think that you know in terms of integrating with an Altnet can be really challenging for all those reasons we spoke about before not all of them are wholesale ready. Has that helped you through gigaNet all points sort of background when you're engaging with Altnets because you've walked in their shoes and I imagine an Altnets coming to you going well I love you please sell uh on our network yeah what do you need um and you've been in their shoes you know does it help with the the sort of integration conversation massively helps it's one of my favourite parts of the job so I think my first exposure with um City5 when I did the head of regional sales role was you know uh owning the penetration of the old metro product across multiple regions and then carrying that through to GigaNet and all points fiber and then to uh to here. So I think I know what the Altnets need. I know what they're motivated by. Back to that point of why do we do it, you know it's it's really challenging to integrate with some of the Altnets. Some of them are further ahead on their API journey than others. There's there's a window of time in the market you know this year is a pivotal year. It's going to be the biggest year for for FTTP 1500 businesses set to move to FTTP. EOFTTP is going to displace a lot of 100 meghernet so there's a we we recognise that there's this probably period of time for the next three to five years where there's an opportunity we talk about it we laugh about it internally because we use the phrase all the time make hay while the sun's shining uh so I think you know we've got why did we do it? Because we've got all the capability and the right people and expertise to do it. We've proven we can do it really well we've built four altnets into the platform in the last 12 months and we've got three more in the works for for this year if not more. So I think shiny names or you get in charge I would I wouldn't have been there well I would have been probably close to be able to show um but I think you know I think we we we have done it incredibly fast and to a great um we we've done it to a great ability so we can you know ordering an Altnet service in the fire hub feels like ordering an open reach service etc.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:07

So and again I'm not going to how do you keep the challenge of so many supplier relationships yes so a lot of resellers that I speak to some of them now are consolidating suppliers so yeah I guess part of that plays into working with someone who consolidates but part of the reason they're refining it is because to manage eight or nine different suppliers with maybe slightly different activities different billing bits so I understand that bit but how of how much of you guys had to go right we need to we we speak open reach we learn City Fibre language yeah we need to learn ITS language and then we need to learn um freedom fibre language and ms3 and and how that how does that work from a it's yeah it's really complex um then we need to go back to the the question on the ornaments because I want to mention something else on that um but so so on that piece and I think that's

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Again, another reason why we're doing it is because we've got this great platform in the Fiber Hub and bringing them all together, you know, so City Fiber have a different way that they build and how they manage, you know, ready for service premises and premises past than a Freedom Fiber do, or they truly do. Each of them have got different codes that they attribute to their premises and whether it might need a way leave or something else. So we have uh teams of people internally that you know their roles are work through that data, manage that data, and how do we ingest that to then ensure that we can create a journey that feels quite seamless regardless of the provider that you're um ordering the service on? And it and as well, still feels like a same Zen service, we can still support it in the same way because some things we we can't do, you know, we can't automatically raise a fault with an altnet that we might be able to with with OpenReach, but how do we then make that service still still feel great and put that great Zen wrap around it? And I think the benefit for the channel is it's quite hard work to go and uh aggregate if you wanted to go and integrate with those altnets, you know, might be a lot of work to do. Some of them don't offer layer two, some only do layer three, some only do layer two and don't do layer three. They've got different ways you have to ingest those codes, different product sets, different SLAs, so it's quite a lot to manage operationally. The cost to serve them becomes quite challenging. Whereas I think you know what we can offer is we take all that away, we can give you a great price point on the altnets and we can support you to win, which goes back to that and that allows me to loop it back around to the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:14

And you can make more money as well from the altnets, just for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:16

Yeah, well that goes back around to the part that you asked me around, the altnets. So I think um a big thing for me for this year and for the next few years is how we make the channel make the most of that opportunity. So um, and I think you know, go again with the altnets, some are very good at going and driving consumer sales for their vertically integrated brand, but they've not had a great deal of experience in B2B. We look at the uh the footprint, and you might see that one of them, you know, business footprint's usually a lot smaller on on those big resi altnets, but there's very little to no update there because they've they've not been able to go and execute anything against it because it's all been focused on on the resi sales. So I think you know, part of um what I see our role and a big part will play this year is we put these um altnets into the fiber hub, but then how do we work with the partners that have that appetite and that are motivated to go make that most of this market opportunity for the next few years, support them and actually like address their ideal customer profile across that footprint. And that's where the altnets really like it because they're looking at it and saying, you know, how how can we how can we get more here? And I think when I'm being able to come in and look at my hat from City Fiber, my hat from Gignet, my hat from APFN and now at Zen. So now I'm back in a pure wholesaler, not responsible for the open ship.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:24

Poget 10 Game Keeper, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

So it's quite it's I'm at the moment, you know, engaged with all of our AltNets around okay, so this is what we can do in these regions. This is um partners that want to work with us here, these are these ones are really proactive and they're quite keen to execute on a sales strategy. Um, but here's a particular sector we might be able to do something with, and um there's quite a lot of innovation going on at the moment, I think. It's really exciting. Um yeah, sorry, I went on a tangent on that, but you can tell I get excited about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:48

Oh, this is this is this is uh this is interesting, and and and obviously, like just uh you know, for me, the the most, most, most, most, most, most important question is if you want to come dine with me, yeah. What three courses would you cook?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:02

Oh wow, gosh, that's uh in Shrewsbury. What would my three courses be?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:07

Okay, um in your mansion in Shrewsbury.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:09

Yeah, in my mansion, it's not quite a mansion, but I do like the house. Um what are my three courses? I'll start in reverse because sticky toffee pudding would would be my favourite. So I know it's quite it can be it's quite a pub classic, but that that would be my favourite. Um solid. Yeah, I'm really into anything zingy spicy, so it would be um probably some kind of masa man or Thai curry for my main. Um yeah, anything you're doing alright so far.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:37

I think you you're you're in the 9-10 mark for me, so let's see if you keep it going.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:41

Yeah, for the starter, um really tough to be honest. Does there's lots lots of different things I'd like? I I'm quite fat, uh quite a fan of like just a really good pub scotch egg where you've got like a runny yolk in the middle. That's uh that's a good that's a very nice kind of pub classic. Like a mustard mayo and the yeah, yeah, that that I'm yeah, but I'm also into things like um actually I took my wife out on Friday night to the pub in our village and they do like uh piggy bits, they call it, which is like you know, like like lits of bits of belly pork and other bits of crackling and things with loads of like soy and spicy sauce on it. Um I love anything like that. So probably it'd be something like that, then the Thai curry, and then go with something indulgent.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:17

As as people can probably see, the you know, I'm a fan of food. Yeah, I like that, yeah, yeah. Piggy bits. I'm really hungry now. Nah, that's that's amazing. I mean, um it's a privilege to sit opposite. I mean, look, we could probably and have d spend hours and hours talking through our industry, your journey, and we've not even touched on your your crazy music taste, and hopefully maybe we'll we'll do that another time. But I think to have started as a hotel trainee manager in Telford, kind of fast forward, not a huge amount of time, 20 years or plus, you not much more, to be an MD of a function, to be going out to market with strategy and all that stuff, to to have made a number of choices in your career where you could have quite easily either stayed in a technical area in the background, you could quite easily have stayed in in City Fiber and still be there now and still be doing what you're doing, you could still be but you've always kind of pushed yourself, and I think anyone that's uh kind of listening to this will be but also there's a cautionary tale, a little bit in terms of that balance between the drive and what's important, and just because you're growing and achieving, and it doesn't mean that you sacrifice stuff, and it doesn't mean that you have to, and you've still progressed significantly, and probably not doing the crazy crazy stuff that you were doing work wise before. And I think it's important for people watching this to go, actually, I can achieve and progress. I don't need to to kill myself to the detriment of seeing family and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:50

Not at all, no, and thank you. That's uh really appreciate that. It's nice and it's been it's been great. Um, I think that taking risks, taking risks is is a big piece, and I do think you know it's um you can build it, you can build a great career, and if you know I and it's it's interesting, like my wife and I talk about this a lot because she's just really happy doing the job that she does, um, gets to just do nine to five, clock out, just like things on the side for charities and bits like that, uh, that she's really passionate about. Um and really happy to do that. And but you know, if you want, if if you want to do something where you might want to go up or do something else, and I think taking that risk and things that make you feel uncomfortable. So it's a bit I always think about it when you go and do a um a live presentation in front of an audience of a few hundred people, you always get a little bit of that the butterflies and nervousness and anticipation before you go on stage, and that's natural you should feel like that. And I think those last few roles that I've gone into before starting them, I've always been I've always had that feeling of a little bit of nervous and apprehension, but um you get into it and it goes well. And one thing that I do think I would I I would share, but you know, if if if anyone's interested in, I think kind of preparation as well. I know it's that classic thing of failure to prepare is preparing to fail. Um but a good example is before joining um Zen in that six months I had off. Whilst I did do a lot of personal things, I also uh worked with an executive leadership coach, which I just you know paid for off my own bat over the six months, which I had sessions with every three weeks. I read a couple of books that would you know help me get into the right mindset for the role. So I do think that that's really important as well. I think just having m having the thinking time and the preparation time before you go and do something, especially before you go and make a big move like a big career move.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:22

So you can't win a lottery, you can't win the lottery without buying a lottery ticket. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, thank you so much, Mr. North. Pleasure, really enjoyed it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

Yeah, it's been great, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:31

He's no longer Serpo North, he is Lord North of Shrewsbury. Um, absolutely loved that session. I could probably spend another 10 hours talking with him through wholesale partners, the amazing altnet market we're seeing, all the changes there, the work he's doing at Zen, the work he's done previously, working in businesses with private equity, working in small businesses acquired, constantly progressing. Lessons learnt as well. I think have resonate a lot with me in terms of work-life balance and the important things and and and progressing but not sacrificing relationships and the importance of life. So I really enjoyed that. And I know not if you won't mind me saying this, if the people want to reach out, be it people want to work with Zen or if they want to just understand his journey and advice or tips and they want to progress to the sort of levels he's at, he'll always be open to those conversations. So I'd always uh check him out. But thank you very much for for listening and watching, and I'll uh I'll look forward to catching up with you all next time. Thank you.